Friday, September 03, 1999

Darts get the story

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Enquirer writer tossed randomly into lives of nice, interesting folks

BY JOHN JOHNSTON
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Enquirer reporter John Johnston has been at the center of our Darts feature for six months. Among the people darts have landed on are, clockwise from left: Evelyn and Harry Ford, Joe and Margo Marsala, Steve Attwood and Walt Luthy. (Saed Hindash photo) | ZOOM |

        I pick up the phone, dial a number, and give my spiel. Usually it goes something like this:

        Hi, this is John Johnston. I'm a writer for the Enquirer. I got your number randomly by throwing a dart at the phone book. We're testing the notion that everybody has a story worth telling. So I'd like to pay you a visit, interview you, and write an article to appear in Tempo.

        You know you're in a polite city when you make calls like this for six months and nobody hangs up on you. Reactions do vary, however.

        • Some people laugh. (Usually, those folks agree to be interviewed.)

        • Some quickly refuse. (“I don't have a story,” is the typical response.)

        • Some want to think it over.

        • And some want to do a little checking, to see if I'm legit. (Good idea, by the way.)

        After making brief appearances in 1997 and 1998, Tempo's dart feature became a fixture on Fridays last March. Since then, it's generated a fair number of questions, the leading one being:

        “How did you really get my name?”

        By tossing darts at the phone book, a page at a time.

        Really.

        “You're lying,” one woman insisted. But she was smiling when she said it, and agreed to be interviewed anyway.

        Here's how it works: First, using a complicated system that involves lottery numbers, I rip a single page from the white pages and tack it to a wall.

        Then I interrupt Cresta Williams, Tempo's entertainment listings writer. She is the designated dart thrower. Her qualifications include owning a set of darts. Also, she has never inflicted puncture wounds.

        Cresta flings the dart at the preselected page 10 times, and I number each hit, 1 to 10. If No. 1 on the page agrees to be interviewed, everyone else is eliminated. If No. 1 refuses or can't be reached, I move on to No. 2, and so on.

        On average, I call three people before someone says yes.

        This is weird, I know.

        So here's my disclaimer: My editor made me do it.

        Features editor Sara Pearce saw a similar feature in another newspaper years ago, and dubbed me the dart reporter. I've done all the stories but one.

        Others journalists also have latched on to the idea. CBS News has a dart feature. They throw a dart at a map of the United States, travel to the town the dart hits, then flip open the phone book and point at a name.

        I admit I was skeptical at first. But I've been pleasantly surprised by the variety of good stories the dart has discovered.

        Among them: a middle-aged woman adjusting to life with a pacemaker; a family with four generations living under one roof; a woman coming to grips with the death of her parents; a nursing home doctor who works with her newborn strapped to her chest; a guy who lives to fish.

        Early this year I arrived at the home of Joe and Margo Marsala with not the slightest idea what I'd write about. During the conversation, Margo casually mentioned that a granddaughter had beaten cancer. Sounded like a story to me. And it was.

        A few weeks ago, the dart hit Steve Attwood's name. I enjoyed writing about his car-racing hobby, called autocross.

        He now says the article “probably accounts for the majority of my 15 minutes (of fame), but hey . . .”

        Another dart subject, Walt Luthy, told me the story of his experiences in community theater. He says he assumed, as many people do, that we screen out the dull people.

        In fact, I am bound by this rule: Anyone who agrees to be interviewed will be written up in the paper. If your story really stinks, I have to write about you anyway.

        And I never verbally twist anybody's arm to participate. No need. There are plenty of other names in the phone book; 497,620 in all, according to Cincinnati Bell.

        So, your odds of getting struck by our dart are only slightly better than your odds of being struck by lightning (about one in 600,000).

        Speaking of which, some of the people I try to call are dead.

        What happens is, I ask for someone by name, and there's this uncomfortable pause, and then the person on the other end of the line says so-and-so passed away years ago, but the phone listing hasn't been changed.

        I'm sorry about that.

        Evelyn and Harry Ford were very much alive when I called. For many years they volunteered as emergency medical technicians on the Woodlawn Life Squad.

        When Evelyn told her friends how I got her name, “A lot of them didn't believe it,” she says. “I explained how it was done, and they said, "that's just like the lottery.' ”

        With one notable exception: no cash prizes.

       

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