American Dreams

ANTHRAX: Media Disease

by Gary Greenberg

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Usually, you report the news. This time you're part of the story.

You make a living writing articles for newspapers and magazines. Since you reside in Boca Raton, you do a lot of work for the supermarket tabloids because they're right in town and they pay well.

One day, you walk into their state-of-the-art building and reach the Star newsroom just in time to see the second plane slam into the World Trade Center.

On another day, you find out that a photo retoucher for the Sun has been stricken with anthrax and will probably die.

Infectious disease experts from New York and Miami are brought in to talk about anthrax and calm nerves. Everyone meets in the National Enquirer newsroom. The experts assure you and the rest of the American Media Incorporated employees that the Boca facility is safe.

"If we weren't so certain," one says smugly, "we wouldn't be here ourselves."

Gary Greenberg

Two days later, the building is closed and quarantined. Experts, like newspapers, are wrong more often than you'd expect.

Early the next morning, you get a call at home.

"This thing gets weirder every day," says David Hayes, a Star editor and friend. "We're told to report to the county health clinic in Delray Beach at nine."

Suddenly, you are news. The media turns up in force at the county health clinic building, the satellite dishes adorning their vans looking indeed like something from the 21st Century. As a veteran reporter, it feels strange for you to be on the restricted side of the police tape. Everyone from local Channel 5 to CNN points a camera in your direction from behind the line, and the news people swarm like locusts over anyone they can corral.

As usual at big news events, there really isn't much happening. A slowly growing crowd mills around the front door of the clinic, it's a loosely formed line moving about as fast as the Ming Dynasty. The crowd is 150 by nine a.m., 300 by ten. Nobody knows anything, other than that the Star editorial staff are going first. Monday is deadline day and they need to get to an AMI office in Miami to put out the latest edition.

The sun is hot and there's not much shade. Being Columbus Day, the doors to the auditorium are locked and no one has the key. Sheriff's deputies in green uniforms tell you the bathrooms are closed, too.

People are scared and tired. Most got a call the previous night -- sort of a "sorry to wake you, but the building's got anthrax and you might, too" kind of thing. So nerves are shot. But everyone is polite, friendly and helpful to one another, bonding to combat the threat of anthrax in the same way they'd bond to combat the threat of a hurricane.

The sunshine turns to cloud cover, then rain. Some people brave the elements and stay in line. Most find cover under building eaves, where they chat nervously about what, if anything, is happening. The sun breaks through; the line re-forms and grows. By noon, all kinds of workmen, contractors, delivery people and anyone else who's been in the AMI building are turning up. One guy tells you he's here because he works near AMI and walks past the building every day on his way to Taco Bell for lunch.

"Can't be too safe," he says.

You wonder.

The line begins to move marginally faster. Finally, your turn comes. Number 244. You slip through the smoked glass portal, fill out forms for the FBI and CDC, get your nose swabbed and are given your own personal packet of ciprofloxacin. You're assured that this is all just a precautionary measure and that you really don't have anything to worry about, except maybe contracting an incurable, fatal disease.

About 20 minutes after you're let into the clinic, you leave it clutching your Cipro, the super-antibiotic that will supposedly make you anthrax-proof.

Back outside, the media people are looking bored, waiting for something to happen. They've been jumping on any scrap of information since this whole thing started. You read in one newspaper that the anthrax strain found in the AMI building is naturally occurring, then turned the page and read in another article of the same paper that the anthrax is a synthetic variety.

And then there was the story of the tabloid intern who was quickly branded a suspect because he supposedly sent a suspicious e-mail threatening to leave something behind after his summer stint ran its course. He was widely reported to be of Middle Eastern descent (one newscast said Sudanese), but it turns out he's a Jew of Spanish descent and left behind some bagels for his co-workers.

Ironically, the mainstream media are behaving like tabloids, reporting rumors as news. But everyone expects it of the tabloids. Now, you really don't know what to believe.

The media people in Delray Beach don't swarm all over you as you approach them on the way to your car. In fact, they don't even seem to notice you. As you pass them and walk around the side of the building towards the south parking lot, you suddenly feel very alone in the world. Very vulnerable. Very uncertain about the future.

You drive to AMI's accounting office -- conveniently located across the street from the health clinic -- and help the Globe editors meet their Monday evening deadline. Working out of a cramped conference room, there's a strong sense of camaraderie, and soft edges all around. They feel more like family here. Your job done, you drive home through a torrential rainstorm and dash into the dry comfort of your suburban house. And as you huddle together with your wife and son, eat dinner, watch some TV, play with the dog, pet the parakeet, feed the fish and read a bedtime story, you realize how precious every moment is and how very lucky you are.

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GARY GREENBERG was born and raised in the Philadelphia area. He attended Penn State University where he majored in rugby and happy hours and miraculously graduated with a journalism degree in 1976. He has been writing professionally for more than 20 years, mostly as a reporter and freelancer. During that time, he has also been a deli counterman, thoroughbred horse groom, apartment house manager, weight training instructor, house painter, freshman composition professor, drawbridge tender, import/export business manager and performance artist.

A world traveler and adventurer, Gary has a vast reservoir of mostly useless information which he draws upon to write thought-provoking and/or funny essays, a wide range of fiction, children's stories and verse, and newspaper and magazine features. Some of his writing and art can be found at his website, the Cosmic Café.

Gary lives in Boca Raton, Florida, with his eternally 39-year-old wife, Nora, five-year-old son, Glen, seven-year-old dog, Banyan, and a box turtle of indeterminate age named Schribner. This is his second article for The World's Magazine.