One month later in Joplin

Despite the circumstances under which I returned to Joplin, I was immensely grateful to wake up here the morning of the one month anniversary of the tornado. I feel connected to my friends and neighbors in a way that's difficult to explain. I could ramble quite a bit on how I felt upon my return, but I suppose it's all in the dispatch.

Dispatch from Joplin: One month later

My attempt at photojournalism

Molly and I spent several days wandering around Joplin snapping photos and collecting audio. It was really, really interesting to give photojournalism a try. You can see a definite improvement when you look at some of our first photos compared to our last photos. We put a really solid effort into it and I think we came out with some good shots. Here are a few of my favorites that I took:

My first day in the courtroom

What is this!? A little hard news!? Nothing like distracting yourself from horrible news at 8 a.m. Monday morning and the looming prospect of a funeral like trotting down to the county courthouse to see if some dude pleaded guilty or non-guilty for murder (okay, okay -- voluntary manslaughter). I never ever thought I would enjoy writing this sort of piece (and I'm not saying I want to be on the crime beat), but the whole courtroom scene was pretty...fascinating. I felt like a little kid pretending to be a journalist, especially when I audibly sucked in my breath as ten men in prison stripes were marched into the courtroom, hands handcuffed to their waist, feet shackled together. I won't lie, I teared up as a man in his forties who had a crack cocaine habit sniffled and choked up while being sentenced to seven years in prison for using a stolen credit card. (And for only buying $500 worth of stuff! I guess that's what prior offenses will get you.) I couldn't help wondering what his childhood had been like and what sorts of troubles he'd been through to wind up there. It had to be humiliating for him, sitting in front of strangers and admitting all of his mistakes out loud. Anyway. I'll get off my bleeding heart high horse. The moral of the story is it was an intense experience and I'm glad I took the assignment. (Birkhead, by the way, gave me the total creeps.)

I also took my Cross Cultural Journalism lessons to heart while trying to tell this story about two homeless men killing another homeless man without making it sound like this was a hobo brawl and no one should care. Ann and I mulled over it at the ACE desk for quite awhile before finally adding, "All three men were a part of Columbia's homeless community." It was important that we made that clear, but that definitely wasn't the first thing that needed to be said. (Even though the headline kind of takes care of that.)

Birkhead pleads guilty to involvement in homeless man's death

"We're just doing our civic duty!"

It's been so long since I filed a story and saw it up on ColumbiaMissourian.com, I forgot how satisfying it feels. I think Kristan did an excellent job with photos, especially as her set was an empty building. I was really intrigued talking to Jake and Chelsea Davis about their store; I might be tempted to start making some healthier choices. (If not, at least they'll also have free WIFI.) And Lisa Bartlett made me squirm and laugh all at once while she blabbed on and on about how tedious it was to constantly be interviewed by j-school students. As Carra said, "We're just doing our civic duty, gawd. People can be so uptight!"

Root Cellar finds new home in North Village Arts District

The Brian Stelter Tweets

We were supposed to read a couple of Jeff Jarvis blogs for lecture, but I got really distracted when he mentioned New York Times' reporter Brian Stelter's tweets from Joplin and how he begged them back in NY to turn his tweets into a story because he didn't have the time or connectivity to write full articles. This post (and Stelter's tweets) gave me chills on so many different levels.

For starters, that's my home he's talking about looking like a dozen disaster movies rolled into one. It's an accurate description -- when I went to see "Super 8" with some friends this weekend, I had to turn away and collect myself because the battle scenes looked like our streets. I am still sick looking at photos from today in Joplin; not that much has improved.

On top of that, I struggled with all the same things. No connectivity to send in my dispatches, and a desperate want to stay on the streets instead of going somewhere with Internet so I could write. There was so much to take in, so many people to talk to... I hated deadline and wanted to stay out until curfew each night. In one tweet, he said that he helped restock shelves and he hoped "that was okay." I felt the same. He tweeted about the radio stations being his eyes and ears; it was the first thing I listened to when I woke up and the last when I went to bed. I was tweeting also, whenever connectivity allowed, and gave John my twitter account so readers could follow me if they wanted. I started getting random followers and retweets; I guess it was working. People were itching to know what was going on there and Twitter was the fastest, easiest way to tell them.

