The abrupt end of my school career

With graduation less than two weeks away, reading James Carey’s “The Struggle Against Forgetting” right now feels a lot like it did watching Toy Story 3 right before leaving for college. It’s nostalgic. It makes me think about the past several years and what I’ve learned and how I’ve grown. It makes me not want to leave the toys behind – toys in this case being the wonderfully large J-School Macs. And, most of all, it’s inspiring. I’m excited about what I’m moving on to, and ready for that stage of my life. “To make experience memorable so it won’t be lost and forgotten is the task of journalism. To be able to do this and to do it well is all that one can ask for in a career.” I’ve always liked to think of journalism as less of storytelling and more of making experience memorable. I do enjoy the storytelling aspect, but the part of journalism that inspires me more is the artful documentation of people’s experiences or events so that they are shared with everybody and saved forever. Storytelling sounds like fabricating stories to me, while making experience memorable sounds like creating permanent meaning and having a lasting impact. Now that’s something I can ask for in a career.

Beefed up

I’ve finally compiled all the best reporting, design and editing work that I’ve done over the past few years and added it to the “Clips” tab of this blog. Most of them are examples of the reporting I completed on the public safety and health beat for the Columbia Missourian. For the two stories at the beginning, I also contributed to the work that was done with the graphics, as indicated. One piece of work I included is to the 2030 business statement that I edited and designed while interning at the European Wind Energy Association, in which the Brussels-based lobbying group organized 173 European companies and organizations to demand ambitious and binding continent-wide 2030 renewable energy targets. For the three videos at the end, “Dancing With Delight,” “Mizzou Quidditch Club” and “Mizzou Quidditch President Daniel Shapiro,” which were projects for the Missouri School of Journalism, I did the multimedia design and editing.

Confidence through attribution

Normal follow-up crime reporting consists of checking case progress on Casenet and checking in with attorneys. But Monday, after I finished a story about a woman facing prostitution and weapons charges, I was given the opportunity to follow-up in an unusual way: directly calling the defendant. She had called the newsroom with complaints about a few details in the story (which were apparently wrong), requesting that I call her back to talk about it. I’m glad that Elise, the ACE on duty, didn’t commit me to returning the call – Elise just told the woman I might – but I did anyway, because I felt confident about everything I used in the story. I couldn’t know for sure if it was all accurate, but I did know for sure that I wasn’t liable for any false information because it all came directly from either the probable cause statement, the prosecuting attorney or the jail. And I was always clear about that. Although I never got a hold of the woman, the experience really cemented the value of attributing. Since I had attributed, and was careful to directly pull the information, there was nothing to fear about talking to the woman. She can blame the probable cause statement, but she can’t blame me. This confidence has been a major area of growth for me throughout the semester, and has made reporting much easier, faster and stress-free. Thank goodness.

Confidently shutting up

A personality test I recently took classified me as a people person. I feel like it’s pretty accurate; I enjoy talking to people, and I am genuinely curious to hear people’s answers to my questions. That’s a major reason I pursued journalism in the first place, after all. So then why am I still nervous about holding phone interviews?

After realizing how terrified I am of phone interviews, and how that shouldn’t be the case for a people person like myself, I finally discovered the source of my silly fear: I’m afraid that I’m missing something. I’m worried that I don’t know a vital piece of information or major recent news related to the story, and that it will cause the call to be choppy and awkward, in a way that wouldn’t be easily fixed over the phone like it would be in person.

Fortunately, this is an extremely easy fix: Before every interview, obviously in addition to standard background researching, I’m going to briefly scan the news for recent relevant stories. That way, after asking questions, I can confidently shut up and let the interviewees spill their thoughts, knowing the only thing I’m missing is whatever they’re about to say.

Covering a massive federal indictment

Yesterday I was once again rewarded for keeping my schedule open and checking my email often, two simple adjustments that have helped make this semester much more exciting than the last semester I spent reporting. Going into the day, I was planning on conducting one phone interview and doing a few accuracy checks to polish off a story that’s been lingering in the works. That story continued lingering, thanks to the announcement of an unexpected press conference that took priority by a long-shot. Tammy Dickinson, U.S. Attorney from the Western District of Missouri, announced the indictments of 27 people for a massive drug-trafficking and prostitution conspiracy in Boone County. There were 15 people arrested by 2pm that day and 56 total counts indicted. Seven law enforcement agencies contributed to the 18-month investigation. Even with a recorder and another reporter (Seth), it was a lot to absorb. Too much to absorb, in fact. There was no way that I was going to grasp all the information, so I was forced to find a strategy that worked: Ignore the details that can be tracked in the news release and formal indictment and ignore the quotes that are being recorded anyway and instead concentrate solely on filling in the holes in the information. With this mindset, I was able to get a few key extra details, including names of the five suspects that still remained at large and the total amount of cocaine involved. The follow-up question I couldn’t get answered, which is now irrelevant but still interesting: How much street value does 5 kilograms of cocaine have around here?

