Words Weekly, Chapter 3:

I Couldn’t Possibly Have More

I hope everyone ate WAY more than they should have (mostly so I don’t feel so awful about gorging myself). Yay for self-control!

The Word That Stayed With Me

alphitomancy

Apparently it means to divine (something) using barley. I did a lot of this over Thanksgiving, but I also used yeast, hops and water.

The Words I Wish I’d Written

“They were electric with drugs.”

— “Firestone and the Warlord” by T. Christian Miller and Jonathan Jones, ProPublica/Frontline

Short and simple, but paints such a vivid picture.

The Stories I Made Time For

“A Rape on Campus” by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, Rolling Stone

UPDATE: Well, fuck. I was duped.

You’ve most likely already read it, but I was a little late to it (I actually subscribe to RS, so I read it in print, defying all millennial stereotypes). I have to admit, after Eli Saslow, Erdely is my favorite writer. She combines scenes — action and dialogue — and information — exposition, data, analysis — so well and so compactly. It’s stunning. I wish I could write more like her.

Anyway, because I trust her as a journalist, I was surprised to find this post about the piece, comparing Erdely to — gasp — Stephen Glass (who, if you believe Buzz Bissinger, is a pathological liar, not to mention an attention whore). The story, the writer suggests, is too unbelievable to believe. That, or, you know, some men are just truly terrible people.

Another reporter I trust tweeted this out:

1) No evidence whatsoever that Erdeley is a Stephen Glass. 2) Victim has spoken w/a WaPo reporter too–her anonymity is unsurprising. (more)

— Robert Draper (@DraperRobert) December 1, 2014

3) Erdeley interviewed other women. 4) Unclear whether she tried to interview Drew but unsurprising if he demurred. — Robert Draper (@DraperRobert) December 1, 2014

And overall I support Bradley’s caution vs. credulity but would also caution against charging a journalist with inventing a story.

— Robert Draper (@DraperRobert) December 1, 2014

And then Pam Colloff replied to that:

@DraperRobert Agree. @SabrinaRErdely is a pro. I’d be shocked if she didn’t corroborate key facts w/ students who were w/ Jackie that night.

— Pamela Colloff (@pamelacolloff) December 1, 2014

And final thing: it’s an urban myth that many/most rape charges are false. As many false reports as burglaries & other crimes.

— Robert Draper (@DraperRobert) December 1, 2014

And now I feel better. Carrying on.

“We’ve Forgotten James Powell” from The Memory Palace podcast

I didn’t make a lot of time for reading this past week, what with Thanksgiving and stuffing my face and seeing family and stuffing my face and all.  I also had a ten-hour drive back to my apartment, so I needed podcasts. As luck would have it, I came across The Memory Palace, and listened to about half the dude’s archive on the way back. Really good stuff. This one about James Powell caught my attention, what with Ferguson and all. It’s only three minutes long and well worth your time. The part about the match and the flame is awesome.

— h/t Columbia Journalism Review

The Older Story I Made Time For

Like I said: traveling, food, family, food. Not a lot of reading got done.

The Article That Got Me Thinking

“‘Profanity dramatically increases engagement’ says NPR health blogger’” at Poynter

If you read my last post, you probably know how I feel about this.

What’s Burning a Hole in my Pocket App

Sometimes I scroll through my Pocket app like it’s a Netflix queue: What do I want to entertain me right now? I’ll pass a title and think, that would be a good film to watch, but I just don’t have the mental stamina to engage with something of substance right now. Same with some articles in that app: I know, at some point, I’ll want to read them, but I want to savor the moment. Needless to say, some stories get stuck in there a while.

This week: “About a Boy” by Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker

The Book I’m Engrossed In Right Now

The Powers That Be by David Halberstam

What CBS did to Ed Murrow? Criminal.

Thanks for reading!

Words Weekly, Chapter 2:

Adventures in Criminal Justice…and Texas

Time to waste some digital ink on two of my favorite subjects. (Check out Chapter 1 for this blog post’s objective.)

