KILLED - Episode 9: The Missionaries

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

An ambitious reporter goes door to door with Mormon elders, gets negged by New York Magazine. Featuring Katie Rosman and Joanna Coles.To submit your KILLED story, visit www.KILLEDStories.com.

in the year 2000. I wanted to try being a freelancer. And so I was pitching stories all over the city. I was doing whatever I could to get meetings or coffees or conversations with editors. And one editor I was really excited to work with, was at New York Magazine, and just seen to be the guy, or at least the editor behind all of their busiest articles. We talked about all sorts of stories, including, I had seen Rudy Giuliani and his then-girlfriend at this sort of like very dark cigar barry place in Midtown. It became a very big tabloid story that he was having an affair and we talked about doing a sort of like a guide to cheating in New York City,

which we didn't end up doing, but it was a fun, exciting, ongoing relationship with him about what I should be doing for New York Magazine. And if I recall correctly, he said something to the degree of, I'm so curious about those Mormon missionaries who are in their white button downs and their name tag. What do you think about that? Hi, how are you doing today? From Justin Harmon and audio Chuck, this is Killed, the podcast that brings dead stories, back to life.

Season 2, Episode 9. If I left you with a little pamphlet. The Missionaries. My name is Katie Rosman and I'm a reporter for The New York Times. I have been at The New York Times for about eight and a half years. Katie Rossman is like a pathological reporter. She takes in what's all around her and she just sees stories. She sees stories in tweets on the street in a good bit of gossip whispered between dinner service and dessert wine.

It's not like you tell me something at a dinner party and the next thing you know it shows up anywhere. But you may tell me something at a dinner party and hear from me Monday morning where I say that story that you told, would you be willing to share that with me in a way that I could get in the newspaper? And people usually say no, but I still try. Katie and I got to know each other when she was reporting a profile on Ashley Flowers. Who?

For the New York Times. Shortly after this interview, it was announced that Katie would be moving from the Styles desk to the Metro desk. But long before the Times, and the ten years she spent as a staff writer at the Wall Street Journal before that, Katie was a different kind of reporter, the hunkery kind. So I was a freelance reporter. I'm guessing I was about 27, maybe 28 years old.

And I had worked at this magazine called Brill's Content. Brill's Content was lawyer, journalist, court TV founder Stephen Brill's brilliant idea. A sort of print-only Y2K precursor to Galker that hawked big medias every move and misstep. Here he is talking about his magazine on C-SPAN in 98. It gradually dawned on me that the only other institution that really doesn't get any coverage and have any real accountability is the institution of the press itself. The publication is no longer with us speaking of killed, but it was a very exciting place to be, and it was a place that really encouraged very aggressive reporting for better or worse.

It was at Brills that Katie first got a taste for the kind of people, the kind of inherent inherited drama found only in New York City. I met this guy who was a journalist whose mother was a writer and we were having a drink and he said something like that his mother had had an affair and I was like wow how do you know that? Did she tell you that? And he said no it was in the second volume of her published memoirs. And he said, no, it was in the second volume of her published memoirs. And I've always remembered being like, oh my god, they didn't do that in Michigan. I left brills in the year 2000 and decided that I wanted to try being a freelancer. One editor who I was really excited to work with was Mayor Broshan at New York magazine. This was back when it was so exciting to read magazines first of all. I

mean I would go to my mailbox on Tuesdays to get us weekly which was the best and really was a precursor to Instagram and in many many ways but in any event New York magazine just had a ton of cash a which frankly I think New York magazine still does And Mayor had an idea for her Why not embed with door-to-door missionaries? See what the hell they do all day door to door, missionaries. See what the hell they do all day. And he said, something to the degree of,

I'm so curious about those Mormon missionaries who are in their white button downs and their name tag and you see them near the Latter-day St. Church, near Lincoln Center. And what do you think about that? And I was very, very into that idea because I have for a long time been very, very interested and fascinated by the entire culture around the religion. In fact, I just finished a book the other day that had a

subplot about a Jewish guy becoming very interested in the Mormon faith and in the acknowledgments, the author said something like a shout out to all the Mormon obsessed Jews out there, you know who you are. And I was like, wow, I do know who I am. And so I was super interested in and I was very gun-ho and I said I'd love to do it. Katie Rossman, a 20-something freelance writer from Michigan, had just been assigned a 4,000 word feature on Mormon missionaries for New York magazine. It was a huge undertaking, but Katie knew what to do. Or she thought she thought she did. I did not need to be hired as a reporter to be a reporter. I've always been a reporter. I've always been really, really good at drawing people out. I'm very, very curious in basically everybody

