HAVE PEN, WILL TRAVEL: PART FIVE

Memoirs of a Freelance Journalist

Reflections and Conclusions About My Freelancing Life

I find it impossible to compare the three phases of my journalism career and choose one I would consider the best. Big city newspapering from 1968 to 1980, self-employment as a freelancer from 1980 to 1997 or trade press editor from 1997 until the end? I enjoyed each phase and prospered. But freelancing provided some basic lessons of entrepreneurship that I need to record. I’m certain the evolution of the Internet changed the business of freelance journalism in ways I can’t even imagine. But I still feel each entrepreneur needs some fundamental truths to survive. So, here’s a quick list of fundamentals that stand out to me.

"That's $200 per day plus expenses."

·    Remember Rockford. As a TV private eye, Jim Rockford ranked as the role model for low overhead, living in a trailer on Malibu Beach. Most importantly, he knew regardless of the fee structure, he still was selling his time. Get a daily rate and work to receive it. Make adjustments if it benefits your long-term goal. But in the final analysis, remember everyone is working by the hour.

·    Pay yourself a regular wage and save the rest. You have to run your business as a business with yourself as the only employee. Give yourself a salary and live on that even when some large windfall contract falls your way.

·   Make every client feel like he is your only client, whether you are on assignment from Time magazine or The Houston Digest.

·    Never show doubt about the value of a completed assignment. Let the editor volunteer any criticism before you give him a reason to doubt before he’s even seen it. Many times, I became discouraged with a story and wanted to warn an editor that it might not be up to par. But I bit my tongue and rarely heard any complaints. Be assured, your clients will tell you if they have some.  

·    Stay alert for unexpected opportunities falling in your lap. My story highlights the many times that random meetings materialized into meaningful opportunities for jobs.

·    Embrace your curiosity. In freelance writing you should always be thinking about interesting story ideas or angles. But that habit should emerge in any sort of enterprise.

·    Never expect any relationship to last indefinitely. Start planning for the exit as soon as you begin one.

·    Pay your dues and use that experience to become a sponge. For freelancing, I had paid my dues with 12 years of newspaper reporting. In that period, I learned what I needed to know to produce salable stories as a freelancer. Paying dues is less about humility than it is about learning your business. Think of The Beatles performing eight-hour shifts in a seedy German bar where they needed to learn and cover every song ever written to fill their card. Observers have described Bob Dylan as a “sponge” during the years before he started writing his own music, learning every song he could find. If you want to open a restaurant, work in one first and learn all you can. 

Now, here’s an anthology of memorable articles I produced in 16 years of freelancing, listed by publication from my earliest association to the latest.

Westward, the weekly Sunday magazine of The Dallas Times-Herald newspaper

·    “A Trove of Tall Tales of Lost Fortune and Greed” (March 15, 1981)—This article shares the stories behind the five most reliable lost treasure stories in the American Southwest as selected by lost treasure magazines publisher John Latham.

·    “Sour Lake: It Bought Success With Oil But Now It’s Overdrawn” (August 23, 1981)—This cautionary historic tale profiled the rise and fall of the East Texas town of Sour Lake, an early oilpatch boomtown that exhausted its oil reserves so quickly the reservoir collapsed into a polluted sinkhole that encouraged the state to begin regulation of oil drilling under the Texas Railroad Commission.

·    “Football’s Winningest Coach: Bear Bryant and Amos Alonzo Stagg Have Nothing on Brownwood High’s Coach Gordon Wood” (November 29, 1981)—This marked the first time for me to write a lengthy feature about the legendary Texas coach Gordon Wood who had logged an amazing 361 career high school victories, outpacing Bryant’s 316 in the college ranks, with several more seasons lying ahead.

·   “Innocents In The Land Of The Guilty” (December 6, 1981)—This article explored the procedures and emotions related to the real problem of female prison inmates giving birth while incarcerated, including profiles of a couple of women who lived through the experience.

·    “Call Him Dr. Know-It-All: Dr. Richard Evans Is THE Authority In Fields Where No Others Exist” (June 13, 1982)—A lengthy profile of a University of Houston psychology professor who had built a national reputation as an expert willing to explain and speculate on the reasons for almost any sort of human behavior.

·    “The Texas Rangers: No More Shoot-outs and Six-guns. Today’s Ranger Uses Everything from Legendary Reputation to Hypnosis to Get His Man” (September 19, 1982)—Besides including a brief history of the iconic Texas police unit, this article examined its role in the state’s modern law enforcement hierarchy with a profile of one current ranger who specialized in hypnosis as an investigative technique.

·    “The Lady & The Cops: They Said Guadalupe Quintanilla Was Retarded. Now She’s Showing The Houston Police A Thing Or Two.” (April 10, 1983)—This article profiled a University of Houston professor who had overcome a troubled background to forge an association with the Houston Police Department in a bid for better Hispanic community outreach.

·    “Texas Heroes: Eight People Who Made A Difference” (July 3, 1983)—Using research from the Carnegie Hero Commission and news accounts, I located a group of eight Texans who had saved strangers facing life-or-death situations, interviewed them about the impact on their lives and included academic research about the psychology of heroic action to produce an article with some amazingly dramatic stories as well as educational insights.

Texas Sports

·    “A Couple of Wild and Crazy Racquetball Champs” (April 1981)—This article profiled a pair of rising amateur racquetball stars who won tournaments and played practical jokes on their more serious rivals.

·    “The Scientist And The Astros” (June 1981)—Well before the emergence of high technology training methods and intricate statistical analysis across all sports, the Houston Astros were employing a University of Houston consultant to offer unique conditioning programs for the players, and this article introduced him to the world.

