Author: erikeisele

Getting It Wrong

I’ve been working on several stories lately that are so complex there are more opportunities to trip up and get it wrong than it is likely I’ll get it right. Today another possible beat got tossed my way: Healthcare. My response? Cool.

But that wasn’t the getting it wrong trap I half fell in today. No, it was a simple story.

The guy who took a 1,000-foot fall ice climbing this winter died recently, someone told me today, of a blood clot. Michael was his name. I was shocked — I’d written about the accident and the rescue, and I’d had an in-depth interview with him weeks afterward. Just recently, in fact, I’d given his number to another writer who wanted to write up his story for a climbing magazine.

One part of my job sucks — making the hard phone call. I didn’t want to have to call his widow, a young woman with a child, but I knew I had to. I took a breath and dialed.

Ring!

“Hello.” It was a man’s voice.

“Michael?” I said.

“Yeah?” he replied.

“It’s Erik, from the Conway Daily Sun. I heard you were dead.”

Try to imagine how the conversation went from there. Sometimes it isn’t so bad to get the simple stories wrong. Just try to do it before you go to print.

Two Years

Where were you two years ago? Where will you be two years from now?

Two years ago my father was battling throat cancer, I was just over six months married, and the ground was still quaking from economic meltdown. I was also starting this blog.

I started LPJ because I had just begun a full-time job at a newspaper, a medium that had been hemorrhaging for years. The job was in a town that had been hemorrhaging as well, Berlin N.H. The industry and the town were two of the same. They were used to the good times, to American dominance, successful manufacturing and booming profits. Newspapers and Berlin were built for the mid-twentieth century, and the early twenty-first was wearing on both of them.

But I had a job, so I was flying high.

The Reporter wasn’t interested in giving me a blog on their website, so after a couple weeks of trying to convince them I decided to start my own. It focused mostly on Berlin and what I was covering at first, but over time I began to look more and more at journalism in general. Where was the industry going? What are the opportunities for people like me who want to continue to tell the stories both at home and abroad that are too often overlooked? How can I make that happen when the financial mechanisms that supported reporters for the last 100 years are proving inadequate?

If someone wants something, however, it’s up to them to make it happen.

If you had told me two years ago I would soon be riding a Humvee through the Mideast I would have said you were crazy. But then I made it happen.

I don’t know where I’ll be next. I’m now working in Conway, N.H., for the Conway Daily Sun, a great little paper with a fantastic atmosphere. I also still send stories to NHPR, something I’ve been doing for even longer than I’ve been running LPJ. I’m not sure where I’ll look next or what the next adventure will be, but it’s nice to see what can happen over two years. Hopefully the next two have as many surprises.

More Pics…

The point of this post is not to show a slew of pictures I’ve taken lately, but to remind me to jump back behind the glass.

So much of my work recently has been chasing down leads about the disappearance and death of a 20-year-old woman, and then flipping through court files on the men accused of robbing and killing her. What I haven’t been doing has been taking photos.

The new media model is not the kind where someone gets to do only one thing and do it well. Specialization is OK, but in the fractured journalism today it’s good to have experience in print, in electronic reporting, and in online journalism. The fact that I can record and edit audio adds depth to my reporting. When the news about Krista Dittmeyer was breaking I was often accompanied by Jaime Gemmeti, the Sun’s photographer. He is fantastic, consistently giving us a visually strong front page to place stories around.

But durring the Dittmeyer extravaganza, while he was shooting stills I was recording video. We came back from the press conferences with video of the entire thing, which wound up getting more than 4,000 hits on Facebook. The same thing the day of the accused murderer’s arraignment: when the senior assistant attorney general made a statement we were ready. He got a great shot from a distance that captured the pack of reporters as well as the AG, and I caught the whole statement on video.

But the downfall of a fulltime photographer is I haven’t been picking up the camera enough. Jaime is great. He is a one-man photo department. His photos inspire people to pick up the paper. I certainly don’t want him to go anywhere, but I need to tap into that inspiration to pick up my camera more.

It’s funny, because I’ve been picking up the camera for more than 15 years. I know how to use it, but in a busy news day sometimes it just falls by the wayside. The story is more important to me, granted — I’d rather miss the photo than misquote someone. But there is something about the art of photography that is enthralling.

