If you are a journalist, or want to be one, you should probably be listening to Grammar Girl’s podcast anyway, but this week should be of special interest to journalists, because she’s talking about her interview technique.
I do most of the same stuff already, and it’s amusing that we both use the “Big Dummy” technique, which works great, although sometimes at the expense of your dignity. And she also does an outgrowth of that technique that I’ve used ever since I realized how often I don’t know as much as I ought to about my interview subjects:
And finally, I’m going to share with you my secret weapons for interviewing and getting story ideas. My last interview question is always, “Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you think is important or worth talking about?” I always asked that question no matter how much preparation I did for an interview, and about a third of the time it got me something I hadn’t anticipated.
Her audiobook, available at Amazon and in iTunes, is also worth checking out for anyone who writes for a living, even if it’s just company e-mails.
Last night, during the school board meeting, I was able to post the first draft of the school board story to the Star Web site using my iPod touch and the locally available wi-fi network (the photo was added later; initially, I just used the stock image of the HUSD logo). The touchpad keyboard was the biggest issue, as it’s a lot slower than even my Treo’s keyboard.
I’d love to do more mobile computing for my job, but the question is whether I’d be better off just getting a keyboard that worked with my iPod (and I’m not sure one is available yet) or getting a laptop that used Bluetooth and could connect to the Web via my cellphone.
It’s not a super-high priority, and with the clone here, I’ve got other things to spend money on in the near term. Still, it was pretty neat to be able to file a report from the meeting. Maybe the Daily Press would be up for buying a laptop or three for each location that could connect to the Internet via a Bluetooth phone.
I already do a lot of work via my Treo at meetings; before last night’s meeting was out, I had already e-mailed George Landon, Jovy Yankaskas, Jim Pace and Jean Campbell about the new HUSD contracts. George even gets his e-mail on his phone, so he’s always able to discuss them with me at the end of the meeting.
The new issue of American Journalism Review has a great piece on the local paper in a small town in Maine:
It’s said that newspapers are dying, circulation is plummeting, ads are fleeing to the Internet and the young couldn’t care less about them. Well, maybe, but not here, not in Bucksport, a quiet mill town in Downeast Maine. The Bucksport Enterprise isn’t just surviving, it’s thriving. Circulation has doubled in five years, from 1,100 to 2,300 (not bad for a town of 4,961), and the slender little paper has made itself not only modestly profitable but also indispensable to this community of mill workers, tradesmen and shopkeepers. It and other small-town papers like it might just be the envy of all those despairing big-city scribes.
“We’re on a roll,” crows Editor, Publisher and floor sweep Don Houghton, a 65-year-old veteran of newspapers in Providence and Louisville who purchased the paper six years ago. Born just up the road in the relative metropolis of Bangor, he moved out of state within a month and grew up in a Boston suburb, a blemish Bucksport’s charitable citizenry has graciously looked past.
Of course, there are some folks who decline to subscribe to the Enterprise – not because they don’t want to read it, but because they’d sooner buy the weekly when it comes out on Thursday than wait for the mail to deliver it a day later. It’s not unheard of for an impatient reader to call the newspaper and ask precisely where the paper is – whether the approaching carrier is on the right or the left side of the street.
The paper doesn’t have any highfalutin motto, but it does claim to be “A Wicked Good Read.” That word “wicked” didn’t sit well with one of the more puritanical locals, who made no secret of his displeasure.
Not long ago the director of the local funeral parlor was miffed not to be invited to advertise in the summer guide. It wasn’t that Houghton wanted to exclude him; it’s just that he couldn’t imagine how the undertaker would profit from an ad between Allen’s Wild Maine Blueberries and the Bittersweet Gift Shop.
Still, you can’t blame the undertaker. The Enterprise is, after all, The Paper of Record, no less than the New York Times. Last year, according to Houghton, a middle schooler proudly shot his first deer, a local rite of passage. But when the boy boasted to his friends, they dismissed the claim. “No, you didn’t,” they told him. The boy persisted, describing how his father had helped drag the deer from the woods. “No, you didn’t,” classmates answered. “It wasn’t in the Enterprise.” A short time later his feat was confirmed in the Enterprise and all was right with the world.
