I’m a HUGE fan of The Washington Post.  Maybe it’s because I grew up with it, maybe it’s because of their great reporting and writing, maybe it’s because I got to take a really cool tour of the printing plant in second grade.  Or maybe it’s because of this story by J. Freedom Du Lac – who I just discovered, after years of reading, is a man. Hmm.

The WaPo gave J. Freedom Du Lac – who is an excellent writer, by the way – the freedom and latitude to write a highly-entertaining, though short, piece about Barack Obama and hip-hop. It wasn’t exactly an essay; it was more of a commentary, a brief look at a story that is getting a lot of press but maybe isn’t as big of a deal as other things in Campaign 2008. The Style section of the WaPo is so good at taking front-page newsy items and twisting them around to make for interesting explorations of culture.

I was particularly intrigued by this article because:
A) I’m a fan of hip-hop and know of the effect Obama’s popularity and candidacy is having on artists and the community at large.
B) I heard about Ludacris’s profane Obama shout-out song, “Politics” and got curious about how the candidate would respond/spin his way out of it without alienating rappers and their fans. Or denigrating his right to freedom of speech.

Now, listening to the song – I must admit, I’ve heard worse. Hillary as an irrelevant bee-yotch, McCain only good for a wheelchair, Bush as mentally handicapped. Not flattering but…not as poisonous as we may have been led to think. But in any case, Obama’s response to the whole situation was pretty artful. He didn’t alienate hip-hop heads because he acknowledged Ludacris’ skills; he didn’t alienate non hip-hoppers because he condemned the lyrics. Dislike the message, not the man? How very…centrist…of our friend Mr. Obama.

Watch out for this guy people. He’s clever.

All jokes aside, J. Freedom Du Lac’s piece helped get my morning started right and reaffirmed again my devotion to The Washington Post.

It’s been far too long since my last post.  I blame that on the following:
• the arrival of real, actual work to complete at TIME
• the continued search for post-graduate, post-internship employment
• general fatigue and disbelief that my summer is almost over
• lamenting about my lack of job and wishing I was headed back to school for the victory lap that is a fifth year

All jokes aside, I recently decided to put the link to this blog on Wired Journalists, so that means I need to keep this up. So I am.

UNITY 2008
First things first, I figure it was career suicide not to have been at the UNITY Conference this past week in Chicago, particularly as TIME was a co-sponsor and I’m a member of NABJ. I really enjoyed looking at all the student work, though – particularly photos from my friend L. Kasimu Harris. The convention news Web site is here.

JUDGING A BOOK BY ITS COVER?
On the work front, I sat in on an interesting discussion Monday about weekly newsmags and how newsy they should – or could – be. Newsweek and TIME have gotten some criticism lately about their covers, from both those on the outside and within their own ranks. For example, instead of last week’s Olympics-related covers, shouldn’t Obama have been on the front for his trip overseas? Wasn’t that the newsier item, and thus, the best to lead of the issue?

As I listened to all this talk, I thought about something TIME Managing Editor Richard Stengel said to us at Ole Miss last year during our Journalism Week keynote. Don’t quote him on this, but Mr. Stengel (or Rick, as he is to the millions of TIME readers), said basically that TIME’s responsibility wasn’t to be a news aggregate. It needed to go deeper than the stories newspapers and bloggers cover everyday, because readers expect more than what they’ve already seen and heard. My college paper did a good story on his talk here. In case you’re interested.

Anyway, it seems that if a newsmagazine is basically National Newspaper 10.0, it wouldn’t be in fitting Mr. Stengel’s vision to feature a photo or topic on the front of the magazine that had already been dissected by NYT, WaPo, whatever. Thus, Olympic coverage was a smart choice for the front, as was putting Obama-related things, like this article by Karen Tumulty inside.

I love that at TIME, everything is a discussion, you know? Sure, Mr. Stengel has the final say, but everything about the magazine is up for criticism and review daily, by lowly interns like myself and those much higher on the food chain. Not to get too corny, but the magazine is constantly trying to improve itself, issue by issue. People are willing to argue over something like a cover line because they are genuinely invested in the magazine’s success and relevance to readers. I love it.

