Close Call

My phone rings this morning, and it's a woman from human resources at the nursing home I visited yesterday, telling me that my coffee date is off. Apparently, my would-be source isn't going to meet with me after all.

Is your spidey-sense all tingly, too?

I'm completely taken aback by this turn of events, especially because I can't figure out what this woman has to do with it. So I ask if she's calling in some kind of official capacity, as his supervisor or something. She says she's not his supervisor but that she's calling at his request. We go around in circles a few times, and in the end I ask to leave him a message, which she volunteers to take. (Yes, I know it's pointless, but I give her the message anyway.)

Of course, now I'm convinced that my official candidate interview will fall through, too. (It's at 4:30PM, so if I do get blown off, it'll practically be close of business, and I won't be able to find anyone else to talk to me, either.) My deadline is tomorrow, and I have every reason to believe I'm going to be totally screwed.

So I seek the wise counsel of Prof. Padwe. Do I call to confirm the appointment?

No, no, no, he says. I shouldn't give them any opportunity to cancel. I should just show up at the appointed time (armed, of course, with lots of other -- and heretofore largely hypothetical -- reporting I can use if, in fact, I don't get the interview). And I should call and let him know what happens.

What do I do about the nursing-home source? Give it up? Call back? Breeze in and see what happens?

Breeze in, he says. So I do. I chat with the security guards again, and they are surprised to learn that my coffee date had been canceled. One very kindly lets me leave a note for my would-be source (which I word very carefully, knowing that it's almost certain to be read by other people), saying that I'm sorry he wasn't able to meet but that I'd still like to talk to him and here's my number, etc.

This prompts a second, somewhat nastier call from the H.R. lady. (Fortunately, it was just a voice-mail message -- I'm not sure I was up for another tense conversation.)

But the day and the story end well. I got to the candidate's office, and she was waiting for me. And though she said she only had about half an hour, she ended up talking to me for 75 minutes. (I willed myself not to look at my watch the entire time -- I figured if I did, it would cue her to wrap things up.) This was my first official interview, and I was pretty happy with how it went.

I called Prof. Padwe and told him I'd succeeded. And then I went home to write.

Foiled, Again and Again

My back-up plan for the candidate profile was to cover someone in the next City Council district over from Hunts Point. Turns out she was running unopposed in the Democratic primary (and, since Democrats outnumber Republicans five to one in the city, that's the equivalent of running unopposed overall). Still, she had a compelling story -- she was a single teenage mother who put herself through school, became a certified nursing assistant and then a union organizer, and was elected to citywide office at age 31. Pretty cool-sounding, huh?

Let's just say I got nowhere fast.

After a couple of unreturned calls, I finally reached her very protective campaign manager and found out that the J-school was a collective persona non grata among Bronx politicians these days. It seems that a student in last year's class wrote her master's project on Puerto Rican politicians in the Bronx and quoted one of them as saying something that could be -- and ultimately was -- construed to be anti-Semitic. The student sent the story to someone at a local Bronx publication, and he printed a blistering editorial that was picked up by the local tabloids. Did I mention that this is an election year? So, not surprisingly, lots of people were up in arms, denouncing the guy, demanding an apology, and on and on. This all happened maybe 10 days ago.

So, the campaign manager wasn't exactly eager to give me access to his candidate, despite my assurances that I was just looking to do a basic profile and that I thought she had a pretty good story to tell. He even asked me for a list of questions I was planning to ask her. (We were warned about this.) In the end, I told him that I much preferred to have her cooperation but that I'd do the assignment without it if need be. Eventually, he said he'd "reach out" to the candidate and get back to me.

Well, he didn't. (You're shocked, I know.)

Being a savvy journalist for three whole weeks at this point, I decided to try an end-run. I took the train up to the Bronx and went straight to the candidate's campaign office, where I was completely thwarted by a 22-if-she's-a-day-year-old scheduler, who wouldn't even talk to me without the campain manager's permission. (She's the one who referred me to him in the first place.) So I sat in the office for a solid hour, taking absurdly detailed notes on the decor and hoping that something would happen.

It didn't.

I finally left (half convinced that the candidate would show up from her hiding place around the corner as soon as I was safely out of sight) and tried another end-run. This time, I went to the nursing home where the candidate used to work to see if any of her former colleagues would give me the time of day. I made fast friends with the two security guards, one of whom called around to find someone for me to talk to. And lo and behold, he found me an actual source who agreed to be interviewed over coffee (my treat) the next afternoon. Hooray!

So I'm on my way over to the library (free internet access), feeling slightly less desperate, when my cell phone rings, and it turns out to be the candidate herself. Someone from the nursing home must have called her directly, because she said something like, "I hear that you've been to talking to some of my former co-workers." I had been there less than an hour before.

Was I freaked out? Damn straight. But I tried to sound like the cool professional I aspire to be, and I explained that talking to former co-workers was standard practice in profile-writing (it is, right?) and that I didn't really have a choice since I hadn't been able to arrange an interview with her. She reiterated her wariness to talk to a J-schooler in light of recent events. I reiterated what I was (and wasn't) after. And, wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, she agreed to have her scheduler set up an interview.

I tried really, really hard not to gloat when I called the scheduler to make the arrangements.

News Quiz

Last week, Professor Padwe reminded us that we need to be prepared for a weekly news quiz in which we're given a list of names or places or things and have to identify them and their news significance. Here's the quiz we got today:

1. Hugo Chavez


2. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani


3. Byron Calame


4. Plan B


5. Leslie Crocker Snyder


6. Betsy Gotbaum


7. Groton Submarine Base


8. Emmett Till


9. Alan Greenspan


10. Miss America

I got 9 out of 10. (And I'm mortified about the one I missed.)

We also had two different news drills, making for a rather intense morning.

In our seminar later in the day, we had our first guest speaker: Pulitzer Prize-winner David Barstow of the New York Times. Barstow gave us chapter and verse on protecting our sources, our news organizations, and ourselves. (He sits next to Judy Miller at the Times -- when she's not in jail for protecting a source, that is.) He basically scared the crap out of us, which I imagine was the point. On the heels of seeing All the President's Men a couple of weeks ago, it was a pretty chilling afternoon.

