Just Say Hello

Not man people would describe me as shy. Still, sometimes I have a hard time just saying hello.

Last week, I had an orientation assignment – a list of 12 places, and we had to visit 10 of them, talk to people at 5.

I’ve gotten a little better at talking to people, but its still easier for me when I can point to a specific story idea, hide behind that sense of legitimacy. I’m so afraid of bothering people, of being seen as a nuisance who has no right to poke my nose where it doesn’t belong. Yes, I know that’s exactly the point, for a lot of types of Journalism, but not for mine. And I’m still uncomfortable bothering private citizens, walking up to someone in the park and saying, “Hello, I’m a Reporter,” and awkwardly asking them a few questions. I’m petrified of rejection.

I didn’t talk to anyone at the first four places I went to. Granted, there was no one at the Blind Boone house. But it would have been easy to talk to someone at the high school, or the historical society. But I was nervous. Whenever I think of approaching someone, I get a certain fight-and-flight response. I ask myself if there’s anyway I can get out of what I’m about to do. Not having an option is usually the only thing that can propel me forward.

And it’s very, very silly. I get rejected and feel embarrassed about 2% of the time. The other 98% of the time, things go fine. We have a little chat, things are easy. Sometimes it’s better – sometimes people tell me something really fascinating. Assignments like this are just what I need, and every time, it’s getting a little bit easier. Ultimately, putting yourself out there, talking to people – that’s the secret, and not just in journalism. Every time I go to that party I wasn’t sure about, every time I introduce myself, every time I decide to stop lurking in the shadows and just ask someone if it would be okay for my to take a photo – every time, I’m rewarded. New friends, new contacts, new stories, and better photos than I ever could have taken from a distance.

And I know it. I’ve learned it, time and time again. I’m better at it than some…

Laugh all you want, but it was a bit stretch for me to ask this woman if I could take her picture at the Cologne Carnival celebration... and look at the payoff!

…but still worse than others.

So I try to remember that the lady at the park didn’t roll her eyes when I approached her, but told me the name of her bright red-headed little daughter and said she was letting them play hooky from school, one day, to enjoy the beautiful weather. I try to remember that the radio station didn’t look at me like I had three heads when I explained what I was there for, but took me inside and told me about an upcoming fundraiser. The older man eating lunch alone beside the pool started out telling me that he’d been to the activity center every day since it opened, that he used to be a Japanese teacher at Hickman, and ended up inviting me to his house to meet his wife.

Just say hello, I try to tell myself, when I’m tempted to freeze up, tempted to run. Just ask.

Because it’s the key to opportunities, experiences, stories and photographs you couldn’t have reached any other way – because life doesn’t have a Single Player mode.

Everyone wants to know the 'story' behind this photo. The 'story' is that I saw a falconer by this castle in Slovakia, and, through gestures, asked if I could take a picture of his birds. He did one better - he let me hold them myself!

You Can Hide

On Thursday morning I woke up with the same slight nagging, dreadful feeling in my stomach that I’d had for the last few mornings. I hadn’t been into the newsroom since I submitted the Pooch Plunge piece on Friday, then run out of the Missourian building, out of campus, and into the wild for some much needed time with friends and family, listening to blue-grass, eating fried mushrooms, playing around on a rope-swing on the Gasconade river, trying to soak up enough Missouri summer in the last weekend to make up for what I’ve been missing in recent years. On Tuesday, I was busy. Wednesday too. Hell, I’m always busy if you want to know the truth. I’ve never been one of those girls who sits around tweeting that she’s bored when there are languages to study, books to reads, friends to meet, trails to hike, or photos to take. Things just added up, and I didn’t have any active story or stone-carved commitment to drag me back to the newsroom, so I simply didn’t go.

The longer I waited, the farther away News Reporting seemed. But I started to understand the danger, understand why people fail this class through sheer neglect – it’s easy to do. It’s easy to walk away after turning in a few big stories, and hide. You can do that. They don’t count our hours on the job. There are no firm numbers of stories we need to turn in, especially not on a weekly basis. No one’s going to call your mom and ask whether you’re sick or playing hooky. By Thursday, my sense of dread had grown. I had to go to the newsroom, now, before I entered some sort of initial-burn out denial, before I hid myself away until there were serious consequences. As I brushed my teeth and ate my oatmeal, I promised that today I would present myself at the Missourian and plug back in.

But things looked differently after four hours of class and walking around campus under the hot sun. Tomorrow, I thought, I can go tomorrow. They’re not missing me today. They would call me if something were important. Going tomorrow will make no difference. Some of the students are only really showing up for their G.A. shifts. I’ve got enough of a lead with my three stories from next week, being lazy today won’t hurt anything. What will I even do when I show up? Walk in and say, hello Schneller, I’m back! No, that’s silly. I’m tired today and it’s better if I just go home. I’ll get a good nights sleep and deal with this in the morning. 

