Category: Reporting

Back at Full Speed

I’ve been working on videos and more from my Peru trip, which went great. I am now back to running at full speed at the paper, but still looking around for the next cool opportunity.

I stumbled across something today that reminded me just exactly why I do what I do, and what possibilities there are for this type of work. Journalism may be struggling, but there is no escaping the fact that there are stories that need to be told. This was a good reminder:

One More Time

I’m about to head off on another international reporting trip, this time to Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, where the receding glaciers are quickly changing the landscape. This is an economic story, not just an environmental one — tourism is the third largest industry in Peru, behind mining and resource extraction, and in many areas the snowcapped mountains are the primary draw. That is true of the Ancash region, where Peru’s highest mountain range sits. Tourism has been a crucial part of the economy there, but as the glaciers melt that is changing things. I’m going down there to meet with the people affected, from the restaurant owners to the mountain guides. I made connections when I was there several years ago, and now this tim I’m going to tell the story.

The Essence of the Written Word

I came to the cities in a time of disorder
When hunger ruled.
I came among men in a time of uprising
And I revolted with them.

I ate my food between massacres.
The shadow of murder lay upon my sleep.
And when I loved, I loved with indifference.
I looked upon nature with impatience.

In my time streets led to the quicksand.
Speech betrayed me to the slaughterer.
There was little I could do. But without me
The rulers would have been more secure. This was my hope.

– Bertold Brecht

I saw the last section of this (revised) poem on Facebook the other day when a friend posted it alongside a story about a Chinese dissident who had barricaded himself into his home to avoid persecution. I read it and immediately put it into Google to find the author.

Bertold Brecht was a German writer born around the turn of the century. He lived through both World War One and World War Two, although he got out of Germany for the second war. When I read this poem (which is only really the middle section of a longer poem, with a couple lines deleted) the words stuck in my mouth. They felt heavy, like they meant something regardless of context.

It’s so rare to see powerful writing, particularly in the everyday. It’s something I’ve been working on, hopefully with success.

I was going through emails the other day tossing out old ones and I came across one I wrote to the former editor at NHPR about the mess in Transvale Acres following the Irene flooding. Check it out:

The fact is most of the lots originally were campsites and were never supposed to be anything more. People bought them and built illegally because they knew they could never get building permits for so close to the river. The neighborhood is private, without town roads or infrastructure, so the development largely happened under the radar. They built everything without talking to the building inspector, so half the houses were shacks jacked up on cinderblock stilts. People obviously knew it was happening, but town officials going back 40 years ignored it.
It’s hard to fault the current administration for a problem they inherited. Officials don’t like to talk about it, but they tried to deal with the problem before the storm. They looked for ways to clean up the neighborhood, but without funding to compensate property owners for the homes they would have been forced out of they didn’t get anywhere.
Then the storm came. The emergency declaration gave the town the deep pockets it needed to finally address the problem. It took political will for town officials to step up and enforce regulations their predecessors ignored for four decades, but most people think it was the right thing to do. 22 people had to be rescued out of Transvale Acres on the night of the storm. The question has come up: What happens if durring the next flood a firefighter dies trying to rescue someone out of sub-standard housing that the town allowed to stand? It may seem draconian now, but over the long term it’s the right move.
The real fault here lies with the people who built houses illegally 30 years ago and the officials who ignored it then. Everyone else is a victim. Sure, illegal construction happened more recently, but by that point the problem had become too widespread: What’s the point of issuing a violation for an illegal porch if the house it’s attached to isn’t supposed to be there? The town, and the homeowners who bought from the original owners, were in an impossible situation.
So that’s the story: the situation sucks, particularly for homeowners, but the town is stepping up and doing the right thing for the first time in decades. And although it’s going to be painful, without the storm there would have been no mechanism to compensate these people.
I like to thing it’s strong writing. Her response was this should become part of the script (the script, however, never got written). I keep playing with my writing to see what I can make it. It’s nice once in a while to feel like you’re writing with weight, not just to get the basics of an idea across.

