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?