The Word That Stayed With Me

the verb “city-slick”

This, which I haven’t seen anywhere else, comes courtesy of Gary Cartwright, who only entered my life about a year and a half ago. He started out in newspapers around and in Dallas, then became a staff writer at Texas Monthly. He’s an incredibly clever writer; his sentences just pop off the page like champagne corks. Anyway, this use of “city slick” is in his 1979 book, Blood Will Tell, about the richest man (at the time) ever tried for murder. How he uses it requires some context to have it make sense: The rich dude’s trial was moved from high society Fort Worth to podunk Amarillo, and his lawyers worried they’d come off as city-slickers the jury wouldn’t trust, so:

“They needed one well-known Amarillo lawyer present in the courtroom to dispel the image of themselves as a battery of high-priced outsiders come to city-slick the good folks of Potter County.”

I love it when words are used in interesting and different-than-expected ways, such as nouns transforming into verbs.

Also, I highly recommend that book, particularly Part 1.

The Words I Wish I’d Written

“On April 12, 1987, Michael Morton sat down to write a letter. ‘Your Honor,’ he began, ‘I’m sure you remember me. I was convicted of murder, in your court, in February of this year.'”

— “The Innocent Man, Part One” by Pamela Colloff, Texas Monthly

It’s not exactly the most scintillating word-play out there, but how fast it goes from 0 to 60 fascinates me. The first line is rather ho-hum: OK, so he wrote a letter, so what? Then he mentions being convicted of murder, and it’s like: Holy shit! Even better, the remaining 28,000 words or so don’t let that feeling up.

The Stories I Made Time For

“Is Texas Getting Ready to Kill an Innocent Man?” by Jordan Smith, The Intercept

After the “this is motherfucking atrocious” reaction I get whenever I see these kinds of stories, I quietly think this to myself: Seems like there could be one of these stories for every reporter there is in Texas. The state is so chockfull of them, it made reading this New Yorker story on an innocent-but-imprisoned man in Chicago rather strange — Wait, I found myself thinking, this didn’t take place in Texas? Anyway, David Grann’s story on the execution of a more-than-likely (read: totally) innocent man is required reading.

“9 Exits on America’s Football Highway” by Wright Thompson, ESPN The Magazine

Pretty, pretty sentences. The man writes pretty, pretty sentences. I also admire how he mixes up the length of his paragraphs, sometimes going long paragraph, one-sentence paragraph, long paragraph, one-sentence paragraph, with the one sentence as one of many kickers (or mic-drops) throughout the story. One more thing, I think this is a great observation about suburban life nowadays: “They came to New London to find oil, and they come to places like Allen, north of Dallas, to find affordable land within an ever-expanding definition of a reasonable drive to work.”

The Older Story I Made Time For

“Free to Kill” by Gary Cartwright, Texas Monthly

Cartwright details legendary Texas killer Kenneth McDuff’s two sprees in horrific detail. It’s hard to read. I’m sure that’s the point.

The Article That Got Me Thinking

“Bill Keller Knows Why the Oxpecker Sings” by Matt Negrin, Bloomberg Politics

Keller is the former editor of The New York Times and recently started The Marshall Project that will cover criminal justice (in case you hadn’t heard). The interviewer asked whether the venture was advocacy journalism, to which Keller replied:

Was Watergate advocacy? Woodward and Bernstein and The Washington Post understood there was something really rotten going on in the Nixon administration. And that didn’t make them Democrats or Libertarians or left-wingers or right-wingers. It just made them journalists. … When you look at a system that is not living up to its own standards, and you report on that, that’s not partisan or ideological. That’s just journalism.

This reminds me a bit of what the authors The Race Beat called the “cult of objectivity”: Reporters covering the Civil Rights Era struggled with whether to put denials from racists that they were racists in their stories. They finally decided, essentially, What’s the point? If a racist is a racist, he’s a racist. Being “objective” — and issuing denials — served no purpose, and really was a disservice to readers.

