Saturday, December 20, 2008
Brrr....
In this season, I'm thankful for my ankle length puffer coat.Oh, it's just about the most unflattering thing I've ever worn in my entire life (and I grew up in the era of stretch pants and scrunchies). But it's warm. Oh, my goodness, it's warm.
I thought twice about breaking it out, but my assignment Friday required it. I was on the storm team.
Yes, the dreaded storm team. That meant that while everyone was bustling home, I was bundling up and finding people who braved the storm.
I tried to postpone it. I really thought that maybe the meteorologists were wrong. I slipped into my brown tweed coat, zipped up my flat brown boots over my hiking socks, and called it a day. That morning it was cold, but clear as I drove to work.
I was prepared though. The night before, I hit up Wal-Mart and stacked up on the essentials. Heat. A fleece blanket. Ice melter. Anti-freeze. In my backseat, I had a reusable shopping bag filled with canned soup, peanut butter and crackers, bottled water, bottled Arizona iced tea (lemon, please), and plastic silverware. I even through a thick scarf and my puffy sausage jacket in the back, just in case. Oh, I was ready.
By the time 2 p.m. came around, it was still pretty clear in Providence. We looked at the radar.
It was all green, except for Providence. It was just a matter of time. I hooked up with a photographer and we headed out. My assignment was to go to the airport and talked to people who were stranded, and go to the mall to see if anyone was shopping in the middle of the blizzard.
Of course, they were.
Kathy - the photog - and I slogged out way through the blowing snow and slippery slush to take pictures, talk to people and basically freeze our butts off.
We slipped and slid down Interstate 95 back to the office. I filed my notes and, after a quick run to the mall, went to go dig my car out from the nearly foot of snow that was dumped on New England.
I thought I was smart, parking in the garage. I figured at best, my wouldn't end up looking like this poor soul's did.
See that? When I came in around noon, the parking lot was empty. Everyone was trying to fit into the garage. I lucked up and found a spot right at the entrance on the second floor.
But here's one piece of advice: park toward the inside of the garage -- always.
Labels: 24-hour news cycle, I-ain't-never-scared, musings, reporting, weather
continue...Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Keep going until you reach the other side
This was about as close to marching orders as we'd get. At least in the near future.My coworkers and I filed slowly into the small conference room in our office, the managing editor of our paper seated on one side of the oval table. For the next hour, she'd tell us what she knew, which wasn't much, but it was something.
All of the bureaus were closing, she said. And the two remote offices would be housed temporarily downtown in our office and another down the hall. The first reporter from South County arrived today.
In essence, the days of hyperlocal coverage writing about the minutae of Town Council and School Committee meetings -- were over, she said. The boss wanted us all to write A1 stories. On our beats, some of the bigger stories would survive, while some of our smaller communities may not even see the light of day in the new paper. We probably won't tell the readers that we're doing away with the zoned editions she said. We should be prepared for the deluge of calls we'll recieve next week.
"We are reinventing the paper and it could be exciting," she told us. "But to get to exciting, we're gonna have to go through a whole lot of hell."
That was one thing we all knew.
In the days since the restructuring began, they've switched beats on some reporters, pulling a municipal reporter onto the blog, and moving the Providence reporter to a national sports beat.
Right. My thoughts exactly.
How we'll cover news in the future is largely unsettled, she said. We may do it by town, but more feasibly, we'll do topical coverage. We should get our dibs in now with beat preferance, so when the New World Order comes, at least our desires have been made known.
I just sent my e-mail to her, telling her that in a perfect world, I'd like to cover either legal affairs, education or news features, in that order.
As I watched my coworkers pepper her with questions, I tried not to be mad. I knew I had no room to be afraid -- everyone else was chalky with fear. I empathized with the M.E., having to go into rooms full of reporters with few, if any, answers. Not a job I'd envy. At least not now.
I tried to analyze what this new world would mean for me, an average reporter. I'd be competing against all of my coworkers for the same amount of space that's in a Monday paper. Ideally, it means I can write what I want, when I want, taking the time to craft stories and delve deeply into subjects. Realistically, it means that I've got to find better stories to tell or find myself squeezed out of the paper.
I sure hope I'll find them by the time we get to the other side.
Labels: fear, for journalism's sake, I-ain't-never-scared, industry analysis, Job survival, layoffs, the industry
continue...Friday, April 11, 2008
Here we go yo, it's Vandy on your radio
What? Your radio isn't perpetually tuned to NPR?Well, just in case you missed Thursday's edition of News & Notes, our very own Vandy was a panelist on the sports roundtable. The crew talked about all things sports, including Tiger, the Olympics and even O.J. Mayo. Here's the link to Vandy's segment.
Scroll to minute 2:56.
or minute 6:17
or, shoot.... Just listen to the whole thing. It's only 12 minutes.
Good job, Vandy! We see you polishing your radio game!
Labels: broadcasting, I-ain't-never-scared, radio
continue...Monday, April 07, 2008
Passive aggresive editors, newsrooms: not good bedfellows
Whoa.I think I've just experienced the first breakdown in communication between me and an assistant editor. This person (we'll call it Shaqwueetah) clearly has bottled up a lot thus far in the semester and has just unleashed it on me, via email.
Passive aggressiveness. Never really been a big fan of it. So when I received the email, which included a laundry list of things that Shaqwueetah felt I was doing wrong, I laughed.
Why? Because many of Shaqweetah's listed items were petty and offered no productive suggestions as to how I might make good on the sins that I've committed this semester.
As the head multimedia editor, I've assumed that most of my assistant editorial staff had figured out that in journalism, being an editor means taking charge with often very little direction.
Oh, but not Shaqwueetah.
Here's a snippet. (If you know me, then you know I had to respond to each listed item.)
6) I have no guidelines to edit multimedias. Producers have no guidelines for producing them either, despite promises you made at the beginning of the semester to hand out something you and Josh put together regarding this.
You have your experience. That is your guideline. That's the beauty of having three and four heads editing multimedia work. Each of us is going to take a different approach at editing, which means we're going to have varied styles of work on the site. That's what distinguishes our work from other college publications that do the same thing over and over. That's why we win awards for our site. It's because WE all bring something unique to the table. Just a note: in each producer's folder there is a document called "Producing Multimedia Stories." That's the document Josh and I put together, that you claim is not available to producers. A "MANUALS" folder also includes a Soundtrack Pro tutorial, an [X]press style guide and a Movable Type manual. So, no I'm not really sympathetic to producers who haven't figured certain things out thus far in the semester. Do more research before you send me another email like this.
So anyway, I've just resolved that some people will be difficult to work with no matter how hard you personally think you are working to prevent breakdowns like this. I'm by no means perfect, and I gladly accept constructive criticism. But not like this.
And over email...geez. I'm glad I didn't pick up the phone and respond. Had Shaqwueetah said something crazy, I may have had to get ignorant.
(Not productive, I know.)
Labels: fights, frustration, I-ain't-never-scared, mean emails, student press
continue...