The money question

Your reflections and responses on the shells project have been incredibly valuable, gang. Thank you for the insights and honesty.

One small piece of background I want to correct, just for the record as it were, is the apple and oranges nature of the money vis a vis Joe and Bright Tree.

First: We had not settled on a final fee, so, although the math might work from an earlier proposal, it doesn't account for final negotiations.

More important: We could not have used that money to fund the Missourian deficit or other day to day operations costs. The Reynolds Journalism Institute grant was specifically for experiments, not operations.

Minor points, I know, but just wanted to mention it.


Tom

Invisible Fruition (i.e. we did our part, but to what ends)

After class on Wednesday I went home and slept for three hours. I wasn’t sure if it was the exhaustion I had from staying up until 2 a.m., because of the city council meeting on Monday or if it was from staying up a little later on Tuesday to finish a final paper, but I feel like the news about the shells project was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was pretty shocked when I heared the news and I still have mixed feelings about the whole project. In many ways it helped me to reinforce some management skills I learned in London and I was really excited when I felt like things were actually going to be finished at the end of the semester. But to be quite honest after Wednesday I felt like I could have written three or four more articles, had another beer with a friend as this is my last semester, and could have taken more time to simply get a workout in or a few more hours of sleep. In my state of shock and exhaustion I simply had to sleep.
I also would like to say that I don't feel angry, I simply feel disappointed and shocked. I usually don't like getting angry because it isn't very productive, just dissapointed.


Finally, what about the whole idea of the shells project?

In terms of the whole idea about the shells project I think it is an awesome idea and in the future. I think it would be an awesome opportunity to possibly get a couple Missourian print reporting and design students, one or two Broadcast students, some convergence students, and a couple photo-j majors to colaborate on a shells project.


Was it worthwhile?

The shells project was worth it, despite my current dissapointment and frustration. I would like to have something to show an employeer or graduate school to show that I did project manage something that reached frution.
I would say that it was worthwhile as a learning experience and a practice in humility, as I often forget that I can’t control everything.

What, if anything, did you learn?

I learned that if this is the direction that news is going it is going to be a tough jugling act to move journalist in this direction.
I learned that not all projects that I work on in my lifetime will reach fruition, and sometimes for reasons out of my control.
I learned that not everyone on a team is motivated to get the work done, but I also should work on my delegating skills and trusting others.



Would you do it again?

I would do it again, but with stipulations. That is all I will say on that matter.

What would you change?

I would have divided people up into teams based on their knowledge and motivation before the project started. I think this would have been beneficial, because we could ensure that there would be smaller groups, and the individuals in those groups would be deciding on a topic/focus that was truly of their own interest.


What would you keep?

Exactly what I am taking away…enthusiasm, team work, and humility.

Almost over

This semester has gone by way too fast. I can't believe that I'm going into my last week of reporting. Like Matt, I am facing a very long week at the capitol, but I'm really exciting to see what comes out of the legislature. I've learned so much about reporting and state government and now I see everything through a new lens. I have definitely had to leave my comfort zone by being on the state government beat. Politics are very tricky. You really have to learn how to read between the lines, and dig through all the crap to get to the story.
I really appreciate having the opportunity to be in a class with reporters of such caliber. The conversations that were had in the classroom were always intriguing and really made me think outside of the box. Everyone brought something to the table and I learned from all of you. I can't wait to see where we all will end up.
The shells project was a great opportunity for me. I got to work with reporters from different backgrounds and experiences. Paul has been amazing at organizing and he has helped me out a lot through the process (Thanks). I am glad that I had the opportunity to take part in such an innovative project. I definitely had to learn a lot about Columbia, shells, and online layout. There are so many things that you have to consider when creating a shell, and I'm glad we got to explore some of the options.
For next time, I would have like to be more specific. We started off with such a huge idea, and so little time. We bit off more than we could chew, but in the end we were able to get it together. Also meet more than once a week. With everything else going on in the newsroom, it's hard to stay on task when we don't get to meet often.
I don't know if it was all worth it. I enjoyed the experience, but I would like to see what it is like once it is published. To me, it is only worth it if it is useful to the people. If it's not, then maybe we should try something else.
Thanks everyone! It's been amazing

One Final Thought

Obviously, I feel disappointed by the end of this semester. The thought of devoting this much time to something that fell through is truly disheartening but it wasn't the first time this type of thing happened to us, and I doubt it will be the last time it will happen.
I questioned several times during the semester who would take up the shells mantle when we left. It is still my question. The way I understood it, these shells will still happen, and that's good. But, with the databases that we have put together, there will need to be people behind us to keep them up, even over the summer until these go up.

In the end, I learned several skills I didn't know I had. I feel that I have learned that I work well with others, and my work with some of the younger reporters during the semester, I feel I can get the most out of people, which is nice. I have had the opportunity to work on my own and with others this semester, and I learned a great deal of patience.
With hindsight, it is easy to say that the shells took away from our work with the editors. I think that is true. But at the same time, the work we did on shells and the things we learned from it are important.
I am not upset that I was able to do this. And I might do it again, but I feel that the one on one work we do with our editors is important and what most of us sign up for this class. Another class should be set up to work on shells and keep up with them.
Just my opinion.

Final Blog Post

While a lot of people are winding down, I will probably have the most difficult week of reporting in the semester in the upcoming week. Like college students, state legislators wait until the last possible moment to get anything done, and our finals week happens to coincide with their last week of the General Assembly. So I will be spending a lot of time in Jefferson City this upcoming week as everything winds to a close, often staying in the Capitol until late at night. This semester has probably been the most difficult for me since I've been at school, between juggling about 15-20 hours a week reporting, 15 hours a week at a job that pays me, and a full workload of five classes. I enjoyed our Wednesday course a lot, though I started to get dicey toward the end of the semester. Reporting in Jeff City was pretty enjoyable, aside from a 2 week stretch in which I didn't get nearly as much accomplished as I should have.

As for the Shells project, I'm working on an end-of-General-Assembly environmental piece that should go along with a lot of the other end-of-General-Assembly things I'll be doing the next week. Hopefully, when the project does go up, that will be able to replace my billtracker.

Was the shells project worthwhile- Like many others have said, I think making the shells project into its own course might be the best course of action from this point forward. Recruiting a group of web developers, reporters and editors and having them work together would be an interesting experiment and one that might be preferable to paying a company like Bright Tree and leaving the project in their hands. I think anyone in the Advanced Reporting Class is going to have enough on their table to begin with, and adding a huge undertaking like this, in addition to our regular beat, has high burn-out potential. After all, we're getting 3 credit hours.

What did I learn- I learned a pretty good deal about the energy process in the General Assembly in doing my profiles and bill tracker. One of the most interesting things I learned was that while most people have a positive reaction to Green issues, there are a lot of things that go into alternative energy, and it's not as savory as a lot of people think.

Would I do it again- I can't honestly say. I will probably not look into reporting as a career path and tend to have a lot more passion for the political process than journalism. I can say that reporting on things other than politics is pretty excruciating for me and I've never had a lot of passion for it. I've gained a lot of good experience in Jeff City in the two semesters I was down there, so I can't say for certain I wouldn't do it again this semester. But it was a lot to put on our table for a career that I'm now pretty certain I'm not going to go into.

What would I change- I would have liked to work on a topic that I was more knowledgable about, and I'd have liked for there to be a clear message on how much time we should spend on the shells in comparison with our regular beats. If I had a choice between doing something for my beat and doing something for the shells, I'd likely pick my beat just about every time. It's nothing against the shells project, I just have more passion for and a lot more invested in my original beat.

What would I keep- The class discussions were very good and I feel as if we had a great group of reporters. Tom is a great teacher and someone I have a lot of respect for, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to get in the Columbia newsroom a bit more this year. The shells projects was a great idea, but one that's difficult to accomplish with a small amount of reporters with virtually no free time.

Lets use the $18,000 for a bar tab

Was it worthwhile?
Despite the obvious disappointment that the shells project will not be published in the near future, I am not as upset as some other people may be. It is nice to have an end result to ones work, not only so you have something to work towards, but also so you can prove to others how smart and productive you are. Unfortunately, the shells project is not the amazing, interactive, world-of-journalism-changing marvel we may have wanted to create, but that does not mean it was not worthwhile or that our effort went nowhere. This may be more for the Green Group, but stories were written for the print edition of the paper that may have never been researched otherwise.

What did you learn?
I learned that an outline helps. My biggest regret is how much time we wasted at the beginning of the semester while trying to figure out exactly what we were doing. While Bright Tree disappointed us, we did not get focused early enough to give us time for unforeseen issues. There will almost always be issues in our profession that will be out of our control that will keep us from doing our job, but planning and even expecting those will minimize the effect of those problems. It is hard to count on others to get your work done, and we have to, but by getting our work done much earlier and having a clear focus, we would have had time to adjust our plans, which we unfortunately do now not have time to do.

Would you do it again?
Yes. Like I said about planning, the project itself was not the problem. Despite not knowing anything about Web design and having a large portion of the project completed by someone outside the paper, this project was something I really liked. Doing something new and on a large scale is not an easy task, but something I think we should be able to accomplish by now

What would you keep?
Having smaller groups would help clarify everyones roles, and not put too much pressure on one member to combine and manage everything (I think Paul will agree.)

