Author: erikeisele

On the Big Screen

On Thursday evening I gave a talk to about 25 people at the Conway Public Library on my reporting trip to Iraq last year. A friend of mine has a son in the library youth program, and his son asked if I would be willing to come speak. It was open to the public, and there was a pretty good turnout. It was my first formal revisit of the trip, and in order to give it I had to root back through my posts while I was there to remind myself of the experience.

Every story I told reminded me of another story, and every vignette sent me directly into the next vignette. It was my attempt of sharing everything I couldn’t cram from that three week experience into the radio stories and blog posts. I had a fantastic time, and my friend tells me it was well received by the audience as well.

I’m bouncing a few of these types of projects around as we speak, although none of them are as comprehensive or with as solid a foundation as that one was. There have been a number of changes at NHPR since last year, and though I still feel welcome to contribute I doubt I could find the same level of support I found then.

That has me mulling around just what the next such project should look like. Like I said, I’ve got a few, but none of them are on the same scale. It is hard, however, to imaging matching the pace of reporting on U.S. troops in the midst of a country that had been a top American enemy for more than a decade.

And besides, I’ve been enjoying rocking the local paper. Day after day I’m churning out interesting stories on real issues. The past year and a half have taught me a ton about the practice of journalism, and I intend to keep those experiences coming.

I do foresee, however, some cool projects on the horizon. Keep your eyes open.

Brushing Up Against The Voters

The Bartlett town meeting was a breeze last night, running about an hour and a half without any real controversy. I had figured it would be an easy meeting, so I brought my camera. Unfortunately because of how easy it was there was only one article that wasn’t settled by voice vote, so there wasn’t a lot of action. I did get to run around and shoot some fun photos, however, like this one. Left to right you are looking at Gene Chandler, the chairman of the board, town moderator Robert Clark, selectman Doug Garland and selectman David Patch.

This marks the end of the town meeting week, and the start of a week of vacation. When I get back Conway’s election will be in full swing (Conway is an SB-2 town). That will be undoubtedly more exciting.

Solid Sources

I stumbled across this article yesterday while perusing the journalism sites. In an era where people are losing their trust in ” the media” being on solid ground is key, especially as the political discourse gets more and more partisan. I thought it was a great resource, something every reporter should at least scan.

A Plane Ticket Away

Riots in Russia had me thinking about buying a ticket to Moscow. Shelling in Syria got me wondering what it takes to get smuggled across the Lebanese border. Elections in Libya have me looking at maps for Tripoli. And burning Korans in Afghanistan have me thinking it’s time to keep my head down.

After more than a year since Iraq, I’m starting to think about what’s next. I’ve worked out a situation where if I can come up with a cool story I will be able to go, so now I just need that story. I’ve been looking at a lot of war photojournalism lately, like this from James Nachtwey, and it has me again thinking about a trip, only this time without embedding.

I’ve also been shooting a lot of photos, working deliberately towards improving my composition. Some of my shots have been popping up in cool places, like these on a local ice climbing site. Photography is barely a part of my day job now because the paper has an awesome photographer, but every time I can I pull out my camera. Mostly my photos wind up all over Facebook because I’m just out there having fun, but I’d like to take one of those trips with a mission to only shoot, shoot, SHOOT.

I felt that way when I got back from Iraq, where I spent more time playing with microphones than behind the camera. I wanted the other side. Now I’m trying to figure out how to find the time to make all sides — print, audio, photo and video — happen in one trip. And along with that, how to make money doing it.

So I’ve been perusing plane tickets again, and I’m pretty close to buying. It isn’t the sort of thing where I’m looking at AK-47s this time, but instead an environmental story from South America. I am looking at the whole kit — video, audio, photo and print. But at least this time IEDs won’t be a part of the mix.

That will be soon enough.

Close Call

A school board member with a long history of holding student athletes to high standards almost got wrongfully smeared in the paper today. So did his son. The close call was a good lesson on just how much you have to look into things before you put them into print.

Every day I get a copy of the police dispatch logs from the days before, which including information about what police and firefighters had to deal with over the last 24 hours. Among the call log are also the arrests, and in one from last week was the 17-year-old son of a school board member.

The son had been arrested for driving after his license was either suspended or revoked. He got handcuffed, put in the back of the police car, formally arrested and bailed. The parent is the school board member who has long said student athletes who misbehave off campus must be held accountable on campus. That had us asking all sorts of questions, since the son kept playing basketball after the arrest.

We were all set to point out the hypocrisy of the school board member’s position, since no one reported the son’s arrest. It was getting close to a banner story.

