I don’t actually disagree with this Wall Street Journal blog post that being a newspaper reporter is the worst job of the year.

I mean, I am tired. Tired.

My brain is absolutely gelatinous from trying to pound out content six days a week. My nerves are shot from trying to maintain patience, patience, patience with sources and PR reps and readers — from trying to please everyone all the time while still keeping a grasp on objectivity and news judgment and all those old, essential pillars. Continue reading →

When I interviewed reporters to work at The Appalachian, they all tried to sell me on one thing: How extroverted they were.

There was very little, “I’m a great writer/videographer/photographer/data journalist.” Almost never any, “I have a great grasp on [x] subject I’ll be covering.” It was all, “I’m a people person. I love to talk to people.”

This makes sense.  Continue reading →

I’m about as digitally native as it gets.

I never used Google Reader — or any RSS reader. I picked through newspapers and devoured magazines as a kid, but when I got older and started caring about the news (and stopped having time to read actual books), where I turned was Twitter.

But, native or not, I still struggle with the seminal problem of getting your news online (for free): Separating the signal from the noise, sifting through the sea of content and finding something worthwhile.

Here are a few strategies that have helped me find gems in the pile of pixels: Continue reading →

I love journalism more than anything else, but I can’t be sure I love it enough to stay.

There was a time when I thought I’d be a journalist my whole life — or, rather, there was a time when I thought I could trust myself to stay a journalist my whole life.

I’ve pored over two blog posts lately that wouldn’t have moved me if I could still fully trust that part of me.

First I read the piece everyone’s been reading, Allyson Bird’s Why I left news, and it broke my heart. Then I read author Mimi Johnson — wife of journalist Steve Buttry — on a time when she thought her husband would finally defect, and it broke my heart more. Continue reading →

…and accidentally cried a little.

Here’s a story that every working journalist, or would-be journalist, should hold in mind. Years ago, when a dear friend was in college, he also worked at the city newspaper. Aware he was fortunate, he gave the job everything, to the point that he sometimes just fell asleep in the newsroom. One morning an editor walked in to find him, bleary eyed, just waking. Shaking her head, the editor told him, Son, you can love this business with everything you’ve got. Just don’t forget that it is never, ever, going to love you back.

–Mimi Johnson: Did it ever occur to you that even the most deathless love could wear out?

My not-so-expert advice.

1. Read everything. If you don’t do anything else, do this. Read newspapers and magazines and books and blogs and brochures and old letters. Somewhere in the process of all this reading, you will learn something about words, and what can be done with them.

2. Take risks. Don’t stick to summary leads. Don’t stick to anything. The trick is to write so much that there’s room for some good work in the midst of all the bad work that will inevitably outnumber it. Continue reading →

I had two thoughts when I read about Madison Roberts, the freshman journalism major at Alabama who fabricated 30 sources in stories for the Crimson White.

My first thought was that I don’t feel sorry for her at all.

And the second was that I do. Continue reading →

Pardon my dust.

I’m in the midst of a website overhaul.

If there’s content you’re looking for but can’t find, please let me know:

frickma@appstate.edu

meghanfrick@newstopic.net

Courtesy of Timehop, this piece on Anthony Shadid — which I’d quoted and linked on Facebook a year ago — showed up in my inbox today. It’s a beautiful piece from his student newspaper, the UW-Madison Daily Cardinal, written just after his death. Here’s the part I quoted: Continue reading →

I’ve learned more in the past week than I did the entire preceding year.

That’s probably hyperbole, but not by much. My first week-and-change at my first daily reporting job has brought story after story, and not just the ones that went on the page.

I’ve learned (from my editor, full disclosure) that if you visit the site of a house fire the next day, you can talk to the family and learn what they lost and where they’re headed. Do that and you’ll blow your own story, the one you would’ve written with the transcription of the fire marshal’s quotes, out of the water.  Continue reading →