It’s actually the same thing that draws me to radio, and it’s very different than my experience with print. When I write a story I feel like I’m braiding together a rope. You can’t ever let go of any single strand for two long, otherwise you’ll lose its place. Instead each strand has to be intertwined with the others. There are ways to massage together imperfections, but overall it’s pretty formulaic.

Audio work and photography are different. They still both retain a bit of mystique, a bit of the art. They are more pliable, more what the practitioner makes of them.

It’s funny, because I don’t consider myself an artist, even when I’m working in those mediums. Print, radio, photo, they’re all just different ways to tell a story. I’ve said before I don’t consider myself a writer, I consider myself a reporter. If the audience gets my reporting through the written word that’s fine, but my ultimate goal was to inform them, and writing was simply the means.

But it’s a means I’m pretty accustomed to. Not that I’m fast at it, mind you, just that I’ve learned how to weave. I’m still improving my audio weaving, although Iraq helped it get a lot better. Photo, however, is less weaving, is less formulaic, and requires a bit more from me. That challenge is something I relish. After a bit too long watching someone else focus the Nikkor, it’s time for me to get back behind the glass.

Iraq, Four Months Later

I was just scrolling through a bunch of the photos I shot while I was in Iraq for New Hampshire Public Radio. It’s a bit crazy to think it has only been four months since I was getting on a C-130 headed for Victory Base in Baghdad, but I’m itching to do something like that again. It was terrifying, didn’t always go right, and it was probably a bigger leap than I intended. There were nights when I wanted nothing more than to be home (especially after I missed my flight), but it was a fantastic experience all the same.

I’m not sure what the future of reporting is, but I know the places where we have to scroll through pictures to remind ourselves we were there are the places that likely need another set of eyes. I’ve been watching the latest iterations of the Arab spring thinking that’s impossibly fertile ground for stories, ground far to threatening to just dive into. But that is where the stories are.

I’ve been covering a murder case for several weeks now. The experience has been revealing for me. Watching roving reporters elbow each other out of the way for details that they’ll all get eventually illuminates exactly why people look down on the profession. The best day for me as a reporter in this story was when I found out who the father of Krista Dittmeyer’s child was. The worst was the following day, waiting in a parking lot alongside every other reporter for the official word on the body in the pond.

Show up in Libya right now, and I’m in the parking lot. There will be better financed reporters just itching to broadcast the story, one that is essentially spoon-fed. But somewhere out there is the story no one is paying attention to. It’s in some random place, where everyone else already isn’t. Those are the stories worth telling.

And looking back on Iraq, that has become the story no one tells. It’s crazy that people acknowledge we have 50,000 troops there, but it still isn’t enough to be the national story.

To hell with national, tell the story that needs telling. What that is right now? I’m not sure, but I think it’s time to start digging…

More War

This story by New York Times executive editor Bill Keller is a great explanation of exactly what it is that makes me want to go back to places like Iraq. It isn’t about hanging it out there and putting my life on the line, it’s about realizing that there are stories out there so terrible no one wants to hear them. Those are exactly the stories that ought to be told.

Particularly with photographs, journalism from war zones can redirect the future. Our lives, here in the United States, are pretty easy. Life here is good, even in the worst of times. It’s easy to forget that rape is used as an offensive strategy in the Congo, or that Mexicans are dying every day in a war fueled by Americans’ drug habits. Reporters have the job to go where others won’t, to find out what isn’t obvious and make it known. Sometimes those places are courtrooms, sometimes it is the battlefront. The reminders, however, have to happen, because otherwise it’s too easy to forget.

The article did a good job getting that across. I’m no daredevil; I’ve remarkably conservative, actually. But those stories need to be told, and I’m not going to leave it up to chance that they do.

Arrested and Arraigned

Three men — two accused of conspiring to rob Krista Dittmeyer and one accused of killing her — are in jail. The next step in the story that began three weeks ago today is unfolding.

It’s a bit strange to consider this a story, and not a woman’s life, but that’s what it has been to me. And it has been a spectacularly interesting story to watch develop.

