On City Island
November 23, 2007
There’s a lot of talk about journalistic ethics, but when it comes down to it, we’re diving into people. As students, we infiltrate our communities, build relationships, and use people for the information they hand us. And when it’s something like a tragedy I admit to rejoicing. There is a thrill in finding the drama in someone’s life. A drama we can tell through words and sounds and images. Yes, thrilling. That’s the word.
If only it were so clear. That thrill, in me at least, inspires and equally potent sense of guilt. That’s right. Guilt. These are people, after all. And there’s a trust built.
I am profiling an 82-year-old woman this week. She’s not laid up in some home, despite what you’re thinking. She’s a realtor and a hoot and she’s outlived everybody. She says these amazing one-liners, which, if taken out of context, could be construed as racist and anachronistic. She has a gruff way with people, practically yelling at me for showing up for our interview, then warming to me, telling me of all the people she’s known, loved, and watched die. And that’s the thing. This survivor has survived it all. Husband, children, friends, dead. What a sad, wonderful, provocative story. What a thrill(?) What an opportunity to either write a touching story about a community pillar, or use my editing skills to cherry pick controversy as my muse.
There’s a famous photo, of some war zone or crisis. The photojournalist who shot the pic ended up killing himself. A journalist should be his/her own censor; it’s the trust that takes years to establish, developed individually and as a media company, that lends credibility to the news. It’s the trust that begins when a journalist trusts him/her self, to make choices with humanity. It is not the job of the storyteller to expose every flaw, every indecency.
As writers and storytellers, we gather the lives of people like collectibles, rearrange them, present them, revel in them. But we have to live with ourselves. Never discount the conscience to keep a good journalist in check.
How Long Is Your Goulet?
October 23, 2007
It’s Halloween and I’ve got a story to cover at the Beacon Theater. Zappa Plays Zappa, son of Frank sings pop’s tunes and there should be a freak show suitable for a gonzo piece of observation. Of course, gonzo is sort of unreliable as it is heavily subjective. It may be journalism, but only just so.
But first, I’m at CBS for a meeting with a 60 Minutes producer, where we run through a story just as they might.
We get a pitch from two freelancers from L.A. Our class sits in the screening room while Andy Court, a producer, role plays all the characters. We’re conducting an investigation and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
Television news has a whole different perspective. Time, money, equipment, agreements to appear on camera from story subjects. All of this adds up to quite a different kind of storytelling than just writing.
Later, I am watching Katie Couric deliver the evening news from about a hundred feet behind her. I can see the teleprompter and her voice rings clear through the studio. A few people are bustling around, answering phones, doing last minute preps of pieces that will run in a few moments.
In the control room, where I am taken during the first commercial break, there it is serene chaos. A segment on Halloween costumes is being replaced at the last second, and I do mean second. The coordination is amazing. But I can’t shake the feeling that this is not news.
But upon reflection, it is news. Just under a thick veneer of high gloss. It’s fancy and sexy and exciting and there’s a story in there somewhere. But this is a production, and once the story is finalized into a neat, clean segment, it becomes another part of the puzzle, put together in mere moments, while millions of people watch Couric do her thing.
“How long is your Goulet?” someone asks. He needs to know in order to fit all the segments together.
Everybody laughs.
My classmate’s forehead gets in a shot.
Nobody stresses.
It’s crazy here, and relaxed. A dichotomy of sense. I always thought these types would be high strung.
Later, I make it to Zappa Plays Zappa.
A guy in the bathroom ingratiates himself with a series of disturbing shuffles. I exit hurriedly. The vampires and ghouls running around the Beacon are hardly scary anymore.
There’s a roach in my pocket. The show takes off. A hypodermic stalactite hangs from the ceiling. Zappa’s kid can wail. The deaf guy next to me shouts and whistles. Reality is breaking down.
This will make for a perfect story with a veneer of its own.
The bees’ needs
October 21, 2007
Feature articles have a structure distinct from the standard news article. Features have more texture and sense of place; they offer the reader a photographic glimpse of the subject, rather than a straightforward recounting of events. My feature article this week is on Patrick Gannon, a scientist, professor and beekeeper.