HEALTH PRECAUTIONS ASSOCIATED WITH SMOKE
SAN BERNARDINO – People who live or work near the areas affected by the fires are urged to stay alert to changing smoke levels. Margaret Beed, M.D., Health Officer with the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health today advised sensitive groups including young children, the elderly, and those with lung or heart ailments, to avoid prolonged or heavy activity. The general public should also limit activities that require prolonged exposure and strenuous exercise or sports participation.
Beed urges people to seek medical attention if they have symptoms such as chest pain, chest tightness or shortness of breath. This is important for not only those with chronic lung or heart disease, but also for people who have not been previously diagnosed with such illnesses. Smoke can “unmask� or produce symptoms of such diseases.
“It’s important to stay on medications,� says Beed, “and individuals with asthma should consult their physician about an asthma management plan and stick to it during these unusual conditions.�
Even healthy people can have some of these symptoms in smoky conditions, as well as scratchy throat, headaches, stinging eyes, and runny nose. There are some ways you can protect your health. If you are advised to stay indoors, keep indoor air as clean as possible. Keep windows and doors closed unless it is hot outside. Run an air conditioner if you have one, but keep the fresh-air intake closed and the filter clean to prevent outdoor air from getting inside. If you do not have an air conditioner and it is too warm to stay inside with the windows closed, seek shelter in a cool place like a mall or senior center.
Do not add to indoor pollution. When smoke levels are high, do not use anything that burns, such as candles, fireplaces, or stoves. Do not vacuum because it stirs up particles already inside your home.
Reduce the amount of smoke in vehicles by keeping the windows and vents closed. In hot weather though, a car’s interior can heat up quickly to temperatures that are much higher than those outdoors, and heat-related stress can result. Beed emphasizes that children and pets should never be left unattended in a vehicle with the windows closed.
Most dust masks are not effective in reducing smoke exposure during a wildfire because they are not designed to filter very small particles and do no fit well enough to provide an airtight seal around the wearer’s mouth and nose. Mask use may give the wearer a false sense of security, which might encourage too much physical activity and time spent outdoors. Also, wearing a mask may actually be harmful to some people with heart or lung disease because it can make them work harder to breathe. In some situations, masks can be beneficial. Outdoor workers, or others who will be outside regardless of the smoke, can get some protection from properly fitted masks. In cases where people are mostly staying indoors, wearing a mask to go outside briefly might be useful.
Some masks can provide smoke protection from fine smoke particles that can be airborne when sweeping up soot or ash during cleanup activities. The types of masks that can filter out up to 95% of small smoke particles are marked with one of the following: “N95,� “P95,� or “R95.� They are more expensive than ordinary dust masks.
For more information about wildfire health and safety, go to the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website at: http://www.bt.cdc.gov/disasters/wildfires/. To get local public health
guidance, go to the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health
website at http://www.sbcounty.gov/dph.
As you may have read in the Hesperia Star or Daily Press, school is out all over the High Desert tomorrow, to minimize smoke exposure for students. I worked from home part of today, since the Star’s office doesn’t seal — you can see sky all the way around our front door — and it was as smoky as if we were outside.
For those of you who’ve never lived near wildfires, imagine smoke comparable to the thickest fogs you’ve been through. Fun stuff.
This is a collision of three things that I like:
- The Bryant Park Project is a new NPR morning show out of NYC with the explicit mandate not to be so freaking dull. I like a lot of NPR, but it says something about their culture that they have to have a special project not to be boring. So far, I think the BPP (which I listen to via podcast) is a lot less pleased with itself than the overly Slate-flavored Day to Day, a midday project from NPR in Los Angeles with a similar mandate.
- Sigur Ros is a very odd, but very cool Icelandic band I enjoy that plays this sort of spare pop music, not necessarily using a real language. When BPP interviewed the band, they weren’t really feeling it, gave a pretty crappy interview, and the very multimedia BPP then posted the raw video of the interview on the Web. (The raw footage of any interview will look less than perfect, even with a good interview, so this was a brave move.) Sigur Ros fans were unkind about the BPP interviewer’s interviewing skills, to put it mildly.
- Jancee Dunn, arguably the best music writer working for Rolling Stone, and someone whom I’ve been a fan of for many years, was called in to go through what BPP did wrong and what they did right, and to talk about the pain of interviewing musicians in general. To me, the scene in Almost Famous where the interviewer gets shut out in the hall, the hotel room door slammed in his face, is probably the single most accurate depiction of journalism on film, and Jancee, although not in so many words, seems to agree.
Anyway, worth a listen.
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