It's a long story.

Upcoming: Computer Meltdowns and Room Service French Fries in an Apple-Dominated World — The...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 02:22:35 -0400

Upcoming: Computer Meltdowns and Room Service French Fries in an Apple-Dominated World — The Story of a Girl Who Hated Macs and Went to a Baptist Convention

Observed Scene

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:36:03 -0400

It’s 1:40 in the morning at McDonald’s on 27th and Vine, and three boys are hungry.

A high school kid clad in a Where’s Waldo beanie and thick rectangular glasses slouches next to the counter deciding what to order. Two of his baggy-jeaned, baseball-capped buddies shoot the breeze next to him, colloquialisms and curses rising spark-like from the cloud of their murmured conversation.

“Shut up, bro.”

“Fuck, dude.”

“Nawww, man.”

The teenaged cashier stares ahead with glazed eyes, speaking five words per customer, max. The boys are next in line.

And then they see her.

She’s a blonde, standing alone in front of them with her feet spaced too far apart to indicate sobriety. She turns at the sounds of their voices.

“Wait,” she says, eyes narrowed. “You’re not Joe.”

Apparently not. They eye the rear view of her tight jeans and nudge each other.

Blondie orders a McChicken and sits down at a booth in the middle of the restaurant. Five minutes later, the boys sit down a table away, and this time, she notices them.

“Where do you go to school?” she calls out.

They look down at their trays. Southeast, one of them says.

Turns out, Blondie doesn’t go for younger men. She says she’s in college — “a junior in my sorority.”

“How many of you can buy alcohol without someone having to go with you?” Blondie says. One of the guys raises his hand a little, then lowers it. Silence.

“You got a boyfriend?” Beanie asks.

Her boyfriend’s in line. He’s tall, dressed in a suede jacket and cowboy boots. He looks like he can buy his own alcohol.

Boyfriend strides to the booth and eyes the guys like they’re a half-empty case of Miller High Life.

“You guys better shut up,” he says. Girlfriend eats her McChicken as if it offended her, licking ketchup from her fingers. Boyfriend sits close, so their thighs touch.

Rejected, the boys move tables.

In the corner, an old man watches Fox News and reads the New York Times as he eats french fries. A redheaded McDonald’s employee with a tattoo at the nape of her neck shakes her head in my direction as she empties the trash can. Kids these days.

Initially, the scene appears to be over. My friend slides from the red plastic stool beside me to answer his ringing iPhone.

And then they see me.

Beanie comes over with his friend to throw away the straw wrappers on his tray.

“Tell this dude ‘no,’” he says to me, pointing at the kid with two glittery earrings and a matching smirk.

I smile, but keep staring at my notebook. Beanie looks like a character off ‘Malcolm in the Middle,’ I write in a scribble I’ll barely be able to read later.

“Hey,” Beanie sits down on the stool across from me. “You doin’ homework or something?”

Damn it.

I tell them I have an assignment to observe what I see at McDonald’s.

“Dude,” Beanie’s eyes light up, “she’s writing about us! Can I see it?”

We argue about the contents of my notebook for a minute until his friend butts in.

“So, you like white guys with beanies?”

“She has a boyfriend, dude,” the other chimes in.

I laugh, because the male friend I walked in with is gay.

“That’s not my boyfriend.”

Beanie takes this as an invitation. He gets closer. I notice his sweatshirt — emblazoned with a diamond and the words “All that glitters is gold.” His folded hands creep past his side of the tabletop.

“Why does it always have to be about boyfriend/girlfriend?” he grins. “We can just be friends. Can I see what you wrote?”

No. My friend re-enters the dining room to crows of “dude, that kid’s hitting on your girlfriend.”

He swears we’re not dating, but no one seems to believe us, probably because we were sharing a milkshake with two straws and I laughed at all his “Gossip Girl” jokes. Beanie, 0 for 2, jumps out of his seat but introduces himself before he goes. His name, it turns out, is Darien.

“It was nice to meet you,” he says, headed toward the bathroom.

“Dude, other way,” his friend laughs.

“Do that all the time,” Beanie says as he leaves, taking one last look back. The redhead shakes her head again as she sweeps. The old man flips the page of his newspaper. Beanie’s lace-up Vans squeak as he retreats into another Friday night, into a parade of just-a-little tipsy drivers heading home from fizzling parties, lonely street sweepers beginning their nightly routes and stars cradling the moon high in the sky.

My greatest flaw

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:08:19 -0400

Over a meal of Runza cheeseburgers and french fries late this morning, my best friend and I had a conversation about our flaws.

“Your biggest flaw — no offense — is maybe that you have trouble connecting to people,” he said.

Maybe a few months ago, I would’ve been offended. Today, I wasn’t. Because I know my friend is right.