The first thing I’ve learned is that I have no interest in being in television news. TV reporters are vultures. Or maybe vulture-sharks. They can smell blood, and they stand in the background while they wait for their chance. When I walked out of the courtroom there was a semicircle of cameras waiting for anyone connected with the case to walk by. The reporters were kneeling down, holding out microphones while the camera operators stood. The reporters shouted questions as people walked by. They literally blocked the exit there were so many of them.

See the video:

I don’t begrudge them their job, but then I think of the newscasts. I’ve seen several errors in reports, and yet there have been no corrections. They just keep rolling on, like a piano player in a band who flubs a note. That’s not the type of journalism I do. I don’t pretend to be perfect, but when I screw up I correct it.

There are other things I’ve learned, like that people will overlook your drug-dealing if you are young, attractive and have a child. Would there be this much controversy if it was a 20-year-old black male who was killed when two people tried to steal his drugs and money? I’ve also learned that many people assume someone is guilty based entirely on what the police say, and not on the evidence. There is no public evidence in the Dittmeyer case, and yet lots of people seem to know these men are guilty. I have no clue what happened, so I’m reserving judgement. Maybe by the end of this we’ll find out.

News Cycle

Want a quick lesson in journalism? Newspapers do the real work.

Want to know how I know? All it took was a mistake.

At the press conference today the cameras were again lined up to shoot the assistant attorney general as she gave the latest report. The Conway Daily Sun photographer and I showed up about 10 minutes early, long after all the television crews had set up.

One of the camera operators noticed us standing a bit behind everyone else. “You guys from the Conway Daily Sun?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

He smiled. “You guys are killing it with this story,” he said.

“Yeah,” said another guy, “we get all our news from you.”

But this post isn’t for me to boast. Actually, just the opposite. At 7:30 p.m. last night, after more than nine hours waiting for a body to come out of the pond, I took a closer look at the police log from the night before. Two men had been interviewed by police at the base of Cranmore ski area, right near where the body was found. One of them was the brother of the man Krista Dittmeyer had a child with. Suspicious, I thought, this has to go in the paper.

Had I been a bit more on top of it I would have noticed the reason police met the two men there: because they called police. But I didn’t, and the story I wrote said police stopped the two men, not that the two men asked police to come meet them.

Fast-forward to today, 6 p.m. The NBC affiliate in Portland announces two men were stopped by police at the base of the mountain, one of them the brother of the man Dittmeyer had a child with. A quick look by a fresh pair of eyes would have cleared this error up, but no one there gave it a look. They just read off my story.

My story wasn’t wrong, but it set the wrong tone about the two men. One wound up arrested on an unrelated warrant, and because I omitted the phone call they look bad.

I can admit it — I screwed up. It was a long day, and I miss read a report not meant for human consumption. At least I’m not the television station, however — their only excuse is that they didn’t check the facts they were reporting straight out of the newspaper (uncredited, I might add). Who screwed up there? Not one person, but their entire process of reporting.

I did what I can to make it right on my end. I wrote a new story that will run tomorrow. In it is says they made the phone call despite it leading to one of them getting arrested. I also include the criminal record of the man not arrested, so it isn’t all positive, but it certainly puts the two in a better light. It doesn’t provide all the answers, but it gives a clearer impression of what happened.

I’ll be interested to see if the television station will correct their mistake (they weren’t the only ones, by the way), or if they’ll just keep on rolling. We may be killing it, but I report for one paper. Everyone else would do well to do their own reporting.

Hot News, Sad Day

What a day today was. I spent most of the day in the Cranmore parking lot getting sunburnt, surrounded by television crews. Police found the body of 20-year-old Krista Dittmeyer in a pond at the base of the ski area this morning, putting an end to a multiday search. It took them until 6:30 p.m. to confirm they found her, and for much of the day people were very upset with us for reporting on Facebook that a body had been found. People thought we were being disrespectful of Dittmeyer’s family, or that we were jumping the gun and reporting things we didn’t know.

I knew there was a body in the pond at 9:15 a.m. I 100 percent knew it, a police officer confirmed it. For me there was no choice but report that as soon as possible.

I get paid to do what is essentially a public service: to keep the public informed. When I know something, and I know the information is good, it is my job to inform the public.

And yet it provoked anger, rage even.

