Chapter One

I hate the term scoop. I don’t know its derivation in newspaper terms, but I hate it anyway. What I hate even more is having it done to me and The Alpine Advocate. But two months ago that’s what happened for the first time in my career as an editor and publisher.

Spencer Fleetwood, owner and operator of my nemesis, radio station KSKY, managed to scoop me on a story about a missing snowboarder on Mount Baldy. I’ve never liked Spence, as he calls himself, probably because he’s so full of himself. And, to be candid, because he’s provided the Advocate with the only serious competition I’ve ever faced. Furthermore, I think his radio station with its weak little signal and prepackaged DJs is just one step up from shouting through a megaphone on a soapbox in Old Mill Park.

But he beat me on the snowboarder story, and I’m still mad. It started with the “exclusive report” of the missing snowboarder. I’m still not certain how Spence got the so-called scoop, but it was probably from one of the park rangers. In the past, they’ve always come to me first with any breaking news. I suspect Spence was hanging on to a barstool at the Venison Inn when one of the rangers came off duty and the story fell into his lap before he fell onto the floor.

“You’re being unfair,” Leo Walsh, my ad manager, declared for about the fiftieth time in the ten weeks that had passed since the snowboarder’s disappearance. “Drop it. That’s the only story he’s beat you on since he started up the station last summer. Face it, the Advocate’s a weekly. With daily radio competition, you’re bou