Draft a post with three parts, each unrelated to the other, but create a common thread between them by including the same item — an object, a symbol, a place — in each part.
A man was reading the newspaper while waiting at the door of the district attorney. I noticed he was reading my piece about a corruption scandal I was investigating. I was there hoping to find more information. I knew that the man with the newspaper was the police officer in charge of the investigation, but he didn’t know me. So I asked him casually: Is it true what it says the newspaper?. He said: Absolutely true. Everything. I wonder how they knew all this. I knew my sources were good. I’d checked and re checked every bit of data before publishing. I liked his reply. Then I introduced myself. That morning I got another valuable source.
The little office was cold and humid. I had a desk and a panel with a chart of the parking they were building right in the opposite side of the street. My job was to sell parking places. I was 19. I had found that job through a friend because I needed the money to live. I wanted to work for a newspaper and I was an intern in a newsroom in Bilbao, but they didn’t pay me enough. So I spent the mornings selling parking places to live and the evenings doing journalism. What I didn’t know was that the parking business would become pretty dangerous. I learned too late that my boss was involved in something suspicious. One day when I was alone at the office with the door open, two thugs came in looking for him. They threatened me and made me promise not to tell him they were around if he showed up. I was so scared I closed and locked the door as soon as they left. I didn’t care about what the customers would think. I didn’t dare to venture out with those two characters around either. The boss came, I told him about the thugs and I quit right away. Well, as soon as I gathered enough courage to leave that awful place alone to go home.
As a reporter for everything in Pamplona, Spain, I had to write a lot about the San Fermin Festival. During eight consecutive years, my boss gave me the assignment of write about the wounded on the Running of the Bulls. So, when everybody was going towards the old city to watch the run, I drove in the opposite direction towards the hospital, to wait at the entrance of the ER the arrival of the ambulances with the wounded. Many traditional runners run with a rolled newspaper in their hand. With it, they measure the distance between them and the bull, and if it is too close, they can move it in front of the face of the bull to distract its attention and save precious seconds to escape. It was usual that when a wounded arrived in an ambulance, he still had his hand tightening hard the rolled newspaper.
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