PITCH MAGAZINE offers a chance.

As a movie buff and Cinema teacher, I knew Ang Lee’s “Ride with the Devil” (1999) had been filmed in Missouri, and the Kansas City Missouri Film Office had made many of the arrangements. Intrigued by the possibility of mingling with cast and crew in such a production, and knowing I had to come up with a provocative sabbatical request to take before the Johnson County Community College review board, I decided to contact the Film Office to see if they needed an intern to help with the film promotion grunt work in the fall of 2001.
Looking up the web site, I found the name of Patti Watson and I e-mailed her my request: Could she write me a letter explaining what my duties would be at the Film Office when and if I were granted a semester sabbatical?
I could not have contacted her at a worse time. She loved the idea of me working, she would write me a letter, but she had to warn me. The Kansas City Film Office was out of money, and funding might not be available for the next year. Patti herself was thinking of resigning her position. She could, therefore, not guarantee me a position for my sabbatical.
These series of e-mails were exchanged in the summer of 2000, and my deadline to apply for the sabbatical was approaching rapidly. I had to dump the Film Office idea.
Only thirty days before the deadline, two friends involved in the culture of Kansas City: C.J. Janovy, editor of the alternative weekly newspaper, “Pitch Weekly” and Warren Maus, key fundraiser for KCPT, the public television station in Kansas City, accepted the idea of an internship.
Within a week, both e-mailed letters arrived, agreeing with my request. My chances were good at obtaining a unique learning experience, and not at just one Kansas City cultural oasis, but at two seemingly opposed venues, highbrow culture, KCPT, versus pop culture, “The Pitch.”
The sabbatical interview went smoothly a few weeks later: my colleagues received my detailed and full schedule that hoped to probe the deepest and darkest secrets of two media giants. The smiling faces of the committee when the interview was over seemed to point to success. A few weeks later a note in my college mailbox arrived: my sabbatical for the fall 2001 had been awarded.
As a preliminary way to ease myself into this new eight months away, I thought it might be nice to meet with Warren and C.J. over lunch and talk about my expectations and theirs. Never able to connect with Warren, perhaps a presage of the future, I did contact C.J. who thought a lunch meeting would be appropriate.
So, lunch on the Plaza with C.J. Janovy, the editor of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alternative newspaper, took place at one p.m. at Houston’s. As I drove through the noon traffic, I knew it would be no problem finding a seat even though it was busy. We could probably walk right to the bar and find a booth.
C.J. was waiting for me in the alcove, wearing a leather coat, her hair cut shorter than the last time I saw her, some two years ago, and she had an earring on her left ear, a gold ring on her right index finger.
She seemed stressed. Her face had a worried look and her skin color seemed pallid, gray. Maybe it was the darkness in the restaurant. Maybe it was the stress of adjusting to her new job.
I wondered what she thought of me. Wearing a shirt and tie, I had a yuppie, Johnson County look compared to the look of the city. On the way through the Plaza, I had seen black outfits everywhere: black shoes, black coats, black turtlenecks. Johnson County seemed to have more of a pastel look.
After ordering the spinach dip and our meal (she a chicken salad, me a huge chicken sandwich with fries I couldn’t finish), we chatted about my goals and her ideas for my sabbatical. She thought helping with Pitch’s annual, “Best of Kansas City” issue would be a good learning experience. The paper runs a public vote for best restaurant, best taco, best swing dance, best newscaster. She explained I should start thinking even now for places in KC that might be different, might be worth a story, even though that issue was months away. “We serve a real purpose, expose the readers to places they might not know about, get them to visit these areas.”
My agreement included the desire to work on anything: write copy, proofread, and tag along with other reporters as they dig for dirt. One of my bigger hopes was to meet famous people, pick them up at airports, show them the town, interview them, not knowing that these events were not in C.J.’s plan for me.
After awhile, we shared stories.
The latest Pitch (1-18/1-24, 2001) included C.J.’s gutsy rant about the city’s lack of a stadium in downtown KC to anchor the area, give it some street traffic and business. Thirty years ago, the Royals’ and Chiefs’ Stadiums were built near Independence, far from downtown KC, supposedly because Lamar Hunt did not want to share a stadium in the heart of KC with the Royals. C.J. bluntly stated, “The powers that be do not have the balls to build a stadium downtown.”
We talked about my novels, especially number six in the Palmer Morel series, “Death and Devotion,” which has light rail as a subplot. Janovy, since her experience in Denver, a city with a “denser population,” said she had come to the conclusion KC does not need light rail. I didn’t realize at the time, but her comment predicted one of the future Pitch articles, a huge spike rammed into the plans for light rail, causing its defeat, in my opinion. But for now I just nodded, puzzling over C.J.’s reasons for opposing what to me seemed like a thoughtful and far-reaching innovation for the city.
She mentioned how she got her Pitch job, having gone to Denver two years ago, hooking up with New Times Inc. out there, then taking the Kansas City job after one of her friends, the editor of Pitch, dropped out last June. Since then, she has been working at the old Pitch headquarters on Broadway, a setting that a college friend, media professor Mark Raduziner, said was a “great place right in the heart of all the Westport action.” C.J. had to laugh at that. “Yeah, right, with a garage that’s about ready to fall down, no hot water, crowded conditions and toilets that won’t flush.”
The Ashcroft nomination for Attorney General came up, along with all the wrong moves George W. Bush had been making with his cabinet. C.J. said, “I’m getting depressed. That old feeling of the Reagan years is coming back. It’s hard to describe, but it’s there.”
Thinking about Pitch’s next issue, C.J. explained how hard it was to talk about the Pitch issue already on the stands today. “It’s like I’ve forgotten that issue already.” When asked if she was going to write an editorial each week, she said, “No, not that often. Only when I have something to say. I don’t need another deadline each week.”
She had the lead story set one week ahead, but the lead story for two weeks from this day was still tentative. “I have a very good writer working on one, but it’s not done and sometimes he’s late. I have one to replace it, but the politics of the situation aren’t quite there yet.”
Noticing some of the letters to the editor this week were not signed, I asked her if that was unusual. She said, “Yes, but we do not print their names if the request is reasonable. The story about the Chiefs’ players was not signed because the letter writer was afraid the ‘goons from the Chiefs’ might harm her in some way.”
I mentioned accidentally overhearing some Chiefs on a cell phone the previous year on my police radio. The players had talked about their girls in various cities, “ho’s” they called them, and it seemed they set up dates for players from other teams and themselves with an obvious disrespect for the women involved. C.J. thought that was “typical.”
Pitch was about to change venues, moving from the Westport area on Broadway. The new “digs” for the Pitch will be at 17th and Main, about two blocks from former politician Pendergast’s old office, and “around the corner from ‘Bazooka’s,’” a topless joint, C.J. said. That should make for some interesting street life, I thought.
Although my sabbatical was months away, I began to anticipate my involvement as an intern.