Related story: War on Terrorism
In Rhode Island, Tourism, service workers feeling economy's pinch

By Lynn Arditi
Journal Staff Writer

Knowing what the story is going to be before it breaks is a big help, especially when it's a story based on numbers.

I knew the unemployment rate would be out that Friday. I also knew it wouldn't tell us what was really going on in the labor market. It was too early to see the impact of Sept. 11. The real story was the people who didn't make it into the numbers.

The key was advance reporting. Early in the week, I picked up the Yellow Pages and started calling limousine services. I'd heard the limousine business was way down since people weren't flying as much, and I wanted to find a driver who could illustrate this. I found a limo company in North Providence and went over to talk to the boss.

He told me about what they called "The Black Hole," when drivers hung out and couldn't get riders. That sold me. I talked to a few of the drivers and picked Kenny Gengo because he had a family to support and he said his fares were way down. Plus, I liked his name.

The next morning I was riding around in Gengo's cab, looking for some narrative hook to carry the story.

Originally, I had planned to lead with something like: ``They call it The Black Hole.'' But that's what one friend calls a ``typical Journal lead,'' so I changed it to something more newsy. Instead, I lead with:

``Kenny Gengo, a driver for Corporate Limousine in North Providence, didn't make it into the unemployment survey released yesterday.''

That had two advantages: It got Gengo in right away. And it got right to the news of the unemployment survey being released.

From there, I teased the reader with another anecdote:

``Neither did the 40-plus room attendants, lobby cleaners, bellhops and kitchen staff at the Crowne Plaza Hotel at the Crossings in Warwick.''

The idea was to signal the reader that I had real people to tell this story through -- and buy myself a little time to run through the numbers before going into the narrative.

I had one character -- a guy who had been laid off from a dot.com in California and moved back to Rhode Island -- who actually made it into the numbers. I saved him for then end.

After the story ran, Business Editor John Kostrzewa made a good suggestion. He said that saving this guy until the very end of the story was like having a new character walk on stage during the last act of a play: better to introduce him earlier. That gave me something to work on the next time around.