Everyday work

In the last two weeks I tried to get more into the newsroom routine, as well as keep reporting and writing in a regular beat. Things got a little slow, though. I finished one story about a mentoring program held by the Hispanic Commerce Chamber in Philadelphia area, and the story is in the cue to be published – in the last couple of days, the paper was short of space, my editor explained me.
That story gave me some new experiences, directly related with my goals in the fellowship.
1- A stakeholder suggested the story to me. People at the chamber realized I am writing about minorities because of my stories about Brazil and about soccer, and sent me an e-mail. I wasn’t really expecting to be recognized as a reporter here at any point, because this usually happens when you got into a specific beat, and after a while. I liked to experience that; dealing with stakeholders is an essential part of our job. How do you deal with their biases? What they can provide you and, more important, is the information they give you reliable? Those questions lead us to the second point:2- Figuring all this out with my editor’s help. I bothered my editor with questions about verification and number of voices in the story. It was challenging; the editors around here are always really busy, as well as the other reporters. There is much more work to do in this newsroom, and they simply have no time to coach me. But I figured the best time to approach them and tried to anticipate their questions the best I could.
3- I dealt with some businessmen and executives. I’m avoiding suggesting stories for the business section just because I’m a business reporter for too long now. I want new experiences. However, it was really good to meet business people and talk to them – that was a way to see some differences between businessmen in Brazil and here. I’m used to have more formal, serious conversations with executives in Brazil, and Americans seemed more comfortable with talking to me. I’m sure they wouldn’t be as open as they were if I was writing some story that makes them look bad, but anyway, it was really different.

I also shadowed two reporters in the last 2 weeks. I went out with Robert Moran to cover a protest at Rittenhouse Square against the Iranian government. They were demonstrating with signs and chants, and it was right in the beginning of the developments in the Middle East. That was a little story, but showed me 2 things.
1- The concern about localizing stories. This is a big trend in my newsroom for several years now, and it’s interesting to see it happening in big American newspapers, too.
2- He took some pictures with his camera, although there was a Inquirer’s staff photographer there. He also took some other pics with the iPhone, and promptly posted it on Twitter. Right after he talked to people there, he wrote the story in a netbook, while we had a coffee in a café with wi-fi. So before we left the site, the editors already had the story filed and could call him to ask for further doublechecking.
I was really impressed by his attempts to multimedia the story, and the twits he made from there were really good – Twitter played an important role in all the Iran coverage. And while it was a pain to carry all the equipment – a camera, a netbook, a vintage reporter’s notebook, an umbrella -, he didn’t seem to bother.
The other experience was last week, shadowing Maria Panaritis to a union meeting in a traditional sports court in Philadelphia. The story was about a deal to change benefits that was offered by Acme – a supermarket chain – to the employees. She went to interview the employees and got some good quotes. I was surprised with the way they express their opinions to the media in a situation like that. In Brazil, it’s hard to find non-union voices to speak up for their rights in labor disputes.

Watching them working, I learned some techniques to approach people and to get good quotes. They tried to keep people comfortable to talk, but they didn’t give up of the tough questions. Maria acted as a “devil’s advocate” several times with the workers, telling them the company’s arguments and asking the workers to answer to them. That was really interesting.

The Mosaic

One of my goals in this fellowship was to really know American culture in site, not just from movies, TV and music. Part of our job as journalists is to listen to our readers, and we need to do it now more than we ever needed. I could say that this job allows me to listen to people more than other jobs – or at least that’s the way it was supposed to be.
I've been writing a lot about Brazil lately. In part because of the lack of covering about my country here at the Inquirer, and also because I can easily find stories here in Philly that other reporters can't find without speaking Portuguese.
Two of those stories generated some readers’ response - comments in the website, e-mails or voice messages in my phone. And I've got some awkward feedback, to say the least. My feature story about how Brazilians in Philadelphia are suffering with this economic crisis burst some very angry comments saying that my countrymen are just a bunch of selfish people who are taking advantage from American tax payers. I'm a little surprised to hear complaints about "greed", "selfishness" and "they just care about making money" in the country that, in the last century, defined the idea of making money as a lifestyle.
You can find immigration tensions almost everywhere, so I won't discuss how wrong the notion of “immigrants sucking all our tax money” is. Let me tell you about the feedback from a story about an American father who is trying to get his son back from a Brazilian family - his ex-wife (the boy's mother) took him to Brazil 5 years ago. After she died, last year, a judicial battle between the father and the mother's family, including her second husband, started in Brazil.
I wrote the story and received two e-mails. Take a look on part of the first one.