INDUSTRY NEWS
And finally, Editor and Publisher had an article today where it recognized the last 6 of 10 newspapers nationwide that are Doing it Right.

I find it so refreshing that smaller, lesser known papers that are experimenting with new things are getting some major recognition. I’ve always believed that one of the best ways to judge a paper’s value was not just in its circulation or reputation, but also in its creativity and community impact. When you look at that, a lot of small newspapers are doing big things.

That’s all for now.

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant article I read today from Variety magazine

I used to get so frustrated at school when our campus TV station – Newswatch – grabbed the stories and reporting done by The Daily Mississippian staffers to fill their 30-minute show, not once ever mentioning that The DM had reported the news first. I got in arguments with their station manager over the pilfering of our content; some of them were bloody. I asked my journalism professors, “Do TV stations even have reporters of their own, who go out and drum up stories and gather facts like newspaper people do?” I was assured that at bigger stations, many reporters did run out to cover things. But the local newspaper was still one of their first, go-to sources for story ideas and content.

Gag.

Even some print-based writers who visited UM for journalism week hinted that they were frustrated by the “read and tell” strategy of TV networks; one big name from a big mag in New York even said CNN would stop running if the New York Times failed to come out one day. I nodded along with him from my seat in the audience and cursed TV journalism one more time.

So it’s nice to see that:
• People are aware that broadcast sources borrow heavily from newspapers and other print media
• As such, TV and radio will see declines like the newspaper industry

Karma, karma, karma.

Before I graduated from Ole Miss in May, I had to write and defend a 75-page honors college thesis on the future of newspapers.  I paid special attention to all published State of the Media reports from the Project for Excellence in Journalism as I was doing my analysis.  If you havent checked the PEJ’s report, you should.  It’s amazing.

My findings weren’t much of a surprise to me or any of my journalism professors – the writing has been on the wall for a while now.  Circulation is down (though readership is up in some places), advertising revenues are down.  Web site views are up and increasing, but few papers have found a way to make enough money off their sites to support their print product.  The public opinion of newspapers continues to drop, thanks to publicized scandals, conflicts of interests and decreased quality.  And all of this is compounded by increasing cuts in staff and resources necessary to put out a consistently good product everyday.

Which is why it saddens me to see things like this, but no longer shocks me:

• So long, Wall Street journal editors
• We’ll miss you AJC team
• Aloha in Honolulu

I concluded at the end of my thesis defense that I believed newspapers that invested in their reporters, photographers and editors and provided them with the resources and support they needed to do their best work would see revenue gains.  Quality is directly linked to revenue, I said.  Mass layoffs and buyouts fly in the face of quality and make readers even less confident in the product that hits their front porch and newsstands everyday.

Are newspapers really the last of a dying breed?  I want to make my career with these things.  I’m hopeful they can turn it around for my sake, and the sake of the millions of readers who count on them – despite insisting they don’t.

There’s nothing like pouring your energy into an article, turning it in to your editor with a smile and a hopeful heart, then getting it back 5 minutes before quitting time covered in blue marker.

I’m hurt.  Maybe the article wasn’t amazing…but wasn’t it decent? Passable?

One of the most important things that I want from this internship is to see some growth and improvement in my journalistic abilities – writing, reporting, interviewing, everything.  But especially writing.  I firmly believe that writing consistently on different topics makes you better.  And that’s the only place my high-profile internship falls short: the magazine is too high-profile to have an intern bump a columnist/correspondent/reporter from their own work.  I can report, I can research, but can I write?  Maybe.  And ONLY for the Web site.  Or perhaps a half-sentence in an infographic that accompanies someone else’s opus in the magazine.  I’ve had the pleasure of doing all that.

