Will Bristol

Disclaimer: While place descriptions and news events may coincide with the real world, all characters and the plot are fictional. 
== Biography ==
=== Early Years ===
==== Book 2: Choose ====
Will grew up in Amity, a conservative and insular rural community about 40 miles SW of Portland. He left as soon as he graduated high school. His parents had wanted him to go to the nearby Chemeketa Community College in Salem OR, but Will diligently applied for scholarships so he could be accepted to Portland State University.
=== Education ===
Will is in his fourth (senior) year of a double major in history and indigenous studies, and a minor in climate change science. His classes included a unit in Media Law in Spring 2020, and in Fall 2020 HST474: History of Policing in America on Mondays and a class ending at 4pm on Wednesdays.
In October 2020, Will is considering learning the video side of journalism, and talking to Ben Waters about what Film Studies course he could take. By December 2020, he is thinking that no one will find him credible as a journalism graduate if he finishes in 4 years.
He hopes to have a career in print journalism.
==== Book 2: Choose ====
Cage expects Will to graduate at the end of Spring Term 2021. 
=== Eyewitness News ===
Will Bristol is a cutthroat reporter, who often covers the Board of Trustees, city council meeting and other government agencies. Anything that involves legal matter, numbers, public records or administration gets tossed his way. As a reporter, he is curious, detached, able to report a variety of sides, more interested in getting the story than in any particular point of view. And then he will do a different story the next day. He enjoys covering controversy, rather than doing routine features.
==== Book 1: Stories We Tell ====
In March 2020, Will covers the PSU Cabinet meeting where EWN leadership convinces the PSU Cabinet that EWN should be viewed as an essential service and allowed to stay in operation despite the stay-at-home COVID order issued by the Governor.
On Friday May 22 Emily Andersen has Will write a brief update on COVID infections, hospitalizations and deaths, and a further story on the Governor's decision to lift COVID lockdowns in Clackamas county, but not in Multnomah county.
The following Friday, Cage Washington has Will write about the actual statistics on how often someone was killed by a police officer in Portland, and how often they were Black.
On Saturday afternoon, May 30, Will thinks of going down to see the protest that evening for himself. Emily challenges his thinking, and Will realizes that there will be no sidelines downtown for him to observe from.
Will hears reports on Monday June 1, that President Trump has been calling governors of several state, including Oregon, telling them they need to crack down on protestors. Will is concerned about the escalation of force, and calls Emily to let her know.
==== Book 2: Choose ====
Will has recently reported on campus police and the emergency calls they receive. The stats he'd found mirrored the states for the Portland Police Dept, to no one's surprise other then the PSU administration.
On Thursday October 15, 2020 Emily calls Will shortly before the evening broadcast starts, asking him to come in to the newsroom. Later that evening, Will, Cage, Emily and Ryan meet in the EIC's office. Will listens to Cage's story about Carroll, and asks how sure he is of the facts. The original story was that it was supposedly feds with rented minivans snatching people, but if Carroll's still seeing the same van, it can't be a rental. Cage says he knows that Carroll was picked up, and returned with bruises, concussion, and panic attacks. In the previous few days, there have been several attacks. But Turk is a solid observer, and Jake and the Witch agreed that the men in the van specifically wanted Carroll. He has no evidence that they are the same men from June, but Carroll says they've seen the same plate three times, and Cage wants to know who it belongs to. Will says the number plate is public information, and he knows a student at campus security who will run it for EWN. He asks to speak to Turk and Carroll, and Emily agrees Will can be trusted with the new use for the Crow's Nest. Will asks Carroll what happened that night, and Carroll explains about the plate. Turk says he's not sure - while it looked the same as Tuesday night, they're pretty common, although not usually carrying men in tactical gear. Both Turk and Carroll remember more details as Will gently prods them with questions. Cage and Sarah are impressed with Will's interview skills. Will then asks Carroll about what happened in June. Turk asks if he can tell what he saw first. Carroll says they'd like to hear it, they've never really talked about it. Turk briefly reviews Portland's history with protests, then goes on to talk about the night Carroll was kidnapped. The police had sprayed the crowds with teargas, so theyhad run toward Keller Fountain park. Vans with no identification were chasing protesters - men would jump out and demand they stop but show no ID. The men were dressed like federal agents, but white militia were imitating the feds. The men grabbed a couple of protestors including Carroll. Turk had called an attorney to bail Carroll out, but forty minutes later, the lawyer called back to say Carroll was not at the courthouse, there was no record of arrest, no incident report. The next day, Carroll was dumped outside the emergency room with lots of bruising, a rope burn around the neck, and a concussion. Carroll says 'Wouldn't talk, can't talk, told them my name, who I was, nothing else, nothing more to say.' Will asks Carroll who they told them they were. Carroll says they're no one, they're 'Carroll Gilligan, independent journalist, find me @ cgilligan for all the latest news coming from downtown Portland'. The men didn't care about Carroll, but their mother scares them. Will asks who Carroll's mother is? Carroll says she's a business owner in Gresham, who runs good restaurants. And she's Speaker of the House, Sarah Gilligan. Carroll's mom had said that if Carroll was in trouble and their press card ignored to give her name to call, to post bail etc. Sarah Gilligan has been speaking out about police brutality, and the men who captured Carroll wanted to know what her plans were, but Carroll didn't know. Carroll talks to their mom about eating more, not politics. Carroll doesn't think the men knew who Carroll was when they were grabbed, it scared them, they called someone and there was an argument. Carroll starts to hyperventilate, and Sarah reminds them it's a memory, Carroll is safe with friends now. 