What would you change?
The balance between our roles of reporter and shells reporter was never clarified, and it felt like the shells was added work instead of a part of the reporting job. I think our editors need to be brought in our the project from the get go, and the first 2-3 weeks of the semester should be used to lay out plans. Hitting the ground running at the beginning of the semester would set the right tone and also give time at the end of the semester if we run into problems.

Selling sea-shells by the sea shore?

Overall, I learned a lot from the shells: how to work in a group, manage a back-out schedule, how to carry a concept through to (near) completion.

But I really think we were trying to sell our shells by the seashore. Towards the end of the semester, as we were trying to explain this concept to our sources and other interested parties, we began calling it a special section or an in-depth web report. We resorted to standard newsroom language instead of differentiating our concept. In essence, we boiled this down to something newspapers have been doing for a long time, not something new. There are usually shells on a sea shore. There are usually special sections in newspapers.

As we moved forward with the shells projects, we forgot the brainstorming session in the beginning of the semester. We decided shells had depth and focus, community involvement and episodic updates, multimedia and narrative. It was a combination of form and function, all working harmoniously together to add layer upon layer to typical newspaper reporting. It was an ultimate service to the readers who cared about the topics. The old adage SHOW DON'T TELL was supposed to take on a whole new meaning.

But did it? I think both groups kept focus in mind. From my understanding of the growth shell, they were make development visual. The multimedia was interesting, graphics were strong. But I always envisioned shells as participatory, like the moral compass. I thought it was forum for community voices, fostering community conversation, if you will. Discussion boards were a large part of our concept when we first brainstormed the green shell. Getting profiles and people online was a goal. Who would moderate the conversation? Would anyone be assigned to do it? What would happen to this shell after we were gone? No one knows. Because we envisioned the shells as an ongoing enterprise, this question was a killer and lead us back to the safe ground of calling it a special section. A shell is an ongoing project that needs weekly updating, someone to monitor the discussion and ask new questions, a blog or two, someone to develop new and specific content that fit within the diagram concept. The shell needs an employee.

Most of realized the shell wouldn't be exactly what we wanted because of the limits of working within standard newsroom procedures. We have to monitor the message boards in case something is libelous or in bad taste. We can't update it with only news that goes into our standard product because then there's nothing to make it any different than an archive of all stories related to green issues. We need to keep on top of the news, update it, make people want to keep coming back. It's a project that should be affiliated with the newspaper, but not dependent on the newspaper.

You're not likely to make much money selling sea shells on the sea shore because people can go find their own. Similarly, you're not going to attract many dedicated readers if they know they can look at the primary product and get all of the same information. If we were going to make this a successful project, we needed to sell our shells in the desert, in the tundra, in the mountains. It needs to be different enough that it doesn't look like it's just a special section. It needs devotion, nurture and a caretaker.

So would I do it again? Yes, if I was employed to work for the shell and the shell only. If I could monitor and update, blog and report. I'd want my team too. I'd keep our concept and build all of the areas we just could not do this semester. I'd add more maps and numerical information. I'd make it more interactive. I think it's a worthwhile concept for newspaper because I think our passionate readers would love the additional depth and context. You give them a place for their passion and a way to connect with others.

Why would anyone by a shell? Because they associate it with a memory. Why would anyone visit a web shell? Because they are passionate about the topic.

No Surprise Here

At the end of the packets Joe brought to a Growth Group meeting in April, he had listed the number of hours of work and the amount the Missourian was paying him.

100 hours. $9,000. For just our group.

For a moment, I put aside the $90/hour rate he was getting, and just focused on the hours. I multiplied 100 by two (we have two groups), and then divided by about 30 days (the time he had until his mid-May deadline).

I came up with maybe 6 or 7 hours of work. Each day, every day, including weekends.

To put it kindly, I didn't understand where those hours were coming from — I never saw his job as that labor-intensive. I spoke about it with two or three of my classmates. I ranted about it the following morning with a former K-12 beat reporter over breakfast. It came up in a conversation with my father, my editor, my climbing partner, on a date...

It didn't help that this page detailing his pay followed an entire page devoted to web jargon about the "implementation" of a link box. I wasn't impressed. If we wanted a link box, we could use Wordpress. For free. Google API is also available to us. For free.

Why do I care? This money was extra, it wasn't coming out of my course fee, it was earmarked.

I put so much work into the Missourian, that it physically hurts to see resources being wasted.

Despite all of this, never ever did I raise my concerns about Joe and BrightTree in class, or with Tom.

I did suggest that on the peer evaluations we evaluate BrightTree. I hoped that we could voice our concerns there. Turns out, it was too late.

I hope this experience leads to the following change: Though we are students, we WORK at the Missourian, and it is our tuition, not subscription and advertising revenues that keeps this daily going. There needs to be a way for us to voice concerns about the people we work with, without fear of offending someone.

THE QUESTIONS:
Was it worthwhile? No. I learned and did little compared to what I could have accomplished had I been allowed to focus on beat reporting.

What, if anything, did you learn? To trust my perceptions more. I'm not sure yet if I've learned to report those perceptions to the group in hopes of change, or to use them to selfishly protect myself.

Would you do it again? No. Creating a searchable resource for the community is important. But I'd like to choose to do that by taking a course in it. Having it posed to me again and again as what I have to do instead of reporting was painful.

What would you change? Let me report. Make me innovate and lead within my beat in Advanced Reporting. Let me take a Shells class if I choose.

What would you keep? The class discussions and the blog. Especially a longer discussion about whether our J-school creates foot soldiers or leaders. And how we can take reporting beyond the traditional. We should have read more on the theory of journalism than spinning our wheels on shells.

Frustratingly Left in Limbo

I have to say, the last week has left me pretty tuckered out. There's nothing like some angered faculty to get you parked at the paper for a few 12-14 hour days. Throw in all the projects, etc. that come with the end of class, and you get the idea, having experience it all yourselves, too. Needless to say, I thought the meeting was a very positive experience, both as a reporter who has had to sit through some very sparsely attended faculty meetings, and as a student who had always wondered at times about the faculty's overall interest (or lack thereof) in the big picture on campus. It was good to see that all academic units aren't always so self-contained. I thought both articles turned out very well, especially the meeting coverage last night. I've gotten good feedback on them too, from both sides of the battle line. As for next week, we may have a follow on a comment from the meeting about the AAUP, and I'm also wrapping up the Five Ideas duty for the semester, which has gone extremely well in its first semester headed up by Advanced Reporters instead of grad students.

Anyway, on to the evaluations of the shells project.

Was it worthwhile? Most definitely, even if it hasn't resulted in the immediate posting on the Web as was promised (and as is needed by those graduating, whom I feel badly for).  I had not done any reporting that had been done with a truly Web-centric approach, and it was good experience for a medium that only seems to be growing in popularity. Plus, I reported in a group dynamic that I really hadn't experienced in the journalism field before — "team" projects, as we've discussed, hasn't always been part of the craft.

What did you learn? I learned just how much work it takes both to brainstorm, pare down, gather focus, and report in a new way all the elements we had to put together for the shell. It's not that I hadn't done these things for other stories I'd written, but not in this particular sense. Again, working with the group made this a fresh new experience.

I learned that the macro HAS to come first in these discussions. I really felt we dawdled the first few weeks of the semester by not meeting enough with Amanda, our designer. As people have mentioned on several occasions, we needed to have had our discussions as a group with Joe (again, going in theory that Bright Tree would have been able to accomplish all this) earlier to hammer out the big-picture issues. I think we'd have been able to form our much-needed backout schedule earlier, and we'd have had more time to work on the Web development part of this.

For me, personally, as a writer, I finally learned to jump on board with the idea of being more conversational with my writing. I had tried to do it before, but I didn't fully understand the level to which we could be as such without losing an authoritative tone. It was a tough balance for me to find at first, as Tom knows, and it still won't be the easiest thing in the world for me. But I am confident I will learn sooner rather than later, especially being exposed to it with the work I did in this project.

Would you do it again? I'd be silly to say no, because I'll likely have to do it again in the real world, if not here again before I graduate. But I'd honestly pick up a project again in the first place, because I thought we as a group were able to tell a very thorough, important story that would interest readers and spur them into different kinds of action, whether they were green supporters or retractors.

I don't know if I was entirely comfortable picking a topic that seemed to border on advocacy journalism at times. It was tough sledding trying to find some skeptic-type information or interviews for a couple of my stories. The green movement, if you will, is still in such a stage that the news is mostly positive, and the hardy skeptics haven't really seemed to push back much yet. The topic is one that I know will get many readers and is definitely a good subject to report on, don't get me wrong. I guess I just hope we don't get accused of being too much of an advocate with our finished project. But that's a small worry, for one, and I know I tried my darndest to keep a good balance in my stories, especially on wind.

What would you keep? I would keep the group size that we used for green, around 6 or 7. I agree with Rebecca that a larger group than that size creates a bit of a disconnect and creates some headaches on the communication level for those in charge. Which leads me to...

