How it's supposed to work

When you live in the South ...

When most of your neighbors are conservative and Christian ...

When you write a column asserting that government officials should not pray to Jesus at public meetings ...

Well, you expect what happens next. You know what you should expect, you expect it, you say what you have to say despite it, you get the phone calls and the letters, and you keep doing what you're doing because it's what you believe is right.

At least, that's what I do.

Sometimes, though, what you get is not what you expect.

My phone rang at the office today and a loud man's voice demanded, "Is this Betsy O'Donovan?"

I strapped on my armor and picked up my shield and said, "This is Betsy. What can I do for you?" fully expecting the answer to be "you can sit on the other end of the phone and listen to me yell at you, you awful person."

And here's what I got:

"God bless you. I am calling to say God bless you, and thank you for writing that column, for writing the things that you wrote. Do you really believe that prayer at meetings discriminates against other religions?"

At this point, I was still slightly worried that I was stepping into a bear trap, but I said it: "Yes. I really do. I think it's absolutely wrong to pray to Jesus at public meetings."

"You're a Christian, you wrote."

"Yes, I am."

"And most people around here are Christians."

"Yes."

"Well, God bless you."

And then I said that he had absolutely made my day with his kindness. We started talking, and my extremely nice caller said he belongs to a temple in Charlotte and added some very nice things about how he'd like to see more writing on this subject, and in this vein, and that it made him hopeful for the next generation. But the best part came at the end, when he said this:

"When I go to temple, I will pray for you and your family."

"Well, I truly appreciate that. That is very kind. And I will pray for you and yours."

We both laughed a little, happy and kind of surprised, almost, and he said, "This is really how it's supposed to be."

"I couldn't agree more," I said.

I am putting this memory here so I don't lose it. I am sticking it in my pocket and carrying it with me, that I wasn't writing in hypothetical, that I am just one among the ranks of a righteous cause, and the people who are with me are good and generous.

It was a good day.

Tough questions

One of the many hooks I use to snag new freelancers is the one that caught me: Journalism is an excellent excuse to ask very rude personal questions.

As much as I adore the classic image of a fast-talking, flinty-edged girl reporter from the '40s, the fact is that I was a creampuff when I started this gig. (I still am at some pains to hide my gooey center, with mixed success.) I welcomed the idea that my job was somehow a secret password, an excuse, and a shield when I started popping questions like, "And how much do you make in a year? What sorts of things did your wife do that made you angry enough to hit her? Can you tell me why you stabbed that girl?"

I was thinking about those beginnings this week when I asked one of my reporters to go on a door-to-door canvass of a neighborhood where a husband killed his wife. 

"Talk to the neighbors," I said airily. "Who were these people? Where'd they go to church? Who were their friends? Dig."

Now, the reporter in question is unbelievably extraverted and motivated, and he came back with some great stuff. I couldn't help but compare how he did with how I might have done at the same task. I know for a fact that I would have been shaking in my shoes, intimidated by the monumental task of banging on doors. I would have done it -- I have done it -- but it remains one of the most scary memories of my early career.

Truthfully, it doesn't matter if we come bearing the credential. The fact is, journalism isn't a special class of authority. We aren't the cops; we don't have any laws backing us when we ask the questions we ask (at least, not when we ask private citizens).

It boils down to one person talking to another. It is, at its meat, a reporter walking up and saying, "The community that I represent would like you to answer some questions. Will you do it?" 

So, yes, it requires a lot of personal gall to walk in with the rapid-fire queries. Sure, we're paid to do it, but it's not the newspaper or the readership that gets a door in the face (or the threats of a lawsuit, the insults and the scoldings). It's the reporter. 

So, how does a young reporter (a creampuff like me, not an extravert like my staffer) get over a very natural nervousness?

Here's what's worked for me.

1. Just walk the plank

It is my job. No, we're not licensed or privileged in any special ways, but we are paid (at least in part) for our courage and thoroughness. If you want the job (and no one who works for journalism wages doesn't want the job), then you get out there, gulp hard, and do it.

2. Practice disclosure of your own

When we launched The Waxhaw Exchange, we started with a weekly editorial. Editorials, of course, are anonymously written opinion pieces that represent the position of the paper as a whole. 

