Category: journalism

Another Gold Star

I have three episodes of reporting I’m particularly proud of since I’ve been at the Conway Daily Sun, and all of them center on the police.

The first was a story I did right before town meeting on the department’s end of year spending habits. Several years ago the department blew through tens of thousands of dollars in the final days of the year. The next year it was a similar story, although less pronounced, to the point they had less than $50 to give back to the town. Finding and pointing out that pattern was exhilarating. When I was staring at their expenses and realized what had happened I almost started bouncing.

The second one was durring Krista Dittmeyer’s disappearance. Through random connections and some luck I found the name of her baby’s father. Then with a bit more digging I found out he was in prison in Maine. That afternoon I was at a press conference with national media where reporters in calf-length jackets and hipster glasses grilled the local lieutenant about the case. They kept asking about the father, but the lieutenant wouldn’t budge. The Sun photographer there with me had to remind me to wipe away the smirk. I knew I knew something no one else did. We wound up beating every other news outlet with that story, including the Portland Press Herald, a much bigger paper based in the town Dittmeyer lived in.

And yesterday the third story came out.

This story was about a theft within the police department, a theft that happened months ago that no one has been talking about. I was able to get the police chief, the police commissioners and the State Police to talk about the incident, and I was able to get a number of the key details out.

When you feel a story like these start to come together it feels really good. It feels like you’ve just discovered a lost civilization, one people meant for you never to find. It’s a treasure hunt, and with these ones I found the prize. There are surely more prizes out there, however. I’m happy to keep digging.

What are the Rules?

I was reading this the other night, about a well-regarded Medill School of Journalism professor who’s well-known Innocence Project may have hit some speed-bumps.

It makes me think about two things: what the rules of reporting are, and how much one misstep undoes a successful career.

I try to always be honest with interview subjects, but sometimes you know something and you need to get someone else to say it to put it in the paper. When the whole town was talking about a drug connection with Krista Dittmeyer, for example, it took finding the father of her child to get that in the paper, and then it took the court documents saying she was robbed of drugs and money before she was killed to really get it out there. You can’t just say something unless you have a credible source, and credible sources are often reluctant to admit what they know. Sometimes you have to pump them for information and get it out of them.

That’s different than pretending you are a census worker, as one person in this story did. I always identify myself as a reporter right away. I think people should know what is at stake before they say anything. But that doesn’t exactly square with what I just wrote, where I’m working to get a source to go on the record with something I know, so obviously it’s a tough line to walk.

But let’s say someone crossed it at Medill, just for the sake of discussion. If the process frees innocent people from death row, isn’t it worth it? (Now you’re thinking you should go back and read the article, eh? It’s good.) I’m not sure — it’s a bit Machiavellian. I do not agree with Barry Goldwater’s assertion that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” I don’t think people should be carted off because they are communists, Muslims or anything else in a pluralist society. Jumping out of bounds to free people may seem inarguable, but what happens if you aren’t looking hard enough at the possibility they are guilty.

I don’t know though. Justice isn’t blind, though we’d like it to be, and the Innocence Project has always seemed spectacular to me. I hope it keeps going, prospers and spreads. Every guilty verdict is worth a second look — if they are guilty it will have been a good exercise; if they are innocent they deserve to be freed. Just don’t step outside the rules to find out either way.

In the WAR Zone

I stumbled on this piece the other night, about what it’s like to think you are going to die while reporting. I had a similar (albiet infinitely less) situation when I was in Iraq, where I felt like I was a sitting duck just waiting to get killed.

I know when I was finished with that ride I wanted nothing more than to be home. I didn’t have the choice to leave at that time, but you have to wonder why after a real brush with death (not just perceived, as mine was) people keep going back.

I can’t thank them enough, though, for being willing to, because it is those stories that tell us about what is going on in Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. It feels like you are alone, but you are there for everyone else, so they can no what is happening and lend some kind of support.

In Syria, for instance, where reports are soldiers are turning on soldiers but there is no independent verification, it feels like there is a war in a vacuum. Who will win? Who will lose? When will it be over? How will the world know? That’s the scariest thing to me. It may even be worse than feeling like a sitting duck.

Another Busy Week

It has been a short week this week, because of the Memorial Day holiday, but it has again been crazy. A man struck another man in the head with a hatchet, there was a drug bust in Conway at the same time as someone in the house was overdosing on antidepressants, there was an attempted abduction of a 14-year-old girl, tornado warnings north of the notches, and former mayor Rudy Giuliani stopped by the office to say hello.

Here’s a brief clip of his visit:

It’s been interesting over the last two months — I’ve become almost a full time crime reporter. I’ve talked to the Department of Corrections spokesman at least once a week, sometimes a couple times a day (like today and yesterday), and I’m sinking my teeth into the law almost every day. Child endangerment? Sure. Felonious sexual assault? Why not. I’ve been seeing more and more of this stuff as the weather warms. I’m interested to see just how hot the summer gets. I’m not sure people want to see much more of this.

On the good side, however, I had no fewer than four cover stories today. I’m not really sure how that works, I crowded out everyone else. The good thing is we have two reporters gone on vacation. There’s been no shortage of things to fill the paper with while they’re gone!

…Everything Else is Publicity

Bill Moyers was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart the other night, and he made the most fantastic quote about journalism I’ve ever heard: “The news is about what people want to keep hidden. Everything else is publicity.”

We had former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani swing by the office today. Why? For publicity. He isn’t running for president yet, but he wants to test the waters.

“Who cares?” should be a good response to his visit, because surely everyone will hear enough from him, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin and every other candidate running for president in 2012 when they start spending like mad. As the campaign continues their stops will continue to be publicity, but unless they’re hiding something it isn’t news, by Moyer’s definition.

I have to agree. It isn’t often you find something people are actively working to keep hidden, but those are the things worth finding. The biggest news story of the last century brought down a president after he tried to hide what his staff was doing. The rest of it? I’m with Moyers — who cares.

Watch The Daily Show Moyers interview clip, and if you have time check out the second segment:

 

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.