What would you change? I personally felt like the project was a bit discombobulated from the get-go. I felt like we were gliding on the seat of our pants. I understand that that was part of the project's nature — none of us had ever done this before, and we were supposed to be feeling out of our comfort zones, and so on. But I really felt frustrated as times, as others have mentioned, about the coordination of this project with the remainder of the class. I felt torn the entire semester, not really knowing when I should be working on shells, or how much, or what portion should go with the beat. We never really ironed that out. And then having the majority of the editors all but give us the shaft for the meeting the sixth week or so of the semester (Scott and Katherine showed up, John later, but no one else) was discomforting. Having the macro issues the first weeks of the semester led to a drop in productivity on both sides for me, also. I felt like being left in limbo with the shells project was a part (not necessarily a big one, but definitely one worth mentioning) of me not getting a couple of heftier stories written this semester.

I know we were a trial experiment, and I'm still pleased with the results, and maybe am not as upset as others because I'll be coming back in the fall and have time to wait to get this posted for a portfolio. Nevertheless, if this project is to be expanded/repeated/continued, I hope the organization can be there on all fronts — us for the projects' content, backout skeds for our organization and for Web developers, and all the editor for setting a proper proportion of work to be completed — at the start of the semester. A clearer plan from the outset would have at least made completion of the projects by spring break a more attainable goal.

Overall, the experience was great, and I learned a lot, and hopefully will see the rewards online sooner rather than later. I loved our group and thought we worked extremely well together. The green project couldn't have been done in our numbers unless people were dedicated. The big lesson to be learned is in organization, macro-based thinking, and a set of assignments and goals (both in reporting and production) before we begin, to have a true, concrete, crystal clear finish line ready before the start of the race.

Shells!!

For my last memo, I will gather my thoughts on the shells project. I thought it was a great idea, but I wasn't sure how practical it was. From the very beginning, I remember telling Tom that I didn't know how much I could contribute, but that I definitely planned to use it as a learning experience. I think I definitely learned a lot about the process, and if I were to do it again I would feel confident enough to contribute and take a larger stake in the project.
The project was definitely worthwhile. As far a a grade is concerned, I don't know how I feel about being the experimental group. I feel it will be a lot easier for groups who are maintaining the site. As for it being a class, I often felt like I was enrolled in two different classes at once. The shells by it self should have been a class, instead of shells and reporting.
I learned alot about how the web works. I have a little experience with eb sites, but nothing dealing with creating an entire site from scratch. Again, I definitely think I learned alot and that is what I set out to do; so mission accomplished.
I can't say I would do it again, but if it comes up during my career, I wouldn't hold out. During my time in Montgomery, the paper accumulated a large youth population because of a website it had. So, I said that to say that I definitely think having this knowledge is useful - especially in this transition time for the press. I just wouldn't do it again necessarily at the Missourian, while I'm in school, or having to deal with some of the things we did this semester. (see next pg)
I would change some of the time wasted. I felt there was a lot of talking in circles, a lot of backtracking and a lot of ego. This is something I typically see with journalism students, but I think it could have been eliminated if there was a clearer objective at the beginning. I understand this occurs when people brainstorm, but we could have accomplished more by the end and not have been constantly pushing work back.
I would keep the last couple of weeks when we got down to business. At first I was discouraged that we wouldn't get anything done. However, the last couple of weeks we got down to business and got a lot accomplished. I think this was mportatn to me to see that a big difference could be made from a few simple ideas.

A pretty big blow

I don't know about the rest of you, but to me Tom's announcement at the end of class was a pretty big blow. We've worked so hard on all of our stuff, and I've had a lot of questions going through my head in the past 24 hours. For example, I'm wondering if anything should have alerted us to the fact that Bright Tree wasn't really being honest with us about when they could get things done or the help that we had. We never saw anything besides outlines in our meetings, for example. I also was really bothered by the fact that they said they could get the development process done so quickly... it never seemed feasible but I didn't want to say anything because they are professionals. I also thought that we fielded some pretty weird questions in meetings - I guess from a web production standpoint, some of the things they were asking us weren't things I thought they would have to ask.

I'm not saying that I know better, or anything, just that looking back, a few things seem fishy.

I can't help but feel really bad for our designer, too. I was shocked by the size of the project they were given, and the project seemed like it required her to learn how to do a lot of html and related things before she could even start.

And of course, I feel terrible for everyone who has worked on this. It seems that we all got screwed by a company that may very well have been making big promises in an attempt to please and do a good job, but still failed us in the end. Half of us are graduating, and we're watching our semester project go down the drain.

With all of that off my chest, I move on to the questions:

Was it worthwhile?
Yeah, it was fun to make a site that was more issue-oriented. I liked being able to expand one subject so much and use different media to show it. It was almost more like a magazine, except that hard, immediate news will also be able to fit in on our site.

What, if anything, did you learn?
- Ask more questions when you use an outside company, and ask to see results
- We have to take a different look at content for the web, especially when it comes to how all of the stories fit together
- We also have to find a balance between hard news that we expect to regenerate, and featury things that have more shelf-life. When do we replace them, for example?

Would you do it again?
It depends. Not if it was on the side of doing advanced reporting.

What would you change?
See above. This needs to be a class on its own. It's hard for people with a print-only background to go in and make an awesome web site. I don't think most of us had any idea how long these things take when we started, or of a lot of the behind-the-scenes aspects of running a web site. Basically, I think that if this is in a class, the class time needs to be spent learning about web interfaces, usability, conceptualizing, and maybe even basic html so people have an idea of how things are done and how long it takes (and what can and can't be done) on a website. We need to know a lot more about the "how" before we make plans.

What would you keep?
I liked our team size, and I loved the class in general - it's a bunch of frickin' prodigies. Way to go, guys.

I would keep the way we eventually started getting things done (backout schedule, etc) and I'd keep the in-class brainstorming we had that's included both teams brainstorming for everything - voices from outside the group was a great benefit.

Last but not least...

Provided that I can sufficiently bribe my Foreign Policy teacher, I will be graduating next Friday. This is absolutely amazing. It's frightening, but it's amazing. I'd just like to take this space and thank everyone I've met here, from Tom and Greg to all of my classmates: you've been great. So thanks - really.


This week: As far as I know, the final college baseball game that I was ever slated to cover was a washout. Though I was excited for it, lord knows I needed the extra time to get things done. I did cover Tuesday's game, as well as the first two of last weekend's series, so I've been busy, but not as busy as some other times. The stories from these games, I believe, came out pretty well. The two features that I should have done by the end of the semester, however, should be much better.


SHELLS:

Was it worthwhile? I have no idea...I suppose the final product will tell us a lot more, but at this moment, the jury is out for me. That said, I never really got into
the whole thing. Writing and reporting, for me, is only enjoyable when I find something that I'm either passionate about or interested in. Unfortunately, growth met neither criteria.


What, if anything, did you learn? I learned that the Missourian, though it takes some hits, still has an exceptional pipeline of thinkers that it brings in. I don't know how to pinpoint anything concrete, but I do know that I left class every day smarter than when I came in, just from the discussion.

Would you do it again? Well, I was required to do it this time, but I don't think that's what you're asking. My honest answer is no, and I say that only because it just didn't seem to be my thing. I think it has value...but lots of things have value, and I still don't wish to do them. Take my taxes, for instance. Also, the fact that we had to collapse groups was catastrophic, and I believe it made many of the safety folk feel at least a touch out of the loop. Or maybe that was just me.

What would you change? The Missourian absolutely MUST find a way to keep from killing off its students. Every college kid has a sob story, but most of them are bs. The Missourian students that have spent a couple of semesters absolutely working their asses off - to the point that it has made many of us ill at times - have legitimate beefs, and it's a serious problem. The people that I have met here are the most driven I have ever known, and they're already pushing themselves past the limit. This shells thing was just another thing on our plate, and it only strained us further. I'm not saying that shells are a bad idea at all...in fact, I believe the opposite is true...but the Missourian must find a way to keep its students workloads in check. They could start by changing the whole "only 3 credit hours" thing...which is as big a joke as anything on campus. If they wanted to give a credit hour for every 5 hours of work most of us did a week, they'd have to make it a 6 or 7 credit hour class. They might not be willing to do that, but that doesn't make it any more fair.

What would you keep? Overall, everything seemed fine, but there needs to be a better way to even out the workloads. Though I didn't mean to slack, and I feel as though I did everything that was asked of me, I'm sure I only did about 10% of the work that Paul Lampe did.


Thanks for a great run.

The Devil's in the Details

One thought kept occurring to me throughout this semester: Wouldn’t it be great if shells weren’t part of Advanced Reporting, but a class unto themselves?

Fortunately, my capstone is, from my understanding, exactly what I just described. To me, the fundamental problem with shells was that they were an extremely worthwhile project capable of teaching us oodles...but not a lot of us wanted to give them the kind of attention they (should have) demanded.

Shells are an awesome project. Stimulating. A chance to build some reporter muscles we too often neglect — innovation, big ideas, etc.

Why, then, do I think the shells assignment didn’t go too well — or, at least, why didn’t I like them as much as I know I could have?

I see three major reasons: time, ownership, and communication.