Keller also said this to Vox about the Project:

I like the idea of we’re doing journalism because that’s what I do, but I like the idea of journalism with a sense of mission, a kind of focus, a sense of purpose. Which is not an agenda of specific reforms we want to enact, or people we want to elect, but problems that we want people to think clearly about and understand. And we’ll also write some about solutions and whether or not they stand up to scrutiny.

And this:

I have never believed that impartial journalism — which is the word I prefer to objectivity, just because objectivity sounds like a state of being that doesn’t really exist — I’ve never believed that impartial journalism meant that you didn’t reach conclusions, that you gave equal ink to every point of view, even the preposterous points of view. Impartial journalism doesn’t mean you have to pretend that evolution doesn’t exist, or that climate change is a myth. What it means is that you go into your reporting with an open mind. You’re led by the facts. Sometimes those facts lead to a conclusion; sometimes they lead to a disagreement.

So, fairness > objectivity. Sometimes a story, and the truth, is one-sided.

(OK, I guess that was technically two articles that made me think.)

— h/t American Press Institute

What’s Burning a Hole in my Pocket App

Sometimes I scroll through my Pocket app like it’s a Netflix queue: What do I want to entertain me right now? I’ll pass a title and think, that would be a good film to watch, but I just don’t have the mental stamina to engage with something of substance right now. Same with some articles in that app: I know, at some point, I’ll want to read them, but I want to savor the moment. Needless to say, some stories get stuck in there a while.

This week: “The Endless Odyssey of Patrick Henry Polk” by Gary Cartwright, Texas Monthly

The Book I’m Engrossed In Right Now

The Powers That Be by David Halberstam

Still deep in it but making progress. One thing I didn’t know was that Time was essentially a Republican mouth piece when it started. Its creator and editor-in-chief, Henry Luce, changed copy to make Republicans awesome and Democrats vile and also to reflect how he wanted the world to be, not how it was. And, boy, were (some of) his reporters pissed. Another thing I didn’t know: the founders of the Los Angeles Times thought Time was too far to the left.

Thanks for reading!

Bonus Vid

Words Weekly, Chapter 1:

Ode. What A Great Word. Simple, full of meaning.

Since I was little, I’ve loved the written word. I struggled with it at first, but I overcame it, and I think that’s why I’ve picked my career path. I love how letters form words, how words form phrases, how phrases form sentences, which then form paragraphs, which then form sections in stories and chapters in books. This is my ode to these formations — with a dash of reporting talk mixed in. It’s going to be esoteric, and probably will interest only me. I do what I’ve done below in my head anyway, so I might as well put it in writing.

(I’m going to try to do something like this regularly [once a week], just because I’m obsessed with email newsletters right now and I think having one of my own would be fun; doing a blog post is a semi-slide into that world. I’ll h/t where I get stuff, unless of course I find it on my own, which in that case, uh, I won’t. And if someone comes up with a better name, please let me know.)

The Word That Stayed With Me

perquisite

It’s not the coolest sounding word in the world, but I like it’s definition. It can mean, simply, a perk. But it’s more like an unwarranted reward based on someone’s position. So, like, big Wall Street banks not getting destroyed after destroying people’s livelihoods is a perquisite. This past week was the first time I came across it, in David Halberstam’s The Powers That Be (more on that later). Surprised it isn’t used more often.

The Words I Wish I’d Written

This requires some context. James Kilpatrick, a staunch segregationist (and the subject of these words not the writer), was the editor of the Richmond News Leader, a Virginia newspaper in the 1950s and ’60s whose copy reflected that of its editor. He firmly believed the country wasn’t a unit, but a “collection of individual, sovereign states”:

“Consequently, Kilpatrick frequently noted, readers would never see the term ‘United States’ take the singular in his editorials. Awkward as it was stylistically, the United States was not mentioned in his editorials. But the United States were. Though a stickler on such things, Kilpatrick was not a prude about editorial humor.”

— The Race Beat by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff

Obviously meta, but the writers don’t dwell on how clever it is, just get back to the narrative, and I think that’s so slick.

