Life can
be as unpredictable as the New England weather.
Imagine telling a little white lie about your knowledge of sailing to land
a job at a newspaper, only to be thrown into the fire to cover sailing's most
coveted race -- the America's Cup -- and to to do so without a hitch.
Imagine being a cub court reporter and having your first assignment is covering
the Claus Von Bulow trial.
Cathy Callahan doesn't have to imagine. Callahan, 45, is a reporter for the
Newport Daily News. She's
been with the paper since 1980; she started as a general assignment reporter,
but eventually became the lead court reporter, a position she currently holds.
Studying English in college, Callahan always had a knack for writing, but
never thought of becoming a reporter. "It's amazing to me that I'm a reporter,"
she said. "I approached it in such a half-assed manner. When I graduated,
I still had my college jobs. I'm such an accidental journalist."
She grew up in Newport and attended Rogers
High School, where she wrote for the school paper. During her senior year,
Callahan met with a guidance counselor to review her plans for the future.
She wanted to become a secondary education English teacher, but was discouraged.
"My guidance counselor at the time told me that the field was full and she
recommended that I look into a different field," Callahan said. "She suggested
journalism."
Callahan didn't exactly take her counselor's advice when she went to the University
of Rhode Island. "I was studying journalism
as a second choice," she said. "I had more English classes than journalism
in college, but I still wasn't convinced that I wanted to do that."
While at URI, Callahan chose not to write for the student paper. In fact,
her first experience with journalism came in 1978, her senior year, when she
took an internship at the Daily
News.
"The internships that the Daily
News offered then weren't as extensive as they are now," she said.
"I basically worked one day a week -- Saturday morning -- and didn't get much
experience. I pretty much wrote obituaries." Callahan said the one valuable
aspect of her "strange internship" was having the opportunity to work in a
newsroom and learning to write on deadline.
Following graduation, Callahan still wasn't convinced she wanted to be a journalist.
She had a job as a driver of a tour bus in Newport. She worked at a shoes
and accessories store. And she taught jazz dancing at her mother's dance studio.
She also worked at the State House as a legislative aide.
While at the State House one day in January of 1980, Callahan received a call
that proved to change her career. "I got a call from Elliott Stein, who was
the managing editor of the Daily
News, and he was offering me a job," Callahan recalled. "I had never
even sent in a resume. I knew that at the State House I was nothing more than
a glorified secretary.
"The Daily News wanted
someone with knowledge of sailing," she added. "Since I'm from Newport, naturally
they thought I knew something about sailing. I said I did, but I really didn't
-- I'd never been on a sailboat. Growing up in Newport, I had a little knowledge
about the America's Cup, but
I didn't know anything about sailing technique. I grabbed a bunch of sailing
books at the Newport Public Library to learn technique."
Callahan had to learn fast, and she did. It also helped to have her colleague,
Barbara Lloyd, working with her. Lloyd, who wrote news stories all year for
the Daily News, took
over Cup coverage from the sports staff during the summer. Her writing eventually
landed her a job at the New York Times.
"At the beginning of my career, I was a general assignment reporter," Callahan
said. "I covered a lot of municipal meetings in Portsmouth. When it started
to get nice out in the spring, I would start writing America's Cup stuff with
Barbara. One of us was always out on the water. I went on the water about
two days a week, writing mostly feature stories.
" It was really
fun. Barbara was wonderful. I learned more from her and Jim Johnson (Daily
News copy editor) than anyone. I think you really learn by working
with another reporter. I was lucky to have people who helped me.
"When Barbara left in 1983, I became the lead reporter for the America's
Cup coverage. It was huge that year because the New York Yacht Club lost and
it was a big upset."
The America's Cup wasn't the only enormous task Callahan had to take on as
a young reporter. Her first court-reporting gig came at the trial of Claus
Von Bulow in 1982.
"I didn't do much court reporting at the start," she said. "My first court
reporting experience was the Von Bulow trail. I've always loved writing courts
and cops. I really like those stories because they start and end. I like it
when a story has an ending."
Claus Von Bulow, a Danish-born aristocrat, was charged with twice attempting
to murder his wife, Sunny, by injecting her with insulin. The Von Bulows were
a wealthy family and had an ocean-side mansion in Newport, which attracted
global attention to the trial. At the time the Von Bulow trial was the longest
in Rhode Island history. The jury set a record of its own by taking the longest
time to reach a verdict: six days. People were surprised at the delay because
the verdict seemed obvious. Finally, on March 16, 1982, Claus Von Bulow was
found guilty. Seven weeks later, Judge Thomas Needham sentenced him to 20
years in prison. This was the first of two trials. In the second trial, Von
Bulow was acquitted on April 27, 1984.
During the Von Bulow case, Callahan learned from the best -- Theo
Wilson from the New York Daily
News. At the time, the New York Daily News was the best-selling
newspaper in the United States, and Wilson was its top court reporter.
"The Von Bulow trial was huge," Callahan said. "Everyone was there. Theo Wilson
was the nicest woman. She was always calling in her leads to meet deadline.
Since we have an evening paper, my deadline was the next morning." Callahan
added, "The Boston Globe
was there, the Associated Press.
All the reporters would compare leads. I feel that even though she didn't
know it, Theo Wilson had a big influence on me.
"She had to have been in her 50s during the trial and I was 25. She was
so good. I sat next to her one day and asked her why she did certain things
in her stories and she gladly explained it. She was a great help, because
that was the first trial I covered."
Wilson died in 1996 and was believed to be 78. According to her obituary,
Wilson never gave her age, because, she said, "A woman who will tell you her
age, will tell you anything."
Callahan isn't the only person who thought highly of Wilson. White House correspondent
Helen Thomas called her, "a reporter's reporter, the kind we look up to with
awe and admiration." Famed trial attorney F. Lee Bailey wrote of how, "perceptive
and highly reliable" her accounts were. "I felt comfortable using them as
a substitute for a trial transcript," he added.
To this day, Callahan is the lead court-reporter for the Newport
Daily News. She said that in 20 years of journalism, she's rarely
faced problems because of her gender. "I've never had a problem in the newsroom,"
she said. "I was never assigned stories, or denied stories because of my sex.
The only time I really faced obstacles was at police station. The problems
were rudeness.
"At the old Newport station, there was a sergeant who got a kick out
of giving me a hard time. He was always trying to make me walk out the door.
He'd always tell me he was too busy to help, or get the whole station to look
and see who he was yelling at. I never left.
"Part of it was stubbornness, but most of it had to do with deadline
and realizing this was my job. As soon as he'd start, I'd say, 'Look. I have
a deadline. I come here at the same time every day.' I just knew I had a job
to do."
Callahan said there were just three female reporters on staff when she started
in 1980 and that number is the same today. However, there has been one major
change. "The newsroom was predominantly men when I started -- there was one
woman on the copy desk," she said. "The top two jobs, obviously, were men.
Now the top two positions are held by women. It has gotten better. We still
have one woman on the copy desk, but there are two women photographers. The
biggest change is having two women on top."
Callahan said she's found her niche at the Newport
Daily News. "I know what stories are important to Aquidneck Island
and that's very important to me," she said. "The local stories are most important
to me. It wasn't until I started working at the Daily
News that I knew I wanted to be a journalist. Writing for people I
know meant a lot to me. It was a powerful incentive to write good stories.
That made me put my heart and soul into it."
See Cathy Callahan's work in the Newport Daily News