·    “It’s A Tough Job, But…” (August 1981)—For this article I attended tryouts for the Houston Oilers’ cheer squad, the Derrick Dolls, explaining the process and profiling a couple of the participants.

·    “High School Coaches: The Best In Texas” (August 1981)—This feature represented an ambitious project to anonymously poll a selection of top college coaches and rank their selections for the ten best high school coaches in Texas, including interviews and brief profiles of each of the ten.

·   “Keeping Score With Sarcasm And Light Humor” (October 1981)—This article profiled operations of the infamous Astrodome scoreboard including tales about its reputation for roiling and tormenting opposing players and teams with animated antics and graphic light displays.

·    “Astros’ Secret Weapon” (April 1982)—This profile of Astros third baseman Art Howe captured the unsung hero’s emergence as one of the best players in the National League, including an interview with his little league coach.

·    “The Kid” (June 1982)—This article profiled the career of Jose Cruz, one the most significant Houston Astros of all time in an attempt to identify the source of his childlike enthusiasm. During my interview with Jose in the dugout of the Astrodome during batting practice, he likely saved my life by intercepting a foul ball headed straight for my head.

Southwest Airlines in-flight magazine (later called Spirit)

·    “One Man’s Election Collection” (November 1981)—This article profiled a Houstonian with an extensive collection of historic election buttons and memorabilia.

·    “Greater Love Than This…These Southwesterners Risked Their Lives For Strangers. Why? What Makes A Hero?” (February 1986)—Here’s an example of recycling as a freelancer, providing an updated version of the same story sold in 1983 to Westward, as explained in that section above.

·    “Hard Line Justice: His Brand Of Sentencing May Be Unorthodox, But Judge Ted Poe Is Leaving His Mark On The Texas Criminal Justice System” (October 1987)—This was one of several magazine features I wrote about a Houston judge gaining attention by requiring probationers to perform unusual tasks to qualify for probation, ordering everything from service on clean-up crews for public facilities to personally hand-written letters of apology to their victims.

Houston City magazine

·    “Card Sharks: Texas’ Poker Greats Tip Their Hands” (February 1982)—This article profiled Houston’s poker community, dividing it into two groups—the professionals and the recreational players playing for high stakes under the radar among the city’s business elite.

·    “End Of An Astro Era? Yankees Are Taking The Wonder Out Of The Eighth Wonder Of The World. If They Take Out The Tipsy Tavern, Can The Scoreboard Be Far Behind?” (June 1982)—This article recounted the detailed history of this legendary sports stadium while analyzing the plans for its future.

·    “They Defend The Police” (June 1983)—This article profiled several prominent Houston defense attorneys with experience defending officers against murder and assault charges, recounting the legal strategies employed in several notorious cases.

·    “Beyond Basket Weaving: The New Wave In Adult Education” (December 1984)—In this article I profiled a Houston entrepreneur who had created a new industry with Leisure Learning Unlimited, providing both an informative small business story and a look inside the thirst for continuing education as a recreational pursuit in a variety of subjects.

·    “Breaking Away: Cracks In The Houston Legal Establishment” (September 1985)—This article chronicled the historic and risky decision by three veteran institutional lawyers to leave those large firms and create a boutique trial defense firm for what they called “You bet the company” litigation while charging unprecedented high hourly fees.

·   “Restaurant Risks: Starting Your Own Little Place” (April 1986)—This article explored the risks and rewards of restaurant entrepreneurship, including a list of suggestions from consultants for anyone ambitious enough to try.

·    “The Life And Times Of D.A. Johnny Holmes” (August 1986)—This article profiled Houston’s iconic district attorney, John B. Holmes, Jr.

Salt (A monthly magazine promoting stories about social justice)

·    “The Gertrude Thomas Home: Where Beauty Is Never Skin Deep” (April 1983)—This article profiled a woman I had discovered six years earlier while working at The Houston Post. I described her as having a monopoly on heartbreak because she had devoted her life toward caring for severely disabled and retarded children abandoned by their parents.

·    “She Speaks Their Languages And Teaches Them Hers” (June 1983)—Here’s another example of recycling, in this case the Guadalupe Quintanilla story published just two months earlier by Westward as detailed above under “The Lady & The Cops.”

The Legal Times

·    “Tenneco Expands Legal Staff In Recessionary Era” (April 4, 1983)—My debut feature for this national legal affairs and business publication involved profiling the in-house legal staff at one of Houston’s largest oil companies.

·    “Bankruptcy Work Means Black Gold For Houston Bar” (August 1, 1983)—This front-page story explored the boom in oilpatch bankruptcy work that had occurred following an oil-price collapse in the previous year.

·    “Health Care Giant Charts New Seas” (August 22, 1983)—This front-page article chronicled the growth of a Houston law firm specializing in hospital representation while exploring the evolution of health care law in an increasingly complex business environment.

·    “Outspoken Texan, Baron Establishes Toxic Tort Domain” (November 21, 1983)—This front-page article profiled Dallas litigator Fred Baron as he built a reputation for representing clients injured by work with asbestos and other toxins.

·    “Texas Capital Feels Winds Of Legal Competition” (March 5, 1984)—This ambitious project involved a profile of the Austin legal community, including profiles of several major players, filling four pages in the paper.

·   “Potomac Fever Passes Quickly For Texas Lawyers” (May 14, 1984)—This article profiled several Texans who had returned to practice back home after serving time working for politicians or the federal government in the nation’s capital.

·   “Offshore Business Gives Houston Maritime Work” (June 25, 1984)—This front-page article recounted the history of maritime legal practice while exploring the role that offshore oil drilling plays in the modern era.