"Shame on you, Mr. Muzell. To title your story, “Boy sides with Brazilian
relatives….” Shame on you!
I cannot imagine that you are a father, Mr. Muzell. If you are, when you go home tonight, take a look at your child and imagine someone taking him or her away from you. (...) Now imagine opening up your morning newspaper and reading an article written by some – pardon me – idiot journalist who was too lazy to research the subject he’s written on that tells the world that your child has “freely” chosen to remain with his abductors."

The title was different in the print edition, and she complained about the website title, which was indeed inaccurate since the matter is highly debatable. I changed it at once and e-mailed her back. My considerations about her calling me "idiot" - I don't know about here, but that is rather offensive where I came from -, are below:

"This case is indeed very sad and complicated. I wouldn’t write anything without
informing myself the best I can. Because of the strong emotions rose by this sad
story, I understand your disappointment. But I can not accept personal offenses.
I believe nobody goes anywhere by calling anyone of “idiot” or “lazy”. Anything
good can come from that. (...)
I would be thrilled if you keep letting me
know about any mistakes in my stories. But I won’t even read anything that you
write me if you call me “idiot” or any use any other offensive word again."

I got other message after that, which I didn't even bother to answer since it wasn't anything pointed to me directly. The guy just made some considerations about the case to me.

"First bad move this man made was marrying a gold digger bimbo from Brazil. He
must be one stupid guy. Poor [father's name] saw that hot Brazilian shake her
booty and that is all he could think about. Miss Brazil was looking for a fast
ticket to the promised land called U.S.A. when she hooked up with sucker
[father's name].
Brazil sounds real romantic and exotic but anyone who has
ever been there knows it is nothing more than a gigantic version of Haiti with
all the similar attributes . . . poverty, ignorance, corruption, high homicide
rate, blatant crime on the streets and on the beaches. [father's name] should re-group and find himself a nice Jewish girl from New York or North Jersey."

Everybody knows that even if you are the hardest critic of your country, when you're abroad you tend to become more nationalist. I'm abroad, so you know one of my biases on this.
I have to recognize that we do have gold digger bimbos, poverty, homicides and all sort of trouble in Brazil (and over the world). And we certainly have selfish Brazilians here just to make money and come back. Not that I think the reader is right in either of the cases I wrote about.

I also know how dumb a reader can be and how offensive he can get behind a computer keyboard. That's no news.

I didn't get offended - in fact, I couldn't care less about what people think of Brazil. But I couldn't help to be impressed with the hate levels I sensed in all that.

Again, I wouldn't take that as a portrait of America. I know better than that. But the whole picture I'm slowly drawing in these months I’m here is certainly influenced by that - as it was also influenced by all good stuff I'm experiencing here. Perhaps, in the end of the day, we all just get random pieces of everything. What we have to keep in mind is that the picture will be a mosaic, not a 10 megapixel photo.

Overwhelmed

It's been really hard to update this blog in a regular basis. For one simple reason: I'm doing so many things that I just don't have time for nothing else. In the last couple of weeks, I worked on three different stories. The editors asked me for a feature about the Brazilian neighborhood in Philadelphia, and that took me some time - it's not easy to report without an angle, so I went there and spent some time talking with everybody I could, and came up with this story, showing how they are dealing with the consequences of the economic crisis.
The story made the front page! I didn't know that until I saw it in a vendor. I felt just like an intern who sees his name in the paper for the first time in his life - bought the paper and showed to the guy who sold me "hey, that's mine". Lame, but I had to do it.
In this story, I worked a different skill - to write a feature is different than writing a news story. Although I write many features in Brazil, to do it in other language and about a entirely different environment was challenging.
My other two stories will be in the features section, and I'm gonna write about a fashion designer and a rock band. Those are things that I've always avoided to write about at home. But here there's no point to be selective - diversify my beat was the intenttion since when I came.
I'm just getting back from Baltimore, where I attended to the 2009 IRE Conference. I managed to bear an extremely cold air-conditioning and a incredibly bad-smelling hostel room, but it was worthy. I knew very cool journalists and I saw awesome panels with new experiences in journalism and also with various techniques from old newsmen. I'm still trying to process all that information and write down all new ideas this 4-day immersion gave me.
But I've had my "groupie" moment: got an autograph and took a picture wiht Mr. Bob Woodward - how about that?