This morning I woke up feeling very ill, so I had to call in to my GA shift. I unfortunately have been having some medical issues that I thought I had mostly worked out, but I guess not.
Even though I wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t come in to the newsroom, the one plus from all this pandemic stuff, is that I could still work from home virtually.
I started my morning by working on the two stories I have in progress right now.
The first story I worked on was about the recent rise in residential fires in Columbia, assigned to me by Pete. I was assigned this story on Monday while I was in the newsroom.
Quick side story: I was in the newsroom Monday because I saw an accident being cleaned up on College and Locust. I slacked the newsroom, but there was other breaking news at the same time as well as no photographers or reporters were available. I went and talked to the officer at the scene and took some photos with my phone to report on it. Afterwards, I went to the newsroom where they decided not to run anything on it due to the other, bigger breaking news (A delivery truck crashed on Rock Quarry.)
Here are the photos I took anyway, because I thought I did a good job, especially with my phone and not being on shift or anything.
Okay, short side story aside, I worked on the fire story. I have done a bunch of research for it and identified some potential sources. I have hit a little bit of a roadblock though in turning my research into a story. I want to talk with an editor, Pete maybe, or an ACE sometime soon about this story and where to go from here, but I have to finish my other story first! I have also already started with photo about this story and we are currently brainstorming some awesome visuals to go with it.
The other story I am working on is the one about Nclusion given to me by Molly. Since my last GA shift, I have conducted two interviews, attended a town hall meeting the group had, set up another interview, and made a trax request for one of their events. I have also spoke with photo about visuals, and there is apparently a microdoc that will go along side this story nicely, so I think it’s going to really come together as a multimedia piece. I started a rough draft, that I have sent over to Molly.
This story is set to pub at the end of the next week, so I plan on attending this event and conducting 1-3 more interviews by next Tuesday. By Wednesday, I will have a complete draft that I can then work on editing through with Molly over the rest of the week before it pubs.
I am really excited about this so far. The people at Nclusion have been excellent! So many of them were immediately ready to be interviewed and they gave me fantastic stuff at the interview. I felt like I really clicked with one of my subjects and we had the best interview I’ve had. I wish they all went like that. They have also been very accepting of a photog as well, so I am excited to see the visuals we get from this. I love a good open source!