After a couple of months, this started feeling a little bloodless to me. Perhaps it's because we're such a  small shop (anonymity doesn't mean much when two or three people are the only writers), but it felt increasingly cowardly to stand behind the paper's name and not my own. So the editorials morphed into a column, and the columns -- which mostly deal with public policy and politics -- came from a place of transparency. 

When complaining about the skewed county property tax valuations in May, I used the example of my own house, which I bought in March. Dear County, I wrote, you're off by $10,000 on my tiny house, and I'm not even a great example. I'd rather pay the difference and know that you did a thorough job than squeak by because your valuations model is hopelessly flawed. (My house, by the way, was by far the least egregious example of the failures. But I wanted to make it personal.)

I've found that toughening up and offering my own stories -- embarrassing, financial, personal -- has increased my tolerance for asking other people. Look, I think, no one is going to DIE from this question.

3. Learn different ways to ask. 

My bold young reporter is, well, bold. He just straight-out asks anything he wants to know, no preludes or pussyfooting around. "I heard you embezzled $59,000," he'd say. "Why?"

It works for him, and the straightforward approach is (shockingly) effective. But it's also worthwhile to stop and be in your source's shoes for a minute. What is his concern? What can you tell her that will make her more comfortable talking to you? Don't ever lie, and don't dress things up, but stop and figure out how to speak to a source's concerns (usually: fairness, misquotes, a bad spin, retribution) on the front end of a conversation.

OK. That's my experience, but there is a lot more to say on the subject. Have you been interviewed? Are you an interviewer? Tips, stories, ideas, concerns?

The Kiplinger Fellowship

OK, overdue post, but here it is: the story about the Kiplinger Fellowship application process.

First, you have to know that I went about the application process in a backward fashion. I spent months lovingly grooming a specific idea for a huge story package that focused on land use and zoning issues with a special emphasis on rural areas and the struggle between the old and new South.

I love planning, I think land use development is only boring to people who don't understand that it is the bedrock of how we live. Mixed-use development, sustainable growth and infrastructure, whether subdivisions (feh) are required to put in sidewalks, the width of roads (11 feet per lane in North Carolina) ... this is the stuff that determines whether you can buy groceries without getting in the car, whether your kids have overcrowded classrooms, whether they can walk to school safely, whether you can bike to work safely.

Still, the shape of the project kept slipping out of my grasp, and I caught myself getting a little frustrated with it.

I scrapped it with a couple of weeks to go and came up with a project that is my private obsession. I knew as I drafted my proposal that it was (a) a critical concept for community journalism but also (b) not something the Kiplinger Program had done before, and a big stretch in terms of the program parameters. Still, it's where my passion lays its head at night, and I was sure it had merit. (In fact, I'm still sure of it, so I'm not going to go into elaborate detail here. It's not so much that it's a secret; it's more that I want to try again next year, and it needs to incubate.)

I got all of my materials together and shipped them overnight on the very last day. And then I waited.

So, here's my first piece of advice: Figure out what you really want to do early. Don't be afraid to take a risk, but make sure you give yourself some time to really explain what you're trying to do.

The Kiplinger Web site says, "We will begin reviewing applications in early August and should be contacting finalists for interviews in September. We expect to complete the application process no later than October 15."

This year, I believe because the program was putting together the McCormick Climate Change Conference, things were running a little behind. I didn't know that at the time, so by mid-September I had pretty much decided that my proposal was too funky to merit serious consideration.

I had gone on vacation for a week with my family when the call came through. I had about 30 messages when I got back, and I was in a haze of listen/note/call when this happened (this is my description to friends and family):

"Blah blah voicemail blah blah call me blah blah event notice blah blah Hi, Betsy, this is Debra Jasper with the Kiplinger Program at Ohio State. I'm calling to schedule an interview."

In my head: "Huhwhazzah? Ohio State? Why did I call someone at Ohio State? That name's familiar. Was it for the economy story? Or the ... OH. MY. GOD. OHMYGOD!"

Debra Jasper oversees the public affairs journalism fellowship.

I sent in my application lo these many months agone and, as September faded away, assumed that my project proposal was too far beyond the realm of public affairs reporting. (In fact, it included no reporting whatsoever, although plenty of public affairs.)

After that, things moved very quickly. Ms. Jasper and I spoke the next day. She noted that they were narrowing down to the top 12, and that the first call/interview was a preliminary round to decide whether I would get a second one.

