Category: media

The Real Thing

Someone posted this as an example of excellent coverage of the Afghanistan war. A brief warning: it’s not for the feint of heart.

This is more combat than I have any real desire to be in, but it illustrates a point I made earlier—more information is better. It’s a hard look at the reality the United States and its partners face around Afghanistan, where today the New York Times reported three U.S. soldiers were killed.

It’s interesting the limited capacity for war the American people have, particularly with two simultaneous conflicts going on. When Iraq was melting into sectarian violence no one asked about Afghanistan. Now it’s Afghanistan, formerly America’s “Forgotten War,” that is erupting into violence. The techniques—improvised explosive devices and suicide bombs—have been imported from Iraq, as have the casualties, which just climbed above 2,000.

This type of reporting is invaluable. It connects the viewer at home with the soldier on the field. U.S. and British citizens (the Guardian is a U.K. paper) can begin to understand what the war in Afghanistan looks like, and they can decide what level of importance they should place on foreign policy when they go to the voting booth.

Will it hurt or help the war effort? I’m not sure. No one wants to see young American soldiers die, but it’s more a matter of your view of the threats posed by a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. Would it lead to more terrorist attacks, and is the current strategy affecting it? Those questions aren’t answered by the reporter in the field. They are hopefully addressed by reporters back home consulting with specialists and experts. But the reporter in the field gives context. They make it clear just what those decisions mean, on the ground, for one soldier and one family. They aren’t policies in a vacuum, and it takes people broadcasting or filing from the field to make the true impacts clear.

I’m still waiting to find out if that’s something I’ll be doing, but regardless I think it’s important when someone does it well, from a perspective rarely seen, to share it. This video is intimidating, but it brings reality home.

Planning and Development

Zoning has been big news in Berlin recently, with the council working to amend the zoning ordinance to deal with non-conforming lots. The council screwed up by rushing the effort. They had to redo it the other night, which pushes the time-line of at least one project back another couple weeks, but they are moving forward still, with the goal to make it easier to start and run a business in Berlin.

There are members of the planning board, however, who don’t favor relaxing the standards. The city should get rid of non-conforming lots over time, they argue, and the way to do that is by restricting their use.

I’m no urban planner, but both sides of the debate have merits. Berlin needs development. The city is in no position to turn away people looking to invest. But the city needs investors willing to do things right, on the other hand. All the slumlords in the world don’t help revive the housing market, for example.

I watched this talk recently about redevelopment of suburban areas that had been abandoned, and parts of it echoed the challenges in Berlin.

Planning and zoning are such interesting tools for development, and at the same time complex. The city needs to consider carefully how to implement them. What does it mean to make this change? Hopefully it creates real opportunity in the city, like jobs, taxes and growth in the near future. In the end, two weeks doesn’t matter.

Update

After a bunch of work between meetings today (I spent a long time waiting for calls back that never came) I pulled together a new banner for the website. It’s more generic, but clean.

I’ve got a couple freelance proposals out there that I’m hoping to take advantage of, so I’ve been trying to spruce up the site. I never fully finished it when I originally launched it, so now I’m trying to do that.

I’ve got a pitch in with a magazine to do a story on the Peru trip I have scheduled for August. A police officer asked if I was going to write something for the Reporter about it, but I just don’t see how I can make the connection.

For that pitch I updated my resume, which is up on the site as well. It’s important to be seen, I guess, when you’re telling companies you write.

Anyway, I’ve got 300 words to write about tonight’s council meeting, so I’ve got to get going on that. I love the weeks I totally botch my word count estimate for council. The agenda was short, but now I’ve got 1,000 words I’ve got to cram into a couple paragraphs. Awesome. It will go quickly, I imagine.

Summer Rain

It’s pouring out, for the first time in weeks. The 90 plus degree temperatures of the last 10 days made everyone lethargic, me included, and this reprieve is a blessing.

But in that time, aside from some interesting developments in Berlin and Coös County, I’ve unearthed some interesting opportunities as well.

First, I’m headed to Peru for three weeks in August for vacation. The trip was originally going to be a fun/climbing trip, but now I might be profiling the area I’m going to for Climbing Magazine. I’m going to go, shoot photos and write something up, and they’ll possibly buy it on spec.