Time:
With our hectic schedules and the already demanding nature of Advanced Reporting, I think we needed a more definitive understanding of how we were expected to split our time. Too many of the kids in our class have Super(wo)man personalities. They try to do it all. And when “all” is too much…well, frankly, it’s hard not to self-destruct.

For me, I enrolled in Advanced Reporting assuming the dynamic would be pretty similar to Reporting: working with an editor on a specific beat. Had I known before I wrote out my goals for the semester that shells would be such a big chunk of the class, I could have mentally prepared for them. If shells continue to be a part of the Advanced Reporting curriculum, I recommend giving reporters a specific list of expectations so they have a firm grip on where to direct their time and energy.

Ownership:
If the Advanced Reporting class does this again, I recommend letting them pick their groups and their topics from the very beginning. If I’m going to spend a semester with a group immersed in one topic, I want that group to feel like it owns the topic. Just like any story, a shell is going to inspire reporters if they feel like they’ve invested a part of themselves in it.

I didn’t feel like I “chose” Growth. (Ironically, I think I pitched the idea in the initial brainstorming session. Go figure.) I couldn’t make it to the session when we whittled away the potential topics because we held it on a Friday afternoon, I believe, and I had to work. My original group got thrown in with another group halfway through the semester. (I firmly maintain that my original group had, by far, made the most progress.) I still did my part, but by then, I didn’t feel very invested in the shell. I hadn’t bought into it; I had no ownership.

Communication:
Shell groups can’t be as big as Growth was. With that many people in one group, it’s too hard to keep track of everyone, and it exacerbates the ownership problem. Over-delegation leads to feeling disconnected from the goal. In this case (though I don’t want to speak for everyone), I don’t know if many of us felt like we ever completely understood what was going on with our own projects.

I propose setting a cap for team size at somewhere around 6 people, including a designer. If that means the topics groups tackle are a little more intimate than the ones we covered this semester, I’m okay with that. I’d rather see a team with less manpower and more communication than one with an assembly line feel. The fewer people there are, the easier it is to keep everyone on the same page.



I hope none of this sounded bitter. I’ll admit I’m still a little sulky over Public Safety’s disbandment, but I’m over it for practical purposes. And I really do love the idea of shells. I just think that as guinea pigs, our class definitely revealed a number of ways this project can be improved so that the Missourian can pursue shells in future semesters with fewer headaches and more victory dances.

Don't talk to me unless it's on the record

So I had been working on a story about women in the capitol for a while now, and had gotten some great interviews. Everything was going really well, until one female legislator tells us this really interesting story about gender discrimination that she thought was going on. After she told the reporter she said that she didn't want it printed. WHAT!!! 

If you just wanted to talk, then you should have called up a friend. Who does that. So we have been trying to talk to her and get her to let us use her story, but she won't. As a legislator, you would think that she would want to expose prejudices so that others won't have to experience the same thing. Being quiet not the way to make positive social change. 

Peer Review Form

The peer review form for your shells teams is in the Blackboard site. Keep in mind:
* You are assessing the performance of other members of your team.
* They are assessing you.
* I will not share your comments with class members.
* It's due Monday at Noon.
* What about your view of your performance on the shells? Add those comments to your final grade pitch. Send it to your editor, copy to me.

Finally, what about the whole idea of the shells project?
Was it worthwhile?
What, if anything, did you learn?
Would you do it again?
What would you change?
What would you keep?

I would like you to address any or all of these questions, or ones of your own, in the final blog post due Friday.

Out of the Loop

One thing I wish we could do a better job of at the Missourian is to communicate the mood and the emotions of certain topics on articles that were potentially contentious when they were first written. I think when many of the reporters go to meetings, they can be hesitant to write when someone is talking furiously or angrily. I was a bit reticent (perhaps a bit to my detriment) the first one or two times I went to cover meetings or take quotes from authoritative vantage points on higher ed last year.

I say this because with the unique position we're put in in this newsroom, you don't always have the best handle on things when unexpected events crop up, no matter how hard you try.

Take, for example, the Compete Missouri story I wrote for Friday's paper. I've gone to numerous faculty and MU faculty council meetings pecking for story ideas this semester. Never once did I hear this plan come up, or even any consternation. And one of the meetings was devoted to the FY 2009 budget and operations.

So when this petition came about calling for a special meeting regarding the university's fiscal future, I was taken aback.I frantically searched through the archives looking for stories and found a couple of articles written last summer. None of them, however, gave the indication that there was smoldering ire to be found, ready to explode if prodded.

When I finally got a hold of faculty members to discuss the petition late Thursday afternoon — no one called me before, say, 4:40 — I felt like I was being prepared for a battle to the death armed with just a toy water pistol. Their anger exploded over the phone, not at me, but at the situation, and what they believed were serious missteps by MU higher-ups in the formation of the Compete Missouri plan. Nothing I had read before or seen at other faculty meetings could have prepared me for their anger.

No doubt, it made for good quotes and a colorful article, but it also left me unprepared to give the MU administration a chance to respond. All I could go on before talking to these professors was what had been previously said, and that was all docile. Only when the faculty members began to spell out their concerns in our interviews did I get an idea of what I could be asking Chancellor Deaton, Provost Foster, or the like. Granted, everything worked out — I was able to get some university statements by making a couple calls late at night and piecing together some previous statements from Deaton. 

But it's just one of those situations where you lament that you somehow could have known what this would turn into. I'm sure an extended, unbroken period of time on a beat would have solved this particular problem. As it stands, I think the article needed to be written as it was, with a little more flavor to capture the anger, which is what has driven this special meeting slated for Thursday. The whole situation just caught be a little off-guard, and it made me kind of frustrated.

Shells are done for me — I'm currently sifting through all the green stories this semester to see what archived content we can add to bulk up the site at launch, whenever that will be. I'm still hoping to get a longer story together on Columbia College's growth outside of Columbia, but other work on the beat (like the story above) and the remaining pieces of shells work here and there and the work in the other four classes I'm doing. Yikes. It won't be the end of the world if it gets shelved for independent work in the fall, but I'd have liked to have written a story on it. Where does the time go when other pressing needs must be met?

But of Course

In the K-12 beat, two reporters were assigned to a story that the community is demanding, and have been dragging their feet for a week. It's been agonizing to watch, because the story needs to be told, and I think it's fascinating.

So I went in, talked to Liz about working with them — not as a reporter, but as a GrowthGroupPaul, and then met with them Friday.

They were: overwhelmed, uncertain where to begin, not sure if this was a worthwhile story...

So we made a back-out schedule. Things are much better now. They're feeling better about how to get this done and I'm feeling more confident that it will get done.

Yes, I do see the parallels.

PROGRESS REPORT:
I had a fantastic interview with a school board member this week — he was upfront, forthcoming and honest. It was refreshing.

We then had a long conversation about blogs and how journalists view blog comments. It just reinforced for me the fact that journalists are more than reporters. We are community members and eventual experts by practice. We should stay impartial, but participate.

Productive Week! (I'm smiling)

This week has been a very successful week. I got an article published on the arbor day celebration. I had another article published on Wednesday about the statewide presevation planning meetings. Also, I was able to tackle some of the final items of the shells project. Today I went to the geology department and got ariel shots of Columbia. There will be some images relating to file size and cropping, but I definitely feel like we are in the home strech with this project.
Also, my yoga nidra article will be printed May 12, so I am very excited to see this article reach fruition. Rose Raymond and I have worked very deligently on this article, but we may have been too invested in the article. We wrote an article that was around 60 inches long. After about four edits it is down to 30 inches. The article should only be 30 inches, but having the other information cut was a good reminder that we need to write for people, not just for our own interest.

An accomplishment.

This week I've felt more than ever that I was in the groove at the Missourian, which doesn't make sense since I only wrote one story and I submitted the Five Ideas at about 3:30 Friday morning and wrote one whole story this week.

However, I wrote the best lead of my life, and possibly the best written-story ever. I'm really kind of absurdly proud of my little story about the kids that talked to Noam Chomsky on the phone. It got me a tip for another story next week and a huge compliment from Liz. I'm still kind of walking on air. It's a good piece of writing.

I also mostly finished my portfolio web site:
http://bengal.missouri.edu/~rahb5c/convfinal.swf

Progress report:

Today I crossed two things off my long-term to-do list. It feels good. Only like 15 more things to go.

Not so keen on riding the wave of change...

[Preface: In this blog, when I say “we,” I should really use the first person. This is a hyper-critical self-analysis, and I don’t want to speak for anyone else. Also, this post is partly inspired by class on Wednesday and partly inspired by Audrey's last blog.]

If I weren’t a journalist, I’d probably hate journalists.

To coin a term my high school mentor once used to describe our breed, we journalists “fancy ourselves mavericks.” We’re tend to think of ourselves as a superior species; we think we’re somehow apart from the masses who read this stuff we package together and sell as the authoritative version of the news.

We worship Woodward and Bernstein. It’s our journalistic wet dream to grab hold of some loose, conspiratorial thread and pull it until we’ve reached an unthinkable climax. Then, of course, we’ll win the Pulitzer.

