Day 6: Pecan Sidebar

By day 6, I settled into the routine of starting my morning in the newsroom. As soon as I got in, I checked my email to see if Derek had sent out another budget, but I didn’t see it in there. I did see a few emails from my job at Texas State, but it was just people saying they would be in late or not coming in.

I wasn’t quite sure what the day would hold. I knew that I had to get a hold of the secret story source again, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t be very successful at that. The sources for this story weren’t calling back after four days of multiple calls by me, so I wasn’t really sure if this would go anywhere. Other than that, I had finished my pecan story and the job fair one the previous day, and I didn’t have any other stories assigned to me, so it was a waiting game to see what Derek would give me.

He did come by my desk and asked if I could contact the Ag Agent again for another story about how the weather affected other crops beyond pecans. My Pecan story was going on the front-page, and this second story would be a sidebar. I told Derek that I would get on it, and also try to contact the secret source again.

I wrote up guideline questions for the pecan sidebar story and reviewed the ones for the secret source as well. I decided to try the Ag Agent first, as I felt more confident about actually getting a hold of the person.

Being that the sidebar story hinged on extensive info from a single source, in this case that Ag Agent, I decided that I wanted the interview recorded. I think I’ve decided that if I have the ability to do so and it’s practical for the story or source that I’m interviewing, then I’d like to use my phone for interviews to record them. I feel like my phone is one of my tools of being a journalist, just like my digital recorder is, and it’s just the way I do journalism, so if I’m able to use it, I’d really like to. There are some cases where I realize having contacts call me on the cell won’t be practical. The secret source is a great example of that. Secret source could call back in the beginning of the week when I am not there, and if they do then they will likely end up speaking with Felicia. So that is one of the cases where it is more practical to give the office call back number.

So I called the Ag Agent, and surprisingly got him right on the first call, no voicemail. I re-introduced myself and asked if I could interview him for the new story. He said it was okay, and that if I wanted to interview him then and there that would be okay too. The interview went really well, the Ag Agent gave great info for my story. The interview didn’t last as long as I thought it would, but I got plenty of info for a decent length sidebar.

After his interview I called the secret source, but as expected, got their voicemail and left a message. There wasn’t anything else that I could do but wait, so I set out on writing my sidebar story.

I wondered at first if a sidebar was a story or something like an info graphic or bulleted breakdown list. My lack of newspaper experience means that I had never written a “sidebar” before, so I wasn’t really sure what that meant. I decided to write it like a regular story though. I figured that if it was a bulleted list or something that it wouldn’t be too hard to breakdown a written article, since all the info would be pretty much organized.

The story came out pretty well. It wasn’t super long. It’s hard to put a word count on it, because I write the articles in TextEdit, so I can’t really see that, but if I had to ballpark it, maybe about 350-ish words. It seemed decent to me for a sidebar, if it’s supposed to compliment another story.

Although there was a Sunday folder on the Editorial Drive, I wasn’t entirely sure if I did the sidebar correctly, so I just emailed Derek the story. I also told him about how I tried to contact the secret source again and that hopefully they get back to me soon.

About this time, it was maybe 2p. There were a few pages for me to proof, so I started proofing them. I found quite a few AP style errors and marked those. I think a lot of those errors were from guest columns,  but they still have to be converted to AP style. One of the journalists at the paper, Ron, praised my knack for catching AP errors, which made me feel good.

We heard a call over the radio for a 1080 major, which meant a car accident with major injuries. I was pretty much done for the day, so I tagged along with Felicia to go check it out. She made sure to give me a reflective vest before we left. I’m not sure if it’s like this everywhere, but in Seguin at least the responding officers can throw you out of a scene if you aren’t wearing one. Felicia said there’s only one officer that actually enforces it, so it’s important to bring it along just in case it does get enforced.

I’m going to admit…Felicia’s driving scared me a little. She rounded corners fast. She told me that she’s from Seguin and knows the streets like the back of her hand. Sometimes she gets to the accidents before the officers respond. So while her driving was kind of scary, I’m sure she had a very comfortable feel for the roads in this town, so I trust her. I’m the same way with driving roads in Austin too.

When we got to the accident…it was just a minor fender bender and no one was hurt. Well, possibly someone’s feelings I suppose, because getting in a fender bender isn’t a fun experience for anyone, but it wasn’t really newsworthy so we headed back to the office.

On the way back I got a chance to talk to Felica more about her experiences. Felicia graduated from Texas State and remembered some of the professors like Dr. Nolan and Kym Fox. We talked about some of the same classes that we had both taken. I admitted that I had never written for the Star, and it made me feel good because Felicia said that she hadn’t either. Felicia seemed a bit disappointed though about not doing an internship herself. During her time in college, she worked at the Gazette instead of for the Star. She said that the Managing Editor at the time (not Derek) had talked her out of doing an internship for National Geographic, she seemed like she regretted that. I told her that I thought it was really awesome getting to write for your hometown paper. I don’t know where my future will be in news writing, but I wouldn’t mind eventually ending up at the Austin Statesman or an Austin based paper. All of my family lives in Austin, so it would mean doing something that I love and not having to move away from them.

When we got back to the office everyone asked us about the wreck, to which we explained that it was a dud. Ron also showed me an AP error that I missed in the headline. The title cut off, “It looked like–“, it looked like that. It was a fantastic learning experience. I realized that up to that point I had been only reading the body text and skipping headlines. I guess I never really thought about headlines having major errors in them since they’re so short, but they’re probably one of the most important places to look for errors. Errors in the body text are bad, but errors in a headline standout to a cringe worthy extent. So now in the future I will be looking at headlines first to make sure they are error free as well.

There really wasn’t much else to do. Derek had sent me an email praising my pecan sidebar, so it was in the correct format as a story. I may have proofed another page or two, but I was pretty much done for the day. Before I left, Derek called me into his office. Felicia would be going on vacation the next week and he wanted to see if I could come in earlier at 10p instead of the usual between 10:30a and 11a (usually I’d get in around 10:45a-ish). I said that would be okay. He had also wanted to see if I could work Saturday, but I told him that I had to work. I’d be okay with coming in before, but I worked from 4p to midnight at Texas State, so I’d have to leave by 3:30p to be on the safe-side. Derek said that he didn’t want me to be working the entire day because that sounded grueling, but that he’d let me know the next week if they needed to use me for a morning story. After settling the schedule for the next week with Derek, I was done for the day and headed home. Thus concluded day number six at the Seguin Gazette.