Miguel comes up in the elevator around midnight saying Ryan sent him to get Cage and Will. A group of men claiming to be police have arrived wanting to search the building. Will asks Emily if the police have a warrant. He then writes a note to Ryan, saying the police have to identify themselves individually, giving name, badge number and agency.
Will arrives at EWN on Friday morning after interviewing Sarah Gilligan. He's pleased with the interview, but not with the result of the plates check. Emily is just leaving the newsroom after being there all night, and Will tells her the plates show the vehicle is owned by a woman in Molalla. He had expected them to have a block on them like most police do, and the woman in Molalla looks like a photograph for a Wikipedia article on rural soccer moms. Emily tells him to keep digging. she'll be back at 6pm, and in the meantime Will should read Carroll's Twitter feed. She reminds Will that Molalla was where a sheriff deputy was suspended for pushing antifa hysteria during the fires. Will is alone in the newsroom when he answers a call from the Provost. Will has interviewed him repeatedly in the past and respects him. McShane says he's been fielding calls from national media all morning. John Cooper hasn't returned his calls, and McShane wants to know if there is new information. Will tells him Rep. Sarah Gilligan is getting involved, as her child is one of the people the men were hunting the previous night. The provost asks if Carroll is a student, he doesn't see a Carroll Gilligan on his system. Will says Carroll was with EWN videographers earlier in the evening. He asks what statement the provost has given the media, and McShane says he told them that PSU stood by EWN and are proud they upheld the principles of journalism in covering the story thoroughly and fairly. He is appalled at the actions of unidentified men purporting to be law enforcement attempting a midnight raid on a campus newsroom. PSU is calling for an investigation into who the men are, and what authorization the might have for carrying out an illegal act. McShane tells Will to tell Ryan and Cooper to keep him in the loop, he doesn't like being blindsided by national media. After the call ends, Will reads Carroll's posts, and is impressed by the quantity and quality of their work. Will checks the stories on Molalla, and checks the boundaries of Rep. Gilligan's district which includes Molalla.
That evening, J.J. asks Will and Emily what they know about police departments, and the differences between various law enforcement agencies. Will's article had been about the PPB, but the linked video was of the Clackamas County sheriff's deputies with Proud Boys, and that was wrong - they think they're different and they are. Will asks if it's like they're different cultures? J.J. says that when EWN mixes them up, they lose credibility because the cops see the differences but EWN only sees what they have in common. J.J. is confident that the men the previous night were deputies. Will goes off to search for at law enforcement sport team photos from Clackamas County.
At the editors' meeting on Saturday, October 17, Ryan runs through minor agenda items, then introduces discussion on the protests, the attempted raid, and what happens next. Will says he's still working on identifying the men. Ryan introduces the issue of the blackmail photos sent to Carroll. Will repeats his phone conversation with the Provost, and his request to be kept in the loop. He recommends that once the story goes live, John Cooper immediately call the Provost and the university attorney, and that within an hour of going live, the story be distributed and released to all local media. The decision to publish is unanimous.
On Monday morning, Will sets up his computer ready to report on Carroll's press conference on the steps outside the Justice Center. He writes a report on the press conference, and Emily also wants a first-person account of his identification of one of the men involved in the attempted kidnapping.