It’s disgusting, really, when I think about it. A lot of journalism is, no matter how saccharinely you sugar-coat it, egomaniacal. We thrive on competition, and individual competition is fundamentally selfish. We scrap for bylines. We fight. We win. We want to be on top.

While I’m sure the Missourian’s newsroom is probably full of aspiring journalists with well-developed altruism — kids who genuinely pursue news in all its forms because they love it and they want to instill the same kind of love in our readers — you’ll never convince me that the people who tend to be most successful here don’t fall into that “maverick” self-analysis.

That’s why I think the shells project has been so challenging.

If you’re in Advanced Reporting, you’ve likely done well in your Reporting class. You’ve fought. You’ve persevered. You’ve proven that you’re capable of succeeding in a competitive career field undergoing constant evolution. So the “group work” thing might be just a little unnatural.

But journalism is changing. Each day, our coverage grows more and more user-centric. We use graphics, multimedia, sound bytes. We post documents online so that our readers can check them out for themselves instead of twiddling thumbs until we authoritatively break it down for them. The new era of journalism is all about relinquishing power. A real reporter is going to have to learn how to stifle the ego and deliver information quickly, effectively, and selflessly. From an reader perspective, this evolution is fantastic. It’s helping news outlets deliver spin-free, objective coverage. One day, our job will probably be to make it quick and easy for readers to process information instead of processing everything for them.

Here’s my problem: I know, in my gut, that it’s the maverick in me that fuels my passion for journalism. Shells DO stimulate my creativity. I think, if I had the time and energy to devote to one (hello, capstone!) I’d really enjoy and savor the shell production process. However, in the long run, I don’t know if I can survive in the coming age of journalism. I don’t know if I can ever swallow my pride enough to meet the Web-era’s definition of a good reporter.

I got into reporting because I saw it as an effective way to make a passion useful. I love to write, but getting a B.A. in English wasn’t going to pay the bills. A steady job at a paper, I thought, would. Plus, I loved reporting. I loved calling people, stumbling upon leads, synthesizing stuff and coming up with one helluva story.

The way I see journalism heading, I think it’s going to take either every ounce of effort in my body or one massive stroke of luck to make a long-term career out of old-school reporting.

…and I’m starting to wonder if, given the way journalism’s evolving, this is the right career for me.

Maybe it’s time to think about graduate school.


Progress Report:
I’ve talked to folks from four different theaters in different regions of the country that have undergone renovations and restorations in the past five to ten years. Originally, I thought my story was just going to offer a little context for the Missouri Theatre’s restoration, but one source gave me a potentially awesome lead. Without revealing too much, we’ll see where it takes me.
Oh, yeah. I’m done with shells!

If you can't say something nice...

The good news is that my long-term to-do list is getting shorter. Slowly.

The bad news is that what I have left is the projects that are the most difficult and the most involved.

Take my trash story, for instance. I had a hard time blogging on our beat's blog about it because some of my sources have been such jerks to me. It also has been an ongoing battle to represent both sides equally in the story. The people with complaints against the system are, of course, being wonderful, because they want their voices to be heard. The administrative people that I've interviewed so far have gotten angry at me on the phone for a) presuming to write a story about the subject and b) reading them things that people have said and asking for comments. One source in particular accused me of deceiving him to get an interview, and telling him that the story was "for a class" (and not for publication), which is completely untrue. When sources pick up the phone and say, "hello?" I say "Hi, this is Rebekah Heil at the Columbia Missourian." I don't think I could have been more clear. I don't think any of us even wanted to say it was "for a class" when we were in J2100.

I don't know how to make it plain to people that I'm not on a side here. I hope they get their issues resolved, but I'm just doing my job.

I also don't know how to give both sides the same amount of face time (or if I should) when half of my quotes from people in leadership positions are them being angry at me.

An update

With everything winding down, I am still pushing to finish up the shells project. This has been a long process and not an easy one. After all the work this group (the class) has put into these projects this semester it would be a shame to have it go to waste.
Unfortunately I haven't heard the plan to keep these two sites up and running in the future.
Will there be a shells beat at the Missourian? A projects class?
I also find myself wondering when the new site will be up. From what I have heard, the technology and interactivity of loading the site will be a great help to our projects.

Anyway, to the week. I had two stories this week, although I was more of a supervisor on the second - the very important school board meeting. Both of these were different deadline experiences.
On Tuesday, before the listening session there wasnt much opportunity to write a skeleton. I could just write one boiler plate paragraph that talked about the failed school tax levy and the board hadnt done this before.
On Thursday there was much more opportunity but it was still a difficult write thru because the meeting ran so long and there was so much information.

My Exhale

It took a couple days longer than I wanted it to, but I finally will be in the position to work on one story the rest of the semester (I think) after tomorrow. The shells project continues to be both fun and frustrating, but such is the life of reporting.

I think when it's all said and done, the green shell will end up functioning pretty well. We have a variety of topics to cover and have left room for many more story updates in the future. Will we foster the conversation we so desperately desire? That remains to be seen, and it will be a challenge that cannot be solved in a week's or a month's time.

For sheer work done on the project, however, I think our group should be very proud. We were able to flesh out a lot of ideas and we functioned well even though the group size was small. Everyone has been doing their part and working hard. Here's to hoping it pays off.

As I said before, I hope to get a longer story written by the end of the next couple of weeks; the little stories that need to be written and the other little challenges in life have been making it a tough go. But there is still time. Not a lot, but enough.

(NotReporting)

I would just like to know why we haven't been taught to be optimistic about our future careers.

We are bombarded with "the coming death of journalism" on a regular basis. In the news and in the classrooms. After a few months, we've learned, and the lack of our future comes up in casual conversation. The message is: Embrace change for the sake of change, or you won't make it in the last 40 years this industry has left.

Sometimes I feel starved. I am starved for adverbs and grammatically complex sentences. I am starved for working computers, breathing room and the promise of certainty — as opposed to the constant reminder that this trade is all about to disappear.

The way people talk at the non-journalism internship I took for the summer is itself satiating . The language they use to describe the future is so incredibly different than what I'm accustomed to.

"You'll have no trouble finding a job," is some of the highest praise I've received at the Missourian. Compare that to:
"You will have so many opportunities after this. This opens doors."

Really, the mentors are saying the same thing. Things will be easier if you work hard. But the language is different. It's taken a toll on me. My dreams are less lofty. Whenever I hear that someone has a newspaper job, regardless of where it is, I'm in awe.

Before I came here, if a former BigManPublisher had sat me down and told me that I was making a mistake, I would have asked for proof, justification and statements of his last newspaper's profits. This year, I just nodded and listened.

The way we talk about our future affects how we perceive it. And if students are told again and again that there just aren't the options there were, should we be surprised if many journalism careers end upon graduation?

I know we need to be strong and prepared for a smaller job market. I know we can't hide our heads in the sand. But I would like to say:

1. Do liberal arts colleges repeat constantly the difficulties of getting a job with a BA in reading?
2. Optimism breeds creativity which encourages innovation. Pessimism discourages it.

PROGRESS REPORT: A lot of phone calls. Few responses. I'm trying. I've asked for something else to work on so that I can do more than waiting to call again.

Decisions

This is a small glimpse of my love/hate relationship with journalism.
Frequently, I've questioned my decision to become a reporter. My first few years in the black press showed me unlimited options for doing what I love.
More recently, I have hated to write, I don't like calling people and I feel cheated out of a senior year. Every day I feel more pressured to conform to a world that I'd rather choose not to and it makes me question my decision.
On one hand, I feel that graduating from the Missouri School of Journalism means that I can be expected to automatically do any job required of me in any newsroom - but this is clearly not the case.
It doesn't help that my relationships with editors here have been strained, and I can't really say I've met any great new people in the newsroom.
Nonetheless, I've enjoyed every internship and newspaper experience I've ever had...
Is it because I don't feel constantly pulled in a million directions by a million different things?
Is it because I haven't found anyone in the Missourian to identify with that I feel so isolated?
And the more people I meet, the more people I find are generally no longer interested in this career path.
Furthermore,
What is it about the MU experience that has made three of the only four black people in news editorial hate reporting?
Should I stay in this field because from what I see the number of black people interested in news papers continues to drop?
More specifically, those who more adequately represent my class and my experiences seem to be non-existent.
Or... well, I don't know!
What I do know is these next few months will determine a lot for me. I hope and pray my experience at the Register will again remind me of the passion I have for this craft. If not, maybe graduate school will do the trick.
Who knows.
One thing I can say though, is that you never forget your first love. Journalism will always have a special place in my heart.

Passionate about passionate people

I walked into the newsroom yesterday carrying a few little pieces of woody grass, Big Blue Indian grass to be specific. I had just returned from a trip to MU's Bradford Farm. The farm's superintendent and a bioenergy engineer showed me what they've been working on and I've been talking about.

I didn't anticipate the passionate dialogue that ensued. I'd ask a question and they'd both have an answer, then play off what the other said and then add something I hadn't thought to ask. I realized these two men have incredible passion for growing warm season grasses and its potential for bioenergy. They also had foresight and curiosity. I left with an adrenaline rush. I was high on reporting.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I am passionate about passionate people. Passion is an emotion that rubs off on those around you. It shines through your eyes, fingertips and body language. It livens up the body. It excites the brain. When you take a genuine interest in someone's passions, it shows. It's the highest compliment you can give someone. I got the feeling these two men could talk about warm season grasses and farming for hours. I could listen for hours. Their passion was intoxicating.

