Tales From the Newsroom

'Yes, Mr. Sinatra'

Journalists may no longer fit the Hollywood stereotype of the crusty, hard-bitten, hard-drinking cynic who believes nothing he or she is told and only half of what they see — but they do remain largely cynical.

It’s the result of being lied to half the time — and trying to figure out if the source you’re talking to at the moment is in their truthful state or their lying state.

Particularly at a daily newspaper — even a mid-sized one — most of the veteran reporters have interviewed their fair share of celebrities. It’s nearly impossible to impress your colleagues by who you can get access to, because while their Rolodex (I’ll let the older readers here explain what that was) may not have had all the bigshots yours did, it had some others you didn’t.

The only time in 30 years in the news business I think I ever got the newsroom’s attention because of who I was interviewing came about 15 years ago. Our local semi-equity theater company was holding a fund-raising concert to help underwrite their upcoming season, and somehow I was assigned to interview the main attraction: Frank Sinatra Jr.

Now Jr. was never as popular, influential or iconic as his dad. But his late in life renaissance, which included appearances on “The Sopranos,” found him finally gaining the respect that had eluded him while his father was alive.

At this time, Sinatra was doing a live show that covered his father’s career. No impressionist, Sinatra Jr. was, thanks to his father’s DNA, blessed with similar vocal cords and nasal cavities and so he sounded more like his father than any impersonator ever could, even if his timing and delivery were all his own.

And, as he explained, he had inherited all of the classic song arrangements his father had commissioned from arrangers like Don Costa, Nelson Riddle and Quincy Jones.

The publicist at the theater was handling the interactions with Sinatra’s staff, and so while I wasn’t surprised when the call came, I wasn’t exactly expecting it either. Not at the end of the business day, when most of the news side reporters were busy at their desks pounding out stories for the next day’s paper.

The phone on my desk rang, and I picked it up: “Trageser, newsroom.”

“Jim, this is Frank Sinatra Junior — I understand you wanted to chat about music?”

“Yes, Mr. Sinatra — thank you for calling.”

As the “Yes, Mr. Sinatra” floated over the newsroom, fingers stopped typing, heads began tilting.

Journalists may be cynical, but we’re not without certain cultural touchstones, and the name Sinatra still carried a certain weight, lent a certain panache.

And so as I asked questions and typed in his replies, I noticed I had a small audience of 3 or 4 reporters behind me, reading what I was typing. Which was weird — one thing we don’t usually have in the newspaper business is a viewing audience.

Mr. Sinatra and I chatted for about 30 minutes or so. The care he put into his replies made it clear that music was something he truly loved and had spent a lifetime studying — not so different from his old man.

I do remember one question I asked him about the difference in the way old-school entertainers — jazz and swing musicians, fading Hollywood royalty, stars of a certain generation — treated the media compared to the contempt that pop and rock stars, and younger actors, all too often exhibited.

He thought about that for a few seconds, then said he thought the difference might have been that people who had come up during hard times, had watched their friends take factory jobs or other physical work, appreciated what they had and understood that reporters were stand-ins for their audience, who made their careers possible.

At the end of our chat, he thanked me for taking an interest in his work.

As I put the phone back in its cradle, a couple of the reporters leaned over. “What was he like?” “Did you get any good quotes?”

It would seem that even cynics have a little bit of fan left in them.

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