I haven’t written much since I left Columbia to come here. Practically, we just got internet at our house last week. Personally, it’s a bit more complicated.

For reasons both deeply personal and purely professional, I began to look for a way out in early June. It’s no secret that I had grown dissatisfied with the work I was doing at the radio station.  While I will always love public radio, I felt the time had come where I could grow no further at KBIA.  It didn’t make sense to do my professional project at a place that offered me little chance of real development.

And then there’s the other reason, the real reason: the end of the relationship that I had very much bet my future against.  I’m not saying it’s a good reason to go.  But I don’t regret taking the leap.

Because let’s be honest, I never anticipated the opportunity.

I don’t like to admit that sometimes I do things out of spite – but I’m only human.  Threatening to pack my bags seemed like the way to go. I didn’t expect to get a nibble, much less an offer, in this economy. But I did (three, in fact), and I don’t regret taking one.

I don’t love my job.  I’d be lying if I said I did.  I hate the hours, and the work I do is often less than fascinating.  But I like having a purpose in life, and I like my coworkers, and I believe in community journalism.  And let’s face it, I could have done much worse for myself.  I have friends – not just from the class of 2010, but the class of 2009 as well – who still haven’t found steady work in their field.  Then there’s our new assistant sports editor, who’s put five years into getting where he’s at.  I won’t be at The Examiner forever.  But wherever I go next will benefit from the experience.

The choices we make define us, but I’m not ashamed to admit that this time I ran.  I stayed to get my Masters for all the wrong reasons – a different boy, the same old story.  And I left, hastily, for reasons much the same.  But here’s what those bad decisions have given me: a chance to make it on my own, and a chance to return when the time is right.

I have seven years to finish my degree.  I figure that gives me a year, maybe two, before I have to start thinking seriously about going back.  In the mean time, I’m going to enjoy my time away and what I can learn about myself – and the biz – in the process.

It’s enough to spark fear in the heart of corporate drone – but even more so when your job is to produce a product that will impact the bottom line not next month, not next week, but tomorrow.  More on this job – a recent acquisition – later.

A new media representative from GateHouse came to town on Tuesday to rehash my undergraduate career take a look at our website.  Four hours, easy in, easy out, I’m an old pro at this stuff anyway, right?

Wrong. Because for some reason, our readers expect Wednesday’s paper on Wednesday – regardless of how much mandatory training we sat through the day before.  (Might I add that Wednesday’s paper is a hefty edition with lots of extra pages and a special section for yours truly to design?)  I know, the public of Eastern Jackson County is pretty unreasonable.

Knowing this, I was filled with dread as our editor marched us single-file into the conference room.  OK, I’m lying.  We were not marched.  Still, you should have seen the expressions of dread.

But here’s the thing: there really are a lot of cool things we could be doing when we update our website.  Too bad by “we” I mean me, armed with a can of Diet Dr. Pepper as I stare bleary-eyed at my computer screen at 12:30 in the morning.  And that’s the shame of it.  I desperately want to create layers of maps and multimedia and sidebars because oh, look how pretty! But I also like to be home before 2 a.m.

So the temporary euphoria of “Oh, I’ll get a chance to put my online media skills to good use!” was quickly replaced with the reality of putting together a daily paper – seriously behind schedule.

When I was a student journalist, I thought being an actual journalist would be easier.  You know, real pay, real hours, no homework.  I was mostly right.  But it also means a whole lot less time to be innovative.  It used to frustrate me when newsroom faculty resisted making changes based on ideas that came out of the convergence curriculum.  Now I see the other side of the equation.  You can add “y” to “x,” but you can’t take away from x.  “X” remains what they were hired to do, no matter how snazzy y might be.

Of course, it’s a more complicated equation when you remember newspapers are “dying” and it’s going to take some real creativity to save them.  Or else repurpose them, which is largely what posting to the web is all about.

Suddenly I’m not the new hire but the newsroom curmudgeon, saying, “It’s a nice idea, but I’ve got a job to do here.”

It’s not news that many students spend every waking hours at Lee Hills or RJI because that’s where the equipment they need to use is located.  It’s also not news that students who do have access to the buildings after hours – TAs, grad students, etc. – often let their friends and peers in late to do work.  And as someone who’s done both (oops?), I understand where all the anger is coming from.  But I also understand where Dean Brooks is coming from.  He had every right to tell students that the building are off-limits after hours.

