Don't put me through another "stress" interview, please!

OK, my hands are shaking as I write this. Bobs of sweat are forming on my temples. Are they bobs or globs? I don't know - I'm nervous. Just talking about stress interviews makes me crazy.

As a journalist, I've been through some stressful interviews, but always sail through because I'm on the proper side of the discussion. I am asking the questions. The stress comes because:

a) a PR has decided to get on the phone with us and thereby direct the interview (or try to) or
b) some bigshot has decided to put me on speaker (happens fifty percent of the time) and when I ask to be taken off, acts like I have a hearing disorder or
c) someone has decided he doesn't really want to answer any questions so much as suggest how I should write the story.

So given all of the preceding stressful situations you'd think I'd be equipped to just show up at some suit's office, look pretty, calm, collected (what am I collecting? armpit sweat?) and sell myself.

But I'm no Martha Stewart or the late Steve Jobs. I can get up in front of a crowd and sell them on the need to clean up the gulf or stop pouring Corexit into the water, but I can't sit or stand for forty-five minutes with the radar on my person. I-AM-NOT-COMFORTABLE-TALKING-ABOUT-MYSELF.

Is this really such a unique "problem" for journalists? I actually think it's normal, because after all most of us became writers because of our other deficits (social skills). If we were great at grabbing the spotlight, we'd be game show hosts or used car salesmen. We would not be interviewing CEOs about why their 88th attempt to make a decent PC failed, despite the ads in top technology magazines stating otherwise. We would not be gravatating toward a job where ruminating over the word "pedantic" versus "wordy" for a solid hour at 9 pm in Lower Manhattan is considered a job perk.

So please, please, job interviewers of New York hear me now. I am a good, solid, hardworking and dependable journalist. You called me into your office because you liked my clips. Do not expect me to be that person you envision when I start to speak. If I was a speaker, after all, I would not be a writer.

9-11 Conversations, 10 years of memories

Edward's cousin worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. I would hear about his cousin's death when Edward came into Barnes & Noble in Westport, where I began working in October, 2001 after my job in New York came to an end that August.

Edward was very depressed. He just wanted something of his brother's, wanted to go back, touch the site. I believe he got a sweater of the cousin's.

Then there was the time I was wrapping a child's gift. I smiled, "Who's it for?"

The patron, stonefaced, told me "her father died in the attacks."

***
Moving to New York in 2001, I had a choice of either living in the city or moving farther out into the 'burbs. I chose the latter, but commuted into Midtown Manhattan, where I worked as a real estate writer for Rubenstein Associates. This PR firm happened to have represented, and still does, Larry Silverstein Properties.

I had no idea who Silverstein was, but I knew this was all pretty fancy. I also knew that New York was a mystery, from its east side to its west side, Chelsea to lower Manhattan and the buzz of Midtown.

When I left that job, just a few weeks shy of 9-11, I didn't realize how lucky I was. I remember jumping into a cab and heading out to Battery Park and staring out at the Statue of Liberty across the river. I'll succeed here, I thought, even though it was not yet clear to me how. I knew PR was not really for me.

***
After 9-11, I felt compelled to head back to the city and connect. I went to Cornelia St. to read poems. That was the first night at Cornelia, the first of many nights where I'd share my poems. There, the Wall Street Poet shared his beautiful and eloquent prose -- so sharply contrasted to the wandering, bohemian offerings of us. Eugene Schlanger, a.k.a. the WSP, knew intimately the streets around the New York Stock Exchange, Battery, Wall, Front.

That Friday night in September, 2001 a collection of women got together in the Village to support one another, share phone numbers we'd never call, and then stumble out into the still grey night of New York. The ashes still deep in the air just a few blocks south of us, I remember one woman telling me about a coworker she'd lost that day. It was an everyday commment in those early days after the attack.

I went to board my train home from Grand Central, passing the hundreds of faces of the "missing" tacked to makeshift placards as I walked. I took a couple pictures of people looking at the names. Instinctively I knew none of these people was actually missing.

