Spreader of Gossip & Vice

New York gets pretty heavy, girl, I hope it doesn’t crush you.

 

In hindsight, I did not handle the hurricane well.

Superstorm Sandy was my first experience as a social media manager during a disaster. WQXR, the classical music station I work at, is the sister station of WNYC, New York’s public radio station. During the storm, WNYC worked tirelessly to keep people informed.

“Radio stations, one of the most reliable sources of information for people without power, were also impeded by flooding on Monday. Two news radio stations, WNYC and WINS, lost their AM frequencies but continued to broadcast on FM. WNYC’s transmitter ‘is in a swamp, and it’s flooded,’ said Laura R. Walker, the chief executive of New York Public Radio, which operates the station. She added the organization had anticipated the power failure and warned listeners ahead of time. The station’s Lower Manhattan studio lost power on Monday night. But a backup generator kicked in immediately and coverage was not stopped.” — Storm Sends News Media Scrambling, The New York Times

It was WQXR’s job to stay on the air and provide a calming respit from non-stop storm news. Instead of going to pre-recorded programming, hosts and the music directors came into the office in order to be a live voice of information and reassurance between the music. My job was to monitor social media channels and relay WNYC’s updates to our listeners. I spent Oct. 27 to Nov. 4 glued to my computer, eyes darting across multiple Twitter feeds, alternating keeping an ear between WQXR and WNYC (and alternating between coffee and whiskey, as day turned to night).

I also live in Zone A in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a mandatory evacuation zone. I live on the first floor two blocks from Newtown Creek, a toxic body of water that was already flooding by the morning before the storm hit full-force. I evacuated six blocks away to a friend’s apartment where I could keep an eye on what was happing in my neighborhood.

I came home Tuesday morning to very thankfully find no water in my apartment, despite seeing this terrifying photo from the boutique hotel a couple doors down the street. Our basement did flood and knock out the hot water heater, a small, barely noticeable inconvenience for a couple days. I do, though, worry about the toxic residue that may still be down there.

During the storm, I, perhaps foolishly, ventured out to take photos of what I saw. After working at newspapers for 10 years, old habits die-hard. I tweeted and Instagramed them, tagging #Greenpointers (the neighborhood blog) and #Sandy. I relayed them to WNYC’s crowd-sourced Storify page.

PJ Vogt at WNYC’s On the Media spent the storm documenting the coverage and communication on social media and he and I, who only live several blocks apart, came away with a similar sense of community built during the storm.

BOB GARFIELD: So, in general, this experience, this total Twitter immersion during Sandy, did, did it yield any surprises, disappointments, revelations, heartbreak?

PJ VOGT: This is a little embarrassing, ‘cause I think a lot of people [LAUGHS] knew this already, but for me using it during the storm was the first time I’d understood the sense of community that people get specifically from this platform. At this point, my street flooded with waist-high water and a dumpster just floated past me. And I took a picture of it and I tweeted it out, and I was just expressing something. I didn’t really know who I was talking to. And over the next 20 minutes, I got I think like 10 to 20 messages from people asking me follow-up questions, telling me to be safe. They were people that I’d never met, and they were my neighbors.

BOB GARFIELD: Oh. I’m a little – I’m verklempt.

PJ VOGT: I just wanted to make you feel something, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: Am I not but flesh and blood, PJ –

Perhaps because of my incessant tweeting, people living in my neighborhood began asking me, via Twitter, for status updates on what was and wasn’t flooded in north Greenpoint and if the Pulaski Bridge was open.

@knowacki Thanks for sharing this. I live 200 feet away and had no idea. Now I’m keeping an eye on my basement. Think it’s receding.

— Burke Wilmore (@burkewilmore) October 30, 2012

@knowacki any idea if the Pulaski Bridge is open to car OR foot traffic? #greenpoint #greenpointers #LIC — Jaki Levy (@jackomo) October 30, 2012

For the days leading up to and after the storm, I slept in the living room on the couch with the computer at my head. The power at the station was out and everything was running on a generator, which meant all those who could work from home, should. I made myself take walks every so often (and a shower now and then when the hot water came back on) as to not go totally cross-eyed and brain-fried at obsessively consuming so much media.

After a week sequestered at home, I felt shaky and stir-crazy and the fear of the storm was now giving way to the immense severity of its destruction. It’s bad. Really bad.

But as crazy as I drove myself staring at the ever-shifting columns of Tweetdeck, I also took comfort in the messages people were sending to WQXR. People without power and heat, but with battery-operated radios and a cell phone, took the time to tell us we were their calm during the storm. Those simple gestures, were what finally brought me to tears.

iPad fully charged, crank-powered flashlight/radio pre-tuned to WQXR. All ready to read in the dark if the power goes out again.

— Rachel Anne (@ForceBard) October 29, 2012

So glad to know that WQXR is still going through this storm.Now let’s hope my internet doesn’t die, or something. — Julie McMillan (@gershwinlove) October 29, 2012

Hang in there, @wqxr. You are keeping me entertained and focused during #Sandy.

— May Torbatnejad (@Mtorbat) October 29, 2012

Listening to NYPhil on my tansistor radio in the dark. Thank u WQXR for restoringmy sanity on day 4 of Sandy — Stephen Fleming (@FlemingStephen) November 2, 2012

No power or heat but at least I could get #WQXR on my battery powered radio.

