Free Some Great Thing by Lawrence Hill

the job, but you could never appear not to give a shit! You could never just stand there and shrug when CBC-TV scooped you. It was unthinkable to say ‘so what?’ when Edward Slade of The Winnipeg Star was the first to catch wind of the sensational murder of a high school cheerleader. Yet this was precisely what Don had heard Grafton say.
    Maybe it was racial. Maybe it was cultural. Maybe it came from too much schooling. Don didn’t know exactly why, but Mahatma Grafton did not fit in a newsroom. Didn’t have the right values. Didn’t have any values. Don had given the guy a chance. Tried to straighten him out. One time, after Grafton had filed a story so balanced and cautious that it made the reader yawn, Don tried to talk to him. “This story lacks zip. It has no punch. Can’t you make the lead stronger?”
    “No,” Grafton said.
    Don tried again. “You have to capture the reader and make him read your story. So pack that story with every punch you have. To do that, you gotta keep one thing in mind. Big or small, local or international, in every story someone is gettin’ screwed and someone’s doing the screwing. Stick to those basics and you’ll never go wrong.” Don gaped at Grafton, who was grinning. “What’s so funny?”
    “So if I understand, our job is to expose fornicators.”
    Don Betts had no use for smartasses.
    Using The Winnipeg Herald ’s computer system, an editor could see what any given reporter was writing at any givenmoment. Late one afternoon, eight weeks after Mahatma joined The Herald , Don found him working on an interesting story:
American immigration authorities listed John Novak as an “unwelcome alien” from 1952 until he became mayor of Winnipeg ten years later.
    After sweeping the 1962 municipal election, the communist politician immediately “took formal steps” to have his name struck from the foreign visitors’ “Lookout List” kept at border crossings into the United States.
    “I had a life in politics ahead of me and it was entirely unpractical, not to say ludicrous, that the United States should continue to refuse me entry on the basis of my political beliefs,” the mayor said in a recent interview.
    Section 212(a)28 of the 1952 United States McCarran-Walter Immigration and Naturalization Act bars entry to foreigners who are members of the communist party of any foreign state, who advocate communism or who write, publish, distribute or possess for the purpose of circulation any printed material promoting it.
    The same section of the Act, which is still in effect, also states that aliens who are anarchists, mentally retarded, polygamists, illiterate or sexual deviates are unwelcome to visit the superpower.
    Producing a file of letters from U.S. immigration officials, Novak said he finally had been given entry for the purposes of his work, although he was placed under certain restrictions, which remain in effect.
    “They made me undertake never to participate in any public rallies, or to engage in the propagation of communist theory,” Novak said…
    Don stopped reading there. “Hat, can you come up here?” When Mahatma walked up, Don said, “Not bad work. But you’ve got to concentrate on the news aspect of this story.”
    “The news aspect?”
    “That’s right,” Don said. “Who wants to read about what happened to the mayor in the 1950s, Hat, before he was even mayor? This is what you’ve got to write.”
    Punching the keyboard with two middle fingers, Don deleted Grafton’s first paragraphs and entered his own:
The American government has slapped restrictions on Mayor John Novak’s visiting privileges to the United States because of his communist beliefs.
    Although he denied a Herald report last summer that he was on a U.S. border lookout list barring alien communists, anarchists and other subversives, the mayor admitted yesterday that he had been on the list earlier and that he was still barred from attending public meetings or spreading communism