The Stories I Made Time For

“Double Jeopardy” by Paige Williams, The New Yorker

On judicial override in Alabama. I have a soft spot in my heart for that state because I have family there, but you can’t defend most of the shit that happens in there. A cool note: The “nut graf” comes about halfway through it.

— h/t about every long-form or “best links” thing I follow or subscribe to

“The Long Way Home” by Eli Saslow, ESPN The Magazine

Saslow is my favorite writer, and this story only makes me love his writing more (even though it’s about a Denver Bronco, and I still can’t forgive that team for beating my Packers in the 1997 Super Bowl; I know I was 6, but still).

The Older Story I Made Time For

“Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” by Joan Didion

C’mon, it’s Joan Didion.

The Article That Got Me Thinking

“‘Serial’ and White Reporter Privilege” by Jay Caspian Kang, The Awl

Like many people, I love “Serial” (more for how it details great reporting, and what I can learn from it, more than for its storytelling). Unlike many people, I don’t like Kang’s writing, but he is an incredibly smart dude and he makes a great point here. I’m a white male, so I have a lot of built-in privilege already, so this article is about me.

When reporting on police shootings in Dallas, I think about the dynamic between white and minority communities a lot because I’m covering a community that’s essentially foreign to me. The balance of power seems so skewed in my favor; I’m surprised people talk to me. Good to be aware of that dynamic, but I haven’t found a way around it yet: Usually I just acknowledge that I know I’m white and can’t ever understand what you’re going through, but I’ll listen carefully as you describe it. (This topic deserves way more words than I’ve written here.)

What’s Burning a Hole in my Pocket App

Sometimes I scroll through my Pocket app like it’s a Netflix queue: What do I want to entertain me right now? I’ll pass a title and think, that would be a good film to watch, but I just don’t have the mental stamina to engage with something of substance right now. Same with some articles in that app: I know, at some point, I’ll want to read them, but I want to savor the moment. Needless to say, some stories get stuck in there a while.

This week: “The Ripples From Little Lake Nellie” by Gary Smith, Sports Illustrated

The Book I’m Engrossed In Right Now

The Powers That Be by David Halberstam

He has this tendency to start a paragraph with only a name, then a short or incomplete sentence to describe its owner. It’s pretty awesome, even though sometimes I feel he overuses it.

Examples:

• “Henry Robinson Luce. Harry. Everyone called him Harry, it was a sign of terrible ignorance to call him Henry, though he was not a good old boy, he was not easily approachable, and he did not grant intimacy easily.” Then, later in the book, Halberstam starts another graf about Luce like this: “A curious blend of a man. Part sophisticate and part hick. At once shy and incredibly arrogant.”
• “Chambers. His name is stamped indelibly on that era.”
• “It had started with Harrison Gray Otis. General Otis. General in title, but even more in spirit. A fierce man.”

Plus, the book is about journalism, and who doesn’t love talking ad nauseam about that? It’s really long; it might be here a while…maybe this wasn’t the best idea for a section.

Thanks for reading!

One Small Step Step — Scratch That … One Giant Leap For Sky

In the next few hundred words, I’m going to attempt wading through some rather thorny material. So, if you continue reading, please bear in mind that I’m not stereotyping anyone or anything. I realize that could come up in circumstances such as the one I’ll relate below, but what happened is my own personal when-worlds-collide experience.

OK, now that the clumsy opener is out of the way, let’s roll.

Like any big city, Dallas has its fair share of crime. Certain areas have more crime than others. Sometimes, those crimes are worth reporting. Monday night, a crime like that happened in an area with a high-concentration of crime.

As I wrote for Unfair Park, a drive-by shooter hit a 15-year-old in the head.

The police didn’t provide much information, so my editor sent me out to the strip mall where it had happened. I’ve done crime reporting before, but usually from my desk — you know, call the police or the lawyers and scrounge up a police report or a court document. The only other time I’ve actually gone to the place an incident had taken place was my first week at the Missourian. Someone had shot a gun, without hitting anyone, the night before and a buddy and I were sent out to knock on doors to find witnesses. Or, at least, people who had heard gunshots. The funny thing is, I thought we were in a quote-end-quote unseemly neighborhood in freakin’ podunk (compared to Dallas) Columbia, Missouri, when really some of the houses were a little run-down. That’s how naive I was when I was 20.