People ask me where I've been this semester. I've been at the Missourian, I say. The scripted and typical response is "I've heard that really takes up a lot of your time and that a lot of people don't like it. Do you like it?" In some variation that's always the question and I feel like people expect a negative response. They want me to tell them I hate it. But I like it. Yes, it's stressful and it takes up a lot of time. But really, what else would I be doing? Where else would I be? Probably whining to a friend over coffee about how I yearn to be reporting.

Exhale

This week, I took a step back. Life, I've realized, is a bit too short to be stressing out all the time, so I just kind of chilled out. And you know what? I think I deserved it...and everyone else here does too.

Unfortunately, it turns out that I also have other classes. Due to my neglect, the notion of me graduating in May is just that at the moment...a notion. My grades in at least two classes are hideous, and in one - taught by a man who sincerely seems to dislike me - I'll quite literally be begging for a D.

At least I got to relax for a bit.


Progress Report: As I said, I didn't do much this week. The baseball team is out of town, so I worked on my other classes, a couple of feature stories, and finished up what I was doing on the shells project.

Next week will be different. I have a grocery shopping date with one of Missouri's pitchers, whom I will be doing a story on, focusing on his weight. I also have the Mizzou/Kansas baseball game in KC to attend, as well as a weekend slate of games in which my father will be attending. Pure excitement.

Archaeology, Stinky Pipes, and Tony Bennett

When Tom asked me to “make sewers sexy” for our shells project, I was sure it wouldn’t be too much work. I figured I could simply collect a few quotes, use a few vivid words here and there, and I’d wind up with a spicier-than-average city government story…so that’s what I did.

But oh! I was so, so wrong. I failed to see the sexy sewer story for what it was: an opportunity to depart from writing run-of-the-mill articles filled with jargon-ridden quotes and dry analysis of information. Sure, the information’s important, but if you can’t step outside the box to present it, you’ll ever engage a typical reader who, with a million things to do every day, doesn’t give a hoot about a bunch of pipes buried in the dirt. This piece is web-only, and it’ll be presented in a format unlike anything the Missouri’s ever tried before. In short, I had a big, fat, juicy opportunity in front of me to break all the rules.

I’ll admit. I was frustrated, initially, when Tom suggested a re-write. Nevertheless, I re-tooled my approach, deciding to write this like a smartass timeline about sewers. The idea was to covertly give readers information by packaging it in an entertaining way.

As I got going, I realized I was having FUN. I was Googling all sorts of outrageous sewer trivia, shouting out bits and pieces to the back half of the newsroom every five minutes. Yeah. Sewer trivia — I’m pretty sure the reporters around me thought I was going insane. The point I’m trying to get at is this: the “hard news” in any story is definitely crucial, and sometimes, you just need to deliver that hard news. But when you’ve got a boring topic (not that sewers are boring, but I’m sure many would beg to differ), write about the stuff that you find interesting. Write about the fact that Elvis died on a toilet. Then, sneak the hard news in.

I sincerely hope I get to write more articles like this one in my journalism career. Heck…I got to write the line “Woohoo! Pooping in a hole.” Yeah.

PROGRESS REPORT:
The Fairfield Gorget story came out on Saturday. Never in my life have I received so much kudos for one story, and I almost feel guilty. The story was, though it took effort to pair down, just waiting to be told. I was just the one who lucked into finding it. As of yesterday, it was the Missourian’s most read article on the Web. I am, hands down, prouder of this story than any I’ve written before.

I wrote a story about Tony Bennett coming to town this week…and learned that even Advanced Reporters need a little wrist slapping now and then. Liz caught some of my errors, which came about because I was frenzied trying to write the article before sprinting to class. But haphazardness is never acceptable, and I needed a reminder of that fact.

And, of course, I (re)wrote about sewers. And throwing pots of sewage into the streets in the middle ages. And the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Cowabunga, dude.

:/

I called the superintendent and asked her if the rumors were true, that she was looking for another job.

I wrote about the ramifications of Columbia not passing a tax levy, and what could happen next.

And then I sat down, to blog about it on the SchoolHouse Talk blog, and...

Had nothing. There was nothing new to add to the issue.

Sometimes I feel like I'm just retelling the same story. Others, I have a weird postpartum depression about the tax levy election. Both are a sign that it's all done and over with. It is TIME TO MOVE ON. But wait, this very petulant part of me says, there was so much I wanted to do while it was happening that I never did.

And that stupid (it is stupid) fixation on the so-called good ideas I never executed is all ego.

I'm reading a book of essays on writing, and one of the author's main points is to take ego out. Don't get attached to what you think is eloquent, cleverly worded, or beautiful prose.
More generally, don't get attached to small things because you think you did them well — you'll miss the bigger THING.

That's my lesson for the week. My to-do list, really.

PROGRESS REPORT:
I'm learning to write about people. It happened two weeks ago, last week, and lo and behold, my next assignment is to talk to people. I'm excited as a student and reporter.

Conundrum:
Last week, I turned in an Econometrics (the economics major equivalent of Advanced Reporting) homework set that I did not finish. I tried — I kept working on it up until the 11 a.m. Wednesday class...

I have never, in the history of my college career, turned in something unfinished. It was disrespectful to my professor and embarrassing.

I have written explanation letters before:
"Dear Prof. So and so, I am writing to explain, not excuse, my absence on Month, Day. I had to write about Something."

The UnfinishedHomework was the result of staying the entirety of Tuesday at the Missourian working on an article. It has me thinking: on the one hand, I'm here to stretch myself, prove that I can fit 40 hours into a day, perform under pressure, find bravery in the eleventh hour. On the other, I'm here to pursue my passions. Yes, one of those is economics.

I'm not sure which is worse: doing B-work in this class and others, or getting an A in this class and not a B in its economics equivalent.
Or, getting an A in economics, an A in the beat reporting component and a non-A in the shell component of this class.
I guess it comes down to which way I want to prioritize: selfishly or not.

Through another lens

At Earth Day this week, I took a few pictures for the shells site while looking for a few extra sources or potential profiles. What I found, however, was a different perpective. I enjoy covering large events. And the Earth Day celebration is one of the my favorite events of the year. So when I went out there with an SLR, I had to look at things differently. I wasn't looking for sources, for people who knew what they were talking about. I was looking for action and interaction.

I took a few photo classes in high school and haven't really worked with a camera since then. But, like riding a bike, it's not something you forget really easily. Finding a focus, getting a different angle, framing the shot were three lessons that teacher drummed into his class. Most of the photos I took for that class were not of the type I was taking on Sunday. They were inanimate, artsy. While taking photos at Earth Day I realized you don't lose the artsyness while taking photos for the paper. It's all the more important. If the shot doesn't have a strong focus, events like Earth Day look like a chaotic mess on film. There are so many people, so many colors, so much movement.

I'm lucky I was really just focusing on taking pictures of the people we talked to. One of the guys I spent some time talking to and will make a profile of was in a booth discussing solar water heaters. He had serveal of the cells on display in a corner. They were a deep purplish color and looked like something from outer space. A gentleman from Quincy, Ill., who was visiting his daughter at MU was asking several intense questions about them. I used the solar panels to frame the photo of the two men talking. I'm proud of this photo and am looking forward to using it on the site.

I have a renewed appreciation for photographers and their jobs. I'm no where near a photo major in skill, but I'm not half-bad. I flexed a few different mental muscles. I had a damn good time. And I think it's a worthy hobby.

Late, but for a reason.

I'm in the middle of some four story projects, but the three that I worked on this week are some of the most frustrating of my short journalistic career.

The Earth Day video still isn't up because I spent the entire day troubleshooting. It's done, but something weird happened with the format. So that is on my list of things to do today.

The trash story has a lot of conflict, but I don't know how to make it more than a "he said, she said" type of thing. They're all really angry.

Saturday I went to the Republican 9th District Convention and it was the biggest shit show I have ever seen. Going in, I knew that there would be conflict - I had been speaking to Ron Paul supporters and they had informed me that they were going to turn out in large numbers to try and elect Ron Paul supporters to the state convention, and eventually change party policy so that Missouri would be a proportional state instead of a winner-take-all state in terms of delegates. This would mean that Ron Paul would get 30 or so delegates from Missouri. The movement is nationwide, apparently.

Anyway, the Ron Paul people showed up and were voted down in everything fair and square, but they basically weren't allowed to talk. The guy in charge used parliamentary procedure as an excuse to rule them "out of order" any time they tried to speak. But it wasn't just then. Delegates were ruled out of order when they asked for 15 minutes to read the rules that they were about to approve by voting.

A woman expressed concern that she was about to vote on amendments from the 25 represented counties to go to the state convention, when she hadn't seen or read them. This came right after the group had voted down having a group read-through of the amendments. She was ruled out of order. God forbid anyone see what is actually in those amendments.

I was shocked and disgusted, and sooo frustrated. I got back and vented to Bowers, who was an amazing neutralizing force (read: he let me vent for like, ten minutes), and who helped me figure out how to write the lede.