Muse Air Monthly (an in-flight magazine for the short-lived Muse Airlines)

·   “World’s Winningest Football Coach: Gordon Wood, Coach at Brownwood, Texas,

Has A Won-Lost Record That’s The Best In Football At All Levels” (October 1983)—If this sounds familiar, that’s because this article is another example of recycling and updating the Gordon Wood feature written for Westward two years earlier. In my defense, this magazine launched on a short schedule and the editor asked if I had any material ready to go.

·   “Tales Of Hidden Treasure: John Latham Built a Publishing Firm On Rumors Of Gold, Silver And Other Treasures Hidden In The Southwest. Or, So the Story Goes.” (December 1983)—If this sounds familiar, that’s because this article is another example of recycling and updating the treasure stories feature written for Westward two years earlier. In my defense, this magazine launched on a short schedule and the editor asked if I had any material ready to go.

·   “Bright New Lights In The Medical Firmament: After DeBakey And Cooley, The New Super Doctors Of Texas May Come From Among These Six Physicians” (January 1984)—This article profiled six rising stars of Houston’s vaunted superstar medical community and examined the evolving complexity of high profile medical reputations.

·    “After The Game Is Over: Though They Get Little Sympathy, Pro Athletes Suffer Through a Worse Transition Than Just About Anyone Else” (October 1984)—For this article I interviewed several retired professional athletes and chronicled their emotional, physical and financial transitions into retirement.

·    “Here Come The Zebras: A Football Official’s Life Can Be Glamorous, Exciting And Rewarding. But Most of All, It’s Dangerous” (September 1985)—For this article I interviewed several Texas business professionals about their part-time avocation and alternate reality officiating major college football games.

·    “Our Friend, The Alligator? You Can Hunt Them Again, But There Might Not Be as Much Excitement as You Would Expect” (February 1986)—When Texas removed alligators from its endangered list and opened a hunting season in 1985, I persuaded a small hunting guide firm to take me along on a hunting trip as its guides explored the business possibilities for adding alligators to its annual schedule of trip offerings. And Muse Air Monthly bought my article recounting the experience.

The National Law Journal (NLJ)

·    “Texas Firms Reeling From Oil Price Drop” (June 23, 1986)—My debut front-page feature for NLJ examined the impact of oilpatch economics on lawyers and firms who handled legal work for companies in that industry.

·    “A Judge With Unique Ideas On Sentencing” (July 28, 1986)—I would later recycle this profile of colorful Houston judge Ted Poe for Southwest Spirit as explained above.

·   “Jury Sentencing: A Last Stand In Six States” (January 19, 1987)—This front-page article examined the evolution and outlook for the controversial practice of allowing juries to assess sentences in criminal cases rather than leaving that aspect of trials to a judge with the help of research from probation professionals.

·    “No Apologies Made For The Profit Motive” (March 30, 1987)—This front-page feature profiled colorful, high-priced Houston civil litigator Stephen Susman and the evolution of his firm, Susman, Godfrey & McGowan.

·    “Searching For An Old Salt’s Heirs” (January 25, 1988)—This inside feature profiled the probate court work of a pair of married lawyers who specialized in the under-the-radar work of finding lost heirs owed funds from forgotten estates.

·   “Bankruptcy: No Longer A Dirty Word” (March 14, 1988)—In this front-page feature I explored the evolution of bankruptcy as a business strategy for cutting losses and the impact of that growth on the attorneys practicing in that field.

·   “Strange Quiet As Deadline Draws Near” (May 16, 1988)—In this inside article, I examined the work of immigration attorneys meeting the demands of undocumented workers seeking amnesty under the nation’s 1986 immigration reform law.

·   “A Scourge Of Doctors Garners Their Respect” (September 19, 1988)—This inside feature profiled the career of Houston civil litigator Richard Mithoff, who gained a national reputation for medical malpractice lawsuits.

·   “Probate, Texas Style” (May 22, 1989)—This front-page feature chronicled the history of Texas probate laws that had evolved to make the Texas probate code a dominant factor in high-profile national inheritance cases like the Howard Hughes multi-jurisdiction estate battle of a decade before, including highlights of legendary Texas estate legal squabbles.

·   “Increased Mobility Adds To Common Law Claims” (August 14, 1989)—In the wake of several high-profile Houston court cases over claims of common law marriage, this article explored the legal landscape of common-law marriage.

·    “They Face The Same Problems Others Do, But With A Twist” (September 25, 1989)—This inside article profiled the inhouse legal staff at the nation’s largest operator of funeral homes, Service Corporation International, examining some of the unusual types of litigation that can confront it.

·   “Law Firms Scramble For Health Business: Changes In The Industry Pose A Strategic Dilemma For Attorneys” (June 4, 1990)—This front-page article profiled the status of healthcare legal work in Houston and nationally, identifying the business strategies required by firms to remain competitive.

·    “Coastal’s Crusaders: Feisty Corporate Counsel Fight Their Own Battles” (May 4, 1992)—This front-page feature profiled the inhouse legal staff of Houston’s Coastal Corporation, demonstrating how the company’s controversial top executive deployed his legal team as a revenue generator and an industry bullying tactic.

·   “Have Gavel, Will Travel: The Wheels Of Justice Are Spinning In Texas—Literally” (April 26, 1993)—This front-page article examined the controversial Texas practice of appointing retired judges as “visiting judges” to help solve courtroom delays caused by heavy dockets.

·   “The Dead Rise Again In Court: Historical Figures Get Their Day. Legal ‘Ghostbusters’ Say Serious Issues Are At Stake.” (June 21, 1993)—This front-page feature chronicled a trend in using modern forensics to solve historical cold cases, examining legal strategies like those offered in the civil lawsuit by the descendants of alleged 1874 Colorado cannibal suspect Al Packer to clear his name or the entertaining mock trial of alleged Lincoln assassination conspirator Dr. Samuel Mudd.

