Day 1: First Day, Parking-Lot-Parvo Story
I left my house at 7:15am with the intention of being in Seguin by 8:30am. I had intended to leave about 15 minutes earlier, but nerves from the night before meant I had trouble sleeping that night. While I didn’t necessarily oversleep, I slept longer than I wanted. Nonetheless, off I was to start my new journey at Seguin Gazette.
I arrived with about 15 minutes to spare. I didn’t want to go inside too early and I didn’t want to just wait around in the parking lot, so I went over to a Taco Cabana right around the corner. I have a feeling me and this Taco Cabana will get to know each other very well over the summer haha. I was hungry, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat much because of nerves, so I just got one bean and cheese taco and a Dr. Pepper. After I ate it, it was about time to head over, so off I went.
When I got inside, I introduced myself to the clerks behind the front desk. They welcomed me and lead me over to a couch area in the newsroom. The newsroom is an open area with a set of four desks/work stations with the couches a few feet away. Derek, the managing editor, has an office with windows connected to the newsroom, and Jeff, the…I don’t really know what he does truthfully. I think I’ve heard Jeff called the publisher? It’s the top position above Derek. Anyway, his office entrance is further down from Derek’s.
When I arrived at the couches, I could see that Derek was on the phone, so I waved to him and he waved back. I made myself comfortable while I waited and looked through some of the booklets they had on a little coffee table. One of the booklets had information on Seguin so I was particularly interested in that one.
After about 20 minutes or so, Derek came out of the office and said hello. He showed me which of the desks would be mine. The desk had an older iMac, but was mostly empty. After I settled in, Derek and one of the administrators came over and showed me how to use the time clock cards. It was very old fashioned, which I found fascinating. I learned how to work the machine thing to clock in and clock out, and where to store the cards.
After they showed me that, it was about 9:30a. Derek said that I could wait at my desk until the other journalists came in, which would be about 10:30a-ish, so I had some time to kill. I decided to use the free time to research more about Seguin. I visited the Seguin city website and the Seguin Gazette’s site and read older articles to learn more about the city and its people.
About 15 minutes into my research session, Derek came by and asked if I could write a feature story on the dangers of buying pets out of parking lots. He asked me to contact a guy about coming in for an interview. The guy had bought a puppy from a Wal-Mart lot that was carrying the parvo virus and gave it to his other dog. I called the guy and got the interview set-up. The guy asked if it was okay to bring his dog inside, and I said yes. The guy was set to come by around 11:00am.
After I got off the phone with him, I worried if I made the right call about him bringing his dog inside. Derek had told me that the guy would be bringing his dog by, and that one of the journalists, Felicia, would photograph it, so I had assumed that’s what they had wanted. But then I was worried, what if they don’t want a dog in here? What if someone has allergies? But then I remembered that Derek had mentioned that I could interview the guy at my desk, so that calmed my nerves down a bit.
I killed more time by writing my interview questions and researching Parvo. Around 10:30am-ish, the journalists started trickling in. I think that first was Felicia. Her desk is in front of mine. This lady is fascinating to watch. She has a very go-get-the-story type style. When she got in, she started what I assume is a typical routine of finding new news for the day. She started calling connections in various departments of the city and asking if they had anything new for her. She had a very friendly relationship with them and each person seemed to joke around. I can’t recall if she got any new stories this way, but it did seem like a good way to get the scoop on new things happening in Seguin.
Another interesting thing about Felicia, is that she has an emergency radio/blotter thingy by her desk. So all day we hear the various 911 calls. I had a hard time understanding what was going on in some of them, but she seemed to be able to discern what was important and what wasn’t. A few times she shushed Derek when he was trying to talk to her, because there could have been a serious call. One of them I remember was a structure fire call that was right around the corner from us, so she took off to go check it out.
I can’t remember who came in next, Megan or Ron, but they both came in around the same time as Felicia.
Megan is Seguin Gazette’s News Editor. She was hired around the same time as me, so she is fairly new as well. She graduated from Texas Lutheran University, which is a small private school in Seguin. From the time Megan got in to when she left, she laid-out the copy for the newspaper in InDesign.
Ron is the other journalist at Seguin Gazette. He is a beautiful writer and definitely has quite a way with words. I really admire his style, so I hope to become half as good of a writer as him one day. Although he has been on staff at the Gazette for a very long time, I’m not sure that he will be with them much longer. He seemed really stressed with the work load. On this day, Derek asked if he could cover another story and Ron snapped. He listed off the other stories that he was covering and said that he didn’t have time to sqeeze another in. He said that he didn’t get paid enough to be treated like that and threatened to quit. Derek seems like a really nice person though, so he empathized with him and said that they would figure out a way to move things around so there isn’t as big of a workload.
I don’t mind taking on whatever story it was that he was trying to give Ron, but I think Derek wanted to start me out slow this week. Hopefully my interning at the Gazette helps take some of that load off of Ron.
Around 10:45am, my source called and said he’d be a little late. He ended up coming around 11:15am. From my desk I could hear some “awws” coming from the administrative desk around the corner, so I knew that they were there. I walked over and greeted them and escorted them back to my desk.