and everything. And I am a firm believer that if you look hard enough, you will find a story in any person's life. The great privilege of being a reporter, as you get to sort of nose yourself into other people's lives. And when in a million years would I be, you know, going around with Mormon missionaries as they try to proselytize and convert people in New York City. It's just unthinkable. But you put a notebook in your hand and all of a sudden people accept that you're going to be doing this. This is Killed, the podcast that brings dead stories back to life. Katie Rossman began to report her piece. Step one, embed with door-to-door missionaries in New York City.

I reached out to the PR Communications Department for the church and I went through whatever process I needed to go through to finally get to the right people in New York and they connected me to these two young elders as as the missionaries are referred to by title. I was pretty young. I had worked at Brill's content where we all were infused with this sense of confidence that perhaps was not completely earned. And in my case, it wasn't earned. And when I really got out into the world, I knew a lot less than I thought I did. So I meet these two kids, and I was young, but they were kids. I do not think these guys were 21 years old. And I met them at the church by Lincoln Center, which is the sort of New York.

Per Katie's article, a draft of which she found after our conversation. They were actually Albert 22 and Edsel 24. Albert and Edsel have been walking the streets of Harlem for over an hour now, in their uniform of black trench coats, gray suits, high school science teacher white shirts, muted ties, and large plastic name tags. And I followed them around several times over the course of several weeks. One of them was a white kid who grew up Mormon. His family was Mormon. This was the faith he was a young black man whose family had converted. A missionary like him had come to their home and had proselytized and brought the book of Mormon and the teachings of the book of Mormon into his home and into their lives. Hi, how are you doing today? We're missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ, a lot of the Saints.

The two-year mission is a right of passage for most young Mormon men. There are 55,000... I went to see where they lived. There was nothing great, as, you know, nor should it be when you're young and living in New York City, by the way. But the apartment was a mess.

They lived with, I think, two other missionaries. And it was filled with Dr. Pepper Pottles. You're not supposed to drink caffeine or alcohol or just tobacco. And so this was like my big gacha that they were drinking caffeine. I later learned in doing other research and other stories. It's really hot caffeine that is not allowed. But I was very excited to see these Dr. Pappers. It was like, you know, my killer detail in this story that was otherwise about very, very earnest,

very earnest people in a city that never has been particularly earnest. One time we brought a photographer with us and the photographer was a woman named Sylvia Placky if I'm pronouncing her name correctly. She has a son who's an actor. His name is Adrian Brody. And obviously, you know, I have sent her to him, but it was, I feel like I had never heard of him, but she was very proud of him.

And it was shortly thereafter that he kisses Halle Berry on the stage when he went to Nascar. Adrian Drody, which is another conversation. It's hard to imagine the world thinking that that's charming now. I bet they didn't tell you that wasn't a gift bag. Just the idea that people grew up in New York City and had parents like that was just

all a part of what was so romantic to the city for me, somebody who was just deeply, deeply ambitious. For weeks, Katie went door to door with these two young elders as they tried to convince strangers to join the Mormon faith. I mean, they were plopped down in New York City. I don't think these boys, if you said,

meet me at the corner, I don't think they know how to get there. And we went up to the housing projects, uptown. And I felt uneasy about that in moments for all sorts of reasons. We were, you know, and I say we, because I was there with them, though obviously I was just a silent observer, but they were first all going into buildings that they could get access into, which can't be said of, you know, buildings that have a door man, for example. They weren't going into, you know, the co-ops of Central Park West.

They wouldn't be able to get in the door. I felt they were setting their sights on people who didn't have a lot of money. Katie writes about this in her piece. Quote, missionaries focus on the projects they say because the economically prosperous are not interested in changing their lifestyle or belief systems. While those who are struggling to get by, more actively seek and are open to spirituality. As one elder put it, the people in the projects are more susceptible to our message. I think there was some degree where some sort of call would come in or there would be other

outreach that the church did that somebody was receptive to and these boys would call them back and say, we got you signed up for our newsletter and then once they would get in the door in a housing project, we would go, you know, every single door up and down the stairs. And plenty of people invited us in and we would sit down and they would give a lesson in the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They would answer questions about how it differs from more traditional Christian philosophy if that's the appropriate way to phrase it. And they would try to set up a follow-up

meeting and that's what we would do. I would just write everything down and try to get people's telephone numbers to follow up. I think that having a reporter there was not necessarily any weirder than having these two young men in these, you know, perfectly starched white button down with like the white button down collar and the name tag. I mean, it really is like right out of book of Mormon. Hello, it's an amazing football. Bonjour! Hello, me, how? Hey, I'm O.L. They're white.

