the unexpected turns of being a reporter

I like the unexpected turns that reporting takes.

Sometimes, I'll identify the key players in a story, only to write a story that hardly attributes them at all. People who seem like they'll be crucial to the story turn out to be unquotable. Experts never call back. A shot in the dark call for a quick verification on a minor detail offers a new perspective that adds an entire section to the story.

Constant flexibility is crucial and necessary.

Last Friday, I prepared for an interview I had with a national allergist for about two hours. Most of it was background and the rest was question crafting. The public relations coordinator for National Jewish Hospital told me I had an hour. I planned accordingly. I had so many questions I needed to verify and didn't want to rely on the Internet.

I called just a few moments after noon here and 11 a.m. in Denver. He was in with a patient. He would call back. I waited for 20 minutes, hoping I'd be able to cram all my questions in. I felt confident I could if I hurried.

About 12:25, he called back. I introduced myself, told him about the story and told him I had about 20 questions. He said okay hesitantly. I launched into my questions, starting with the background and planned to hit the technical stuff after we got going. Two question in, he said he had two minutes left.

I felt flat, realizing I shouldn't have hoped for so much. I should have diversified my portfolio of national sources. I asked one last question, trying to prioritize 15 questions into one in a matter of moments.

We hung up and I felt disappointed, insulted. My skin has grown thick enough in this industry to not take it too personally. I just felt isolated from the topic. Where was my spirit guide? Where was the person who would explain the intricacies to me? Why hadn't I been able to identify that person? I had been planning on that interview since Tuesday.

I learned a valuable lesson. National experts are important, but perhaps best reserved for that highly technical question: the one that can only be answered by someone in their position. The other background-y questions should be reserved for the local nurse or doctor.

I called a nurse in Columbia on Monday. She spent 30 minutes with me, patiently explaining while she read charts and ushered patients in and out. I know this because I could hear her and because once she admitted to reading to charts.

Health care workers are slammed. At the top level, they hardly have a moment. They are triple booked. While I was bummed to not be prioritized, it's hardly surprising. Just a couple hundred, maybe a few thousand will see my article. I'm not the AP. Perhaps experts like him should be reserved for the bigger media dogs.

I'm glad I tried my hand. I won't give up. I'll try again. Next time, I'll prepare the same. But instead of having one list of questions, I'll have two: one for the 5 minute interview and one for the interview that actually turns out to be an hour.

After all, he's a sample size of one. It's certainly not enough to generalize to all doctors of his standing.

so, quant was worth it

Last semester, I used to show up to my quantitative research methods course at least 15 minutes early. My palms were always a little sweaty. My heart beat a little quicker. Dr. Leshner had a propensity for passing out quizzes unannounced.

My first few scores were 2 out of 10. I thought for sure I wouldn't pass the class.

So, I bumped up my studying. Rather than just reading the material, I composed what felt like mountains of note cards. I flipped through them at all hours of the day.

I learned the language of quantitative researchers. I memorized the terms. I hoped that by knowing everything on command, I could reason my way to the answers. It helped. I was at times, unable to synthesize the necessary information. My brain doesn't quite work in a mathematical or logical way. I think in analogies and networks of information that look more like the roots of a tomato plant than a computer chip.

My parents have told me. Friends have teased me about it. Boyfriends have even endearingly termed our conversations slightly related tangents. Drawing relationships between seeming unrelated information is something I adore, but it can make communicating with other people who don't think this way, difficult. It's a logic that makes sense to people who know me, and a logic that drives people who work from point A to point B absolutely crazy, especially when I pop up with point K.

Although, it can be difficult at times, I'm okay with thinking differently; I've come to peace with it anyway. I like noticing patterns that might not be obvious to other people.

Taking quantitative research methods was like spending hours with point A to point B people. Every step had to be examined before the next decision could be made.

I could feel myself becoming more rational.

I'm not worried that I'll lose myself in a different way of thinking. This language is another option I now have. I have noticed that the downside is that it feels constricting. When I think "logically," I miss the freedom that comes from dismissing the "rules." But, being a health reporter, requires attention to detail and often, a careful examination of medical studies.

