Reporter's notebook

The object in the photo is a staple and icon of American journalism: a reporter's notebook. It's the last one I have from my days at the Seattle P-I and I have filled it up. Which means that another connection to my years in journalism has been broken (yeah, yeah, I can hear DylanW saying: "Cry me a river").

For years, until people starting recording interviews and taking notes on their laptops, the reporter's notebook was a standard item in the journalist's toolkit. It's 4 inches wide by 8 inches deep, spiral bound at the top, with lined note paper inside and a stiff cardboard backing.

Unless you have small hands, it's easy to hold and take notes on. It's particularly handy when you have to interview someone standing up, like at a fire or an accident. And it can be easily stuffed in a back pocket when you need your hands free.

I wasn't a reporter at the P-I, but I used the occasional reporter's notebook to take notes at meetings or for other work-related projects. This one followed me home. I've been using it in my new job, where I interview people all the time, and for the neighborhood web site I've been working on, Eastlake Ave, where I tend to be interviewing people and covering meetings.

My colleague at work, Sherry, and I are both refugees from the newspaper storm and we've asked to have some of these ordered for the office. I found some for our personal use yesterday at Staples. The brand name is "Evidence," which Sherry and I both thought was funny.

Journalism basics, part 2

This is the second of my occasional series of journalism basics for online news folks. Today's lesson:

IF YOUR MOTHER SAYS SHE LOVES YOU, CHECK IT OUT

This is an old saw and one that I've heard credited to Chicago newsies. What it means is: Don't trust what people tell you, even people you believe to be trustworthy. People lie, people get things wrong, people repeat untrue information and present it as fact, and people flat out don't know what they're talking about. Check out what they tell you.

What should you check out? Everything from the simple (please, spell names correctly) to the complex (is that "widely cited study" really accurate? Do those budget figures add up? Did the city councilor really say what you heard he/she said?). You'd be surprised how often things turn out not to be what they seem.

One example: Back in the 1980s, stories began circulating in the news media that reported shocking numbers of children going missing every year in the U.S. Reports placed the number at 1.5 million and up with 50,000 kids said to be abducted annually.

People panicked. Photos of missing children began appearing on milk cartons with the caption, "Have you seen me?" The kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh became a national story and a TV movie.

Unfortunately, the numbers were wrong. Reporters Diana Griego and Louis Kilzer of the Denver Post looked into the story and found the numbers of missing and abducted kids were inflated. Very inflated (94 to 95 percent of the missing kids were later found).

Children's advocates had initially quoted the figures. Reporters then repeated the numbers without checking on their accuracy. Other reporters picked them up from those stories and repeated them again. Once the figures were cited in story after story they quickly became gospel and were re-reported as fact. And no one stopped to check them.

Finally, two reporters had the brains to ask a simple question: Is this correct? And it wasn't.

So, always question what you're told. Look for corroborating information. Check sources (and ask yourself if the source is truthful. Do they have an ax to grind?). Don't assume things to be correct. Make sure they are!

Next lesson: "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."

On the Media on Seattle's news scene

NPR's On the Media looks this week at the Seattle news scene after the demise of the print P-I. If you've followed the story closely, there isn't much new in their report, but it's mostly well done and worth listening to.

On the Media gives us some of the usual suspects: Eli Sanders of the Stranger offers his usual half-informed analysis (the P-I is a shadow of its former self ... gee, ya think?). Scott Gutierrez of seattlepi.com explains what's different about the P-I now that it's online only (fewer people, more emphasis on breaking news). David Boardman of the Seattle Times encourages people who love newspapers to keep subscribing (but he misses the point that it's the lack of advertising, not subscribers, that is causing big problems for papers).

Tracy Record of the West Seattle Blog offers the best analysis: The news blog she and her husband, Patrick, run is filling an important need (and they're covering stuff the dailies never did anyway), but what's missing are the journalists with the broader, city-wide view. She's encouraged that former P-I folks are willing to be "guns for hire" and offer their services to blogs like hers.

