The Foundation: 022
Life in the lungs
For the last six months I’ve been working on a story that finally published. I was in a weird limbo where, since about Thanksgiving, I was employed as a reporter but haven’t published anything. I was teaching for three months before that, laid off for eight months before the teaching job, and on paternity leave from CNN for three months before being laid off. So even when I was hired I was more than a year between bylines.
And I didn’t really cover anything local when I was at CNN. So, years between really being involved in city news. Got situated at work around Thanksgiving and felt rusty, a bit out of sorts. But excited too, just at being able to cover Chicago again.
The first week in the new job, I had a list of eight or ten things that could have led to stories, and this tip about a dispute at the scene of a double murder at Benito Juarez Community Academy was on that list. The gist was: the school’s principal stood in the way of homicide investigators, and complicated access to a witness and security footage. Right away the question was – I wonder if it’s true, how much of a time delay are we looking at, and if it’s true is there any way to prove it beyond sourcing.
So there’s the basic journalistic component of this, which is that I go into stories open-minded without trying to prove or disprove anything. All the normal reporting avenues (interviews, records, open-source, etc). Trying to understand what happened during the period of time in question. But also, I put pressure on myself to write something that felt important to me, that was a story of my own choosing, that I knew in my bones the importance of and could articulate that whenever I encountered reporting obstacles.
It turns out that there was paperwork documenting almost all the disputes over evidence the afternoon of the shooting, it just took some time to track it down. You can read the story here if you’d like. It’s not the only thing I’ve been working on, but it took as long as it needed to get done in a responsible way.
It’s in the same subject area I’ve always worked but felt different because there was an accountability component. But in getting it published, clearing the fact-check and a legal review, I feel like a weight was lifted. Don’t know how else to describe the feeling – I had my head down for the past six months and now I can look up and maybe see a longer view of things. About being here, anyway. And I didn’t realize it until I was done, until I saw a story through from beginning to end.
There’s a newish coffee place on Touhy in Skokie (just west of the Edens) called Qahwah House that’s as close to me as anything in the city, it’s got a ton of space and it’s open really late. There’s always a line, at least the few times I’ve been. And there’s a dozen different drinks I’m going to try, many with cardamom. I usually drink espresso now, just small amounts here and there. Whole new world of coffee out there!
So far I’ve had Adeni Chai (chai isn’t usually my thing, but … ) and a coffee drink with a little milk, cardamom, a little sugar, and something else. I imagine space is at a premium further into the city and I’m not aware of other open-late coffee shops (between 11p and 1a) and it usually feels better in coffee shops than being alone in bar.
Listening:
Lana Del Rey (Video)
Lana Del Rey (Video)
Prof (Video)
Bizzy Bone (Video)