The More Things Change, The More They Change.
Reflections on being a freelance reporter in Paris in the '80s
Contributed to the Paris Pages by Tom Noland
8 December 1995 :-
In Paris, the more things change, the more they change. Twelve years ago I was
tear-gassed on the Esplanade des Invalides while covering a student
demonstration for an American newspaper. I stumbled down the steps to the Metro
which was, unlike today, running. Good thing; I had a deadline. I got off at
Republique, seeing better and walking more steadily. Then it was up to my
fifth-floor apartment on the Quai de Valmy. I banged out the story on a portable
Smith-Corona, then took the Metro to the Opera where I climbed the wide steps
and walked over to the Associated Press. There I filed my story "just-in-time"
on the teletype machine.
Now the students aren't only demonstrating; they're striking. Smith-Corona is
bankrupt. And I'm filing this on the Internet so deadline, schmedline.
Back then information for a freelance reporter largely meant whom you knew or
could talk to whether you knew them or not. "Research" for a deadline story,
beyond perusing the French press, was problematic. A service like the Paris
Pages was unheard-of. This lack of ready information led to a number of
caricature scenes that are unimaginable today.
At one point in my stay I had just been married and was without a television
when the phone rang at 2 a.m. Sleepily I realiized it was a very excited editor
from USA TODAY, one of the papers I worked for, informing me that Princess Grace
of Monaco had died of injuries suffered in a car wreck on one of the corniche
roads outside Monte Carlo and would I please fly down there and work up a story
in the next three hours?
"We need local reaction. You'll get front-page play -- promise!" he said.
"Listen, it's two in the morning, there aren't any flights to Monaco or anywhere
else."
"We gotta have a story." Click.
I woke my wife and we put our heads together on how to gather information. To my
chagrin I realized I didn't even have a radio anymore; the couple I used to
share the Quai de Valmy apartment with had taken theirs when they moved out,
just prior to our wedding.
"But we DO have a radio!" my wife said excitedly. "The toilet paper radio!"
Of course. Someone had given us a plastic Portuguese toilet-paper radio as a
joke wedding gift. It was in the bathroom, encased around fresh roll of paper.
Desperately I switched it on and turned both plastic knobs back and forth, back
and forth. Only static. I cursed the well-meaning friend who had, unbekwownst to
him, raised my hopes so cruelly.
"I know what you can do," my wife said, and her voice was quieter. "You can find
out the telephone prefix for Monaco and call people up."
"Which people?"
"Any people. Dial numbers at random. See what you get."
"Just. . . wake them up?"
"And say you're sorry to have to tell them that their adored princess is dead,
but you're on deadline and you need a quote."
She should have been the reporter (actually she had been a reporter, but hated
it; she couldn't stand cajoling comments out of strangers). Of course it worked
-- if you count tears, threats, and spicy Gallic insults "working." It even
turned out that I was the first to break the news to the Monte Carlo harbor
police, one of the numbers I reached through an hour and a half of blind
dialing. I guess they only had a toilet-paper radio too.
Tom Noland is a publisher with The Cobb Group in Louisville, Kentucky. He
lived in Paris from 1979 to 1984. He can be contacted via
Tom_Noland@mm.cobb.ziff.com.
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