Home Stretch

Dear Folks: Today marks either more than half way, or beginning of the last three weeks of your Chips Experience. For this DQ, please let us know WHAT YOU WANT TO ACCOMPLISH by the end of our time together. A particular story? A particular kind of story? How will you go about it? What kind of skills/ time/ support/ thought process do you need to get it done?

Don’t forget to post to ledes and nutgrafs and spanky’s to keep us up to date on your travels .... Be sure to check NOTIFY ME WHEN SOMEONE POSTS TO THIS THREAD, below, so you can keep up with who is doing what.
As always, available for story review or brainstorming. HAPPY BIRTHDAY LANZ!!!!!!

My main goal has been to organize my desk and come up with an effective filing system for the many police reports, court documents and other papers I have scattered across my desk. It sounds simple enough but I’ve been swamped with stories week after week after week since my first day so I haven’t had the chance to sit down and do it (also because whoever is supposed to send over supplies to our bureau hasn’t sent any file folders), so that’s the main thing I want to accomplish. I let my editor know today that I was going to take a day this week, maybe more if I needed it, to go through and organize my desk, and that I’d go buy my own file folders if I needed to, and she was cool with it, so I should have that done by the week’s end.

Other than that, there really isn’t any other specific goal I have. I still feel like I have a lot to learn and a lot of basic things I’m trying to figure out, so that’s been my main focus rather than trying to write a certain type of story or setting some story or multimedia productivity quota for myself. I feel like I need to get the basics down before I start worrying about more particular things. I have learned a lot since I started back in January. I look back at my stories and even how I went about doing the reporting and writing them, and it’s improved so much. I think I want to continue that – seeing new angles, perspectives and sides to a story, new ways to expand an idea, new ways to approach a topic, better ways to structure my stories, etc. I guess that’s kind of broad, but it’s all I can come up with aside from organizing my desk system.

As of now I have just less than five weeks left here. Nothing much has changed, and I’m beginning to think I’m holding off the one thing that may be a good story so I’ll have something to look forward to.
I knew as soon as I got here I’d want to try covering diversity, but everyone from reporters to people on the street have said, and I’m quoting, “If you cand find it.” I know there’s something though. I started trying to hit up the student groups on the university campus here a few weeks ago but we kept missing each other. Plus they’re on a quarterly system so they had finals and stuff and just got back from spring break. That’s where I’m sure I’ll have stories - it seems a lot of kids come here wanting to get away from wherever they’re from, and the school here doesn’t have out-of-state tuition. Still, the school is always on rocky ground and there’s not a lot of activity.
I was a little worried about just repeating the same kinds of things I did at my student paper but now I’m totally cool with it. I do have a interesting story on Oregon field burning laws my editor gave me, but again it’s either something that doesn’t really apply to the area or isn’t that newsworthy. This one’s the former, but it’s been fun talking to people at the state capital.

J-Coe - 31 March 2009 12:46 AM

I feel like I need to get the basics down before I start worrying about more particular things. I have learned a lot since I started back in January. I look back at my stories and even how I went about doing the reporting and writing them, and it’s improved so much. I think I want to continue that ...

Jackee et al: continuing to get the basic stuff down—whether strong sentences, story structure, nailing the heart of the story, or organizing the files on your desk—is REALLY the first step toward the bigger stuff, i.e., nailing great stories ... the fact that you recognize this, and are committed to doing it, is huge. It will only result in good things.

It’s amazing how crazy-making a messed up filing system can be. Sounds weird, but it is true… keep us posted!

AnthonyCW - 01 April 2009 01:20 PM

I’d want to try covering diversity, but everyone from reporters to people on the street have said, and I’m quoting, “If you cand find it.”

Anthony et al: this is always interesting to me—when people say, “Oh, there’s no diversity....” There HAS to be! That is simply the nature of life. I remember once a Chipster who was from the Republic of China was working in a seriously lily-white place, I think it was North Dakota. One day she went to the supermarket. There happened to be an Asian man in line ahead of her—probably the only other Asian person within a thousand miles.
The check-out lady moved the guy’s groceries through then started moving hers through.
She said, “Wait—those are mine.”
The check-out lady said, “Oh! I just assumed you two were together.”

That is one of my all-time “there isn’t any diversity here” stories. I think it speaks volumes about what “diversity” or “lack of” means .... food for thought…

Mary Ann - 02 April 2009 07:37 AM

That is one of my all-time “there isn’t any diversity here” stories. I think it speaks volumes about what “diversity” or “lack of” means .... food for thought…

haha ... which one of mine do you want? when the lady at the metrolink asked me for directions, stopped, then asked if i could speak english? when one of my floormates thought it was still OK to call us “oriental,” or when we were picking kickball teams and someone called me “chinaman?” man, i’m glad i’m back in california.

lcbanes - 06 April 2009 08:10 AM

Mary Ann - 02 April 2009 07:37 AM

? when the lady at the metrolink asked me for directions, stopped, then asked if i could speak english? .

Haha back at you! See, I for one always wanted Xiao (the reporter in the grocery line above) to write a story about that incident… But I think there’s even a BETTER story somewhere that uses all these incidents, like the ones you describe above. Idea is, we supposedly live in a (forgive the Obama-inspired cliche) “post-racial” world/ country. But soon as you get outa the big city, you can see at every turn how truly ignorant and backward it really is ... I would encourage anyone who feels the urge to take that story on ... I myself can’t do it unless the “diversity” people are being ignorant about is the middle-aged female Irish Catholic contingent.... (which happens too, from time to time!)

I got my desk completely organized and set up a filing system, and since I did that last Tuesday (I spent the bulk of the day just doing that), it’s made getting my stories done and just working so much easier. I know where everything is, I can see my desk and I have room to work, take notes, etc. It really does make a big difference.

J-Coe - 06 April 2009 11:28 PM

I got my desk completely organized ...It really does make a big difference.

”Good order is the foundation of all things.”
--- Edmund Burke