The article is about the bees Gannon keeps in his apiary in his Bronx backyard. He’s got two hives, at a quarter million bees each. This alone might make for a fascinating story, but city beekeeping isn’t news: it’s already been reported, from Harlem to Fort Greene. Rooftop beekeepers often sell their produce at the Union Square Greenmarket So instead of simply describing the buzzing metropolis in Gannon’s backyard, my article will focus on how Gannon’s bees are helping to repopulate an area that was ecologically devastated by the malathion sprayings by New York City as a defense against encephalitic mosquitoes.
Journalistic ethics play a role in this story. Keeping bees is illegal in New York City. A city ordnance against keeping dangerous animals includes bees on that list. By conducting a routine journalistic investigation in the process of writing this piece, I will be contacting city departments that have the authority to prosecute Gannon, despite the fact that none of Gannon’s neighbors have made a complaint against him. In fact, in interviewing four of his neighbors, including his tenant, who has an autistic son who plays in the backyard near the hives, I found them to be welcoming of Gannon’s bees. There is an appreciation of the function of bees in the natural processes of the larger ecosystem of the Bronx. Perhaps surprisingly, none of Gannon’s neighbors appeared afraid for themselves, or for their children.
So when I approach the city’s Health Department later this week, I will have a quandary on my hands. If the representative with whom I speak want’s Gannon’s name and address, do I hand it over? How can a journalist cover illicit activity without burning his sources?
Clearly journalists cover illegal activity all the time. A Columbia student did a masters project on a heroin addict several years ago. My solution here was to inform Gannon that I would be speaking with city departments. I’d also be questioning his neighbors and checking for complaints. Gannon had no problem with this. But something taught in class the other day stuck in my mind. It is up to each journalist to decide if his story will burn his subject, and whether or not to continue with a story is left to the individual’s conscience. This is the heart of ethics as we learn them. All options may be on the table as to how to cover a story. But it is the conscience - what one can live with - that often determines the product of the author’s mind.
In this case, I have decided that if the city department wants specific details about my subject - I will deep six the story. The last thing I want to do is cause problems for Gannon, who was kind enough to invite me into his home and show me the apiary. If the city demands my source, I’ll defend it by stopping the process, killing the story, and moving to another topic. That’s what my conscience tells me to do.
Bring it on
October 17, 2007
Discussion abounds about the amount of work at the school.
I say there’s not enough.
In RW1 (Reporting and Writing, the nuts and bolts of writing in the journalistic style) we have an ‘enterprise’ story due just about every ten days, give or take. An enterprise piece is a story whose topic the writer finds on his beat. My beat is Rockaway, a peninsula that juts westward from the south shore of Long Island, and cups Coney Island around the Jamaica Bay, which is a federally protected wildlife area. This works out well for yours truly. I am, in the self-marketing sense, a science writer. So in Rockaway, and in Jamaica Bay, I get to write about endangered shorebirds, environmental issues and other fun stuff. This beats the hell out of some other ‘hoods in which I might be forced to do stories about gentrification and difficulties in getting liquor licenses: trite tales for the veterans of Manhattan. And so I plug away in Rockaway, scanning the beach for surfers, plying my trade in the liquor stores and food marts.
In addition to the enterprise, we also have an A.P. daybook story - an event happening that day, listed on the Associated Press source page (I don’t think it’s publicly available). Yesterday, October 16, I covered Donald Trump signing of his new book at the Barnes and Noble on Fifth Ave and 46 Street.
Finding sources was a cinch. People wanted to talk - begged to, even. One woman had a sign that read, Trump is a Hunk. She was there with her son, from Thomaston, Connecticut. She was loving the attention. Two high school girls cutting class were eager to share displeasure when they failed to gain entrance to the store. Iran Barkley, once the WBC world middleweight champion, was on line too. “He should be a fan of me,” said Barkley, who has fallen far from that past glory.
So, what do I mean about there being not enough work?
When we started this thing, it was billed to us as a crazy, 24/7 roller coaster. We were gonna break down and cry, ’cause the work was so crazy.
But you know what? I spent the last three weekends chilling out. Okay, I worked Saturday, but dammit, this is so…enjoyable, that it doesn’t feel like work! Going out, meeting people, trying to get a cogent story from the life and times of so many people, is, simply, fun. And because of this, I can’t tell if I don’t have enough work, or if I simply don’t realize that I do.
