Herald-Leader reporter John Cheves proves the pen is mightier than the cartoon

In 1987, at the age of 15 and suddenly in need of a job, I visited the newspaper in my small hometown in Florida to offer myself as a cartoonist.

It didn’t go as I hoped.

The editor flipped through my portfolio before suggesting that, as an artist, I might make a passable reporter.

He tossed me a notebook and pen. I departed to cover an awards ceremony for local teachers.

It was not a glamorous assignment — and I didn’t do an especially good job — but I was hooked.

That notebook and pen were my ticket into places a kid ordinarily wouldn’t get to go. I sat in the front row of public meetings, walked into private offices and interviewed many of my interesting neighbors.

It didn’t discourage me that I had to ride a bicycle to assignments because I was too young to drive a car. What I scribbled down in my notebook ended up on – well, if not the front page, then at least page A5.

That notebook and pen represented power.

Fast-forward: I worked my way through the University of Missouri School of Journalism and bounced around several Southern newspapers before landing here at the Lexington Herald-Leader in 1997.

My plan was simple. I would stay briefly in Lexington and write a few big stories until my staggering genius was discovered by The New York Times, which would summon me to my destiny.

It didn’t go as I hoped.

For one thing, my staggering genius has gone undiscovered for so long that I’m almost starting to wonder.

For another, as John Lennon sang, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Rather than zip through here, I accidentally settled down and became a Kentuckian.

I fell in love with and married another Herald-Leader reporter, Janet Patton. We bought a home that we share with our two amazing children, both enrolled in the Fayette County Public Schools.

I spent years as the courts reporter, writing about Kentucky’s justice system, and more years in our Frankfort and Washington bureaus, covering our state and federal elected leaders.

Today I’m an investigative projects reporter.

What an incredible ride it’s been.

I’ve written about the hundreds of millions of dollars that Mitch McConnell collected from special interests while rising to power in the U.S. Senate; what’s changed and what hasn’t in Appalachia since Harry Caudill published his heart-breaking book, Night Comes to the Cumberlands, in 1963, launching the War on Poverty; how a tax break meant to preserve Kentucky farmland instead subsidized the developers who were paving it and how a small group of real-estate investors gobbled up one in every 10 Lexington homes, making the housing market less accessible for everyone else.

I exposed the wrongful acts of a member of the Kentucky legislature, helping send him to federal prison, and I helped get another man released from a lengthy prison sentence by explaining that he didn’t commit the crime for which he was convicted.

Most important — to me, anyway — I’ve shown readers how vulnerable people are mistreated in institutions that often go unscrutinized: nursing homes, jails, prisons and juvenile detention centers. My stories about these places sometimes get laws changed and statewide reforms enacted.

That notebook and pen represented power.

I’m grateful to the editor who casually tossed them to me 37 years ago.

He only needed a kid to cover an awards dinner, but he ended up giving me a career, a family and a community — everything important. It would be hard to complain.

This story was originally published March 8, 2024 at 11:14 AM.

John Cheves

Lexington Herald-Leader

(859) 334-0802

John Cheves is a government accountability reporter at the Lexington Herald-Leader. He joined the newspaper in 1997 and previously worked in its Washington and Frankfort bureaus and covered the courthouse beat. Support my work with a digital subscription