Notes from St. Louis.

I've always loved books and reading. It's unsurprising then that one of the first things I did when I came here was to enroll in the local library.

It was one of the best moves I made. The library system in St. Louis is wonderful. The books, the CDs, the DVDs, the programmes - they're fantastic and the perfect example of the gulf between a developed country like the United States and a third-world country (I will not call it a developing country until I see signs of development in the mentality of its people) like mine.

The Central Library on Olive Street is a thing of beauty in itself. With it's massive arches, vast marble floors and beautiful stained-glass windows, it has a cathedral-like grandeur that takes my breath away every time I go in.

With all the time I spent in the library, it was inevitable that I would eventually end up writing a story about it.

Fact is, my article on libraries was a labour of love from start to finish. I conceived the idea, wrote the story, took the pictures and got the graphs and statistics. Seeing it published has got to be one of the most satisfying moments of my time here. It's not the biggest story I've ever done, but I just loved this one a lot.

That being said, work recently has been a curious mixture of triumphs and disappointments, of satisfaction and frustration.

The library story was definitely a triumph. The disappouintment was my story on human trafficking, which I was really keen on. Human rights coverage has always been my area of interest and one of my early forays into contact building was with the International Institute in St. Louis. The Post-Dispatch already has a reporter, Doug Moore, working the beat. So, finding an untapped angle and not stepping on his toes was the key. I thought I had managed to do that with the human trafficking story, which was basically about people being brought to the US under false pretexts and being made to work in slave-like conditions.

It was not to be because my contact person at the Institute said the victims were unwilling to be interviewed, even after I offered to not take pictures or use their real names.

I could deal with that. After all, this kind of rejection is part and parcel of every reporter's life. What annoyed me was the unprofessional way in which the person at the Institute handled it. She promised to get back to me after I had gone to see her and discussed the story with her. However, two months and several emails and voicemails later, she still hadn't told me what the situation was one way or the other. I hate being left hanging like that and really expected more. Oh well...

Work on the whole has been good though. I've had stuff to do regularly and that's always good for my mental health.

That being said, I have been getting a little frustrated at the number of parades/fairs/street events I'm asked to cover. Sometimes, it feels like all I'm doing is parades. In the past month alone, I've done stories on Baden Taste, the Corvette caravan and Festival of Nations. It's nice to attend these events, but I'd really like to get a greater diversity of coverage while I'm here. I don't mean I want to be assigned to all the front page stories. What I do mean is that I'd like to not be the "intern" that's given the stories that can't be screwed up.

It's galling also because I've been getting compliments from my editors and colleagues on the quality of my work, which makes it hard to understand why I'm not getting more challenging stuff to do. Well...at least they're receptive to the ideas that I pitch.

However, it is this that I feel is one of the weaknesses in the fellowship. While we have mentors - and I have a great one in Elisa Crouch - it appears that in my case at least, the higher-ups in the newsroom don't really seem to be on board with the fellowship's ideas and ideals.

Don't get me wrong. They're all fantastic people and have really made me feel welcome at the Post-Dispatch. It just seems that they often don't know what to do with me. For the benefit of future fellows, it might be a good idea for the foundation to work with the higher echelons of the company and come up with a work plan based on the fellow's goals.