·   “Blowing Whistles: Spilling Beans In The Private Sector Is Now Big Legal Business” (September 20, 1993)—This front-page feature examined the evolution and growth of civil whistleblower litigation arising when private sector companies retaliate against employees for alerting the government about corruption on federal contracts.

·   “This Hit Man Is Shooting For Arrests” (October 18, 1993)—In this inside feature, I chronicled the story of an investigator for the Harris County District Attorney’s office who had built a career posing as an undercover hit-man for hire and collecting a long list of convictions.

·   “Gaming Industry A Legal Jackpot: Lawyers Representing Gambling Businesses Hit The Big Casino” (February 28, 1994)—This front-page article explored the legal community impact of increased interest by states across the country to legalize casino operations within their borders.

·   “Fire And Death In Waco Spark A Legal Slow Burn: A Billion Dollars In Litigation Includes A Novel Bid To Hold The Media Liable For Killings” (December 12, 1994)—This front-page feature presented a roundup of all litigation stemming from the April 1993 confrontation between the federal government and the Branch Davidian church group of David Koresh in Waco, Texas.

·   “How Weil Gotshall Lassoed Houston: Using Texas Talent The New York Firm Has Become One Of The City’s Top 10 Players” (May 8, 1995)—This front-page feature provided the inside story of how a New York firm invaded the Houston legal community.

·   “He Tamed Texas’ Wild Forensic Frontier: Houston’s Medical Examiner Made The Old County Morgue A More Modern Operation” (September 18, 1995)—This inside feature profiled Houston’s legendary medical examiner Dr. Joseph Jachimczyk, who had retired at the start of that month after 38 years in that post building a national reputation for work on numerous high-profile criminal and civil cases.

·   “Fake Evidence Becomes Real Problem: From Fingerprints To Photos To Computer Data, Lawyers Are Learning To Be Vigilant” (October 9, 1995)—This front-page expose examined examples of attorneys attempting to submit phony evidence in several criminal and civil cases nationwide. One law professor assigned it for several years as required reading in one of her classes.

Houston Metropolitan Magazine

·   “Trial By Legend: When Mike DeGeurin Inherited Percy Foreman’s Criminal Law Practice, He Knew His Toughest Battle Would Be Against His Mentor’s Mythic

Reputation” (July 1989)—This feature profiled one of Houston’s rising young legal stars as he worked to succeed one of the nation’s most famous legal icons.

·   “The Finders: Local Seekers Prove Wherever There’s A Need, There’s A Market” (December 1989)—In this article I profiled a couple who operated an unusual but successful business locating things for other businesses that were difficult to find, such as older model cars for use in period movies.

·   “Expert Witnesses: A Growing Sideline For Know-It-Alls” (January 1990)—This article explored Houston’s importance as a place that could provide experts in many technical fields for testimony in civil lawsuits and the agencies involved in matching experts with lawyers-in-need.

·   “Trigger-Happy Cops? With More Trouble On The Streets And Fewer Officers To Face It, Does Houston Have The Right People Behind The Badge?” (May 1990)—This article chronicled Houston’s historic struggles with police brutality, and examined new training and recruiting methods aimed at reducing confrontation.

·   “Divorce In The Boardroom: Today’s Business Must Be Ready To Face ‘Marital’ Woes” (July 1990)—This article explored the fundamentals of procedures for businesses breaking apart with examples from recent Houston business splits at firms and partnerships large and small.

·   “Lawyers Vs. Lawyers: As Legal Malpractice Cases Grow, Suing Your Attorney Has New Appeal” (November 1990)—This feature explored the evolution of legal malpractice litigation and the increasing acceptance by some local attorneys to represent clients in suits against their own kind.

·   “That Magic Moment: When Inspiration Came To Call, These Local Entrepreneurs Were Ready” (July 1991)—For this article I interviewed several successful Houston entrepreneurs in an effort to pinpoint the exact circumstances for their discovery of the new niche or need that led to creation of their businesses.

·   “Not Just For Laughs: Business Humorists Shoot The Bull For Fun And Profit” (October 1991)—This article explored the relatively unheralded community of local humorists earning a living by serving as hosts for corporate retreats and private business meetings.   

·   “Be Careful Of What You Wish For: Most Of Us Have Dreamed Of Coming Into A Fortune. For These People Their Dreams Came True And Then Their Troubles Began.” (December 1991)—In this feature I explored the concepts of windfall psychology by examining the experiences of several Houstonians who became wealthy all of sudden in a variety of ways, from winning a bass fishing or poker tournament to collecting a large civil court settlement.

Texas Highway Patrol

·   “Game Warden” (Spring 1995)—For this article, I spent a day with a female game warden checking boats in Galveston Bay and provided an article about that branch of the law enforcement community.

·   “Hate Crimes: A Growing Number Of Texans Are Using Hatred To Justify Violence And Murder…Again” (Summer 1995)—This article explored the evolution of hate crime laws, providing officers with information about the procedures and reasons for using them.

·   “Killer Kids: America’s Youth Are Both Killing And Being Killed In Record Numbers And It’s Only Going To Get Worse” (Fall 1995)—This article chronicled the rise in juvenile crime and the outlook for improvements.

·   “Reforming Death: The Death Penalty In Texas Has Been Criticized For Taking Too Long, But New Legislation Seeks To Change That” (Winter 1995-96)—In this article I reviewed the long history of capital punishment in Texas and provided an update on legislation pending for changes.