Reading Stelter's blog and tweets made me feel like a real journalist, because here we were, facing the same struggles. It was like when we were out at Home Depot and Anderson Cooper showed up and stood in our group of reporters. For awhile, we were on the same level.

I think it was reading Stelter's tweets that made me want to go back to Joplin again so desperately. It's easy to shove it to the corner of your mind and pretend it isn't happening, but it still is. It's going to get worse before it gets better, and I want to be there for my friends and neighbors in whatever capacity I can. I started my semester of reporting there, and I'm really hoping I can finish there too.

Lots of pots on the stove

It's funny how the more pots you have on the stove, the less productive you actually feel. My Root Cellar story was a mess from the get go -- it was axed, it was refocused, it was reworked several times because I had the worst writer's block in the world, and when I did finally finish it with beaucoup help from Jeanne, it was put off until next week to make it more timely, understandably -- leaving me feeling like I had done absolutely nothing this week. But I suppose that wasn't entirely true. I did the fairgrounds tax story, I worked on the Root Cellar piece every single day, I geared up for my multimedia project, I started doing background on a couple other pieces I'll be working on next week, and I worked 20 hours outside of the newsroom. So I guess even though my productivity isn't showing up in my profile, it's there somewhere.

Lucking out on deadline

I was feeling particularly lazy yesterday after my Root Cellar story got put on hold and I couldn't come up with anything worthy to do, so I was relieved when Ann tossed a bit of news at me that we'd missed: a half-cent tax on the Boone County Fairgrounds had been passed that morning. KMIZ had a two-sentence blurb on it (which was actually inaccurate), so I started making phone calls at about 2 p.m. I needed to leave at 3:30 to pick up Molly from the airport so I wasn't sure how much I'd be able to get done, especially after I learned that all three county commissioners were in a meeting until 3 and I couldn't get ahold of the manager of the fairgrounds on my first call, either. But patience and persistence paid off, and I filed my story at 3:28 and headed out to the airport. Sometimes we just luck out. It was a teeny tiny story, but it answered the immediate questions and I'm looking into a follow up.

Sales tax on Boone County Fairgrounds passed

Playing the waiting game

Being someone from Joplin who works all of the men's basketball games, you can imagine how ecstatic I was when I found out Thursday night that the Mizzou/MSSU exhibition game in Joplin was approved. I wanted the story, but figured someone on the sports desk would grab it up asap. However, I was surprised Friday morning to find no sports people were in and no one had covered it yet -- not even the Trib. So I jumped on it, naively assuming it would only take a couple hours. However, as the day went on and I still wasn't hearing back from anyone, I started to panic a bit and widen my source base. I called, I emailed, I facebook messaged, I bit my nails. I'm the type of person that just shows up at someone's office when I want to talk to them. I'll set up an appointment if it's necessary, but I hate waiting around on phone calls. But finally, at about 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon, sources all started getting back to me at once and my story filled out quickly. Phew.

MU men's basketball team to play in Joplin for relief efforts

My really, really big screw up

John tipped me off on a quilting truck driver, and 30 minutes later I was sitting in her living room while she told me her life story. I learned quite a bit from working on this piece.

Lesson #1: Everyone has a story. I was really intrigued by a reporter John told me about who went out and met someone new everyday, then came back to the newsroom and wrote their story. I like the idea of it.

Lesson #2: A profile told only by the person being profiled is just an autobiography. My rough draft did just that, and John told me I needed to speak to other people. So I spoke to one of her good quilting friends and met her husband. My story was instantly better just by using a couple of their quotes.

