Page 35 of The Business Trip

“Well, uh… they talked about why it’s so important, you know, stress and other triggers, and ways you can stay calm, like breathing or exercising.” That sounded plausible. I looked to Bill to see if he bought it. Amazingly, he seemed to.

“Terrific. Please write up other tips you learned about mental health and send them to me by the end of the day tomorrow. Our newsroom will be better for the knowledge you gained at the conference. I’m glad I sent you.”

Aww, shit. Now I would have to BS this assignment. Thank God for the University of Google.

“Tell me about the news directors you met there,” Bill said. “People in from all over the country?”

“Oh, yes, Boston to Kalamazoo and everywhere in between,” I replied, thinking of Dorothy, the stoic bitch, and Alan, that little geek.

“Anyone have anything interesting to share about the way they are producing news in different markets? I’m always fascinated by learning from others.”

“Um… not really, Bill. I mean everyone has their own style, but as I said, I don’t think anyone holds a candle to us.”

“OK,” said Bill. “Well, let’s adjourn for now. I will see you at the sales meeting after lunch.”

“You got it,” I said, popping quickly out of my chair, happy to be free. Plus, I had to start googling “mental health” to see what I could cobble together as my pretend session from the conference.

I made it through some other boring planning stuff; then it was lunch and time to prep for the sales meeting.

Swinging by the men’s room to make sure I looked sharp, I smoothed my hair and straightened my collar. The receptionist always kept mints in a little glass bowl, so I popped by there to grab one. Nothing worse than meeting someone you wanted to win over with lunch breath.

The clients were from a mattress chain that had just opened more than four dozen new franchises in our area. They wanted to advertise but needed to see which station would be the best fit for them for the max amount of dollars, and they were ready to open their wallets and flood the airwaves. They were standing in our news conference room with Bill, admiring the view of downtown as I walked in.

“And here comes our news director,” Bill said.

I turned the wattage on the Trent smile as high as it would go and walked over with my hand extended, saying loudly, “Trent McCarthy, the pleasure is all mine!”

We sat down around an oval glass-topped conference table. Bill hit a button so a drop-down screen descended at the front of the room and a video began to play. It featured a local band singing a jingle with images of Atlanta mixed in and video of our on-air talent out and about with station-logoed microphones. The music came to a crescendo and the words “Home is where the heart is: NBC6, Atlanta” flashed across the screen. I saw one of our saleswomen dab at the corner of her eye.

“It gets me every time,” she sniffed. Another salesperson handed her a tissue.

“Welcome to our wonderful city and to NBC6,” Bill said, spreading his arms wide. “We’re simply thrilled to have you opening up Mega Mattresses all over the metro. How can we help you get the word out?”

They began talking about the many mattresses they offered. The company was looking to advertise across all stations but would put most of their money into the place that felt like it best aligned with their values. Bill turned to me.

“Trent runs our entire news operation, so he can talk about our values. In fact, he just attended a conference in San Diego and will be writing up a report for me on how we can better serve the mental health needs of our staff.”

I had to go into full-on bullshit mode. It reminded me of college when a professor would ask for a two-thousand-word paper and I’d stretch it by saying the same things in several different ways. We all had tried the font trick too, making the font bigger to get to more pages, but professors always caught that one. No, it was better if you just had the gift of gab.

“Mega Mattress aligns with our brand perfectly,” I began, and saw Bill nodding. “We are all about comfort and safety. The stories we do matter because our community needs to feel safe. We report on the bad guys getting locked up so that youcan feel better when you tuck little Johnny into a Mega Mattress at night. We follow through on cases every step of the way through the court system, so that you at home don’t miss a thing. Our investigators are out there working for you. If there’s wrongdoing, we will uncover it. If something is hiding in your medicine cabinet that could kill you, we will expose it. There is not another station in this town that works as hard to keep you and your family safe for a good night’s sleep. Channel 2? They hardly even cover crime. Channel 8? Try watching them, they’re all about politics. And I think they’re very partisan, by the way. You look around at the others, and I guarantee you’ll make your way back to Channel 6. We are mega-right for Mega Mattress.”

I flashed my smile, proud of myself for sticking the landing like an Olympic gymnast.

“That’s wonderful, Trent. What a nice description. And how do you help your own employees with mental health?” asked one of the women.

I had to scramble on this one. The only things that came to mind were days when I wasn’t helping at all. I had mocked a producer just last week for telling me her kid was having a mental health crisis and she had to take the day off. “Isn’t he in college?” I had asked. “Does he really needhis mommy?” I had also turned down an offer from a local therapy organization to host a mental health awareness day with our staff because I thought it sounded like BS. But now I had to answer. The only things about mental health that leaped to mind were some of the talking points Alan and Dorothy had told me during our table session.

“We value the opinions of everyone in the newsroom. It’s a democracy, not a dictatorship, and I think that sets an importanttone. Everyone knows they can come to me. My door is wide open, literally and figuratively. Mental health is almost as important as physical health. It all starts up here…”

I tapped my head. I was on a roll now.

“If you get that right, everything else will follow right to here.” I tapped my heart.

“Lovely, just lovely,” sighed the Mega Mattress woman, and I could feel my tail feathers rising.

“Diversity is also very important to us,” said a man seated next to her. “Can someone speak about the diversity here?”

The salespeople spoke of how over 50 percent of their staff were women or people of color. Bill then talked of our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion training, which was mandatory every year. I hated every minute of the videos we were forced to watch; had cheated, in fact, on the most recent test we had at the end of the video and asked Jorge to help me out, saying I was “so busy.”

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