After Barstow left (he was on deadline, of course), Professor Padwe returned to the topic of sourcing and verification, and we hashed that out a while longer. I have to say, the word morass came quickly to mind. Apparently, it never gets easier.

Oh, and the day ended with an evening panel on Local Political Reporting featuring Melissa Russo (WNBC) and Evelyn Hernandez (El Diario/La Prensa) and moderated by Dominic Carter (NY1). Highlights included clips of local politicians' and pundits' gaffes and missteps, including an absolute free-for-all between Liz Holtzman and Ester Fuchs on NY1 in 2001. After hearing the panelists talk for a couple of hours, it seemed safe to conclude that politics really, truly is a circus.

Quotes of the day:

Journalism is in real trouble right now. -- David Barstow

Have fun, but don't let up. -- Sandy Padwe

The only thing I trust anymore are my former students. -- Sandy Padwe

9/11 has changed the climate of reporting in New York City. -- Melissa Russo

Rule number one: A camera is always hot. -- Dominic Carter

You're not always going to be liked. --Dominic Carter

Slacker

OK, so I didn't go up to my beat today.

Shoulda. Woulda. Coulda. Didn't.

Instead, I had my first physical therapy appointment, where I learned that I slouch and stick my neck out (so attractive!). My assignment is to come back in two weeks with unposed photographs of myself at work, which I'm sure will be used for behavior-modification purposes.

Then I bought a bunch of school supplies (aka office supplies, if you have a job).

Then I met my wonderful pal Dan -- en route back to SF after living in London for a couple of years -- for a spot of lunch and some catching up.

Then I visited my parents for a while, and eventually hijacked my mom's computer to do a little bit of completely dead-end research on City Council candidates. (Dead-end because it took me forever to figure out that there wasn't actually an election in my neighborhood's district. So much for the research skills I was supposed to have.)

Then I sent a panicky e-mail to Professor Padwe to try to figure out what I was supposed to do in the absence of a candidate to profile.

Then I went with my mom to visit my grandmother, who I hadn't seen in a couple of weeks.

Then I called it a day.

Jody the patient/friend/daughter/granddaughter: A.

Jody the reporter: F.

No Rest for the Weary

Some stuff I was too tired to mention in the previous post:

I really, really wanted to go to my parents' apartment (about a mile or so from school) to grab a nap this afternoon, but it just wasn't meant to be. We turned our stories in and then had a regular RWI seminar, which was a continuation of the discussion on sourcing. And we got our very next assignment: to cover a City Council candidate from our neighborhood beat.

Later in the day, we had an info session on the alumni association's mentor program (sign me up!) and a screening of Control Room, a documentary about Al Jazeera. Tomorrow is supposed to be another full day on our beats. . . .

Dunce Cap

Imagine me up at the front of a classroom with a big piece of white chalk in hand.

I will not start writing my stories the night before they are due. I will not start writing my stories the night before they are due. I will not start writing my stories the night before they are due. I will not start writing my stories the night before they are due.

Last night I pulled my first (and I sincerely hope my last) j-school all-nighter. I’d been having trouble with our first neighborhood story assignment – a portrait of a block – and, against my instincts and better judgment, I did not start writing the piece until about midnight last night. I have a bit of a defense, which is that my left arm had really been hurting for the previous several days, and I had been trying to give it a rest, especially after the painful (in every respect) drill we did in RWI on Monday.

The good news is that I finished the piece and even had plenty of time to polish it this morning (after the oh-so-refreshing catnap I took from 6:00-7:00AM). And, for once, I did not come in substantially under the word length. (Instead, I came in substantially over. But hey, my average is probably dead on, right?) And while I’m not exactly proud of the piece, I’m not ashamed of it either.

Oh, and for some strange reason, my arm actually feels better today, even after all that typing. (Yes, yes, I’m still going to the physical therapist tomorrow. I’m not taking any chances. I want to get off the DL as soon as possible.)

And now, dear readers, I am going to reacquaint myself with my bed.

(And yes, I still plan to catch up on the missed entries of the past week. Keep on scrolling!)

Quote of the day:

Don’t be afraid of anything. --Sandy Padwe

Information Overload

Today we had both a two-hour talk on Smarter Surfing with Dean Sreenivasan (our Dean of Students and tech/web/new-media specialist) and a 90-minute Research Training session with Deborah Wassertzug, the J-school Librarian. Both really valuable. Both completely worthwhile. But by the end of the Research Training session, my head was about to explode. It probably didn’t help that our RWI class was the 13th and last group to receive the research training (the first group had their session two weeks ago).

After the research training, Professor Padwe called an impromptu RWI class -- mainly, I think, to reassure those of us feeling overmatched by our assignment. (Count me in.)

I spent the rest of the day furiously researching Joseph Rodman Drake Park, which included a long phone interview with the Parks Department Librarian, a follow-up visit to the J-school Librarian, and a lot of quality time with a reference librarian at the University’s Art and Architecture Library. I don’t know who your heroes are, but today mine are the librarians of the world.

National Library Week is April 2-8, 2006. Rock on!

Quote of the day:

There are going to be days when you just get nothing. --Sandy Padwe

Slog, Slog, Slog

First of all, I did finally go to Health Services today about my thumb/elbow/shoulder pain. I walked out with a referral to a physical therapist and a wrist brace.

Then I tried to navigate the NYC Parks Department bureaucracy to get some background info on the park I was planning to write about for my “portrait of a block” assignment. Apparently, the legacy of Robert Moses lives on.* In a voice-mail exchange, I was told that all press inquiries – even from “lowly Columbia J-school students” – had to go through the Press Office. So, despite Professor Padwe’s admonition against dealing with P.R. departments, I called the Press Office. With the promise that “someone” would get back to me, I trudged off to the subway and up to the Bronx.

