The Interviewing Process

One of the most challenging aspects of taking Writing and Reporting the News I has been the interviewing process.  One of my other journalism professors at the moment is Tom Haines, and he described this class as "Meeting Strangers 101."  I agree with him 100 percent.  The first week of the class we were thrown right into the news writing process, which can at times be a bit frightening, especially if walking up to strangers and proceeding to ask them questions isn't one of your strong suits.  I am a naturally shy individual but have taken advantage of this opportunity to get out of my comfort zone.  In fact, I even feel a bit empowered interviewing someone as a journalist.  I gain courage from this persona.  Although interviewing can be tough for me, I love the writing process, and when I sit down at my laptop it feels like Christmas Day as I giddily pour over all the presents I've received in the form of interview notes.  I relish the chance to piece together the comments of disparate individuals into one coherent piece all tied together through a common theme.  I have found that discovering sense out of the chaos of my notes and piecing together these stories has become my favorite part of the process.  While getting these notes is still a bit of a struggle, I know that this crash course in meeting strangers will be great practice for me and help me immensely in my future endeavors. 

Ann Curry

Recently journalist Ann Curry was the first Western journalist to interview the new president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, an important achievement due to the historically tense relations between Iran and the West.  Most likely Rouhani picked Curry because she is known to be a fair journalist and has had a long, well-publicized career in American journalism.  His trust in her, a trust he showed to her even before our own president, illustrates something key that can only be found in journalism.  As journalists, we have the power to be mediators.  To be the unbiased intermediary that gets both sides of the story in order to create a verified, understandable version of events that strives for truth.  While Curry obviously has allegiances to the United States, she interviewed Rouhani in a fair and leveled manner, giving him the opportunity to answer for some of the wrongs of his predecessor (or at least those of us in the West would consider them as such).  It would have been easy to get in an argument with such a man for saying that he is "not a historian" when asked if he believes the Holocaust didn't happen.  However, Curry is there not to argue or to get angry at the man but to be an observer, someone who brings back the important information we as citizens need to know in order to understand the world around us.  And that is why now more than ever we need accurate, unbiased journalists in such a globalized world. 

Chimp Shenanigans

Police Officer Susan Smythe first noticed that something was suspicious when she saw a Lexus with Wyoming license plates pull out of the parking lot of the Tin Palace on Tuesday night without its headlights on. 

She followed it up Madbury Rd, and, as the car began to dangerously weave down the street, she pulled it over, expecting to find a typical, belligerent drunk. 

But, when she peered into the window, what she found seated in the driver’s seat instead was less than human: a chimpanzee with a mischievous, toothy grin.

            “I nearly fainted!” Smythe exclaimed.  Not only did she find the chimpanzee to be the one operating the vehicle, but also she noticed banana peels all over the passenger seat of the car.

            The chimp, whose name is Oliver Twist, appears to have driven the stolen Lexus all the way from Wyoming to Durham in two days after escaping from the Wyoming Zoo.  Durham police are still trying to figure out the details of how the chimp managed to pull off this feat. 

            Police Chief Bo Diddley said that the chimp keepers at the Wyoming Zoo in Lander noticed Oliver Twist had escaped Saturday morning.  The following day the owner of the Lexus who lives in Cheyenne, Wyo. reported his car stolen.

            Currently the chimp is being held indefinitely at the Durham Zoo.  Smythe said after she discovered the chimp Tuesday night she called the zookeeper out of bed to come transfer him to the zoo.  

However, the question still remains how a three-year-old chimp managed to escape his enclosure in the Wyoming Zoo, which is something zookeepers there are currently investigating.  

Also, Chimp Expert Joe Brown said that while chimps are very fast learners, he does not think a chimp could have driven the almost 2,000 mile journey from Wyoming to New Hampshire without experiencing a traffic accident.

            “It’s definitely possible for a chimp to learn how to drive,” Brown said. “But I doubt that at his young age he could have been taught how to drive safely or even how to follow the rules of the road.  I think in this instance something seems fishy.  This chimp would have needed some help.”

            Brown also mentioned that it would have been highly unlikely that the chimp could have unlocked the car without direct access to its keys.

            How the chimp managed to get the keys is unknown, and the owner of the Lexus could not be reached for comment at this time.   

Bicycling in the Netherlands

This afternoon I read a very interesting article in the Boston Globe about bicycling in the Netherlands and how integral it is to daily life there.  What I liked about the article was that it illuminated a quirky part of the life and culture of another country while at the same time showing how it relates to life at home by comparing the bike friendliness of the Netherlands to that of Boston.  I think that is key.  In journalism you have to make your readers understand why what you are talking about is important.  It is the "so what?" question that Sandy is always asking us.  In this case, the journalist related what's going on in the Netherlands to a pertinent topic of discussion in Boston.  Indeed, it illustrated how engineers in the Netherlands design their cities so there are less accidents on bikes (the rate of getting killed on a bike in the Netherlands is one of the lowest in the world), and it used these ideas when it transitioned over to the discussion of how to make Boston a more bike friendly city.  I would love to write articles in the future about traveling to places in Europe and elsewhere and I think this article was a great example of how a journalist can make something seemingly specific to a far away country actually important to the people back home.

