Lisa K. Winkler
Not yet a year out of college, I landed a six-month paid internship with The Hartford (CT) Courant in its Washington, DC bureau.
Having grown up watching the Watergate hearings on television 1972-1974, I dreamed of becoming a newspaper reporter. I’d always loved writing stories as a young child, and in college wrote for a student-run newspaper dedicated to consumerism, sort of college-type Consumer Reports. (We rated the local pizza parlors, for example.) I’d also written a few features published in local newspapers in Connecticut.
The bureau, in the National Press Building, was in a small office, run by Mr. Robert Waters, a veteran Capitol Hill reporter for the Courant. There was barely enough room for us to sit behind a desk with two manual typewriters.
My first day, in early January, 1979, I met Mr. Waters for lunch in the building’s elegant restaurant. I had dressed up in a suit and carried a dark brown leather briefcase with my initials embossed on the side that had been a graduation gift.
I felt important. And nervous.
As we began to eat, I suddenly felt ill and within seconds vomited all over the table and floor. Waiters rushed to clean up the mess and Mr. Waters graciously suggested I return another time.
I was mortified! I’d thrown up my first day on the job!
The next day, I was shown around the Capitol, meeting the entire Connecticut delegation of two senators and five congressmen and their staffs. I got my press pass, granting me access to the federal buildings and news galleries.
Mr. Waters, in DC for twelve years, knew everyone in town. In my time with him, he taught me how to write on deadline, how to structure a news story and how to interview people and get the information I needed. He made sure I had many by-lines of my own.
I ran around Capitol Hill flashing my press pass as if I belonged there. I sat in on legislative hearings and visited congressional offices and then would return to the tiny bureau to write and file my stories via teleprinter to Hartford.
I remember the State of the Union address in 1979 given by President Jimmy Carter. Mr. Waters, who everyone called Bob, sent me alone to the press box.
He said: “Go watch some history being made.”
I’ve kept that press pass in my desk drawer all these years as a reminder of where I started.