I’m a shy person. Like countless other people everywhere, interacting with people I don’t know makes me uncomfortable. I remember the first time I realized I was shy, back in fourth grade when I transferred schools for the first time. Suddenly, I didn’t know the favorite games, dolls and ice cream flavors of all of my classmates. I couldn’t conjure up 5-year-old memories of my adventures on the playground with them. I didn’t know what to say to my new classmates. So I didn’t talk.

And sometimes, even 10 years later, I still feel like a fourth grader who’s new in school. I’ve gotten over what used to be debilitating shyness, but the trait is still a part of me. And I know it holds me back in journalism, a career that’s all about fostering connections with people you’ve never met.

I’ve been asking myself this question for a while now: Why do I want to be a journalist if I have the wrong personality for the job? Lately, I think I’ve come closer to my answer.

I don’t want to be a journalist because I’m good at connecting with people. I want to be a journalist became I see the value in those connections, however difficult they are to come by.

I don’t have an expansive circle of close relationships, but the ones I do have are the most important part of my life. To me, they are worth more than anything. I live for moments of true honesty with others: learning a secret, seeing tears fall from someone’s eyes, giving a loved one the understanding he or she desperately craves.

I want to be a journalist because it’s a career that forces me to confront my fears and better myself. I refuse to run away my flaws — I want a job that makes me look them in the face every day, until I’ve conquered them.

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/208701/why-its-still-a-good-time-to-be-a-young-journalist/

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 13:38:04 -0400

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/208701/why-its-still-a-good-time-to-be-a-young-journalist/:

Dallas Morning News reporter Scott Goldstein on “Why it’s still a good time to be a young journalist.”

"But ‘why’ questions are exhausting — they necessitate the reexamination of what..."

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 01:44:00 -0400

“But ‘why’ questions are exhausting — they necessitate the reexamination of what has, for better or for worse, been accepted, and they’re disruptive, and they often start fights.”

- Ron Suskind, The Price Of Loyalty

I wrote this article about immigration reform and the young...

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 13:10:00 -0400

I wrote this article about immigration reform and the young people it will affect. It ran in the Grand Island Independent today.

By Jacy Marmaduke

He remembers two black cars pulling up alongside a dusty playground in Chihuahua, Mexico. Two faceless drivers exchanging unheard words. A round of gunshots ripping a trail through the afternoon like Roman candles.

All the children froze. Twelve-year-old Juan Gallegos leapt from the rusted swing set and ran to the haven of the school, ducking beneath the window of a crowded classroom, breathing hard. Recess ended early that day.

It was 2001. The Mexican corn economy had collapsed, leaving Juan’s father with no buyers for his deli meats and cheeses — now deemed luxury products. There was no money for food, and drug violence rose like a murmur in a quiet room.

So the Gallegos family — Juan, his parents and two brothers — deserted the three-room house where Juan had learned to walk, making the 24-hour drive to America in a borrowed blue pickup. Although the family’s visitor visa expired within six months, they would never return to Mexico.

“When you have to feed a child, you’re going to do whatever it takes,” Juan said. “And crossing a border is a lot less than joining a drug cartel.”

The Gallegos family came to Hastings to lead a new life undocumented. For Juan’s parents, that meant working below minimum wage to strip fat from pig carcasses on an assembly line and repair machinery at the meatpacking plant, scraping to meet each month’s rent without federal aid. It meant relentless fear of deportation. It meant life in the shadows.

But that all could change for Juan and his brothers — at least temporarily.

President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy now offers young people such as Juan a chance to attain a two-year reprieve from deportation, a work permit and maybe even a driver’s license. However, the policy doesn’t offer Juan what he craves most: a path to citizenship.

“This is a critical step, and it’s going to make a huge difference in the short term for these young people. But at the end of the day, it’s not a long-term solution for them,” said Becky Gould, executive director of Nebraska Appleseed, a nonprofit law firm that works for justice and equal opportunity in the state.

A long-term solution, Gould said, would mean a complete turnaround in the immigration system. She said the system doesn’t recognize an increased need for workers in a country where meatpacking plants, textile factories and construction projects have increased tenfold in the past several decades.

For many prospective immigrants, there’s simply no line to stand in for legal citizenship.

“There’s a big hole in the middle of the system where, if you don’t qualify for a high-skilled business visa and you don’t already have family here with immigration status, there’s essentially no way for you to apply,” said Darcy Tromanhauser, Nebraska Appleseed’s program director for immigrant integration and civic participation.

The problem is, nobody seems to know about that hole.

“The (public) reaction usually is, ‘That’s crazy!’” Tromanhauser said. “’Why aren’t we doing anything about it?’”

Policy parallels DREAM Act

Obama introduced the deferred action policy in June, but the policy draws parallels with the DREAM Act, a bundle of proposed legislation that’s made congressional rounds every year since 2001 — and failed each time.

Versions of the DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act reflect a range of subtle differences, but the concept is the same for all: Certain young undocumented immigrants would have six years to obtain a college degree and become American citizens.

But for some, that proposal is more nightmare than dream.

