For my journalism class, my professor has asked all of us to write a blog post describing our writing process. This is the first time I’ve ever really stopped to think about how I write, not necessarily what I’m writing. I apologize in advance if this post is a little disjointed, but I’ll do my best to explain my writing process.
- Find a story idea
- Once I have an idea, I look at what has already been written about something. If I’m writing for The Post, I read old articles so I know what’s been done and can therefore avoid it. I read or listen to national stories to find outside experts who might be helpful.
- I look for sources. I’m used to writing for The Post, so I usually start with student sources, then university sources and experts (on a local and national level). After creating a list of interview sources, I’ll also look for reference sources, like public records or Web sites that can give me data, trends, facts and monetary amounts associated with the topic.
- I generally record and transcribe all of my interviews.
- I like to have all of materials up on my computer before I begin writing. So, I’ll have several windows open with Word documents of interview transcripts and Web sites for reference.
- I usually have an idea of my story angle by the time I finish my interviews, but I’ll go through the interviews again and make sure I know exactly why this story is being written now and what purpose it serves the reader (Basically, I write my nut graph.)
- As I sift through my notes, I look for commonalities and differences in opinions or facts. I think of how I’m going to move from subtopic to subtopic throughout the story and how I’m going to support these points. At this point, I might think of some subheads to use throughout the body of the copy — but sometimes that just flows as I begin writing.
- When I go through the interviews, I try to find something interesting, quirky or unusual that I can use in the lede. If I can’t think of a solid lede right away, I’ll type something, really anything, that comes to mind so I can just get the flow started.
- Once I start the story, I’ll follow my general outline and try to use the subheads.
- On the first draft, I don’t worry too much about length, but I try not to write more than five inches over the amount that’s been budgeted.
- When I finish, I check the inch count and work to cut the story to the budgeted inch count.
- I make break-out boxes for facts and think of pull-quotes. Then, I come up with headline suggestions.
- I turn in the story to my editor and then I have to revise it.
- Finally, I give the editor my materials so he or she can fact-check it.
(Note: This is the first draft of my first story for J331)
Chris Mullen sat in the Columbus airport wearing dress blues, his thoughts concealed by a close hair cut and perfect posture. American forces had pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad the day before and here he was, an officer who had been in the Navy “since breakfast,” as he liked to put it, heading to Washington, D.C. to be part of the U.S. Navy Ceremonial Guard.
As Mullen looked up, he saw 20 men in black and yellow uniforms getting off a plane. Although he recognized many of them, one in particular walked toward the naval officer and made him rise.
“Mr. McBride,” Mullen said. “I just want to shake your hand. I’m a big fan.”
The professional soccer player, who was preparing for his third World Cup appearance, shook his head at the officer he had never met before.
“Oh, my God, thank you,” said Brian McBride, a forward for the Columbus Crew. “I’m a big fan of you. Are you getting ready to go Iraq right now?”
Mullen answered honestly, “No, no, I’m going to do some other stuff.”
McBride asked if he needed an autograph, but Mullen had nothing for him to sign. The two shook hands and parted ways – one of the perks that come with uniform. Those perks, however, were not the reason Mullen joined the U.S. Navy in 2003.
“I was living in southern Ohio and being from Chillicothe, I never saw anything else,” he said. “I just had to get out and I felt the best way to do that was the military because they would pay for me to leave, pay for me to live somewhere and I wouldn’t have to worry about money and food.”
Nor does Mullen, now 27, have to pay for his education at Ohio University. The senior, who studies political science, is one of the 433 students attending school on the main campus in Athens using the GI Bill.
Changes in the GI Bill
On the second floor of Chubb Hall, to the right of the line for pink slips, is an office door decorated with a paper American flag and a poster bearing the slogan “Support Our Troops.” On the other side of the door sits Maggie Thomas, the veterans’ affairs coordinator for OU and the embodiment of that support.