==== Book 3: Don't Go ====
At 4pm on Tuesday, October 20, 2020 Will is at EWN working on a follow-up story to the major headlines of the previous week when Teresa Valdez arrives.
Around 5pm, Cage calls Will, Miguel and Ben into the EIC's office, then steps out to call his mother. Ryan lays out the plan to leave the newsroom in their hands for the evening. Will gulps a bit before nodding. They discuss the stories coming in that night. When Lam Deng arrives, Emily call him in.
Will takes a call at EWN from ICE around 8pm - they are looking for Teresa Valdez. Miguel realizes the significance of it and texts Emily.
Will arrives at EWN straight after class the next afternoon, and joins the meeting in the EIC office. He tells Emily he'll have the Board of Trustees story ready for her as soon as the meeting ends. The student member of the Board had pressed the administration about the timeline for eliminating weapons from the campus police department. Ryan asks Will if Miguel had given him the photo of the vehicle plates from the previous night. Will says the number on the plate was clear, but the report came back as blocked. Will thinks it's the feds, as his friend who works for Campus Security is spooked. His gut feeling is that it's ICE. When the meeting ends, he types the Board of Trustee's story.
Ryan arrives at EWN around 4pm on Tuesday, October 27, 2020 after nearly being run off the road on the way down from OHSU. Will, Emily and Cage follow him into his office to ask what happened. Ryan asks Will if he'd like to write a story about a professor plagiarizing a paper from his honors student to form the basis of his latest book. He catches them up on the more convoluted story, but says that this is the equivalent of Capone's sentence for tax evasion. Ryan gives Will a thumb-drive with a copy of the complaint he filed with the Provost that morning, and says that his resignation as EIC is also on the drive, together with a recommendation to the Media Board that Cage and Emily be appointed jointly to finish out Ryan's term of office as EIC.
Around 10pm that evening, Cage calls Will to tell him to cover the shooting of Ian Black by Provost McShane outside the EWN building, and to have J.J. get video for the newscast. 
==== Book 4: Hold Me ====
* With Ryan gone, EWN needs to reshuffle management. Emily is continuing to hold the news editor role, though Will Bristol is now assistant news editor.
* Tuesday December 1, 2020
** Noon: Will is already at EWN when Emily arrives Emily tells them they have a positive COVID test on staff, so they need to think about how to contain it. But more than that, they need to discuss how to cover it, because she thinks it's going to be bad. She relays Cage's briefing to the staff, and asks if sports posted copy the previous night. Will checks the website and says it was updated at midnight. There wasn't much as it was a Monday night, so just a new lead story and a new column. She asks Will to find the Health Services director and find out what the plan is. Gossip says there is no plan, and the provost is angry as they've had 10 months to prepare. While Emily is talking to Corey and Gregory about setting up a quarantine hotel in the Crow's Nest, Will takes care of cancelling the News 101 class, sending out an email, and following up with a text, telling them all to leave campus and go home.
** 3:30pm: Will Bristol tells Emily to call up The Oregonian's online daily COVID briefing, which shows increasing numbers since the previous Thursday. Once all the department heads have joined the Zoom meeting, Prof Cooper and Provost McShane are added. Emily and McShane discuss what is known of current numbers. When McShane says it's traveling fast, Will says it may be a mutated strain. After McShane and Cooper log out, and Ben tells them Joanna Montgomery is in OHSU and all the sports staff are symptomatic, Corey shuts down the Zoom meeting to give everyone privacy to cry. and Will goes to join Ben in his office.
** 6pm: Emily asks Will if they can have the News 101 class do contact tracing, as interviewing practice. Will says he can set that up, but Emily asks who else is available with the skills and patience? Will suggest Blair Williams, and calls her.
* Wednesday December 2, 2020
** 10:30am?: Will is typing a story when Cage arrives in the newsroom. Will tells Cage that people will die because the Health Center director is so incompetent. He had months to prepare and has done nothing, and even replacing him won't help now. Cage tells him to bring it up at the 4pm Zoom meeting. Cage joins the discussion between Ben and the 4 alumni, and waves Will over to join them. Cage asks Will to put a call out to their reporters to see who can be involved in creating vlogs and voiceovers about what they're seeing and feeling about what's happening.