“It completely undermines the role of law,” said Kristen Williamson, spokeswoman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a nonprofit that seeks to end illegal immigration and establish tighter quotas for legal immigration. “It sends the message that, as long as you get over the border and don’t commit any violent crimes, you’ll be granted amnesty and allowed to stay in the country.”

U.S. Sen. Mike Johanns voted against the DREAM Act twice in the 111th Congress, and he has publicly decried Obama’s executive directive as “blatantly ignoring the Constitution and the will of the Congress.” Gov. Dave Heineman said the state will continue to deny driver’s licenses to successful applicants because they are not “legal citizens.”

A learning, a dreamer

Cruising down Hastings Avenue in a yellow Ford Cougar his father restored, 23-year-old Juan Gallegos smiles when he notes the red brick building where he learned English.

He has always liked school. He walked from his first home, a studio apartment where he slept on a pull-out couch with his two brothers, to Hastings Middle School every morning and was always 30 minutes early.

In 2011, Juan graduated from the University of Nebraska Kearney with a multimedia degree — the first in his family to graduate from college. He wants to use the degree to manage his web and graphic design business, Conexion Bilingual Marketing & Printing. He also wants to work with social justice organizations and create an Internet presence for small businesses in Central Nebraska.

With money from his business, he could buy a house and support his parents, who still work at the meatpacking plant, and his brothers, who work on irrigation projects in the fields while saving up for college. But without citizenship, Juan can’t get a loan to fund his dream.

So, in the meantime, he works at odd jobs. He helps community members with web design in exchange for a cup of coffee or a Runza. He just finished an internship in Colorado with two gay and immigrant rights groups. He campaigns for immigration reform and attends conferences around the country with organizations such as United We Dream, a network of youth-led immigrant groups.

And in 2010, when the DREAM Act finally passed for the first time in the House of Representatives, no one was watching closer than Juan. He shouted, “Si, se puede,” (meaning “Yes, it is possible” or “Yes, we can”) in the streets of Grand Island with hundreds of other “Dreamers” marching for immigration reform. He watched the wind of public support fill the sails of a movement.

And then he watched as the DREAM Act failed in the Senate — by five votes.

Sitting in the familiar Blue Moon coffee shop in Hastings, Juan didn’t fight the tears.

“We’ve been living here for years and years, and you finally see a little window, and that window is closed by (five) votes.”

To cope, he started drinking — every weekend. At 21, he netted a misdemeanor for supplying alcohol to minors — a group of his drinking buddies.

“It was a low point in my life,” he said. “I know that’s not the person I am. I’m not a drunk.”

When the deferred action policy passed this year, the window that had closed in 2010 seemed to open again — if only by a crack.

“It wasn’t what we were looking for, but it was something,” Juan said. “It was hope.”

Public support needed

As the cycle of immigration influx and native backlash ebbs and flows, Nebraska Appleseed’s Gould said America has a lesson to learn: Change isn’t bad.

“This is the lesson we keep not learning,” she said. “Now is a moment for us to step forward as a country and say, ‘We’re not going to do this anymore.’”

The question for immigration reform isn’t how but when, Gould said. Lawmakers already have laid out most of the framework for reform, but Gould and Tromanhauser said both parties will have to work in unison to pass further legislation.

Eventually, public support could be the push the reform movement needs. A Bloomberg National Poll conducted in June showed 64 percent approval of the deferred action policy.

Jose Soto, vice president for Access, Equity and Diversity at Southeast Community College, said the public needs to hear the stories of undocumented immigrants who aspire to achieve legal status. As a Puerto Rican who came to Arkansas in the 1950s, when water fountains were still segregated by skin color, Soto said he identifies with the struggle of emerging from society’s margins.

“These are young people who are valedictorians and honor students and volunteers in hospitals and schools,” said Soto, who has a law degree. “They’re doing great things. We need to tell those stories.”

Waiting and hoping

And what about Juan’s story?

Soon, he will apply for deferred action. If he’s accepted, he can obtain a work permit to raise seed money for his business.

But he also has a traffic cone in the way of his future: a criminal record. The misdemeanor from two years ago wasn’t a violent crime, but it’s a smudge on his record all the same.

As for how that smudge affects his status, Juan will have to wait and see, just like thousands of other undocumented immigrants.

Meanwhile, he thinks of the youth immigration conference he attended at 21 that turned his life around, of meeting dozens of people with stories like his own. He thinks of the time he rallied in front of the White House, standing beside undocumented immigrants chained to each other in their caps and gowns. He thinks of the mobs of protestors dressed in white, gushing through the streets of Los Angeles, Denver, Grand Island, like water through a pipe. And he has hope.

“That’s maybe why we’re dreamers,” Juan said. “Because we’re willing to do a lot, even if it seems impossible. We’re going to look for ways to demonstrate that it’s not.”

——

About Deferred Action

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program offers undocumented immigrants — 30 or younger with a clean background and high school diploma who came here before they were 16 — a two-year reprieve from deportation and a work permit.

