Important CD Mix of the Month announcement: Since I’ll be out of state for most of February, Tom has graciously agreed to be in charge of mix distribution this month. So if you normally get a CD in the mail from me (or want to — check the page for details), you’ll be getting it from Tom instead for February only. (It’ll still be my mix, it’ll just be coming from his house, not mine.) Email me if you have any questions or want in.
In exactly four hours and twenty-six minutes, I’m being picked up to go to Salt Lake City for the Olympics. I wish I could tell you that I’m tremendously excited, but to be honest I’ve been too busy doing other things at work to get excited. I’m sure that’ll change once I land in Utah around noon, though.
In a whole lot of ways, this is exactly the kind of assignment I loath: 9,000 reporters in a few square miles, all chasing the same 10 basic stories. Pack journalism at its worst. I’m hoping to get past that a bit by finding little niche stories to write, but I fully realize that even those little stories will all also be found by 50 other reporters. I prefer dealing with real people in my stories, and once you’ve been interviewed 100 times by other reporters, you really cease to be a real person — the answers get rehearsed, the lines get too pat, and so on.
All that complaining said, it’s also exactly the kind of assignment I love: an extended high-adrenaline rush, the kind that comes with (hopefully) finding great stories on little sleep. There’s absolutely no structure to my job. Everybody else going there for the DMN has their next few weeks planned out for them hour by hour, day by day: “If it’s Tuesday, it must be luge prelims.” All I have to do is come up with an interesting story to tell every day.
And you can judge to see how I do, by checking out the web site every day. (And here, of course, although I don’t yet know how much time I’ll have to post. Hopefully, enough to keep you guys interested.)
3 thoughts on “cdmom announcement, oly preview”
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Well, I’m sure 50 other reporters will discover this one, but I did a short on all the medical disaster teams from across the country being sent to Utah. They’re all gonna be in some big warehouse or something “training” in case someone drops a bottle of smallpox on the luge track. The team I spoke with insists they won’t actually get to see any events, though.
BTW: Try some of that Polygamy Ale.
Hey Josh… how do we check for your articles on the DMN site? You’re not listed as a “columnist”, the search function turns up only one article you’ve done for them, and the front page doesn’t show by-lines. Any suggestions for finding _your_ articles?
Alas, with the web site redesign, it’s harder than ever. If you go to the main Olympics subpage and look for anything that doesn’t involve a specific sport, there’s a good chance I wrote it. Otherwise, I’ll try to post links to all my stories here.