You can listen to the whole piece here:

Making the P-I farewell video

The Nieman Foundation's Narrative Digest web site is currently highlighting the video I did for the P-I's closure as well as the video the Rocky Mountain News did for their final day. I'm still a bit stunned by this and very humbled to have my work singled out.

The P-I video was important to me and it's nice to see it recognized. I just wish it had been for something other than covering the end of the P-I's print publication.

[Update: I have to thank D. Parvaz, a former P-I colleague who is currently at Harvard as a Nieman Fellow, for passing the video along to everyone at the Nieman Foundation. D.: Thanks and the drinks are on me!]

Andrea Pitzer, deputy editor of the Narrative Digest, interviewed me by e-mail about the creation of the video. She had to edit the interview down a little for the site. My ego running wild, I thought I'd publish the longer responses here. If you're interested in video storytelling online, you might find this interesting (or you might drop off to sleep before the end):

1. What story were you hoping to tell in your video? To put it simply: our story. This was meant to be a chance for the people who worked at and loved the P-I to tell their story. Much had been written about the P-I's potential sale and possible closing and about how the community felt about losing the paper, but there hadn't been much chance for the staff to speak about their feelings of loss and sadness. And this would be one of the last chances.

I have to give credit here to assistant managing editor Chris Beringer who made two key suggestions: focus on the staff and that the question they would be asked in their interviews would be "What will you miss about the P-I?" Those two ideas gave me vital direction and helped guide the shooting and editing of the video.

2. On using the group photo shoot in the video: I always tell people there are two really difficult parts of any video project: Getting the piece started and then figuring out how to end it. Of course, the in-between part isn't exactly easy but if you know how you're going to open and where you want to end up, it makes it easier.

In this case, the opening and closing are linked. I came up with the idea of having the audio of staff members identifying themselves play under a shot of the P-I's iconic neon globe with it's giant letters spelling out the paper's slogan: "It's in the P-I." The sign refers to the news being in the P-I but I wanted people to know that we were the people in the P-I who made it all happen. And that we were the people who loved the place. This was going to be our story.

This was the second time in two years that we had done a group shot of the paper's staff in that same spot. The first time was in April 2007 when the P-I came out of a lawsuit with our JOA partner with a new (albeit brief) lease on life. It was decided that we should do a second, final portrait to run in the commemorative edition of the paper that would appear on our last day. I quickly realized that that would be the perfect ending for the video. The people who were "in" the P-I, some of whom you heard at the beginning and others of whom you met during the video, would gather one last time. We'd show everyone gathering for the shot and then we'd end it with the still frame (which seemed like a very newspaper format) and the long fade out at the end. Simple and elegant. It just says: This is us and we are the P-I. And now we're gone.

3. What was it like to shoot the story and stay in my role as videographer? It was tough. Photographers talk about the camera being a shield in dangerous situations. You don't worry about the potential of being hurt because you're so focused on getting the image. The camera protects you. That's how it was for me making the video. I was able to focus on the details of getting the interviews and editing the piece and delay my emotional response. It wasn't until I finished editing the end of the video and saw my name come up on the credit that I really felt the sadness hit me. There were some tears and a catch in my throat. It still happens when I watch the video. Others in the newsroom started to drop by and watch the video and they had the same reaction. In a sense, we'd been using the daily production of the paper as a shield and now the enormity of what was happening was settling in.

4. Do I see the video as being for the P-I staff, the Seattle community or a larger audience? All three, I think. Primarily the staff. I wanted them to have something that would reflect their point of view and their thoughts. This would be part of their legacy. So much had been written and speculated about us, more than a little of it inaccurate. I wanted this to be our turn to speak. And I knew that many people in the community who loved the paper would share our grief and would miss many of the same things we would. Plus, it would tell a larger story of what's happening to the industry and what we'll lose as newspapers go dark. It's a record of what the paper was and what it did for its community.

