A Job--And A Story--Without Limits

People in the news business can't resist classifying everything--and everyone--into categories. We even do it to our own. Some journalists are considered newshounds, adept at chasing down leads. Others are deemed stylists, seeming to be more suited to the profile, the thoughtful and provocative examination of one person's life.

In reality, not even journalists are that simple. Karl Taro Greenfeld, TIME Asia's deputy editor, probably thought he had a straightforward, if somewhat unusual, profiling assignment facing him when he touched down in Kathmandu, Nepal, two Fridays ago. He was there to write this week's cover story, the heroic tale of Erik Weihenmayer, a blind man who had scaled Mount Everest. But in the wee hours of Saturday morning, Greenfeld was roused in order to track down a different beast altogether--the story behind the assassinations of the King, Queen and much of the royal family of Nepal by the Crown Prince.

"For the Nepalese, this was bigger than President Kennedy's shooting was for the U.S.," says Greenfeld, who moved to Hong Kong from TIME's headquarters in New York City last summer. "It's as if the entire Kennedy family were murdered--by a Kennedy." Greenfeld and TIME's Nepal stringer, Dhruba Adhikary, spent many hours driving to the homes of Nepalese government and army officials, gathering leads, names and numbers. Greenfeld turned in the story in time to make last week's issue--and beat the competition handily.

For this week's cover story (What have you done for us lately, Karl?), he had a new problem. In the aftermath of the massacre, Kathmandu was seething with intrigue and turmoil. A noon curfew was imposed, and maneuvering around the city became increasingly dangerous. Getting Weihenmayer's story became a little more problematic. "At one point I was walking down the street past the palace with Erik when a riot broke out," says Greenfeld. "Erik with his cane and I had to run from these angry, shaven-headed Nepali youth and the police who were chasing them."

The curfew afforded Greenfeld plenty of time with Weihenmayer and his team after their successful summit. "I couldn't go back to my hotel, and we couldn't go outside because the police were shooting to kill," says Greenfeld. "So Erik and I were stuck in a room together for two days. I think he got pretty sick of me."

Despite the abundance of access, Greenfeld says, Weihenmayer's story was harder to get in many ways than that of the royal murders. "There was more nuance to it. Trying to understand what a blind person goes through every day is a struggle. Trying to understand what he went through when he climbed Everest is even more difficult."

Nothing about the assignment proved simple, not even leaving it. Because the airport staff obeyed the curfew, many planes were unable to take off, so Greenfeld and the Weihenmayer expedition were in danger of being grounded. Surveying the amount of equipment the expedition members had with them, Greenfeld was comforted. "I thought, I could do worse than be stuck with guys who survived months in the world's most inhospitable place," says Greenfeld. "But we got the last plane out that day."

And Greenfeld got both tales: the news of a bizarre tragedy and the examination of an unfathomable triumph. For all of us who are tempted to put people into categories, like "rich-therefore-happy" or "blind-therefore-disabled," these two stories are a reminder to resist.