Ten 95

Saturday, July 07, 2007

Week one is blowin' in the wind...

It's quiet in the newsroom today, with the exception of the police scanner squawking out random jibber-jabber. No phones, no printing fax machines, just:

'Suspect one is a black male, in his twenties, with dreads, baggy jeans, and large white t-shirt. Do you have a twenty on suspect one?'

The scanner is never turned off...and at some point today, I'm going to make calls (or possibly pay a visit) to all the "shops" (newsroom jargon for police departments) in our circulation area to see if anything newsworthy has transpired.

I'm actually the only one in the newsroom this morning because most reporters here file their weekend stories by Friday...or they at least do enough work so that they'd only need to come in for a few hours on Sunday.

In my first week at the Daily Review, I met three of the PIOs (public information officers) at three shops and the interim Hayward city manager...I covered my first fire, wrote cutlines (extended captions) for two stand alone photos, co-wrote a Fourth of July round-up with the only other black reporter at the paper, and began work on a story about a mother who wants the city to bar ice cream trucks from selling toy guns to kids in her neighborhood...

But today is slow. Luckily, there is a blues festival going on right up the street from the paper. I can grab a nectarine from the farmer's market one street over and then head to "B" Street. Or I can sit here, listen to the police scanner and start writing some inches on this toy gun story.

One thing is for sure: being here this first week has reaffirmed for me that I was made to do this thing called journalism.

Labels: inspiration