Murphy's Law

The title sums up Thursday for me in a nutshell. I knew exactly what I wanted to cover that day, even though it took me a good amount of time to actually find a story that I found mildly interesting. Point was, I thought I knew I had a story that I could do a good job on. And I had a decent backup just in case for any reason my first story fell through. The Post-Standard's website said that there was an event taking place on Thursday at 11 am in the city - the Economic and Entrepreneurial Fair at the South Side Innovation Center. I thought it would be interesting to go and see if it was popular event and interview a few people involved with the event. I drove into the city with Matt Cohen around 12 (the event was supposedly going until 3) and went into the building where the fair was taking place. Of course, there was almost nobody there. I asked a woman at the front desk if there was a fair taking place here today. Well, she said, the Post-Standard made a mistake, and as it turns out, the event isn't taking place until October 12. Good, I said as I left. OK, so the Post-Standard screwed me up; that's alright, because I have a backup plan - interview a spokesperson at the Republican Party. Headquarters. We drove over there, thinking that a spokesperson would be there (Cohen had been told over the phone when he would be available), and as it turns out, he was out and wouldn't be back until it was too late for me to interview him.

By this time, it's 1:30 pm, and I have absolutely nothing. This is where I made my rookie mistake. Instead of sending up a flare (go to Prof. Nicholson) while I was drowning, I tried to save myself. I found the Fulton schools story at around 2 pm back in the classroom, conducted a phone interview with the director of finance (yes I am the one whose initials are A and J), and cranked a script out by around 3 pm. Prof. Nicholson asked me if I actually went to Fulton when I gave him my script, and I told him what I did, to which he replied the assignment would be an automatic "F" because I did a phone interview as opposed to an in-person one. I went ahead and recorded the piece anyway so I had something to hand in.

If there's one thing I could take out of Thursday's experience, it would be what Prof. Nicholson told me afterwards: Always go to the news director if you don't have a story. Never try to salvage something by yourself, because you could make a critical error without realizing it until it's too late. So I learned a valuable lesson that I can take with me through the rest of this class and hopefully through my career.

At least the Phillies won the division, bringing euphoria to Phillies Nation for the first time in 14 years. So I got that goin' for me...which is nice.