***
At Bridges, a mental health facility in Milford, Conn. I temped for a couple weeks right after 9-11.

While there, I was tasked with filing, making appointments and greeting visitors. I noticed that one particular counselor, Mary Fetchett, wasn't taking appointments. "Why isn't Mary booking?" I asked.

A voice told me then about her son, Bradley.

Mary Fetchett later became a very vocal and nationally-known activist, a beacon for the 9-11 families as they took those precarious steps toward the new reality. For although we were all grieving the loss of our innocence, the loss of a world without 27 security checks and bomb-sniffing dogs at airports, people like Mary Fetchett, my patron Edward McManus, and later, families of my coworkers from Incisive Media in SoHo, who lost 10 workers at Windows on the World would be knowing something deeper.

And for them, for David Rivers of Incisive Media, Bradley Fetchett, Edward's cousin, the poet's coworker and all the hundreds more I shed a tear.

No, it didn't change the world that day. And other countries have experienced even more abominable horrors, but this will always stand uniquely as a great American tragedy. And today, more than ever, I am very proud to be an American.

Synchronicity--my move to NY shortly before 9-11

Those who believe in Fate know it comes in all types: good, bad, and somewhere in between. Yet, fortunes are made on the advice of sages who predict nothing but starlight and roses, a yellow-brick-road of riches and romance into perpetuity--she shows equanimity, and it’s up to all of us to read the signs.

Moving eastWhen my regular freelance job came to a screeching halt in the spring of 2001, I didn’t want to give up my dream of moving to the east coast. I’d been writing articles each month for a CBS/Winstar startup, and had been having a ball. My producers were grooming me to come out and try my luck at a promotion. Yet thanks to Ch. 11, that dissipated somewhere between a check that was never cut and my resolve to trade bikinis for parkas.

I was leaving Ventura, California.

A contact at a top PR company in Manhattan, Rubenstein Associates, told me I was one of the most pleasant journalists he knew. He was so sorry I’d lost the freelance gig, so perhaps he could connect me with his boss and maybe there was a writing job for me. I was thrilled that he’d suggest this, and before I knew this was being lined up faster than I could book my ticket.

Within a handful of months, I’d met the boss, been offered a position they created for me in the real estate division, and was packing my bags for the drive east.

June, 2001“You need to familiarize yourself with New York,” my new boss said. He wanted me to go out to visit all the properties, from apartments in the Chelsea to a post office development on Murray Hill.

I had one in mind, too, that was especially significant: the World Trade Center.
My freelance boss Andy had told me to go up to the top. “The Statue of Liberty looks like a green Barbie Doll from up there,” he said.

That was April, when I’d come out for the interview at Rubenstein, and when I was a tourist. But now I was a bigshot PR writer and I needed to go visit the Twin Towers because our company represented the owner. His name was Larry Silverstein – a name as unfamiliar to me at the time as the comment my boss made about not pining over Murray Hill. “It’s not what New Yorkers would consider an idyllic location.”

Then he’d screw his nose up at me, as if to say ‘What on earth did we hire?’ True: I kept getting lost walking out of Grand Central Station and was twice late for work because I ended up going east instead of west. The subways also confused me, as did the overwhelming noise, rat population and 27 ways to get out of and to GCS. Yet I was in love and wanted to get to know my new home in the way I knew kick-back Ventura.

August, 2001The second week of August, though, the job and I parted ways. That is all I am allowed to say, except I’d like to add that in hindsight I’d have moved to the city earlier, learned my way around as best I could, and keep my stories of getting lost to myself.

Nevertheless, by Sept. 11, 2001 I was an office temp – not a bigshot PR writer. My salary was $12/hour with no benefits vs. a stable income. I was holed out in Wilton, Conn. as a receptionist for an ad agency, where it was one of my jobs to turn on the tvs each morning. The company wanted to watch their ads play on the telly.
This is the only job I’ve ever had like that, where I got to watch TV while being paid. It was pretty cool. I guess I had a few letters to type, but mainly, I watched tv and delivered mail.

