Please don't call me Laura - a journo's resolutions for 2013

1. I resolve to never make mean faces when I read e-mail rejections from editors, or if I do, I resolve to not record them and send them as attachments;

2. I resolve to rely more on my brain and less on Spellcheck, unless of course I'm really tired;

3. I resolve to be nicer to PRs who interrupt my busy day with pitches that are 17 paragraphs long and are addressed to "Laura Weigler" (Never was, never WILL BE Laura, and it's i before e, thank you very much);

4. I resolve to be nice when checks are late. No, no I don't. I resolve to hunt down editors who don't pay on time, publish their names on my blog, and kidnap their puppies!

5. I resolve to encourage my fellow journalists in the same way I want them to encourage me: constant praise, heaps of praise, gushing to the point of idolatry;

6. I resolve to stop screaming when I read the way a 23-year-old editor has just ruined my copy;

7. I resolve to stop bragging when one of my editors has had lunch with a major celebrity;

8. I resolve to learn how to iron my clothes, I mean really, for real, before business lunches, cocktail parties, etc. or at least finally find a boyfriend who can do this for me;

9. I resolve to stop going to journalist parties only when the first drink is on the house;

10. I resolve to keep defending my profession in 2013, be-yatches. If you think blogging is the new journalism, then I ask you to explain what the five Ws and one H are, what a lede is, and why Hunter S. Thompson should have been president.

When the journalist is a soldier, and the story is war - in your backyard

I live in Milford, Conn., a pastoral community of roughly 53,000. We're about 26 miles south of Newtown, a town of about 27,000 and tucked within it lies the 18th century village of Sandy Hook. To call Sandy Hook quaint is like calling the Kardashians overexposed. Matter of fact, Bruce Jenner even graduated from Newtown High School.

In addition to being a Connecticut resident, I'm a tutor; my mom is a fifth-grade teacher, and her mother was a high-school geometry and trig teacher. I don't have children, but consider myself a mother to my furry friend Wally, and have loved every child I've ever explained which way the printed 'e' should go or whose drawings of me on the subway or in a field of sunflowers graces my bedroom wall.

It's trite to say this is a day of mourning, or that our hearts go out to the victims, but it's still worth saying.

What's less obvious is that every journalist covering this story has, in a sense, gone to battle. Down on the front lines one can see the strain etched on the faces of Diane Sawyer, Soledad O'Brien, Anderson Cooper and all my local newscasters here in Southeastern Connecticut. I watched WTNH and sobbed as Keith Kountz was forced to share what had to have been the toughest story of his career apart from 9-11.

I bucked up and pitched one of the major news agencies in the world. I told the editors in the UK I was very near the story, and was thanked for reaching out.

Then I sat back, drew a breath, collected myself and started making mental notes of the details. How would I form the "story"? Who would I approach and who would I avoid? I watched news crews gently lean in and talk to children, always with their shaken parents of course. I asked myself if I too could talk to those children? Could I push a microphone into a distraught parent's face, much less gather outside the school the day bodies had been identified?

In 1984 I drove to Chowchilla, California to interview a young mother by the name of Darla Daniels. She had been one of the children kidnapped in the famous case of 1976. It was a seminal event of my upbringing, for I was 14, almost 15, when the tale of those 26 kidnapped kids and their heroic bus driver Ed Ray made national news.

This was before the Internet. I didn't "chat" with my friends or text anyone at the time. Instead, I would go to sleep wondering how I would survive such an ordeal, or would I? Passing a schoolbus inevitably led to the many questions our community had, and driving past the quarry, so close to my beloved Shadow Cliffs recreational area, brought chills.

"I still have nightmares," Daniels told me in 1984. I was a young, aspiring reporter working on a project for my magazine writing class. I remember sitting beside her and hearing how tortured the "kids" still were, many of them re-envisioning their hours under the ground, sobbing, being ordered at gunpoint to shut the hell up!