Second, I’m trying to embed with the 94th Military Police Company, out of Londonderry, this fall. They are going to Iraq to train security forces, and I’m going to go to tell New Hampshire what their soldiers are doing in the war zone. I am currently looking for angles on this, but it should be an interesting project.

And then additionally there is all that is going on in my coverage area. I’ve been hearing rumors about the Fraser mill sale, but nothing I can put into print yet. And the city is finding out just what ATV do for business this weekend—it’ll be interesting to see if the festival has a real impact on non-ATV-centric stores. Broadband will be getting a major boost from a $44.5 million federal grant, and the struggle for biomass continues. There is never a shortage of stuff going on.

The other day all the staff at work had a meeting—my editor and the reporters from the Democrat—the first of its kind. We bounced stories off of each other and discussed angles. It was a great discussion, because we generated ideas not one of us would have come up with alone. It made me realize how much of a handicap it is to work in an office of one. I make the decisions and see things from my perspective, and that perspective rarely gets challenged or questioned. But my perspective isn’t all encompassing, and the Androscoggin Valley would do well to have more viewpoints looking at facts and for stories. We all had ideas for each other that spurred new ideas, and in the end the sum was greater than the whole. As a reporter trying to inform residents that greater sum is invaluable.

I’m hoping we can try it more often, because it gave me some great ideas. My office at WMCC is great, but every once in a while it’s nice to share an office with a colleague.

Father’s Day

I went to visit my family last weekend for Father’s Day, and I planned a little adventure with my dad I heard about on NPR while driving home from work on Friday. Check it out:

It took 30 balloons, a digital camera that shoots video and a kite string. My dad taught science for a few years and loves tech projects so I knew he’d love it. It was a fun adventure and video project, much better than buying him a tie or tools.

Going Deeper…

I was doing some research into PSNH’s new PUC docket, and I realized something I knew all along: no one is willing to go deep. Or maybe no one has the capacity to go deep. Or the resources. I did my CPD/PSNH story for NHPR last week, and several people commented it didn’t get deep enough. I totally agree. Unfortunately NHPR doesn’t have the resources to devote half an hour to such a story. (I’m not sure NHPR listeners have the patience to listen to a half-hour version of it either.)

But there is always more. As I wrote the script I knew there was more, and as the news editor cut it down and revised it to fit the time slot I knew I was going to get to say less.

But what’s the solution? PSNH already gives significantly to NHPR, and so do New Hampshire residents (read: rate payers). Interest groups are contributing what they can. Which one should we ask to give more to allow for more depth in reporting that affects them? And what implications would that have on the stories? (The host read a PSNH underwriting tag about 10 minutes before my story aired on Wednesday night. I had to laugh when I heard it—nice coincidence.)

Norm said something on here about the model for democracy being broken. I don’t agree; I agree with the Winston Churchill quote more: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

The same can be said for journalism. It isn’t perfect. In fact, someone at the IGA on Monday told me they can’t believe how bad the paper is (they were talking about the daily). I wish I knew a better answer. I wish there was a way to allow people to take part in democracy, to get engaged in the debates, that didn’t neglect the depth.

I’ve been trying to figure out how I could change that in Berlin. The fact is being a reporter is more than a full-time job; news doesn’t happen on the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule. But running after the day’s or the week’s news doesn’t allow for enough context, enough depth, to tell people what they really need to know. It takes those parts that get edited out to really understand what’s going on.

So how do you revive what lays on the cutting room floor? I’m not sure. As a staff of one, freelancing and reporting via cell phone and Internet, it’s tough to see where their is room for expansion. I see the need, but not the market. How do you make it profitable for a paper like the Reporter to reopen an office in Berlin, expand the staff and increase coverage. How do you pay for a three thousand word story about the ins and outs of energy? How do you make that argument to a publisher, who is running the paper as a business, not a philanthropic endeavor?

I don’t know, but I see the need. I recognize the criticism my story got as valid, but I have to take it as criticism of a broken system. I would have loved to add the details, but there simply wasn’t time. How do you make time? That’s the real question.

Or Tonight…

If you were listening to NHPR last night and didn’t hear my PSNH/CPD piece, it isn’t because you weren’t listening intently.

I had a computer meltdown and then a server issue that nearly caused me to throw my computer out the window. The large audio files I was using (new recorder) overwhelmed my editing program, and the final mix had large gaps in the sound. I raced to patch it together in time for All Things Considered last night, but it wasn’t happening.

