People often ask what it’s like to be a newspaper reporter. They visualize reporters as racing to disasters, uncovering government conspiracies and the such. Booze in the bottom drawer, and anonymous insiders on Line 1.
Well, wouldn’t that be fun.
In truth, a good portion of my day is spent cultivating stories. I’m constantly brainstorming fresh ways to tell perennial — potentially tired — tales. I scan newsletters, field calls, hash out story ideas with colleagues, write and re-write, proofread, and argue about grammar. No, it’s not always exciting.
Part of that story research involves firing out emails to contacts. And for almost two decades, it’s a system that’s worked like a hot damn. That is, until The Great Email Mystery of Sometime in Early June.
It was about that time we seemed to hit the summer story drought, a time when community news is generally scarce. Groups break off until fall. School dwindles down to summer classes. People go on holidays. The phones stop ringing.
But if there’s one thing a reporter can count on, it’s the constant trickle of emails providing potential story fodder. Alas, sometime in June I began to think it was going to be a particularly dry summer, so to speak. Barely anyone was answering me. I would arrive each morning and find that once again, my email inbox was drier than a canteen in the desert. I kept refreshing, hoping for a taste of something.
Sure, I got a few emails every day. Enough not to question my email’s basic operation. There were inter-office memos. A few government pressers here and there. Even a few direct emails were answered. But I was starving for stories generated by me. I kept sending out queries through June, and then into July.
“Why aren’t people answering me?” I recall whinging, shortly before my own summer break.
That all changed at the beginning of August, when a colleague mentioned an email blast we all received from some PR guy. Only, I didn’t receive it. I refreshed. I refreshed again. Nothing.
And then it dawned on me. Finally.
“Maybe it’s in my junk folder…” I mumbled.
And yep, there it was. Along with a wellspring of other emails. But instead of bringing relief they knocked me over, one by one.
An email from Doreen Jones from the Community Cupboard, thanking us for highlighting the loss of their space at Chilliwack middle school. (They’re about to announce their new location.)
An email from Ed Centre graduate Angie Moseanko, who earned numerous financial awards for her hard work towards graduation over the last year. I had reached out to her to write a feature story about her success, and yes, she would have been pleased to be featured.
An email from Cultus Lake Waterslides, responding to my query about a rumour that their lifeguards had to be treated due to poor air quality on August 2. They answered right away, and in the affirmative. But just like all the rest, it was sent to junk.
Click after click through that darn folder, my heart broke a little more. Missed opportunities. Stories I couldn’t tell in time. Leads that were too late to follow. And after the heartbreak came the self-loathing, coupled with a tinge of anger.
Why exactly, had I neglected my junk mail folder for three entire months? Three months! How could I be so entirely stupid?
Finally, I had the technical questions. Did I change my preferences? Did I alter something to send all the good stuff to the trash can? I didn’t remember doing any such thing, and a mini-investigation proved I was right. My email is set up exactly like everyone else’s.
So, I’m chalking it up to a gremlin or a glitch. And I’m trying to find the humour in it all. This is, after all, what it is to be a newspaper reporter. To take the hit and keep on going. To make mistakes and get to come back the next day. To miss a few shots, but keep the big picture in mind.
And, as I summed it up after at least half an hour of noisy pouting: “I know I’m going to get over this, but it won’t be today.”
@CHWKcommunity
jpeters@theprogress.com
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