5. A little about the process of making the video: I was leaving town for the weekend on the day the Rocky Mountain News closed and posted their final video. I started to watch it but had to stop because I had to leave. I forwarded a link to the video to Chris Beringer, an assistant managing editor who was working on the commemorative edition for our final day, and Sarah Rupp, senior producer for seattlepi.com, and suggested we might want to do something similar. Both immediately said yes and I left town wondering what I'd just agreed to do.

I knew we couldn't compete with what the Rocky had done (and I purposely didn't watch their video until I was finished with ours). I had been shooting video around the newsroom since early January when Hearst put us up for sale: shots of people working, the news meeting, walking through the newsroom ... stuff like that. I knew I had that material to work with. But what else to add to it?

I decided pretty quickly that the best thing would be to just interview staffers and use those interviews as the core of the video. As I mentioned earlier, Chris came up with the question everyone would be asked: What will you miss about the P-I? That turned out to be a great suggestion and I got responses from serious to silly.

I set up the camera in the newsroom and e-mailed the staff, inviting them to come by and tell us what they'd miss. Close to 50 people did. There's something powerful about a person just standing there and telling you directly what they think. It really says: This is who we are.

The tough part about doing a project like this is that you end up with lots of material and you have to then find the story and the arc of the piece. I spent a lot of time watching the interviews and making notes about what people had said. Certain themes began to emerge (the P-I as champion of the little guy, the P-I's iconic globe, all the fun, cool things we got to do on the job ... and so forth) and I decided I'd structure the piece around those. And the idea that I mentioned earlier that we were in the P-I. When you're on the right track, it all just comes together. And this project did.

Lots of new blogs, post-P-I

Several of my friends from the P-I are starting their own blogs now that the paper has closed. I'm starting a list on this blog so others can find them. Check the list of links at right. You'll find:

• Cecelia Goodnow's blog on children's books, Cover to Cover Kids.
  
• Rebekah Denn's food blog, Eat All About It.
  
• Leslie Kelly Whining and Dining
  
• Gene Stout's music blog
  

And there will be more to come as people get online. James Wallace, the P-I's superb aerospace reporter, is promising a blog. John Levesque, who held more jobs at the P-I than just about anyone (business editor to sports columnist) has a blog and I'll get the link to that as well [Note: Turns out John isn't blogging].

Check these folks out. They are the best at what they do and worth a look.

UPDATE: Rebekah Denn has a much more comprehensive list on her blog, Eat All About It.

P-I farewell video

This is the video I did for the end of the P-I print publication.

Morning after at the P-I

Went in to work this morning to do my exit interview. The final paper was published last night and the P-I is now a web-only news site.

There were a surprising number of people in the newsroom. Some were working on the web site, others were cleaning out their desks, which is one of the things I did. Computers are being removed from most of the desks.

Before I came in, I e-mailed KPLU and requested a song: Tony Bennett and Bill Evans' haunting version of "Some Other Time." The song is from "On the Town." The lyrics are by the incomparable Betty Comden and Adolph Green, the music is by Leonard Bernstein:

Some Other Time

Where has the time all gone to
Haven’t done half the things we want to
Oh well
We’ll catch up some other time

This day was just a token
Too many words are still unspoken
Oh well
We’ll catch up some other time

Just when the fun is starting
Comes the time for parting
But let’s be glad
For what we’ve had
And what’s to come

There’s so much more embracing
Still to be done but time is racing
Oh well
We’ll catch up some other time

Empty desks at the P-I

Sad to see how many desks are already sitting empty in the offices of the Seattle P-I, where I work. We expect to learn the final publication date any day now. Could be as soon as next week that the print product will cease to exist. Wish I wasn't taking these in our shop but that's the way things are going in the news biz.

The words of a song from World War II come to mind: "We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day."

The next couple of weeks are going to be hard.