How I Became Friends With A Racist And Anti-Semite

When I moved from Detroit to New Jersey in 1996 to become CNN Radio’s New York correspondent I only knew one guy who lived here. He was a guy who sometimes shot photos of breaking news for newspapers and we’d previously connected on an online forum.

After I’d settled in he invited me to lunch and as we ate he told me there was another fellow he’d like to introduce me to. That man, who I will call “Jim,” was also in the news business. And like me and my lunch companion, Jim was a breaking news junkie. I said sure and he arranged a meeting.

It turns out that Jim and I were a lot alike. We both lived with our police and fire scanners on, ready to jump into action to cover a breaking news event. We’d both been chasing stories like this for years. And time hadn’t diminished our passion for it.

You might say we were junkies for the excitement of covering breaking news.

We weren’t direct competitors so over the ensuing years we’d often tip one another off on stories. Sometimes while covering the same event we’d help one another out. If, for example, one of us got a particularly good interview we’d point the other toward the news source.

He was a scanner maven. I of course knew what police and fire frequencies were best listened to while covering the streets of…