I lived in Stratford, Conn. at the time, roughly a 40-mi drive southwest. I had a big apartment, a big cat, a nice car, but no friends. I was still in the getting-to-know-you stage in my community.

So on Sept. 10 when I went to sleep – having enjoyed talking to my half-sister, who was celebrating a birthday that day – I had nothing particularly to feel bad about. I was sorry the job had ended, of course, but I was confident I’d get something else. I was eager to explore my new home, particularly getting back to Mystic, where I’d gone in June, and see the old seaport. I was also eager to explore New York and get to know it in a way that would have been valuable to Rubenstein.

Yet, I woke up so early on Sept. 11 that none of this hope was in my mind. I was anxious, restless. I couldn’t get back to sleep. So at 5:00 a.m. I got in the Nissan Sentra and drove to Wilton looking for an early-morning diner. I sat and ordered eggs, bacon, toast and coffee. A man in the booth next to me crawled in with his child and started smoking. I can’t remember if I asked him not to smoke – probably not – but remember this as jarring. Smoking was not allowed in California restaurants, but at the time it still was in Connecticut and New York.

I pulled out a journal I kept in my satchel. I wrote: “Sept. 11, 5:43 a.m. I feel restless…something in the air. What is it? Am I perhaps anxious about having to learn to drive in the snow? Something foreign to me? Or am I anxious about having to meet new friends and start this whole new life?”

I paused and sipped my coffee. The smoker in front of me turned around and acknowledged my presence. I was probably sleepy but all I can remember is being in sort of a fog.

So I drove to work.

The first tower is struckI sat in the parking lot until they would allow me to go in. Finally I did go, and once inside flipped on the tvs. It was about 8:30, and my mind was on coffee, how tired I was, and what I might write while working on the office computer.

Then NBC broke with the news:

Bryant Gumbel said: “Hello, we are just getting word that the World Trade Center has been hit by a plane…”

I am probably paraphrasing. Memory does that.

This must have been just after 8:45, when the first plane was hit…And then the announcer, still speaking, had to garishly tell us, the American morning viewer, that wait, we were now seeing another plane slice into the second tower.

These were no passenger planes mis mmunicating with the FAA.

This was war.

I picked up the phone and dialed. Mom answered groggily from Sausalito.
“Heee—lllo?”

“Mom, a plane just went into the World Trade Center.”

“What does that have to do with us?”

“Mom—you don’t understand…”

She was so sleepy, I told her to get back to bed and called my dad.

He got it – immediately. “Oh my God. I’ll bet you’re glad you’re not in New York today.”

I stared at the images in front of me, still recalling how my guts sank to my bottom the second I watched the live images of United Airlines flight 175 from Boston crash into the south tower of the WTC and explode.

I breathed.

Dad and I said our quick I love-yous. And I hung up.

Sept. 11, 2011In the decade that has followed, I’ve written about real estate for a few publications and even had the pleasure of interviewing Barbara Corcoran, one of Manhattan’s biggest names in real estate.

I’ve learned how to traverse the miles of Manhattan the way ants can find their way in the long line in your bathroom after a rain. I have even made peace with my six-week, aborted stint at Rubenstein and forgiven myself for any of my own shortcomings. Good lord, how could I have possibly known New York City in a few days or even weeks? The job I took there was really designed for a New Yorker.

And through happenstance, I suddenly became one.

On Sept. 11 this year, I look back at that date ten years ago, knowing full well that if I had better understood why Murray Hill wasn’t saleable and why Silverstein properties are, I might still have the job.

And then again, I might have been at one of Silverstein’s properties on Sept. 11, which was a workday after all. I might have been traveling up to the top for a view of that Barbie Doll, as I had done in April of 2001.

On that date, an elderly gentleman who ran the overlook, explained why he’d posted a “NO VIEWING TODAY” sign.

“Zero visibility,” the old guy told me. “Come back another day.”