Anyway, on Tuesday I drove the 20 minutes up I-75 and parked in the strip mall’s lot. Now, I have what I consider a nice car. It’s a 2001 Toyota Highlander. The gold paint job is still intact. It looks like a really nice car, especially when the vehicles around it aren’t so nice. Also, I was wearing a white button-down shirt and shorts, with Sperries (what a friend once called my “rape shoes” because he thought I looked like a total tool wearing them; they’re comfortable; they do make me look a bit fratty, unfortunately).

When I stepped out of the Highlander, I became instantly aware of how I looked in relation to the other people at the mall. I felt like the type of guy some people in my apartment building probably think I am — the $30,000 millionaire (a most insipid species native to my neck of Dallas) that I most likely could pass as if I ever ventured out to a bar by myself.

A man in a wife-beater (maybe not the best word, but it’s the only one I can think of to describe the article of clothing he was wearing) who was standing on the side of the corner store next to the dumpster got my attention. Music was blaring from the store so I couldn’t hear. I walked up beside him and cocked my head.

He’d been asking me what I was looking for. Weed? Something else?

Uh, no, I told him. I’m a reporter and a boy was shot here last night, I said, do you know exactly where it happened? He pointed to the other end of the lot. I said thank you.

It was one of the most surreal moments of my life.

I walked down the walkway by the store fronts. I could see a group of about 20 guys gathered near the shop on the other end. Getting into lockstep with two young guys, I asked them if they knew anything about the shooting last night. They both looked down at my shoes, up at my face, then away from me without a word.

When I got to the group and introduced myself as a reporter, they went silent. I asked if anyone knew about the shooting last night. No one said anything. Most looked away.

“Your story is right over there,” one told me, pointing to the memorial of religious candles and stuffed animals about 20 feet away. I felt particularly unwanted. Totally understandable.

The blood stain had not been cleaned up yet; it might still be there. I took a picture of it, which I still feel like a creep for doing. The Observer didn’t run a picture of the stain, but The Dallas Morning News did if you’re interested.

After that, I knocked on doors. An apartment complex (which doesn’t have a good rep on YouTube) abuts the strip mall’s parking lot. I went to the apartments closest to the lot. In the middle of the day, only three people answered. One was a little girl whose parents weren’t home so I left without asking anything. One told me he didn’t hear anything last night. One said she had.

I went back to the memorial. A young woman sitting next to it said she knew the dead teenager. A guy sitting beside her said, under his breath, “Don’t talk to them.” I asked a couple questions, trying to get more information on the deceased’s personality. I didn’t get very far.

Driving back to the office, I wished I had tried to sell the woman on talking to me more. I’m trying to honor his memory, I should have said. I want to make sure people who read this remember him. And I really did; in a statistic-heavy area, I wanted to do my part to make him a non-statistic. I don’t know if the hard sell would have worked, but at least I wouldn’t have had reporter’s guilt about not trying everything I could have. Lesson learned.

Now, if you haven’t guessed already and if my opening wasn’t heavy-handed enough, the people I spoke to were all black, which is something I never bring up in the story I wrote. There, it was unnecessary, but I think the information can serve a purpose here. On a lot of levels, I can’t relate to the people I talked to. Their experiences are nothing like my experiences. It’s good to be aware of that, but at the same time it can’t hold me back.

Based on crime data, the area I was walking around is a hot spot. At no point did I feel unsafe, only apprehensive. I’m sure it’s a lot different at night. Back in Socorro, I’m not even sure we locked our front door when we hit the pillows. It wasn’t really a thought I had.

I don’t really know if there’s a “larger picture” to be gleaned from this, but I have a couple takeaways. I need to be more conscious of how I come across to people; the way I’d dress to interview the mayor should not be the way I’d dress to talk to an on-the-job plumber. And no, I don’t think that’s gimmicky. Also, I need to be more persistent — though always polite and courteous — when tackling a tough story, but only when’s it’s proper.