When the story was published, some of it had to be cut and I still didn't feel like I had demonstrated exactly how outrageous the situation was. But I guess that's why we have blogs.

When mouths run faster than brains

This post is a day late, but that may have worked out for the best. My week was rather uneventful anyway. Saturday night, however, was not.

As long as I can remember, I've been attention starved. Though I wouldn't equate it to a "look-at-me" type attitude, I have become something of a showman, and I tend to use my mouth and whatever wit I possess to garner whatever notice I can. For better or worse, I've been fairly successful with it. I'm always the one joking around, spewing one-liners, sarcasm, and busting the whatevers of my friends. It almost always elicits a laugh.

Saturday night, it didn't.

The back story is longer than anyone cares to hear about, so I'll just say I came into the newsroom that evening in a bit of a hurry, looking to have a story read that I thought to be going in the Sunday paper, a story that I'd poured literally dozens of hours and three rewrites into.

Upon informing my editor that said story was done and asking him to read it, he countered by saying that he'd read it tomorrowish (turns out the story got moved back to Monday). At 7 o'clock, it is likely he had other things that took priority. I recognize this.

Unfortunately, as I have mentioned, I also have a fairly active mouth. I haven't a bit of malice in my body, but I certainly do like to talk. Given the rejection, I immediately moved into "sarcastic busting-of-chops" mode, challenging him on why he couldn't read it, and eliciting some somewhat real disappointment. All of this, I can assure you, was done in jest...I didn't even think twice about it. Unfortunately, it did not come off in any reasonable facsimile of the way I had intended it. I no doubt came off as a self-absorbed, inconsiderate smartass, and one that doesn't respect authority to boot.

For my transgression, which my editor took as not only a blatant attitude problem, but also a measure of personal disrespect, I received an ear-full. Taken aback as I was by the situation, I was exceptionally apologetic, though I was also somewhat defensive, offering that I certainly meant nothing by it. After all, I've displayed that same brand of sarcasm many times before, only to receive the same brand back.

None of this, however, gets to the point. While the Missourian has taught me how to be a journalist, and my parents have taught me to be respectful, no one has seemingly been able to drill it through my head that there is both a time and a place for my antics, no matter how good natured they may be. Eventually, as it did Saturday, something is going to come off wrong. More than comma usage, reigning in my personality figures to be one of my greatest challenges when working in a professional environment.

Anyway, to Greg, again, I'm sorry. From now on, I hope I can stick to botching punctuation instead of my relationships within the office.

PROGRESS REPORT: The baseball team is out of town. Though simple, I'm not sure I've ever read a more beautiful sentence. In their absence, I hope to pen at least a feature or two, while also catching up on sleep, money, and my life. This week I only had two stories in the paper, one in which I may have timed incorrectly, and another that just wasn't very exciting. Hopefully my break will recharge me a bit, and an uptick in work quality will follow.

It's a good time, really.

As I walked into the Missourian after my leisurely lunch , one of the 4450 reporters said, "Wow, you weren't here for an hour." I've spent a lot of time here this week, finishing up a draft of a longer story, working on organizing my shells information and writing the my shells stuff. I've spent a couple of late nights and had a few early mornings. And another friend of mine told me that when I talk about the Missourian, I always sound really excited (unless it's copy editing). The truth is, I am excited. I like working here. I know there are plenty of people who don't and plenty of people who don't understand this job. My brain works completely differently when I'm reporting or writing than it does when I'm doing classwork. Switching from classroom mode to reporting mode is really hard and that's why the Missourian can be so exhausting, not to mention stressful. Class disrupts my flow, keeps me from getting in the zone, or whatever you want to call it. Moral of the story: I've been here a lot and I don't hate it. I think that's a good sign, but it makes deciding what to do after graduation difficult. I've been trying to decide if I want to go to grad school or get a job. I change my mind every week. Today I'm leaning towards a job. But that will probably change a few million times.

On another note, it's really nice to have a back-out schedule. For me, being able to look in one place and see everything that needs to be done and when it should be done is a relief. I feel so much more on top of things. If we had created this two weeks ago, it might have relieved some of the subconscious stress of knowing you had to do something but not knowing when it had to be done by. Now it's down to the wire, and I hope everyone can pull through. I think the product will turn out really well. Another great thing about this schedule: everything is done they day before I go out of town for a friend's wedding. I will be able to enjoy the reception so much more knowing that no matter how much champagne I drink, I don't have a shell story to do tomorrow.

Priorities

I don't think laziness is the correct word for my work on shells, but I think it simply has been pushed back by myself (and others) because we view ourselves as reporters first and this as a "class" assignment. Having the Missourian mentality, I work on my stories first and classwork second, and the shells work has fallen into the classwork category.
At the same time that I have been falling behind on my shells work, I think I have been doing a good job reporting and allocating my time and effort at the paper.
With the shells schedule finalized, hopefully we can all wrap up this work and have something to be proud of.

So FB is real!!

This Missouri Civil Rights Initiative issue has really picked up. I first learned about it several weeks ago during a casual conversation with a friend. She told me that it would affect the scholarships of minorities and being on the higher education beat, I thought this would be something worth writing about.
The friend who I spoke of is over a FB group called Vote No for MoCRI (or something like that), and she invited me to the group to find out more information. I told her from the beginning I was interested in covering it for the Missourian. The group takes you directly to the MoCRI site and there was my first introduction to it.
Several weeks and several stories later, it was brought to my attention that I was still a part of the group. I thought nothing of it because I learn of all the campus events pertaining to this issue by being a a part of the group. (If you join a group you automatically get the e-mails and event messages sent out by that group.)
However, it slipped my mind that that the MoCRI group I joined said "vote no" in the title. It also slipped my mind that someone would actually be monitoring my actions as a journalist... on FACEBOOK!! (I know we talk about it in class, but seriously.)
FB is not even real to me; however, I definitely see how as a journalist it could cause a problem. So I am happy I am learning this lesson now, rather than later. Nonetheless, I can't say I didn't feel important that people are checking up on my activities in that manner. I must be doing a pretty good job. or making somebody upset... same thing.

This post could use a steak...

I edited the proofs for my Saturday cover story today.

As soon as I saw the cover, my jaw dropped a little. I’d had this vision in my head of what I expected it to look like, knowing full well that the final product would have a totally different design (that I was sure I’d love all the same.)

Nope. This thing looked eerily like what I had in mind, down to the placement of the Fairfield Gorget on the cover. The color scheme was even the same as the one I’d nebulously come up with on my own. Sure, I’ve done a lot of work from the production side of the desk, so I know how design works. But man, this bordered on spooky.

The “dream cover” seemed like a fitting conclusion to the creative process. As far as I know, I’m done. I’ve handed the reins over to the printer now, and it feels like everything’s so neatly wrapped up — so tidy, and so satisfying. The design looks fantastic. The story made it through the copy desk with blissfully minimal intervention. The pull quotes are perfect. The editing process with Liz was painless and extremely constructive. Her input helped streamline the copy tremendously, and she really helped me hammer out the kinks in the narrative. More than that, though, she forced me to cut through all the fat and marbled meat clinging to the edges of my story so I could find that nice, juicy steak. The steak was always there, but I couldn’t have found it without Liz’s advice and guidance. At least…it would’ve taken me a LOT longer.

So many times, stories start out vague. You’ll have a behemoth topic to tackle, a cumbersome story with too many twists and turns to navigate, or you’ll start pulling on a yarn to tell and you’ll realize the yarn just keeps going, and going, and going. And sometimes, the story’s so straightforward it’s impossible to write…like you can’t really capture what’s happening without looking at things from a different angle.

I wouldn’t be surprised if most of us experienced this exercise in high school or middle school: your English teacher gives you a minute or two to observe the classroom from your seat and tells you to write about it. Then, she’ll have you stand on top of your desks, or sprawl out on the floor, and you’re tasked with writing a new description from a new point of view.

For me, Advanced Reporting has been a multi-month saga of standing atop desks and sprawling out on floors. With our brilliant class, with the topics I’ve written about, with web shells, and with the critical thinking I’ve been expected to do on a regular basis, I’ve learned how to change perspective. And I think I’ve grown tremendously as a writer. I think we all probably have.

(You wouldn’t know it reading today’s blog, though, would you? I’ve got to get off this rambling blog kick.)

PROGRESS REPORT:
I spent most of this week editing proofs, fleshing out captions for the cover story, and generally getting all those ducks in a row. Tuesday, when I came into the newsroom to work with Kate on my web shell sewer story (thanks for helping me out, by the way, Kate!), Liz asked if I could write a brief on an event at the museum that linked in with the Saturday story. I had about half an hour but managed to knock it out. I had enough “stuff” that we decided to hold it, flesh it out and run it Thursday. Tomorrow, I’m getting started on a story breaking down historic theatres across the country that have undergone renovations. I’ll be linking that in with the Missouri Theatre — common obstacles, where the money went, how long it took to pay of the loans, etc. Should be a decent little read.

Mary Lawrence sent the following around to editors yesterday. It's a pretty cool shell. But DONT FREAK OUT -- I'm not suggesting you look at it to make major changes in our shells. Just continuing sharing, that's all.