But we’re only halfway through the first semester here. And things are picking up. In the next ten days, I’ve got a bunch to do. Saturday, I have to work my way into the wealth expo at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan. I have to find a way to get in (it’s not a given that conventions let just any journalist in), then write a feature-length story about it. On Wednesday, I have to hand in a 500 word story on crime in my beat. I have to conduct an interview with a critical figure related to ecology and global warming, who is in China, over Skype (an internet phone system), and report my findings to my advisor. I have to begin creating a website, upload edited stories to the school site, edit at least one, if not two or three drafts of enterprise and day book stories. And, after that’s done, I have another enterprise story, probably 1000 words, due in about ten days or so from now.
So maybe there will be enough work after all.
Just More Questions
October 2, 2007
I’ve got mixed feelings.It’s too short. Nine and a half months for this program. I want more time to synch the theory of our lectures with the real world of reporting.
It can’t be any longer. I wouldn’t want to have two years of this kind of slapdash schedule.
My keyboard misses letters; I’m developing a nasty case of carpal tunnel radial nerve compression; my golf game is going to hell.
And on top of all of this, a slowly congealing sense of place in the free fall of story-finding and reporting. There’s a subtle confidence-of-job that seems to develop. I’m increasingly willing to jump fences, park illegally, and approach certain people becuase I’m working as a journalist and that gives me some sort of mandate. I can’t compel answers, but I can, at least, ask the questions.
It’s a constant challenge though. Tomorrow we go to supreme court, and this newfound confidence (let’s call it “j-balls”) will face a new test. I don’t have a clue what to expect. I’ll let you know how it goes.
I have questions now too. Like the ’seduction and betrayal’ of interviewees. This is a real test of personal ethics, and a common part of everyday journalism.
To toss out some basic ideas: the story is not written before the interview; the interview informs the story; the story written in the end may be entirely different than the story in its infancy.
(These aren’t canonized dictates of the J-School. This is just how I make it through the day.)
The result of all this is a necessary seduction of the subject, and a subsequent betrayal. Here’s a well-thought out example: I approach a possible story subject. It could be anyone. Let’s say a park ranger. And I say, “Hello, I’m ________ and I’m writing a story for ____________. I’m interested in squirrel-on-squirrel violence. Can you give me a few minutes of your time?”
And s/he says ok.
In the course of conversation, the ranger lets on that there may be a department-wide scandal involving stolen squirrel nuts.
So now i’ve got a lead into a whole new story, a scandal in fact, which may ultimately cost my subject his job and more.
But do I hesitate to investigate and write the story?
Hell no! If the information is of significant public value, I go ahead with the story.
Of course, this leads one to ponder, Who decides what constitutes significant public value? Aha! Dean David Klatell might say. Klatell teaches Critical Issues, the closest thing we have to an ethics course. And he’s a witty and fun lecturer with plenty of atitude and a stylish oration. But for all his sardonic remarks and good humor, Klatell would not supply the answer. He’s said as much in lecture. The question of what is significant and what isn’t, and the core ethical questions for each and every journalist, is nothing that can be held to the canon. It is a singular decision, made on each story, every time a writer, or radio broadcaster, or television reporter goes out on assignment. And we have to live with our decisions. This appears to be the heart of it: a group of disparate individuals, each with their own ideas about how to move through the process, each acting in dissonant concert with the whole to produce some type of un-defineable body of knowledge categorizin and classifying itself in the endless attemp to tell some sort of truth.
My Man Mahmoud
September 24, 2007
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Protests are like carnivals without the fried food. Festivities of theoretical argument perfume air with the smell of heated exhalations. Today at Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus, the lawns were plush from last night’s rain. The sky was a crystal dome and the sun shone like God’s unblinking eye. And in that glorious bowl, the stone columns of libraries rose like ancient Athens returned from the dust.
By noon the protest had organized on the steps of the Low Memorial Library. The school was nearly invisible during this. Some campus patrol, no NYPD inside the gates as far as I could tell, and cleanup crews later in the day. The rest of it seemed to put itself together - a deft sleight of organizational hand.
Protests are multicolored, like candystores. Posters in vibrant yellow and orange - but rather sloppy text - bounced along on people sticks. If you had a camera, they stopped moving, bouncing up and down in place until the click of the shutter. One sign read, don’t bring a liar to a place of truth. I’m paraphrasing. I thought it was curious that a university, a place that arguably produces a truth, was posited as a place for someone foreign (to the university population, not nationally foreign) to avoid expressing views. What is a university if not universal?
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Even the universe has limits. A massive python of protesters wriggled down Broadway. I watched from the men’s room window. The men’s room has a particularly good view of the 116th Street entrance with Broadway as the backdrop. On this beautiful day, thousands came out to chant in unison.