But here’s where he went wrong.  Talk about a difference in tone between the e-mail he sent the staff and the e-mail he sent the faculty (I’d actually read both before learning that students were up in arms).  When framed as a safety concern, his issue seems very reasonable.  With the faculty, he also seemed to start a dialogue – which kids should we allow in the building, when should we let them in, and how do we grant them access?  The e-mail he sent students should have reflected the “best and brightest” attitude he usually has about this school.  It should have said, “Folks, we have some serious safety concerns about students being in the buildings after hours, but we’re going to work together to find a satisfactory solution to the problem.”

I don’t know if a sit-in in the complex is the right answer.  Remember, many of those sit-ins in the ended in arrest.  If you’re passionate about after hours access to risk getting jailed, by all means, join in.  I agree that 9 to 9 access isn’t enough in a 24-hour news cycle.  But I also agree with the convergence faculty, which worries that 24/7 access, with swipe cards and without TAs, means a lot of unsupervised students with a lot of high dollar equipment.  That’s a multimillion dollar liability I understand not wanting to take.

So where do we start?  With journalism faculty who don’t put in 10, 12, 18 and even 24-hour days recognizing that some of their students do.  Then, a conversation about what constitutes reasonable access.  Twelve hours clearly isn’t enough, but what is?  I think keeping the lab open until midnight, when the library closes, would be a good a start.  Since the problem is access to equipments/program, can we check out laptops with Avid and CS5 to students who really are working round-the-clock to meet a deadline?

Let’s start a dialogue, not stage a demonstration.

I hate writing about myself.  That was my gimmick in high school, actually.  ”I want to be a journalist because that way I can always assure the cameras are pointing away from me.”  Not bad.  Or, at least, no college rejected me for using that line.  I wrote about my family, my friends, my vision for the future.  Hook, line, sinker.

I’m currently in the process of applying for the Stone & Holt Weeks Fellowship, which would let me spend 12 weeks working for the Washington Post and 12 weeks working for NPR.  Before I could shriek, “This was made for meeeeee!”, my palms began to sweat. “B-but, you want me to write about myself?”  Not only did I have to write about myself, but I had to explain how I’ve changed the world.

I want this fellowship.  I’m still, at the eleventh hour, trying to find the words to express how much, but I want this fellowship.  I sit at my sad, dying computer and my fingers ache to talk about Jenna, my best friend in high school, the one who died in a car accident.  I feel an inexplicable connection to Jan and Linton Weeks.  But I won’t, because even though it feels heartfelt and genuine, I’m not sure how it would translate on paper.

So I revert to how I’m really changing the world, how I’ve always wanted to change the world. “I believe in the profession of journalism…”  You know the rest.  Cross your fingers.  Wish me luck.

What’s your gimmick?

Elle Moxley: Have you always been interested in social media?

Craig Kanalley: I started with a journalism degree focusing on print in undergrad. I always wanted to write for a newspaper, preferably in sports. Late in my junior year, I had a chance to be online editor at the school paper and I loved it. Senior year I really gravitated toward online I saw a lot happening in that space and a lot of opportunities in the Web, so I decided to do a grad degree focused on online at DePaul.  I wasn’t always interested in social media but just got really interested in it over time. At DePaul, I really grew interested in Twitter.  I decided to focus on Twitter for many of my classes and put a huge emphasis on it to learn it really well.

EM: Where did the idea for Breaking Tweets come from?

CK: I first thought of the idea of Breaking Tweets when I attended Barack Obama’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., and saw the use of Twitter there. It was outstanding and so cool to see real-time reaction/emotions from so many people both in DC and elsewhere.  I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to monitor Twitter reaction to major events around the world? So I started Breaking Tweets as a personal blog.  It quickly grew into something much bigger due to Twitter and Google referrals.

EM: How did you end up at the Huffington Post?

CK: I work as Traffic and Trends Editor, which basically means I monitor trends online and breaking news and help file news stories about them. I originally contacted HuffPost about Breaking Tweets – to see about a potential partnership – and next thing I knew there was a job offer.

EM: How can young journalists use social media to find similar opportunities?

CK: I teach a class at DePaul (remotely from NYC now, this quarter is the second time it’s being offered).  I think the biggest thing for journalists, especially young journalists, is to just jump into all the social media tools out there today.  Give it a try. Experiment. See what works, what gets a response and what doesn’t. By engaging, it’s amazing how much you’ll learn and how quickly you’ll learn it.

EM: How is social media changing how journalists report the news?