Lesson #3: It's okay to let someone else do the talking. In my rough draft, I moralized the story myself by commenting in the end that Cathy's life came together like one of her quilts. (I'm cheesy, I know. The ACEs are slowly but surely beating it out of me.) After talking to her husband, I ended the piece with his quote about wanting Cathy to sew her initials on her quilts so she could effectively leave a legacy. It was so much better when I shut up and let someone else tell the story.

Lesson #4: Be concrete. Use those details I'm trained to notice.

Lesson #5: Use those details with caution. This morning Cathy called me up and ripped me a new one for using the name of her street in the piece. I felt absolutely terrible. I hesitated to use her address for the same reason she was hacked off that I did: I basically advertised to everyone that her house is empty three weeks out of the month. But in an effort to be concrete, I did it anyway. Here were my justifications: I was trying to use concrete details. I see addresses used in stories all the time (albeit not in stories about truckers who are never home), and I didn't give the actual address, just the street name. Obviously someone could narrow it down because I'm assuming her house is the only one on Georgetown Drive with a red semi out front. Again, my bad. Her house isn't technically empty when she's on the road because her grandson lives with her. But, Cathy argued, he's only 17 and "someone might attack him." They've been living this lifestyle for years and years. If someone was going to case the joint, they would have by now. Nevertheless, I can't help but side with Cathy on this one and want to kick myself over and over again. She said I invaded her privacy, she can't trust the Missourian anymore, and if anything happens to her house or grandson it's all my fault. Suffice it to say I'm probably going to lose some sleep over this.

On the road: trucker quilts while traveling across the country

The family of anvil shooters

I started rolling with this story while I was on my city desk shift, but it took a few days to hammer out. All I knew was that this kid, Curtis Bollinger, won an anvil shooting competition in Farmington the past weekend. After talking to Jonathan about a photo op, he showed me a story we'd done in 1998 of another anvil shooting champ, Mark Bollinger. Could this really be a father-son duo!? I had to find out. So in the hopes that Curtis was an MU student, I looked up his name in the online directory, found a Curtis Bollinger, and shot him an email. I mean, who checks their student email over the summer, right? But as I was leaving the band rehearsal, I got a call from a very nervous sounding kid saying yes, he was the anvil shooting champion and yes, his dad was Mark Bollinger and taught him everything he knows.

I definitely wanted to speak to both of them, but I could also tell that Curtis was a clam and I wasn't going to get much out of him one-on-one. So I set up a time to come to his house and meet with him and his dad at the same time. His mom was there too, which was an added bonus because she's a little firecracker. As I'd expected, Curtis was pretty shy, but his parents helped pull him out of his shell and we all sat around the kitchen table and laughed and talked like old friends. The longest part of the story process was transcribing our longwinded conversation, and the most difficult parts were leaving out all of the funny anecdotes I wanted to use and always coming back to Curtis. But the easy part was actually writing it, because they basically did all the work for me. They were a very quirky, friendly family and I had a great afternoon talking with them.

Columbia man wins US Championship Anvil Shooting title in Farmington

Less is more

On my first city desk shift, I received two tips: a champion anvil shooter from Columbia, and the Hickman marching band's impending trip to Hawaii. The band story actually came from Cheri, whose friend is a mother of one of the band members. So after many a phone call to attempt to touch base with the band director, I eventually just showed up and tracked him down in person. This was a pretty short piece and I probably could have dragged it out longer if I wanted to, but sometimes less is more.

Hickman marching band packs its bags for Hawaii

A day at the library

My first day back at the Missourian after returning from Joplin, I was relieved to get a "nice" story: the "One Read" book sponsored by the public library. I didn't have high hopes for the piece, I figured it would just be a "who/what/where/when/why" kind of article, but I had a great conversation with the public services librarian, Sally Abromovich, and she really filled out the story. She had me so convinced, actually, that I checked out the book when I left. I just finished it last night. It's definitely an enlightening read.