** 3pm: When Emily arrives at EWN, Will looking grim while reading The Oregonian's daily COVID briefing which shows high infection rates in the teen and 20-29 age groups. Emily tells him to get a list of possible stories together and the reporters he wants them assigned to. Will tells her he wants to do a story on the OHSU campus the following day to show how a normal health clinic should look. He doesn't think people understand just what a mess the PSU clinic is. Emily says she read his stories and watched the news the previous night, but asks him to explain what's not been understood. Will says people are waiting in an enclosed space for hours to be tested, even when it's obvious that some people there are sick, so attending the clinic is likely to increase the chance of infection. They don't have enough tests, so they're only testing people with symptoms. Emily asks why the clinic isn't referring students to the hospitals, if they can't cope. Will says the clinic is part of Student Affairs, and funded by a dedicated student fee which acts like insurance. So, if the clinic refers a student to another provider, the clinic has to pay for the care and they will only do it for ICU cases. While most of the younger students would be covered by their parent's health insurance, no one is telling them to use that to go to the hospitals for help. Emily says then EWN will. Will warns her of likely administrative push-back from VP Benjamin Davis, and Emily says she doesn't care. She directs Will to tell PSU students what they need to do to protect themselves, and asks why the Health Service director is still in charge. Will says that the man isn't a medical professional but has a doctorate in student affairs management, however no one else in Student Affairs appears to want the job and they feel he's better than nothing. Emily tells him to delegate out the other stories but save that one for himself - she wants a story list from him in under 25 minutes.
---
In December Blair Williams is appointed as Will's assistant, to help whenever as his experience as chief government and investigative reporter is needed.
== Physical Appearance ==
Will is about 5-foot-10, lanky, and geeky, with brown hair flopping in his face and brown eyes hidden behind fingerprint-smudged glasses. His glasses steam up with every breath while wearing a COVID mask, but they give his face a sense of intelligence and shrewdness that becomes animated when on the hunt for a story. 
He generally wears a blue shirt, baggy khaki pants, and may wear a jacket and tie if working on interviews with administration. 
=== Book 2: Choose ===
Will doesn't have a particularly commanding presence, or muscular build. 
== Personality ==
=== Book 1: Stories We Tell ===
Emily Andersen considers Will to be one of the sweetest guys she knows. He is a known introvert, who stands on the edges of groups watching, but in the past year, he has blossomed as realized that people respected his intelligence. 
While an effective reporter, he is shy. Will does not dance at parties, saying: "Better to be thought a klutz than go on the dance floor and remove all doubt."
Will describes himself as a workaholic and is very heavy handed on keyboards - banging on keys as though on a manual typewriter.
Although they have never discussed politics, Cage thinks Will is a moderate Democrat.
=== Book 2: Choose ===
Will has a low-key personality, which puts people at ease. Cage thinks that when interviewing people, Will 'stuffs all of his personality into a closet, and becomes a soothing person you wanted to confide in'.
Will acknowledges his published persona is much more polished and aggressive than he is in real life. He gets along with people in power. He understands its a form of white male privilege that gives him access to the university president and provost, as they find him comfortable to deal with. While he's not as been as liberal as many at EWN, the police reaction to the BLM protesters is making him more radical.
He's gone to student meetings for left wing anarchists, Bible Study groups, and libertarians. and dislikes people who haven't read, or understand, the texts they quote.
== Residences ==
=== PSU Residential Hall ===
==== Book 1: Stories We Tell ====
Will lives in a single room in a residence hall, the same room since he moved to PSU in Fall term 2016. He likes having his own small tidy room. 
The room is about 20' square, with a bed, desk and bookshelves, a closet for clothes. He has a coffee pot, and a microwave perched on top of a mini-fridge. And an extra chair in case he ever had a visitor (not that he can recall ever having one). 
== Relationships ==
=== Family ===
After going home to Amity at the end of the Fall 2020 term, Will returns to Portland on Monday, December 21. He found it hard to return home, he doesn't fit in. His parents are donating to Trump's legal challenges to the Presidential election results. They have a 'Stop the Steal' sign in their yard. He was relieved when Emily asked him to return to Portland. He loves his family, he just doesn't like them very much.
=== Blair Williams ===
In January 2021, Will is attracted to Blair Williams and finds her easy to be with, but is too shy to have ever asked a girl out. He asks Emily whether it would be even ethical to do so. Emily reminds him that EWN doesn't have a non-fraternization policy. But if Blair isn't interested, Will has to let it go and continue to work with her professionally. She suggests Will ask Blair to go with him to buy coffee, and then find a sunny bench to sit and drink it. And then just be himself, and let Blair handle it from there.
Category:EWN
Category:Character