For some, it could mean the ability to attain a driver’s license. But the policy provides no path to citizenship.

President Barack Obama announced an executive directive to de-emphasize deportation of young undocumented immigrants in June, and the Homeland Security Department began accepting applications for the deferred action policy on Aug. 15.

As of mid-October, about 180,000 people had applied for the deferred action program, and about 4,600 had been approved, according to an Oct. 12 Washington Post article. No applications have been rejected, but the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will take about two months to reject an application.

The policy could apply to as many as 1.7 million people, according to Pew Hispanic Center research.

A note on moderators and my new minor

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 02:07:00 -0400

Who’s been watching all the presidential debates? Hope you raised your hand, even though that’s kind of a weird response to a question you read on a computer screen. Anyway, I watched the vice presidential debate in its entirety and the first and second presidential debates in pieces, but I don’t want to talk about the debaters.

I want to talk about the moderators.

I think we can all agree that Martha Raddatz absolutely killed it as moderator for the vp debate.

First, she kept firm control of the discussion — remember the way she steered the conversation to Iran with a no-nonsense “Let’s move to Iran”?

Second, if Jim Lehrer’s questions were sporks, Raddatz’s questions were spears — sharp, efficient, to-the-point. And she didn’t let either candidate get away without answering her queries, whether she sought the definition of Biden’s “stuff” euphemism or the exact math behind Ryan’s tax and budget plans.

That’s great journalism. Did she show some editorializing at parts of the debate? Sure. But she got her questions answered and she moderated a lively debate that was the cayenne pepper to the first presidential debate’s watercress.

You go, Martha.

And on another note: I’m declaring a political science minor. Not sure if I want to cover politics as a career, but I sure do love reading about them and I think a solid understanding of our government is essential for any journalist.

"The difference between journalism and literature is that journalism is unreadable and literature is..."

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 14:15:02 -0400

“The difference between journalism and literature is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.”

- Oscar Wilde (via parhelions)

"Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate."

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 16:15:27 -0400

“Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.”

- (via christopher-bush)

"To me, the core of that attraction is that she is a better reporter than he is. Think about being..."

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 11:58:41 -0400

“

To me, the core of that attraction is that she is a better reporter than he is. Think about being Superman for a second. The Olympic record for weightlifting is 1,038 lbs., but you could lift more than that as a child. The record for the 100 meter dash is 9.58 seconds, but you can travel over 51 miles in that time. Going to Vegas? You don’t need your X-Ray vision to win at Blackjack, because you can just count the cards while holding down a conversation about nuclear physics. Without really trying, you are better at just about everything than anyone else in the world.

However, (as Mark Waid once pointed out in a podcast with Marv Wolfman) none of that really translates to your chosen profession. Typing really fast does not help your prose. Being able to lift a tank does not help you convince a source to go on record. It is as near to competing straight up with normal people as Superman would ever be capable of. Even then, it comes easily enough to him that you get a pretty lofty perch at a great paper very early in your career. It is just in this one context, there is someone better than you are: Lois Lane.

As mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent, you reach up for the first time in your life and she rejects you.

To me, it is an inversion of the Luthor story. Luthor sees someone above him and feels hate. Superman sees someone above him and feels love.

”

- Dean Hacker, comment on “Giving Lois Lane A Second Look, For The First Time” by Kelly Thompson (CBR: She Has No Head!)

Unasked questions

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 03:29:00 -0400

It’s interesting to imagine what kind of material I might have if only I had the guts to ask those tough, uncomfortable follow-up questions. I’m transcribing some interviews right now and noting the parts where I really should have asked one or two more questions, but I didn’t because my source was a little shaken up, or I didn’t want to pry.

One opportunity was in an interview where a young man started talking about a drinking problem he developed a few years ago. I wish I had asked to hear more about that, but I stopped. He had already teared up a few times in the interview, and I didn’t want to put him through any more stress. But I missed out on what could have been a moment of honesty and vulnerability. I regret that.

The second instance, I was talking to an older man about segregation he experienced when he came to the US from Puerto Rico in the ’50s. For the first time in the interview, I felt that I was hitting on something more real and personal for this man. But I stopped, because he seemed a little uncomfortable. I was unsure.

It’s difficult to find the line between what is appropriate and what is necessary. In both of these scenarios, I believe I made the wrong choice.

My instincts told me to ask these questions, and I did not. One day, I will always have the courage to ask.

How to make a mistake

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 00:44:00 -0400

I don’t keep count of the mistakes I make, probably because I never learned to count that high. Sometimes they’re small: I get a little overeager with the red lipstick and creep toward Joker territory, or I forget to bring my notebook to my notes-heavy Microeconomics lecture. But sometimes, they’re a lot more significant than lipstick or spiral paper, and fixing them takes more than a tight-lipped trip to the bathroom mirror or borrowing supplies from a more-prepared neighbor.