One Read aims to provoke discussion, promote community among readers

Why I want to be a journalist

Last semester, Jacqui Banaszynski came to my Cross Cultural Journalism class and gave a lecture on her Pulitzer award winning series, "AIDS in the Heartland." I was fascinated. I could have listened to her talk all day. And then she said something that I scrambled to write down because I knew it was exactly why I feel pulled to be a journalist:

"We all start out the same way, and then life happens. One of the great powers of journalism is to record that. There is no such thing as 'the other.' It's more important to write about the sameness than the things that divide us."

That says it all.

Finding the human side of journalism

On Sunday, May 22, I was at my duplex in Columbia relaxing while a tornado wiped out my hometown and left most of my friends, family, and neighbors shell-shocked and heartsick.

I had a breaking news shift the following morning so it was with slight hesitation that I haphazardly threw things in a duffel bag and drove to Joplin. I was relieved the next morning when John got in touch with me and I wasn't in big fat trouble. He asked about my family and then pointed out that incidentally, I was in the middle of a national news story.

I knew that. I was as shell-shocked and heartsick as the next person, but the journalist side of me recognized that this was huge, and I was the first one from the Missourian on the ground (to my knowledge). I wanted to get the word out... but I didn't know how I could possibly be a journalist in a time like that. I've only had one journalism professor tell me I could be human -- the rest seem like they want you to turn off all your compassion and feelings and be a robot. But John told me that I couldn't -- and shouldn't -- remove myself from the situation. It was okay to be human. So I wrote my first dispatch.

Dispatch from Joplin: An unwelcome homecoming

That one came easy, because I hadn't seen anything yet. When I saw my friend Andrea's, it got harder.

Dispatch from Joplin: Counting themselves grateful

When I delved deeper into the disaster zone with Kristen and Molly, the other two Missourian reporters, it was almost too much.

Dispatch from Joplin: Picking up the pieces

I hit the wall that night. That became a common expression for everyone in Joplin; all you had to say was "I hit the wall yesterday" and we all knew what it meant. Everyone hit at different points and for different reasons, but we all hit it nonetheless.

The good thing about hitting the wall is that things look a little brighter on the other side, which was my inspiration for my next two dispatches.

Dispatch from Joplin: Finding the silver lining

Dispatch from Joplin: Pitching in

I was grateful for a two-day break to just be. And then for a little closure when President Obama visited.

Dispatch from Joplin: Don't forget about us

It's difficult to describe that experience and the emotions that came with it. I'm so grateful that my editors gave me the chance to do these dispatches, even if only a handful of people in Columbia read them. I was so grateful to have Molly and Kristen there so I didn't have to go through it alone, especially the night the tornado sirens started going off and we all hid in the bathroom together. I cried when they gave me a slip of paper out of a fortune cookie that said, "Time heals all wounds. Keep your chin up."

By the end of the week, I learned that I didn't have to turn off my "human side" and turn on my "reporter side"... I could be both at once. I learned that even though I wasn't writing the hard news, I needed to be in the middle of it all and see everything if I was going to express all the emotions that people in Joplin were going through.

I was relieved and heartbroken to leave, all at once. And as life changing as it was, I sincerely hope I never have to relive it.

First day on the job

I just found out about this blog today... whoops! Time to catch up a bit.

My first day at the Missourian was not what I expected. From what I understood, "orientation" was from 9-2. I naively assumed we'd just go over the syllabus, learn how things work, get comfortable. Oh no. About an hour into so-called orientation, it turned into our first budget meeting and we got our assignments. I ended up heading to Centralia to cover a fifth-grade field trip/Civil War reenactment. Turns out the battle was actually the next day, and then the actual reenactment got rained out. It didn't take long for me to discover that getting quotes from 11-year-olds is like pulling teeth. But somehow, amazingly, with the help of Jeanne's editing and some insightful quotes from some older people in attendance, I managed to scrap together a story while still keeping the focus on the kiddos.

At any rate, I guess that was more exciting than a regular old, uneventful orientation.

Fifth-grade students have Civil War experience in Centralia