We talked about the project, but -- and this is the part that I hadn't prepped, because I apparently caught a bad case of the dumb in the late summer -- the Kiplinger Fellowship interview process is, at its core, a job interview. So you should be prepared to talk about yourself. A lot.

I was ready to talk about the project and sell it for all it was worth but, asked about my leadership style, how I would describe myself and how our staff would describe me, I stumbled around trying to describe how much I love them, how collaborative our newsroom is, and how long it's taken me to be the one to call plays when there is no consensus.

(Tangent: Part of this is about having rock-solid self-assurance. I've got the blame-taking and solution-finding part down for when things blow up. I just struggle a little with the front-end bit where you tell people that you hear their points and yet are doing something entirely different. I remember feeling disenfranchised at too many jobs to take that lightly. Now, why couldn't I have expressed THAT in the interview?)

At any rate, that first interview went well enough that (again, as told to family and friends):

I got a second interview! And I'm in the top 12.

I seem to be in the top 12 because the program director came from a small community and put in time at tiny papers, and that's where the fruits of my project would go.

And she EXTREMELY generously explained her reservations about my plan, so I have an opportunity to correct the problems, but I also have a boatload of thinking and work to do before the next interview (day after tomorrow).

The second interview was a phone conference with Ms. Jasper and Kiplinger Program manager Betsy Hubbard. (Odd, by the way, to be on the phone with another Betsy; we're pretty thin on the ground.)

We talked about the program, hashed out a few more aspects of the plan. The first 10 weeks of the program are devoted to developing digital media skills and creating the digital component of the project. (For a project example, see here and click here for a description of the learning process.) That was a primary concern with my project, which is not a traditional reporting project and, therefore, would have to find a different purpose for the digital project. (Since my project involved getting buy-in from some industry groups and other papers, I decided on a digital media sales pitch that built the case for my work.)

Again, I felt fumble-footed describing what I, as an individual could bring to the program. So, let me offer a second piece of advice.

Once you've sent off your fellowship proposal, spend a little time thinking about why you are worth the program's investment. (For people who regularly apply to fellowships, this might be obvious; this was my first time out.) The fact is, the Kiplinger program is about developing strong journalists who go out and share their new skills and resources, as much as it is about producing top-notch examples of project-based journalism.

The third and final interview was over Skype, again with Ms. Jasper and Ms. Hubbard. That was crazily exciting to me; honestly, WHERE IS MY JET PACK? I'm having video conference calls from my living room. (Side note: What do you say when someone asks "Why is there a sign that says 'Beware pickpockets and loose women' on the wall behind you?" Check your backdrop, people. Although I'm not sure I would have changed mine; might as well let everyone know what they're in for.)

After that, it was bated breath and held thumbs for a week. And then:

First, guys, thank you all for being so supportive, encouraging and thoughtful as I wandered through the Kiplinger fellowship process. I have some of the best friends in the world.

You see where this is headed, yes?

I got the e-mail this morning that, although I made the top 12 candidates, I missed the cut to the five who will be awarded fellowships for 2009.

At the risk of sounding too Pollyannaish about this, my perspective is that this gave me some very valuable information about both the need for a project like the one I proposed, and about the process of applying for this (and other) fellowships in the future. I'm going back to the drawing board, but I'm going to be working off of a pretty sound rough draft.

Anyway, thank you all for being such a good booster club. Please store your foam No. 1 fingers somewhere that will be easily accessible next fall.

To be honest, I'm not sure about the perfect alchemy of a Kiplinger fellow, but I am convinced that it's a great opportunity, rewards creativity and risk-taking, and the people who are administering it are doing so rigorously and thoughtfully. And I know it's something I plan to pursue next year (and the year after that, if it comes to it).

So, why the breakdown? When I did my usual obsessive background checking, I had a hard time finding accounts of the process or applicant's-eye views, which seemed strange to me. (Although I didn't want to actually follow my usual next step of contacting primary sources -- like former fellows -- because that seemed ... obsessive and intrusive? Looking back, it wouldn't have been a bad idea.)

If you came looking for this, I hope it's helpful. If you go through the process and have a different experience, I hope you'll write about it, too. And good luck.

Placeholder post

Coming next weekend: The 100 percent true story of the interview process for the Kiplinger Fellowship in Public Affairs Journalism.

As some of you may know, I applied for the Kip fellowship this summer (and, alas, was not one of the final five). While I was waiting to hear whether my project proposal had any juice, I spent a lot of time trolling the worldwide tubes for in-depth information about the selection process.