Thomas has spent 20 years helping veterans navigate their way through the GI Bill and the paperwork that goes with it. This school year was the first with the Post-9/11 GI Bill in effect, giving Thomas a few extra duties such as checking students’ credit hours and fees on a quarterly rather than a yearly basis.
The Post-9/11 bill, also known as Chapter 33, is different from the Montgomery GI Bill (Chapter 30) for active duty members of the military. The Post-9/11 benefits are determined based upon an individual’s qualifying active duty service, whereas the amount is fixed under the Montgomery bill, regardless of education program, and is adjusted annually based on the average undergraduate tuition as determined by the National Center for Education Statistics.
Mullen, for example, served in the Navy from 2003 to 2007. Under the Post-9/11 bill, he (and other active duty veterans who served at least 36 months after Sept. 10, 2001) qualifies for 100 percent of the benefits which include tuition and fees, a housing allowance and a stipend for books.
Lauren Baker, 25, switched her military benefits to the Post 9/11 bill option before fall quarter. Baker, a junior, studies outdoor education at OU and served four years in the U.S. Marines, playing trumpet in the band.
“The government revamped (the GI Bill) from the old system and Maggie (Thomas) was really good about helping me,” Baker said. “She kept calling me and saying ‘Hey I need such and such paper and you need to send it back and it’s due by this date.’”
Thomas works with student veterans every day and is surrounded by veterans when she goes home. Her husband, father, brothers and brothers-in-law have all served.
The devotion and enjoyment Thomas takes from her job is obvious. A framed flag sits in high above her computer, a gift from one of the many veterans she’s helped through the years. A photo of her grandchildren taped to a cabinet shows four smiling faces in matching red-white-and-blue clothes. Her voice wavers a bit as she talks about her work.
“This is a an OU job and paid by the OU budget, but I enjoy the veterans. I enjoy helping them because I believe in them,” Thomas said.
She isn’t the only one; Individuals have stopped Baker in the airport to express thanks and a classroom of her peers once applauded her service. But both she and Mullen have said that they didn’t serve to get this type of attention.
Even when recounting his experience with a world-class athlete, Mullen stands firm on this point.
“I didn’t join for a hero status,” he said.
-30-
For my first J331 assignment, I plan to cover a meeting of the OU Combat Veterans Club. I think that this student organization might be a little bit different from others, so I wanted to make contact with the president or faculty adviser before I just showed up.
I sent e-mails and left phone messages last Monday, but have yet to hear anything back. I plan to attend the meeting this Tuesday and write about it for my assignment due the next day.
I do prefer in-person interaction, because as my professor reminded me, people find it harder to say ‘no’ if you’re standing in front of them. It also shows more initiative when a reporter takes the time to find a person and approach him or her, knowing that there is no guaranteed interview.
Which brings me to my next point: Journalists find things out about sources. Obviously, we don’t take it to the point of actual stalking, but I’m willing to bet that many professional journalists will use all of the resources available to find a source and get that source to talk.
I think my most extreme example was this fall when I wrote an article for The Post about the teaching of evolution in public schools in Ohio. I had national and student sources, but I was missing the perspective of someone essential: a professor who teaches future educators how to teach science.
I consulted the OU course offerings and faculty directories and came up with a seemingly perfect source. I e-mailed her and also a two other professors, just to cover my bases so to speak. I heard no response from the “perfect” source. I did hear back from one of the other professors who said that he wasn’t qualified to speak about this topic and he promptly referred me to that “perfect” source.
Now, my deadline is creeping up. I still hadn’t heard back from this source (I had e-mailed her again, too). So I looked up when she taught class that quarter. The room wasn’t listed so I called the Registrar’s office and got the room number. Then, I showed up 20 minutes before her class was supposed to end and waited in the hall. The end result? I introduced myself after class and made an appointment with her for an interview. She had received my e-mail, but was so busy that she hadn’t yet had time to respond.
Now — any suggestions on what I should do if I get shut out of this veterans meeting? I’m going to try to contact other sources tomorrow afternoon, but I also have quite a few other interviews for work and I might not be able to get as much information as I want.