I got an A-plus on that paper. My professor said it should have been in Life Magazine.

Today, I look back on that conversation with Daniels, remembering how shattered those kids lives' were. Their long-lasting symptoms would include a host of ills - from panic attacks, nightmares of kidnappings leading to their deaths, substance abuse and spending time in prison for what a UCSF psychiatrist said was "doing something controlling to somebody else."

If I were to interview Daniels today, would I see a different woman? Has she become bitter? Been through multiple divorces, jobs, rehab, etc., or instead has she grown into the mature woman I sensed she was becoming back in the 80s?

As a journalist, we play the role of both detached observer and soldier in these crises. We have to be tough enough to get into battle, to hear about everything from bloodied children and gunfire to terrified parents who would wait at a fire station, only to be told their kids were not among the living. We have to be able to hold the microphone as steadily as we comport ourselves.

It's not easy. It's not natural. And some would argue, on many days it's not even human.

That is why I, as a freelance writer, have great respect for the talented journalists down in the trenches on this one. Each of them cares. Each of them goes back to their hotel room sobbing, recollecting a day of horrific loss and streaming chaos. It's a world for only the strongest souls and the best communicators. But it is a responsibility we owe to our communities.

Nothing super about this storm

This will be a short column.

For two days I went without power--a small price compared to what friends and neighbors experienced in Hoboken and Brooklyn, lower Mahattan and down by the water here in Milford, CT. But let me tell you, for about 18 hours straight I was terrified.

I don't own a home; I am not even renting an apartment. I am staying somewhere about 3 miles in from town temporarily as I apartment hunt. I rely on people here to inform me of the integrity of the building. Am I going to ask for a recent building inspector's report? Right.

So when the wind started kicking up Mon. morning as I left my room, I wrote out a "will". I use quotes because a) I didn't bet on not making it through Hurricane Sandy, but b) in case I was that one statistic from Milford, Conn. to not pull through, to get hit in the head by a collapsed roof or shards of metal that pierced the window, I wanted my brother to get my CD collection.

Now, I've been through worse personally. I've lost boyfriends, homes, jobs, my fertility -- all of it, to some degree, horrific. But there is perhaps no more terrifying ordeal than being completely alone when faced with the wrath of Mother Nature. The advice to "hunker down" when alone feels a little like crawling in a fox hole when mortar fire's engulfing the battlefield. It's like drinking the Kool-Aid but being told you probably didn't get the poisonous batch.

Will you be ok, you wonder, as your cat looks at you with fear in his green eyes and another thud stops you cold. The wind was only whipping at tropical storm force strength most of the time, but that alone was scary; add to that some 70 mph gusts (or even more) and you're glad you made your peace with God 10 minutes earlier.

So the point of bringing this up is not to feel sorry for oneself. Sandy's death toll as of today, Nov. 1, 2012 is 74 -- and they haven't nearly rescued all those trapped in places like Hoboken so the number could surely rise -- so I am very happy to be alive. No, the point is to remind everyone who reads this, who watches, listens to and reads the news but is not intimately affected by it, that my community has been wounded.

It's all the fresher because 11 years ago we went through something even more horrific, more unimaginable and not so super either. It was called 9-11.

So for now, please just leave our hurricane alone. Call it for what it is--a piece of crap. Not Super. Not Franken. Not. At. All.

How the new news cycle changes our cachet

Reading the other day that AARP-the Magazine boasts over 22 million subscribers I felt a tingle -- how thrilling, I thought, to have a story appearing in its October issue. While this is my second small piece for them, I am aware that exposure on a national level is invaluable for a journalist.

I've also been published in dozens, or close to 100 other publications, and these days it's tough to remember them all. I remember a time when waiting for a magazine article to come out was like waiting for Christmas and no one could ruin the surprise.

