Brief Update

As some people have pointed out recently, the "Dispatches" blog has basically become a place where I post NFL articles and nothing else. I apologize for that. It was never my intention. In fact, I think I deserve some credit for continuing to produce the football article each week.

Anyway, even though I don't have a lot of time right now, I wanted to give any readers out there a brief summary of what's going on in my world. I'm coming up on the busiest time of the semester. The next week (or two) is going to be absolute hell, but if I get through it relatively unscathed, the rest should be smooth sailing. This week, I have a pretty big assignment for my magazine editing class due on Wednesday, a research paper for my ethics class due on Thursday, and one of my last major stories for my news reporting class due on Saturday. I have not made substantial progress on any of these projects. I mean, I've done some serious research (mostly today and yesterday. I am, at heart, a procrastinator), but I still have a long way to go.

I am particularly excited about the story for my reporting class. I'm finding some great information, and this could potentially be a pretty big story, assuming I can get people to talk to me about it some time this week. The professors are calling this a "document story," and the main purpose of the assignment is to teach us to use information from public records to buttress a story. Since my beat is the business of higher education, I'm reporting on the university's finances, mainly by looking at the forms the school is required to file with the IRS, since they are technically considered a non-profit organization. Obviously, since these are public records, this information is out there for anyone to see if they care to look it up. But it seems that most people just don't care enough to look into it, or even if they do, they're not making the sorts of connections that I'm making. Man, I hope I can get people to talk to me about what I'm seeing. This story could be excellent.

My research paper for my ethics class is also quite interesting. I'm writing about the Don Imus "nappy-headed hos" controversy, and the general thrust of my argument is that, even though what Imus said was basically indefensible, the media coverage of the story was inappropriately one-sided. Plenty of journalists rushed to condemn Imus for what he said, while relatively few took a stand for freedom of speech or argued that the reaction was not proportionate to the offense. I'm not necessarily saying those positions are correct, but I find it curious and somewhat troubling that relatively few people in the mainstream media were making those arguments.

My lack of free time is becoming increasingly frustrating to me, as I have all sorts of great ideas for stuff that I would like to write. I'm still working on the horror story that I've mentioned before, though I can't make any sort of prediction regarding when it will be finished. One problem is simply that I can't afford to dedicate much time to writing fiction right now. Another problem is that the story is proving to be much longer than I originally expected. I thought it would be about a 3,000-4,000 word story when I first came up with the idea. I've now written over 6,500 words and I'm not particularly close to the end.

Whenever the story is finished, I intend to put it up on an internet publishing site I found recently, www.webook.com. It looks like a good place to have your stuff read by other aspiring writers, and maybe even get it in print if enough other people dig your story.

I don't know if I've written much about the multimedia project I've been working on for the past few weeks (probably not, considering how little I've been blogging), but the project involved interviewing a cancer patient, recording the interview, then pairing the audio with photographs of the interview subject and her family. It was a difficult project to work on, from both an emotional and a logistical standpoint. There were a lot of complications, many of them arising from the fact that our professors did not organize this well and the thing turned into sort of a clusterfuck. It was also particularly difficult for my group because our interview subject had to go into the hospital to be treated for a spot of cancer that recently appeared in her lung, so our access to her and her family was limited, preventing us from getting all the audio and photographs we wanted. That being said, I think we did an excellent job with what we had. I was thrilled to be teamed up with a great group of people (two fellow print journalists from my class, plus an undergraduate photographer), and I think that what we produced is a very professional and moving presentation. It will eventually be online somewhere. They might end up on the American Cancer Society's website, and I wouldn't be surprised if our professors set something up on the university's website as well. I have no idea when this will happen, but I'm not holding my breath, considering the lack of foresight and organization our professors have displayed thus far. As soon as the project is on the web somewhere, I'll let you all know and link to it.

So I never got around to writing something about the election before it took place, but I'm still thinking about writing something about what Obama's presidency will-- or won't-- change about the country. I voted for Obama, and I'm thrilled that he won, but I'm not filled with the boundless optimism I see in some people. I've always been a glass-half-empty kind of guy (as if you didn't know that already). Actually, there was an article in Esquire a few months back, during the primary season, that expressed many of my thoughts much more eloquently than I could myself. I strongly recommend you click the link and read the article; it's one of the best political pieces I've ever read, and this is the kind of writing that makes me love Esquire so much.

Okay, I think that's all for now. I could tell you more, but I'm getting tired and I should probably get back to work. Hopefully more blogs like this one will be coming in the future. As much as I love writing about football, it's nice to write about other things, too.

-Nick