This blog has a new purpose.
Instead of recording my experiences in new places (and then sitting dormant for five months), this blog will document my progress in JOUR 331: Reporting Contemporary Issues.
As I understand the new direction of the course, I will occasionally have blog specific assignments. The bulk of the class, however, will be three news stories that are supposed to be in-depth exercises in journalistic storytelling. All three stories should relate to one general topic. I have chosen the topic of veterans.
Specifically, I want to investigate what it is like to be a veteran returning to college. In my personal experience at Ohio University, I think that the voices of veterans are often left out of public discussion and the media. Students churn out content in political science classes about war or in journalism classes about funding for defense, but the voice of the veterans on campus is often noticeably absent.
I also have found the coverage of veterans in the New York Times very interesting. I thought the War Torn series was excellent, providing as much detail as possible and also personalized accounts.
I’ve compiled a list of potential sources from the following organizations (I don’t want to list them here before I contact them… Although odds are strong that they will never see this blog post):
OU Combat Veterans Club (student organization)
OU Mental Health Services
Veterans Representative at The Work Station
Veteran Coordinator at Ohio University (Ohio GI Promise)
That’s all I have for now. Stay tuned for developments…
So where was I? Oh, right, Mount Rushmore.
Mount Rushmore is located in the Black Hills of SD. I’m glad the creator didn’t go with the original plan of having massive sculptures of western heroes. If that had been the case, I never would have gone.
After visiting the four presidents, my boyfriend and I drove about 15 miles to the Crazy Horse Memorial, which is planned to be the world’s biggest mountain carving… if it’s ever completed. Watching the intro video, I learned that one man, Korczak Ziolkowski, designed Crazy Horse at the request of a Lakota leader and then Ziolkowski worked on it by himself for many years. Pretty intense.
I have to admit, I have mixed feelings about this memorial. First, Ziolkowski refused to accept any government funding (even though law makers offered) based on his idea that public demand would drive the memorial. It’s worked well, but things could be so much farther along if he had accepted the government’s offer. Then there’s the whole question of how many members of the Lakota and American Indian community actually want the memorial.
One example of opposition is the Native American group Defenders of the Black Hills, which was featured a few years ago in an article in Smithsonian magazine.
When I explained to the dozen men and women there—mostly Lakota, but also Ponca and Northern Cheyenne—that I was writing about the Mount Rushmore memorial, they laughed, then turned angry.
“Tell your readers that we’d like to blow it up!” said one.
“Cover those white faces up!”
“They call them the founding fathers? To us, they’re the founding terrorists!”
And how do they feel about Crazy Horse?
All work on Crazy Horse should cease at once: “Let nature reclaim the mountain!”
Those in charge at Crazy Horse have tried to promote cultural understanding through a museum, but to be frank, the museum was more like a backdrop for a few people to sell native crafts. It has nothing on the Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC (then again, it doesn’t have the funding or support, either).
Devils Tower looms in the distance.
After camping in the Black Hills, we headed to Devils Tower in Wyoming. I was struck by how neither man-made mountain, Rushmore or Crazy Horse, came close to the beauty of Devils Tower. The columns are so intricate and so high. But like many things in the west, the Tower is a source of controversy between indigenous populations and tourists. For many American Indian tribes, Devils Tower is a sacred site. The idea of tourists climbing on it — and it is a popular summit — infuriates them. The current compromise is a voluntary no-climb break for June, a time of many American Indian celebrations.
Wild horses roam the badlands of Teddy Roosevelt Park.
The next day of driving took us through the eastern edge of Montana to the western part of North Dakota, home to Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Here we did backcountry camping, which was really frightening in a way because I saw our tiny tent in such a large area. I did, however, survive the night even after seeing a bullsnake (eeek!). We saw lots of other animals, too, like mule deer, elk, wild horses and bison.
The bison were not shy about coming close to the road.
… I actually updated my blog? Me neither.