When I make a big mistake, I can’t sleep that night. I can’t focus on work or play, preferring to cycle through a pathetic list of could’ve, would’ve, should’ves. When I make a big mistake, I never really forget it.

And if you’re like me, you’ve come to despise that falling feeling that comes along with the knowledge that you’ve done something really stupid.

Do you want to hear about the big mistakes I’ve made in journalism? I don’t care. I’ll save those horror stories for when we become best friends and start having actual conversations.

I will tell you this, though: They made me feel like absolute crap. But they weren’t as bad as I thought they were, and I learned something from all of them.

So here’s my guide to doing what I do best: making mistakes.

Step One: The Mistake.

Bummer, man. You accidentally wrote that there are 6 billion Muslims in the United States when you meant to write “million.” And is that 6 even correct? Don’t you know there are are only like 7 billion people in the world?*

You probably feel pretty silly. That’s OK though, because…

Step Two: Everybody Makes Mistakes.

Seriously, everyone. Now try not to freak out, and consider the insignificance of your blooper in the grand scheme of the majestic universe that you inhabit. Calm down.

Step Three: Correct Your Mistake.

Own up to what you did, and run a correction in your publication, even if it makes you look foolish to your superiors. Your job as a journalist is to get it right — preferably on the first try, but hey, shotgun skeet strategy is confusing.

Don’t apologize over and over again. One sincere apology to those affected is all you need before you’re verging on the border of self-deprecation, which is the unflattering mock turtleneck of the workforce.

You can’t go back and change what you did — if you can, please write in my ask box letting me know how you went about your discovery of time travel. But you can…

Step Four: Do Better Next Time.

[cliche] Mistakes happen, but you’ve got to learn from them. [/cliche]. This summer, I learned once and for all to ask question after question even if it makes you feel stupid. Otherwise, you’ll make a mistake. And you know how we feel about mistakes. Just a few days ago, I learned, hopefully for the last time, to be deliberate and careful in my editing.

That’s not to say you’ll never again let an inaccurate headline go to print under your watch or mistype a source’s last name. (Actually, I’m super careful about names since my freshman year mishap, so here’s hoping that will never, ever happen again.) But the memory of how much it sucks to make a mistake will fortify you for the future, and it should teach you to watch your own back. You can’t depend on copy editors to catch your slip-ups. You are your own best defense.

Four steps. Easy, right? Not exactly. It’s hard to get over a mistake when your own fear of mistakes is your predominant protection against the beasts. You’ve trained yourself — as you should — to loathe mistakes. You, as a journalist, should hate mistakes more than anyone else does. They make you look bad, they make your field look bad, they embarrass your subjects and your sources and they represent your failure to do your job.

But they happen, and they’ll happen a lot less often if you’re careful. Create a checklist for editing or writing, and use it. Learn to second-guess yourself when necessary. Assume that any fact, quote or attribution is incorrect until proven otherwise. What’s that saying? “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

Words to live by, for sure.

* OK, you caught me. All mistakes mentioned in this post are ones I have made. Now leave and never speak of this again.

"The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner,..."

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 12:22:13 -0400

“The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability. Other qualities are helpful but not diagnostic. These include a knack with telephones, trains and petty officials; a good digestion and a steady head; total recall; enough idealism to inspire indignant prose (but not enough to inhibit detached professionalism); a paranoid temperament; an ability to believe passionately in second-rate projects; good luck; the willingness to betray, if not friends, acquaintances; a reluctance to understand too much too well (because understanding means forgiving and that makes dull copy); an implacable hatred of spokesmen, administrators, lawyers, public-relations men, and all those who would rather purvey words than policy; and the strength of character to lead a disrupted life without going absolutely haywire.”

- Nicolas Tomlin, The Sunday Times, 1969 (via parhelions)

The Smackdown: Big city paper vs. Small town paper

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 21:02:27 -0400

Here’s a question I get a lot: “Would you rather work in a big city or a small town?” I’m sure the asker isn’t really interested in hearing me wax poetic on the finer points of my internal dilemma regarding this very question. (That’s what my blog is for.)

So we’ve got two fighters in the ring today. The big city paper is brawny beast of a work environment. Powerful and intimidating, sure, but ride with the big city paper and you’re guaranteed name recognition and a shot at glory.

The small town paper is smaller in stature, but don’t count it out. It can handle blows just like the big shot. Working for a small town paper could give you a chance to catch your breath and make a name for yourself in the meantime, if you play your cards right.

I have a little bit of experience working for both kinds. In 2011, I interned on the news and web desk at the Dallas Morning News, and this summer I interned as a news reporter for the Grand Island Independent. Each job had its positives and negatives. Let’s take this point by point.

1. Circulation:

The Dallas Morning News has an average daily circulation of about 260,700. The Grand Island Independent? About 20,500. Assuming you want more people to read what you write, the big city paper is the clear winner here.

