notes from my messy desk

• a reporter is only as good as her sources. put another way, a reporter’s life is about staying connected to the world she’s covering. put another way, a reporter’s life is all about the relationships she has with the people who keep her connected to what’s happening on the ground, what’s happening behind closed doors, what’s being whispered and ranted about.

• i will always, now, on a weekday, strive to return a phone call within an hour of getting it. i know what it’s like to be on deadline. i get it now! i know what it’s like to call people and leave a dozen messages, and wait and wait while i try to get someone on the phone. i know what it’s like to have my work depend on other people’s getting back to me. stress is what it feels like. the article doesn’t move till i get someone on the phone to explain things to me, or it doesn’t move till i get a quote from someone. i get it, i get it.

• today i had an entire morning where it felt like i was being punished for all the times i put off returning people’s calls. and lord, did it hurt. it threw me into an awful nasty cranky funk, stomping around the office, questioning my job security, considering another career. and then lo! someone returned my call, we had a hasty but SO NECESSARY conversation–there is so much knowledge in the world, and every day i get glimpses of how much there is to learn–and then ah. the world, ever so slowly, righted itself.

• i am no good without: a keyboard, attached to a computer, to type while people talk. my notebook. my land line at work and my head set, so i do not have to give myself a kink in my neck while i jabber on the phone with people. my cell phone, which i am glued to these days. a pen. a pen. always. always carry a pen.

more, soon.

Filed under: journalism, work

i would call myself a reluctant reporter.

i’ve been with my employer for almost three years now and had several job titles and many responsibilities. in my latest incarnation–we’re talking about constant change and upheaval at this job–i have become a staff reporter at the magazine, which is becoming more policy oriented and DC-focused.

i thought i would hate it. i was very resistant at first. i said: oh, that DC stuff, that is very far away from me. that is another world, that is not of any interest to me, it is so insular, it is so inaccessible.

i think i still instinctively pull back whenever i see multisyllabic policy-related words hanging around in the headlines of the day while i skim newspaper websites. it all seems so soulless, standards and regulation and administrations and institutions and allocations.

but there’s not much time for questioning my duties or the editorial focus, it is time to learn to become a daily reporter now! it means teaching myself the do’s and dont’s and falling flat on my face in front of a couple thousand readers every day, mimicking the organization and structure of the news that’s already out there. faking it.

my day starts when i receive my morning assignments from my editor. he gives me little direction about who to pursue, he will maybe include a link, but no more, and send me on my way to go chase after the story as it’s developing. my practice now is to do as much background research as i can before i pick up the phone and call folks to schedule interviews.

there are inevitably moments in the day when i panic, there is the very nasty internal tug as i try to figure out out when i’ve got enough of a lay of a land that i can call up a source and engage in an informed conversation so i can get reasonable quotes from them. most days i just need to pick up the damn phone and schedule something NOW NOW NOW because the piece needs to go online before 4pm EST, even though i arrive in the office at 12pm EST, and who knows how long it will take for a source to respond to my call. sometimes i speak with people the moment they pick up the phone, sometimes i don’t hear back for hours, so i try to err on making my calls early in the day, even if that means risking that the interview is not useful enough because i don’t know enough about the topic to fully exploit my source’s knowledge and expertise and political agenda.

sometimes it means that i call a person and ask a very very basic question that reveals to them how little i know about the topic, thereby giving snobby jerks the right to say to respond to my question with: “are you serious?” and to which i respond with stunned silence, and to which the source might, as one did today, continue by repeating: “are you serious? i thought you knew what you were talking about when i started speaking ten minutes ago.” being new (and easily intimidated) means that i let this man slap me around on the phone while i do my best to maintain a professional manner and end the interview with my dignity intact. and it means i don’t think fast enough to ask the man if he’s really that much of an asshole to the people who must deal with him more regularly than i.

i’ve been covering a different topic every day, and even within one fairly specific beat, like education, a hundred topics spring from that. in the last two weeks alone i’ve covered national education standards, charter schools, public university admissions processes and affirmative action, federal funding of public schools, student loan reform, every topic under the sun. and that is just one of my beats.

i guess most surprisingly, i’ve found that when i’ve been tossed into new pools, i have actually become very passionate about whatever it is i’m tasked with covering. reform of many kinds, regulatory bodies of all sizes, it ends up being very fascinating to me. so much of it, at the end of the day, is about power and exploitation, resistance and change and holding those in power accountable. and that part i really love.

and i realized that if i’m doing my job right, i can make my readers care just as much as i’m starting to about these sorts of things.

Filed under: journalism, work, writing