Valya’s Blog

This weekend was a wonderful one. It was Nate’s 30th birthday. It was a wonderful, intimate celebration with brunch, dinner and cake, and keeping everything low key and fun. We discovered a great new brunch restaurant in the Pearl District – Isabel’s and we went to our favorite Indian restaurant for dinner. We spent Saturday afternoon at Wordstock, the Portland writers’ convention. I went into the festival thinking I would enjoy browsing books, perhaps talk with some publishing houses about the outlandish idea of writing a memoir – my mother’s dream more so than mine, but of late, seriously considering it myself for my own reasons.

I thought I might see a few school represented. I wasn’t mistaken there. (I was, however, not so lucky with the publishers looking for new talent… they were there, mostly local companies, looking to promote their most recent products… understandable. No big deal anyway, although I would have been curious to have a chat with someone.) I made a contact with a University of Oregon professor who runs the undergraduate internship program in Portland. He said he knows our company’s owner. I’m getting used to that – everyone seems to know him. It was just like everyone knowing a college professors of mine from the journalism department, who had spent decades working for the Tacoma News Tribune and other prominent media outlets in the Puget Sound area and elsewhere.

It was nice to have made a professional connection. I am supposed to be doing more networking anyway.

That wasn’t nearly as inspiring, though, as the two lectures we heard. They were talks as part of the Wordstock schedule of speakers and the first presentation we heard was from hosted by the University of Oregon. The topic was Investigative Journalism and the three panelists were Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada of the San Francisco Chronicle, and Nigel Jaquiss, a Pulitzer prize winning reporter from the Willamette Week (a Portland alternative weekly newspaper). It is not that the discussion made me realize that I miss the grind of day-to-day journalism work (not to deny that I like that and have fond memories of it, mixed in with a few bitter ones – for learning experience’s sake), rather the inspiration came in the form of a realization that I am desperately starved for lectures, discussions, research into current and developing trends in journalism and international relations. I miss school. I’ve been reading up on grad school prospects lately – just trying to get a sense of what grad school would be like – and I am not 100 percent certain if I miss the undergraduate academic experience in and of itself (i.e. a strong sense of community within the departments, etc.) or what I gather is the graduate school experience (i.e. more research-focused, narrow topics, a lot more 1:1 work with professors (which I actually really tended to enjoy in undergraduate as well), more stringent workloads, etc.). Whatever it is that I was reminiscing for (not that I can reminisce about grad school when I’ve never attended one), the tug to academia was strong and I just wanted to jump back in, dive into the discussions, attend a million more events where I could hear panels like this one, and write papers about them, quote excerpts from the talks in my research on the subject, ask questions and engage the panelists in a lengthy and well-informed discussion afterwards…

A few of snippets I collected in my little notebook (I couldn’t help it… I resisted for a long time, but finally caved to taking notes):

• scoops will be more important as journalism changes and becomes more competitive (Lance)
• newspapers are dying; it will be a slow death, but they will die and not enough revenue is generated online yet (Nigel)
• Federal prosecutors go after reporters every few weeks; not about protecting reporters, but about public information and public access; states have shield laws; Federal – not; hence the problem; understand the concern of “online journalists” who wonder if they will be protected by a Federal level shield law, but the issue is greater than that (Lance)
• bring it on – because our stories were “extreme lawering” – question was: will you get civil lawsuits by Bary Bonds if he’s not indited for the drug use you uncovered (Mark)
• editor vs sensor & how do you define a citizen journalist & should they be covered by a Federal shield law? (yours truly)

There were 100-150 people at this panel (thank you Joanne for teaching me to always jot down an estimate of the number of attendees at any event… scan the room, cont a group of people of about 10 to see what the looks like and then extrapolate/estimate the rest of the crowd). What struck me is that very few were young people. Perhaps predictable given the venue was Wordstock but a bit disappointing considering the stage hosting the panel was the University of Oregon. Not many in the audience were journalists, I judge that by the questions during the Q&A – including what is the Federal shield law (currently in the works) and who falls under it, etc. The topics in the discussion interested me immensely … I was on the edge of my seat, nodding, smiling at the panelists when they made a point I was familiar with, getting overly excited when they mentioned a concept I remember studying… But the trouble is, I do not want to work in the field anymore… or if I do, it is likely not in community newspapers where I belong (done that, not my cup of tea, unfortunately). I don’t believe I have a good grasp on what I need to be as a journalist and I have heavy criticism for myself when it comes to keeping the readership in mind when researching and writing a story. I think I belong in the research and teaching area of the discipline, especially interested in law, ethics and new media angles. However, I also know that it would be difficult to impossible to obtain a grad school degree and teach a subject so hands on in its nature where I have such a minimal term of experience.

It is a dilemma yet to be resolved.  Than you, Nate, for talking me into stopping at this panel. Wish I had caught the one on magazine writing, one of my unexplored passions.

The second inspirational talk we listened to at Wordstock was from Adrian Tomine, a graphic novelist who had recently put out a new book. Nate hadn’t heard of him specifically, but being such a devoted reader of the genre, he wanted to hear this author’s take. Of course, he ended up buying the book afterward, devouring it by the end of the weekend and now I can’t wait to read it myself.

What was inspiratoinal to me was that he seemed like a great story teller, witty, yet carrying a lot of sadness and heavy wisdom. Young man. Very familiar looking. A bit harsh and cold from a distant perspective, but warming up to you very much while his talk takes you away into his creative process, his intriguing inspirations, his interesting and frank take on the craft that is graphic novel creation.

Here are my random notes from that session (yes, indeed, I caved again and took notes in my notebook… the fact that I brought a little notebook just shows how well I know myself and how I anticipated to miss the academia during this experience):

• lives in New York City (Brooklyn) with his wife; how contemporary; I want that for Nate and I – should we both go the artsy, creative route vs. the service-oriented research and academia route;
• dinner scene @ restaurant (sushi) – where a couple next to them were discussing his latest book; the woman had recommended it, the man was heatedly criticizing it;
• San Francisco (SoHo district) (Nate and I recently visited San Francisco after I was there on a business trip, my second time in the city, his – first; I visited with a Bulgarian friend who lives there now too) – used it in his book too; the architecture, the culture, inspirational;
• the viability of this genre and making a living in it (when before he was sleeping on the floors of comic book shop owners);
• and then the restaurant where the woman pushed his coming to her boyfriend’s attention; the man taking it seriously enough to critique in depth rather than dismiss it; and also this discussion in public and at length – they were not ashamed at all; just how has our society changes with comic books…
• English major @ University of California, Berkley; works in studio, acts out & speaks out loud the gestures and dialog his characters do – to make a more realistic representation on the page; his method changed – from scripting first and then drawing off of a Word-typed, listed format script, to sketching and writing at the same time;