·   “Hypnosis: Unlocking The Mind” (Summer 1996)—This article chronicled the history of the use of hypnosis in criminal investigations, including the legal controversies over its use in criminal cases.

HAVE PEN, WILL TRAVEL: PART THREE

Memoirs of a Freelance Journalist

Stability with three core clients: Money, The Journal of Commerce and The National Law Journal

My association with Money magazine began shortly after my departure from Ampersand and the transition to an office in my apartment. It occurred unexpectedly when I received a phone call from an editor there inviting me to become the magazine’s first contract correspondent in a decision borne from an internal Time-Life empire political dispute with Time magazine. Besides the namesakes Time and Life, the company published a number of sister magazines such as Fortune, People, Discover and Money. Each of those publications relied on the various Time news bureaus for reporting services like those I had been providing to Time since 1981.

By 1983, however, Money had ridden the growth of the Baby Boomer population into a prominent position within the empire. Launched in 1972 as a personal finance magazine, Money thrived from providing information about investments, spending, saving and anything that might affect its readers’ pocketbooks. As the boomer population aged into its more productive middle years when it sought that kind of information with more interest, circulation increases drove a growth in advertising revenue that provided Money’s editors more muscle to flex inside the Time-Life shelter. But correspondents at the various Time bureaus refused to pay Money the proper respect. When assignments arrived from Money editors, the Time correspondents routinely ignored them or provided only cursory effort at finding interview subjects to answer the questions—except in Houston, where the Time correspondent had an ambitious stringer named Gary Taylor willing to tackle any reporting assignments requested from New York.

Thus, I already had been handling the Money assignments in Houston almost by default when Susan called in 1983 with her job offer. Fed up with the routine rejections by Time correspondents around the country, she said she wanted to use me as a demonstration to show that Money needed its own slate of contract correspondents. Under her terms, I would continue to accept assignments for Time as well. She had no need to poach the bureau’s busiest stringer. But she wanted me to agree to accept all assignments from her in addition to those from Time. She could not guarantee any monthly income figure, but assured me there would be regular work with payment on an hourly basis for reporting files, just like I’d been doing for Time. She would bypass the Time correspondent in Houston and send the Money assignments directly to me. It sounded like the perfect way to fill the vacancy created by the failure of Southwest Racquetball while joining a more prominent and reliable alternative.

While assignments for Time covered a wide range of subjects on a weekly basis, the monthly Money assignments focused most often on finding individuals willing to share their personal investment information in what the magazine described as “model portfolios.” A typical Money assignment, for example, might ask me to find a single woman with two children starting to build their educational investment portfolio. When I found her, I would write a profile including all the details of her finances. Then the magazine would recruit a panel of top financial advisors to review it and provide specific recommendations on investment options.

This typical Money cover from November 1984 promoted my analysis on the investment portfolio of Houston TV anchor Shara Fryer.

In the early 1980s, this type of assignment did not prove as difficult as it might sound. I began developing sources in the Houston financial planner community, contacting them for access to willing clients. The planners proved more than eager to assist because they could expect prominent attention if quoted in this magazine demonstrating their talents. I could always find individuals willing to share their details in exchange for free consultations with top planners or brokers. And I used my imagination to locate subjects outside the planning community, developing connections with all sorts of neighborhood organizations, school groups or anyone with access to a wide range of friends. Facebook would have been a perfect portal for recruiting regular folks to interview had it and the Internet been available back then.

In addition to the model portfolios, Money also had a wide variety of other assignments. The editors there believed that they could find a Money angle to any news event and they instructed me often to find financial experts in Houston to interview on a range of topics. A couple of times, Money assigned me to produce full freelance features that would include my byline. On one occasion, I researched and wrote an article on office football pools. Using the knowledge gained on that assignment, I even did a bit of recycling for a local magazine, giving it a version focused specifically on the Houston football pool activities.

On another assignment for a story titled “How to Divorce a Millionaire,” I interviewed several of Houston’s high-profile divorce lawyers asking the question: “What advice would you provide if a client approached in confidence with plans to divorce their millionaire spouse within the next six months?” One of them even connected me for interviews with a female client who actually had plotted out her six-month divorce strategy as directed, gathering all financial materials so she could ambush her husband at the courthouse.

Another time, Money sent me to spend a week in Mexico investigating whether Americans really could retire there on $300 per month. I discovered a colony of transplants from the U.S. and Canada living in Guadalajara in style, but complaining about access to medical care and devaluation of the peso. One had been forced to operate a secret illegal side-business making yogurt after losing half his retirement savings because he had placed it all in a Mexican bank account before devaluation.

Susan’s “experiment” with me as Money’s first contract correspondent proved successful enough that she had added freelancers in at least a dozen more cities around the country within a couple of years. The magazine listed all of our names in its masthead every month, so my name appeared in every edition of Money published between 1983 and 1996. And several times the magazine brought us all to New York City to join the staff in its annual Christmas holiday party. Susan considered us family.

The Journal of Commerce (JOC) emerged as a primary revenue source about two years later through another unexpected turn of events. In fact, I had been unaware of the JOC’s existence until I encountered the newspaper’s Gulf of Mexico correspondent, Joseph Bonney, while attending a conference in Houston to cover a speaker for a Washington D.C.-based newsletter as a freelancer. Seated beside him, we struck a conversation that concluded with his invitation to accept some assignments in Houston under supervision from his office in New Orleans.

Headquartered in New York, the JOC boasted a rich and prominent history as a daily newspaper dating all the way back to 1827 when founded by Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph. I would learn that the JOC represented a classic example of entrepreneurial journalism, filling a niche in the business information world that few realized existed. As a publication, it was a beast with a global reach and an enormous appetite for copy, particularly from a growth region like Texas and the Mexican border.