A young man I came across in the apartment complex’s parking lot told me he was with the dead teenager the night he died and that he saw the bullet go through his head. He pointed to his temple. In a professional tone, I asked him if he wanted to talk to me about it. He said no and walked away. I thanked him for his time.

The Continuing Story of Quid Pro Quo

This dude flabbergasts me.

Last week, I blogged about emailing a source, requesting an interview and getting a strange reply. At least, I thought it was strange. When I visited him in his office yesterday to hash the situation out, though, I realized we fundamentally disagree.

To recap: I asked him for an interview, and he asked me to do something in return. Quid pro quo, he wrote in his email. I told him I couldn’t do that, and he never replied. So, I went to his office.

He was cordial, shaking my hand and telling me to sit down. But the moment my butt hit the cushion, he launched into his spiel.

I teach an ethics class, he said, so I don’t understand why you can’t do this small thing for me in exchange for my time. Why can’t we be “collegial” about this? You spend some time helping me out, and I’ll help you out.

I listened, then launched into a spiel of my own, basically repeating what I wrote in that last blog post.

He blinked his eyes and shook his head. He made a face, as if baby talk were spewing out of my 22-year-old mouth.

I just don’t understand this predicament, he said.

Well, I wanted to tell him, neither do I. No one I’ve interviewed has ever fundamentally disagreed with this main tenet of journalism that he was so hung up on. I tried restating my position, but he still didn’t get it. Obviously, that could have been a failure on my part, not explaining well enough.

We didn’t raise our voices, and we shook hands and wished each other a happy Thanksgiving before I left. I didn’t get the interview. I stood up for what I believe in, though, and I left with something greater.

When journalism professors would talk about “demystifying the newsroom,” I never really gave it much thought. How can people not understand this stuff? I thought. Well, yesterday I came face-to-face with it.

People who don’t understand what we do are out there, and, really, it’s on me (and other reporters) to explain to them the process, to take the newsroom out of the mist. Maybe I should have a prepared statement or something the next time this comes up.

The Three Fs

An interesting email — an ethical dilemma, really — popped up in my inbox last night.

I had emailed a source asking if he had time to meet, and he said he’d be happy to. I emailed him back: When?

Normal enough, right? His response, to say the least, surprised me.

“Sky, Perhaps we can do a quid pro quo.”

What?

I’m pretty sure I said that out loud when I read his email. I’ve never had someone ask me to do something for them in exchange for talking to me for an article before.

He didn’t request money. He didn’t request I not report on something. He didn’t request — let’s see, he didn’t request I dispose of a body or anything like that.

He did, however, ask that I do some “research” for him about the amount of students hit by cars when they cross College Avenue. So, I mean, that’s not, like, some … big … thing. But, still.

I don’t do — I guess you’d call that a “favor”? — favors for sources in exchange for quotes. No reporter should.

Obviously, you want to be as accessible to your sources as you hope they are to you. If my sources have questions, about anything, such as the reporting process, why I’m asking a certain question, I’m more than happy to answer them. Lately, in fact, I’ve explicitly asked them if they have any questions for me. About anything. Then I say if they think of any questions, feel free to call or email. No one’s taken me up on it, but I hope by saying it more trust develops between us.

But being accessible for questions and doing a source a favor are two different things. And it’s a slippery slope.

If I were to agree to help him out in exchange for him talking to me, what’s to stop him from telling other sources that I report in exchange for favors? My journalism would be tainted. My reputation would be tainted. A slippery, slippery slope.

It comes down to being free from faction — the three Fs. We don’t report in exchange for anything. We’d lose our independence, which is something we shouldn’t give up.

I don’t know if the College Avenue thing is a story; it might very well be; and I don’t know why he wanted help on it (it’s a strange request, isn’t it?). Not helping him out on it, in my opinion, is the right thing to do, though, even if that means he won’t talk to me. It’s really, yes, the principle of the matter.

