Feb 25
कुसौरा में पत्रकारों ने की बैठक:ग्रामीण चुनौतियों पर चर्चा, विशेष कानून बनाने की मांग
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Germany
seen from Italy
seen from China
seen from Australia
seen from Germany
seen from Indonesia
seen from Türkiye
seen from Nepal
seen from Yemen
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Singapore
seen from Türkiye
seen from Singapore
कुसौरा में पत्रकारों ने की बैठक:ग्रामीण चुनौतियों पर चर्चा, विशेष कानून बनाने की मांग
कुसौरा में पत्रकारों ने की बैठक:ग्रामीण चुनौतियों पर चर्चा, विशेष कानून बनाने की मांग
For the ask thing, are you a black pen person or a blue one?
(Also, as a bonus compliment , you have awesome music taste 💖)
thank youuu 😁
as someone who goes through many, many pens - i still take notes the old school way when i interview people - i am a free pen person. i take’em where i can get’em. but if i could choose, i’d want them all to be blue pens.
random inbox ask
One of these days, I might make a post about all the ridiculous things I’ve witnessed covering city council and local government. You would believe a group of people in their 50s would be capable of maturity, you would also be very wrong.
One day a council meeting was delayed by 20 minutes due to a screaming match between two councilors. Another time there was a whole kerfuffle over a mean anonymous note no one would admit they’d written, 5th grade style. Never doubt your ability to hold office. If these people can get elected anyone can.
Journalists are people, too.
In the nearly three years since I started writing, I’ve had any number of comments thrown my way regarding pieces I’ve written. People have said I was out to get someone, purposefully slandering someone’s name, and blindly following some unnamed herd when writing about my local government and education system.
And for the most part, I’ve been able to shrug those comments off my back like a duck and water. I can realize what people mean when they say things - in general, people just don’t like what they’re reading, which certainly isn’t anything new in the field of journalism.
But this weekend I had so many personal attacks against my character that I have to wonder if social media is really the best means of communication for journalists and news outlets.
I wrote a column - not a news story, a column - about getting the opportunity to see former first lady Michelle Obama at Ryman Auditorium. Nashville was the last stop of her international book tour, and while I haven’t had the chance to stop and actually read her book, I still took away a lot of lessons from what she spoke about that night.
Obama, who has absolutely weathered her fair share of slander storms, such as the “terrorist fist bump” or “ape in heels” news cycles during the campaign and her husband’s presidency, kept the evening light. She mostly spoke about politics in a broader sense of the term. She didn’t pit any party against another during the night, choosing instead to give a general overview of how politics has influenced her life and career. For instance, one of the most powerful lines I remember was “politics is about power.”
So I recounted my experience of the evening with a positive outlook - Michelle Obama still has hope for the country and its politics. She still believes this nation will overcome the forces that divide us and reunite in caring for one another. And if she can still believe that will all she’s had to go through, I can, too.
This is what I wrote about. For the most part, I didn’t even make any directly political references, other than those broad overview statements by Obama.
I did, however, include a line about “arguably the best president,” in reference to Barack Obama, but that was the only overtly political stance that I included in the piece.
It’s clearly a column, an opinion piece. It’s a short little “around the water cooler” type of piece.
That one line is where I went wrong, according to Facebook.
I have spent the last 36-some-odd hours being slandered and called names and having my character attacked by people with whom I haven’t spoken in years, by people I’ve never once met in my life, and by people who are trying to defend me yet somehow miss the actual defense part.
I get it. Journalism can be divisive. But never before in my life have I seen such vitriol directed at me for an opinion piece.
Of course, there are those who mistake articles for editorials, and those comments are easy to roll my eyes at and ignore, because - again - people can be ignorant of how newspapers actually work.
But the attacks against me, personally, particularly by people who don’t even know me are what have made this weekend the most difficult I’ve faced in quite some time.
I’ve worked in retail and been called names before, but when people are right in your face, they don’t dare have the same sense of gall to say what these people are writing about me.
This is the first time that I’ve ever doubted myself as a writer since I first started this job, and I don’t like how I feel.
It’s easy to write that you don’t care about what people say, but when people who don’t even know you call you a “dirtbag,” or when people who think they know you because you used to be in the same class 10 years ago start claiming to know your beliefs and feelings, it really starts to wear on your mind.
Logically, I know these people aren’t saying these things because they truly believe them about me (save for one person). I know they’re more upset because I chose to write about the wife of the president they claim ruined the country.
I know this. But that doesn’t make it any less hurtful to see such hatred aimed at you. It doesn’t mean it’s any less cruel to see so many people make assumptions about you when they’ve never taken the time to get to know you.
I speak with a great many people with whom I disagree politically - I’m even friends with a few of them, or are on my way to being friends with them. I would never say the kinds of things that people are saying about me about those people I know.
Just because you disagree with someone’s politics doesn’t mean they aren’t a person.
Just because you can write whatever you want on Facebook doesn’t mean those words don’t have real-world consequences.
I am a person. I have feelings.
Please, whenever you see articles on the internet, - particularly on Facebook - criticize the content all you want, but please, please, remember that it was written by a real person with thoughts and opinions and feelings.
Journalists are people, too, you know.
People amaze me, truly
A week ago a wrote a story on our local science center and their new STEM director.
During the interview I did with the woman, I had to ask even basic questions to get her to give me some information I could use for the story. I kept asking her to explain things to me so I could put that in the story; alas, I received little help from her (this is not unusual for interview subjects).
Today I’m trying to write a story about the center and these weekend special things it’s doing, and I have to talk to her again.
I ask about it; she gives me some basic info to go on, but then asks me if this story will be the “same size” as the one I wrote about her and her new position.
I tell her that the content of the story, e.g., how much she can tell me about the things, will dictate how long the story is.
She then tells me that she felt the previous story about her had a lot more “depth” to it that wasn’t really conveyed through my writing.
I nearly fell out of my chair.
I had to pull multiple teeth in order for this woman to answer my questions the first time around, and even after asking for multiple clarifications all she could give me was that she was basically doing “the same stuff as before” just with more resources.
NO DEPTH?? MADAME, YOU SEEM TO HAVE A GOLDFISH MEMORY, BECAUSE I HAVE OUR CONVERSATION ON TAPE, AND YOU GAVE ME JACK SHIT TO TALK ABOUT.
I can’t write a story about information I don’t have, missy.
That’s how this works. I’m a journalist; not a savant.
Writing is like taking a dog for a walk. Sometimes it’s a lovely day and you’re strolling along and your dog’s happy and he’s not running away from you or pulling on his leash, and sometimes you stop and have a conversation with some lovely people who want to compliment your dog and when that pleasant conversation is over, you continue on your walk. And then when you’re done you’re refreshed and energized and feel like you’ve accomplished something.
And other times the dog doesn’t want to go for a walk, and you’re having to physically drag it down the street while it digs all four of its heels in and its collar is coming up under its chin and around its ears and damned if it’s going to go with you because it wants to spend ten fucking minutes sniffing at a fire hydrant that you literally pass every single day but which it finds particularly interesting today for some reason. And you’re annoyed and your arm’s tired and you’ve only walked like 100 yards and you’re just like, “Fuck it, I should have gotten a cat” and then you start applying for PR jobs online.
After almost a decade of not using them, Oxford commas almost drive me nuts.