Frankly, I don't have a tremendous insight into that process, but I thought the least I could do is offer my applicant's-eye view as a favor to future applicants.

For the record, my sister thinks this is a stupid idea because I'll be applying again (and again and again if it comes to that; I'm nothing if not persistent). So here's my first bit of insight: I think the selection process is pretty tough to game, because it seems tightly focused on both the specific project proposals and on finding a good mix of fellows who can lend something unique to each year's program.

Therefore, my first piece of advice is this: Come up with a proposal you love, that you are simply burning to do. Then figure out why no one will do it nearly as well as you can.

Two a days

I was reading "The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry" at lunch yesterday, which is the story of how journalist-then-junior executive Kathleen Flinn got fired and went to Le Cordon Bleu. In an early chapter, she has a short paragraph about her professional experience and she says something along the lines of "I wrote a story every day -- sometimes two or three ..." The context suggested pride at her volume of work.

Sometimes, I feel like I work in a journalism mine. Our reporters are expected to write two stories a day, plus two for Sunday. Twelve stories a week.

(We, as a collective newsroom, had a generally friendly but taunting relationship with our opposite numbers at the Observer's Union bureau until McClatchy shut it down. A few months back, a few reporters were shooting the breeze and an Observer reporter observed that they think we work our staff like this is a sweatshop. I was obscurely pleased when one of our reporters said, "Yeah, that's why we're beating you on so many stories." Go, team little guy.)

I forget that this is not the industry standard, sometimes. Well, I don't forget, exactly. I am constantly aware that my reporters could use more time to round out their stories, work their beats, and develop their skills. But we are tiny, we print six days a week ... and everyone knows the score when they get the job.

My point here is not to complain. Frankly, I turned in two stories a day for years, and some of them were excellent. (Some were really not.) I learned to manage my time, kick down doors and write fast and efficiently because of that pressure. I suspect it would have been a great foundation (and made me feel like a serious cowgirl) if I had gone on to write at a bigger paper (instead, I went to copy desks).

My point is that I was once again reminded of how dramatically the workplace shifts at every level of journalism.

Journalism, of course, isn't a factory, and it takes time to develop stories that are more than spot news or shallow skims. One of my reporters sent me an e-mail this morning to apologize if it feels as though the work isn't strong lately. How can you not love staff like that? How can you not want them to have time to develop their creativity, and room to flex their reporting and writing power?

If any of you have a solution, let me know. Let us all know. Most papers in this country are small. The majority of reporters ARE writing multiple stories, at least a few days a week. Those days aren't special; they're called "Tuesday" or "Friday."

The balance point

Photo credit: Ed Cottingham for The Enquirer-Journal

It's 10:32 p.m. and I'm on the night desk. Everything's humming along, I'm giving 1A a final proofread when the expression of a guy in the centerpiece photo suddenly catches my eye.

Check him out. Upper righthand corner. He's spotted the camera, and that's not delight on his face, is it?

It's funny, the little moments in this job that grab you. And it's even funnier, the things you use to justify your decisions.

I sat and looked at the photo for a minute. Five kids, all probably younger than school age. An anxious-looking woman with an Aldi's bag. A few other people, looking tense or eager or bored or indiffferent. And that guy, whose face is a fascinating question mark.

"Oh, jinkies," I said with disgust (out loud; I'm trying to train myself away from certain vulgar words and I decided that, if I must express myself, I could do so colorfully or quaintly). All of a sudden, I could imagine the guy's third-grade kid getting teased on the school bus, or his middle school daughter locking herself in the bathroom and crying with humiliation that her dad was seen on the front page.

OK, let's be fair: That her dad was seen on the front page in a crowd of people awaiting a distribution of surplus commodities. Government cheese (and Rice Krispies, milk, whatever). If you've ever known anyone who actually ate government cheese, you'll mostly hear them speak of it with a kind of angry humiliation.

Oh, jinkies.

I whirled quickly through the arguments. This is an important story in our community, where requests for food aid are at a 10-year high. The photo tells a true and important story of people standing around, waiting for help, and a system that is trying to help them but also (look at the deputy's hand) holding them off to try and stretch resources for everyone.

The photo is important. The secondary art -- of a beautiful teenage girl filling grocery bags and a little boy sweeping behind her as a stringy line waits in the background -- is fine, but it's not as powerful.