Are these your kids? These guys were very serious about their work and very earnest. It was very hard to build any sort of conversation. They were stilted and there's a script. I mean, there's literally, it's very, very scripted, and they're very trained in what to do, what to say. You know, I could not get them to be unbridled. And I wasn't trying to, you know,

get them to say something impolitic or, you know, colorful in a way that would get them in trouble or reflect badly on anyone, but I just could, it was very hard to build a rapport. Katie started to put her piece together. In addition to the week she had spent shadowing the young men on their mission, she'd been attending baptism, reading scripture, and everywhere she went, it seemed like the universe was throwing her a bone. I felt I needed to go witness people getting baptized,

which is like the end success of a missionary. You know, they're proselytizing in a person, says, yes, I want this to be my faith, and then they take part in this ritual, which seals it. And I made my boyfriend come with me to these baptisms. And I sort of vaguely remember being like incredibly hungover on a Saturday or Sunday. And being like, come on, we gotta go to the Mormon church.

I mean, he really must have been in to me to do that. As a result of this, my boyfriend was in a taxi and he told the taxi driver that he had gone to these baptisms and the taxi driver handed my boyfriend a flyer and some way, way, way, way, way, off-broadway play about a young gay man who had been raised as a mormon who was trying to face his sexuality and my boyfriend gave me the flyer into the ever-growing reporting pile it went. the flyer into the ever-growing reporting pile it went. I overreported which is something that I still do but I now have enough experience to be able to tell myself when to try to start thinking about a shape of a story but when you overreport you can really burden yourself with information. It's one thing if

you're trying to find out or confirm a single fact and you need to call everybody in the world that you could possibly call to get confirmation. There's no such thing as overreporting there, but there is overreporting when you are going with two, two one year olds who are doing the same thing every single day over and over again just with slightly different outcomes and slightly different cast of characters. Katie was overwhelmed and her editor mayor over at New York magazine. Well, he wasn't exactly on speed dial. I don't know if he was remote from me or if I was trying to pretend like I didn't need

my hand to be held, but I didn't have the guidance that I needed during this part of the overall storytelling process. Possibly a combination of mayor having a million stories like mine out in the world and my trying to pretend like I was this very capable, self-sufficient journalist just led to me just being buried under notebooks and transcripts. When reached via email, Mayor Roshan confirmed the assignment had been his idea. He wrote, quote,

quote, I was interested in these young devout Mormon kids fresh out of school who were deposited into the middle of Sodom and Gomorrah, aka Manhattan, and required to go around door to door, trying to convert the natives." When it came time to write the story, I was paralyzed going into it with just like, what the hell do I do, and how do I do this, and how do I keep it in any sort of length. I'm still not very good about adhering to lengths, short lengths, that would be. I'm very good about adhering to long lengths. So I turned in something that was just an absolute mess. I assume I mean it was. I don't even need to assume. And I didn't hear anything for a really long time.

This is Kilt, the podcast that brings dead stories back to life. After Katie Rosman filed her story to New York's Mayor Roshan, who is now the editor of Los Angeles magazine, it was pretty quiet. At some point, Mayor left New York magazine to go work at Talk magazine for Tina Brown, because again this is the golden age of magazines. Talk magazine was launched to great fanfare last night with Madonna to me more. You grant and Elizabeth Hurley. It was just such a big deal and there was this big huge party.

Was it on Alice Island? Liberty Island. I don't know because I wasn't there because I was much of a loser to be invited, but I certainly gobbled up everything in page 6 that I could. Party is still raging as the stars continue to talk about top magazine into the night. So Mayer left and I was sort of lost. then somehow I got assigned to work with an editor named Joanna Coles, who many of us know now as a really big fucking deal if you will pardon the expression. Pardoned. She's on the board of SNAP and she was the editor of Cosmo and she was the editor of Marie Claire, the executive producer of the bold type. I'm the executive producer on

the bold type which is loosely based on my own life. Oh, I like her. You know what? It's saucy. I mean, she's sort of famous, right? Big time. She invited me over to her apartment to work on the piece together. And I remember opening the door and this incredibly lively, intelligent, beautiful woman with a cascade of blonde girls was standing there. Did the legendary Joanna Colors just enter the chat? Yes, but it's a zoom.

