Tricks of the Trade

It's 4:15p.m. on another uneventful Thursday at the newspaper, and I think it's time for another update about my life here.

There are certian things about the way journalists conduct business that is known to very little people outside the journalism world. I like to think of them as backstage activities and techniques that help the actual publication that comes out every day/week look and read awesome.

For instance, about 90 percent of the time, I am not prepared for interviews. I don't know many journalists who ever are. If I'm supposed to go to an interview with someone, I usually do not prepare questions, especially if I'm only going to ask them about some event they helped plan/host/create. I show up and say one thing: So, why don't you start by telling me a little bit about what it is you are doing/trying to accomplish? Then, people start talking and I start listening. If they say something I want more explanation on, I'll make a mental note to ask them about it when they stop talking.

This brings me to secret number two: when journalists are conducting an interview face-to-face, they are only half-way listening to what their source is telling them, especially if they actually did prepare questions. All they are thinking about is waiting for them to stop talking so they can ask their next prepared questions. The next time you're watching the local news, and the broadcaster is interviewing someone face-to-face, pay close attention - they are not listening to a word that person is saying.

Sometimes, I don't even remember what a source has told me, and I'll be listening to my recording of it later and not remember talking to them about whatever it is they are talking about. That happens a lot actually.

I figure this is all part of the job. Reporters are constantly thinking about 42 different things all at once all the time, and when they are talking to someone, they are probably thinking about how they have to get back to the office after the interview is over, transcribe their notes, write the story and cutlines, call 11 other people for about 4 other stories and finish writing their weekly column all before deadline later that day. At least, that's usually what I'm thinking about.

Also, more often than not, when I'm interviewing someone around here, I'm trying so hard to remain objective that I can't focus on a word they're saying. All I can think about is how the place I'm biting on the inside of my lip is starting to bleed. It's so incredibly hard to keep my mouth shut sometimes, and it's all I can do to walk out of anything having anything to do with coal without saying what I really think. That has been the hardest thing about working here. Keeping my mouth shut about issues I feel strongly about. But, my j-professors taught me well, because to this day I have not yet openly humiliated/offended anyone because of my opnions.

Yet. This could change by the time I leave here in May for grad school in the fall.

Wednesdays are hell.

I don't mean that figuratively. I literally mean that Wednesdays are hell in this office. It's the day our paper is published, and I think of it mostly as a decompression day after Tuesday, which is also hell, most of the time.

Wednesdays are full of sitting around the office, listening to the police scanner plaring behind me, and doing the following on a continuous loop which restarts every five minutes or so: checking my six email accounts (two for school, two for the paper and two for personal use), checking/updating my Facebook and reading online news articles about current events and - ocassionaly - about the top ten careers that I could be a part of and be making about 42 times the amount I'm making now.

Sometimes, I have something to do. Sometimes, I have nothing to do. But, instead of searching for something to do in the case of the latter, I just sit at my desk and continue to ruin my eyesight by staring at the computer all day.

It's clearly a grand life, the life of a small-town journalist.

Our ears perk up like a dogs when we hear and of the following on the scanner: structure fire, 10-46 (car accident with injury), shoplifting (because it usually means the shoplifter is either taking or dealing drugs) or anything about crazy pill-heads/drunks/people doing something ridiculous.

For instance, today I heard on the scanner that a man had been at the local senior citizen's center and had done something to upset the other people there, or they had done something to upset him - that detail is fuzzy. Somehow the police got involved and arrived at the center only to find out that the man did not want police assistance. This man walked all the way to his house from the senior center, even though the cop offered to drive him. The distance on this jaunt beside the four lane highway was probably about three miles. But he walked the whole way.

It made me wish I was out there walking with him. Anything is better than sitting in this office on a Wednesday.