On Saturday I posted on the Conway Daily Sun’s Facebook page that a 20-year-old Portland woman was missing, and that her baby had been left in the car. I got that information from a police officer, and I trusted it to be true. I put it on the Facebook page as soon as I could, not knowing how else I could get it out there (our next paper wasn’t until Tuesday).

For days since that first post people have begged for information. Each morning there were requests for. On Easter Sunday someone asked for an update before I was out of bed. As soon as I saw it I put a call in to the police station. There wasn’t any news, and right away I posted that on Facebook.

I would never have held information back then. I would welcome criticism if I did. But the same is true for bad news.

When I posted the police found a body I didn’t say it was Dittmeyer’s because I didn’t know. But I did say they found a body, because the fact is they had.

“But you didn’t know,” people might say, “no one confirmed there was a body.”

If the house in front of you is burning, yet the chief of police says it isn’t burning, what would you report? Confirmed or not by an official police spokesmen, I knew there was a body in that pond.

“Other news agencies aren’t reporting it yet, it must not be true!”

It’s true, other news agencies didn’t report it, but it was true. There was a body in that pond, and it was Krista Dittmeyer. It was true at 9:30 a.m. when I posted on Facebook they had found a body, and it was true at 6:30 p.m. when the assistant attorney general told the TV cameras it was Dittmeyer. I had good information, and just like when it was good news, I did not hesitate to give it directly over to the public. The Sun never said it was Dittmeyer before the assistant attorney general identified her, but the fact is from the start we were right on the body.

That wasn’t by chance. It was because of good, solid reporting by the Sun team. Official confirmation or not, we knew.

Only the day before I had a great lesson in this. For days no official source would say a thing about the father of Krista Dittmeyer’s baby. So I started digging. With the help of colleagues at the Sun and others around the community, I discovered a man named Kyle Acker was the father, and that he was in prison in Maine for selling drugs. When I approached official sources about this, they refused to comment, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. It went in the paper. We beat out every other news agency in the country with that information. That’s good reporting, and it was the TRUTH.

I take my job seriously. I do not publish information I believe to be incomplete or untrue, and I will not hold back information I believe the public wants to know. The community at large has been hungry for information about Dittmeyer since the start of the case. They celebrated us for giving it to them when they hoped she was alive; they can’t crucify us for doing the same thing now that she is dead.

If I can confirm it, out it goes, just like it did this morning.

Official sources are wonderful, but they can’t rule a journalist. When an official source wants to get information out they can, but what about when those sources want to hold back information?

That is when a journalist’s job actually begins. Retyping press releases isn’t reporting. Reporting is learning new facts and verifying statements, even if people don’t want you to know those facts or check their statements. The public is entitled to the TRUTH, even if it sucks. And they are entitled to it right away, without censorship or delay.

I do not fault the official sources — in this case the attorney general’s office or the Conway Police Department — for trying to keep a tight lid on this investigation. But just because they don’t hand me every fact on a platter doesn’t mean I should stop looking. Today I verified there was a body in the pond, and I put it out to the public. To do otherwise would be unethical.

Painful truth is still TRUTH, and verified facts are still facts. Reporters delve for truth and facts, instead of only publishing the easy story, should be celebrated, even if the truth is painful.

The Latest

Krista Dittmeyer has not turned up yet, but news about her baby’s father has. He is in jail for dealing drugs, something thus far that has been out of the news. It was only because of my colleagues’ longtime connections in the community that I was able to uncover who he was and what he was in prison for, but we beat the national media hovering over Conway. That feels good.

Now we’ll see where other community connections get me. I’ve been hearing a bunch of rumors that are tough to substantiate about what Dittmeyer was doing over here. I’ve got a few leads out there, and may have another interesting story by tomorrow night. This one is going to wind up on the Today Show, I guess, but I turned down the chance at an interview. I’ll just keep doing my job, and leave television to the television reporters.

Press Conference

Krista Dittmeyer has been missing for several days. The search for her began on Saturday after her 14-month-0ld daughter was discovered in her car parked in the parking lot of a local ski area. It’s become a bit of a media circus, but the Sun has tried to keep its coverage professional. Here is a short snipet from the Conway Police Department’s press conference:

Read the full story here.