I glanced over as he sat down and a hot thrill of pleasure shot through my stomach, the same sensation I get on a rollercoaster when it careens downhill. He’s just three tables down from me, shiny white hair, age spots dotting his tanned face, a navy blue polo, khakis, and Teva sandals. He catches me staring and I quickly look away , but I can’t stop glancing over to see what page he’s reading first. It looks like Letters. Here he was — the elusive Walrus reader — taking a coffee in Dooney’s Cafe to leaf through the last issue I’d fact-checked as an intern.

After four months of slaving away, checking fact after endless f’ing fact and phoning everyone, everywhere — a retired pilot in B.C., an expert on the Khmer Rouge trials in Cambodia, a mother who lost her son to Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Kurdish TV broadcaster in Diyarbakir, Pico Iyer on a book tour, a famous librettist and artist in London, my old history professor — who would have thought this lone reader would bring me such a straight shot of unadulterated joy?

Fact-checks are painstakingly detailed. But the rewards are the sometimes surreal conversations you have with people you phone, and getting the story behind the story. Pulling out every minute detail and putting it through the ringer, fact-checkers go deep — sometimes too deep. Like the case of a fellow intern who got stuck reading [writer's name redacted] entire journal to verify otherwise uncheckable facts about their trip to a remote place.

FACT: Attacked by pangs of guilt, this fact-checker squirmed whenever he had to read deeply intimate confessions about the writer’s wife.
OPINION: “But if the writer had told that part of the story, it would have been a much better piece,” he sighed, closing the journal.

Comparing the work that goes on behind one feature to the next, I quickly learned some journalists are better — much better — than others. Some (mostly older) journalists get lazy. They are prone to recycle and repackage stories, don’t do the extra digging and heart the mighty press release. Leafing through the latest issue, Ken Alexander lamented, “Where’s the payoff?” during our regular interns-plus-Ken sit downs.

I’m rubbernecking it around the couple who so rudely sat down beside me, leaning back to see what he’s reading now. I’m not sure, but it could be a column. Maybe it was that one that was submitted weeks late, the author going AWOL and not responding to the editor’s repeated requests for an update. A seemingly too-easy, but actually effective (and common) writer’s trick: pretend you never got the email.

Meeting our wide-eyed replacements — the new interns — I was reminded just how much I’d learned in four short months. It would be a snap to answer the question that had left me stumped in my internship interview: “What don’t you like about the magazine?” My judgment of a good and bad story sharpened substantially. Fact-checking, shadow editing, talking to writers, vetting submissions to the general pitch account, after-work beers on the Hooters patio — all of these experiences clued me in to what makes a piece work.

And The Walrus has plenty more good than bad. At 31, I’ve had my fair share of gigs ― tour guide, pizza girl, mill worker, PR flak, waitress, researcher, salesperson ― but I’ve never worked for free, or worked as hard. It was the best “job” I’ve ever had. From the crusty and nearly flawless editors, to the hard-nosed publisher, to the laissez-faire, supremely talented designers, to the outgoing editor-in-chief, who spent more time with the interns than anyone — it was (mostly) a fun place to be.

What I’ll really miss is working with my fellow interns. We were like the Breakfast Club. The whimsical, doe-eyed poet; the East Coast brainiac reporter whose diet consisted of one hard-boiled egg a day; the unfailingly helpful, razor-sharp linguist (and Wikipedia addict); the intensely curious ballerina and reluctant mother-hen; the circus-tall, loud, straight-talking older broad. Our bond was so thick and fast, it was almost sickening.

“Where will we all be in a year from now?” my fellow ex-intern asked over an ex-intern-turned-starving-writer breakfast this sunny morning. Blank faces answered back. I refuse to believe it’s because we’re clueless, but because there are so many possibilities.

My man from Dooney’s is gone now.He was replaced by a man wearing a crisp, striped shirt, sipping a large glass of red wine, and reading the Globe & Mail at 2:30 in the afternoon. A waft of marijuana seeps in from the street. Ah… I’m delighted to hang up my fact-checking hat. But I’m still in love with that hulking, brown beast.

Tags: editorial, fact check, fact-checking, walrus interns

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Posted on Saturday, June 21st, 2008 at 12:49 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.