In the journalism building, the ‘working’ -read real - press took over the lecture hall. Students were in the World Room. He came, we watched, we wrote. It was on TV.
I turned in an A.P. style story at five minutes to 5 p.m. It was narrow. I could have expanded the scope. I could have questioned the method of the event, the event itself. I could have turned the critical eye at Columbia. That kind of work is appreciated around here. Columbia, for all it’s reputation, seems not to have fear of internal dissent. In fact, at this moment, I’m tempted to say the University thrives on rebellion.
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Instead I focused narrowly. I automatically had Mahmoud as the main character, and, I admit, cast him as the adversary. Perhaps conveying him as an adversary was not the error, though. Perhaps I should not have considered him the only adversary.
Walk in the Park
September 17, 2007
Morning finds me walking down the slim paths of Prospect Park, where the trees tower above and the pastures are verdant and everlasting. I am here to cover an event outlined in the AP Day Book, a daily posting of events by the Associated Press, with basic information regarding the event, like a contact phone number. In my case, I was covering the ceremony for graduates of the Urban Park Service Academy, an 8-10 week program taking place on Randall’s Island (underneath the Triboro Bridge for those unfamiliar), involving physical and civic training. These guys are basically cops for parks, making decent scratch for a civil job and working at some of the more pleasant areas of the city.I got there early, which saved my ass. Milling around before the ceremony were several recent grads of the park patrol, the law enforcement side of the park service. (The other division consists of rangers, who do more outreach and education about nature. Both divisions have law enforcement powers.) Getting quotes from bona fide sources, including full name and some type of contact information, is tremendously important to reporting. So when the ceremony lasted longer than I expected, I had my quotes and notes in my book already.
The interview process is one of the hardest things I do. What questions do I ask? What tone of language do I use? I’m not one of those investigative types. I want to be told what wants to be told. I’m not the type to run after the subject, waving a mic, quoting constitutional provisions. So I move in gently, sidle up, engage a light conversation. I identify myself as press. Some people are totally shy. Some want to buy you lunch.
I sat down with Aisha, a young, pretty, girl with dark skin, dark eyes, and hair dreaded out a bit. She ushered her friend, Rashid, over to us and we sat and talked. Well, Aisha and I sat. Rashid stood. I asked a lot of dumb questions, like how she came to be in the park service, what she did before this, how was training camp, what’s the most interesting thing you’ve seen? Not the most creative fare, on my part.
One man, older than these two, had been a corrections officer at Sing Sing prison. I didn’t follow up. I thought the story had to adhere to the Day Book event. The lesson here was plain, after the fact. The story is always there, waiting to be found. But it may not be the story you seek. It may be hiding in a shadow, behind a door, inside someone’s head. It must be recognized in its camouflage and teased from hiding. It has to be caressed and tenderly undressed until it is finally, fully exposed. This is the kind of lesson learned by utter and complete failure in the field.
Deadline was 4pm. I got to school at 2:30 and started writing. And that’s a whole other process.
To Be Continued…
Ahmadinejad is coming
The Iranian president is coming to Columbia and I heard about it from the New York Post. For all I can tell, I don’t think the Journalism School was involved in the administrative levels of this event. I delay posting an opinion because I’m not quite sure how I feel about this. But I feel something. Check back early in the week for more…
As for the second part of the previous post, my professor/editor yawned at the first draft, so I went back and wrote a sarcastic version of the coverage of the graduation ceremony for the N. Y. Urban Park Service. In this one, squirrel fiends hunted for nuts until the hero-park ranger, clad in a green cape and utility belt, flew in. But I had to balance this with the fact that these guys are law enforcement and were a big presence on Sepember 11, 2001, so respect was to be paid as well.
It’s tough, this kind of writing. You have to satisfy many sources with accurate reporting. Then add a gossamer layer of perspective. Bake for thirty minutes. Cut to shreds with a red pen and start all over again.
Unfinished business
September 16, 2007
This is how the schedule breaks down. Monday and Tuesday are reporting days, and belong to the class, RWI, which is Reporting and Writing I. This course holds the majority of credits and represents the most intense workload for the first semester. It takes at least three days a week, two days for reporting on the beat, and one day in class.