So, I emailed him back and explained all that — in a calm and measured tone, mind you. I haven’t heard back from him yet.

Different Strokes for Different Folks

Thinking of catchy and captivating beginnings is hard, at least for me, so I’m just going to write this post straight. No lace. No frills. No fancy tassels. I had an interesting conversation with a fellow reporter this week, and this post is about that.

It’s something I think I’ve always known, but hadn’t really thought about before. It hibernated in the crevices of my brain, waiting for the right stimulus. It’s really not all that foundation-shaking.

People get into journalism for different reasons.

For me, someone who’s been drawn to the writing aspect of journalism since I was old enough to spell “of” “uv” because that’s how it sounds, journalism has been an opportunity to try and prove myself as a writer. There are other reasons, too, and I think my interest in journalism, albeit roughly, breaks down this way:

• Love of writing (i.e., personal satisfaction): 50%
• Wanting to expose injustice (a tired trope, perhaps? Too bad, it’s something I aspire to): 20%
• Helping people (for instance, giving them the information they need to survive): 20%
• Accolades (i.e., awards, duh): 10%

I grew up with a pretty strong sense that the world wasn’t fair, and that pretty much ticked me off. Exposing some of grave injustice in the world is a career goal. Helping people is an offshoot of this. Jacqui Banaszynski recently gave a speech at a journalism conference, and her message was to measure the impact of stories not in terms of page views but the anecdotes from the people touched by the story (the whole speech is worth a listen).

Now for the accolades part. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want some recognition for my work. Praise from peers feels good. It’s validating. Obviously, getting a big head from the praise is bad. But, in general, a little recognition boosts my confidence, not arrogance.

The biggest thing is personal satisfaction, though (which manifests itself in the form of writing). Part of that, I believe, is selfishness. I want a career in which I’m happy. It’s my biggest motivator. Exposing injustice, helping people, winning awards. That stuff would would be the cream on the top of a career I’m happy with.

To wrap up, the four things I list above are the main reasons I got into journalism, but the reasons change depending on the person. And, I guess, to end where I began, I find that interesting.

Echo Chambers

Tuesday, Michael Golden, vice chairman of The New York Times Co., visited the Missourian newsroom and said something I find interesting but rather troubling.

He said the media had to become more individualized for each person. He compared the media experience, or what it should be, to the Facebook experience. What I see on my Facebook wall is different than what Ashley sees on hers.

But, is that really how I want my New York Times experience to be?

To me, that kind of mentality gets us into dangerous territory. People won’t get the news they need. Instead, they’ll just get what they want.

We live now in a world of affinity-based media, where citizens can and do construct echo chambers of their own beliefs. It is altogether too easy to feel “informed” without ever encountering information that challenges our prejudices.

From a conversation between Glenn Greenwald and a New York Times opinion writer.

Writing Weight Room

I know it’s kind of corny, but I’m a fan of inspirational phrases. No, not Joel Osteen-like or The Secret-type inspirational phrases, but blue-collar ones that remind me of my high school’s weight room. Please, bear with me here.

During the summer, before the football season started, I spent several hours a week pushing weights with my hamstrings, quads, chest, biceps, triceps and stomach. (I also dragged monster truck tires 30 yards, but who’s keeping track?)

I must say, I got pretty good at lifting — second highest bench max on the team senior year [looks at nails]. I left so much sweat in that room. But there were days when the grind got to me. A third set? Are you kidding me? (Because it was high school and I hung out with football players, I may have added the gerundive form of a certain four-letter word to that phrase, between the “you” and the “kidding.”)

On days like that, I’d look to the south wall. A mirror the length of the wall and maybe 10 feet high adorned that wall. (OK, I admit it: I checked myself out a few … dozen times during each workout — I was in high school!) Above the mirror was a white, rectangular sign with blue lettering. It read, and I’ll never forget this, “The more you sweat in times of peace, the less you bleed in times of war.”

(If you search the Internet, variations of this saying abound. It’s credited to Gen. George S. Patton and Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, among others. My football coach always said Geronimo uttered it. Anyway.)