So, I felt especially grateful to Dr. Leshner today. as I combed through about two dozen medical studies. I read them with varying levels of understanding, yet am certain I comprehended much more today than I would have last year at this time.

Statistical significance and p-values scattered through the literature. I paid attention to confounds. My new knowledge helped me sort the information into a hierarchy and know which studies should be given more prominence than others.

I still felt like I was drowning in a sea of information, trying to make sense of it all. Synthesis is key, and that's the main task of the reporter. Stories bring the data to life. But, at the core of the story is the ability to make sense of it all.

I love striking a balance between the personal and the logical. People will always be anecdotal because they are a sample size of one. But, it amazes me to this day how much more powerful that sample of one can be when set against mountains of data.

Perhaps that's why I'm drawn to journalism in the first place. While the data is part of supporting the story, the story itself comes to life through quotes and personal experience, something quantitative researchers might quickly dismiss with the flick of a wrist.

thoughts on an interview

I'll never forget the moment I turned up the drive to Angela Anderson's house. My palms were a little sweaty and my chest a little tight. I was excited and nervous to meet the woman I had spent the past few weeks thinking about. Ever since one of my editors — Katherine Reed — told me her story, I had been thinking about the interview. I wondered how I would keep my emotions in check; and even wondered if I could. The interview took an emotional toll on me, as I expected it would.

It reminded me of the interview I did with Tracy Edwards last December. When I walked into his home and saw him in a wheelchair with bandages wrapped around the stumps of his recently amputated legs, it was hard not to get emotional. I am, at times, incapacitated by sadness.

I remember these interviews intimately. I remember the smells, the awkward moments, the questions I forgot to ask and even the ones I did. But, as the interviews begin to bleed into one another, I realize that these are the interviews that are easy to remember. But every interview is special and has surprises. I think it's easy to latch onto extremes, but it also is in the everyday experiences that stories lurk.

Yesterday, I met a mother, Amy Pope, who has two extremely allergic children. It was the first in-person interview I'd done since I interviewed Angela. I found myself comparing the two stories, but stopped once I got into the details and immersed myself in the story of the woman in front of me.

She surprised me with information I hadn't considered: shopping for children with allergies takes hours, is cripplingly expensive and has essentially forced her to stop working. As I biked back to the Missourian to finish off my copy desk shift, I felt myself pondering the life experiences of Amy. She had invited me into her world, as each subject of a story hopefully chooses to do.

I felt honored, as I typically do following an interview. I learned something. And, even though the timing was tough — my mind will wander back to Angela for probably quite some time — it was a good step back into more everyday reporting. It was also a good reminder that every interview is unique, is surprising and has something to teach.

spinning globe

I grew up in a 2-level home. The first floor is where we lived and the second floor is where we slept.

As a child, I spent summers in a hot pink one piece running around with a super soaker squirt gun. My brothers and I would scream until our voices became hoarse and my mom would call for us, particularly me, to do something cerebral.

I had no idea what the word even meant. I remember I was holding a sun chip and had my eye on a doughnut the first time she said it. "What's that," I remember asking. She told me it means doing some reading or writing; something with your brain. I protested that I was already keeping a journal. I guess it wasn't enough.

That afternoon, I ventured into my dad's home office to thumb through his books and spend time inside. I was glum. His shelves of dusty books looked thick. I stared at the computer. A stack of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing programs he'd bought us for the summer sat nearby. The plastic wrap was still on them. I told myself I'd start those programs soon and turned my attention to the globe to the left of his computer. I started spinning it around and stopping it with my finger to see where it had landed.

It was on this day, I started to really look at the countries of the world. Their outlines started to mean more than just a new blob of color. I landed on the U.S.S.R. (it was an older globe) and looked it up in the encyclopedia. I landed on Panama and started reading about the canal. The afternoon passed.

My dad came home and found me on the floor of his office with the globe and stacks of encyclopedias in a circle around me. Back then, we had one large book for every letter of the alphabet. I think it was 25 or 26 books in all.

