Editing Armistead Maupin (section)

==Career==
Maupin worked at [[WRAL-TV]] in Raleigh, a station managed by future U.S. Senator [[Jesse Helms]]. Helms nominated Maupin for a patriotic award, which Maupin won. Maupin said he was a typical conservative and [[segregationist]] at this time and admired Helms as a hero figure. Maupin later changed his opinion and condemned Helms at a [[pride parade|gay pride parade]] on the steps of the [[North Carolina State Capitol]].<ref name=grow/><ref name=ny>{{cite interview |subject=Armistead Maupin |interviewer=Bill Goldstein |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/10/29/ra/maupin-audio.ram |format=.RAM |work=New York Times |date=October 24, 2000 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20090410085606/http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/10/29/ra/maupin-audio.ram| archive-date=April 10, 2009| url-status= live |title=Audio interview by Bill Goldstein}}</ref><ref name=kuow/> Maupin is a veteran of the [[United States Navy|U.S. Navy]] and served several tours of duty including one in the [[Vietnam War]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Maupin |first=Armistead |title=Logical family: a memoir |date=2018 |publisher=Black Swan |isbn=978-1-78416-104-0 |location=London}}</ref>

Maupin worked at a [[Charleston, South Carolina|Charleston]] newspaper and the San Francisco bureau of the ''[[Associated Press]]'' in 1971.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.literarybent.com/am_04_also_by_glimpse_01.html |title=My First Glimpse of The City |access-date=2017-04-07 |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050520074826/http://www.literarybent.com/am_04_also_by_glimpse_01.html |archive-date=May 20, 2005 }} – in ''Guest Informant'', 1998–1999. Maupin recalls his first experiences of San Francisco.</ref><ref>He said he had "no sense of it being a gay mecca" and called it "this amazing city that embraced me, that had made me aware of my true self", and "what really floored me was that the straight folks in San Francisco were so civilised about homosexuality." (in the ''New York Times'' interview)</ref> In 1974, he began what would become the ''Tales of the City'' series as a serial in a Marin County-based newspaper, the ''[[Pacific Sun (newspaper)|Pacific Sun]],'' moving to the ''[[San Francisco Chronicle]]'' after the ''Sun''{{'s}} San Francisco edition folded.<ref name=time/>

In 1978, Maupin publicly accused San Francisco Police Inspector [[Dave Toschi]] of faking one of the [[Zodiac Killer]]'s taunting letters to the media, seriously and irreparably damaging Toschi's career and reputation. Maupin claimed to have noticed a similarity between anonymous fan mail Toschi had sent him after Maupin based one of his ''Tales of the City'' characters on him, and a Zodiac letter received by the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' on April 24, 1978. Although the USPS crime lab cleared Toschi of being the Zodiac letter's author, Toschi admitted to writing the fan mail and was removed from the case, destroying his chances of succeeding [[Charles Gain]] as chief of the San Francisco PD.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.zodiacciphers.com/the-1978-letter.html|title = The 1978 Letter}}</ref> The incident is portrayed in the 2007 [[David Fincher]] film ''[[Zodiac (film)|Zodiac]]''.