Well, today makes 11 straight days in a row now that it has been below freezing. It’s so so so cold out there. It hasn’t stopped snowing for like three days straight. The roads are all ice.
So, I get to work from home today! Yay for being able to work remotely. My dog likes it especially.
Today, I primarily worked on a longer story about the case about the Beta House Settlement funds. Yesterday, I called for comment from Randy and made a resource document. This document included all the information about the case: the history of it, the timeline, the side elements of the story, definitions of terms and groups, a list of characters, etc. Since this case has been going on for so long and is about events that happened before that even, I thought this would be helpful for the reporters currently working on it.
Today, I used that information as well as suggestions from Scott to create a rough draft in blox of the story. There isn’t a rush on this story since the next step is a court date in two weeks, and we missed the step before of the settlement offer in Dec. However, we are late on the news of the offer, and the rejection of said offer, and this pertains to the upcoming election, so I wanted to get started on it right away.
Next, I will need some editing and I had a few questions about if we should go into this or that. We also need to finish contacting sources for the story. We haven’t spoke to the defendants at all yet and there is a big hole in the story for their narrative. We also need to finish out the effect on the election part but we are waiting on further comment from candidates. Once we have reached out to everyone, we will be able to finish the story.
Just as I was wrapping up work for the day on this (it’s always better to come back with fresh eyes multiple times in a project so I try to space out my work), I received a request from Skylar, the ACE, to follow up on a tip that was called in to the newsroom. She briefed me on the story and past reporting and gave me a contact.
The timing was impeccable today. Just as I wrapped up the phone call about the tip, and we decided we didn’t need to publish a story, another press release came out.
So I got to write a brief about that. Here’s the link: https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/covid19/mu-health-care-postpones-both-friday-and-sunday-first-dose-vaccinations/article_14c4ed64-7171-11eb-8be9-2fa81a8051b3.html