That all changed with the Internet, though, and it's certainly likely I could be out-scooped. This is true not only for the AARP profile but for any stories I write, including environmental pieces for tce today or the new Green Guide published by the Hartford Business Journal. Even a citizen journalist or heck, Facebook friend, could publish an article that uses the same sources. While it's fine to say there are no accidents, in the publishing world I am constantly seeing my angle reworked elsewhere--99.9 percent of the time it's not intentional (who has access to my brain but I?)

So the question is, how do I set myself apart in this "new" climate. Do I become the queen of a click, getting a story up online faster than the next guy? Do I acquiesce to those so-called publishers and editors who choose to rate us based on page views?
 
In my work for Examiner I have made money mostly in relation to how much traffic I drive to my stories. Since I view this work as "am-pro" (amateur professional) -- as does Examiner -- I don't have a problem with it. Yet if I were told during a job interview that I would be rated this way, I would pack my bags and go find a real journalism job. Wait, no, that's not right--I was told at the International Business Times that we must get "x" number of page views per month.

And I told them I did not have a problem with it--I was game, I implied, to be not only flexible but change the way I do journalism. I wondered, though, if a very small hurricane hit a sparsely populated area or if a minority of scientists proved fracking caused earthquakes if I would still be judged in this manner. What if, say, most readers didn't find the simple truth sexy?

I don't have the answers. We all need to pay the rent. We all need to please our bosses, and our bosses need to please the advertisers who ultimately, are pleasing you.

So the question is: are you pleased?

The Value of College

Whether you are 80 or 18, you're learning every day. People will say, too, that the world is your teacher, that experience carves character and life can provide lessons no classroom ever can.

Yet, more and more I'm finding that my world is full of uneducated people, for whom life/experience and so forth haven't taught so much as proper grammar, a perspective on history or art appreciation, or the ability to count without a calculator. Saying "I didn't know nothing" is no longer the purview of backwoods characters on TV shows, but common language among the gum-smacking teenagers at shopping malls.

Was I the only one who didn't fall asleep when the teacher taught us about double negatives? (Or for that matter, when my mom taught me how rude it was to smack gum in public?)

The way forward is not only through experience, then, but through modeled experience. A good mentor is tantamount to our raising standards of excellence, not only for ourselves but our children, peers and family. How many times in your life have you recalled the lesson of a good teacher? Or his or her words of encouragement or helpful criticism? I remember frequently the admonishment from a college English professor to "never tear down the building without replacing it", or words to that effect. The idea here was to simply debunk a story line or author or genre without supporting my argument, was weightless.

Why can't the gum-smacking, cell phone-chatting seventeen-year-old turn off the noise for five minutes and read a book?

How many of these kids are remembering anything their teachers tell them if the experiences they're having are so connected to technology that they're disconnected from humanity? How long before the actual teachers in classrooms become technology (robots) themselves?

I suggest the world take a step - or several - back and embrace the "Little House on the Prairie" days of the one-room school house, the teacher who learned every student's name and won their hearts each term. I am not even sure we need computers in the classroom, even though I am writing this blog on one. If the power went out, and computers broke, would kids even know how to do all their work offline?

Education, the old-school type from teachers and books, is so critical for the survival and advancement of society that I put it right up there with enviornmental health and hazards. If we cannot save the planet including the rainforests and world's oceans, we cannot save ourselves. Ditto, if we cannot teach Johnny to read, write and know how to say "I don't know anything" rather than "I don't know nothing" we are no better than animals - and perhaps not as smart as they. For the chimps, cats, birds and squirrels communicate with one another flawlessly, and are not at risk for losing brain cells because they're hooked up to an MP3 player.

The Ann Curry in all of us

Watching Ann Curry's heartwrenching goodbye Thursday on "The Today Show," I wept like a school girl. Who didn't? When was the last time viewers were treated to such honest, gripping emotion?

First, kudos to the NBC executives who allowed her to have her five minutes. As critical as I am of her ousting, it could have been far worse -- we might have awakened to her simply being gone, like an anchor-cum-Sopranos victim. She could have been 86'd like the first Darren on "Bewitched" or the superiority of network programming over cable (oops - did I say that out loud?)