The guy said that he had never been interviewed before and didn’t know what to do, so I told him to just think of it as a conversation, which seemed to calm him a bit. We jumped right into the interview, and it went really well! It started dragging on a bit though and I was worried that I was annoying Megan, so I wrapped it up. I asked if we could photograph his dog, which was Felicia’s cue. She came over and took photos and I helped get the dogs attention behind her so that he would look in the direction of the camera, instead of turning his head back to his owner.
After all was done, I walked the guy outside and thanked him for coming by. He said that I was the first reporter that he had ever met, which was very humbling. It was the first time that I had ever been seen as a professional. Running stories for my classes, I tell sources that I’m a journalism student at Texas State or student journalist, so I think sometimes the sources see me more as student and they’re helping with a project- ya know? I’ve never written for Texas State’s school paper, the University Star or our radio station, KTSW, either (I know, weird for a journalism major I guess haha), so I’ve never had any kind of authoritative or professional type position when running stories. I just thought that was really cool to be viewed that way.
When I returned to my desk, I looked at two of the cards that the dog guy had given me for two Seguin animal hospitals that he had taken each of his dogs to. I needed an authoritative voice for my story to explain what parvo was and why you shouldn’t buy dogs from parking lots. I tried to call both animal hospitals, but couldn’t reach any of the vets at either. Felicia recommended I try animal services, but the animal officers were on lunch and so the call kept routing me to the police station. A fourth source I also got from the dog guy was for a Chihuahua rescue that he had spoken to for assistance about what to do with the puppy he got, as it was a Chihuahua puppy, so I tried calling her but got voicemail and left a message.
I figured all my sources were probably at lunch, because it was around 12:30pm around this point, so I thought that I should go to lunch too. I poked my head into Jeff’s office and let him know, used the punch-out card thing and then off I was to Taco Cabana.
Taco Cabana was insanely busy inside. It took most of my lunch time to get my one steak fajita taco, but I didn’t mind the wait, it killed time. The lady who brought me my order recognized me from the morning. I have a feeling me and her will get to know each other quite well at this Taco Cabana over the summer. 🙂
Once I got my taco, I was starving, but still so full of nerves that I could barely eat. It was strange, I wanted to eat it so bad; I was so hungry! I felt slightly nauseous so I just picked at it until it was time to go back.
When I got back to my desk, I tried making the round of calls again, but I guess the sources were all still at lunch, so I decided to wait until 2:00pm. In the meantime, I reviewed my audio recording of my interview with the dog guy. He had wanted me to include that his neighbor helped him, but he didn’t know how to spell her name. He gave me her number to interview her. I debated whether to call her or not. Her interview wouldn’t tell me anything more than he already told me, so I would just be calling for her name. I didn’t want to be rude and interview her only for her name to appear in the article, or just tell her that I needed her name and disappoint her, so I decided to just refer to her as Mrs. Debbie, which is what the dog guy called her. She was only mentioned once in the article and it was very minor, so I felt that it was okay.
Derek didn’t say anything about it when he reviewed my article so I think he was okay with it. In hindsight though, I wish I had called her and interviewed her. Even if I didn’t use what she said, It could have built another relationship with a Seguin resident, and who knows, maybe she could have had something else to add. This was a learning experience, and I think in the future I will explore all sources, even if I may not use their interviews.
Close to 2:00pm, I looked at my phone and saw I had a voicemail from the Chihuahua rescue lady. I called her back and interviewed her on the spot. It was a really good interview too and I got a lot of information about parvo, why you shouldn’t buy dogs from parking lots, where people should buy dogs and such. After her interview, I had all the info that I needed to write my story.
Felicia had seen me interviewing on my cell phone so she brought over a landline phone for me to use and hooked it up. The other journalists had them on their desks and used them for calls. I thanked her for setting it up for me. Truthfully though, I’m a bit worried about it. I like to record all of my interviews, because I’m not good at catching quotes and information while people are talking. I have an app on my iPhone that lets me record phone interviews, so that’s why I like using my cellphone for them. I can’t do that on the landline. I totally get why it’s a good idea though. I don’t really want to give my number out to a million sources, and some people might be reluctant to call me back because my area code is 512 while Seguin’s is 830.
I see it as a challenge I am determined to figure out though. If the other journalists at Seguin Gazette can interview over the phone without recording, then so can I. It’s just a skill I will need to further develop, that’s why it’s an internship I suppose.
After I wrote my article, I emailed it to Derek to review. He was super busy though, so it would be awhile, which was totally understandable. The story won’t publish until Wednesday or Thursday, so it wasn’t very high priority. After sending it to Derek, it was a waiting game. I just researched more about Seguin at my desk until it was time to proof papers.
At the end of the day, copies of the paper were printed out and cycled around the room. Each person read the pages and edited it for GSP or AP style errors. I found a few and circled them. When everything else was done, Derick said that it was okay to go home. So I packed up and told everyone that I’d see them tomorrow. I punched out and headed back to my car. It was time to go back to Austin, my first day at Seguin Gazette was done!