— Lee Knuth (@Violetcatlover) November 1, 2012

I love you WQXR. I’m so happy you didn’t abandon me during the hurricane. — Kim Gendreau (@arachnesweave) October 31, 2012

@wqxr Before the power went out I had my viola, bourbon and the late Beethoven quartets. Hell yes!

— Gouverneur Morris (@GoverneurMorris) November 2, 2012

This past Sunday morning, I was standing outside of the hotel in San Francisco that hosted the 2012 Online News Association Conference when Robert Hernandez (@webjournalist to many) walked up and asked, “So, Yakima to New York, what’s that like?” Or maybe it was, “How’d that happen?” A question I ask myself ALL THE TIME.

I think I looked at him a little confused. (Admittedly, the night before included an epic, beer-battered, post-ONA conference karaoke session and everyone was a little groggy.)

My answer was, to some rambling extent, that sometimes I have to pinch myself to know it’s real. It’s a 10-year journey I talk sentimentally about in this post I wrote on the last day of my summer internship at The New York Times.

He followed up by asking what role USC Annenberg’s graduate school, where he teaches and where I earned my master’s degree in online journalism, had played in that? Just as I was about to answer, my ride pulled up and all I could get out, along with a hug goodbye, is “that it helped me shake up my life.”

Reading Robert’s recent post on the Neiman Journalism Lab website, I’d feel like I should get out my full answer because it parallels a lot of what he says in his essay on how students should approach — or attack, for that matter — their J-school education. (It’s no secret that while he as professor and me as student, we disagreed on several how-J-schools-should-be-run issues. Robert also worked at the same paper I did in Yakima, Wash., the Yakima Herald-Republic, but prior to me coming there.)

But I also agree with this commenter, that many J-school students probably aren’t reading Neiman Lab, or utilizing/aware of the other resources out there to take control of their education. I know as an undergrad journalism student in 1995, that I sure didn’t care about the Society for Professional Journalists or its conferences (oh! don’t those seem so old-fashioned now?). I cared about working in the student newsroom and writing stories and, you know, making a difference, CHANGING THE WORLD.

Access to online tutorials to teach yourself coding and the ability to follow industry leaders on social networks changes the student journalism experience today, I’m sure, both undergrad and graduate. But I think for many young journalists there’s still that romance about being in the newsroom and getting the story, not about reading industry and academic blogposts and attending lunchtime talks about the “future of journalism.” (Of course, there are certainly your Callie Schweitzers and Ethan Klappers out there, not to mention my dear friend Kevin Grant, to dispute this general, sweeping statement.)

So, what follows is simply my experience with USC Annenberg’s journalism school, as a 31-year-old journalist nearly a decade into my career, who found myself in a rut at a paper I just didn’t fit in anymore in a town I had grown to love but that never felt exactly like home. I needed a do-over and grad school seemed like the only way out. It turns out it would totally change my life.

THE THINGS I STRUGGLED WITH

• With the decline of the newspaper industry, I really, really thought there would be more people my age and with similar work experience to me in the two-year program. Instead, those people were in Annenberg’s one-year specialized journalism program, which at the time did not include a focus on online journalism and digital media.

• Even in your 30s and with professional experience, it’s hard not to be swayed by professors. It really wasn’t until my second year that I truly began to “hijack,” as Robert says, my J-school education.

• It’s fucking expensive.

• Yes, as Robert says, there are, in fact, “older professor you have written off as ‘irrelevant.’” Their war-story, glory-day ramblings should be limited to an inspirational three-hour symposium lecture the first day of class and be done with it. An entire semester of weekly war-story, glory-day ramblings is a waste of time and money. Did I mention this school is fucking expensive?

• The repetition will kill you. Unfortunately, there was never any continual flow for the online journalism classes. Instead of picking up where the semester before had left off, we were often re-hashing skills and assignments we’d done the semester, or even year before. Audio slideshows, yeah, we got that, can we please move on? Yes we’ve heard of Twitter, next please.

THE THINGS I LOVED

• It’s fucking expensive but you get what you pay for. The one-on-one attention at Annenberg is something I’ve never experienced in academia before. Even while I was writing frustrated blog posts and tweets about how sloooooow J-schools are to change, I never felt more cared about and supported by professors and administrators than I did at Annenberg. And still do as an alumnus.

• The access to the top doers and thinkers in journalism is unparalleled. It was often hard to keep up with the lunchtime, nighttime and in-class speakers that came to Annenberg.

• I got to take a class with Henry Jenkins. I have no idea what the class was about, but HENRY JENKINS!

• As a journalist with a good amount of professional experience, I had a clearer idea of what I wanted out of grad school. I took classes on the future of newsroom leadership and an entrepreneurship course in the business school. I volunteered to set up chairs at the Knight Community Info Challenge Boot Camp so I could sit in on the sessions, and I applied for scholarships to attend new media conferences.

• I did multiple internships, including one at a public radio station that quickly turned into a part-time job and began my love for working in public radio. And I applied to an internship I never in a million years thought I’d get until The New York Times called and said that I had. This brought me to New York, where I’ve been lucky to stay after finding my dream job at New York Public Radio.

• I shamelessly networked the hell out of everything.

• I started this blog so I wouldn’t forget what my goal was or see how far I’ve come from Yakima to New York.