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It finally started coming together in my head, so I went to the nearly desolate journalism school and comandeered a white board for half an hour. I have a dozen reporting checklists scribbled in notebooks, but this is the first time I felt like I know enough to make a writing plan.
Then I photographed it and erased it.
The other day I listened to NPR and sipped tea while I made plum scones. It felt like somebody else’s ideal morning, though I enjoyed it plenty myself. Here’s the recipe I sort of used, before I changed everything and measured none of it. Really. I didn’t use a single measuring device.
My roommate and I went to the parade Thanksgiving morning, just to see it. We took the train down and found a decent side street facing Central Park, north of Columbus Circle. We weren’t too concerned about getting awesome seats, but it was a warm day and pleasant to be there.
I’m pretty sure I never picked up a copy of The New Yorker before last weekend. I’m kind of proud of that.
Of course, I realize that’s not too far off from the proud ignorance that reinforces the East Coast elitist disdain for the rest of the nation. So I read an issue at the library. It was pretty interesting. I particularly liked this article about Hollywood’s expert accent coach.
A handful of friends and strangers have commented in recent weeks about the cluttered state of my laptop desktop. I know, I know, so I finally got organized and threw a few virtual reams of scrap paper into the recycling bin. Also found this, which I apparently saved a while ago for the sake of some old Evergreen lolz.
Hahaha.
I’m not caffeinated today, but some combination of music and weather and thought added up to about the same effect. So, despite the fact that it was raining and the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything yet, I decided I absolutely needed to spend my lunch hour between classes at the Lehman Library where they keep old J-School master’s projects.
I was looking for these.
If you can’t read the titles: Christopher J. Chivers (‘95) writing about the Marines and Damien Cave (‘98) writing about theater.
They’re long pieces and I didn’t have time to read them through (non-circulating books are annoying), but I did read the “P.S.” method notes at the end of each. Good stuff. And I did make time to get lunch.
That’s what one of my classmates asked yesterday when I brought sugar cookies for the class. They were frosted with red and blue sugar on top, but I forgot to take a photo at that point. I made more than 120 star-shaped cookies and left most of them with the student veterans at City College, whom I’m writing about for my master’s project.
The cookies were a day early because today I am running around to parades and things. And yes, I believe Veterans Day can be a cookie holiday if you want it to be. Why not? Veterans like cookies just like everyone else. Better than shopping the Macy’s sale.
I troll the local Craigslist categories a few times a week for story ideas (surprising how much you find) and this caught my attention:
Losing a notebook sucks, but the description made me laugh. How would you describe your lost Moleskine? I think the most distinguishing characteristic of mine is teeny tiny handwriting.
I hope the person gets it back one way or another.
Check it out, Nick and I and Rajah Bose are quoted (as is Ben Shors, and Brian Immel is mentioned) in this WSU Magazine article by Hannelore Sudermann about the depressing state of newspapers in Washington state. The story feels a little like a mini-Spokesman/Evergreen reunion.
Even as a journalist, it’s kind of strange to see our familiar stories all organized in print. It makes those long days answering calls at the Spokesman seem like a very long time ago. The story includes a piece of my “journalism history and goals” essay for my Columbia application, which I guess I may as well share for context. Keep in mind that I was writing with the intention of getting accepted, though I think it’s all pretty genuine. Also keep in mind how different things were a year ago when I wrote this on plane trips from New York to Minneapolis and Minneapolis to Seattle; in some ways all of 2009 has been my successful attempt to postpone the personal despair of a shrinking industry.
If you’ve ever heard me try to explain What I Want To Do in journalism, aside from writing, I almost definitely mentioned the interactive NYT election graphics from the ‘08 race. As a reader I thought they did an outstanding job blending aesthetics and usability with an enormous amount of data, and then I became even more fascinated as a journalist after I heard some of the graphics guys talk about it last spring.
So I am very pleased to point out this interactive election map from The Uptowner, which Shane and I made yesterday to show voting trends in the past three elections for NYC mayor.
*And by “we” I mean the way Victor and I used to collaborate: I tried to articulate an ambitious vision, Shane confirmed my hopeful suspicions that it was in fact possible, and then I watched over his shoulder with sometimes-helpful design suggestions while he did magical things in Flash.
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