One More Adventure

So if you’re wondering why LPJ has been quiet for a bit, I’ll tell you — I just got back from a trip to Yosemite Valley, Calif., were I climbed El Capitan, the largest granite monolith in the word for a travel piece I’m working on. It was a crazy trip that had me sleeping 2,000 feet up a rock face.

It’s called the best rock climb in the world, and when it was first climbed more than 50 years ago it took 18 months. We spent four days climbing and spent two nights on the wall. I’d hoped to do a radio piece as well, but the amount of work it took just to climb every day made that impossible. I will, however, be writing up a killer account of the climb, and I will weave into it the story of the first ascent.

I have another such adventure planned for several weeks from now. It will include work on a story about the disappearing glaciers of South America and the effect that has on the economy there. Again, I’m toying with doing it for radio as well as for print, but we’ll see. I’ve already got one media outlet lined up, and I’m working on more. One adventure after another — just the way I like things.

Sometimes It Just Happens

I was working on a story today about the Saco River, a story that I’d been trying for several days to pull together, and then this evening it just happened.

The gist of the story is this: a landowner on one side of the river wants to build protection systems into his embankment because he is losing land to erosion, but the landowner downstream is concerned that will push the erosion problem onto his property. The first landowner discovered the problem after a landowner upstream from them did just what they are now proposing to do. This is a simplified version, but you get the idea — every individual wants to protect their property, and as a result everyone else has to protect theirs.

About half an hour before deadline, with nothing really yet on paper, the story exploded. First I got a call from the head of a local conservation commission, who I’d been waiting to hear from for two days. Then I got a call from a longtime selectman and state rep. Then the Attorney General’s office sent out a press release about a $66,000 penalty for someone local who went ahead and protected his property without getting the proper permits. Then an attorney in that case called to explain their side of things.

All the sudden there was more of a story sitting in my lap then I had time to process. My deadline was blown, but my story was in my lap. It’s amazing how two days worth of work can flip in a moment from connecting the dots to holding back the floodgates. I still have a few calls to make to get the whole thing on paper (so to speak), but regardless it’s cool to know everything converged. Sometimes, I guess, it just happens.

Pitching Like Crazy

So I have a day job, but in the modern media environment I would feel remiss if I wasn’t pitching all the time too. A steady job is the surest way to lure yourself into obsolescence, I’m sure of it, so I always have a story or two headed to NHPR or somewhere else.

Lately, however, I’ve been trying to pitch elsewhere, and to some big names. I’ve sent a few things into the New York Times over the years, never with success, but I’m trying a little harder lately. I’ve also been talking with an editor at the Boston Globe, which at least has some regional connection. I also had a brief chat with NPR, for whom I’ve done production work but not done stories. I’ve also got something lined up for PRI’s The World, so hopefully that’ll go.

It sucks to get told no, or to hear nothing back at all, but I figure the only way to get in there is to pepper them with stories until one lands on an editor’s desk they can’t refuse. I’ve got a few good ones out right now, and when I get shut down by one person I turn around, tweak it and send it on to someone else.

I’ve already got tickets to California for a story I’m determined to sell, so that one better land somewhere. I’m also arranging to go to Peru for another, so that one better not strike out either. But no matter what, I’m a veritable pitching machine. If you get an email from me don’t be surprised if the subject line says, “Article Query.”

Ira, and the Fate/Future of Journalism

It’s always inspiring to listen to an excellent storyteller, but it’s particularly interesting when the story they are telling is about your future.

Not my future in particular, but that of the industry I’ve been lulled into loving. Ira Glass, creator and host of This American Life, the radio program that introduced me to the power of radio, was in Keene, N.H., this weekend, and I went down to see him. Ira was there to talk about his program, and about the failings he sees broadcast news.