But we are a small community, and people are proud. If we were the New York Times, I told myself, we'd run the photo. But is it appropriate here?

I called Stan and hashed it out. We decided to swap the art positions -- beautiful girl spread across four columns, hungry crowd squeezed down to two.

But here are the horns of the dilemma: Sure, we have to know our audience and try to hedge our bets with that nebulous idea of "taste." (That's an envelope that we've pushed before with photos of tragedies, so why not here?)

And what is our job? Is it to anticipate tastes, or tell stories? Both? Why do I feel like it would be different at the Times? Because there are more people? Because the ratio of people embarrassed to people who see the article would be an absurd proportion? And since when do numbers provide the tipping point for our ethical decisions?

It's hard to be a small-town journalist and dodge the decisions that make us into small-time journalists. I'm really not sure about this call, which I made and then Stan supported.

What do you think?

The new style

Well, we were talking about examples of blogging ad nauseum in the newsroom, and it finally occurred to me that what we needed was an example (in addition to the absolute PAGES of examples I had already offered, see below).

So I threw together my blog for the paper. We're emphasizing lifestyle content that also touches news, so my posts are a mix of how-to advice, articles I collected on the 'net, and commentary on local issues that have a connection to my blog topic.

Which, OK, was parenting. And I am a non-parent, but a non-parent with a lot of parenting advice and childcare experience just rotting on the vine here. Plus, it's fun. Here's the blog: Agony Aunt.

And here's the e-mail I sent to staffers with suggestions for ideas:

E-J Blogging Bootcamp

Surf through the following list of ideas (grouped by category) until you find something you like. Then, it's time to craft a blog proposal (see end of document for an example).

Remember, it all has to tie back in locally, it has to be well-written and about something, so readers know what they'll get, and it has to be updated 3 times a week, so pick something sustainable.

Posting styles vary (as you'll see), but regard this as a short, personable e-mail to readers. A micro-column, if you will. Other than that and a sense of professionalism, try not to limit yourself.

I need everyone's proposals next week so we can set them in place and start writing before the roll-out.

— Betsy

Goal-oriented blogs:
• The Climb
An amateur cyclist has six weeks to train for the Tour de France
• Weight Loss Challenge
The Florida Times-Union did this; it's a fantastic idea. Back story is here.
• Triathalon Training Blog
Going from couch potato to triathaloner (thanks for the note that this is not a short-term blog; I've change the subject header for accuracy)

Photo blogs:
• Dooce.com
Three daily photos: One that's just a cool photo, with a note about the conditions and why it was shot; another that's just a funny shot of the author's dog, and a third that's something stylish that caught her eye. People love 'em. We could do a "daily photo" blog that just archives our favorite images, or uses interesting lighting conditions, or is a photo taken at a specific time, wherever our photographer is, each day.
• I also love the idea of shooting signs (church signs in particular) and posting them as often as we have them. We would never run out.

Informational/expertise blogs
• The War Room
A politics blog on Salon.com.
• Glenn Greenwald
All about the media
• Get Rich Slowly
Great example of a blog that doesn't require expertise, but invites the reader along on an educational journey with the writer. All about personal finance; terrific.
• Well
All about health and healthcare, but from a laymen's view. Check out the post about the best online psychology tests.

Humor and art:
• XKCD
Single most popular comic strip on the Web
• Laugh Lines
Just funny stuff that Times staffers find on the Web. The challenge here is to be family friendly(ish).
• Breakup Girl
Started as a Web comic, evolved into an advice column and misc. blog, with plenty of comics.

Reader participation
• Postesecret
• Regret the Error
• Passive Aggressive Notes
• Flickrblog
A community of photographers; photos are selected based on subject or theme in a weekly contest
• Overheard Everwhere

Finally, it's time for a blog proposal. It might look like this:
Jill:
Yankee in a strange land
- Reporter with a northern attitude tries various quintessentially southern foods, activities, etc.

Possible posts:
§ RC Cola and Moon Pie review
§ The great barbecue debate (could be multiple posts)
§ Coke, soda, pop, cola: A man on the street blog post?
§ Hush puppies: The best in town?
§ How to make a (whatever "yankee" food – grinder, philly cheese steak, pizza)
§ What else is Southern (or local)?
o Sample posts (minimum two)