For the past two weeks, the staccato cacaphony of a jackhammer dominated parts of the busiest two days of the production cycle at the newspaper. A crew was taking out a perfectly good curb across the street so that they could replace it with one that appeared to be identical.
The first week, it took them a day and a half to take out some 40 feet of curb. Thankfully the Lord brought rain on the actual deadline day so that we could concentrate. For yesterday's deadline day, the racket lasted only half a day as the crew took out another 40 feet of curb.
In writing classes, discussions about the writing process often turn to talk of writers creating an environment conducive for them to write in. But discussions about reporting often talk about being flexible. If these discussions were part of the rock/paper/scissors game, flexiblity would trump ideal writing environments like scissors beat paper or paper beats a rock.
Deadlines are deadlines, and they're always a part of the journalist's life. So whether it's filing a story from some new venue or trying to do phone interviews or write to the sounds of a jackhammer, the journalist has to be able to adapt.
Posted by JRC at June 1, 2005 09:38 PM | TrackBack