Yet, we all know that what happened to her was merely what happens to all of us women of a certain age who are no longer desirable in the eyes of our male bosses - or in her case, the imaginary viewers these male bosses felt had lost interest. Their golden boy, after all, has to fight the drool coming out of his mouth whenever Savannah Guthrie or Natalie Morales are at his side.

Is this a cynical view? Perhaps. Maybe it's all in my imagination that I've been reading about illicit affairs on the show, or that Ann, once voted a MILF by some men's group, has lately looked more like a concerned Mother Teresa.

It's as if looking smarter, looking more concerned and actually being those things were a detriment in television journalism.

Think about it.

Years ago I interviewed many former broadcast journalists for Mediabistro. The subject was how these journos had jumped over to PR. I'll pick up that story at some point and publish it, but until then let me share the gist: I was told repeatedly that these news programs are becoming increasingly infotainment driven.

And this was 2002. Back when "The Today Show" still looked like a news program.

So while watching Ann Curry's passionate and at times pathetic goodbye, not only did I want to hug her, but I wanted to slap her. She is far too smart, too gifted, too worldly and wise to be diminished by this episode.

I am sure her family has been reassuring her of that this pre-Fourth of July weekend.

I only hope that the Ann Curry that rests in all of us - especially we female journalists of a certain age - will kick it into overdrive the next time a smarmy white middle-aged male executive no longer wants to flirt us up. Give him the heave-ho and just run the reel of our work in Darfur or tsunami-ravaged Thailand.

Who knows, but maybe one of these days some testosterone-driven network may just hire us for our brains.

Blogging the new journalism?

I was in New Orleans to interview a professor at a university when the talk came up about the Times-Picayune impending layoffs.

"It's very depressing," I told a PR. "I interviewed there last year. I was upset when they didn't hire me, but now I get it. There was a hiring freeze."

The PR said indeed, it was depressing. "This is the only business in which people will just give their work away."

Really? "What about actors? Musicians?"

He: "People pay for tickets to see a play."

Perhaps.

I said goodbye, walking down that hot, muggy Canal Street despite having 1.25 left over for the street car. Suddenly, I was nervous that in my profession, without watching each penny I'd soon be on the streets.

---

Since leaving my last full-time job in Jan. 2008, at least three of my girlfriends have been laid off or "downsized." Some have reinvented themselves beautifully: launching magazines, web sites, radio programs, freelancing for prestigious science magazines. Even I have pulled off some neat tricks: two stories in Scientific American, being asked to speak at an oil spill conference with reporters from NPR, the New York Times and CNN, and reporting on fuel cell vehicles in a TR article. I've had great relationships with my freelance bosses, whether at tce today in Rugby or The Prague Post in, well, Prague.

I could not have enjoyed the range of experiences I've racked up since 2008 were I still chained to my desk as an editor in Lower Manhattan.

That said -- I miss the chain.

I think I knew in my heart I'd miss the chain the night before I left. I remember crying suddenly when it was time to finally check out of my cubicle. I used to relish the feeling of having my own space, eating a sandwich at my desk, asking Charlotte behind me if she'd had a good weekend.

When I look back, I kick myself (two or three times) for whining about losing my camera en route to a business trip....in Vienna. That's right--Vienna. All expenses paid.

These days, I cry over losing a quarter because I'm out of bus fare.

---

I am not sure what the way forward is for my profession, though I think blogging is a pretty good idea until we figure it out.

On the street car en route to my interview, a nice African American lady smiled up at me when she heard I was a reporter.

"I wanted to be a reporter," she said softly. "Then I got pregnant."

For the first time in my life, I felt pretty lucky to be childless.

"Well don't give up! Got a computer?"

"Yes."

"Start a blog tonight....about being a mother. Lots of people will be able to relate."

She grinned from ear to ear. "Thank you. I will."