So it’ll be on tonight. Luckily the only time reference in the story is to Friday, so one day late doesn’t matter.

It’s a shame though—with the limited time I had to tell the story I wasn’t able to get into the meat as much as I would like. It’s the same issue as the paper: stories are money, and companies and organizations only have so much money.

I have the sound, however, to tell the story a little more completely, although it may come out a little closer to 10 minutes (for NHPR it was three). I am thinking about mixing it together and throwing it up here, with more depth.

Anyway, it will be on tonight around 5:45, and then again tomorrow morning. I hope I didn’t mess anyone up by giving them the information a day early. But believe me, no one was more distraught than I.

A PPA and more

It’s official: PSNH has reached an agreement with Laidlaw Berlin Biopower to buy their power. The PUC still has to approve the PPA to ensure it is in the best interests of the rate payers, but this is a big step toward getting financing for a major generation project for any private developer.

At the same time there are some new roadblocks to CPD’s project, which will be in next week’s paper (Tuesday night meetings vs. weekly paper schedule). Again it involves PSNH. Energy, it again seems, will be a big part of the coming Reporter.

I’m also seeing if I can do an NHPR story on CPD and Laidlaw.

At the end of Wednesday night’s meeting there was a short debate about the mayor’s position on the two plants, as well as those of several other councilors, which didn’t make it into my council story last week. I had to follow up on a major story I’d done two weeks before, and by the end of it I didn’t have room for a new version of on an old argument. Not that the argument is unimportant, but I simply didn’t have room.

In fact, a lot happened on Monday night that didn’t make it into either paper. That’s how it always happens. There just isn’t enough space dedicated to news to capture all that goes on at those meetings. Those decisions are made by publishers, but reporters, editors and citizens have to live with it.

It makes me wonder about all mediated messages. It’s impossible to follow all that’s going on, but it is imperative residents stay informed. The media doesn’t have room for all of it, but unfortunately in Berlin there is seldom any other account of events. When Mayor Grenier asked for public comment on Monday night at the start and end of the meeting the only person in the audience was Bobby Haggart. There funny looks from councilors who recognized the absurdity of the moment.

Thus my version of what happened, and that of the daily’s reporter (both inevitably incomplete), make up the story of Monday night’s meeting. The councilors also have their opinions of the discussion, but their views reflect their politics. Residents don’t have access to a complete, unbiased view of the meeting. A few more first hand accounts would be phenomenal.

(Some people would say the meeting minutes provide this, but I assure you they are incomplete; not in content, perhaps, but in emotion. The debates often involve backstory and personnel interactions that the secretary doesn’t write down. It’s like reading a script versus watching a movie—one doesn’t compare to the other.)

People come out for issues, but not to ensure their city is run to their liking. For day to day decisions, often only the reporters (and Mr. Haggart) are watching. And there just isn’t enough newsprint available to capture it all.

Do you ever notice the daily has three stories on Wednesday about what happened on Monday? They could do more, too, if they had a bigger news hole. It’s amazing how much goes on in the evenings at city hall, and how few residents are engaged.

But then again, maybe the silence is approval. The budget hearing last month was much quieter than I’d expected, considering teachers, cops, public works employees and firefighters are all getting laid off. Maybe Berlin is OK with that. Maybe even thought the papers can’t get the word out people are confident the politicians are doing a fine job. Aside from the occasional street name change perhaps everyone is happy.

That seems like a stretch. I’ve talked to many people who don’t like what’s going on there, but then I never see them at public comment times. Everyone who cares about the city must know the papers do not have the space to answer all the pressing questions, and residents have to take a keen interest if they want to see Berlin thrive. The best stories develop largely through interactions with residents and seeing what people care, often at these meetings. Media doesn’t act alone. It takes engaged citizens to generate engaging reporting. And it isn’t enough to just read the stories. People need to show up.

Context Context Context

A recent discussion in the comments section has made me think more about how context plays a role in reporting. I found two great examples of context to enhance the discussion:

Here’s a piece from today’s New York Times that weaves excellent reporting with context, connecting a Democratic senate candidate with his ambiguous comments about his military service. It is the context, the background, the history of his comments juxtaposed with the his past that have made for a story. What will it do to his future? Who knows, but it’s good to have someone leafing through records and checking the facts. (Mr. Blumenthal responded to the article today.)

