My Story
Fox, Steve

>>STEVE: Steve Fox from Indianapolis, the Hoosier Writing Project; I was in the university, I joined the student newspaper, it was a daily paper, the "Red and Black" of the University of Georgia. I had worked on the newspaper in high school and I fancied myself a decent writer so I signed up. The news editor came along one day, and this was in the days of Watergate so investigative journalism was all the rage, and she said, "Would you like to do an investigative story? Over in the geology department they're having this scandal and the faculty is arguing. This one guy is accusing them of this, that, and the other." I said, "sure," so I went over and arranged interviews, talked to different professors and was suddenly feeling a little nervous; I realized whose side of the story do you believe, are you fair to everyone? Suddenly I realized that I was going to have people that would possibly be upset with me and the first story came out in the paper and I was getting phone calls. It suddenly made me realize that being a writer out there in the real world had a lot of responsibility and it wasn't like in the movies. It was a good experience; it really made me understand the consequences of writing.