2. Paper size:

Small town papers are, well, smaller — in both the size of the newspaper and its staff. A smaller staff is great because you get to know the people with whom you work (hopefully you like them). It sure does feel easy to get lost in the crowd at a bigger paper, and there’s a lot more competition amongst reporters.

When it comes to the size of the actual publication, fewer pages in the paper means more focus on local events and a greater chance of making the front page. At the GI Independent, about half of my articles were on page 1. At the DMN, I was lucky if I made the front page of the local section.

Is that really so important, though? Being on the front page is awesome, but I’d much rather be proud of my work and confident in its significance, no matter the page number. We’ll call this one a draw.

3. Pace:

The working environment of a big paper is just as quick-pace as the city to which it delivers the news. Same goes for small town papers. With less interest in online and convergence media and less competition from other news outlets, you can afford to take a breather at a small town paper. Eat lunch before you write up that school board meeting. Help another reporter with his or her story while you put your own on hold for half an hour. Just get everything in by midnight — or by the time your editor leaves.

That doesn’t mean the reporters at small town papers are lackadaisical about their work — the reporters I met at the GI Independent stayed at the office well beyond their 9 to 5 commitments tying up loose ends, following leads and finishing up their stories. There’s just a bit less pressure to put out content when you have little competition and a smaller range of coverage.

At the Dallas Morning News, every deadline was ASAP. In a full-time position, I’m sure that could get pretty stressful. But I’m the kind of person who thrives on a quick deadline, so I think big city wins on this point.

4. Content:

Big cities are hosts to higher crime rates, more politicians to complain about, and a lot more community events and issues to cover. The definition of “news” is arguably more strict than that used by a smaller paper, which has to reach for more features and community events to fill the pages.

But small towns are far from idyllic, and many communities sport their own ugly undersides when it comes to government and crime. Grand Island was no exception: The city was rife with issues regarding its lack of a fire chief, the forced resignation of an unpopular city administrator and growing ethnic diversity.

Stories are to be found everywhere. If you can’t find stories in a small town, you’re not looking hard enough. So we’re calling this one a draw too.

5. Commute:

I live in a suburb north of Dallas, and my daily commute to work last summer should have taken about 20 minutes each way. Instead, it took more than 40, and it would have taken an hour if I didn’t beat rush hour by about 30 minutes each day.

Dallas traffic sucks, and there’s no way to get around it unless you’re okay with arriving at the office at 4 a.m. The situation is a different shade of the same color for any big city.

In Grand Island, my commute took me 10 minutes. In fact, you could get most anywhere in the town in about 15. It goes without saying that small towns are also easier to get around in general, although if you’re like me, you’ll find a way to get lost wherever you are.

Regardless, waking up only 30 minutes before I had to be at work was really nice. Small town wins.

6. Environment:

This one is subjective: City or country? I say city. I like the open-mindedness, I like the public transportation, I like the culture and the food and the sheer variety of it all. I’d rather live in a city of 5 million than 50,000.

Tally it up: Big city paper is the clear victor, despite some of my qualms about getting lost in the shuffle and losing job security. Working for a larger paper is a bit intimidating because of the quicker deadlines and competition, but I dream of having a major impact on the face of journalism, and for the time being I believe working at a big city publication is the way to do it.

Of course I will apply for positions at smaller papers. I have a lot of respect for small town papers after this summer and I’ll work anywhere, no matter how small, as long as I can call myself a journalist. But next time I’m faced with that question of dream job preference, I think I’ll have an answer.

theatlantic: How to Change the Coverage of Mass Shootings In...

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 15:29:14 -0400

theatlantic:

How to Change the Coverage of Mass Shootings

In this clip from Charlie Brooker’s BBC show “Newspipe,” after the Winnenden school shooting in 2009, a forensic psychiatrist lays out guidelines for reporting on massacres without promoting new ones. The bullet points:

If you don’t want to propagate more mass murders:

Don’t start the story with sirens blaring.

Don’t have photographs of the killer.

Don’t make this 24/7 coverage.

Do everything you can not to make the body count the lead story.

[Don’t] make the killer some kind of anti-hero.

Do localise this story to the affected community and as boring as possible in every other market.

Read more.

This is interesting. Think I’ll write a blog post about it once I’ve done more research.

So, this is it.

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:26:43 -0400

My internship at the Grand Island Independent is over. I still have one more story running on July 23, though. After that, I will have had about 80 stories published.

I’m not done blogging, though! Still to come:

The Smackdown: big city paper vs. small town paper.
Looking back on my time at the Independent and looking forward to the coming year
How to earn respect when people still call you “kid” during interviews
And whatever else happens in the future. I’ll keep you guys updated as I take on editor duties for the Daily Nebraskan, continue to report, (hopefully) attain more internships and (fingers crossed) travel to do the work I love best.

Regardless, I’ll keep you guys posted. Thanks again for reading!

With 66 published articles in the Grand Island Independent, I have more than doubled my output from...

