First, some news about my recycling story, the one I was working at in the last 2 posts: no news. It's ready to go to the paper, but there's no space. I hope it sees daylight at some point before I get out of here, heh.
Besides going through more editing on that, I dedicated my last week in getting my hands dirty in "multimedia".
The Inquirer is facing tough times when it comes to personnel and that's especially true in the photo team, which has 16 professionals now. Because of that, “other options” (reporters taking pictures, third-party photos) are always considered for stories less important.
So I offered myself to go with an intern in an assignment to take photos. Even without any formal training, I always liked good photography and I was curious about how Naomi, the 22 year-old journalism student from Princeton, would work with a photographer. I wanted to play a different role, for a change.
It wasn’t much different than the way we work in Brazil. There was no specific orientation or planning, either from the reporter or the editors, about the images. She took a camera to do a video, but she decided what kind of video it would be just in the edition room. The story had a frame – a first-person piece of a day as a tourist in Philly as seen by a girl from Delaware and a guy from Brazil – but the lack of planning made necessary change the frame after she wrote the first draft, for a more conventional story about one of the venues.
Suddenly, the 150 photos I took in 5 different places throughout the day didn’t matter anymore: just the 20 from Betsy Ross House. So I sat with the photo editor to evaluate them and learn their standards. It’s not really different: they value movement, action, people’s faces like they do it at home. There are some new things for me that I could point, though:
- Get enough material: most times, you don’t know who is gonna be the lead person on the story. So it’s better to have different 3 options for each person. One photo with her in the context of the story to be used as the main photo on the story, one close up to use it small on the page, and other “medium” – not with too much information but with some action, to be used as a secondary.
- Understand the story: since we changed the focus, I wasted 90% of my photos. That’s fine by me because this is all about learning, but in a ‘professional’ acting it can’t be this way. It’s important -- and I saw photographers doing it rather frequently here – to understand what the story is about, talk to the reporter or the editor. Especially because they often go alone to shoot photos in some non-breaking news stories.
Besides that, I'm working on an interactive map, using Google Maps, suggesting a tourist day in Philadelphia. Heritage from Naomi's original assignment, now it seems to me a little senseless. I'm doing my best to find a creative approach -- the work is now delayed by my office's computer, unable to upload photos and deal with simple internet tasks. Tomorrow, I'm taking my laptop to the office and will finish this to get other assignment.
Although things are really slower compared to my first months, I'm getting now a better sense of the newsroom mechanics. I'm seeing how they are coping with the industry hard times - with an unique situation here, since the Inquirer is in bankruptcy. Their struggle to keep the paper local and keep the presses on in the middle of this hurricane is really moving. I feel I've learned more in the last month than in the previous 3, when it comes to realize what we have to change as journalists to keep serving the public. And that, my friends, was my primary point, not only in this fellowship, but in general.
UPDATE: The recycling story is out! In Monday's paper, B1.
domingo, 30 de agosto de 2009
sexta-feira, 14 de agosto de 2009
Time is on my side - yes, it is
Two weeks after my last blog post, I'm still in the same recycling story. Filed it yesterday, and made some changes today. Yes, the same story of the previous post. Three weeks in one simple story isn't something that I'm used to do. I'm positive they just allowed me to spend all this time because I'm a fellow - a friendly one, heh.
But we have to take advantage of what life brings us. I could afford to actually be in the field and I've knocked in a lot of doors lately, to see how Philadelphians take care of their trash. Many people treated me badly and others showed me some politeness, as I expected.
I also took that long to write the story because the editor asked me a whole new bunch of questions after I considered my reporting done. Her questions opened another flank on the reporting and gave the story more substance. The method and the relationship reporter-editor here is a little different than in my Brazilian newsroom: here, the ball is always in my court, so to speak. She asked me a lot of things, but I called the shots on defining the characters, places to go, angle. We discussed a lot more, and that's a different approach, not only a matter of having more time.
I'm not saying the editors don't use their power to interfere, as it happens everywhere in the world. But even the words chose to talk about the story show a different point of view. Here, the editor says "your story". In Brazil, editors almost always say "the story" or "our story". It's a different approach, and I'm not sure if the Inquirer's way give reporters more power than Zero Hora's way, as it might look. I didn't yet have to fight or stand for something I wrote and the editors didn't accept or changed. You just can tell something about the balance of power after getting into some kind of conflict. But letting me decide a lot about the story is certainly a more comfortable way to work for a reporter. "Do you think you have everything you wanted to have in this story?", asked me the editor after I filed it. In my 10-year career as a journalist, I didn't remember to be asked that very often.
Of course this has its drawbacks. Reporters and editors working like that have to be extra careful to not get lazy, specially covering a beat, and stuck with the same sources and stories. I'm seeing this here with some people: searching their clips, you see a pattern on leades, voices, news. More dangerous to lose perspective than if you have an editor messing more with your work from the beginning. Although the editors here seem to be more respectful with the reporters, the reporters have to be more humble to listen to their insights. And humbleness is not exactly a feature for journalists in general.
Is all this blah-blah-blah? Could be. But is also the development one of my goals for the fellowship, something that my Brazilian editors wanted me to learn: how to get big stories done. This boring 3-week reporting provided me many tools on double-checking, note-taking, organization, source development. I'm pretty sure I'll have a different, more effective way to report and deal with editors in Brazil once this is over.
I've never had such luxury as this lot of time. I made good use of it, I guess.
But we have to take advantage of what life brings us. I could afford to actually be in the field and I've knocked in a lot of doors lately, to see how Philadelphians take care of their trash. Many people treated me badly and others showed me some politeness, as I expected.
I also took that long to write the story because the editor asked me a whole new bunch of questions after I considered my reporting done. Her questions opened another flank on the reporting and gave the story more substance. The method and the relationship reporter-editor here is a little different than in my Brazilian newsroom: here, the ball is always in my court, so to speak. She asked me a lot of things, but I called the shots on defining the characters, places to go, angle. We discussed a lot more, and that's a different approach, not only a matter of having more time.
I'm not saying the editors don't use their power to interfere, as it happens everywhere in the world. But even the words chose to talk about the story show a different point of view. Here, the editor says "your story". In Brazil, editors almost always say "the story" or "our story". It's a different approach, and I'm not sure if the Inquirer's way give reporters more power than Zero Hora's way, as it might look. I didn't yet have to fight or stand for something I wrote and the editors didn't accept or changed. You just can tell something about the balance of power after getting into some kind of conflict. But letting me decide a lot about the story is certainly a more comfortable way to work for a reporter. "Do you think you have everything you wanted to have in this story?", asked me the editor after I filed it. In my 10-year career as a journalist, I didn't remember to be asked that very often.
Of course this has its drawbacks. Reporters and editors working like that have to be extra careful to not get lazy, specially covering a beat, and stuck with the same sources and stories. I'm seeing this here with some people: searching their clips, you see a pattern on leades, voices, news. More dangerous to lose perspective than if you have an editor messing more with your work from the beginning. Although the editors here seem to be more respectful with the reporters, the reporters have to be more humble to listen to their insights. And humbleness is not exactly a feature for journalists in general.
Is all this blah-blah-blah? Could be. But is also the development one of my goals for the fellowship, something that my Brazilian editors wanted me to learn: how to get big stories done. This boring 3-week reporting provided me many tools on double-checking, note-taking, organization, source development. I'm pretty sure I'll have a different, more effective way to report and deal with editors in Brazil once this is over.
I've never had such luxury as this lot of time. I made good use of it, I guess.
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