The sources I bug repeatedly

As the semester has progressed, it’s been increasingly evident to me how important it is to maintain positive relationships with sources. My first focus is always to initially build rapport with sources so that they will help me get the specific information I’m seeking for the specific story I’m writing. But it should go beyond that. Now that I’ve been using the same sources repeatedly for multiple stories (and even multiple reporting classes) over the course of the semester, I’m wishing that I would have been more friendly and grateful toward them earlier. If I had been more conversational with somebody throughout our interactions for one story, and thanked them more sincerely at the end, I would have been more likely to get a quick, helpful response the next time I needed something from that source. Plus, that source may have now helped me on two or three or more stories – and whether or not it’s their job to provide journalists with information, that’s awesome they helped me so much. To my present and future sources: Prepare for a more grateful, more conversational Brian.

Columbia’s public safety department I haven’t been covering

With the exception of a single brief I got on GA, I strangely haven’t covered anything that involves working with the Columbia Fire Department despite being a second-year reporter on the public safety beat. So I was excited to change that and see how covering the fire department compares with covering the police department. In addition, I was on a loose deadline for my editor (Thursday) and a very strict deadline in general (Elections are in four days…).

It was also a bonus getting an attainable yet challenging assignment on a tight deadline because I’m working on writing faster (especially by riffing) and spending less time pre-reporting and more time talking to people. I had the first draft complete before deadline, but still haven’t been able to coordinate a time for edits with my editor. Lesson learned: Don’t just strive to meet deadline. If you’re really on a time crunch, strive to get the story done absolutely as fast as possible.

Working with the fire department was tough. There isn’t a national government agency that has an online database with all the statistics you could ever need, like how the FBI does that for police. All I could manage for data is the National Fire Incident Reporting System’s Public Data Release Files for whichever year I want. I anticipate those being helpful numbers but they won’t be helpful for this story since there was a long delay trying to get them and they’re coming in the mail. Just as unhelpful, one of the report links I was emailed was a May 1987 file… The firefighters themselves were friendly and accommodating, however they had to be careful with their quotes because they have been prohibited from making statements about Proposition 1, so I didn’t get anything juicy like I occasionally can from the police. That said, it’s understandable that I’m not as smooth working with this department because I’m so fresh to it, but I finished a story in which I have faith!

My precious public safety tax story

When I got out of shoulder surgery Thursday afternoon, I had one missed call. It wasn’t from my mom, or my dad, or any family or friends. It was from Mayor Bob McDavid, returning the call I’d given him the previous night as I was trying to get accuracy checks. The accuracy checks were the last thing holding my four-week monster of a story about Prop 1 back from completion. So the first call I made after my surgery was to the mayor. Maybe it’s just because I was loaded up on pain medications, but I found that to be pretty funny. But he answered. And the story is done!

Now I’m turning my attention to my second Prop 1 story, this one fusing angles on the understaffed Columbia Fire station and the problem with the department’s response times that are over four minutes. Unlike the previous story, which involved gathering tons of information and data and what I would honestly estimate as 50 hours of work, I’m going to try to crank this out out quickly. With elections coming up in just a week and a half, I don’t have a choice.

Ways I practice resiliency

1-2. If I’ve got at least a half hour of free time, and my heart isn’t pounding too fast as a result of stress, my favorite method for staying resilient is napping or reading. Both of those activities are helpful for slowing down my breathing and forcing me to relax and absorb everything that’s going on around me, rather than getting tunnel vision and only being able to focus on the task at hand.

3. It can also help to take a silent, leisurely walk around a new part of town or campus. This also forces me to relax. Furthermore, the new things that I inevitably notice distract me from stress.

4. I hope males will still accept me as one of their kind after this statement, but, honestly, talking to people about what’s happening and how I feel about it always helps me stay resilient. Even if the other person doesn’t have any helpful support or advice to offer, just describing the issue to them helps you see it from a clearer, more approachable perspective.

5. Sometimes, during chaotic times, I do the exact opposite of slow down. Taking more stories and tasks can really be a great distraction, and then a great ego boost if you accomplish them. If you can put something on hold for a few days, go get something else done, and then come back to the original task, it can be much less overwhelming.

Gathering information

I think every single time I was talking to somebody for reporting purposes this week was because I was making a request. I’m still in the early stages of reporting on the public safety tax, so I’ve spent all week requesting information, requesting interviews and requesting ridealongs. I’m in full information-gathering mode.

The most time-consuming task has been gathering information about police departments in Missouri and in the rest of the country to compare them with the Columbia Police Department. I’m seeking three different pieces of information, all from 2013: number of officers, number of arrests and number of service calls. And I’m trying to get these figures from 10 different police departments: Independence, St. Charles, Jefferson City, Springfield, Boulder, Athens, College Station, Lawrence, Columbia, South Carolina and, obviously, Columbia, Missouri.

Interestingly, some of the departments have no trouble finding the figures within a few hours and casually giving them to me. But a few required that I make official FOIA requests. And, sadly but not surprisingly, our very own police department has been the most difficult to work with. I sent in two different FOIA requests and still haven’t heard back about an estimated cost or time frame for filling my request. But I don’t blame CPD; they’ve unquestionably had enough negative experiences with journalism students to warrant being hesitant to fulfill requests.

Throughout the process, I’ve discovered a friendly-but-demanding tone of voice that I previously never knew I had. It’s gentle, like my serving voice, but direct at the same time. When you’re continuously awaiting responses from five or more police PIOs, you can’t waste time beating around the bush.