Shamelessly taken from Miranda Writes, journalism in six words:
I like #1, #3 and #7.
Via Boing Boing, something awesome:
I think it’s time I blogged a bit about work. I have always intended this space to be one in which I can write about what matters to me, but I’ve refrained from writing about this new job thus far for fear of the consequences. As you’ll see, this post will maintain some level of anonymity, but I think I’m going to ease the gloves off over time.
(I also think that my overall lack of blogging has been partially due to my decision not to blog about work. Maybe.)
I stopped subbing in December 2007 (with one day’s exception – I was really, really confused when mail from the LCSD showed up today). I started a new job in Corvallis, one that is at least full time. It pays better, but the workload is killer. Down the road, it might even have benefits – though that is a long, ironic story.
I was originally hired to fill a six-month temporary position that was expected to end in June, brought on to compliment an existing employee and help out with a special project. The plan called for at least 3.0 FTE equivalent, with 2.0 in the office at all times and the remaining FTE filled by a pair of folks affiliated with my organization who would conspire to spend 4-5 days in the office between the two of them.
Six weeks in, my coworker, the only person on staff doing the same thing as me, quit. I applied for and got his position, which is full-time and (more or less) permanent. The decision was made not to replace me in the temporary position (how and why that decision was made is still not quite clear to me). As well, one of the people who had originally intended to spend quite a bit of time working in my office got called away to work on another project.
The end result? We’re down to 1.5-1.75 FTE, if that, split among two people instead of four. The workload has shifted somewhat, but not a lot – the original plan had called for two people precisely because previous experience had suggested that one was simply not enough, and I’m not in so deep I missed the irony of my org’s decision (the same org that decided it had needed two people) to stick with one person. I had six weeks experience and no real training when I started the full-time job. We’re in the middle of something rather important (the thing that brought me on in the first place), which means the learning curve is steep and I don’t have a lot of time to adjust.
Oh, and I should mention that two of my bosses, the ones with experience in my field, don’t have much experience working on a project quite like the one I’m working on. So while their experience is good, I’m finding that their suggestions, advice and orders don’t always translate well to my immediate situation – though for the most part, I have had nothing to compare them to. I had the good fortune to host three volunteers from two similar worksites (who do the same work I do! yay!) for two weeks earlier this month, and I learned more from them (thanks, A, D & L) in the two weeks they were here than I did in the preceding 3+ months from my more immediate supervisors. It was amazing (the amount of work we got done and the fun I had was incredible), but the crash that occurred when they left was harsh.
I also inherited the work my predecessors had done in shaping my organization and its relation to the community. I like my predecessor(s), but they did things very differently than how I intend to do things. The problem is that I don’t have the time to really lay the groundwork for the adjustments I want to make – I need to make things happen right fracking now, and it’s proving quite difficult to work in someone else’s paradigm.
On the plus side, I have the support of my seven bosses (yes, I have seven bosses – at three different levels/in three different orgs, depending on how you want to look at things; five of them are a committee). That helps. What doesn’t help is that they are legitimately busier than me and thus rely on me to do quite a few things I would prefer to see them do in the long run (part of my job entails training my bosses to do the things I can do now – and it makes total sense in context, trust me). As a result of my covering for them, my own work has suffered a bit. I’m treading water rather than making progress, or so it feels sometimes.
I have one part-time coworker who is either helping me maintain my sanity or helping me become cynical about my job. I’m not sure which. I think it’s both. In any case, she makes me laugh, which I’m counting as a good thing at this point. At the least she is a source of institutional memory for me, since my predecessor/former coworker chose to keep a lot of really useful information in his head and not in writing.
The next 6-8 weeks look to prove crucial to the project I’m working on. I’m not sure how things will turn out, as I’m finding my ability to influence what happens is much smaller than I’d hoped it would be at this point. As well, I’m seeing decisions made that I think are flat-out wrong, and my inexperience gives me little credibility with which to make my suggestions of alternative courses of action stick.
I suppose I should comment on the upside of all this, in case everyone thinks I think my job sucks. It doesn’t. It’s hard, and I’m in a pretty tough place, but I have lots of optimism regarding the long-term possibilities of my organization. I’ve compiled a long list of projects to start and processes to implement, and I’m genuinely hopeful that when I walk away, I will have really changed and improved the organization.
It’s just the next two months that are threatening to do me in. Right now, I’m focused on survival. After that, well…. *rubs hands together in glee*
By the way, the genesis of this post was two phone conversations Friday and a long lunch I had today with someone who’s becoming a very dear friend. She helped me get some perspective on the seemingly endless list of things I need to do, and reminded me that I need to do a better job taking care of myself while at work. Thanks, J – you have no idea how much that helped – or maybe you do =) I just hope I can make it happen.
Dave, Jen – I think we are going to do a lot of drinking. Get ready.
From Carrie Brownstein’s Monitor Mix, an excerpt from an interview Brownstein did with a producer from The Bachelor (yes, I know):
Q: What tricks or strategies does the show employ to amp up the drama and tension during the taping of the show?
