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Every reporter has their first day of this type … bonus points if he is only 16 years old.
“This is serious business – why did they send a kid?”
“I'm the grandson and future heir of the paper itself, and besides, the people you need to talk about feel just the same way about young people as you do.”
Thus Mr. Thomas Stepforth III, youngest but intrepid reporter and future principal heir of the Lofton County Free Voice, established respect between himself and the first person he would ever interview on “deep background,” which is the correct journalistic term for the most serious form of “don't name the source.”
This public official was a little taken aback, but recognized in the teenager the Stepforth grit of his father, Major Thomas Stepforth Jr., and his grandfather, billionaire Thomas Stepforth Sr. He didn't like either of the two men in particular … but he also needed the help Lofton County's only surviving Black newspaper could give him, because now, being white was not enough.
The corruption had come to a point that it was a danger to everyone … other people were taking money out of the public till on a public safety matter that wouldn't survive another harsh winter … but those people were also invested in the Big Loft Bulletin. Not that J.B. Madison III, the editor-in-chief over there, wouldn't have run the story – Mr. Madison was an honest man – but he also wouldn't survive as editor, and maybe not in person. Too many people from too many big families in Virginia would feel personally betrayed. Said official had the same problem.
Thomas Stepforth III, and his paper, were expendable. The paper already knew that and had survived a deadly attack – it played with fire for a living and had burned out its enemies on that occasion for that. The men who survived attacking the paper in that incident wouldn't see the light of day until the plucky teenage Stepforth was around his grandfather's present age of 66 – and speaking of the grandfather, Thomas Stepforth Sr. was the third richest man in Lofton County and about to get into spot 2. One would not lay a hand on anything he was invested in and not pay a terrible price – and now, his grandson worked for the paper every day.
But the other thing: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Said official found himself impressed with the teenager's news-gathering and professionalism – he could barely grow peach fuzz for a beard yet, and his father and grandfather's baritone was not anything like settled in his voice, but he was a good journalist, perhaps even a great one in the bud, and was the man for the job, because no one thought he was anything but a delivery boy, bringing food into Big Loft's city hall.
The teenage journalist left with copies of all the requisite data, and a plan already in mind to head to the library and confirm what he had been told with the documents he had been told were there – meanwhile, his fellow reporters would get on the phone with their sources that could go on the record. The story would break on Monday, and it would be a doozy, just three months from the 2020 election.
The breaking of the story would save a million lives over the next ten years, because water that needed to stay clean would stay clean.
“Well done, grandson,” Thomas Stepforth Sr. said to his grandson when he came in from work that evening.
“Thank you – I love this job!” the grandson said as he shook with and embraced his grandfather.
