about this sitesee Meranda's resumesee clips and work sampleskeep in touch
home

Archive for March 15th, 2007

QOTD: To have a right to do a thing…

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”
— G. K. Chesterton

Otherwise known as, the entire point of ethics class summed up in one succinct sentence.

OK, so maybe ethics class was to teach us how to tell the difference.

I miss that class. It was actually one of my favorite journalism classes (ranking just behind print beat reporting and just before feature writing and news design). It was also one of the most challenging because, as Jan would always tell us, there was “no fence sitting.” It definitely prepared me to situations I later ran into and will surely run into in the future.

What makes me happy

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

It doesn’t take much to make me smile. The night editor is constantly telling me I laugh, eh hem, giggle, more than anyone she’s ever met. It’s true. I’m probably one of the happier people in the world.

Why am I so happy? It’s not that my life has been amazing. I’m still waiting on the UPS truck to bring me that silver platter and still wonder who stole my silver spoon. Nope, I’m not happy because I’ve had it easy. Because, I learned a long time ago to find pleasure in the small things and to laugh at life’s bumps and learn from its bruises. You can’t really do anything about something that’s already happened except accept it and move along.

“Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.” — Unknown

The truth is, I find joy in the silliest of things. It might be a funny item in the blotter, such as someone getting arrested for underage consumption the night before their 21st birthday or some teens running out of gas while trying to burglarize a home. (OK, so that second one, it seriously made me laugh the whole night.) It might be a vending machine that tells me, “Have a nice day.” It could be not finding a parking ticket on my car, six hours after I should have moved it off the street. It could be flipping a penny face up so the next person to walk by can enjoy the “all day long you’ll have good luck.” Or it could be as simple as a stranger saying hello, a nice breeze as I walk from my car into the building or a glimpse of the skyline on my drive home from work. I’m seriously easy to make happy.

no newspapers is a good thing... haha

Today, it was the two empty newspaper boxes I saw on my way home from work.

It made me smile so much I took my camera out and snapped a photo. Why? Because, empty boxes means that people were compelled to buy today’s papers. The J&C and the Indy Star made people stop, pull out 50 cents and buy the news. Although I’m all for new media and the Web, there is still that rush that comes from knowing what you produce is being read and seen.

I used to love going to Chipotle in Kent. Not because of the food (though the chicken burritos are amazing), but because standing in line I was always guaranteed to see at least half a dozen students reading the Stater. For some reason, the newspaper box in the front door and the long lines combined to produce a steady stream of readers. I loved to watch them. My colleagues and I used to stand in line and almost squeal everytime we saw someone follow the jump or read something and prod their buddy, “Did you see this?”

It’s one thing to produce the content, to talk about the stories,develop them and lay them out, and even to see that pay off in print. But seriously, nothing can replace knowing that people actually see what you spent your time on. It makes it so worth every sleepless night, every stressful day.

I get a similar rush from story chats, e-mails or phone calls. Likewise, our editors send out a daily online reads telling us the top dozen or so most read stories on the Web the previous days.

Like I said, it doesn’t take much to make me happy.