A: Well, in the private one on one interviews with a producer (like me) it is the producers job to get the sh*t talking started, like “tell me honestly what you think of Sally” — if the interviewee does not want to respond in a catty way then the producer will usually go to the next level, like “well I personally think she is a self absorbed, attention starved skank,” and then see if the person will take the bait. Once you start learning who in the house is not well liked it is easy to start seeding conversations and gossip. Also, if the conversations linger too long on favorite movies and stuff the producers will step in a say, “ok we all know we signed up for a TV show — so if you don’t start talking about something more topical then you can’t have the sushi you requested tonight.” The smarter cast members start to realize that everything can be bartered. Like, “I will give you a good one-on-one interview about Sally, IF you let me listen to my iPod for the rest of the day.”
It’s like the opposite of ethical.
If maintaining people’s dignity is at all important… ah, never mind.
Why don’t journalists everywhere publicly repudiate Fox News?
Inspired by this.
…or is that atheist? Either way, he’s got a point: The holier-than-thou game is counterproductive:
One of the more frustrating, futile, and self-aggrandizing rhetorical games is to tell people what their priorities should be. Nick Kristof has played this game in the past, chastising womens’ rights groups for not focusing their limited resources on whatever his pet cause of the week happens to be. It’s also global warming concern troll Bjorn Lomborg’s trick, saying that instead of focusing resources on combating global warming we should use them for a bunch of other things that aren’t going to happen. There’s always a more important cause, a more deserving subject, a more downtrodden person. It’s essentially a way of undermining all good works while building up the critic as More Serious And Enlightened Than Thou.
But people have different priorities. And to the extent people become involved in issues or causes, they have different skill sets, different abilities, different sets of knowledge. They have different things they can bring to the table. Telling people they should be fretting about the women of Afghanistan instead of focusing on eating disorders is, to put it bluntly, just stupid. More than that, it achieves absolutely nothing.
“Sometimes, though, the professional outlook can become a disadvantage, preventing the very people who have the most at stake – the professionals themselves – from understanding major changes to their profession. In particular, when a profession has been created as the result of some scarcity, as with librarians or television programmers, the professionals are often the last ones to see it when that scarcity goes away. It is easier to understand that you face competition than obsolescence.”
From Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody.
Guess which profession he’s talking about.
Crallspace points out that there’s a slight discrepancy in two stories covering the recent cancellation of jetboat races on the Willamette.
The races were cancelled, as far as I know, due to complaints and public outcry regarding the noise and pollution.
How the DH story explains the cancellation and opposition:
Gary Weaver of Crabtree, who serves on the association board and had lobbied to have the races based in Albany, said the event was called off because it had not yet heard from the State Marine Board and was running out of time.
…
The planned event got opposition from Willamette Riverkeeper, a Portland-based conservation group which suggested Detroit Lake as a better venue, the Corvallis Gazette-Times reported.
How the GT handles the same:
“(The Marine Board) just had too many letters of complaint,” said Tim Harding, SOPBA vice president. “The end result was to take it to a community that wanted us.”
…
Ashley Massey, spokeswoman for the Marine Board, said the agency had received more than 1,000 e-mails and letters about the race. She said the letters had not yet been tallied to determined how many were against the event and how many were in support.
…
Conservation organization Willamette Riverkeeper encouraged its 1,500 members to urge the Marine Board to deny the application. The group officially opposed the race and argued that a better location would be Detroit Lake or some other body of water where motorboating is more common.
Do you see the discrepancy? The DH story completely omits any context as to why there was opposition or who the opposition was (it was more complex than Willamette Riverkeeper), instead relying on pro-jetboat sources.
It reads like a retyped press release.
This is not meant to be an attack on the reporter who wrote the DH story. There are plenty of possible reasons the story was garbage that have nothing to do with the reporter.
However, the fact remains that the DH story was bad journalism. It lacked important information and context regarding the event.
I wonder if we’ll see a follow-up or correction. Something tells me the DH editor won’t see the need.
In a major shift of policy, the Justice Department, once known for taking down giant corporations, including the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, has put off prosecuting more than 50 companies suspected of wrongdoing over the last three years.
Instead, many companies, from boutique outfits to immense corporations like American Express, have avoided the cost and stigma of defending themselves against criminal charges with a so-called deferred prosecution agreement, which allows the government to collect fines and appoint an outside monitor to impose internal reforms without going through a trial. In many cases, the name of the monitor and the details of the agreement are kept secret.
In other words, the government is enacting a whole new set of practices designed solely to protect corporations from having to follow the law.
I’d be more optimistic if I thought Clinton OR Obama would put a swift end to this practice.
As is, it’s another piece of evidence of how thoroughly belief that private property is sacred has permeated mainstream American culture – and rather completely corrupted the Justice Department.
It’s disgusting.
I’ve been paying a lot of attention to politics and the media my entire adult life, and I still can’t believe this actually happened.