The JOC began as a vehicle to fill the void in information for ocean shippers in New York City. Before they could move cargo overseas, those shipping agents had to learn which ships were arriving and leaving, destined where and when. Morse realized he could gather that information in a news product he could sell to the city’s growing community of shippers more cheaply than they could gather that information on their own. The heart of the JOC was a section called “Shipcards” where all the shipping lines could post their schedules. Moreover, he learned he could charge the shipping lines for placement in the Shipcards as advertising while selling that information as a subscription to the agents in the port. The JOC would earn money on both ends of its operation.

As the publication grew from those basic shipping roots, it also developed another revenue stream with all manner of advertising around the shipcards. It had room for news stories, too, that would add value to the newspaper with coverage of the people and businesses related to the shipping community. By the turn of the Twentieth Century, the JOC ranked as a more viable publication than The Wall Street Journal, which would become the nation’s pre-eminent business paper. Of course, a century later, the age of the Internet would destroy the JOC’s reason for existence. Who needs to buy a newspaper for shipcards when shipping schedules post in real time on a computer screen? When I needed the JOC, however, from 1985 through 1996, it ranked as the Bible of shipping, commerce and any sort of business related to or dependent on those fields.

Excited to join the team, I learned that the JOC needed me primarily to cover the Port of Houston, including the politics of the port’s governing body as well as the organized labor activities there. The JOC paid primarily by the published column inch in its news sections. But it also produced special sections several times each week, paying freelancers set article fees—usually $300—for stories like the one I mentioned in Part One about the Mexican market for reinsurance.

In Joe Bonney, I had hitched my wagon to a rising star. Within a couple of years, the JOC had promoted him to editor, moving him to New York and adding New Orleans to my area

of focus. From September of 1985 until June of 1996, my byline would appear 338 times in the JOC on articles covering a wide range of subjects. In 1990, for example, the JOC would provide 28 percent of my annual freelancing revenue--$16,815 of $57,031. 

Contrasting with the accidental nature of my connections to Money and the JOC, I secured my connection to The National Law Journal (NLJ) in 1986 through a concerted, targeted effort spawned by an analysis of what should have been my business strengths as a freelance journalist as well as my failure in 1985 to maximize one of those strengths. As a newspaper reporter from 1969 through 1980, I had spent the lion’s share of my time covering courts and legal affairs. As a freelancer, I had to consider my experience in legal affairs reporting to be a primary strength. Emphasizing that experience in 1983, I had added a publication called The Legal Times to my stable of clients after spotting a classified magazine ad from that weekly newspaper seeking a correspondent in Texas.

The editor there offered to pay me a monthly retainer of $400 to guarantee my availability for assignments in Texas with payment for published articles deducted from that retainer. Basically, he paid me in advance for work that later would be calculated on an hourly basis of $12 per hour.  I quickly realized, however that the complex legal articles required more time than we had anticipated. But he needed to limit my monthly payments to $400. Instead of making bonus payments every month to cover the gap between my actual time and the $400 retainer I already had received, he added the excess payments into the budget for the following month. But he and his assistant editors continued to call me with requests for a wide range of stories, and I quickly reached a point where the paper owed me more than the total of my retainers for several months into the future.

Although I produced eight memorable articles for The Legal Times, including a lengthy 3,865-word profile of Austin’s entire legal community in 1984, relations with the staff grew strained as I refused to accept some assignments in an attempt to let the paper catch up on its payments. Rather than attempt to renegotiate my retainer with an editor who seemed satisfied with my work, I started cutting corners to spend less time on assignments for him. The inevitable showdown occurred in the summer of 1985 when he rejected my manuscript previewing what was destined to become one of the most significant trials in U.S. history between oil giant Texaco and Houston oil independent Pennzoil. I eventually would cover the result of that trial for Time a year later, earning one of its precious bylines. But my initial effort for The Legal Times clearly lacked the effort, and I realized the editor was correct. When he rejected my story, I terminated our agreement in July of 1985 in a letter explaining I just couldn’t provide the complex service he needed for $400 per month.

Despite the loss of $400 per month and the shot to my self-esteem for getting fired for the first time in my life, I managed to salvage some positives from that experience. I feared that the paper had been abusing my services by paying just $12 per hour even if that amount equals $40 per hour in 2021. I also realized the difficulties facing my negotiations in the future assessing offers for service. I concluded I needed to become more creative in formulating compensation schemes. I also had delivered eight strong legal articles to enhance my portfolio of work samples, including one about the creation of a new Houston law firm that I managed to recycle into a more general interest version for Houston City magazine in 1985 for a $1,500 fee.

With Time, Money, JOC and the AAPG Explorer as regular clients by the start of 1986, I decided to make another attempt to land a publication in the legal field. Reviewing a large reference book of magazines and newspapers, I discovered a brief profile of a weekly newspaper in New York called The National Law Journal (NLJ). I did not know it at the time, but the NLJ ranked as an extremely successful national publication associated with The New York Law Journal, which enjoyed unique status as the official daily paper of legal record for New York. Lawyers were required to advertise all lawsuits in the daily paper. As a result, one of the NLJ’s editors would later explain to me, The New York Law Journal represented a license to “print money.”  The publisher of the daily New York paper had launched NLJ as a national show horse for his stable of legal news. As a weekly newspaper, the NLJ appeared to fit my reporting talents perfectly.

After plotting my campaign, I mailed a proposal to the editor of the NLJ, inquiring about his interest in having a Texas correspondent. He called immediately to say he actually had been considering the addition of correspondents, particularly in Texas where he thought Dallas ranked as a more likely location. But he described himself as stumped about the most equitable way to compensate a freelancer for regular services.

