February 29, 2008
My rookie try at covering the Supreme Court
I run into Robert Dillon, with whom I worked briefly in Anchorage in 2004, on the Mall in Washington. Dillon was covering the Supreme Court for the Fairbanks News-Miner, me for the Cordova Times. We both worked earlier for Alaska Newspapers, me as a designer, he as the editor of the Tundra Drums.It's certainly a jolt to go from being in a home office in Baltimore to joining the press corps at the Supreme Court.
I usually spend my weekends copyediting six rural newspapers in Alaska. The dress code for this job is relaxed, at best. I interpret it to allow me to wear, as a sampling at the low end, a paint-splattered University of Maryland sweatshirt, grey Lee jeans and Timberlands with caulk on them.
With any luck, I remember to wear a bandana while doing home improvement projects sandwiched around the editing, so maybe my hair isn't paint splattered as well ... maybe not.
I fit in fairly well with our idiosyncratic Upper Fells Point neighborhood with its mix of arty types, immigrants, blue-collar workers and casually dressed professionals.
Not so well in go-go, busy, hyperaffluent Washington, D.C., the 21st century's answer to the glory of Rome at its height.
So when the Cordova, Alaska, editor of the Cordova Times, Joy Landaluce, suggested I cover the Supreme Court hearing on the Exxon Valdez oil spill on Wednesday and file a story, a major cleanup was in order before I could be presented to the public.
Help came from many quarters. My neighbor Blaire cleaned her Wal-Mart briefcase of cat hair and lent it to me for my notebook, wallet, pens and camera.
She suggested buying black tights at Walgreens -- warmer than stockings, she said -- and wearing some light makeup. While at Walgreens, I also grabbed a box of L'Oreal hair color to address my roots.
My sister Maureen sold me and shipped to Baltimore her wonderful Canon G2 Powershot to take pictures of many Alaska events surrounding the Supreme Court hearing.
My boss in Alaska, editor Randall Howell, and administrative editor Tammy Judd sent a request for press credentials to the nice staff at the Supreme Court information office.
The Supreme Court deputy information officer approved my request and noted a dress code: business jacket mandatory even for female Scotus reporters. And nothing but pens and a notebook would be allowed into the actual courtroom.
I had never owned a business suit in my life. Mindful of my laughable hourly rate working for Alaska Newspapers, I drove to Value Village in Highlandtown and perused the racks of various blue pinstripe numbers. I found a lovely brown suit for $9.98, a new belt for 99 cents and a Liz Claiborne black blouse for $2.98.
To quote the president, mission accomplished.
My sister Sharon and her husband Rob offered lodging a few Metro stops from the court. Rob lent me his aging but servicable Toshiba laptop and Sharon lent her cell phone.
It become obvious that not only did I need a wardrobe for this event, but that I lagged technology by not even having a cell phone, laptop or a professional-grade digital camera. My home office is fairly up to date but I didn't have what I needed to cover a major story without family support, for which I am eternally grateful.
Lamont watched the pets and bought the car down for my use after the court hearing.
And, a family friend, Lee Arnold, counsel to a Republican member of the House of Representatives, who is a fine legal mind, checked my stories for errors, and Eric Caplan of Caplan Communications, publicist for the Cordova-based activists, snared me a career-saving cubicle at the National Press Club to work at on deadline for my preview story the night before the court arguments.
So, all spiffed up, I got the court Wednesday morning about 90 minutes early, and met the Alaskans who were thawing out in the hallway after spending a frigid night outdoors in sleeping bags.
In the press room, in strode Pete Williams, the court reporter for NBC News, Joan Biskupic of USA Today, Bob Barnes of the Washington Post, and all the "bigs" of the Supremes' court media.
Then an elderly gentleman with a cane came in, smiled, and introduced himself. "Hello," he said. "I'm covering this for the Cordova Times." (!)
I was more than a little territorial, proud to be representing the tiny ground-central town most affected by the oil spill.
"I'm covering the case for the Cordova Times," I said. "Who are you?"
He was the husband of a former Times editor, it turned out. The court staff was kind to let him in, as he ostentiously lacked pen, notebook or other accoutrements of a working reporter. He ended up essentially in a hallway behind the working press.
Around 9:20 a.m., 40 minutes before the court would convene, the "bigs" were escorted out first to sit in the permanent press corps section to the right of the justices' bench.
Next came the rest of us to be portioned out in alcoves crammed with chairs, behind the "bigs." The chairs were packed like in a really popular comedy club, reminding me of D.C.'s old Cellar Door.
Robert Dillon, a former colleague at Alaska Newspapers stringing for the Fairbanks News-Miner, knew what to expect.
Those of us brand new to this experience -- namely most of the Alaska fishing town journalists, from Kodiak mainly -- quizzed folks from USA Today and the National Law Journal on how to interpret what we saw.
"Can we interpret what the judges think by their questions, or is that a mistake?" I asked two reporters from the National Law Journal.
