On a very Rodney Dangerfieldesque kind of day the phone rings. The phone call is just one more reason that I hate being the young guy on the paper. No respect. After my Cusack for president story ran, the managing editor called my boss asking her why it wasn't run on A1, and several other papers took it off the wire and ran in it their publications with all the prominence and graphics that they felt it deserved.

"Hi Brendan, this is Diana from Fox 61."

Sheesh, not this again. I hate when our great big happy corporate family makes us hand over our hard work and reporting to the news. There's no money in it for us, we have to come inearly look pretty and lose half a morning doing their stupid newscast.

"Yeah, we're doing the Cusack story..." The more she goes on the sooner I realize that she is not looking for me to do her newscast. Instead she wants me to do her reporting. She isn't doing a story, she's doing my story. Same angle. Same people interviewed. Same opening joke.

"I'm having trouble tracking down a few people. Like that girl from Pennsylvania who goes to Yale, is she local?"

"Did you just answer your own question?"

"So she's not living in New Haven?"

"No, she lives in the town in Pennsylvania that I listed in the story."

"Well how did you find her?"

"She was the only Koslulinkski in the phonebook."

"No, I mean how did you find her."

"I got her from the Cusack people. You did call the Cusack people, didn't you?"

"Uhm, I uh, I couldn't find their phone number." She switches from awkward to live at five: "Do you have it in front of you? Could you give it to me?"

"Listen, I'm working down here and I can't just hand you a story, have you been to the Cusack website? The phone number is in the media relations section at the top of the press releases. You know how on press releases there is always a phone number at the top?" She wasn't responding. "Ok, listen, I've got to get back to work here, but can you do me a favor? Do you have business cards? Ok, why don't your whiteout the word "reporter" on each one of them and write "complete moron"? Ok?"

She actually hung up minutes before, but when you stand up and really stick it to TV news when you're at your desk, well you know, you don't feel so Dangerfield around the water cooler.