Crash Course: A Reporter's Journey into Prison
Comes from hand-written notes veteran reporter Pippin Ross had stuffed into an XL Men’s Nike shoebox. Ross says all reporters scribble notes on who/what/where and why to get the facts to print, or on air for the 5 o’clock news.
Meet the Author
Pippin Ross
I NEVER MEANT TO WRITE A BOOK ABOUT ME. UNTIL I REALIZED I HAD STUFF ABOUT LIFE’S HARD KNOCKS EXPRESSED BY A LOT OF PEOPLE—ESPECIALLY WOMEN.
1st PERSON, ME, I stuff? YUCK!
A QUICK CHECK-IN TO CONFIRM HER FACTS:
Pippin Ross is a seasoned journalist with an extensive career in both print and broadcast. She earned her Journalism and Communication Studies degrees from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Ross spent three decades doing what she describes by delivering a commercial radio tone to wrap a newscast: “That’s it. That’s What’s Happening, You Heard It! Right Here! Right Now!”
Professional Experience as a Reporter
Pippin Ross
Details and Excerpts from Crash Course
Crash Course is from the piles of notes I kept on to get a grip on the detours and the wrong way turns I’d chosen to wind up, fenced-in the dead-end of Prison.
Any reporter will confirm we scribble notes, record everything, even, yes, share info. Why? The news biz mandate is to never blow or skip a detail. I learned the technique from my childhood adoration of the T.V. show ‘Dragnet’. In each episode, Sargeant Joe Friday said: ‘Just the facts, ma’am/sir. Just the facts.”
Those words are my mantra.
The notes I took in court, with cops, in therapy and in the Gulag revealed my lust to be the first to uncover complex schemes of well-suited bankers, lawyers, doctors, priests and politicians’ lust for big bucks usually swept under their social status rug.
Crash Course doesn’t qualify as a ‘memoir’, an autobiography, an expose, with the must have French accent agiu over the final ‘e’.
Non-Fiction would almost qualify but, hard as I try, I am prone to bullshit. I prefer to describe the details in Crash Course as ‘color’, enhanced with character. Yada-yada. Sure, I admit I occasionally use erasable words to aggrandize my words. Who doesn’t? I felt obligated to achieve vivacity to what was annoying, stupid, sad and, certainly not unique. I’m surprised my notes turned into a bound book with a glossy rendition of my illustration of how too much confidence almost killed me. Here’s my ‘cover’
In a wave of recent reviews, Crash Course’s plot is described as ‘Kick-Ass’, ‘A Stunner!’ and ‘Superbly written and Raw’.
With the awe of such praise, the word, ‘RAW’ is the most accurate. I didn’t write Crash Course with a book in mind. It was Fulton Book Publishing’s offer to clean, preen, and take it to press. The original garble called ‘manuscript’ is from my determination to air-out the stench of my shit.
Any reporter also knows that we have to ‘pitch’ ideas we consider NEWS worthy to the boss of the moment, News Director, Managing Editor, etc. I had one.
Breaking news was about a chartered LearJet crash carrying golf superstar, Payne Stewart, 3 of his pals and 2 pilots lost oxygen and flew on autopilot for a few pointless hours. The fuel ran out to corkscrew into a North Dokota field. Miles away from their destination of Palm Springs in California. The only remnants of Stewart? His wedding band and a bag of tangled golf clubs. My opener to the editor of Travel and Leisure golf was, “I know this isn’t happy gold talk.” “Okay”, Harry Hurt III said, “let’s do happy hour next door.”
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