My last post was written weeks ago, but I do have a semi-valid excuse for my lack of online presence. From August 9 to August 18, I was driving across the northern part of the U.S. on a roadtrip to Mount Rushmore with my boyfriend. Half of the time we camped, and the other half we stayed in motels. I wasn’t too optimistic about the wireless capabilities, and in all honesty, I wanted a break from technology. No blog, no Gmail, no Facebook, no Twitter.
Although, I guess I did “blog” about my experiences the old fashioned way: I made a scrapbook. A pretty awesome scrapbook, if I do say so myself. But since you can’t see it unless you come visit me, I’ll provide a recap of our trip.
Sadly, we did not stay at the Corn Palace Motel.
Our drive took us on I-80 west, across Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and halfway across Iowa. We stayed in Iowa before driving north into Minnesota (where it downpoured for about five minutes while I was driving) and then into South Dakota, which is where the Corn Palace is located. Now, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Corn Palace or not, but it is a classic tourist trap, causing my boyfriend to recount an episode of Doug in which the Funnies go on a family vacation and stop at places they think will be awesome, like Bug Ranch, but are really lame. Anyway, the Corn Palace was silly, but it had some intricate corn designs on the side of the building. Check it out here.
I found the only jackalope in South Dakota. Actually, I'm sure there are more at places like this.
From Mitchell, SD, we drove to Wall, SD, home of the famous Wall Drug Store, which is where I took this stunning picture on a jackalope. The great thing about Wall Drug is that billboards appear on I-90 advertising it from 300 miles away. I plan on petitioning the mayor of Youngstown to put a sign on 680: “1263 miles to Wall Drug.” The store was HUGE and had gimmicks like a robotic dinosaur and a mini-water sprinkler park.
The Badlands were absolutely beautiful.
Wall is the closest town to Badlands National Park, which was our first “real” destination. Exploring there was amazing, although I was terrified to go off of any trails for fear of running into a prairie rattlesnake (I figured I had a better chance of spotting it on the trail than in the high prairie grasses). We saw bison, prairie dogs (and an amusing sign that read “PRAIRIE DOGS HAVE PLAGUE”), teeny snakes, big spiders and mule deer, which have big floppy ears. We pitched a tent in a campground at the end of the day, hiked a couple hours the next morning and then took of for our next stop (drumroll, please).
Mount Rushmore looks as epic in person as it does in pictures.
Mount Rushmore was awesome. I mean, what else could something made 90 percent by dynamite be? I have a lot more to say about this, Crazy Horse and the rest of my trip, but I need to stop writing and study for the GRE (a topic for another post).
Part 2 of my travels is forthcoming. Some teasers: Teddy Roosevelt and SNAKES!
As promised, I’ll give some details about my last weekend in D.C.
On Saturday, I went with a friend to Alexandria, Virginia, and it was such a nice change of pace. I actually felt like I was on vacation because I was in a place with one main street and small-town charm (even though it was supposed to look like that with the “Old Town” signs everywhere).
Portions of shea butter, cut to specifications.
After exiting the metro, I hopped on a trolley and rode along to the end of the main street. Everything was old-fashioned from the movie theaters to the ice cream shops, or should I say “shoppes.” An African festival featuring Angolan culture was taking place that Saturday and I watched as an expert sliced shea butter for all who wanted it. The butter smelled like lotion, which makes sense as it’s a common ingredient in moisturizers.
At the very end of the street was a harbor with a decent collection of boats and a man with a dozen parrots that he would put on people and then take their picture — for a small fee, of course. I ended the day at Pop’s Ice Cream Parlor where I tried some of the Reese’s peanut butter cup ice cream, which was excellent. (Don’t worry; Since I’ve been home, I’ve had my coveted chocolate raspberry truffle from Handel’s).
The next morning, I went to Arlington. For all of my visits to D.C., I had never visited the most famous of all national cemeteries. What struck me was the combination of cemetery and national park characteristics. There were rangers and large crowds of tourists, even though I went early to avoid them, that seemed sort of out of place among the many tombstones on the hill leading up to Arlington Manor. The Kennedy burial site was very moving, and I’m fairly confident that because that exists, there is no JFK memorial on the National Mall.
