School Days & Second Cuts

All Along the GirlTower, 1977-1979

I entered college the way some people enter a witness protection program. I was supposed to start my “new life,” but I had no idea what that looked like. I was in a disguise— I looked like a freckle-faced undergraduate, but I had come out of an underground cell.

Jay Levin was desperate for reporters when he started the LA Weekly, so my socialist newspaper past was not enough to dissuade him

I got a campus job pasting up the Cal State Long Beach school newspaper and it reminded me of my days as a basketball scoregirl. The merry headlines of “The Forty-Niner” celebrated sports team wins and a new candy machine at the campus bookshop. Everyone in the editorial staff was serious about being a journalist but their idea of big-time news was to cover a fire. My take was that you started your own fire and people covered you. Then you wrote a blistering editorial!

I couldn’t help myself. I did a small story unmasking a fraudulent college job agency (Students! Earn $1000 a day in your Spare Time!)…