A Stranger on a Deadline

A reporter rings the number on the intergroup site, because the paper is running something about the new detox unit and wants a line from A.A. The GSR takes it, since she is the one who answers that phone. She is careful. She says she can't speak for A.A. as a whole. She gives the meeting times, explains what the Fellowship does and does not do, and gives her name the way she gives it in the rooms — first name, last initial. The reporter is decent and barely interested in her. But a copy editor at ten at night has a house style, the paper does not print initials, and her surname is in the phone book. It runs on page five beneath the words Alcoholics Anonymous. She did everything right except the one thing nobody had told her: the decision about how her name appeared was never hers to make. A.A. put it as sharply as it can be put (Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers) — an A.A. "who permits his name to appear in the press in connection with matters pertaining to A.A." has broken this Tradition. Permits. Nobody asked her.