Diary - 3

May started with a trip to New York. On Friday, May 2, Maria and I hit the road and by 10.30, we were sitting at the morning news meeting of The New York Times. I already knew this newspaper is a leader in multimedia journalism, now I saw why: the meeting actually began with discussing what was already online, including a video showing how a park in the city would be transformed. Then we got a tour of the building from Nancy Sharkey, Umar’s mentor, and I had a lunch with Umar. He was my great host for the weekend, as I stayed in the city until Sunday.

Next week I started to work on a story that had a couple of twists and turns. I had the original idea of writing about how cheap Chinese imports hurt businesses in the region (it came from an advertisement in which a business association complained about the issue). My editor suggested instead that I should write about how the cheap dollar might help foreign-owned businesses to expand in the region. He gave me a list of all the foreign-owned companies based in the region, counting some 500 firms. The only guidance he gave me was to look for smaller companies (the number of the employees were indicated on the list) that are not publicly traded (for this, I should have checked Yahoo Finance).

I soon realized that it just made no sense to randomly pick companies from the list and contact them on a trial and error basis, so I called the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce to ask them if they knew about foreign companies with expansion plans. They did. In the next step – following Maria’s advice – I looked up the clips the Inquirer had about these companies. I showed them to Maria who threw them out after one another: none of them seemed to be good to write about from the perspective of the dollar.

There was a company, however, that announced investments last year with the first phase due to be completed by the middle of this year. So I was asked to check up this company. The dollar story was dropped.

As an editor, I must quietly say that it was clearly not a well-thought-out and serious assignment to give a foreigner without the knowledge of the local business environment a list of companies to make a story out of it. It was rather like giving a child a toy (not a funny one, though) just to engage him.

Anyway, I started to work on this new assignment that also held some surprises. When I first called the company, a receptionist simply hung up on me after I introduced myself, saying “sorry, we don’t take any calls”. At my second try, she wrote down my name and number, saying that “if they want to talk to me, someone will call me”. Finally I called directly the president of this company on his cell who immediately agreed to meet me and give me an interview.

But the following morning an e-mail was waiting for me from a manager, saying the president is too busy for the interview. Then I called this manager and asked if he could give me an interview. He said OK but this OK lasted for only a couple of days again as this Monday he wrote me he could not make it.

Meanwhile, my editor told me to get the contract this company had with the state, as it received some state aid for its investment. These “right to know law requests” must be made in writing and who knows when I will finally receive the documents. To be continued at that time, provided I am still at the Inquirer.

The third story I started to work on looked a bit more promising. Inspired by some advertisements from jewelers who seek to buy diamonds from people off the street, I made I couple of interviews with jewelers on the so called Jewelers’ Row. It went fine and I got a picture of the current troubles of the diamond market.

To write the story, however, my editor wanted me to talk to people who are trying to sell their diamonds as well. Finding such people is of course much more difficult, if not impossible, than finding jewelers. I went back to Jewelers’ Row asking for the help of the jewelers – as my editor suggested – without success. My last try will be going to an event tomorrow, where a company will buy everything from people who need instant cash, from gold to antiques. Probably I won’t find anyone with diamonds, but hopefully will find something to illustrate the story with.

Earlier this week, I asked Mike Vitez to accompany him on interviews. I really like the stories of this Pulitzer-winner journalist (and like him as a person as well), so I would like to learn from him. It was not an interview, but I went to an event with him where his goal was to fish for people he could later interview for a story about those who do not have access to proper health care.

Outside the newsroom, I went to a baseball game yesterday. The Phillies beat the Atlanta Braves.

Also yesterday, there was a Big Hollywood Filmmaking in the newsroom, with Superstar Owen Wilson Himself. The title of the movie is Marley & Me, where Marley is a dog and Me is her master, a former Inquirer columnist. This guy wrote a column one day about the death of his dog, and the next day he received some 3,000 e-mails from touched readers. So he decided to write a whole book about Marley (& Himself), which became a bestseller bringing him to riches (so he is not with the Inquirer any more). And now the book is even beeing adopted for a movie. And it's not even just Owen Wilson, but his wife is played by Jennifer Anniston! (I knew who she was before, unlike Owen Wilson).