Written earlier this week sometime, in between editing other stuff.
When I was fired from my job as a science reporter for the Washington Post, the editor told me I’d never be able to get a job with a decent paper again. He was right, at first: no one wanted to hire a reporter who had taken bribes to write a series of articles about a non-existent technology in order to inflate the value of a company being used in a stock swindle, even if I had managed to get off without serving time.
Yes, I took the money. Yes, it was a stupid thing to do, and if I had it all to do over again, I wouldn’t have. I had my reasons at the time; what they were don’t matter. All that matters is that no newspaper or TV station in the country would touch me after that. I tried freelancing for a couple of webzines, but it didn’t pay the bills.
And that’s the only reason I took the job with the Midnight Star tabloid. They didn’t care that I’d made up a news story