Two subways, a bus, and a few blocks’ walk later, I was back at Joseph Rodman Drake Park, the subject of my story. Over the course of several hours, I managed to befriend a pigeon-feeder, a truck driver, and local business owner playing catch with his golden retriever. And when the Parks Department maintenance crew showed up, I was able to wander around the cemetery at the center of the park – it’s only unlocked when they’re there to tidy up.

It was a worthwhile if exhausting afternoon, but at the end of the day – after I’d sweated through my clothes and hadn’t eaten lunch until about 4PM – I still didn’t think I had enough sources. Ugh.

*If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I invite you to read Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, a biography of Robert Moses that was our recommended summer reading for the J-school. It clocks in at 1162 pages, not counting the extensive Notes section.

Drilled

We had our second RWI drill today. This one was about a plane crash. I think I said the first/last drill was an exhilirating experience. This one would better be described as humbling. I got thrown off by the over-the-shoulder editing and just couldn’t regain my momentum. Ugh.

Later on, we had our RWI seminar, which focused on sourcing and all of the difficulties therein. We had a long talk about anonymous sources, which I have no doubt will continue all semester – as it should. Professor Padwe told us that we should expect to conduct five interviews to get one quote on the record. Yikes.

We also got feedback on our profiles, including lots of group edits:

• Avoid using the first person. (“Third person requires more discipline.”)


• Be specific.


• But is a conjunction – don’t use it at the beginning of sentences.


• Be mindful of transitions – they make all the difference in flow, pace, and rhythm.

Our evening activity was a talk on Covering Education with Professor LynNell Hancock . Technically, the whole J-school class was assigned to write an education story this week, but Professor Padwe had other plans for us. I’m grateful because, as you may have noticed by the date at the top of this post, it’s still summer vacation here in New York. That means teachers, students, principals – you know, the key sources for an education story – are nowhere to be found this week. (Public schools don’t start until September 8.)

I took lots of notes and expect to refer back to them later in the semester, when we’re assigned an education story. (And Professor Hancock was kind enough to enumerate about a dozen story ideas. Thank you, Professor Hancock!) Here are some of the more remarkable stats she shared about the New York City public school system:

• It has 1.1 million students in 1500 schools and programs.


• It has 90,000(!) teachers.


• It has an annual budget of $20 billion.


• There are 140 languages spoken and more than 200 countries represented.


• It is one of the most racially segregated school districts in the U.S.

And that doesn’t even begin to cover all the politics involved. . . .

Quotes of the day:

This is an incredibly hard business for those of you who are dedicated and want to do it right. --Sandy Padwe

To me, every piece has to be treated as if the First Amendment is riding on it. --Sandy Padwe

Are you getting a sense now of how complex a field you’ve entered? --Sandy Padwe

Drive-by

The perpetually fabulous Zach offered to come with me on a driving tour of Hunts Point today. (Technically it’s the weekend, but I’m now completely lost in the whole time-space continuum. I’m pretty sure “down time” has ceased to exist.) Good thing, because I’m still not up to speed on driving our elderly stick-shift Cabriolet. (And probably won’t be anytime soon. See previous parenthetical.)

It was a ridiculously hot day. (Did I mention that our car has no air conditioning? It’s a convertible, granted, but the thought of having the top down under that burning sun was a complete nonstarter.) Still, I got a good sense of the neighborhood topography. And we befriended a security guard at the soon-to-be new HQ of the soon-to-be-relocated Fulton Fish Market, and he let us tool around the gargantuan parking lot to get a sense of the place. I imagine that I will be writing at least one Fish Market story once the place finally opens (this fall, in theory, although it’s been delayed a couple of times already), so it was good to check it out on a dead-quiet Sunday.

Turns out Hunts Point is just a short drive from the ABC Carpet & Home warehouse, which just happened to be having a massive sale. So we did what any self-respecting, dehydrated, overheated couple would do: we bought a couple of bottles of water and soaked up ABC’s A/C for a while. (We seriously thought about buying a rug and a leather sectional sofa, but then we remembered that we live in the poorhouse now, and redecorating it seemed ill advised.)

No, You're Not Crazy

I haven’t written in several days, and it’s because I am flirting with either tendinitis or some kind of repetitive-strain injury. Now I’ve had this trusty laptop for two years with absolutely no problem, but it turns out that I was doing very little composing at the keyboard until the advent of these here Chronicles. Having been down the repetitive-strain-injury road once before, I know that these things come on fast and then take a substantially longer time to heal. And, well, since the symptoms came on during my very first week of j-school, I was more than a bit stressed about what might happen once I had a steady stream of actual assignments on top of the daily blog entries, so I tried to rest my arm as much as I could.

Also, we had evening activities four nights in a row last week, so I was a bit short on time to write.

So I’m going to spend the weekend catching up, but I’m going to make the posts retroactive so that the dates at the top actually correspond to the goings-on described below. Which means that if anyone out there is actually reading this thing, you may need to scroll down and see if any back-dated entries have been added.

Gee, it’s kind of like having to check my online class schedule periodically to see if anything has changed. (Scroll down and read Retraction if you don’t know what I’m talking about.)

The Kindness of Strangers (Well, One Anyway)

Today was supposed to be my first full day on my beat. As it happens, there was a block party scheduled in the neighborhood, and I figured it would be a great way to get my feet wet – you know, lots of happy, really approachable people just waiting for an intrepid reporter to chat them up.

Well, I got my feet wet all right. When I got out of the subway, it was raining. Oh, and the block party was nowhere to be found. Turns out it conflicted with another community event and was cancelled. And after I was all set to be intrepid!

So . . . I pounded the pavement a little bit and found my way to the offices of South Bronx Concerned Citizens, Inc., a local community-based organization. The founder and executive director was exceedingly kind – he talked to me for a good two hours. Turns out he’s a member of the local Community Board, too, so I ended up with a twofer. Hooray!