“Funny you should ask,” I thought, then I proposed my plan. If the NLJ could pay me a monthly retainer of $275, I said, I could send a list of potential story ideas twice each month. Then he and the other editors could select from that list and assign articles based on the paper’s standard article fees: Front page features paid $700, inside news stories paid $100 to $200 depending on length, and shorter department articles paid as little as $25 to $50 each. Essentially, I explained, the NLJ would be paying me $275 each month to scout for news in Texas and feel confident the editors knew about every potential story in Texas. To myself, I thought: Can I really persuade a magazine to pay me just to pitch queries?  He pondered my proposal for about a day, then agreed to give it a try.

For starters, he also assigned me one of his ideas as my first NLJ front page feature, analyzing the impact of the oil patch bankruptcy boom on Houston’s bankruptcy bar. I had to laugh because I had produced a story on the same subject just two years earlier for The Legal Times and already had a lot of the basic information and legal contacts in my files.

My NLJ Debut Feature

To succeed with the NLJ, I realized I needed a more efficient means of scouting for legal news items. The paper covered all manner of legal news, from colorful lawsuit and court activity to inhouse gossip and politics at law firms. In addition, my focus area covered the entire state. That mission statement required a wider view of the state. So, I invested some money in additional subscriptions to publications within the state. Besides the two Houston dailies, I added subscriptions to the weekly business newspapers published in each of the five largest cities.

And I discovered a true fountain of news tips in a relatively new weekly publication called Texas Lawyer. Technically a rival for the NLJ, Texas Lawyer covered the same news territory with a focus only on Texas. It published stories with much greater detail than needed by the NLJ so I could always turn its stories into something unique without plagiarizing it. In those days before the Internet, the NLJ editors lacked real-time access to Texas Lawyer, but I’m sure they had a subscription and received their copy in the mail just like me. They never complained about my use of Texas Lawyer as a tip service as long as I developed the resulting stories on my own. Of course, Texas Lawyer was scooping me all the time, producing its in-depth articles several weeks before I could report a matching story. But even when I worked in daily newspapers, I had always believed I could respond to any scoop by writing a follow-up story with new and unique information.

Beyond the smidgen of in-depth articles published by Texas Lawyer, the standard news articles represented fair game. Court decisions or law firm mergers are events with the same details regardless of which reporter is reporting them. I considered Texas Lawyer to be an outstanding example of regional, industry-specific journalism and had great respect for its staffers, some of whom I had known from working with them in the Houston newspaper community a decade before. One of them joked on occasion that I probably couldn’t do my job at the NLJ if he wasn’t doing his for Texas Lawyer. I imagined him mumbling to himself: “It’s sketchy enough for Taylor to recycle his own stories, why does he have to recycle mine?” I accused him of exaggerating the threat. Had I been offered a staff position at Texas Lawyer in the 1980s, however, I likely would have accepted.

But the NLJ proved a match made in freelancer heaven for me. After faxing my initial list of story ideas to the NLJ’s desk, I received a call from an assignments editor named Anthony Paonita raving about the magic of having a dozen article suggestions just plop on his desk. He assigned several for me that first week and encouraged me to keep them coming. I would learn that Anthony, like most NLJ staffers, boasted a law degree but enjoyed journalism more than legal work. I also recognized quickly the need for accuracy, considering that lawyers comprised the majority of the NLJ’s reading audience and serious libel lawsuits loomed just one misquote away.

Just as with Money, the experiment with me at NLJ prompted it to duplicate my suggested compensation scheme, recruiting freelancers in various other cities from Miami to Chicago to supplement the production by the staff in New York and full-time correspondents in California. Within a couple of years, the paper was flying us all into New York annually for a staff meeting and party. During the decade from 1986 until 1996, the paper would carry my byline 705 times below headlines on a wide range of legal topics. A law professor in San Diego regularly used my front-page 1995 feature on the proliferation of fake evidence as a required reading assignment for her law students. I discovered I could earn a more efficient payment from the shorter $25 or $50 articles on humorous events. Employing the Rockford Rule, I could churn out those things in 30 minutes or less including the research, easily earning more than $25 per hour. In 1990 when the JOC generated 28 per cent of my income with $16,815, for example, the NLJ added 16 percent with $9,204—equivalent to about $18,000 in 2021.

If Time and Ampersand had represented a vegetable garden and chicken coop in 1981, by 1988 the combination of Money, JOC and NLJ had expanded my regular food sources into fields of corn and wheat with pigs and cattle always available. Around that agricultural bounty, I still could hunt big game from magazines and other publications as opportunities arose.

Rather than relying only on my three core contracts, I forced myself to keep three or four random magazine assignments circulating at all times, leaving me busy both mentally and physically. I continued to build my story ideas inventory files and practice my ability to pitch them as time would allow. This financial security prompted a new assessment about freelancing as a business. Where I once considered it synonymous with unemployment, I now saw the advantages.

Old friends from The Houston Post constantly worried aloud about losing their one job and source of income if rumors of that paper’s demise proved true—as it eventually would in 1995. In contrast, however, I would need five or six of my client publications to fail simultaneously before seriously affecting my earnings. I realized I enjoyed more security from a variety of employers than my old colleagues had from their sole source of income. In fact, I would grow a bit nervous upon noticing that any one of my publications represented more than 25 per cent of my income.

But I felt like I was running on an endless treadmill. I had four or five part-time jobs that equaled a couple of full-time positions. Luckily, I was still young enough to handle the pressure, and my personal life had taken a turn toward more stability as well.