--the end--

Where the truth lies - advertising, sources, and the BP oil spill

I've been covering the BP oil spill and its effects on people, marine life and wildlife for over a year. I can't fully explain why I've felt so passionate about this subject other than this has been the United States' biggest environmental crisis ever, capping the well was a gripping, internationally-relevant news story, and my memories of swimming in the Gulf of Mexico as a child are among my happiest souvenirs.

But perhaps, no certainly, what's driven me through all of this is the people of the Gulf of Mexico, specifically those around Grand Isle, LA and Orange Beach, AL, whose stories continue to compel me daily. I've befriended a few of these folks on Facebook including top toxicologist Riki Ott, been invited to speak on the spill at UGA and attended a NOLA task force meeting on restoring the ecosystem.

The stories of the people of the Gulf should inspire all journalists, but unfortunately, in the words of one source the media and big business are too intertwined to reveal the full story. As I write this, I wonder if I'll ever sell a mainstream article on what's really occurring there--images of the tar mats rising like sick brown reminders of the world's largest frat party. Except, of course, the perpetrators were Tony Hayward and his ilk; and now the Obama administration.

For who else but the Obama administration authorized the Corexit dispersant applications? And though a presidential committee was assigned to report on the spill and what to do going forward -- the Minerals Management Service was rightly replaced by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement -- and one top official ater another "retired" (sayonara, Admiral Allen), this reporter is left feeling I never did, not once, report a grain of the real truth.

Oh, sure, a grain. I got the stories from the people -- I got the images from photographer and grandmother Betty Doud or the sad stories from Capt. Lori the Dolphin Lady. I got their stories. Thank God for the people, or I might have been forced to just report on those bi-weekly press calls, such as the one in which Admiral Allen defended dispersant use. I sensed then he wasn't allowed to tell the truth when I asked my first media call question:

http://www.examiner.com/environmental-news-in-new-orleans/admiral-allen-defends-dispersant-use-the-gulf

I still intend to mete out the real story. I won't rest until those who aren't down in Orange Beach cleaning up oil that washed up as recently as, uh, yesterday are held fully responsible.

Everyone talks about Casey Anthony getting away with murder. I wonder, though, why 11 men died in the Gulf, thousands remain sick, and countless dolphins and Ridley's sea turtles and brown pelicans die and yet a trial is not a national news event.

***
Photo of "catfish with his butt blown off" at Grand Isle, LA by Betty Doud, Apr 18, 2011

Seven simple tips for PRs everywhere

After feeling like a schmo for telling a PR off last night, I realized it was time to write this credo for my flack friends everywhere.

Note, I didn't so much tell them off as point out the obvious; but apparently, Simon Cowell-as-Laurie-Wiegler isn't sitting too well with innkeepers in Northern California right now (I imagine it wasn't a real publicist who sent the pitch, or she would have known better.)

So here's what you need to know in order to keep the journos well fed and on your side:

1. Address us by name. This is so obvious that I can't believe I have to mention it. The above offender cut and pasted her pitch to me. I thought it was SPAM at first.

2. Get to the point in the first sentence or at least the first graf.

3. Stop at graf two. If you can't sell me in two grafs, I'm not interested. Remember, I am pouring through dozens of pitches like yours. I don't have time to read novels.

4. Please, please keep the links and cute images to a minimum.

5. No pitches "in case you are writing about mint julep in springtime" or "Christmas in Vienna" (when I'm pitching Thanksgiving stuffing stories.)

6. Assume I'm on your side, but don't want to hang out. I realize you have a sometimes thankless profession (so do I, believe me), but just because I am friendly and helpful does not mean we are buddies. Do not put me on your rote mailer (the daily blogs about your cousin's marmalade or how to green your kitchen in five easy steps) without asking my permission. I also recommend just avoiding the idea all together. No one is getting too few e-mails these days.

7. Have relevance. If I have posted a query on ProfNet about needing to talk to nuclear physicists, do not send a pitch about astronomy conventions in Denmark.