Tom



http://www.newsok.com/news/elephantnation

The Oklahoma City zoo is shipping its elephants to Tulsa for breeding. The
Oklahoman put together a great shell with all kinds of stories about
elephants, including a wonderful map of elephants in N. America, their names
and ages -- sort of a little black book of pachyderms.

Enjoy.

The Deep Breath...

It's definitely the home stretch in all facets of life. The stress builds a bit — papers, exams, projects, longer stories that still need work. I was hoping to write this little note on Saturday morning, but I needed to desperately take advantage of the opportunity to recharge for a couple more hours.

Needless to say, the rest of my shells reporting and article-writing needs to get done this week so I can have two weeks to work with graphics/editing to get everything publishable.

Then I get to move on to the last group of stories I want to do before the end of the semester on the beat. Add that in with getting ready for my summer internship and finding a new car, and my head will soon be spinning.

So I've taken this past weekend to prepare before the plunge. And then life speeds up, and it's here. So it's time to see how long I can hold in that deep breath and see if it lasts me through the week. If so, then the remainder of the semester may actually be semi-low-stress. Maybe. Possibly. I hope.

But for now, it's time to get workin'. Maybe Earth Day on Sunday will culminate in a celebration of my work being done and to promote the site to the community.

Let's all wish each other luck.

Awesomeness in the Newsroom!

This semester's Advanced Reporting Class and everyone involved is incredible. I know that we have at least four weeks left, but everything and everyone has been incredible. Everyday has brought something new to my plate as I have had a day turn story turn into a story that takes over a week, but makes the front page of the Sunday Missourian, I've lost sleep trying to find just the right word, and have found that some story that I thought was very important wasn't as important to citizens of Columbia.
I had no idea of what this semester would bring. In truth I had no idea what today would bring. I planned on contacting numerous sources for stories today, but instead cut out more time to attend my beat meeting and plan ahead on another story. Additionally the meeting with Joe from Bright Tree went really well. I was slightly nervous, because most of my preperation took place over phone calls and looking through documents while I was at the airport this weekend. With the Shells everything seems to be going really well. I am really happy to have the opportunity to help out with the shells project. For a couple weeks I don't think I really felt motivated or connected to this project, but I am realizing how important this project is to the Missourian and what a great opportunity it is to work on the shells project. I know that the rest of this semester will be awesome, because we are and awesome group of reporters!

People!

"Remind me to talk to you about people," Liz Brixey said Tuesday as the K-12 beat was running to and from election places to talk to voters.

We never did get to that conversation, but I did talk to many many people Tuesday. Thursday, Friday and Sunday I called more people. I'm pretty sure I know what she wanted to tell me: the beat hasn't been on the ground enough, we haven't spoken to real people enough about their concerns.

I have spoken with community members, ex-school board members and ex-administrators. No one I spoke with had been quoted in a newspaper for at least a year. Several refused to go "on the record."

These were conversations. I had a list of questions to ask, but used them only as a starting point. Every conversation stretched to about an hour about the leadership history of the district.

I'm a young, inexperienced reporter. I'm impressionable. When I talk to administrators, my writing veers towards jargon. When I discuss theory behind student achievement, I unconsciously slip in academese.

But when I talk to people, the writing comes easily and is straightforward.

And they appreciate it. I think we contribute to the image of the school district as an unfeeling unit instead of an organization of teachers and administrators. We call administrators, translate the jargon, pair it with some commentary from well-known district critics or numbers and call it a day.

These conversations have brought an entirely different view of the school district to light. There is a history here, of people. And I do think that the history is newsworthy. It's driving a lot of the action, and it puts Tuesday's tax levy failure into context.

So I'm writing a history/analysis hybrid. If nothing else, it's an excuse to listen to people we and the Tribune stopped calling five years ago.

Lessons from magazines

Throughout my time at the J-School I've been told to read, read, read. And I've been told to read like a writer. I think its also important to think about why you read what you read. I dropped into my brown Katie-sized recliner last night with this month's issue of the The Atlantic magazine. My mind drifted mid-article: I love this magazine. And I sat down again this morning to think about why, for the past two years, I have read every issue nearly cover to cover. The content is divided into two strong sections: current political, national, international news and cultural review and commentary (books, plays, travel, food). The standard of its reporting is depth and context. The writing is analytical, smart and clean. The photography is stunning. But what's fascinating about it is the variety of topics it covers and it's ability to make me read and care about issues incredibly distant from me. Writing about topics that don't directly affect your readers lives requires talent, but to do it well requires also space. When I read quick and brief accounts in newspapers of protests in Tibet, or about elections in Zimbabwe, it's hard to retain. When I read these things in the Atlantic, it gives me the background, history, context. It tells it like a story. I can almost see it. I feel like I am in the know when I read this magazine.

Do I want to write for a magazine? No. But there are lessons that can be adapted. Never, ever assume your reader is up-to-date, following every news item related to your topic even if it's something like the elections, which were throughly covered. With each story, a strong nut graf explaining why this matters and what it will change is crucial. Magazine articles have the luxury of space and can break their nuts down into all the fine parts. In the online news world where readers choose what they read, I feel the rush to get the information online pushes emphasis on this context down. To be clear, I don't think this is a problem at the Missourian. In fact, I'd look at the school board coverage on the levy as a great example of explaining context. I see this as a problem with my hometown newspaper, the Rockford Register Star, and other mid-sized papers removed from the Journalism Epicenter of the World.

Another lesson adapted from the Atlantic or other magazines is sentence structure. Roy Peter Clark wrote about front-heavy sentences (making sure the subject and verb are towards the front of the sentance). Magazines typically follow this structure, it's how they handle the remaining clauses that makes the writing more pleasing and often carries more context and information in a clear way. Here's an early passage from one of my favorite profiles that ran in last July's issue of the Atlantic.

"My introduction to Coben occurred in October 2005, when he and I were among some 150 authors featured at a book fair in New York’s Bryant Park. I was a last-minute addition to the schedule—my publisher was able to get me a slot because another writer canceled—and was thrilled that despite my book’s small print run, about 30 people attended my reading. After I finished, however, I realized that most of them were not there for me but had come early to secure themselves seats to hear Coben, the next writer on the bill." Click here to read the article.

The writing in this piece is fantastic because his use of asides, offsetting them with dashes, which give the reader context when they need it. The amount of information conveyed in these few sentences is powerful. Newspaper writers need to learn how to use a complex structure to increase clarity. Yes, simple sentences work. But variety is the spice of life.

Progress report: I had a really good week last week. I set two small goals: a day turn around story on Monday and a story on the biodiesel bill done by Friday. I did both, and both turned out well. I got a lot of good feedback, including an email from Glen Cameron, a strat. com. professor. This story wasn't a legislation story, it was a history and context story and that was what I liked about it. I'm working on shell stuff and I'm in the final stages of reporting on my Food/Fuel and Energy policy story.

Apathy?

I consider myself a pretty normal college student. I’m probably more versed on local news than most, though no more versed than any other student writing for the Missourian.

When I chipped in with election coverage this week, I couldn’t help but wonder…I voted in this election, but if I hadn’t been at the paper, I don’t really know if I would have bothered. For a die-hard voter, that’s an uncomfortable thing to admit.

But this election didn’t have a tremendous impact on me, individually, other than offering me a chance to blacken in an oval to indicate an opinion.

After all…I don’t pay taxes yet, so the tax-related ballot items wouldn’t have impacted my life very much. As for sewer rate increases: I’m not going to be here after December, so even if the bonds failed and rates went through the roof, it wouldn’t hit my pocketbook too hard. I think education’s important, but had I not needed to know the candidates before I could interview voters, I would have been relatively uninformed on the school board candidates.

I knew nothing whatsoever about the folks running for hospital trustee.

So, essentially, if it weren’t for being at the Missourian (not just reading the Missourian, but actively being in the newsroom), I don’t know if I would have been comfortable voting, period. I wouldn’t have been informed at all and wouldn’t have really had much stake in any of the election outcomes.

I’d still like to think I’d have done a little research on my own and, come election day, would’ve headed to the polls…but even then, I sincerely doubt I’d have known enough about any of the issues (after all, I’m busy and prone to being oblivious on occasion) to confidently cast an informed ballot.

I’d be interested to know if uninformed college students make up an appreciable chunk of the people voting in municipal elections. My gut tells me that the answer’s probably no, but in tight races, how many times do things get decided by people who come out to vote for a single issue and randomly blacken in the rest of the bubbles? How many times to people got to their precinct so they can vote for, say, their City Council rep, and then choose random school board delegates and blindly vote yes or no on tax issues?

It’s something interesting to mull over, I suppose: can apathy actually make an impact?

Boy, was this a pointless blog.

PROGRESS REPORT:
Spent most of this week helping with captions and coordinating efforts to make sure everything for my Saturday cover story on the jaguar gorget is totally ready to go. I fine-tuned my stuff for web shells and am coordinating a progress report (with help from Paul, of course) to sent to Tom, so he has an idea of where growth stands. Other than that, I’m meeting with Liz today to decide what I’ll be working on the next several weeks so I can finish the semester strong.