Obviously, war was a game or a season; peace was those summer workouts. I still think back to it in my everyday life, though. Instead of lifting weights for football games, I prep for interviews by researching as much as I can, writing down questions and practicing saying them, and sometimes playing out scenarios for certain questions in my head.

The saying holds true. I was reminded of this today, actually. A source called me back when I wasn’t prepared for the phone call. The stick of lead in my mechanical pencil had been whittled down so much that, near the end of the interview, I had to write with the pencil perpendicular to my notepad. I had to cut the interview short because I couldn’t write anymore.

I was bleeding, bad. When I hung up, I wondered why my workout clothes still smelled good.

Another favorite phrase of mine came, not from football, but from my J2100 teacher, Judd Slivka. In one of the third-floor computer labs in the Neff Annex, on either the first or second day of class, he told us to “embrace the suck.” (I’m sure I giggled because, as a sophomore, sophomoric humor, intentional or not, was a favorite past time.)

He said it after a rather lengthy preamble about dealing with the stress, or the sucky-ness, of the class. If journalism is what you want to do, I remember him saying, embrace the suck. The class did suck, in a good way. I learned a ton.

That phrase is now on my wall, on a sheet of paper, written in sharpie. Next to it, in the same format, is a phrase my editor, Liz, emailed me in the last few weeks of my Missourian reporting semester. “Keep going.” I take that as “don’t quit working hard to accomplish your goals,” only in a more positive way because it doesn’t have the word “quit” in it.

A new favorite inspirational phrase, though, came from an unlikely source.

Chris Jones, the Esquire and ESPN the Magazine writer, tweeted a link the other day to some dude’s blog, saying it was rules for freelance writers. So I clicked, you know, just in case I’m ever in that position. I read through them, then read through them again. And once more.

The dude (he actually seems pretty successful, based on the list of books on his blog) has 15 ways to survive as a freelancer. All of them are worth looking at, but the one that stuck with me the most was number three.

“Ass in chair.”

Yep, get your ass in a chair and write. Just do it. Don’t make excuses. Ass in chair. That’s just so gerundive brilliant.

I’ve already went back to this phrase this week. I had some writer’s block, and I just pushed through it because I sat in a chair and just wrote something. It’s not great, but now I have something to work off of. (Liz would call it a sh*tty first draft.)

The list, as you might have guessed, is on my wall, next to the other two. I printed it out though.

Embrace The Suck. Keep Going. Ass In Chair.

The phrases make my bedroom (or any room, I guess) my weight room.

October Madness

I spent an hour and a half in a 10th-grade Biology class yesterday. I took notes furiously. From the color of the five ceiling fans to what students were drawing on their 2 1/2 ft by 1 1/2 ft white boards — and the name of the snake in the back of the room in between — I jotted down everything I saw and heard. I think it takes up about half of one of my notebooks.

I don’t think I’ll use any of it.

Although I’m appreciative that the teacher allowed me to observe his classroom for an article, and I got some good information, I didn’t find what I was looking for. Part of that is the day I showed up. I should have been more direct about what I wanted to see.

(The article is about flipped classrooms and blended learning methods. Essentially, teachers create video lectures and post them online for students to watch at home. When they come to class, they work on assignments. This way, teachers can work with students one-on-one more often. The day I showed up, it was a review day, for a test. It had a more traditional structure.)

I learned enough in that 90 minutes to know I’m on the right track but also to know that I need to find another classroom to observe, so I can see a “flipped” classroom in action.

I did a similar thing on the last article I wrote. I interviewed a few people for the “role” of my main character before I came to the one who appeared in the story. I did all the interviews, transcribed them, asked some follow-up questions, and arrived at this conclusion: These people’s stories are similar, which is good because then I know I’m on the right track, but one stands out as the most compelling.

So, that’s the story I chose to focus on. I kind of felt like the selection committee for the NCAA tournament. Which will get the best ratings?

It’s a similar process for finding the right classroom to profile for this article.