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 14:47:21 -0400

With 66 published articles in the Grand Island Independent, I have more than doubled my output from my internship last year. Hooray! There’s still a week to go. My number goal is 75, but I don’t really care if I reach it or not. Quality is more important.

In the wreckage

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 20:12:00 -0400

I reported on a fire for the first time when I was a junior in high school. It was for my school newspaper, a feature that our adviser suggested after he heard that a student’s house had burned to the ground a few months previously. (We weren’t exactly quick on the uptake at the Hebron High School Hawk Eye.)

I interviewed the student first, sitting at two desks in the middle of the hallway with my tape recorder running. It was one of those great interviews that can occur when connected with a traumatic event, when the subject, aware of the importance of all that happened, can recount every detail.

I don’t remember a lot about the interview, aside from a general sense of sorrow and confusion that remained even months after her home had been destroyed. I remember her attachment to the clothes that had burned in the fire, sort of the way a kid might feel about a lost stuffed animal.

And from my interview with the girl’s mother, I remember the tears. You never really forget tears.

I reported on a fire or two last summer, but nothing major. Nothing like the Miletta Vista fire.

It struck about 2 a.m. on June 23. The owners of Miletta Vista planted their winery as a seed five years ago, and what started out as a pipe dream grew into a popular winery known for its “fab four” most beloved wines and nearly 30 national and international awards. As the fire began to destroy it all, they were asleep on the property.

They say it’s the smoke, not the fire, that kills you. You fall asleep, but you don’t wake up. Mick and Loretta McDowell are sure that would have been the case for them if it hadn’t been for the calls from a group of local young men who saw the fire from the highway.

Thank God, they think. Thank God they’re alive.

But their winery was burnt to a mountain range of foot-tall rubble piles, ash covering it all like the first, powdery snow of a winter. Parts of the walls are still standing. Bottles upon bottles of prize-winning wine rendered undrinkable remain in their stacks. They found a few of their charred medals — who knows what color they used to be? — among the remains, the castaways that even the fire couldn’t touch. Metal wine racks, chunks of hard oak furniture, pieces of glass. So much glass.

And so many memories in those buildings. Family reunions, dinners, weddings. All gone.

The morning after the fire, a photographer and I drove to the scene, parked on the side of the highway and walked toward the wreckage. A pickup truck stopped us in our tracks.

“Who are you?”

I don’t remember what I said. Does it matter? I told the driver, who looked on the verge of tears, that we were with the Grand Island Independent, looking for the basic details of what happened.

He told us to go away.

“Don’t report on this today,” he said. “There was a fire. That’s all you need to know.”

So we retreated. I got my information from the police, from bystanders, from what we could see of the property from the highway. I wrote a brief.

The following Monday, my editor assigned me to a follow-up story on the fire. But there was still no news on the cause, and all the numbers we found for the owners of the winery were disconnected, of course.

I told my editor I didn’t have anything for him. I told him the only option left would be to go to the winery and hope someone would be there and willing to talk. So go, he said.

To be honest, I didn’t really want to go. I kept thinking of the young man in the pickup truck. I felt like a vulture.

But I went anyway, because the staff videographer was hoping to get some footage, and I don’t make a habit of not doing things that my superiors suggest.

Anyway, I figured there could be a good story here.

As we walked toward the property, we saw a small cluster of people standing beside a pickup truck, and we heard laughter. A good sign.

This time, the staff was willing to talk to us, and they thanked us for waiting on the story until a few days had passed. I saw the young man I’d talked to the other day standing behind the truck. I blushed.

I’d been expecting a few of my questions answered, at best, but Mr. McDowell began to tell me the full story of what had happened, the story told with that special detail of a recounted tragedy that I mentioned earlier.

I think the best thing about the McDowells, about all the staff I talked to, is that they’re very hopeful. They’re rebuilding their business, they feel fortunate to have been spared, and most importantly, they have confidence that their winery will survive this setback.

It was a wonderful interview, and a sad one. This will make me sound like some kind of weird journalism robot, but it is always a strange relief for me to hear the details of a story, to wedge my way in and find the path to recreating it.

It’s crucial to recreate stories of seemingly everyday tragedies with emotion and accuracy so people will understand their magnitude. People ignore disasters and tragedies because they seem far away. Remove yourself from the event enough, and you don’t have to be scared. You can forget about it. You can even laugh at it.

But I don’t want anyone to forget about the bad things that happen in the world. Or the good ones, either. That is why I tell stories.

The problem, though, is that this motive isn’t what comes to mind when the victim of a fire, a tornado, a flood, sees a person approaching with a notepad or a camera.

Instead, they see us as vultures. We are here to suck the shock value from the event that has ruined or drastically affected their lives, then spit the juice out on a TV screen or newspaper so the public can get a short-lived high from their tragedies. We are sick and heartless.

Who can blame them for wanting people like me to go away? I know how we appear to them.