Sorry about the technical difficulties. Don't worry. It's all right. It's all good. I've only got till 1230. Okay. That's fine. I was in the process of being interviewed for a job as article editor at New York Magazine, and my background was in newspapers. And I think they would terrify that I didn't know how to edit an article. So Caroline Miller, but then editor, called me and she said we have a piece that we don't know what to do

with can you meet the writer and give it up or once they go you know figure out what you would do with it. So I called Katie Rosewood and suggested she come round to my apartment and we work through the piece together. And so we went and we sat at her living room or her dining room table actually. Why should you use what word wear? And on paper with a pencil we went through every line of the story. In the first word that comes to my mind. She edited it and she told me why she was doing what she was doing and things for me to think about in the future with structure, with use of quotes.

That really makes the sentence live. You know, it had been like just sitting there rotting and I needed the help. Like I was under no illusion that like what? How dare anybody touch my pros. I was so happy to have somebody focused on it. Joanna got the job. Her edit had been good, but the piece didn't run. It was a very well-observed feature, very nicely written, but it didn't have a wild amount

of drama in it, and the problem is that every piece in a magazine is competing with five other pieces for space. And I think the reason it never really got used was it was a very good B plus, but it wasn't an A, and every piece needed to be an A. And a week later, everything changed. I got the job and I started the week before 9-11 and it was as if there was the pre-media 9-11 and the post-media 9-11 and of course the advertising market completely stopped, everything stopped. And a story about door-to-door missionaries from the before times.

Honestly, who cared? I think that is probably why, because everything was very very 9-11, because then that just seemed completely irrelevant. At some point, I reached out directly to Caroline Miller, who was the editor-in in chief of New York Magazine, and I said, you know, I feel like this is never gonna run. It was very humiliated and sort of skittish and nervous, but I asked if I was gonna get a kill fee.

It was, I think, years, 18 months, something pretty extraordinary. And so she paid me in full, and I think she paid me $2 a word. So I got paid $8,000 for a story that never ran. When I asked the New York Times comes person, if it was okay for me to do this podcast, which is very standard procedure, you know, when you represent a company just to make sure they're okay with it. The person I spoke to said, are you sure you want to do this? Because you're going to be talking about, you know, your story that never saw the light

of day and, you know, sort of the subtext was you failed. And I felt really involved in by that because now that I'm older in my career and have a lot more experience. I want people who are younger to know that you can have a lot of misses and you can have failures and you're probably not going to get paid $8,000 for them anymore. I'm sorry to say, but you shouldn't give up because a story doesn't work out. A lot of stories don't work out and a lot of people have stories that don't work out who go on to have great careers. Wait, you thought that was the end? have stories that don't work out who go on to have great careers.

Wait, you thought that was the end? No way. You didn't forget the flyer Katie's boyfriend now husband got from the taxi driver. Did you? I reached out to either the people paying for the play or I can't remember. And I ended up finding another story. the player. I can't remember and I ended up finding another story. And it was a story about a very conservative family insult like city Utah and their son came to them and said that he was gay and they put him in therapy and he tried to kill himself. And the parents had a realization that they were being asked by the church essentially to choose between their faith and their child and they chose their child. They left the church very disruptive to the whole extended

family and they became activists. And I wrote a story about them for the nation and it was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award. I was very proud of that story and it never would have happened if not for reporting on the Mormon missionaries and my husband mentioning something to a taxi driver. Turns out a reporter's intuition just might be hereditary. You never know where a story is going to come from.

I, a couple days ago, told my kids something about our pediatrician and my son was like, that's a story. And I was like, oh my god, you're right. And I'm going to pitch it. and my son was like, that's a story. And I was like, oh my god, you're right. And I'm gonna pitch it. Next time on Killed. There was a lot riding on this for the Department of Defense, the Air Force, the Air Force Academy.

I mean, this was the case, and this was the kid. And it was a big deal. At the time, it was a big deal. Killed is an audio-chuck production, created and written by Justin Harmon and edited by Alistair Sherman. You can find links to all the published stories featured on the first and second seasons of Killed at KilledStories.com. So, what do you think, Chuck?

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