Where JFK and his family rest eternally.
The Manor itself was disappointing because it’s undergoing heavy renovations. I went in and walked in a square. I might have been in there three minutes, max. There wasn’t even furniture on display, so if you’re planning on visiting Arlington in the next two years, I’d just skip the manor.
I did happen to see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and that was a very moving scene, even for someone who isn’t into military drills or shows. Overall, Arlington was worth the trip, but I don’t think I’ll be back anytime soon. It’s the sort of place that doesn’t really change over time, which I think is appropriate for what it is: a cemetery.
These last 10 days have been crazy. Since my last post, I have: gone to Arlington National Cemetery; visited the National Museum of African Art; eaten Ethopian, Thai and Indian; attended events at National Geographic Traveler and Kiplinger’s Financial magazine; and I’ve continued work on my online feature story for Smithsonian.
So please forgive the lack of blogging (I’ll retropost on some of the experiences I mentioned above).
To more serious topics, or rather seriously crazy: Tomorrow is my last day at Smithsonian magazine.
Today was strange. I moved my files onto a longterm spot on the server and printed out copies of all my notes and interviews that I used to fact check stories. The entire staff said goodbye to our two Web interns, who have been absolutely amazing. Now, I feel sort of in limbo with one more ghost day. Don’t get me wrong; I have things to do, but the sense of finality is heavy.
Which is why I feel the need to liven it up a bit. This shall be my theme for the next 24 hours (minus the hairspray):
And there’s a Spongebob version, yessss!
Which do you prefer?
The idea of a post office is a good one, tried and true. Even though snail mail does take longer than email and Facebook, nothing’s better than getting a note, invitation or letter from someone who took the time to stick a stamp on it. Plus, it inspired the name of a band I like and there is even a National Postal Museum within the Smithsonian Institution.
I’ve actually been to the museum (shocking, I know), but my best D.C. postal experience was visiting the old Post Office. My wait to get into the clock tour was rewarded with a far-reaching view of downtown and the mall. I also got to see the gears of the clock and the bells, which were donated by Great Britain in 1976 and were made in the same foundery as the bells of Westminster.
I thought I’d share some photos of my trip:
Looking up at the old Post Office.
Ben Franklin was one of two Deputy Postmasters General in 1753.
The view down Constitution Avenue draws the eye to the Capitol.
This is the gear the keeps all four clocks ticking on time.
These bells were donated by the British for the U.S. bicennenial.
Photo of Alan Bean taken from the moon (left) and his self-portrait titled "That's How It Felt to Walk on the Moon."
I can’t believe I have eight days left at my internship. By this time next week, I’ll be starting to pack (or at least I’ll tell myself I should be packing). I’ve truly enjoyed my time at Smithsonian magazine and hope that the next week and a half goes as well as the other seven and a half weeks.
Last time I updated this blog, which I might add has been lacking updates because of my awful wireless at GW, I mentioned that I interviewed Alan Bean. You can read that post here, but I have some extra things to add. What I liked most about Bean was that he was a very personable guy, the kind that you would like to adopt as your grandpa. He spoke with a southern accent (a native Texan) and explained most answers by giving a story.
Bean really is serious about his art. Some might think it gimmicky, especially when he uses moon dust, but I liked his textured, impressionistic style. His favorite artist is Monet and it shows.
Although Bean can be very technical, using models to get the light just so, he has started to paint subject matter that didn’t happen — but his fellow moon men wished had. Bean painted Pete and himself throwing a football on the moon and there’s a wonderful story behind the painting “Tracy’s Boulder” of how one astronaut regreted not writing his daughter’s name in the moon dust on a rock. With a few strokes of a paint brush, Bean was able to counter that regret. I suppose I’m also partial to Bean because I went to exhibit of his at the Butler Institute of American Art when I was young — and because he told me that I had a nice smile and was a very easy person to talk to. read more…