So I have to be careful and considerate. We all do. We have to give them time, we have to do the best job we can explaining our motives. We have to gain their trust with only a first impression.

We have to give them reason to let us in. They will never let us in without a good reason, whether we’re the ones who give it to them or not.

Sometimes, our methods, our explanations, and our waiting work. Sometimes we get the story. And sometimes, we don’t.

It’s not easy. But it’s what we do.

(photo by Denton Cushing) Here’s a feature I wrote on...

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 00:25:00 -0400

(photo by Denton Cushing)

Here’s a feature I wrote on Miletta Vista, a popular winery near Grand Island that burned down in a still-unexplained fire last week. Planning a blog post on this, but here’s the article for now.

ST. PAUL — In a matter of hours, the fire that started in the northeast corner of Miletta Vista winery early Saturday morning took away all of the buildings on the site. It took away the owners’ home, hundreds and hundreds of bottles of wine and almost all of the medals they’d saved from nearly 30 awards in wine competitions in the past three years.

But it couldn’t take the view.

Standing on the winery’s patio off Highway 281 and looking out at the rolling hills, you could almost pretend the piles of ash and rubble splayed between the remnants of walls aren’t there. Listening to the whistling song of the meadowlark hiding in the trees, you could almost banish the smell of the smoke from your consciousness. Just don’t look to your left.

Owners Mick and Loretta McDowell don’t know how the fire started. Neither does the St. Paul Fire Department — yet.

For the McDowells, the story began a little later, when they were awakened at 2 a.m. by the ringing of their phone and pounding on their front door. In a sleepy haze, Mick thought the calls might be a prank. But the caller, St. Paul native Brandon Nowak, knew Mick and Loretta’s names. Nowak and friends Remington Smith, Mathew McCarty and Kyle McClary had noticed the fire from the highway.

The fire department arrived within five minutes, Mick estimated, but it was too late. High-speed winds fanned the flames across the structure. There was no hope.

“Once it got in the roof, it was like a chimney,” he said.

It took six hours and six fire departments to put out the blaze, and hot spots continued as late as Sunday afternoon. The McDowells saved a few pieces of equipment — tractors, trucks, a lawn mower — and not much else.

The funny part, Mick said, is that many of the wine bottles remain. The fire didn’t melt the glass, and the liquid inside is intact. Not that it can be safely consumed. Not that the business hadn’t lost years of work harvesting, pressing and bottling overnight.

It might be hard to look at the rubble that remains of a five-year-old business, the product of a Nebraska couple’s long-held dream, and have hope. But at 4 a.m. Saturday, Paul Perske, who works in sales for the winery, did just that.

“Paul here burst his way through and said, ‘I think we can rebuild it,’” Mick said. “I said, ‘OK, Paul. I’ll let you do my thinking for me this morning.’”

And now, Mick and Loretta have hope, too. They plan to rebuild, with the help of their staff and the community. Soon, the insurance company will evaluate the damages, which the McDowells hope will all be covered. The couple is on the lookout for low-cost equipment and storage so they can harvest the grape crop in about a month and set about doing what they do best: making wine.

“We’ve worked hard for five years — I suppose five more years won’t kill us,” Mick said.

The McDowells have seen an outpouring of community support since the fire. Friends and community members have bought them breakfast, left encouraging Facebook and phone messages and offered them places to stay.

“We’ve got a lot of people praying for us,” Mick said. “And quite honestly, without that, I don’t think we’d be as stable as we are. God keeps taking the circumstances, and everybody’s just keeping them away.”

Fans have bought nearly all of the Miletta Vista wine available at its 175 retailers, from Grand Island to Kearney to Lincoln. Winery sales agent Linda Goettsche was on the phone with her sister when she asked her if there were plans to rebuild. When Goettsche said yes, her sister’s co-workers began to cheer.

“You could hear them clapping and hooting and hollering,” Goettsche said. “I said, ‘Yes. We’ll be back.’”

For now, the McDowells are staying in a motel and assessing the damage. They’ll spend the rest of the week with their employees, determining what equipment can be salvaged. Aside from about 65 cases of wine in storage off-site, no wine will be for sale for at least three to four months. In the meantime, Miletta Vista’s “fab four” top sellers — Edelwiess, Brianna, Workhorse and Cougarlicious — will be missed.

Still, the McDowells feel lucky. Twenty, thirty minutes more asleep in their bed, and they said they likely wouldn’t be here to plan the next move for the business.

“It could have been so different,” Loretta said. “It’s humbling.”

Right now, they’re looking for the positives. Such as the community support. Such as the handful of charred medals that remain in the ashes of the fire. Such as the view.

“It’s sad, but there’s four seasons to a year and many seasons to a life,” Mick said. “This is one of the seasons God’s given us. You just keep going. You have no other choice.”

Look at this! I authored four of the five most popular stories...

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 19:02:38 -0400

Look at this! I authored four of the five most popular stories on the Grand Island Independent website right now.

This week has been great. More later.