19CateP – CA Work Experience Program

Day 8

Guys!! My story is up on INDY Week’s website! Find it here: https://indyweek.com/news/durham/durham-hit-10000-participatory-budgeting-goal/.

If you are for some reason interested in economics, I highly suggest you read it as well as the original story, found here.

In short, my last day at INDY Week was bittersweet. I finalized my story (I went with the first version after Jeff told me to “trust my instincts”), and it went through copyedits and the like before publication. I also ran some basic copyedits on Thomasi and I’s story, adding Oxford commas to every serial phrase (we’ve had some disagreements). It was a great day, but I’m sad to be leaving.

Since it’s my last day at the office, I’m putting some journalistic things/phrases I’ve learned below:

Some terms:
1. Lede: The first sentence/paragraph of a story. Should give a basic summary of the story.
2. Hed: The story’s headline.
3. Dek: The sentence that goes after the headline, kind of like a subheading but longer and more comprehensive.
4. Graf: A paragraph in a journalistic article. In journalistic writing, these are usually short; Thomasi is a big fan of grafs that are only one sentence long.
5. Folo: A follow-up question, often in reference to an additional email sent to a person who you already emailed on that topic.
Getting quotes is hard, especially when you’re using a high school email. I found that, on average, more people responded to emails from my Gmail account than from my CA one.
People want to read personal stories. Starting an article with an anecdote is a tried-and-true way to draw people into the text.
Getting advice from peers is beyond helpful, but when in doubt, go with your gut.
No matter how bad you think you are with technology, in a news office, being under a certain age means you’ll always get questions about it. Case in point: even the college interns were asking me if I could find people’s emails for them.

I’m so grateful to the awesome people at INDY for this experience. I learned so much and had an amazing time!

Day 7

Today was again a busy one! I sent out at least half a dozen emails to everyone from the chair of the Durham County Board of Commissioners to the Durham mayor. I got quotes back from multiple sources on multiple topics (I sent out a few emails for each of the stories I’m working on, the story on participatory budgeting and the story on crime). It’s weird because it feels a lot like what I do for yearbook: Skyping middle schoolers about their experiences playing on Blue Basketball is a lot more similar to Facebook Messenger-ing Durham residents for their takes on the city’s budget than you would think.

Perhaps the most funny thing to me– who, at the beginning of my junior year, was nervous to Skype said middle schoolers– is that I’m getting much less intimidated reaching out to people I don’t know. When Thomasi asked me to email the mayor today, I copy-pasted my question pack from OneNote without batting an eye. (Okay, maybe I batted an eye, but only a little bit.)

On the topic of said quotes, I also got a few really great ones back for my story on participatory budgeting. My mess of a Word document is shaping up into a story that’s weirdly close to my heart. I’ve found myself starting to care quite a lot about an initiative that I hadn’t known about before this week, and the stories I’ve heard from the people I’ve reached out to have been incredible to hear and write about.

And write I have– in fact, I’ve been working on the story for the last hour or so. I literally have three versions of it pasted and labeled on different pages of a Word document. I’m planning to ask Thomasi and a few of the other staff writers which version they like better tomorrow. I’m crossing my fingers that this story will actually make its way to the online pages of Indy Week– a lot of stories get scratched– but either way, I’m so proud of the work I’ve done.

OH– and I didn’t even mention the best, most important, most wonderful part of my day. It might just have been the highlight of my week.

My boss Jeff brought his dogs to work.

Their names are Sebastian and Belle, and they’re some of the sweetest puppies I’ve ever met.

Did I hold Sebastian on my lap during an entire staff meeting? Yes. After said staff meeting, did Jeff ask me to watch both dogs while he went to a meeting? Yep.

Did I agree and spend at least twenty minutes cuddling with them? Absolutely.

Day 6

Production Day, Part 2: When I came to the office this morning, it was packed. Our part-time copyeditor, Cole, was tackling a stack of papers at his desk; the arts editor, Brian, was working on formatting for one of his articles; college intern Thomas was writing another new story; EIC Jeff was typing furiously at the computer in his office. Thomasi got here a few minutes after me, and we worked to compile charts, write the opening for our crime feature, and string quotes together into something comprehensive. I also reached out to the Durham Police again; I’m getting, I think, pretty good at writing professional-sounding emails.

We also referenced one of Thomasi’s old articles describing how Durham officials called publicly for “common-sense gun laws” back in January. It’s interesting seeing how national hot-button issues, and their controversies, translate to local politics and news.

In addition to that story, I continued working on my participatory budgeting article, communicating with the project’s budget coordinators and reaching out to a city council member who spearheaded the initiative.

Once we hit 2:00 deadline, the newsroom started to quiet down. I spent most of the late afternoon looking through a report from the DPD, meeting with Ms. Eason when she stopped by, and chatting with the two college interns, Thomas and Sophia, as they leafed through old classified ads.

The newest edition of INDY Week is out tomorrow, so go pick up a copy if you’re out in Durham (or check out the website at indyweek.com)!

For reference, here’s a few pictures of last week’s edition. It’s amazing to see how much a small team of people can put together in just a week.

Day 5

A new week, a new story at Indy Week! Today I drafted an article updating readers on the city’s participatory budgeting initiative, which allotted the three city wards $2.4 million — $800,000 per ward — to spend on community improvement projects. The catch? Anyone studying or living within Durham, albeit only those ages 13 and up, decided where the money will go. The experiment in direct democracy was launched in May, and voting continued through PB Durham’s website and physical polling stations until May 31. We don’t know the results yet, and getting that info is one of my main goals for this article. To that end, I requested information from the project’s managers and utilized Lara’s extensive notes (3,500 words!) on the topic. I also enlisted the help of Thomasi and his infinite knowledge of journalistic writing.

