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Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover: Part Two
Editor's Note: This is the second from a four-part series from Greg West, our Studio intern who is currently majoring in print/digital journalism at USC.
Read the first part here.
Thanks to my editor’s initiative, I had finally escaped the cramped confines of the newsroom.
I was at last out on the open road with my notepad and recorder hidden snugly beneath the professional folds of my khaki pants. The sweet taste of freedom had never been so sweet. Absent mindedly tapping my fingers on the steering wheel, I was heading to Mansfield Massachusetts to see Phish perform live at the Comcast Center. This would be my first big internet assignment as a rookie reporter for a two-thousand word blog post on the concert. I had no idea what to expect.
Things, of course, got weird as soon as I parked the car.
“Hey, man,” said the child with crooked glasses, outstretched palms, and a boyish grin. His hair was matted to his silt-strewn face and his clothes hung off his body like tie-dye rags on a scarecrow. “Make a miracle and get me dosed.”
I stood there with my mouth open. What did a ten 10-year-old just asked me for?
To his immeasurable chagrin, I didn’t have the means to give him the sort of “miracle” he wanted. However, I could sense that he possibly had something for me.
“Can I quote you on that?” I laughed and pulled the recorder out of my pocket to hold it out to him. “I’m writing an article about the band.”
“Uh, well, I don’t know,” he said untrustingly, “I have to talk to my dad.”
“Well,” I said “Do you think he’d mind talking to me about the band?”
It turned out that he didn’t mind at all. The kid, whose name turned out to be Travis, led me through mess of cars until we eventually stopped at his home - an old handed-down Winnebago illegally parked in one of the farthest lots.
His parents were sitting outside the car RV on lawn chairs with Travis’s three other siblings playing in the foreground. Travis’s parents had both been following bands since their childhoods. They lived frugally, made their money by begging and did their best to “exist for the moment.” I was so engrossed in talking to them that I missed the first three songs of the concert.
I was quickly discovering that there are interesting people all over with their own distinctive stories. The interview itself appeared to be my greatest method of uncovering these “social histories.” From these histories a new perspective is inevitably created for a previously unknown culture. Looking back, the Phish concert itself was great, but couldn’t compare with the lessons that my first interview helped teach me.
I knew this would be the first piece of the puzzle to a daring new adventure. But first, it was back to the newsroom to try and paste together the information nearly bursting from my notepad and recorder.
To be continued...
Read the first part here.
Thanks to my editor’s initiative, I had finally escaped the cramped confines of the newsroom.
I was at last out on the open road with my notepad and recorder hidden snugly beneath the professional folds of my khaki pants. The sweet taste of freedom had never been so sweet. Absent mindedly tapping my fingers on the steering wheel, I was heading to Mansfield Massachusetts to see Phish perform live at the Comcast Center. This would be my first big internet assignment as a rookie reporter for a two-thousand word blog post on the concert. I had no idea what to expect.
Things, of course, got weird as soon as I parked the car.
“Hey, man,” said the child with crooked glasses, outstretched palms, and a boyish grin. His hair was matted to his silt-strewn face and his clothes hung off his body like tie-dye rags on a scarecrow. “Make a miracle and get me dosed.”
I stood there with my mouth open. What did a ten 10-year-old just asked me for?
To his immeasurable chagrin, I didn’t have the means to give him the sort of “miracle” he wanted. However, I could sense that he possibly had something for me.
“Can I quote you on that?” I laughed and pulled the recorder out of my pocket to hold it out to him. “I’m writing an article about the band.”
“Uh, well, I don’t know,” he said untrustingly, “I have to talk to my dad.”
“Well,” I said “Do you think he’d mind talking to me about the band?”
It turned out that he didn’t mind at all. The kid, whose name turned out to be Travis, led me through mess of cars until we eventually stopped at his home - an old handed-down Winnebago illegally parked in one of the farthest lots.
His parents were sitting outside the car RV on lawn chairs with Travis’s three other siblings playing in the foreground. Travis’s parents had both been following bands since their childhoods. They lived frugally, made their money by begging and did their best to “exist for the moment.” I was so engrossed in talking to them that I missed the first three songs of the concert.
I was quickly discovering that there are interesting people all over with their own distinctive stories. The interview itself appeared to be my greatest method of uncovering these “social histories.” From these histories a new perspective is inevitably created for a previously unknown culture. Looking back, the Phish concert itself was great, but couldn’t compare with the lessons that my first interview helped teach me.
I knew this would be the first piece of the puzzle to a daring new adventure. But first, it was back to the newsroom to try and paste together the information nearly bursting from my notepad and recorder.
To be continued...
