I may have made a bad decision this week. It was a snap decision, and I had no precedent to follow. Here’s how it happened: last Wednesday, our Advertising Manager, John Marshall, handed me a flyer pushing an appearance by Miguel Camejo, Ralph Nader’s running mate. He was speaking later that same day.
Why hadn’t I heard about this already? Unfortunately, it’s a cherished tradition at USM (and, I suspect in general) to promote even important events at the last minute. Flyers quietly sprout, like mushrooms, throughout campus the same day something is scheduled to happen. People notice the flyers and ask their friends about the event, but no one knows anything about it. It doesn’t take a lot of time to type up a press release and get it out to the media. People neglect that simple step all the time, though, and rely on word-of-mouth and 8×10 inch flyers, pretending, hoping, praying maybe, that busy people will actually look at them.
I scnned the flyer suspiciously. Did I have time to cover this, with my other duties at the Free Press, which can be likened to juggling chainsaws? An event for which the promoters hadn’t even bothered to send a press release? With all our writers and editors on assignment, it would fall on me to write the story. On Wednesday night, by the way, I usually squeeze in some special time with my much-neglected homework.
“I’m not gonna do it,” I said. “We’re not covering national politics anyway.” Which is true – in all sections of the paper, we’re trying to keep our focus tight to USM. The whole editorial board agreed at the end of the summer that we only wanted to cover larger stories if they had a compelling USM angle.
But isn’t a visit by the vice presidential candidate for the Greens compelling, you might ask? Aren’t a lot of USM community members interested in Nader’s campaign, you may continue, your frustration mounting? You’re probably right; the answer is yes. I think I made the wrong decision. It gets worse!
About an hour later, my phone rang. It was Sam Pfeifle, the managing editor of the Portland Phoenix. He wanted to know if I’d cover the Camejo event for his paper. He, too, must have been taken by surprise by the event. He, too, had no writers to divert to it. He said he needed 400 words by noon the next day, and that he’d pay me 10 cents a word. My email program beeped at me. It was an email from votenader.org. “Subject: BREAKING NEWS: Nader/Camejo ticket VEEP in Portland.” It was 2 P.M. Nader’s people had finally gotten around to notifying the school paper where they were sending their vice presidential candidate to speak at 7 P.M. Brilliant. Genius, even.
So at 7 P.M., I put down James Joyce, picked up my reporter’s notebook, and ran across the street. My story is in the Phoenix that printed last Wednesday, and an expanded version is on page 14 of this week’s Free Press, which printed the following Monday.
Some of my staff members felt like I’d sold out the paper for my own freelancing ambitions. That’s too bad. I work my ass off, just like everyone else does at the Free Press, because I love it dearly. I don’t want to give the impression that this paper is anything less than an unhealthy obsession for me. ‘Cuz it isn’t. That said, I definitely trod into dubious ethical territory with this story; The Free Press and the Phoenix are competitors in some senses, and competing papers don’t share their paid staff members. So for the future, we’re establishing guidelines to avoid a similar situation.
So that’s my first real leadership snafu here at the Free Press. I’ve gotten a taste for freelancing (how novel! maybe I can actually work in the field I’m studying after I graduate!), and from now on we’ll make sure that anyone who is committed to the Free Press can do so without compromising the mothership.