The monologue, the bargaining, went on and on inside my head, but I ignored it. I turned my feet in the opposite direction of home, and before I knew it I was across Lowry Mall, across the Quad, across Peace Park, and climbing the stairs up to Schneller’s office.

“Hey.” I said.

Schneller asked me where I’d been, and I didn’t say anything. He sighed and said that ‘at least’ I was here now – that most of his reporters had disappeared and he had all these stories to give out. Before I knew it, he’d given me two great ideas for stories – things I was actually interested in. So yes, I’m glad I went.

Reporting is proving difficult for me, but not in the same way that classes are normally difficult. It’s not about sitting down and memorizing flash cards, or trying to wrap my head around a difficult equation, or even trying to put together an argument that will convince a professor to give me an A. It’s a different sort of system entirely, and its based on other sorts of challenges. It’s about personal responsibility and accountability and get-up-and-go, facing your nervousness and fears and worst of all… laziness. Fighting the instinct to look for the easier way out, to sink back down to the median-level, to push things off and off again. No one’s watching you as you stand in the crowd knowing you should approach the boy in the corner, who probably has an interesting story, but knowing you can pull off the piece without it and wondering if its really worth the effort. No one’s yelling at you because you didn’t show up in the newsroom for a week. No one’s looking over your lead and telling you, “this is good, but you can do better.” No one, that is, except for you.

And from that one, you can’t hide.

Not Drowning But Waving

Not Drowning But Waving

Reporting is everything they told me it would be, I suppose. It’s incredibly time consuming and unpredictable and it challenges all the ideas we cherish about our own specialness and writing abilities, it eats souls and social lives and aspirations. Cutting where I can, I’ve already missed a meal or two and one nightly shower… and my other classes aren’t even in full swing yet. No, on paper everything I’ve been told about J4450 seems to be checking out. So why does it feel so different? Maybe because… I’m enjoying it.

I don’t remember the last time I had this sensation, of learning so much and so fast, of being so surrounded by new stimuli that the only way to take it all in is through pure osmosis, submersion. For the first time since entering the J-School, I actually feel like I’m part of a cutting edge educational experience, like I’m actually getting the preparation I need for the industry.

In the first few days I had this feeling that I was a bit behind. Maybe because I took News awhile back, or because several of my new Missourian friends are grad students with all the advantages that gives, and maybe because I’ve never really taken Journalism seriously until now. I wanted to be a Travel Journalist, after all, and preferably with TRAVEL in all caps and journalist in a smaller font size. But that’s changing, too, because I can see myself doing this. Travel journalism is still my ideal niche, but I always thought that if that didn’t work out, I would be essentially back to square one – I’d use my writing skills in some marginally related industry, or even take my Spanish major and go teach somewhere. News Reporter? No thanks.

But I’m enjoying this.

I’m beginning to understand why they told us to make the Newsroom our default location. My first story’s turned out to be a little bit more involved than I imagined, and I’ve found myself at the Missourian every day since I got back to Columbia. Its a chaotic place in its way, with people on the phone here and there fact-checking and interviewing and giving feedback. The tables are littered with AP Style Guides and how-to-guides and notebooks someone left when they ran out of the room in a rush. I’ve loved seeing the often high-speed teamwork and delegation that goes on when a story breaks… the respectful arguments about wording and ethics and processes that are not merely academic but constructively affect reality… the collaboration with the photo and graphics departments, who are so passionate, professional, deliciously geeky about their own specialties.

I may seem a little busy, a little stressed out. I am.

… And I’m enjoying it.

At least for now, I’m not drowning but waving.

Conception, Development, Birth

News stories can have very short gestational periods

The girl sitting next to me was having trouble connecting to the internet.

“I know,” I said. “I don’t even have an ethernet cable, so I’ve been hanging out in the computer lab all week. Mizzou Wireless is a mess this year.” I told her what I knew about the situation – that it had to do with IP addresses and the explosion in student numbers and mobile devices per student. “You know,” I said then, very quietly, “That could almost be a story.”

I went back to what I was working on.

Just a few minutes later, I noticed a flurry of activity over to my right. An editor was delegating various tasks and contacts out to reporters – she wanted the Mizzou Wireless story, and she want fit as fast as possible. From the corner of my eye, I saw calls made, options discussed, a story drafted and edited. How many hands and voices touched and contributed to that story, I couldn’t count.

The next day, I was headed out of my dorm to class when I glanced down at the Missourian. The cover headline: New wireless devices causing connection problems on campus

I smiled then… a knowing little smile.