God save me from the 26-year-old editors

I'm not a religious person, but tonight I have one prayer and one prayer only: "Please God, please save me from the 26-year-old editors."

It's not that I'm jealous of their toned penmanship and taut critiques, their uber-slim fonts and invisibly small mobile phones ...It's something bigger.

These 26-year-olds are taking over the publishing industry. Everyone who is not Arianna Huffington -- wait, does Arianna have one n or two? Ah, who cares -- or Anna Wintour is under 30. Because they are under 30 and were raised on laptops and notebooks and iPods and now iPads and Blackberries, these brats think they know everything.

Last week, the problem was an idiot copyeditor at YeHaw (not the real name, but use your imagination) who changed everything I wrote in a stupid format-style piece of content I never should have stooped to write, and then when they edited my bio they spelled the word "writings" as "writngs." That's right - no second "i". Of course, it was stupid enough that this idiot had used the word "writings" instead of "articles."

So I quit those jokers -- not because of the aforementioned idiocy, but because Yehaw's 32-year-old megagazoponillionare in Santa Monica (you do the Googling) had all ready made a small fortune off all the other Yehaw articles I'd written about miniskirts and trips to Bermuda with Grandma. The copyeditor of the writngs spelling had been too stupid to look my name up in the database before she instructed me on how to write.

Then today, another site (I am too paranoid to come up with a funny name for this one) had their beeyatch goddess twerp a one liner to me about how I might be better off writing for another part of the site. She presented this in a way to poke me (not in the friendly Facebook way, but in the beyatchy school cheerleader way) and make me feel bad about my original defense of her ridiculous criticism. She had claimed that my report on, let's say Honolulu fish shacks, had nothing to do with let's say, Waipahu Hairstylers. (Waipahu is 14 mi from Honolulu.)

I lost it: I told her this was an interesting comment coming from a woman who had never responded to my inquiry about why I hadn't gotten a raise. Of course I didn't say it quite like that, but she caught my drift. Then I was so twisted in knots I ate an entire package of Peeps (just five marshmallow pull-aparts).

Taking a breath and reflecting, I realize that the problem is not with 26-year-old editors so much as what they represent: their inane, egotistical assumption that anyone over 40 (ok, pushing 50 big time) should be put out to pasture.

I am not sure what the answer is or answers are. I am heartened by the fact that I've written for AARP once before and have a story possibly coming up for summer publication. This is cheery on many levels: the money I am making from these content providers is pretty much pushing me into homelessness, whereas AARP pays $2 per word; and secondly, on Aug. 19 I turn 50, just old enough to actually join AARP.

Neil Calman MD: In Memory of Steven B. Tamarin MD - a Great Physician and a Great Friend

Neil Calman MD: In Memory of Steven B. Tamarin MD - a Great Physician and a Great Friend

Drawing the line between journalist and source

It's getting trickier these days. Try as I might, I've slipped a bit from those days when I sent a $10 Starbucks gift card back to a source. And might I add, I only did this after my boss admonished my hastily accepting it with a whiny, "but I looove lattes..."

I've accepted free nights at hotels, buckets of pralines/gift cards/barbeque chips, free flights, dinners, wine, champagne, flattery, you name it. Am I coming clean?

That said, I'd also like to mention that everyone who's bought me things is still under the same watchful eye as those who've bought me nothing (and ps, if this is you it's not too soon to prepare for my August birthday. I am a size 12.)

The problem is that the line between journalist and source is becoming hazier. In the social networking age we are "friends," aren't we? And if we aren't, why in the heck haven't you accepted my Friend Request, Mr. Source? I know I am often troubled as to why I haven't been granted immediate access by editors I've met once or twice at a cocktail party but can't seem to shake that hangers-on from high school whom I barely remember from chemistry class.

What's the answer? How do journalists stay pure in this increasingly sullied climate? I'd like to think I am still that journalist who sends the Starbucks card back, but I'd be lying. It's tougher as a freelance writer, not making a regular salary, not having an editor within eye-shot who can throw me a disapproving glance when I jump with joy at that free $310 a night stay in a King suite. But I will try.