The article: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/09/21/bicycling-dutch-way/kFRT0ABSPtUnXMIUj5zONM/story.html

NBC Nightly News

Last night I was watching NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams and one part of the newscast especially caught my attention.  They were covering the recent debacle of the U.S. government threatening another “shutdown” if they cannot reach a deal on the budget.  This threat of a shutdown has happened before, and a tone of exasperation seemed to be very potent in correspondent Chuck Todd’s reporting of the news and in his interaction with the anchor, Brian Williams.  This struck me as interesting because it was obvious they were trying to relate to the audience, a public who is fed up with the current sluggishness of the U.S. government to get seemingly anything done.  However, I was a bit surprised how they were so cavalierly illustrating their own bias against the ineptitude of the government because usually these newscasts seem to be pretty even-handed and illustrate both sides without any sort of bias.  This made me wonder if having such a tone should really be acceptable in straight-journalism newscasts.  I understand why they did it; almost everyone is feeling frustrated with the government at the moment and they want to get more ratings by seeming attuned to the public’s frustrations as opposed to being an outdated, just-the-facts type news organization.  However, I wonder if this is appropriate in the sense that it does not corroborate with the traditional definition of journalism. 

The Daily Show and 24-Hour News Media

Tonight I was just watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, a comedy show, which skewers both politicians and the media.  On this particular show they addressed how the three major news networks – Fox, MSNBC, and CNN – covered the shooting in Washington D.C. this week.  Because they are 24-hour news networks, they have a lot of time to fill, and Jon was illustrating that during incidents like the shooting these networks go a little crazy trying to fill airtime with trivial descriptions and ludicrous conjectures.  I thought this segment of The Daily Show brought up a whole host of pertinent questions vital to journalism and media in today’s age, but the one that struck me the most is what standards should journalists strive for in this day and age?  This interested me because Jon pointed out that many people on CNN especially were making wild conjectures about the shooter without many or, at times, really any facts to back up these theories.  Also, the day of the shooting I was looking at Twitter and noticed that even news sources like The Boston Globe were reporting that there were three shooters, when really, by the time the 6:00 p.m. news aired, it was revealed there was only one.  This idea of news outlets needing to compete to get out news first is a bit disturbing to me and one that forgoes much of the verification process.  It’s an idea I’d like to follow and look into more in the future.     

The clip of the show can be viewed here: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-17-2013/wrongnado

Reading the Boston Globe

Reading the Boston Globe regularly has been a thought-provoking experience for me and I believe it has improved my journalistic literacy.  I have noticed how many top stories open with a lead including all of the pertinent facts and how the paragraphs in most stories are short and to the point and flow smoothly from one source or quote to another.  I have read stories about everything from fast food workers’ strikes to Tokyo succeeding in becoming the host city for the 2020 Olympics to the unfolding crisis in Syria.  What I have found about reading the newspaper is that the stories go into a lot more depth than news stories on television, which was my main source of news before this class.  For example, one Sunday the Globe had its page one story about Obama asking Congress to vote on what should be done in Syria.  Not only did they have this story, but also they had related stories about what Putin had to say about the situation and how Syrian-Americans were protesting against US involvement.  Also, the articles included more local points of view, like from Boston congressmen.  Overall, through reading the Globe I have been getting a fuller picture of the news.

How I am adapting to writing the news

So far I’ve had to work at a couple aspects of my writing style while transitioning to news writing, but I enjoy that it forces the writer to be succinct.  I have had to edit my articles a lot through deleting miscellaneous words that aren’t necessary such as “that” and changing phrases like “she went on to say,” to just “she said.”  However, I think this editing process that is integral to news writing is helping me to become more economical with my words and making me a better writer in the process.  Also, I’ve enjoyed trying out different kinds of leads and I especially like writing leads that include word play.  The stories I have written haven’t been especially urgent news stories, so I have tended to include the six W questions in the “nutgraf,” as it calls it in our textbook.  Something that has been hard for me is wrapping up my stories because I tend to try to make a conclusion like in a literary paper, but in the future I am going to try to get myself to stop the article in the most succinct way possible.

The UNH outdoor pool story: why it's news

This week I wrote my article about the debate surrounding the UNH/Durham community outdoor pool.  I had heard a lot about this debate over the summer because my mother is a Durham town councilor, and the town council has been involved in this issue as representatives of the community.  I believe that this story is news because it includes conflict, impact, immediacy, proximity, and emotions.  It has conflict because UNH may get rid of the current pool, which according to UNH has a significant amount of deficiencies in health and safety, in order to create a new one, something a good amount of Durham citizens are not pleased about.  It has impact because it matters to readers whether the pool will be changed since the current one has been such an integral part of the Durham community for almost 100 years.  It has proximity because it is a very local issue, and it has emotions because many Durham residents have fond memories of this pool and it means a lot to so many who saw their children grow up at the pool.