SHUSTER: Well, here’s the other thing that we saw on the tape, Chris, is that, when Obama went in, he was offered coffee, and he said, “I’ll have orange juice.”
MATTHEWS: No.
SHUSTER: He did.
And it’s just one of those sort of weird things. You know, when the owner of the diner says, “Here, have some coffee,” you say, “Yes, thank you,” and, “Oh, can I also please have some orange juice, in addition to this?” You don’t just say, “No, I’ll take orange juice,” and then turn away and start shaking hands. That’s what happens [unintelligible] —
MATTHEWS: You don’t ask for a substitute on the menu.
Chris Matthews is insane.
Perhaps in the future, he will be considered the greatest satirist of all time. People will look back and wonder how he got away with having what was so obviously a brilliant comedy show on a ‘news’ network (and how he managed to never break character, not even once).
In the meantime….
I had one long day today, but something pretty fun happened at the end of it: I got to have drinks and talk with Mark Rudd, formerly of Students for a Democratic Society.
Plenty of my friends were there, and the conversation was great. I’ve not the time or energy to rehash things now, but there is thing that is really stuck in my mind that I want to try and get out before I go to bed.
Let me also add that the writing of this post was prompted by this Atrios post.
The larger conversation we were having was around the idea of organizing – what is organizing? How do we define the term? What historical models can we draw on? And – and this came up repeatedly – what’s the deal with the kids today? Why are/aren’t they organizing? (And I say kids because I am indeed talking about people who are still in high school.)
At one point, the conversation wandered over to electoral politics: What’s the deal with that Obama guy? What is he doing to create such a groundswell, especially among youth?
Earlier, Rudd had raised the idea that for many youth, something happened in 2005-2006 that really pierced the usual haze; he suggested it was the combination of Katrina and the mainstreaming of the realization that Iraq was lost. I think he’s right.
Putting that together with the Obama phenomenon, I suggested that it’s possible the left (broadly and vaguely construed, as always) missed an incredible opportunity by not organizing around that sea change in perspective, by not anticipating and being ready for it, and – frankly – by letting it get sucked into electoral politics and Obama (who, for all his virtues, is not talking about capitalism or imperialism in near the same way he’s addressing race and even gender).
The point is – and this is a damn exciting thought for me – that something is going on. Something is piercing the atomized, consumerist haze we normally walk around, at least for a few more people than normal. The potential for change hasn’t been this great since, well, before I was an adult – and that means it’s time to revive once-common and now-heretic ideas like free education and radical limits on corporate power.
I know this thought is barely coherent and completely undeveloped, but I wanted to get it down and out there before I crash.
Also, Mark had a great question: What is organizing?
Leave your answers in the comments.
Yes, that’s FUCK, in BIG FAT LETTERS.
What else do you say to this?
The exact circumstances surrounding the dealings between Haynes and Yoo that led to the development of this memorandum are unclear. However, it is clear that Haynes had previously authorized the use of the torture techniques, and had secured an order from Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld authorizing them.
Following the implementation of these techniques, more than 108 detainees died in detention. In a large number of these cases, the deaths have been ruled a homicide and connected to torture.
I know: It was done in our name and we didn’t stop it.
The National’s “Fake Empire,” off Boxer.
Eric Alterman has a great essay in The New Yorker. I’ve been meaning to blog about it for a week or more, but…. I just haven’t. Instead, I’m going to link and excerpt:
In a recent episode of “The Simpsons,” a cartoon version of Dan Rather introduced a debate panel featuring “Ron Lehar, a print journalist from the Washington Post.” This inspired Bart’s nemesis Nelson to shout, “Haw haw! Your medium is dying!”
“Nelson!” Principal Skinner admonished the boy.
“But it is!” was the young man’s reply.
Nelson is right. Newspapers are dying; the evidence of diminishment in economic vitality, editorial quality, depth, personnel, and the over-all number of papers is everywhere. What this portends for the future is complicated. Three years ago, Rupert Murdoch warned newspaper editors, “Many of us have been remarkably, unaccountably complacent . . . quietly hoping that this thing called the digital revolution would just limp along.” Today, almost all serious newspapers are scrambling to adapt themselves to the technological and community-building opportunities offered by digital news delivery…
…
Finally, we need to consider what will become of those people, both at home and abroad, who depend on such journalistic enterprises to keep them safe from various forms of torture, oppression, and injustice. “People do awful things to each other,” the veteran war photographer George Guthrie says in “Night and Day,” Tom Stoppard’s 1978 play about foreign correspondents. “But it’s worse in places where everybody is kept in the dark.” Ever since James Franklin’s New England Courant started coming off the presses, the daily newspaper, more than any other medium, has provided the information that the nation needed if it was to be kept out of “the dark.” Just how an Internet-based news culture can spread the kind of “light” that is necessary to prevent terrible things, without the armies of reporters and photographers that newspapers have traditionally employed, is a question that even the most ardent democrat in John Dewey’s tradition may not wish to see answered.
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