Making crime pay.

It's been an interesting couple of weeks here. There've been quite a few developments, personally and professionally.



My time at the Post-Dispatch is almost coming to an end, with me hardly even realising how quickly time has flown by. All of a sudden, I find myself with barely enough time to do all the things that I wanted to do when I first came here (visit Memphis, Chicago, as well as check out several things in St. Louis itself). And I still haven't even come close to doing any of the souvenir shopping that I need to do! Having so many friends can be a tough proposition sometimes, you know!



The good news is that I have, since the mid-term seminar at Poynter, managed to dispel the feeling of homesickness that used to descend on me every few days. I've finally settled nicely here, made some friends and have started slowly counterfeiting what passes as a social life.

I've started going clubbing (courtesy of the Post-Dispatch, which wants me to do reviews), properly checked out some of the many attractions of Forest Park and even attended a Cardinals baseball game (and it was a cracker of a game too!). Go Cards!



But, I digress. This posting, as we Fellows keep being gently reminded, is about the trials, triumphs and tribulations of the 2009 Alfred Friendly Fellows as we muck about at the newspapers in our host cities.



Since my last posting, I've come up with the aforementioned club reviews, a piece on my Disneyworld experience with Hoon, as well as a story on a fire that killed three children.

Each of these experiences has been an interesting learning experience in itself.



I'm particularly proud of the club reviews, because it contains an innovation (I think!) which I suggested all by myself. Our editor, Evan, asked us to do the review in a conversational form. So, I suggested actually having a Gmail chat session with Sherice, the other reviewer. It's worked very well. Having a real chat session enabled us to have a very natural sounding article written in the dialogue form. It also helped us inject some quirkiness (like me ordering a vodka martini, shaken not stirred) as well as some informality (like asking if a dodgy foreigner can pick up a girl at a club) into the proceedings. Check out the finished product here. Btw, in case you're wondering, the vodka martini gag was for a different review. I'm now considering suggesting a similar club review form - probably called Saturday Nightlife - to my paper back home. I really think it will work out well.


The Disney article , on the other hand, was both an opportunity taken as well as an opportunity missed. It was an opportunity taken because I got off my backside and pitched it to the Features editor, Christy Bertleson - who I have to say, was very supportive. Don't you just love editors like that? What started off just as a lark for Hoon and I became a story which got some interesting feedback from readers. Some people - including one guy who works at Disney and had a half hour long phone conversation with me (phew!) - loved it. Others actually called and told me that I went for the wrong rides and should have done other things in that time. One lady left a message saying that I was an 'amateur' for only being able to do so much in one day. Lol!

It was also educational because I got to see how an editor who thinks outside the box can completely change and improve on a story. You see, my original was a long-form feature which ran up to 1,600 words.



Needless to say, it was too long. However, I was pretty much brain-frozen by the time I had done it and asked Christy to surgically remove anything she felt like removing.



However, instead of doing that, she changed the style of the first few paragraphs, from an actual narrative to a snappy, timeline-based almost point-form article and told me to do the same for the rest of the article. It dramatically reduced the length of the story but retained the style, the humour and the flavour.



That being said, the same article also presented an opportunity missed for me, as in I finally didn't get to insert multimedia elements like I wanted to. I had an idea of doing a picture slideshow, along with audio narration for the website. However - and this is mainly my fault. I dawdled - in the end, there just wasn't enough time for it and it ended up being just a regular text-based article on the website as well. Worse still, for some reason, the picture used in the paper was not put up along with the website's article, making it look rather unimpressive. Oh well...



Finally, I worked on a story about a fire that killed three children. It made the front page (woo hoo!!). It was a tragic story, but very interesting from a professional point of view. You see, in Malaysia, most crime (i include accidents and disasters under crime) stories - unless they're really sensational - rarely make the front page. Most of the time, we just give it the regular, run-of-the-mill treatment and it ends up stuck wherever there is space to stick it in. And most of the time, one reporter is sent out to do the story and he comes back with the essentials.



But, what happened here was this: I was sent to the scene, to interview witnesses, get some atmosphere and wait to see if the surviving members of the family returned to the scene.

Another reporter, Michael Sorkin, remained in the office and worked the phones, calling the police, fire department and other authorities to get the nuts and bolts of the story.



This division of work actually makes a lot of sense. Leaving the reporter on the scene free to get anecdotal information and letting somebody else get official statements means both reporters are free to concentrate on one specific element of the story. Hence, nobody is rushed, nobody is pressured and nobody is overwhelmed. Also, when the two different sides of the story came together, the result was interesting - the officials said the smoke detector was not working, while the residents said it was. And that became the crux of the story.



I've got two projects still in the pipeline. One is about the library system here and I finally got all the interviews done today. I'm hoping this might sneak into page one as well. Fingers crossed! The other, a human trafficking story which I would say is a more likely candidate for front page treatment, seems to have hit the skids, mainly because of a lack of response from certain authorities. Very inconsiderate of them, really! But, I've still got a month and a half to go and will continue bugging them until they either tell me yes, or tell me to bugger off. Watch this space. :)