Entertained and Inspired

Another busy day in a very busy week. The morning began with an all-class lecture on Covering the Cops with the New York Post’s Bill Gorta, a former cop himself and a J-school alum, and ended with a talk by David Isay of Sound Portraits Productions (but probably more familiar from NPR). In between, I went up to Hunts Point to find a subject for my “portrait of a block” assignment.

Covering the Cops

Gorta was a character out of Central Casting, a colorful speed-talker with a flagrant New York accent and a great comfort with profanity. He gave us a tremendously helpful primer on the NYPD going back 25 years to his rookie days on the force.

Gorta likened the Department variously to the Catholic Church and the former Soviet Union in management structure and ethos. According to Gorta, “why?” is the only thing you’re not allowed to ask in the Police Department. If you do, you go through a “gulag re-education system” in which you are sent to some “shithole precinct” far from your house. Gorta himself was re-educated. Twice.

He told us that it’s been extremely difficult to get information out of the Police Department since the Giuliani administration, when the press was considered an outright enemy. Then he gave us tips on how to do it. For example, he said, look for “the dopey kid at the tape” – aka the least important cop at the crime scene, who probably won’t know much but probably will at least talk to you.

Gorta also told us that cops are a tough audience. They’re news junkies (who knew?) and take the coverage personally. They’re also very literal and pedantic about the law, so it’s important to be specific and accurate when talking about crimes. Don’t say sodomy, for example, if what you really mean is aggravated sexual assault (his example, not mine). Apparently, for the real inside scoop, one needs to check out NYPD Rant, some of which he described as “breathtaking.”

As with so many speakers, there was much, much more – and trust me, it was good stuff. Gorta closed the talk with some words of wisdom for our year at the J-school: “You have to get a life – one will not be issued to you.”

Walking the Beat (Mine, That Is)

When you look at a map of the Hunts Point section of the Bronx, you see a single small patch of green, which turns out to be a park that covers approximately a square block. It is so incongruous – it’s in the midst of the area’s industrial center and nowhere near its residential neighborhoods – that it seemed the perfect subject for my first neighborhood piece.

I have to say that I got off to a somewhat slow start, at least in terms of talking to real, live people. I did, however, get pages of description, including a diagram of the park and the surrounding buildings. By the time I left for the evening lecture, I knew two things: this was the block I was going to cover, and I had a lot of reporting still to do.

Radio Documentaries

David Isay, certified genius (aka MacArthur Fellow), performed what I had thought was an impossible feat tonight: he made me want to work in radio.

It’s not that I ever had anything against radio, mind you, but I was never a big listener, either. Not even to NPR. Heresy, I know. But true. I’m just a really visual person, so I have a hard time processing information solely through my ears. I tend to get distracted and look for something else to read, write, or watch. (This presented a serious challenge in my last job, which sometimes seemed like an endless series of conference calls of disembodied voices.)

Nevertheless, when Isay played extended clips of his work for us, I was riveted. And this was at the end of a long, exhausting day when nodding off would have been far more likely. We heard segments of character-based documentaries on Angola Prison inmates serving life sentences (Tossing Away the Keys); the prison staff in charge of executions in Huntsville, TX (Witness to an Execution); two teenage boys living in the ghetto on the South Side of Chicago (Ghetto Life 101); and just regular, everyday folks (the very cool Story Corps).

I sailed out of the lecture hall intrigued and inspired – a pretty great way to end the day.

Quotes of the day:

“Police said”: the two finest words in the English language. --Bill Gorta

I work in short-attention-span theater. --Bill Gorta

He had an IQ approaching pi from the low side. --Bill Gorta

Get drunk. Cut a class. Kiss a frog. Get a life. --Bill Gorta

Fight to do stories you care about. --David Isay

Recommended reading:

Alex Kotlowitz, There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America --David Isay

Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel and Other Stories --David Isay

Beat the Clock

Our RWI class met only briefly today – just long enough to get our first same-day assignment. The goal: pair up with a classmate, interview each other, and write an 800- to 1,000-word profile -- with multiple sources -- in six hours.

Since we got the assignment at around 11:30AM, my partner, Jeff, and I decided to interview each other over lunch.

Note to self: When on a short deadline, do not go to a restaurant eight blocks away from the computer lab where you’ll be writing your story. (Also, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on your watch.)

In a weird way, the whole thing felt like a scavenger hunt. Each of us had to gather facts, find sources, and get quotes, all with the clock ticking. The time pressure actually helped in one respect: it forced me to overcome any hesitancy about calling strangers (even friendly ones) to get information.

In the end, I had about an hour to write the piece. It was too short (about 625 words) and lacked physical description of any kind (glasses, goatee, tattoo, the restaurant where we ate), but it had good quotes and a pretty solid theme.

Oh, and I made the deadline with about five minutes to spare. Whew.

Quote of the day:

I myself have never tipped a cow. --Jeff DelViscio

Beat Reporting Boot Camp

OK, so I’ve got my beat. Now what?

That’s what Tuesday was all about. In the morning, we had back-to-back all-class lectures with two of the masters: my very own Professor Padwe, who talked to us about Street Reporting, and Professor Sig Gissler, who gave a talk on Covering a Beat and Writing the Person-on-the-Street Story. In the afternoon, we had a breakout session on Interviewing with Professor Gissler, and in the evening we had a talk on The Newest New Yorkers by Joseph Salvo and Frank Vardy of the New York City Department of City Planning Population Division (the city government’s “hub of demographic expertise”).

Street Reporting

Professor Padwe focused on two things: professionalism and sources. On professionalism, his watchwords were preparation, accuracy, and honesty. He also told us to be polite, dress and behave professionally, be streetwise, and develop a thick skin. His list of suggested sources was comprehensive and therefore a bit daunting -- it will take months of sustained reporting just to scratch the surface [cliché] to make the rounds of all the places and people he suggested:

• police precinct


• firehouse


• churches, synagogues, mosques


• community-based organizations


• schools


• hospitals


• senior-citizen centers


• neighborhood library


• food pantries


• parks


• local restaurants


• local community college or university


• garbage collectors


• bus or train depots


• local politicians


• bodega proprietors and employees


• construction workers and unions


• livery cab drivers

And that doesn’t include all of the secondary sources he suggested. Or the background reading. I sense a lot of sleep deprivation in my immediate future. . . .

