The Real Deal

Learning the ABCs

I left the beeper-driven, happenstance life of a wire service stringer and took the job ABC Television offered me. A staff job, an island of assurance, if you will, in the dangerous waters of never knowing where your next paycheck might come from. It turned out to be only a brief respite from the turbulent seas of the freelance life, however. I lasted 18 months and quit. Even in that short stint, a sameness was setting in, and it turned out that I was more onboard with uncertainty than I was with shooting cast pictures on the soaps.

I was assigned to the public relations department, because that’s what we did. We pictorially ...