I remember being unimpressed with Asia. I didn't feel an urge to go there, no matter how many times my index finger landed there. Years later, I told my friends Asia was the last place I wanted to visit. Iceland, Uganda and Peru were much higher on the list. The entries for those places seemed much more interesting for some reason.

So, it was strange when, at 27, I found myself living in Sri Lanka and just a few months later, embarking on a 2-year Peace Corps stint in Central Asia. Instincts, or rather, the information I'd gathered in those encyclopedias or in my daily life, had not successfully informed me about the wonders of Asia.

My experience in Asia was intensely life-altering. It's the reason I'm in grad school and the reason I'm studying journalism. Asia taught me about community and communality and the importance of others. It is a magical place. And I cannot for the life of me understand why I didn't understand that sooner. In fact, my little brother just said over the weekend, "I'd like to travel, but am not really interested in Asia."

I just thought: If only you could just go there to see it. You might have a different take.

I think that telling stories well is a lot like my struggle to understand Asia. Anyone who has been to Asia will understand this statement, which I know sounds a lot like a huge generalization. But, the dozens of Asian countries share a common culture, just as every state in the U.S. shares a common understanding.

It took me more than a year to wrap my head around the cultural differences. The divide between Western culture and Eastern culture is wide. But, when I left, I could safely say that I knew how to think like a Turkmen. It is a skill that is incredibly useful if used in parallel in the U.S., but that if used directly would do nothing to help me. Thinking like a Turkmen in the U.S. would be maddening for me and most likely maddening for everyone around me. Essentially, I would be unable to operate in our culture.

I think being a reporter means living in a divide like this. We are tasked with inviting readers into a situation they are completely unfamiliar with. We tell them what it's like. We invite them to understand it, to smell it and to feel it. But, they've likely never been there themselves.

Our job is to be the bridge and to invite readers over the divide.

rhythm

I love the readings we do for class. It seems they are reading my mind. Varied sentence length. Varied paragraph length. Varied example count ... I think about this constantly.

One word.

Two words.

Three.

Four?

I really love Roy Peter Clark's assertion that one is for power; two for comparison, contrast; three for completeness, wholeness, roundness; four or more to list, inventory, compile and expand. I also like how four can be used to introduce an awkward idea.

The more I delve into writing, the more I realize that the magic I once felt for it is starting to evolve into something less like magic and more akin to power.

Constructions are intentional and while writing from the gut is always the answer, knowing the tools used in those constructions by feel, touch and smell is equally as powerful.

To wait, or not

Waiting between interviews and the writing process is tricky. I was working on another story between the time that I interviewed Angela and the time that I sat down to write a profile on her. I lost some details in between and learned some good lessons about the danger of waiting.

We learned last week that the 20 minutes following an interview are the most important. Writing everything down during that window is ideal: the items in the rooms, the smells, the pictures in the picture frames, the name of the dog. Capture the details. What was the flavor of ice cream Garrett ate while sitting on the porch that Friday afternoon?

I didn't do this.

After interviewing Angela, I stepped away from the sadness. Seeing Brayden's room. Seeing Alexandra's room. It was like looking at death. I stepped in and then straight out of tragedy. I think it's a natural impulse, but it did nothing to improve my writing. I should have stayed in it. But it scared me.

It took me a week to process the loss. And, even now, I don't think I can comprehend it. I tried, but by the time I did, I think I had lost some of the natural power.

I should have stayed with that fear, that anger and that sadness. Had I stayed, I could have written both with more efficiency and power.

If I had it to do over again, I would have spent the weekend adding details from memory, listening to the recording of the interview and playing with potential leads and anecdotes.

I think another reason I waited is because I was overwhelmed with details. It was when I stepped away from everything that I was able to focus on something. So, I did what most beginners probably do when they approach a daunting topic like this one. I stepped away from it and came back when it was less overwhelming, less intense. But perhaps digging through all of those details is worth the challenge.

It'll be interesting to see the difference in the results when the chance comes around again.

Hopefully next time I won't opt for the door.