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Rejected as news reporter, she wins a PulitzerMargo Huston is one sweet writer.A couple of years ago, Margo, then working on features, women’s news and food pages at the Milwaukee Journal, heard of an opening in that paper’s news department.She applied for it, but was told by the editor that he was not going to consider her because there was a lot of tough competition. A male reporter got the job.In other words, he didn’t think she could cutit.“I really had to blink back the tears until I got to the ladies room and could let it all hang out,’’ she recalls. ‘‘He cut to the quick — I wasn’t good enough for the job.”Ironically, it was the same person who, a little more than a week ago, came to her with some humble pie and the news she'd won a Pulitzer Prize for local news reporting.“After thinking about it, I guess he really wasn’t trying to cut me down,” she says. But all he had to do was not hire me and I would've gotten the point.”The assignment that resulted in her prize-winning stories came from her boss, Barbara Strain. It was a mundane sounding one: alternatives to nursing homes for the elderly. But Margo took it and ran with it.At first she was interested in finding out what the agencies with in-home health care were telling the general public, so there were many phone calls. .“Hi, I’m thinking of having my grandmother come and live with me,” she'd say in a breezy, nonchalant tone.“I wonder if your agency could provide some services for her? What do you offer? How much would these services cost? How long have you been in business? Can people pay with Medicaid?She read the state statutes to see if they needed a license and for what services. Then she checked with the state to see if they were licensed.bit mooreBy Pot Moore Tribune columnistShe called a second time, only this time as a reporter.Hi, this is Margo Huston of the Milwaukee Journal. We re doing a story on alternatives to nursing homes. What do you offer and what are the costs?”For many profit-making agencies, there would be another question. The state requires you to have a license. I checked and you don’t. What about this?”She talked to the elderly in their homes and was horrified at the plight of many.Too poor to afford nursing care, or not wanting to leave their homes, many were alone and friendless, barely existing while they waited to die.During the four months she did the research for her stories, she interviewed more than 100 of the elderly in their homes and made just as many phone calls.The writing came easy. It took two weeks. It poured out.If it doesn't come easily, then you’re writing the wrong thing,” she told a workshop for women in the media from all over the state.Even before she'd won the Pulitzer Prize, she'd been asked to speak at the Media Bylines For Women Conference held in Madison last weekend.Remember the nursery rhyme, The HouseThat Jack Built?”She changed that familiar refrain and used it throughout the series The first of her stories Inside the House Bertha Built began like this:This is the house that Bertha built: Shabbybungalow, shades drawn, dark. You've seen this house, somewhere. When you were a kid. you called it haunted and ran past, screaming.This is the woman who lived in the house that Bertha built: Urine soaks through her wheelchair, trickles down her swollen legs, into the open sores, over her bleeding bare feet and lands in a pool on the warped floor.At 91, her blue eyes still twinkle, her smile beckons and she manages, ever so slowly, to raise her saggy arms and motions, come here, with her fingertips.”It was a difficult series to read, one woman at the conference commented. “It was filled with urine and feces and the smell of death ”But people talked about the stories. They were angry about the conditions of some of the elderly; the fact that no one was doing anything for them and that some government officials were overlooking the license requirements'They talked about it in beauty parlors, on elevators, on street corners and at lunch counters,” the same woman added.Each newspaper may have only one entry in the contest for the Pulitzer. The Journal entered her series.So who is Margo Huston, Pulitzer Prize winner0She's a slender 5-foot-7, is 34 years-old, pretty, soft-spoken, bright and friendly. Not very intimidating. Perhaps that combination is why people open up to her, even to the point of incriminating themselves.She's the kind of person you talk to just for a few minutes and feel like you've known for a long time.A 1965 graduate of Marquette University, she taught journalism part-time at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha for about a year and a half and was feature editor at the Waukesha Freeman for about a year.She started at the Journal in 1967 as a feature writer for the Green Sheet and TV Screen.She praises the artwork of Journal artistGregg Klees, who illustrated the series, and called it vital in making the stories attractive to the reader. Together she and Klees returned to visit some of the people she'd interviewed Klees’ artwork evolved from those impressions.When she wrote about nursing homes, agencies and health care centers, she named names. When she wrote of the elderly she used ficticious ones.Sure, she told the media women, she gets scared once in awhile when she finds something to expose.But what’s really scary for her is something, that occurs sometimes when you re interviewing someoneAt a certain point. I can see that’s it. This person can t say anymore. She can’t handle it. Any minute she couid click out. I believe I have an obligation not to give that person morejhanthey can handle. I stop then and talk aboutsomething else.”That same sensitivity and compassion came through in her stories.She still has the letter from Columbia University and the $1,000 check that came .vith her prizeIt’s just enough to pay back the loan I tookout to pay my income tax with,” she laughs.She recalls what a Washington reporter oncetold her Reporters are story junkies. A good story’s like a fix ”When I’m working on a story, I like to think I’m working for the people who buy the paper.” Perhaps the brass ring came just at a particularly low point in her life She doesn’t betray her feelings, but she and her husband, Jim, who s managing editor of the Mukwonago Freeman, are getting a divorce.Right now the most important man in her life is her 6-year-old son, SeanfShe's received congratulatory letters and telegrams from all over, from congressmen, from editors and government officials. But the onesshe is proudest of came from people she doesn’t know.Like the one written in bold pen strokes on a plain piece of stationery:Dear Margo,1 never drink in the morning. Today, however, I am drinking A strong Bloody Mary at 9a m. I need it to recover from your story of Bertha.I am humble. I am stunned 1 am filled withmemories and sadness for my own Bertha, mygrandma, whose house we ran past screaming.”Only a great writer can prompt a letter like that.AP Wirephoto
Newspaper Details
La Crosse Sunday Tribune
La Crosse, Wisconsin, US
Sun, May 01, 1977
Page 13
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 29 Jan 2020
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