Of course, because “reportage” means anything from going out on the street to see, smell, hear, touch and taste the beat, to home research, phone calls, visits to other resources, tracking down sources, and more, this course actually takes my weekends as well. Then, Wednesday is class all day, with a seminar, which is basically a workshop, and a drill, which is a two hour writing session where we learn, under some sort of pressure, how to write quick and proper according to AP style, which is how the Associated Press defines how it’s done through an annual publication. Many of the aspects of AP style have been determined historically by the constraints of the analog news wire. For example, not spacing in between an initialled name, i.e. W.C. Fields instead of W. C. Fields. And they do this because they do not want a name separated between lines as it is transferred over the wire. Functional grammar.
Thursday is my feature writing class. It has not yet begun.
Friday begins EARLY, with law, precisely the class to lull one back to the fluffy pillows of sleepytime. I pulled myself back into consciousness several times during this lecture. But watch out! They know where everyone is seated, and they call you out just like in law school.
Next on Friday is Critical Issues, the closest thing to an ethics course that we have. In CI, we discuss the history and current ethos of journalism. So far, nothing concrete has been said. Rather everything has been left up to us to discern. No easy answers. No finite quantities. No firm borders, besides the obvious (like inaccuracy, plagiarism, et. al. All things that get one fired from a journalism job, or kicked out of school).
Finally, on Friday, I meet with my master’s project advisor. Deadlines are set up throughout this semester for this monster piece of writing. In two months from now, I need my project topic approval. After that, it gets crazy. Deadlines hot and fast. Source lists, notes, outlines, complete reporting (from all sources) before the winter break. And then we write. And submit. And write again.
And still, my Skills course has not yet begun. (New Media. There, I think I’ll be learning how to work with Flash).
So that’s it. That’s semester 1 at Columbia. I can tell you now, with the work expected in RWI, that single course would fill any normal semester. I’m beginning to appreciate how this can work as a one year master’s program. Whether I maintain my sanity is still in question.
Eared Grebe Waddling
September 10, 2007
The pedagogy at the J-School is directed towards personal development rather than rote. There is no firm direction, like “do this” and “do that.” Rather, the focus is on the negative space, the borders of appropriate journalistic practices, ethical behavior and accurate writing. We had a lecture the other week, delivered by Dean Klatell, who spoke of developing a story source as a dance of seduction and betrayal. Do we seduce our sources with our fascination in them, and then betray them as we tell all their secrets in our text? The question was ultimately left unanswered. This is the essence of our education. We are positioned in front of these questions, ethical questions that strike at the heart of our personal morals. And then we are left alone with the ways to answer. For each, the process is different, and the result is a necessary discovery of how we, as people, as journalists, must live with ourselves and the choices we make.
I am finding my way firsthand. Covering the BioBlitz at Jamaica Bay this weekend (Sept. 7-8), I was, for the first time, a member of the press at a public event, and through the 24-hour period, I had to find that niche within which I could be myself, represent myself as a writer, and gather the information from sources that ultimately will be the meat of my story.
It wasn’t easy. Scientists are wary of press. Most science journalism, in my opinion, sucks BEANS Science journalism routinely looks for the controversy, for the binary oppositions, for the dramatic perspective that finds its home in the human heart. But nature is not so parochial. Science is nothing more than observation. When in nature, or what we call nature, there are no binary answers, no right and wrongs, no perfect tragedies or comedies. As I watched an Eared Grebe dip under the waters of the East Pond in Jamaica Bay, the birders with whom I observed, explained that this fellow was far outside his natural migratory pattern. Searching for the tension, I asked, is this due to the human presence? No, he answered. This was a normal occurrence, the frequent anomaly present in nature, which befuddles man’s attempt at breaking down the world into comprehensible bits. It could be the fringe of a new migration, a mistake by a young bird, or some other sort of entropic occurrence. But there was no reason to suspect human activity as the source of this small bird’s wrong turn.
Later, in a conversation bordered by the cars rushing along Cross Bay Boulevard, we spoke about journalists and science writing. He recalled being quoted with such telescopic ferocity, that controversy was made from statements that neither represented his scientific view, nor the functional truth. This was a recognition of precisely the science writing I will not engage in. Of this, I assured him.
The drama of nature and science is too magnificent to be framed in the petty diatribes of a myopic perspective. As I piece through my notes and set up interviews for an in-depth look at this event, I am finding my way through this personal maze, coming to understand how I must be, in the most existential of senses, a writer in the world. And in this way, I’m coming to appreciate the school’s focus on developing the person rather than just developing a generic body of knowledge.