But what had I just told her?

When I mentioned the incident to the journalist later he said, yeah but that's not journalism.

I said of course, I know that.

But do I?

----

The point of becoming a journalist was to communicate the world through the special lens we call our own. We are supposed to be objective, but every journalist has what is called in the trade "a voice."

And forgive me if I was wrong, but my suggestion to the nice lady on the street car -- and to myself -- was to never forget, let alone squelch, that voice that lies deep within.

Judge the messenger, not the message

It's counterintuitive, but this is how hiring managers should be judging their applicants. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world and all of us are judged on those thirty minutes or an hour, a writing or editing test thrown our way to assess our worth.

Imagine if, wanting to choose a husband, you threw an hour-long quiz his way: "Here, catch!"

He: "But, but...?"

You: "Seriously! Time's a-tickin'. Go! Answer the 60 questions. I will be in the other room."

...

The heart would race, the sweat would bead.

He would turn in his answers, half of which would be "wrong" in your book.

You: "I am sorry, but you lack skills for this job."

He: "But we are crazy about each other! You said I was cu--"

You: "Sorry. You failed the test. Next!"

...

This is how we're judged in this very competitive job market, which makes it all the more important for editors and hiring managers to fine tune their sensitivity -- not only for the sake of not hurting applicants' feelings, but for the purpose of finding the best candidates.

For example, if we are told we "lack the skills" for a job, this is probably just the impression we gave to an employer during a one-hour interview or as a result of a test.

On the other hand, we may sweep someone off her feet during the interview, land a job, and then find we are completely unsuited for the role.

Granted, from the editorial director's POV it's a stressful process. Many times they're being deluged with hundreds of applications, choosing only a precious few for the interview. At that point, applicants must bring their A-game. I get it.

But bringing the A game, being the best salesperson, being able to put a toothache, a leaky faucet, a cheating husband, a broken heart, etc. on hold for that one-hour period of judgement can be a really arduous task.

I suggest that if a hiring manager interviews an applicant and that prospective hiree performs badly that he be given a second chance.

It's just plain ignorant to tell an applicant he "lacks skills" for a job if he's been doing that exact thing for decades. Imagine Michael Phelps trying out for a position of swim coach, then showing up and not swimming well (for whatever reason--maybe he is getting over the flu).

"Sorry, Michael. You lack the skills for the job."

Clearly then, it's not Michael Phelps who lacks skills.

The real problem with Limbaugh

It's not the "slut" and "prostitute" slurs or the insinuation that Miss Fluke offer the world free pornos in exchange for subsidizing her contraceptive fix. And it's not even that Limbaugh, on the face of it, is just a nasty, narrow-minded, clueless goon of a man desperate for ratings (and perhaps a roll in the hay). No, it goes even deeper.

Limbaugh's rise to media power -- especially during an age when so many of my peers are flailing about as unemployed, unpaid or just as bad underpaid scribes/broadcasters/etc. -- points to what's really wrong with society. It's called Misogyny.

Left unchecked, it allows for everything from the JFK mistresses to the wink from the boss who gives his 22-year-old waitress more hours than her gray-haired counterparts. Misogyny is the father who urges his daughter to quit competing so hard on the soccer team, and just settle down and have kids. It's the uncle who scolds his niece for a ten-pound weight gain on the same day she shows him her A+ on the Chemistry paper.

Misogyny is so pervasive in society that I dare say, we are all to blame. Everyone who's cheered on a Miss USA pageant contestant or bought the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition is guilty of perpetuating this stereotype: that women are commodities. Much like sugar, oil and gold, the commodities are valued, but only in the sense of what they can bring to the buyer.

So no, Mr. Limbaugh, it was not Miss Fluke who was the prostitute in this scenario. But you know that now. And all the riches in the world cannot undue the damage due to the billions of women who've walked this earth, only to find their intoxicating scent far more compelling than the ministrations of their minds.