Dispatch from the Other Side

WICHITA, Kan. – Crime has a way of happening right around meal time.

Seconds after I walked back into the newsroom after a tasty sandwich, a call came over the scanner. People were being arrested! Near a school! Many of them! I was on my way, still digesting as I drove my car down Douglas Avenue.

I arrived. Hundreds of students were on the front lawn, playing hackey sack, soccer, chatting on cell phones and just looking aimlessly off into space. In front of the school were the cops: at least six cars, with red-and-blue lights still flashing. Inside many of the cars were teenage boys looking aimlessly into space.

These must be the suspects. These cops were the ones who did the arrests. Now all I needed was someone to tell me those very facts. I went up to a low ranking officer. She was friendly, but told me to wait over on the sidewalk. Not just the sidewalk in general but one tiny square of the sidewalk. It felt like I was the one back in high school.

Then Susan entered my square. She looked in my the eye, shook my hand, and asked me who I was. Right then I knew she was a PR person. Only PR people care about who you are at events like these, and that's because they want to control you. Susan was well put together, as PR people tend to be. In her middle 40s, with dirty blonde hair pushed by into a ponytail, her look was confident, but not too confident, a kind of casual that takes work to pull off. It exudes trust.

The policeman, who I needed to talk to, was taking his time making the statement. He seemed to be more interested in walking between each of the six police cars and seeing if anyone had snuck out. ("Nope? Better go check the first one then.") I decided to put my time on the sidewalk square to good use, and interview Susan, not about the arrests, but her career.

Do PR people make a lot of money? Well, no that much, but more than journalists.

Why'd you leave journalism? Too much time at the office, and as a TV producer, I never got to leave. We had to do all the work, got none of the credit, and still took the blame.

Is PR easy? I still work long hours. This arrest is killing me. I'm going to have to come tomorrow to finish this (On Saturday really? Yes - really.) But we get spring break off every year. That's nice.

Should I stay in journalism?

Before she could answer that one, the officer came over and answered my questions about the crime. Or he told me that yes, those were people that were arrested, and that yes, they were arrested by police officers. And I went back to the office, mostly digested and definitely not a PR person.