Those failings may not have been his theme, but they were certainly what I heard most clearly. Broadcast news, he said, is all about telling you what’s important. It’s about making sure you get what it is about this event that make it news. TAL, however, is about connections — connecting the listener to the person on the other end of the interview, making you hear what they are saying and care. It tells the same story, but instead of telling its global ramifications it distills it to the implications for one person. And sometimes that isn’t all that grandiose.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about better ways to tell stories, better ways to get people to connect with the information I put out on a daily basis. This talk was a great window for me into ways to do that. And it has given me ideas for how to improve what I’m doing at the Sun. The goal of journalism is still to inform, but if the audience turns you off that goal isn’t being met. I’m looking for ways to keep people tuned in, ways to keep people connected. Thank you, Ira, for the ideas.

SHAMELESS PLUG (Not for me, but for Ira): TAL is doing a live broadcast on May 10 where they beam the performance into movie theaters around the country. They did the same thing several years ago and it was AWESOME. The closest theater to me that is carrying the show is at the Catamount Arts Center in St. Johnsbury, Vt.  I’ll be there. Will you?

Police and Things

One job of reporters is to go to the police, go to the courts, and find out who has been arrested or charged with what. It is not a popular task. The police logs are probably what generate more complaints than anything else we do. All the time we get requests from people who get arrested and charged and then don’t want their name to show up.

“Can you just leave me out?” they ask. The answer is invariably no.

But then there are the exceptions. The child of a school board member showed up in the log, which prompted me to call the cops and ask what happened.

Clerical error, it turns out: the kid had several speeding tickets, and the state had considered revoking his license but didn’t. He got arrested erroneously for operating after suspension. If it hadn’t been for my call his name would have appeared, but because he was the child of an elected official I had to double check.

Then this week one of our reporters got arrested. He’s a diabetic, and he got pulled over late at night and arrested for driving while intoxicated. He got back to the station and took a breathalyzer test, which he passed at 0.00. The police called me to let me know there were no charges, so his name also will not appear.

It’s fair, and its unfair, and there isn’t any way to get around it. The paper has no interest in printing the names of people who are arrested erroneously and not charged. The police log isn’t about embarrassing people. It is actually about holding the police accountable — if no one asks who they arrest they can do so with impunity. The individuals who are named are in some ways just a byproduct.

But if it isn’t the son of a public official or one of our reporters we would never think twice about printing the name of someone arrested. It’s only when we check back to get the details of the story that these people are offered this extra layer of protection. If your arrest isn’t a story the log goes in the paper without question. Granted, there have not been a flood of phone calls about erroneous reports, but still, two is enough to make me wonder.

The newspaper may be printed in black and white, but all through it are shades of grey. Readers would do as well remembering that as the reporters who create it. There’s no such thing a perfect fairness.

Lacing Opinion into the News

I got some flack today from a selectman for a story I wrote that appeared in today’s paper. The story in question wasn’t about any action in particular, it was more an analysis piece on the first meeting of the new selectboard. There is only one new member, but a lot changed as a result of the election. The personalities on the board are not something I want to comment on as such things are hardly hard news, but sometimes the facts make impressions of personality quite clear.

One board member does not make motions. She seconds other people’s motions, but she does not make her own. I can not recall her ever making one, but I could be wrong there. I checked the minutes from the first few months of 2012, however, and in those meetings she did not offer one motion. I put that fact in the story to contrast with the newest board member, who on her first day made several motions.

I offered the fact up to show the comfort the new board member seemed to have with her new seat, but it didn’t get over well. I got two phone calls today, one from the board member and one from a sibling, raising issue with the story. The sibling understood what I was doing after a brief discussion, but the board member didn’t seem to. At one point she said I was thrusting my opinion into the story. I asked her where. Which line was she referring two? I was citing the minutes, I explained. Those numbers are fact.

Those numbers exemplified the point that the newest selectman came ready to jump into the fray in a more vocal way than the last new inductee. That analysis was backed up by the statistics. Was it me intertwining my opinion with facts? I don’t believe so. If one selectman is quiet and the other vocal is it opinion to point that out? Again, I don’t believe so.

And further, I don’t believe being vocal equals being a good elected official. It isn’t even one measure of what makes a good elected official. But it certainly is measurable, not just in opinion but in fact.