CK: I think Twitter and other social media will only continue to grow and become more important in the news. They provide millions of sources instantly around the world. It’s a great tip service for news organizations that know how to use it, and it’s a great way to do research. But you do have to be careful about inaccurate information. You still need to go through traditional methods to verify and double check info.  Twitter has made it incredibly easy for anyone to jump into all kinds of conversations – about news events or any topic they’re interested in. Twitter is great for journalism. It opens up a range of opinions and thoughts in real time about almost anything imaginable. It’s a very useful tool.

EM: Finally, earlier this year you wrote about changes in Facebook’s privacy settings for the Huffington Post.  Is there such thing as a social media balance?

CK: Sure.  It’s possible to use Facebook as a private feed and Twitter as a public one. That’s the real value of each I think.  On Twitter, it’s not really possible to over share good, quality content. But it is possible to be annoying. You need to be sensible.

Kanalley received his Bachelor’s of Arts from St. John Fischer College in Rochester, New York, and his Master’s of Arts from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois.  In addition to his work with the Huffington Post and Breaking Tweets, he’s teaching a class at DePaul on Twitter and social media.

News

Hundreds line up for new Lincoln penny – I really fell in love with Springfield, Ill., during my short time there. I lived about a mile from downtown, and even closer to Abe Lincoln’s house.  The enthusiasm in Springfield when the penny was released was contagious, and I just had a really great time taking this local event and running with it.

15th Street Boys & Girls Club remains in limbo – I spent a lot of time reporting this story.  When I couldn’t get a straight answer from anyone at the Boys & Girls Club, I went straight to the organization’s tax records.  It was a tedious process, but I felt like the numbers in this case revealed more than the sources ever would.

Desert dome project takes shape in Springfield – Most newsrooms do their fair share of reporting on eccentric locals.  It’s not hard news, and it’s not every journalist’s favorite assignment, but it’s an important part of the daily news cycle.

Rain disrupts bus routes, floods IEPA headquarters – A features editor once told me that he’d take a reporter who could write a good weather story over a reporter who wrote splendid arts stories any day.  It’s gotta get done, and I can do it.

Muncipal Band ends its season early – So I went to this concert thinking I’d write a nice feature on the band – until my editor called to let me know the program had been slashed from the budget.  Suddenly, I was reporting a very different story on a much tighter deadline.

Waterford Wedgwood shifts to Asia to save company – I spent a lot of my time at the AP writing briefs, making calls to experts and wandering around the City of London asking laid-off businessmen how they felt about the financial crisis.  Eventually, my hard work paid off, and the bureau chief sent me to Stoke-on-Trent to report on the closing of a major English cultural icon.

Features

Benld school collapse ‘heartbreaking experience’ – Almost all small towns in Southern Illinois have felt the effects of mine subsidence, but none so much as Benld.  I was so impressed with the perseverance the people I interviewed while reporting this story.  They’re the reasons why I got into journalism.

Losing his voice sent barbershopper Terry Ludwig in a new direction – I love, love, love becoming an expert for a day – whether it’s on barbershop singing or spasmodic dysphonia.  Thinking of my own radio aspirations as Terry struggled to pronounce every word was an incredible experience.

Tip jars: The new counter culture – This story consists largely of man-on-the-street interviews, which once terrified me.  Having to ask a few hundred people what they thought of tip jars largely cured my fears.

Muni’s ‘Oliver!’ finds the dark side of Dickens – I don’t do a lot of arts reporting, preferring instead to report on science or politics, but I love capturing the sights and sounds of theatre.

A league of her own – I spent about six months working on this story – the longest I’ve ever put in on a single story.  Following Colleen nearly every day for a semester gave me an intimate look at the life of the lobbyist and a unique window into her cause.

Sports

Belcher back to defend City Golf Tournament title
It’s a 1-2 deja vu at Women’s City Tournament
Ohio man wins world horseshoe championship
World Horseshoe Tourney: Defending champs always on target
Horseshoe tourney kicks off 12-day run
Girls lacrosse team seeking out competition

I included six sports stories in my portfolio – a fair few for someone that doesn’t consider herself a sports writer or even a sports fan.  But here’s why I included them: I’m far from an expert on golf, horseshoes or lacrosse.  When I went to Beijing for the 2008 Olympics, I didn’t know much about road cycling.  But if I can learn how horseshoes is scored and communicate that in a conversational way, then I can learn anything for the purpose of reporting on it.