Covering a Beat and Writing the Person-on-the-Street Story

Professor Gissler picked up where Professor Padwe left off, giving us both practical and philosophical insights into the reporter’s job. He’s the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes (based here at the J-school, which was founded by their creator, Joseph Pulitzer), so most of us were doing our best to string every pearl of wisdom he offered. And there were many, from fundamental principles (“never, ever burn a source”) to tricks of the trade (always carry a pencil as a back-up -- ballpoint pens can freeze in the cold, and ink can run in the rain).

According to Professor Gissler, good beat reporters share three attributes:

1. they work on the three fundamentals (the “trifecta”): sources, story ideas, and execution plans;


2. they show good organization; and


3. they stay in touch with their editors (or, in our case, RWI professors) without being a pest.

He spent the rest of the time giving us dozens of examples of these attributes, along with a slew of practical tips on how to approach people, how to ask questions, how to take notes, and how to write the story. For example, he told us that people tend to speak at a rate of about 100 words per minute, but the best note-takers can only get 25-50 words per minute, so it’s important to jot down key phrases right away and equally important not to be afraid to ask a source to slow down or repeat an important comment. He stressed that strong reporting undergirds strong writing. It’s like filmmaking in a way -- you’ve got to get everything in the can first, then figure out what’s going to get left on the cutting-room floor (a lot, by the way).

Interviewing

Our RWI section was one of those lucky enough to have Professor Gissler lead our breakout session, which was a combination pep talk and primer. He told us to “cultivate a really strong can-do philosophy” and to be eager to listen. He described our job as entering the lives of total strangers and set out the goal: to develop a swift rapport -- instant intimacy -- while maintaining a professional distance. Easier said than done, no doubt, but he did give us more advice than we could have hoped for. For instance:

• Project a sense of “joyful entitlement” and use a tone of honest inquiry when talking to sources.


• Push for specific answers -- don't accept generalities or evasive statements.


• Be an investigative listener.


• If sources stray from your questions, let them go -- serendipity can be your best friend.


• Finish each interview with a “sweep-of-the-room” question: “Is there anything important I haven’t asked you about?”


• At the end of the interview, always ask for at least three more sources -- and get their contact information.


• Spend some time each week nurturing sources -- sending them the final version of your story, for example.


• Any target of criticism deserves a right to reply. Always seek balance, and make sure that the story reflects the effort even if you can’t get a reply.


• Always get as much information as you can while the getting is good (the “Velcro school of reporting”).

The Newest New Yorkers

OK, these guys are scary. They can spout census statistics the way some people can rattle off batting averages. And do you have any idea how complex New York City’s census stats are? For example, of the roughly eight million people who call this city home, more than a third are foreign-born. Among that group, here are the top ten countries of birth:

1. Dominican Republic


2. China


3. Jamaica


4. Guyana


5. Mexico


6. Ecuador


7. Haiti


8. Trinidad & Tobago


9. Colombia


10. Russia

Messrs. Salvo and Vardy provided such a blitzkrieg of facts, figures, maps, and graphs that it was nearly impossible to digest more than the highest of the highlights. But they translated the mountain of census data into compelling narratives that underscored the intensely dynamic nature of this city, driven by the constant influx of immigrants. As Mr. Salvo said, our reliance on immigration is extreme.

It turns out that immigrants are actually underrepresented in the Bronx (only 13.2% foreign-born, according to the 2000 Census, compared with nearly 40% today in Brooklyn and nearly 50% in Queens). According to the experts, it is especially hard to find pockets of immigrants in the South Bronx (home to my beat) because there is so much public housing there, and immigrants can only gain access to those units by marrying in.

Nonetheless, I found the demographic tales fascinating. East Harlem is evolving from a Puerto Rican neighborhood to a Mexican one. Several African-American communities (Crown Heights, Flatbush, Canarsie, et al.) are becoming Afro-Caribbean. Of all ethnic groups, Filipinos have the highest median household income in the city; Ukrainians have the lowest. Female heads of households are very common among Dominicans but rare among Bangladeshis. And here’s a great historical footnote for my fellow feminists: according to Mr. Salvo, the Census Bureau did not recognize married women as heads of households as late as 1980 -- if a woman’s name was listed first among a married couple, the Census Bureau would change it so that her husband’s name appeared first. So much for standing up and being counted.

Quotes of the day:

This city is a daily miracle. --Sandy Padwe

Save the best; ditch the rest. --Sig Gissler

The miracle of journalism is that we get so much stuff right. --Sig Gissler

Cities are as much processes as they are places. --Joseph Salvo

Retraction

Remember everything I said about how excited I was to be working with Sam Freedman, my master’s project adviser?

Well, forget it.

Late Monday night, I happened to check my online class schedule and was quite surprised to find that a different name appeared where his had been. And the new name was of someone I’d never heard of, let alone requested.

(Back in July, we had to submit a ballot indicating our preferences for specific classes and professors. I spent an entire weekend reading past student evaluations of these classes and very carefully submitting my choices. For master’s advisers, we were instructed to list at least ten choices on the ballot. Freedman had been my first choice. The person whose name now appeared on my schedule hadn’t cracked my top ten.)

Now, we’d been told that there had been some glitches with student schedules, which are all entered manually (no, I can’t explain why), and that we shouldn’t freak out if we saw something weird. So, I didn’t freak out.

At first.

The next morning, I checked again, in the vain hope that things had changed. The system is refreshed overnight, so I thought there was an outside possibility that the glitch would be corrected in the normal course.

It hadn’t been.

So, I headed up to school and buttonholed our Dean of Students and Assistant Dean of Students before that day’s all-class lecture began. I explained the situation and asked, politely, for an explanation. Here’s a rough approximation of our conversation:

Me: I happened to check my class schedule last night, and my master’s project adviser seems to have been changed. Do you know what might have happened?

