Back on track

After one week researching for a story, just last Friday morning, at 11:30 a.m., I realized what can be a good angle for that. It felt like a really waste of time, and I'm feeling really stupid. They are giving me all the time I need to get this done, but even working hard I couldn't manage to find out the story until hours ago.

And now that I found the right angle, I practically have to start all over again. I hate when this happens. At least, is a good angle for a over covered subject - recycling. I went to a recycling plant twice and it was something. The photographer that went there with me is leaving the newspaper, so his last assignment was, literally, garbage. Heh.
For this story I drowned myself at the Nexis Lexis database, as well as in the Inquirer's doc center. Reading dozens of stories everyday, I figured some patterns in newswriting and chose some to avoid when I'm back home. But some differences are not about journalism - they are about the American culture. Friday's newspapers have cover stories about Obama having a beer with the black Harvard scholar who was arrested trying to enter his house and with the cop who did it. The whole thing is really odd to me. The proportion that it took amazes me. I understand the touchy issues involved, racism and politics, but to me the whole thing was complete rubbish (a word choice according to the story I'm researching).
Not that Brazilian press don't waste time with bullshit -- our president, Lula, is a specialist on nonsense declarations, all of them reported by the press. But there is a general feeling there that this is all politics, and usually people give politicians some slack. It's different here; the whole beer thing were taking really seriously.

Last week, I had lunch with Vernon and we talked about some things to do in my last 2 months. I'll spend some time in other Inquirer bureaus, like Harrisburg (Pennsylvania's capital), South Jersey, City Hall. I'll also try to shadow a reporter in a baseball game, because it's impossible for me to understand the game, not to mention cover it. But the craft of sports covering here is really important to me to know, so it would be great. Let's see if this work out. I probably will have less bylines than in the beginning, but, at least for me, the program was never about bylines. It's the learning.

My training plan is still changing. For some, this would be a downturn, but I see it as an accomplishment. I don't mind not to have training in multimedia, as long as I understand how the guys over here work with multimedia possibilities. I've had tons of story ideas for my newspaper so far, most of them impossible to put in practice at the Inquirer, and the talks and examples I'm seeing here are helping me a great deal with that. My main goal, to learn how to tell stories better and to understand how the newspapers are dealing with these transition times, is being met really well.

Rodrigo's Beatlemania

It was a Saturday, July 18th, when I saw him standing there. Sir Paul McCartney, the best rock musician alive. Pretty much my only idol still among us. So he walked to the stage at Citi Field, and I was there with Ananda, my girl, Tiago, my drummer back in Brazil, and Maria, his wife. Dearest friends and love in a warm and perfect summer night.
Everything went just perfect. He played over two and a half hours, he did his best to entertain the people --- complete success on that. After an incredible fireworks show in "Live and Let Die", he played Hey Jude and I bursted on tears. Pretty lame, I know, but I couldn't help it.
It was unforgettable. The stadium stands on the very spot of the famous Shea Stadium, where the Beatles performed live for a crazy crows in the 60's. By my side, in 2009, plenty of baby-boomers remembering the Beatlemania. I traveled in time a little, and watched to the best concert in my life. As you can see in my face.

Florida

There's plenty of photos and some footage from our midterm seminar in St. Petersburg, Florida, at the Poynter Institute. But this image shows best my state of mind that week: a time to reflection over what happened since I got here. A vacation for the mind - and, as you can tell by that shot taken at Bill Mitchell's house, on a delightful welcome dinner.
Those days at the Poynter were really awesome. Their insights on new technologies, the old good storytelling techniques but, most of all, the training and coaching tips.
Bill and Paul, the main teachers, showed how even a young journalist can contribute a lot for the newsroom. They made me think about how young journalists and interns sometimes lack the confidence to perform great works, and, looking back, how I could have developed skills more quickly if I was exposed to coaching in a regular basis.
We had to simulate a training session, and mine was a really shame in my point of view. Even talking too much, I ran out of words sometimes at questions made by other fellows. I learned the importance of controlling the time and having an realistic objective for the session. Planning is fundamental.
I went back to NY -- where I was "based" in the studio my girlfriend rented -- with loads of tipsheets and some books. Moreover, with a renewed confidence in journalism and in my (and my fellows') skills. I'm pretty sure I'm able to learn a lot more in those 9 weeks I have left in Philadelphia.

It's been a hard day's... MONTH

Well, as you might remember, 2 weeks ago I was in New York, where I arranged two meetings, at Forbes and Bloomberg newsroom.
At the first one, I was received by mr. Carl Lavin, managing editor at Forbes.com. A really cool newsroom in Manhattan, where the transition from the print magazine to online is happening for some time now. There's no distinction between online and magazine team - as far as they told me, the reporters and editors make the decision of what's worth to online and what's worth to print magazine as things happen.
It's a really different business covering from what I'm used to. I went to a editing room where there was a guy editing an Akon videoclip for the website --- my business desk at Zero Hora would never get to that. They cover both celebrities and business people, because Forbes is one of the primary sources to consult about rich people. A really different vibe - I attended to a reporter's meeting and they had champagne. Cool!

Speaking on treats, my next visit was at Bloomberg News headquarters, in this really cool building in Lexington Ave. This picture is from their cafeteria - simply hundreds of snacks, soft drinks, coffee, all free. With a reason: to keep people in the building. It was another different point of view of business coverage: the editor Pete Young showed me their strong focus on immediatism - to scoop CNBC or Thomson Reuters, even if it's for a matter of 15 seconds, is crucial. This is because Bloomberg readers are not only people that surf their website: most of its revenues come from their subscribers -- basicly market traders and other financial players.
In addition to be the first, they have to be right, so the accuracy of the information is also very important. Dealing with speed and time pressure shouldn't be easy.
It was really something to get to know those newsrooms. Both of them are getting to different business models than traditional journalism -- mr. Lavin stressed the need for journalists to use better their time and resources nowadays, putting their efforts on a wider range of content. In a way that's what Michael Bloomberg did when he created the company, years ago.

New York for a week

After talking to my mentor, I decided to use this week to try to get to know some other newsrooms, for one of my main goals on this fellowship is to find out how the journalism is changing over here.
So I managed to set up two meetings in New York, using Susan contacts: I took a tour over the Forbes and Bloomberg newsrooms in Manhattan.
In this week spent in New York I'm also having a really intense experience with media; the proportion of it in this city is very different from Philadelphia. New York is much bigger, crowded and intense; the subways are always packed and so are the newstands. Some differences between newspapers you only see when you're with them in your hands. The NY Post and the NY Times, for instance, you can tell them apart also by their readers. I don't recall to have seen anyone reading the Times in the subway. But the Post is everywhere in the hand of working class people, always opened in the Michael Jackson or other celebrities stories.
Funnily enough, I've had a taste of business reporting once again at those two meetings. At the Inquirer, I'm more focused in not to have any specific beat, because I want to learn other things and think "outside the box". But those two meetings I could get were really profitable. I'm going to Wall Street now to complete my "financial week", but later on I will tell you what did I learn from the guys at Forbes and Bloomberg - a lot, in a short time.