Magazine

Equip your toobox for DIY projects
Springfield garden in the spotlight
The art of choosing the perfect bedding

None of these stories are the most interesting, exciting or important thing I’ve ever written, but they demonstrate my ability to adapt my writing style for any occasion.  Being able to step up and do anything – in this case, file stories for a niche lifestyles magazine published by the State Journal-Register – was part of the job.  Even after my features rotation officially ended, I kept returning to write for Springfield’s Own, as it was an opportunity to write in a way I’ve never written before.

What didn’t make the cut?  Well, a lot of things.  But I felt it was time to dump some of my oldest clips, even the ones that got me internships in the past.  (Note that I’ve also stopped listing high school awards and accolades on my resume.)  So I said good-bye to a story on Britain’s famous pint, a long look at Celiac disease and a feature I wrote on Columbia’s gay community.  Will I bring them back?  Maybe someday.  But for the reasons you’ll find above, I feel the clips I’ve chosen best represent who I am as both a person and a writer.

One of the more difficult decisions I made during the design process was dropping the teaser text that used to display along along with links to my clips.  Now, the page is just a collection of links.  There are things about this that I like – namely, how it looks on the page.  I don’t like that you don’t know where the link is going to take you (in this case, off the page, to the website of the news organization).  I’m still debating whether or not to hand code each story to appear on my site, as I did with my AP copy.  I’m also torn between having the links open in the same window, or popping up a new one.  Here’s hoping whoever’s browsing has their computer set to open each as a new tab!

Now I need to decide how I’m going to display all my audio clips without making it look like a long list of MP3 players.  Of course, this means I need to get all my audio off the KBIA computers first.  You think I would have done that already at some point during the last five semesters, but no, I haven’t.

Oh, I was on a boat all right.  I spent spring break on a Mexican cruise, returning approximately two shades darker and my liver capacity reduced by approximately 20 percent.  But I didn’t have the satisfaction of looking up at the Carnival Elation, knowing that with my next check-in I would unlock the coveted badge, because I scored it while still very much land-locked – while standing in the middle of Los Angeles International Airport during a layover, in fact.  So I was, indeed, en route to an ocean adventure.  But what about my Seaword-bound traveling compatriots?  Something tells me that a lot of people are carrying around an undeserved badge.

Now, I know there’s a lot of people with mixed feelings about FourSquare.  I’ve decided it’s (mostly) harmless and quite fun, so I’ll take the ribbing when my boyfriend teases me about being the mayor of Cracker Barrel.  But let’s put all of that aside for a moment and talking about cheating.  I think it’s pretty clear that I’m not the guilty party when it came to my slightly unscrupulous acquisition of the “I’m on a boat!” badge.  But what about getting “Crunked?”

This weekend I went out for a very nice date with my boyfriend.  We had a gift certificate for Outback Steakhouse that my mom had given us.  Afterwards, I wanted frozen yogurt.  My boyfriend wanted to have a drink somewhere with a patio.  So, we stopped at both  Yogoluv and the Heidelberg.  My goal wasn’t a badge or even serious debauchery.  It was to spend a nice night with my boyfriend.  Still, I checked in out of habit – except when it came time to check in at the ‘berg, I accidentally checked into another local restaurant with a name that starts with the same letter.  Not a big deal, I figured… I’d been there a few days before and forgotten to check in, so it was fair.  Except that when I corrected my mistake, I learned that I was now, in fact, “Crunked” – at least according to FourSquare.

Last week FourSquare had to respond to a flurry of comments, questions and concerns when it announced that you’d no longer be able to maintain mayorships from your couch.  But whatever magical GPS formula they’ve calculated to keep people from cheating has yet to implement in Columbia, Missouri, because I was able to check into a venue at 10th and Cherry from 9th and University, two blocks away.

Most of the complaints came from wireless users and people without smartphones, and a day later, FourSquare posted an addendum to its new policy that explained how it was working to preserve the veracity of users’ locations.  Personally, I’m not sure what appeal location-based social networking has for the non-smartphone set.  FourSquare is fun for me because it gives me something to fiddle with when I’m in line for my frozen yogurt.  I imagine it would fast lose its appeal (and really, its purpose) if I had to rack my brain each day when I got home to remember where I’d been.  If I was going to complain about anything, it would be that I liked the fact that FourSquare worked on an honor system, since it did help preserve that playground aesthetic for which they’re striving.  But with more people playing, maybe we need controls for couch mayors and incorrect venue tagging.