Deans: Well, it turns out that some people aren’t advising this semester after all, and others are taking fewer advisees than we had anticipated, so we had to make some changes.

Me: And when you made the change to my schedule, would you have referred back to the preferences I submitted on my ballot back in July?

Deans: At this point, we would have assigned you to whomever was available.

Hmm.

That’s not really satisfactory, is it?

So then it gets worse.

Up at the front of the room, the Dean of Students says to the whole class something like this (as nicely as possible, but still):

We’ve had some questions about changes in master’s advisers. When we made the original assignments back in July, we didn’t necessarily have the most up-to-date information from some of the faculty, because many of them had been away since the end of the spring semester and weren’t going to be back until August or September. So in some cases we’ve have had to make changes based on updated information about their availability.

The part he left out:

Oh, and by the way, we made these changes unilaterally and without notice, so you might want to check your schedule to make sure you aren’t one of the unlucky ones.

Yes, we could have waited to make the master’s adviser assignments until we had all of the information we needed, especially since you won’t even be meeting with your advisers until after Labor Day.

Or we could have warned you up front that the assignments were subject to change.

Or we could have contacted you personally if a change had to be made in your particular case, so that you’d (a) know about it, (b) have an opportunity to ask questions and advocate for one of your alternate choices, and (c) still feel somewhat warm and fuzzy about the J-school administration.

But we didn’t.

And did I mention that the drop/add period started at 7:00PM on Monday night (approximiately four hours before I noticed the switcheroo)? Or that drop/add requests are handled on a first-come, first-served basis? (Upshot: I’m pretty well screwed.)

Now I have been trying rather gamely (with frequent prodding from Zach) to bear in mind that I am the student in this relationship, which means fully relinquishing the academic-administrator hat I wore for so many years. This has been an ongoing challenge since I first decided to apply to Columbia because, despite the universally acknowledged excellence of the program, there have been more than a few indications that the administration was not running the tightest of ships. But I’ve tried to be very Zen about the whole thing and not get overly worked up about even the not-so-minor incidents. But, of course, each successive incident reminds me of the others, and my hard-won easygoing-ness (yes, yes, I know that’s a contradiction in terms) has been increasingly difficult to maintain.

So I am resolved to meet with the Dean of Students to provide some feedback about my various less-than-satisfactory experiences. He seems like a really good guy, so I am hopeful that it will be a worthwhile conversation and not an exercise in futility.

In the meantime, I consulted with Professor Padwe, who confirmed that I should, in fact, do my best to switch to a third adviser and gave me lots of helpful guidance on who that adviser should be. Of course, of the seven possibilities we discussed, one isn’t advising at all, five are fully booked, and one “may have space,” according to the Assistant Dean.

So I put in my drop/add request late Tuesday afternoon and, theoretically, have to hope for the best. (Where “hope for the best” includes checking my online class schedule every day because -- wouldn't you know it? -- we won’t be notified if or when our drop/add requests are granted. Nice, huh?)

Field Trip

Today was an RWI marathon – an all-day bus trip through Harlem, the South Bronx, and Washington Heights, followed by a two-hour class in which we chose our semester-long beats, mainly from among the neighborhoods we'd seen.

Our section was paired up with Professor Isaacs’ section for the tour, and we were accompanied by Val Ginter, an urban historian, who identified points of interest and provided a running commentary that incorporated historical, topographical, architectural, and sociological tidbits. We set off from 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue at 9:00AM and returned, a travel-weary troupe, at 5:30PM. Highlights of the day included:

• a talk by Cynthia Ceilan, Director of Special Projects at Harlem United, who told us about the challenges of treating HIV/AIDS patients in the Harlem community;


• a talk by the Environmental Justice Coordinator for Mothers on the Move, a community-based organization in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx, along with a brief visit to the city’s largest fertilizer plant to smell for ourselves what residents endure (although last night’s heavy rain mercifully muted the effects);


• lunch on our own on Arthur Avenue in the Belmont section of the Bronx, home to some of the best Italian food in the city; and


• the “insider’s tour” of Yankee Stadium, during which we sat in both the press box and the dugout and visited the clubhouse (no player sightings, though).

When it came to choosing a beat, I had a just a few parameters in mind:

• avoid Harlem -- it's the area with which I am most familiar, and, because of its proximity to Columbia, it tends to have lots of students chasing the same sources, many of whom are reluctant to talk to yet another generation of J-schoolers;


• find a neighborhood where the issues are complex and topical -- one in which the stories will be relevant to a broad audience;


• keep my commute as manageable as possible -- it already takes me nearly an hour just to get to school each day; and


• if at all possible, honor my family history -- I found out over the weekend that I actually have roots in the Bronx on both sides of the family, connecting me to at least three different neighborhoods.

In the end, we chose our beats in the order determined by numbers we picked out of a hat. I drew 12 out of 17 but still got my first choice: Hunts Point, in the South Bronx. My mom lived there as a girl in the 1930s, and my great-grandfather had a fruit stand nearby. In seventy years, it’s changed quite a bit.

Today, the neighborhood is New York City’s gastronomic gateway, housing its main produce, meat, and fish markets (the last of these is the very recently relocated Fulton Fish Market). It is also home to the aforementioned fertilizer plant (just what you want near the food supply!), two prisons, innumerable auto-supply shops (at least some of which are chop shops) and, apparently, a vigorous prostitution industry (big wholesale markets = lots and lots of truck drivers). As for demographics, it’s one of the nation’s poorest Congressional districts with one of the highest rates of asthma. And did I mention that it’s a peninsula?

I’ll be sharing my beat with a classmate named Jeff, who has a science background and is interested in the many environmental issues the neighborhood is facing. Although we'll be covering the same turf, we'll be doing separate stories. Our first assignment is to write a portrait of a block.

I can’t wait.

