The stories behind the stories
The best type of stories to report on, at least in my mind, are the ones that you get to experience first-hand. I've repelled off a rocky cliff, crawled through caves and scoured mountainsides in search of mushrooms for articles. I have written about tours that featured a labyrinth of piping and a roar of water rushing through turbines at a hydroelectric plant and watched from the sidelines while firefighters in a hazmat challenge contemplated how to respond to a made-up scenario involving a terrorist and chickens.
But even though I treasure these stories, I've had quite a few memories conducting phone interviews that have stuck. One time I sat in my car in the YMCA parking lot and interviewed a man who proposed a capital improvement project dealing with horse manure. The sun had practically set the car's interior aflame and I sweated more during that interview than I did while exercising at the gym.
Another time I hastily picked up and threw away one dried-up ballpoint pen after another, desperate to find one that still had ink in its insides so I wouldn't miss anything my interviewee said. I conducted one phone interview in my parents' laundry room - my pad of paper resting on my mother's dryer. My neck ached during a phone interview as I tried to shoulder my cell phone and type notes on my computer. I once rang someone's phone around midnight for a quote on election night. I've listened to voice messages that revealed one man could not come to the phone because he was sleeping with the neighbor's wife and another message revealed the family couldn't pick up the phone because they were too busy mourning the loss of Pluto as a planet.
Maybe this is what I truly appreciate, even more than an article unfolding before my eyes. Those untold tales behind the published ones add juice to the story- they make me laugh, moan in despair and sometimes cringe in embrassment. Most of all they urge me to pick up the pen, the paper and sometimes the phone one more time.
But even though I treasure these stories, I've had quite a few memories conducting phone interviews that have stuck. One time I sat in my car in the YMCA parking lot and interviewed a man who proposed a capital improvement project dealing with horse manure. The sun had practically set the car's interior aflame and I sweated more during that interview than I did while exercising at the gym.
Another time I hastily picked up and threw away one dried-up ballpoint pen after another, desperate to find one that still had ink in its insides so I wouldn't miss anything my interviewee said. I conducted one phone interview in my parents' laundry room - my pad of paper resting on my mother's dryer. My neck ached during a phone interview as I tried to shoulder my cell phone and type notes on my computer. I once rang someone's phone around midnight for a quote on election night. I've listened to voice messages that revealed one man could not come to the phone because he was sleeping with the neighbor's wife and another message revealed the family couldn't pick up the phone because they were too busy mourning the loss of Pluto as a planet.
Maybe this is what I truly appreciate, even more than an article unfolding before my eyes. Those untold tales behind the published ones add juice to the story- they make me laugh, moan in despair and sometimes cringe in embrassment. Most of all they urge me to pick up the pen, the paper and sometimes the phone one more time.
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