Then I called the cops, who told me the whole thing was an administrative error. The Department of Motor Vehicles incorrectly had the son’s license as suspended. The arrest will appear on his arrest record now, the police said, but it was not his fault.

I immediately took the boy’s name out of the police log and called all the people we’d contacted who were connected with the story to make sure they had the full information, but it was that close to a story. The official police records said there was an arrest, and there was no backstory on how it was essentially an erroneous arrest. Think about how that would have looked in tomorrow’s paper.

That was the second story dealing with that same school official where everything pointed in one direction but some key phone call or piece of information tipped the scales in the opposite direction. Both would have been monumental errors on the paper’s part, made someone look bad and in no way left any recourse for those hurt.

These are the dangers of three-quarters journalism. The evidence may point in one direction, but that may be only 90 percent of the evidence. The other 10 percent may make it clear that what the other 90 percent points two is inconsequential. It isn’t about what the evidence points to, it’s about the truth, and for that three-quarters (or even 90 percent) isn’t good enough.

Close calls are a reminder of why solid reporting is so important. Banner stories die because you do your job well. Sometimes it feels great to kill them.

More Lawyering

This week I was in charge of attorney issues. We finally got the documents from the court case we won, but tons and tons was redacted. I had to get on the phone with two attorneys and argue why what they did overstepped the court order. I was happy to be able to successfully negotiate this one away seeing as the other option was going back to the courts, but considering all the holes in the paperwork that would have been a viable option.

And then there was the matter of abolishing the budget committee and whether that violates Conway’s charter. I was on the phone with the town attorney, asking if he thought the ballot question to transform the budget committee from a board with statutory authority into advisory-only was legal when I pointed out a way the voters could wind up eliminating the budget committee all together, which would put the town in violation of its charter. The town attorney’s response: “That’s a good point.”

I’m not sure what attorney’s get to talk to me, but I know what I get to talk to them and it isn’t much. Sometimes its fun to push people outside your paygrade.

That is essentially what journalism is, I guess — asking people who ought to know the answers basic questions to test them. Late last year I got to challenge candidates vying the U.S. Presidency. One of them makes more in a day than I make in a year (guess which one). If that isn’t quizzing above your pay grade I don’t know what is.

The nice thing about being a reporter is you aren’t being paid by any side. You are being paid to find the truth. Press every side, then press them again, and if something that appeared right before goes sour press it until it pops.

I had back-to-back hour long conversation/arguments this past week about the court case we won, both of them on the phone. Coworkers were stealing glances my way, wondering who I was sparing with. At the end someone said they wanted to buy me a coffee because I’d had such a rough couple of days. I, however, couldn’t keep the smile off my face. Pushing like that is why I do the job. Who wants to be an attorney — those guys are paid to defend their client. I’m paid to defend whoever is right.

Budget Time, and Public Office

Local government is an amazing thing. In New Hampshire, the Live Free or Die state, the goal is to put control directly into the hands of the voters for the most part. That means elected officials sit before citizens and have to answer direct questions directly. Imagine if the same were true on the national level…

I’ve been caught up in the budget debates in recent weeks, from how much teachers make to grant applications for police officers. The only thing that seems to be missing, however, is the public.

Last night I was at the public hearing for the town of Conway budget, which just passed the 10,000 population milestone. There were roughly six members of the public in the audience. Everyone else was an elected official. Tonight it was the town of Bartlett budget public hearing. There were 10 people there, including the fire chief and the police chief. While proportionately better (Bartlett has about 3,000 residents, I think) it was still a dismal turnout.

The day before I was at a Conway selectmen’s meeting. A local neighborhood association had urged people to come out and voice their position on an issue, but there were less than five people that heeded that call. A couple other people who were there for unrelated reasons shared their opinions, but overall it was a flop (there may have been a few emails sent to town officials, however).

I wrote about this problem years ago in Berlin — Where is everybody? Local government gives people a lot of control over how decisions are made, but first people have to show up. And they don’t. When they do, like at last year’s school deliberative meeting, they can exert amazing force, but in day to day governance boards and commissions are left on their own. It’s sad to see.

And yet people complain. They write to the paper and post to Facebook about how much local government sucks. They may not realize the level of power they could wield, accustomed instead to federal elections where one vote is a drop in the bucket.

If there is one thing I’ve learned by covering hundreds of public meetings (literally) it’s show up. And run. Get involved. Try running things and you’ll probably criticize a lot less. Or at least you’ll be able to do something about it.