Quote of the day:

Reporting is thinking. -- Sandy Padwe

Down Time

With no classes today, I stayed close to home in an effort to catch up on some of my reading, which included going through the foot-high stack of the New York Times that I have allowed to accumulate.

I have this weird obsession with the Times where I feel like if I don't read the whole paper (or at least scan it), I will inevitably miss some crucial piece of information. I understand, at an intellectual level, that news, by definition, must be new, and that leafing through papers that are days, weeks, or even (when life has been really busy) months old is a rather futile exercise. Nevertheless, I have on several occasions gotten positive reinforcement for doing just that -- I've found some nugget of information that, had I read the paper on its publication date, I would have had no use for but now, for some reason, do.

Of course, I have been kicking myself for falling behind in the last few weeks leading up to j-school (you know, the Mecca of news junkies) -- I had hoped to be extra-well informed on the first day of classes, not behind the Times (couldn't resist).

So, I started going through the stack, knowing that the best approach is full triage mode, in which anything that merits a full read gets put to the side and everything else goes straight into the recycling pile. That usually allows me to reduce the stack to a manageable pile, and there is a great sense of accomplishment in tying up the rest of the papers and taking them out to the curb (or to our front hallway, if it doesn't happen to be recycling night).

Today I got about a third of the way through the papers before finding the positive reinforcement for my obsession: the July 17 issue of the Book Review, which contains a review of two recent books on public radio: Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio by Jack W. Mitchell and NPR: The Trials and Triumphs of National Public Radio by Michael P. McCauley. The review was written by Samuel G. Freedman,who just happens to be a member of the faculty at the J-school and my master’s project adviser.

We haven’t met with our advisers yet -- that will happen after Labor Day -- but Freedman was my top choice based on the past student evaluations I read. He also teaches a renowned seminar on book writing in the spring semester, which I am aching to take. (No, I don’t have a topic in mind yet. Yes, I realize that that is a prerequisite.) In his FAQs about the seminar, he says: “It is too much work. So only enroll if you are burning with ambition and energy.”

My kind of guy.

So thank you, Professor Freedman, for giving me a good read, for reminding me how excited I am to work with you, and, of course, for validating my obsession.

Fresh Tidings

Professor Padwe made my day today. He left me a lovely voice-mail message with some very nice feedback about my news drill. I am absolutely elated.

We had a fairly light day today -- just a lecture on news writing by Professor Bruce Porter. He started off with the most fundamental question: what is news?

Apparently, according to Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (2d ed.), it is "fresh tidings." (How quaint is that?) Porter also gave us his own definition: "fresh information that interests or affects us." He then deconstructed it a bit. For example, "information" = facts = things perceived (and therefore able to be validated) by the reporter ≠ opinion, rumor, or assumptions.

After that, he dove into the mechanics of news writing, starting with the inverted-pyramid structure, in which the most critical information is front-loaded at the top of the story, with increasingly less important information following thereafter. This structure makes life easier for the reader -- rather than having to (heaven forfend) read the entire piece, you can get the gist right up front in the first few paragraphs. It also makes life easier for the editor, who can simply trim the story (from the bottom) when space is at a premium.

Porter focused a lot of time on the heart of news writing: the lede. The lede tells the whole story quickly and completely, generally in one sentence of fewer than 35 words. It covers the traditional five Ws and H: who, what, when, where, why, and how. In a straight news story (as opposed to, say, a feature), the lede is typically the very first sentence. Everything else flows directly from it.

To help us get the hang of it, Porter had the class -- as a group -- write the ledes for several well known fairy tales. It was a great pedagogical technique -- since we all knew the facts so well, we could concentrate completely on mastering the form. Here is the lede for "Little Red Riding Hood":

A 10-year-old girl and her granny were saved from being eaten by a wolf in Big Woods today when a passing lumberjack killed the animal with his ax, police said.

After working his way through most of the collected works of Aesop and Grimm, Porter finished up with some tips on writing the body of the news story (organization is key) and general advice. He told us to be on the lookout for original angles, especially on major stories that receive broad coverage. As an example, he cited Jimmy Breslin -- after JFK's death, when all of the other reporters were covering the funeral, Breslin tracked down and interviewed his gravedigger.

So, Week 1 of J-school is officially over. Wow, that was fast.

Quotes of the day:

A good reporter never misses irony. -- Bruce Porter

Always distrust your ears. -- Bruce Porter

Class photo:

Onward!

Orientation is officially over (not a moment too soon), and we have moved on to the "August schedule," which is comprised of RWI and a whole bunch of one-off lectures and events. After Labor Day, we will move to a regular fall schedule that includes RWI plus an elective (called RWII), a five-week Skills class, our Master's Project, and two plenary classes -- Critical Issues in Journalism and Journalism, the Law and Society. Meanwhile, the August schedule is designed to introduce us to the city, to our beats, and to the fundamentals of street reporting (in the reverse order, in my case).

Today's one-off lecture, given by Professor Andie Tucher, was a three-hour talk on the history of American journalism. Butt-numbing seat aside, it was a great crash course for someone like me, who is playing catch-up on the context front. She traced three centuries of developments and trends, focusing a great deal on four big stories of the 20th century -- World War II, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and Watergate -- and their influences on the journalism we know today.

I loved getting the big-picture perspective, augmented by the readings she'd given us: Nellie Bly's first exposé (on an insane asylum for women, published in 1887), Ernie Pyle reporting from a WWII battlefield in Italy, Relman Morin on the first day of integration at Central High School in Little Rock, and Seymour Hersh on the My Lai massacre. Tucher's talk was rich with examples, vivid stories, and props that included Ernie Pyle reimagined as a GI Joe doll and early examples of photojournalism from Life magazine. She also gave us the names of close to two dozen influential journalists from the distant and recent past -- a mini crash course in and of itself -- to add to our ever-growing recommended reading lists.

