One day in February 1975 (eight weeks after the AP laid me off), I was sitting in my apartment working on a newsmagazine story, when Jim Wieck, the co-manager of the Boston UPI bureau, called and asked for my roommate Norman Sandler.
Norm was in Washington that day. “Too bad,” Wieck said, “we need someone to fill in on the New England radio desk from 4 to midnight.”
“Hey," I said, “This is Paul Schindler, the guy you interviewed a couple of weeks ago. I could do it.”
“Did you write radio over at AP?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. I had written it twice in five months. Didn't that count? “Can you be here by 4?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. It was noon. I rifled the apartment, and found both my AP Radio Stylebook and Norm's UPI Radio Stylebook.
I studied them frantically for two hours, rereading them on the subway as I rode into Boston. I arrived at UPI at 2 and watched the New England Radio Bureau Chief, Ron Reichman, for two hours. I then took over and filed the wire with reasonable proficiency for 8 hours. Wieck was impressed. I did a week's fill in, then another.
Then John Cunningham, the long-timer overnight man, broke his leg vertically while skiing. He would be out for six weeks. Bureau Manager Don Davis asked for and received permission to hire me.
He was sitting at the desk when he got the word. He turned around and said, “Congratulations. You are the newest Unipresser.”
It was Feb. 15. I immediately asked for two things: the week of March 15 off and that afternoon off. “What for?” Davis asked.
“This afternoon to collect my unemployment check, and March 15 to go to Jamaica.”
“How were you going to pay for it?” he asked. I never knew how an unemployed guy was going to pay for a week in Jamaica, but my friends were going so I went too.
AP Vs. UPI
The AP was a bigger, richer organization. Two stories that illustrate the difference:
When the AP sent a reporter out, that reporter was given a cab voucher and took a cab in each direction.
During my first few weeks with UPI, the National Women's Political Caucus met at Boston's Hynes Auditorium.
I asked Boston UPI Bureau Manager Don Davis if I could take a cab over. He flipped me a quarter [the fare at the time] and said, "It's the auditorium stop on the Green Line." He was telling me to take the subway.
The other story is that, when Gerald Ford visited the Old North Church in Boston, 200 years after the famous ride of 1775, the AP reporters went out in force with walkie-talkies, while UPI went out in force with pockets full of dimes, and spent a lot of our time searching for pay phones.
The same was true that fall, when I covered the opening days of the second year of busing to achieve integration in the Boston Schools. I had a car that I had either rented or borrowed, and I spent the entire first day in South Boston, where my lack of an accent marked me as one of the outsiders.
Standing in crowded candy stores and supermarkets, with the whiff of tear gas wafting in, among crowds of angry Southies, trying to file notes about arrests and demonstrations, was one of the scariest things I ever did.