Yes, I will try to send back all invitations to expensive dinners I will not be obliged to pay for, provided my sources stop expecting me to accept. No, that doesn't sound right either. How's about this: I will strive to stay as honest as possible in my reporting, regardless of whether I've accepted a free lunch from said source.

I remember as a reporter covering financial technology on Wall Street, I often charmed my way into the offices of executives all the way through lunch at any number of Lower Manhattan eateries. I got a great scoop this way, and I am sure my boss (a gay male) had no qualms about hiring me for this very reason. Use what you've got.

It's tough enough getting paid at all these days, so why not allow us this one small pleasure. Besides, my creative juices don't even begin to flow until I've had a nice hot soak in a Jacuzzi while sipping free Moet and Chandon.

Indigestion in the age of the 24-hour news cycle

I've found I need to go on vacation in order to unwind. It's impossible to do it around the house, where I am chained to this laptop - like it or not. I can't stand to see a headline on the crawl above this page -- there's one now! -- without wanting to pounce on it. And it did not used to be like this.

Twenty-five years ago when I entered the field, we didn't have computers; we had typewriters. Charming, antiquated, loud, clunky, wonderful typewriters. We purists pounded out our thoughts on a manual. I got through college that way. White-out (Liquid Paper) was our friend. When we were done writing articles, we had better things to do - like date, visit with friends and go for walks in the woods.

Nowadays, though, no self-respecting journalist is caught dead spending more than an hour away from her e-mail. I find that I can miss jobs, stories, gossip, you name it if I so much as take a long shower.

That's why I'm so sick at my stomach that I'm ready to leap off the nearest bridge, though I fear doing this might give an unfair advantage to the competition, who would no doubt write about my suicide and therefore grab a front page headline: WIEGLER FINALLY LOSES IT AND CATAPULTS OFF THE GW!

Well, I won't let that happen, of course, because there is Tums, a visit to the GI doc, and rumor has it something called meditation. And I've also heard it's physically possible to pull oneself away from the laptop with enough discipline, or at least a threat from one's boyfriend in the other room.

Getting roughed up by thugs: the new normal?

Anderson Cooper was "roughed up by thugs" this week - as he posted on Twitter - and many now wonder if this is the new normal for journos.

By new normal I mean, any self-respecting scribe will earn his stripes traveling halfway across the world and not flinch if sent into rock-throwing range of a crazed Muslim brother or frantic eighty-year-old democracy-hungry doctor.

Maybe I'm a wimp, but I'll take my journalism work the way I would take any job: without putting my life in danger. I didn't become a cop or firewoman or President of the United States. I am a journalist. I am not required to put my life on the line in order to get to the story.

To see CNN and the New York Times and Fox News and whomever else jockeying for stories and standing space on the square over there in Cairo...well, it's just a little unsettling. More than a little.

There have always been war correspondents. And war photographers. These are noble professions -- but they stand apart from other types of journalism. Ten years ago it wasn't frowned upon to be a good, hardworking journalist who would refuse to put her life on the line.

Nowadays, with the 24-hour news cycle and everyone worrying what blogger will come and take her job away, well, journalists are going out on a limb - and then some.

I was saddened to see David Rohde's name on a news story from Egypt today. Having just read his wife's moving account of his kidnapping by al-Qaeda and emotional return, I figured he'd stay put forever. He'd learned his lesson.

What do I know?

I remember once leaving a message on my outgoing answering machine -- back in 2003 at the start of the Iraqi conflict -- stating that I was off to the Middle East to report. Please don't worry, I stated, and I wouldn't forget to write.

My brother took it seriously and was frantic.

"How could you do that to me? To the family?!" he shouted.

I thought it was funny. "What? You wouldn't honestly think I would do such a thing, would you?"

"I don't know - yeah?"

I thought a moment. It was a question I never forgot - and one that my profession is, more and more, answering on my behalf.