If that wasn't enough, today was also our first RWI news drill. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this (drill is not a confidence-inspiring word), but it turned out to have a very specific methodology: with Professor Padwe feeding us information piecemeal, we had to write three versions of a story, each longer than the last, based on what we knew at each juncture. We took notes by hand and then wrote the stories on our computers while he walked around the room, reading and editing over our shoulders -- the verbal equivalent of a red pencil. I'd never been edited in real time before -- it was slightly unnerving but quite effective.

We're going to have one of these drills every week, but this one was intended mainly for diagnostic purposes. I feel good about my peformance, based both on my own assessment and on Professor Padwe's comments. I think he was expecting, given my lack of experience, that I'd be facing a pretty steep learning curve in news writing. In fact, I actually found the whole exercise somewhat exhilarating. Working against a deadline was strangely liberating -- no time to agonize over every word. (OK, much less time.)

I'm looking forward to getting my marked-up stories back, either tomorrow or Monday, even though it may be a very humbling experience. One of the reasons people come to this school is for rigorous editing -- the kind that has all but disappeared from real-world newsrooms because of time and cost pressures. So I'm going to look at every edit as a return on my investment.

I'm not sure how I managed to become sleep-deprived after only two days of school (hmm, could it be the late-night blog entries? the hourlong commute each way?), but I am about to face-plant. Fortunately, the rest of the week will be less taxing -- just one lecture tomorrow and then the day off on Friday (where "off" translates to "spent reading from sunup to sundown").

Quotes of the day:

You're entering a profession with a real image problem. -- Andie Tucher

I'm big on getting people out of their mental ZIP codes. -- Sandy Padwe

You're going to have fun. That's the beauty of it. -- Sandy Padwe

Today's Inspiration

Today was Day 2 (of 2, mercifully) of Orientation, which translated into a parade of talking heads and lots of time spent in butt-numbing seats in the school's main lecture hall. We also got goody bags containing, among other things, our bibles for the next year: Strunk & White's The Elements of Style, Tom Rosenstiel's Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect, and The Associated Press Stylebook.

Also on today's activity list: ordering my J-school business cards ("Jody Rosen Knower, Reporter") and picking up (and then very quickly depositing) a huge student loan check (most of which, of course, will be going right back to Columbia when my eye-popping tuition bill is due in a couple of weeks). And I bought my first textbook (for a whopping $75!!) -- Melvin Mencher's News Reporting and Writing (of which I have to read 4-1/2 chapters before RWI meets again tomorrow afternoon).

All in all, the day was somewhat administration-heavy and inspiration-light.

So it was an extra-special treat to go back to the lecture hall at 6PM to hear documentary filmmaker Martin Smith talk about covering the war in Iraq. Smith is a longtime producer, writer, director, and correspondent for PBS's Frontline, for which he has done a series of four segments on the war, from Truth, War & Consequences in October 2003 to Private Warriors in June 2005. (Three of the four are available in streaming video on PBS's site.)

He gave a great talk, filled with meaty clips from the series, and set a tremendous example as a passionate, intelligent, forthright, principled, and generous professional. During Q & A, the hands shot up like weeds after a hard rain, and you could feel the intensity of interest all around the room. This is a guy who has taken the biggest, most reported story of the day, found several critical yet unexplored angles, and then used masterful storytelling techniques to bring the truth to the public in a way that's both accessible and powerful. I envy those who get to work with Smith, especially those just starting out -- what an incredible role model and mentor he must be.

Cool quote of the day:

The key is to find the chaos out there and make sense of it for your audience. --Martin Smith

Off to the Races

J-school rocks!

Today was mainly orientation-type stuff, but there were two especially cool elements. The first was a harmonic convergence of sorts. This morning's program featured a talk by Jill Abramson, Managing Editor of the New York Times (and an old college pal of our dean, Nicholas Lemann). Her remarks focused in part on Judith Miller, the Times reporter who was jailed several weeks ago for refusing to name a source in the Valerie Plame leak case. As it happens, the paper published an editorial today called "Leading by Example," about how the loss of freedom of the press in the U.S., exemplified by Miller's incarceration, is reverberating around the world. And it carried the news of the death of Peter Jennings, whose passing marked the end of the network-anchor era. Reading those two pieces and hearing Abramson's perspective on the state of journalism really drove home what I have known for months: that American journalism is at a crossroads, and that I could not have picked a more important or exciting time to embark on this profession.

The second cool element was the first meeting of our Reporting & Writing I class (RWI in J-school parlance). RWI is the heart of the J-school curriculum and a third of our credits for the fall semester. Next week, we will be assigned to our semester-long neighborhood beats and will do our first real reporting. This morning I was elated to learn that I had gotten my first-choice RWI professor, Sandy Padwe, and he did not disappoint. I came to the J-school to immerse myself in journalism -- to work hard and to learn as much as I possibly can in these 283 short days. I walked out of RWI today knowing that I will be able to make that happen, that Prof. Padwe will be both a demanding teacher and an inspiring mentor -- exactly what I wanted.

It was an auspicious first day.

Cool quotes from the day:

Journalism is a permanent passport to talk to the most interesting people in the world. --Jill Abramson

Think about the word independence all the time. --Sandy Padwe

Starting today, my job is to read, write, and talk to people. How cool is that!

Countdown

Twenty-four hours from now, I will be on the 2 or 3 train, speeding my way from Brooklyn to Morningside Heights and the first day of classes at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

I think I’m ready.

I’ve done all of the easy stuff—the student loan paperwork, the recommended reading, the back-to-school shopping. And before that, I did a lot of the hard stuff—set my mind to a career change at age 37, got myself admitted to this unbelievable program, left the job where I was well liked and well paid.

For the past eight months, I have been singularly focused on making this transition—from errant attorney to aspiring journalist, from comfortable breadwinner to struggling student. And now that it is upon me, I find myself in that most delicious state of anticipation.

This program is only a year long—283 days, to be exact—and for months I have been referring to it as a catapult. So much effort and planning goes into it, and then, in a blink of an eye (or so I imagine), it will be over. So today I am all potential energy, just waiting to be released. Starting tomorrow, I will be holding on tight and enjoying the ride.