source crushes

a girl i know who works for the la times was telling me about someone she worked with at a small paper with. her friend had taken a personality test and the results had been definitive: she wasn't going to make it far in the journalism business.

now i've never taken that particular personality test, but as someone who knows myself pretty well, i'm fairly certain i'd fare similarly. ironic, because like this hopeless soul i'm aspiring to break into the same business. here are the facts.

it's hard for me to cold call sources. sometimes i feel the need to reach down and make sure my body hasn't sucked up my balls like a frightened dog. then i dial. approaching strangers at an event for comments isn't exactly my forte either. for that matter, i'm not a great writer either. pretty good compared to just about everyone i meet, but not exactly a standout around people trying to do the same thing i am for a living.

yet i try. and it's because even i have those occasional days where interviews will stop being uncomfortable and the interviewee just keeps saying interesting things. i still trip over questions, but they don't seem to mind and send something witty, insightful or both back anyways.

that i enjoy. i want to tell friends about the great conversation i just had. and yes, if i were a 12-year old girl i'd probably draw a big heart with an arrow through it with my name and the sources printed inside.

so courtesy of a story i am reporting about publid disclosures of conflicts of interest, here's who i heart right now:

i called geneva overholser because she's more or less the most qualified source in the world for writing stories about the media. she's been a foreign correspondent on two continents, editor of the des moines register when the paper won a pulitzer for overall excellence, editorial board member of the nyt, ombudsman for the post, and now teaches at missouri. i could list all her credentials but that might exceed whatever memory blogger allocates my humble blog. oh, and she's smart as hell and seems to formulate well thought-out ideas in the time average people need to decide their next word. at one point, she said i haven't considered the issue before so this is off the top of my mind than went ahead and said about five things where i immediately thought to myself, how can i work that into the story? next time i'm hard up for something to write, i may just call her and say what's on the tip of your tongue?

cassandra tate, you may have never heard of. i hadn't either, though she was pretty successful as a journalist, and wrote for cjr and was a nieman fellow before she left the biz to get a ph.d in history. but admittedly, while i was chatting with her, i felt a tinge of envy toward her husband (ombudsman for the seattle pi) who i had spoken to a day earlier. i can't imagine how many great conversations took place in their house. she spoke as if you needed to turn a painting into your editor. i wasn't in lewiston, idaho in april of 1978 but it sure sounded great.

if you haven't spoken to jay rosen about old-school journalists, then you're missing out on many good laughs. rosen's blog, press think, is mandatory for anyone looking to think critically about the media. and he's more or less the guy in civic journalism. to date, he's the only source i've encountered who goes in to character on the phone. without warning when talking about journalists, he goes into the act, a sort of whiny crowing voice paraphrasing the usual complaints about who's going to pay for this or that or how are we going to do the important stories. his message: stop being a bitch and start trying to figure things out. yet, he's not condescending about it, he's right.