Diversity Diaries: Laura Wingard
By Laura Wingard
Assistant managing editor/metro, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.
10.31.01
When I was a young city editor at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, I thought I knew my staff well. I'd been a reporter there and had been promoted up through the ranks.
A former news intern had returned to the staff and had become a stellar general-assignment reporter. There wasn't any topic or news event that he couldn't make interesting. So when the idea was pitched to find out why so many of our local politicians were all of a sudden clamoring to be speakers at the annual Gay Pride Day festival, I turned to this reporter to write a daily story that did more than advance the festival. I wanted him to explore the political angle and how gays were gaining clout in the community.
We had one of those quick reporter-editor meetings where I gave him the assignment, and he acknowledged it would be a good story.
Then that afternoon he asked if we could meet and talk about it again. I was rushed. Meeting and budget deadlines loomed. But I could see some urgency in his eyes. He asked that we meet in the "fishbowl," the glass-enclosed newsroom conference room.
There, this intern-turned-reporter whom I thought I knew so well — I’d been to lunch and weekend movies with him, after all — told me he was gay and asked if I wanted to reassign the story. I didn't reassign the story, and he did his usual fine job. I thanked him for his openness. He thanked me for trusting him to do a fair story.
Over the next several months, I also supported him as he came out to the rest of the staff. I was glad to be there for him and to show that his sexual orientation didn't matter in the newsroom.