Thursday, April 3, 2008

Who am I working for? Me? The Paper? The Community?

Unforuntely (or fortunately...or whatever), I believe I'm working for all three. I work for myself to do good work and get a job. I work for the paper to get a grade and, alternatively, to serve the community (and learn).

Why would this be bad? Well, because it's pretty tough to serve them all, at least at the optimum level. Here's why:

The baseball team thinks it is a good idea to play five times a week, and give me one day to talk to the players.

The newspaper needs a story for every game, but not ABOUT every game...rather a story about the team. This is nearly impossible to do with the access that I have.

The community needs both the game story and big features.

I don't need game stories at all...I need features...that's what is going to get me hired. Unforunately (like I said the first time), I'm not only here to serve myself. I have to do what the need, and put out everything the community deserves.


I don't know if this post has a moral...probably doesn't.



Progress Report
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Finally, I'm rolling. I've been getting a lot of positive feedback on my stories, I'm starting to build a good rapport with the team, and I can tell that I'm getting better. I get frustrated a lot...I don't like writing tiny-feature stories that kill off a lot of the bigger features I could do, but I don't really have the time for all of the big ones anyway, so I suppose it works. I've filed about 15 stories in the last month, which is insane, but the team leaves at the end of the month, and I should be able to get some good features out.

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