That turn began emotionally for me after my ex-wife had relocated to central Texas in late 1981. Until then, she had shared a lot of the responsibilities for parenting despite my control of custody. With her gone, however, I had them all the time and had to adjust. I began thinking about more domestic permanence for us. The following year I had moved us out of the city and into the Southwest Houston suburbs. By 1983 I was expecting to have both girls attending the same Vanguard magnet school for the next school year with Erin in third grade and Shannon in first, traveling by bus every day. I wanted to keep them as busy as possible with activities that would stimulate friendships and growth.

In February of 1983, Erin came home with a flyer about joining a girls fastpitch softball league in our neighborhood. So, I signed her up at Southwest Houston Girls Softball

Mr. Ladybug with Shannon and Erin in 1985.

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Association (SWHGSA) in Bayland Park, where she joined the roster of the Ladybugs—a team for ages 7-9. A new team created to meet the demands of an expanding population, the Ladybugs were coached by a pair of young women in their twenties, who quickly realized they had volunteered for more trouble than they anticipated. They had underestimated the aberrant psychology of little league parents. Some day I will write a separate article about my years involved with fastpitch softball for girls and women and perhaps entitle it “Blood Along the Baseline.”

Coaching in 1990.

For this article, however, I only need note that I became intricately involved with SWHGSA to a point where I even served one year as president and spent the next twelve years coaching girls as they aged through high school. Besides keeping us busy in the neighborhood, the softball league also provided the opportunity for my next long-term domestic relationship when I recruited one of the single mothers with a daughter on the Ladybugs to serve as their team mother in 1984, after I had become the coach. Before the end of that season, we had decided to rent a house together so her two daughters and mine could have a better living environment.

“Taylor will do anything to get a pitcher,” cracked one of my rival coaches when he heard about our new arrangement. Of course, we found a house near the park and set about to create our own little version of “The Brady Bunch.” Two years later we would buy a house in the area. Even with the four girls grown up and gone by 1995, we continued our arrangement through the present time.

Beyond the impact on my family, the relocation of my freelance business into a house provided significant benefits for stability. Moving August of 1986 into a house where I would live until 2013, I sequestered the dining room and adjoining living room for office space. I installed my desk, computer, fax and printer in the dining room and filled the living room wall-to-wall with four-drawer filing cabinets to hold my ever-growing morgue of magazine and newspaper clippings. By this time, I had my stable of regular clients in place with Money, JOC, NLJ and the AAPG Explorer.

But I also supplemented that income stream with assignments from a wide variety of additional publications, some of which became fairly regular as well, even if they did not last throughout my freelancing career to 1996. My records list annual freelance revenues for the rest of that decade as $54,210 in 1987, $50,116 in 1988 and $47,732 in 1989.

Among the various publications, two stand out in particular as regular contributors; Southwest Airlines’ Spirit in-flight magazine and the two city magazines for Houston in this period, Houston City and Houston Metropolitan. From 1984 into 1988, Spirit had assigned me to produce a monthly column summarizing all significant business news in the southwestern United States. Since magazine production lagged copy submission by about two months, this feature made absolutely no sense to me. Everything in my columns had occurred more than two months earlier than passengers could read about it. I assumed the editor just wanted to present her magazine as some sort of official publication of record for the Southwest region.

I researched these columns by subscribing to the weekly city business journals across the area, including Phoenix, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Denver. And I collected $300 per month plus telephone expenses to provide a summary. Added to the fees for feature articles in 1986, Spirit ranked as my most important client that year with 17 percent of my income, just barely beating JOC with 16 percent and Money with 15 percent from a total of $36,512 (or about $92,142 equivalent in 2021). A new Spirit editor in 1988 decided he didn’t need this feature any more and terminated my contract. I responded by immediately canceling my subscriptions to most of the weekly business newspapers I had been reading just to produce the column and wondering how I could make up the missing $300/month.

The previous editor answered that question a year later, calling to introduce herself as the new editor for Houston Metropolitan and recruit me for another monthly business column for her at that magazine. Instead of summarizing old news, however, she wanted me to provide original reporting. I could write about anything in the business sector without a query for $500 per month.

“Of all the nerve,” I laughed: “You want original reporting?”

Besides recycling wherever feasible, I actually did produce a lot of original magazine reporting in those years. In addition to the column for Metropolitan, I sold her some of my most interesting feature ideas. One in particular I had wanted to do for some time about what I called “windfall psychology.” I wanted to locate several individuals who had suddenly received a large sum of money and find out how it affected them. That feature ran in Metropolitan’s December 1991 editions under the title: “Be Careful of What You Wish For.” I republished that article as a blog post in 2019.

In a bid to expand my opportunities with national publications, I joined the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA)—a well-respected organization that required applicants to qualify for membership while also paying annual dues of $160. The ASJA published an annual membership directory listing freelancers available for assignments by geography and areas of expertise. I stood out as one of the few freelancers available in Houston boasting expertise in many subject areas from business and general interest to sports and legal affairs.

With overlapping assignments from so many different publications, explaining my business to outsiders proved a bit like presenting a jigsaw puzzle. On one resume in 1996, I divided my historical client list into three groups: contract assignments; books; and, publications with occasional assignments and byline credits. Beyond my work for the regular contract publications already discussed, here is a quick look at the publications that provided extra income between 1981 and 1996:

The New York Times, USA Today, Newsday, Fortune, Compute, Wireless Week, Guest Informant, Discover, Vacations, PC Today, NG Magazine, Healthweek, International Business, Cuisine, Genetic Engineering News, Computerland, On Patrol, Business Month, Institutional Investor, Plants Sites & Parks, Southern Living and The Houston Press.

Next in Part Four: Beyond magazines to books and PR.