Remember when?

In response to a Twitter question I couldn't answer in under 140 characters:

2004 was the year of the Red Sox for Northeastern. It was also my freshman year, and as an overexcited genuine Red Sox fan living in Kennedy Hall, I lived in incredibly close proximity to Fenway Park throughout the storied playoff run. In fact, I found myself rioting celebrating outside the park on, I believe, six separate occasions that October.

The majority of those incidences were entirely peaceful. Following the win against the Angels and the first three wins against the Yankees, Lansdowne Street was a bedlam of jubilation, rather than that of destructive mentalities.

But the final win against the Yankees, after Game 7 (where the result was never really in doubt), the mob got unruly.  BPD officers were summoned to try and control the crowds behind the Monster, and several patrolmen were armed with specialized guns that fire pepper pellets.  These pellets are designed to disperse crowds; think projectile Mace.

Well, at some point during the evening, a BPD officer found cause to fire his pepper pellet gun into the crowd. The shot struck an Emerson student in the face, and she lay bleeding on the sidewalk.  Naturally, since this was the fifth such riot in only two weeks' time, several news organizations had photographers stationed near Lansdowne Street to respond to the riots celebrations. The photographer for the Boston Herald took a picture of a then-still-alive Victoria Snelgrove as she was treated on the sidewalk.

Snelgrove died between press time for the Herald and morning reveille. The Boston Herald had a picture of a bloodied (but, I repeat, alive) Victoria Snelgrove on pages A2 and A3.

Cue mass outrage.  The unwashed masses hollered in protest at the callous treatment of Snelgrove by the Herald, despite the fact that she had not died when the paper went to press.  Every journalism class in Boston discussed the merits of publishing that photo.  But NEU took it one step further and removed the free Boston Herald copies throughout campus.

Technically, it can't be proven (as far as I'm aware, anyway) that the removal was in response to the Snelgrove picture. But I don't recall there being any exhortations to the contrary from NEU administration. After another outcry from the student body about the injustice of the papers being taken, they were eventually restored. For the remainder of my college career (ending in 2009), the Boston Herald, Boston Globe, NU News (later Huntington News) and NU Voice were all available to students if they knew where and when to look.

The cowardice of the NEU administration wasn't forgotten by the JRN students, though.

Staking My Claim

When I'm asked what I want to do for work, I can't give a short answer - usually it's something to the effect of "I'd like to work in traditional, social, and broadcast media, and how the three interact". Not exactly a simple thought. And yet, recently, I was nearly afforded the opportunity to do just that. I interviewed for a position with the Your Town hyperlocal project run by Boston.com.

The towns I was being considered for are just down the road from me, and I regarded the prospect with unreserved excitement. I would have been working in a groundbreaking experiment in aggressive news coverage, and I would have been doing it in my own backyard. I hoped I was among the top-choice candidates based on my devotion to the paper in finding new places to work, based on my proximity and familiarity with the area, and based on my previous work for Globe West and the Boston in 60 Project.

But last week I got the call that I was not the finalist chosen for the position. It was a blow, I'll readily admit, and one that took me a day or two to rebound from. But immediately following that tough news, I was afforded the chance to go back to basics and work in local coverage for the print section, Globe West. In fact, I was going to be picking up four towns out there, most of which are high-activity and all of which are high-profile. Not a bad deal, I suppose. It doesn't pay as well as the Your Town job would have, but I'll have more traditional clips this way. And I've seen writers take opportunities like the one I now have and turn them into bigger and better jobs.

In the interest of maintaining an online mindset from time to time, though, I'm hoping to add another function to my blog here (one that I hope will drive me to add content far more frequently than I've done): outtakes. The Globe has, in a couple of places, features that highlight the "best of" something that didn't run. A long-time photographer posts the best picture that didn't make it into the paper. Sportswriters add little tidbits to the Notes columns when they don't grow into full stories.

What I'd like to do is, once a week, post the best quote/picture/anecdote that I came across but didn't use in working on these four towns, just because it was interesting. Maybe it'll help me keep the writing-for-new-media skills in practice, too.

Pledge of Allegiance

Friday afternoon, while I was working the phones at the Globe, a colleague of mine dug out a packet of business cards and handed one to me with a chuckle. These aren't given out anymore, he told me, but folks used to be instructed to carry one at all times...just in case.

It reads:

Your Honor, I am a reporter for The Boston Globe. On behalf of the public and The Boston Globe, I respectfully object to the closing of this proceeding and request a hearing at which legal counsel may present arguments to the court on the issue of closing this courtroom. I also request an adjournment so I can arrange for counsel to attend the hearing. Thank you.

The card, on its inverse, has numbers for several lawyers retained by the Globe (presumably the Times - all the numbers are New York-based).

I found it an interesting little specimen. Part of me wants to make a snide remark about there obviously being enough use of these cards to justify printing a batch. But part of me rather wishes there was still enough purpose to them to justify handing them out.

There was a time, I'm told in my history of journalism classes, when reporters were respected, rather than despised. There was a time that dropping the name "Boston Globe" would startle many and frighten some. There was a time where reading the text on that card might actually have gotten the desired results.

I doubt any of those are as true today as I'd like, as I enter the industry. A court faced with that card's statement will not change its decision. The last presidential administration so poisoned the judicial pool that most judges won't care. The First Amendment and the respect given to those who protect it has been so eroded that the cards given to reporters, just in case, lie forgotten in a drawer underneath the switchboard.

Damn shame.

Twitter as a Secondary Source

Now that I'm officially out of college, I'm getting in touch with all my past and present editors and offering up my services as a writer-with-a-car to anyone who'll have me. But when the freelance budget is bupkis, there's got to be other ways to contribute. An editor told me he couldn't use me on the writing front for the section he's controlling, but asked if I knew of any ways to "mine the Internet for content" that he might not have thought of.

Well, when in doubt, I turn to people who know more than I do. And lately, I've discovered that the "collective" is often the best source.

My response was to Twitter-search each of the towns. Yeah, it sounds dumb, but hear me out - you're not using the tweets themselves as sources, obviously you can't do that with unconfirmable identities and the easy potential for bad information. But you can see very quickly what people are talking about in respect to a given town.

For example, one town in question had a short tweet about termites. Well, looking at the tweeter's website indicated he was a pest control service provider, so he clearly has a vested interest in increased interest in termites in that town. That said, the simple fact that it's being mentioned merits a call to town officials to see if there has, in fact, been a spike in the number of termites in the town. And if there is - bang. Story.

I'm looking at Twitter for journalists the same way I look at Wikipedia for research papers - you can't use it as a primary source, but you can absolutely use it as a listing of primary sources or an idea well.