Anonymous asked: How about sharing a story you had to cover and weren't looking forward to but enjoyed it unexpectedly?
Great question!
I don’t really have an example from my professional life, but I do from my time interning: I just started at the Village Voice at the end of August 2007, and Wayne Barrett was close to finishing a story about a scandal involving then-N.Y. Gov. Eliot Spitzer and then state senate majority leader, Joe Bruno. (EDIT: You know what has since happened to Spitzer, but Bruno had a corruption conviction thrown out on appeal.)
I was assigned to obtain N.Y. Senate budget books from a 10-year period and I got them from an aide to one senator in an arrangement set up by Barrett. My task (one of about 40 he’d assign each day) was to dig through those books for hours to look for the salary of one specific employee. I found it, and we ran an item that was a sidebar to the larger story.
At the time, I wasn’t looking forward to spending hours in budget books. Nor was I into doing the interview with the senator’s spokseman over what I’d eventually find.
It was daunting work, and I hadn’t been there for more than a week when Barrett assigned me to it. I didn’t think I’d find what he wanted, nor did I think I was ready to handle such a task. I had little actual journalism experience beyond my school paper, a small-time freelance thing at home and a phones/photocopies clerk internship at Newsday (though I did get a story there that landed on page one).
It was this assignment that taught me the patience and the power of investigative reporting. It was my first real taste of what I thought was influential journalism. I haven’t looked back since.