In addition to working on that story, I continued to help Thomasi with his research on crime within Durham. We called sources, found statistics from a new internet database, and even attempted to craft Thomasi an email signature (let’s just say that technological problems abounded with Outlook). As I worked, I enjoyed the rather pretty view of the post office– it looks something like a Greco-Roman temple– across the street.

Our view, partially obscured by the sidewalk-planted trees.

Day 4

Today was again a great day at Indy Week! I continued my research and made plans with Thomasi to start working on a few new stories next week. As part of my research, I requested information from the Durham Police, surfed through social media feeds, referenced other journalistic sources, and more– using basically every technique I could think of. I also took the opportunity to talk more with Thomas, one of the college interns, about his experience working for a collegiate publication.

At lunchtime, Lara and I accidentally went the long way to the restaurant and ended up at Durham’s City Hall, which is actually a really beautiful building.

After our relatively roundabout trip through the city, we found ourselves at a restaurant called Toast and each had an incredible panini.

After we got back to the office, we finished up our work (with me discovering the wonderful City of Durham Twitter feed) and headed home. Except I had one last stop to make: to The Parlor. My order? One scoop matcha, one scoop chocolate. I have absolutely no regrets.

Day 3

Today was another busy day, as I continued to research Durham politics and crime. Thomasi and I didn’t make it down to the courthouse, instead staying in the office and doing our research online. It’s incredible to see just how much work goes into every news story and feature; for Indy Week, which is a weekly specializing in longer features, writers often have days or even weeks to research, draft, and edit stories. Staff writers started working on most of the stories for next week’s paper either early this week or last week, and many are still in the research phases of that process. One of the college interns, Thomas, has been working on a story about a legal case for the past few days, for instance, and is still amassing files and reports.

It can also be hard work to find people online. A large part of what I did today was finding online contact info for a myriad of people, which was often harder than what it sounded like. Though we’re often used to finding any info we could possibly want on the internet, I often found myself backstopped as I dug deep into a story.

For lunch today, Lara and I went to Luna, an empanada restaurant near the office. I have to say, I’m quickly growing to appreciate Durham food– like with the other places we’ve been, the food was amazing.

As another consequence of writers getting research for their stories, the office was pretty empty again today. People dropped in depending on if they were needed at their desks, and otherwise were out collecting data and interviewing people. We’re also getting wind of some big stories; it’s really cool to hear about things firsthand, before they appear in the paper or on TV.

I also took the opportunity to leaf through Indy’s stash of old papers. They keep piles of them in the office, with multiple copies of each issue organized by publication date.

Day 2

I began the day by meeting Thomasi, the new staff writer who just moved to Indy Week from the News and Observer. I’ll be working on stories with him for the rest of the internship, looking into Durham politics, crime, and court cases.

For most of the day, I researched Durham crime rates in an effort to eventually understand the patterns of crime that are shaping the city. Lara and I, along with another writer, took over Indy Week’s conference/meeting room for the day, and the two of us compiled our information into a masterlist. We also sat in on a staff meeting, during which we learned about a myriad of local news stories.

Later that afternoon, Lara and I took a break from our work to go out to lunch at B. Good, which was — like yesterday’s lunch — absolutely delicious. We did have to evacuate due to a fire drill, but we grabbed drinks for the road and headed back to the newsroom.

When we got back, Lara picked up working with the food editor and I kept working on Durham news. Tomorrow, I’ll hopefully get to head down to the courthouse to look through some case files!

A few of the articles that we printed and sorted through as we researched a feature.

Day 1

I’d planned it all out last night– today I would leave the house at 8:15 in the morning, drive to Durham, be there by 8:50, and get to the office at 9. However, the day didn’t go– as with most things– according to plan. My 35-minute commute stretched into 45 and then 50. I had vastly underestimated Durham traffic, and I started to worry that I’d be late for my first day of work at Indy Week.

I shouldn’t have worried, though. After arriving at Indy Week’s door and ringing the bell, a guy from the sales department let me in. Noticing my distress, he told me that most people hadn’t gotten to the office yet. That was because it was Tuesday– production day– which meant hours were variable, even chaotic. People popped in and out of the office at random times, as the writers were often out chasing stories for the next issue. And indeed, the newsroom was almost empty when I walked in. Lara had gotten there a few minutes earlier, and we set up on a set of couches, where we worked for most of the day.

The newsroom’s environment was less crazy than I expected. People shouted across the office when they needed something from a different desk, but that was the loudest it ever got. Most things happened digitally– articles sent over email, communications between our office and the one in Raleigh, phone calls with police about crimes, city council news coming in about taxes and housing and the city’s experiment with participatory budgeting. That digitalization meant that the newsroom, besides that occasional shouting, most often seemed calm and even still on the surface. Besides the constant hum of printers spitting out articles for proofreading, there wasn’t much of an indication that there was a 2:00 deadline at all.

However, there was work to be done. Lara and I edited features from the paper’s food section, one about a tea shop raising funds for its first pop-up and the other about how a brewery was celebrating its ten-year anniversary by publishing a coffee table book about itself. We then went out to lunch at Neomande, which was delicious, and got back in time for the 2:00 deadline. At that point, most of the work was done and the final pieces were sent to the printer.

After that, we talked with the editor in chief about our plans for the rest of the week. I’m going to be working with the Durham editor on city news and politics, which I’m super excited about. I can’t wait to work on stories tomorrow!

Tag: 19CateP