I get the meaning of “intern.”  I appreciate the incredible opportunity I’ve got to even be able to meet someone like my editor and our bureau chief and all the amazing writers.  But understanding all that doesn’t make the sting of blue marker any duller.  Then again…

“Only a mediocre writer is always at his best.”
– W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

My dear Time editor told me that part of what I should be doing during this internship is looking for story ideas that he – or hopefully, I – can pitch to the bigwigs in New York.  I’ve been seeking inspiration in tiny publications and larger ones; from Al’s Morning Meeting on Poynter to Facebook notes left by friends.  But I learned from Glenn Proctor at the RTD that the biggest help I can give to a publication in finding stories is to be myself.

“You’re a young, black, female,” Proctor said gruffly during our first meeting, right at the start of my internship.  “Work with that.  Use that.  We don’t have that here.  Show us how to get it.”

When I heard that, it made real sense to me: use who I am to develop unique story ideas.  If I’m unique, the topics and subjects I could come up with would, in turn, be unique.  But how exactly do I tap into me?    How do I transform what I’m doing and who I am into something that a large audience would want to read?

I’m still figuring that out.  But my editor here at Time told me that good magazine stories and featurettes can come from exploring what I’m doing, what my friends are doing, who we’re doing (just kidding).  Taking that to heart, this is the best thing I can come up with (for now, anyway):

• Getting married young – or marrying young in the military.  Maybe it’s the fact that I went to school in Mississippi, but I have probably 10 friends and friends of friends who are engaged or already married.  I also have friends who entered the armed forces around 18 and got married before they could legally take a sip of alcohol.  I’ve done a little research, and it appears people aren’t really marrying young anymore – they’re getting married older than over.  So what’s up with my friends?  Sure, part of it is because they’ve had babies and marriage is the next step, but for so many others it must be about…love?  Or is it the social custom and stability of marriage that is so attractive?  And why are there so few young, black people making this commitment to each other?  With the exception of those in the military, the only engaged-married couples I know happen to be white.

I’ve thought about this topic and talked it over with my friends many, many times over the course of the last few months. Maybe other people out there are curious too?

I was in Fairfax, Va. last week at Robinson Secondary School when Barack Obama held a quaint, little town hall meeting of about 2,200 people during a campaign stop.  Armed with my press badge from my current internship, I had a clear view of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee as he worked the stage, pointing to various people and giving them an opportunity to ask questions.

About four questions in, Obama whirled around to face the excited, smiley-faced supporters behind him and called on a young woman who said she was a teacher who had brought her students from a summer writing camp to hear his speech.  Rather than ask about his plan for education, healthcare, or help for working women (which he was there to tout), this woman instead said something like this: “How did you become a better writer and how has writing helped you in your career?”

I was all business – being a lovely little intern with a press badge, after all – but I perked up considerably in expectation of his answer.  See, my passion is really for writing.  I just got my B.A. in Journalism from the University of Mississippi.  I lived and breathed our college daily – editors tend to do that – and snagged internships at newspapers and magazines, where I revel in the opportunity to write and see my byline in print or on the Web.  I wrote a 75-page thesis on the future of newspapers.  And now, I’m trying to make journalism-reporting-writing my career.

Obama paused for a moment, probably a little amused and surprised by the out-of-the-norm question.  His answer, predictably, was brilliant.  He got good at writing by being an avid reader and by journaling during his early adult years.  Being good at writing  has helped him pen two successful books, draft laws and communicate with people of all different backgrounds and walks of life.

So if we follow the Obama example – which I, as a young, black, female am frequently urged by friends, family and colleagues to do – I need to read like a maniac and make friends with a journal.  The reading part will be fairly easy, but the journaling will take work, discipline really.  So this blog is my attempt at journaling.  And what better thing to journal than my struggles, news and views on trying to make it in the world as a journalist?

My goal is to write as often as possible about all things media-related – and wherever possible, put my own personal recollections and Marti-related spin on things.  I’ll keep the gossipy, unprofessional, Washingtonienne-style content off the blog, but I’m 21 so things are bound to get a little spicy every now and then.  And at the end of this process, I will hopefully have learned more about the inner-workings of my own mind and the media world, made a few journalism-loving friends, polished my AP style and gotten a job in the field.

Let’s get to work.