Dread

Nope, that’s not a zombie in a cheap horror movie – it’s just me, Miranda…. about to taste Rocky Mountain Oysters for the first time. I played the mood up a lot for the photograph, but I was a little nervous about taking that first bite. In the end, the ‘oysters’ were no big deal. I dare say I even liked them. After all, nothing deep fried and served with cocktail sauce can truly be evil!

But I was scared to start reporting as well.

– Scared that I’d freeze up in interviews.

– Scared that I wouldn’t feel like I had the right to question people on the street or call strangers on the phone.

– Scared that I’d feel voiceless and trapped in the confines of the news article format.

– Scared that I wouldn’t be any good, once I got out of the classrooms and the theory and into practice.

What I was most afraid of was the unknown itself. Taking that first step, that first bite, raising my hand for that first story and calling up that first source. But I concentrated on what I knew I would like, what I knew I could do – reminded myself that I was a good writer, and capable, and curious – not unlike focusing on that fried batter and cocktail sauce. I’ve taken the first bite now, and reportings not so bad after all… in fact, I think I like it.

Root

The Black Forest, Germany

I’ve named this blog Tree and Root because I expect Journ 4450/Reporting to be a turning point in my education. Up until now, my whole life, and in particular my ‘life as a journalist’, has been all ‘root’. Education. Formative experiences. The little things that have broadened my knowledge base and developed my curiosity and sharpened my writing over the years. Things the world doesn’t see, as crucial and expansive as they are.

This semester, though, marks the turning point. The line seperating practice and preparation with reality is about to be seriously blurred. With some help, some luck and some perserverence, I’ll be covering and publishing my first real stories. This is where the root ends and the tree begins.

 ——————————–

But, first, a quick look at the Root. And what better than a review of my beat request essay, to remember where I stood when I stood at the turning point?

The day I decided to go into journalism, I was sitting in the lounge at my residence hall with a stack of twenty books, furiously researching indigenous reindeer herders. I was fascinated by this group, which forms a cultural continuum from the westernmost Siberia, across the vastness of northern Russia and all the way to Finland, Sweden, and Norway– even as climate, ethnic appearance, and languages change slowly but greatly over thousands of barely populated miles. I wanted to go live with these people, to taste reindeer milk, hear shamans sing out the essence of a friend or an inlet, and hear my breath crackle as it freezes in the still arctic air at forty degrees below zero. I wanted to write about them and take pictures of them and show the world how amazing they were. It was a feeling I’d had before and have had many times since – a friend of mine suggested I go into journalism, and things seemed to snap into place.

I was born in Boston but raised almost exclusivelyin Missouri. I spent my childhood eating fruits and leaves in the woods behind my house, catching minnows in clear cold streams and camping in the Ozarks. As I grew up, I raised my eyes to the horizon, but what I was seeking was the same – a sense of place that pulled in all the senses. Nature and travel both near and far have always been my passion. I’m also very interested in languages (I am fluent in Spanish, German, and Norwegian and have also studied Catalan, Japanese, Italian, Finnish and Basque.) I’m interested in cultures and cultural landscapes at all depths – I love photographing picture perfect towns and colourful festivities as well as digging deeper into the roots and fault lines of identity. 

My dream is to be a travel journalist someday. To this end, I attended the travel journalism conference in Kansas City last fall, where I got to meet lots of people in the field and learned a lot about how they interact with the tourism bureaus, restaurant owners, etc. I have spent the last year studying abroad and this semester I am working on the MU Study Abroad blog.  As this niche of journalism doesn’t fit neatly into any of the beats, I feel relatively flexible about my placement. I have almost no interest in sports and am not overly fascinated by government – what intrigues me is what goes on at the personal and cultural levels – portraits of interesting people, feeling out the pulse of a community or subculture, etc. I would love to have the chance to do some photography as well as writing – although the written word is my first focus, in my career I hope to be comfortable with both media.

Next semester I am planning to focus on my studies, as I’ve heard that Reporting isan extremely demanding class. However, I am taking a relatively full courseload as I am working towards a dual degree. There is also a chance I may study abroad next spring, but I can’t imagine how that would effect the fall semester.

————————————

I didn’t actually request a beat. With all due respect, I wasn’t super interested in any of the beats offered. Not that I didn’t think they were interesting or worth reporting on, they just weren’t me. But I figured I could get through a semester reporting on just about anything (well, readers might suffer if I was assigned to Sports, but even then I guess I’d give it a go from the human interest and off-the-field perspective!)

For once, my honesty paid off. Or at least, that seems to be the way things are going. I was placed in the Enterprise beat, which means I can basically pick and pursue my own stories, take up whatever falls through the cracks of the other beats. It’s really perfect, and I can’t wait to see where it’s going to take me.