Reporters

The anchorman formerly known as David Johnston was stuck in a dead-end job. For six years, Johnston had served as evening anchor at two small TV affiliates in Midland/Odessa and El Paso, Texas. He wanted a shot at a bigger market or a network, but his audition tape never seemed to interest recruiters. But when Johnston took a job three years ago at KOVR-TV in Sacramento, his career prospects changed dramatically. So did his name.

Debbie Steelman flashed her media pass at a small group of reporters hovering around her. "See, right there. It says reporter," she said with a grin, pointing to the GOP convention badge that recognized her as an agent for the Republicans' television operation, GOPTV. "It feels so weird. I feel like," she paused, "like I'm going to do vengeance."

There's speculation he had a hero's complex. --KCBS-TV Channel 2 on Tuesday * Call it synchronized swimming in rumor and innuendo. Whatever the title, it stinks. If anyone has a hero complex, it's those members of the media who, swept up in their own pandemonium, leaped to conclusions about Richard Jewell based at the time only on shards of circumstantial evidence. They're the ones prancing in the limelight.

Before hitting the intellectual heights of a law conference last week, I sought a dose of reality in the Los Angeles Criminal Courts Building. Up on the ninth floor, the scene of the O.J. Simpson murder trial, I wandered into Department 106, where Superior Court Judge Edward A. Ferris was presiding over the trial of Jose Santa Maria. It was, the prosecution said, another story of love gone bad.

Last February, facing a challenge from a new Sunday night edition of "Dateline NBC," "60 Minutes" executive producer Don Hewitt announced the first changes on the CBS newsmagazine in many years. In addition to adding more breaking-news stories to the mix, three prominent commentators from print journalism--Molly Ivins, P.J. O'Rourke and Stanley Crouch--were hired to do weekly commentary.

These simple tales tell of society's ability to move forward and also stand still. I wouldn't care to know the number of times I've take the result of a high school event over the phone the last 11 years. But one call stands out. It came earlier this spring. Our office had heard that the Woodbridge boys' tennis team upset top-seeded Santa Barbara in a Southern Section playoff match.

The phone call came on a parched, August day. It was The Times' sports editor in Los Angeles, telling me I had been reassigned to Orange County, effective the next week. Stunned, I wandered my apartment, trying to understand what this would mean for my life. I had worked at Times Mirror Square in Los Angeles for three years, covering nonrevenue college athletics. Moving to Orange County to cover local high schools, I knew my job would change dramatically.

Bob Dole is the old guy. Steve Forbes is the rich guy. Pat Buchanan is the mean guy. Lamar Alexander is the plaid guy. Bill Clinton is the guy who wants to keep his job. If this is the rough sum of your knowledge of the 1996 presidential race, you have no one to blame but yourself. Or, of course, the media.