Considering the Times is often called a liberal paper by detractors it is interesting to note the candidate’s Democratic Party affiliation. Independent but not neutral would likely describe the Times’ philosophy as well.

This video is another great piece where context fills the gaps.

Notice the Russian official is held to account for her earlier comments. What does the inconsistency do to her credibility? Is the reporter exhibiting a bias by asking those questions and reporting the incongruities, or is it  good journalism?

Those are all good conversations to have in the public sphere, where people can decide just what kind of press they want. Does the Russian model seem desirable? Not to me, and I doubt it would to most people.

I bet the candidate from Connecticut, however, would likely prefer a little less press freedom right about now. But the Times is hardly to blame for his dubious statements; if he is upset with their compiling what he said he shouldn’t have said it. Each individual statement, reported as stated and unverified, was not have been news. But by compiling them and putting them in context with his record the paper exposed his hypocrisy. Context sometimes is where the story lies. Reporting isn’t just reprinting what people say.

Mornings

Mornings in Coös County are the best. Mondays and Thursdays are my consistent early days in Berlin, with an 8 a.m. meeting police department for the weekly log. In winter my drive over the notch starts before sunrise, but now that the days have grown the sky is usually bright and unspoiled.

The city streets are always still, and all the parking spaces on Main Street are empty. It’s a gift to roll in and watch the city wake up. The mist burns off the river, shops unfurl their open flags, and cars start to roll out of driveways. Morning has always been my favorite time of day, and in the North Country it’s the way always remember it.

I have come up a few times at 6 a.m. or earlier to shoot photographs before dawn. The streets are always eerily quiet. I always wonder if people wonder what the heck I’m doing, as I pull over on the roadside and duck under fences, dragging my camera bag with my tripod under my arm. As of yet no officer has wound up tapping on my shoulder, so I’m guessing people either don’t notice or don’t care.

Between the area’s landscape, architecture and industrial infrastructure there are always ghosts poking out of the darkness. Trying to capture them in interesting light is a fantastic challenge. The mornings, of course, are the time to do it.

When I come up for work, as I’ve said before, it’s like I’m leaving one world for another. I leave a town largely devoid of community, where neighbor is a geographic distinction, not a reference to personal relationships. I come to a city and a region undiluted by fast-paced existence. There is no rat race here. People know each other, and they still attend community suppers and barbecues. Berlin still fosters community, builds it and wrestles with how to preserve it.

The premiere of On the River’s Edge this weekend exemplifies this quality. More than 400 free tickets to the local showing disappeared almost instantly, and the historical society sold more than 200 DVDs of the documentary. It was a remarkable show of local pride for a city constantly on guard against its own demise.

Berlin residents have a sense of pride, however, that grew out of the city’s reputation. They loved Berlin even when others ridiculed it for the smell of the mill and its remoteness. Today the mill is gone but the pride remains. Along with it, however, are the scars left by being the butt of too many jokes. The armpit of the state and Stinktown USA are no longer, but the affects remain.

But today the view of Mount Madison is crystal clear. The river runs clean, and the woods have more trails than loggers. Every morning I come north I marvel at the country Coös County residents live in, and I wonder how it can sustain itself so they can keep living there. The answer is there, I am sure of it, but the recipe hasn’t been discovered yet.

The mornings, however, convince me that recipe is worth searching for.

This morning, after police log, I was driving along Riverside Drive, when I looked over the river and saw a sea of white dots: seagulls, perched on the boom piers, huddled together during a rain shower. The sky and the river were almost black and the birds popped from the background. They were so numerous and so brilliant I had to turn around. I walked to the river’s edge with my camera and tried to capture the moment. Instead I got a few snapshots of birds too far away to make an impact. But they made their impact on me. They woke me once more to the many things northern New Hampshire has that other places lack. A river through town, for instance, that hasn’t been completely overrun with construction. A sense of wildness and life even in the downtown.

It’s hard to appreciate, I think, when you are there all the time. But try leaving and coming back and see what it is you first see. See if you notice the morning sun on the mountains turning the snow shades of gold, or the mist rising off the river in trails. See if you notice the muskrats in Tondreau Park searching for fresh grass, or the birds soaring around Mount Forist. Ordinary? Drab? Not for a moment, particularly in the mornings.