For the record, I’d return the “Crunked” badge if I could, waiting instead to unlock it during one of the many end-of-semester bar crawls in which I’ll very likely participate.  It feels inauthentic to have it now, just as it did to unlock the “I’m on a boat!” badge while sitting at LAX instead of standing at the San Diego pier.

In an unrelated FourSquare ethical conundrum (and this is one I’ve been pondering for awhile), should you check-in where you work?  With more and more restaurants and bars offering FourSquare-related incentives to their most frequent customers, what happens if an employee has the top spot?

Here’s why: this girl is brilliant, dedicated and able to make even the most confusing science stories appealing to the ear.  Today, she heard back from a company that advertised for interns to work on a documentary project it was undertaking.  It should have been the perfect opportunity, given her background in computer-assisted and long-form reporting.  But in the e-mail she got, the company conceded that it wasn’t actually a news outlet, advertiser or market research firm, and while she wouldn’t be doing clerical work per se, her job responsibilities would include watching a couple of non-fiction TV channels and writing up reports on what she saw.  Alarm bells went off in my head.

There’s been a lot of debate recently about unpaid internships, and perhaps I’m still fired up after what someone in the photojournalism sequence wrote last semester about students journalists often selling themselves short (she also weighs in on the intern debate here).  But I don’t think it’s right for students to take unpaid internships unless the experience they would get from the internship is absolutely invaluable to their career.  An unpaid first internship at a daily newspaper in your hometown?  Yes, if it helps you land a paying gig the next summer.  A second unpaid internship at a place like the Washington Post?  Yes, because what you learn (and who you meet) will probably be the thing that makes your resume stand out from the pile.  But an unpaid internship with a company that admits a.) it’s not a news outlet and b.) not really asking you to do what it originally advertised? No way.

I will not be taking an internship this summer.  I had a paid internship last summer, and the experience I got at the State Journal-Register was invaluable (and the unpaid experience I got at the Associated Press the year before was probably what landed me the position).  I probably did better work at the SJR than I did at the AP because I was getting paid.  That’s not to say I didn’t care about the unpaid position, and in fact, I was thrilled to have it.  But when you’re away from home, away from your family and friends, eating ramen every night because it’s the only meal you can afford, it’s not hard to get discouraged.  And it’s very likely your work will suffer.

It’s hard to put a price on the experience that will help you get your first job.  But it’s also important to realize that if you’re losing more on the arrangement than you make, it might not be worth your time – especially if it’s going to require you to take out even more student loans because you didn’t make anything to put towards your tuition the next semester.  I am not taking an internship this summer.  The cost of a short term lease and relocating to another town, possibly on the other side of the country?  It’s more than I can currently afford.

Bottom line – in an ideal world, we would all get paid for busting our butts from May to August, or at least we’d be able to shoulder the burden of not getting paid.  But there’s also no shame in listing that restaurant job on your resume, either.  Putting yourself through college is admirable, too.

I spent most of the night reporting live for KBIA from mayoral candidate Sid Sullivan’s watch party at the Broadway Brewery (he didn’t win).  I’ve covered a lot of Columbia elections – five, in fact, for three different media outlets – but I was in London during the 2008 presidential election and missed my chance to do live coverage for KBIA then.  Apparently, things didn’t go as smoothly as they did last night, and I want to shout out to a few of the amazing individuals who made it a success…

- KBIA’s Sara Wittmeyer is always poised and elegant on air, but kudos to her for coordinating a couple of dozen student reporters, finishing her show, and surviving what had to have been 18 consecutive hours at the station.  This woman is amazing, and I’m proud to say I’ve had her as a mentor for the last four semesters.

- Kyle Stokes asks the best questions.  I’m still amazed I was able to answer what he threw at me with any kind of depth or clarity.  Plus, he told me I looked nice yesterday, even if he then said I looked like I was dressed up for Easter.  But seriously, we were lucky to have him in the control room, and even luckier to have stolen him from KOMU for the evening.

- KBIA’s Maureen McCollum brought the biggest smile to my face when she sent my call to the control room with a “Go get ‘em, Tiger!

- Brandon Smith arrived at Sullivan’s watch party just in time for some much-needed comic relief, which kept me going for the rest of the long night.

- And finally, Steve Weinman was nice enough to walk me back to my car when I finally got out of the station sometime after 11 p.m.

That’s not to say the rest of our reporters, editors and producers weren’t all kinds of awesome (and special thanks to a certain someone who got roped into letting my dog out halfway through).  We had more reporters going live than I think we ever have before, and the entire production was, quite simply, a success.