"Yes, you can interpret," they told me, unless the justices were obviously playing devil's advocate. They said one could start by understanding that justices Scalia and Thomas were resolutely pro-business, and thus likely votes for Exxon, and then study the others' remarks for clues to their leanings.
We less-celestial journalists were rounded into our alcove seats, and our alcove had three Kodiakers, myself, and the suffering-from-a-bad-cold Dahlia Lithwick of Slate.com.
Just before 10 a.m., Toby Sullivan of the Anchorage Press, a former commercial fisherman and plaintiff from Kodiak, and I were inexplicably singled out from everyone else and summoned to rise and follow a brusque female officer of the court.
I worried that we were getting moved from decent seats in front of our alcove to Siberia, farther back near the hallway, alongside my fake Cordova Times counterpart. If I was demoted down to the hallway, where officers signaled which justice was speaking using a number of fingers and a code for each justice, because you couldn't see anything, my reporting was going to suffer even more than it did already from not knowing the court in any great detail.
I was about to protest when we were actually led, not into Siberia, but forward into the chamber proper and shown seats in with the "bigs." The little Cordova Times was about to be seated beside the Washington Post. Though honored that Toby and I were recognized as legit, and that the court officers were kind enough to show courtesy to journalists covering the oral arguments for residents of small-town Alaska, my seat at the end of the row seemed even more claustrophobic than the seat in the alcove.
"Dana, do you want my seat?" I called to Dana Milbank, the Washington Post political reporter superstar, who had arrived late and been shoved into our alcove.
Milbank had no idea who I was yet didn't question why I would know who he was. If you know you are a "big" you are not surprised at being known to strangers. Dana said sure if I was sure.
I was sure I didn't want to be packed in with the bigs. I wanted back with the "smalls." This was a David vs. Goliath case, and I was happier with the Alaskans.
Dana sat down a seat or two away from his Post colleague Bob Barnes, who mockingly asked if he'd bought anything to write with -- color columnists can just sit and listen, he implied -- and I returned to the Official Alaska Alcove to sit by Dahlia Lithwick.
Dahlia actually mentioned the invitation to Toby and me to move at the start of her fabulous column -- fabulous in its writing style, its sympathy to Alaskans and the fact she wrote while fighting a wicked respiratory disorder. Her column is headlined, Oil and Water: The Exxon Valdez case runs aground at the Supreme Court:
The high court is teeming with Alaskans this morning, and the press office has made a superhuman effort to accommodate them all. ... Outside the court, Alaskans hold banners demanding justice. And flanking me in the press section today are reporters from at least four different Alaskan newspapers. One is himself a plaintiff in the Exxon suit. A few moments before argument begins, a passel of them are even moved up to the two front rows reserved for the permanent press corps—sacred ground to which your ordinary beat reporter dare not aspire.Milbank made good use of the seat I had been offered to crane his neck and listen, rarely taking notes but soaking it all in. His column is entitled, At the High Court, Damage Control:
Exxon Mobil, the giant oil corporation appearing before the Supreme Court yesterday, had earned a profit of nearly $40 billion in 2006, the largest ever reported by a U.S. company -- but that's not what bothered Roberts. What bothered the chief justice was that Exxon was being ordered to pay $2.5 billion -- roughly three weeks' worth of profits -- for destroying a long swath of the Alaska coastline in the largest oil spill in American history. "So what can a corporation do to protect itself against punitive-damages awards such as this?" Roberts asked in court.The other major thing I noticed was that NPR's Nina Totenberg, who had the seat very closest to the bench, was wearing a bright, shiny, light brown leather jacket in violation of the dress code that had sent me to Value Village.The lawyer arguing for the Alaska fishermen affected by the spill, Jeffrey Fisher, had an idea. "Well," he said, "it can hire fit and competent people."
The rare sound of laughter rippled through the august chamber. The chief justice did not look amused.
As I had been temporarily led to a seat in the row behind her, the court officer had told me to "put away my sunglasses," hanging on the front of my blouse. "They're reading glasses," I replied, alarmed that they she might confiscate them, and I might need them.
"Well put them away," she repeated, and I complied, though they didn't have a fraction of the shine and potential of Nina's leather jacket to distract the Supremes from their Very Important Work.
Oh, here's a link to my curtainraiser story, Cordovans vs. Exxon: Spill victims plead passionate case as high court hears appeal, and a scan of this week's Cordova Times with my story appears below.
My story on the Supreme Court's oral arguments is here online: "Supreme Court weighs case to cut oil-spill award."
And thus have I covered my biggest story in my 35-year career while working for my littlest newspaper, the Cordova Times, circulation 1,000.
UPDATE: My curtainraiser story was mentioned in the Anchorage Daily News Newsreader, image here:
Click above
My second front-page, with a story I wrote, my photo of lead attorney Jeffrey Fisher, and a graphic I helped to put together:
Click above to read full-size version.
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