We journalists are hefty readers — newspapers, blogs, Web sites, magazines, and books keep our eyes busy for oh-so-many hours each week. I probably spend 12 hours reading on a good day. Which leads me to this blog — a two-parter spawning from the massive headache building behind my eyes as I type, and the novel I very much want to finish that’s sitting on my desk (The flourescent lights overhead do little to ease my dilemma).

What do you do to keep your head from hurting during all the reading you do?

I have witnessed the following remedies:
1. Turn off half the lights in the area (this seems to irritate about half the people who work there).
2. Wear a visor or sunglasses indoors (this does work! but it also looks silly)
3. Drink copious amounts of coffee (also works, and yum!)
4. Take copious amounts of Tylonal, or similar pill.
5. Turn on all the lights in the area (this irritates the half that like it dark)

And now… part two — the more interesting, less whiny question to readers:

What do you read for pleasure?

I’ve got a copy of Gregory Maguire’s ‘Wicked’ staring at me right now, but a whole bunch of other delicious reading waiting for me at home.
So how about you? Do you read fiction, non-fiction, magazines, poetry – or nothing at all?

So I inherited the police beat in January or February, and I’ve been trying very hard to develop sources for a department that has been famously and notoriously secretive in their operations.

It’s very difficult because I am not kama’aina, which means a local, but directly means “child of the land.” Sure I’m from an island, but since I don’t know how to spell the street names, it kinda gives me away.

So do you all have any tips on how you all develop sources? I’m not going to pretend I’m a guru at this: I was behind a desk for two of three years in my career, so I don’t have as much beat experience as some of you might have.

Cheers to a new category: Job hunt.
Here we’ll post thoughts, questions and suggestions on job seeking.
I’m not looking for a job, I just thought the category would help some folks out.
I’ll start it off with discussion of clip books.
I hope lots of you chime in with your tips on organizing clips, demo tapes, etc.
I’m not looking for a job right now, but I would like to start organizing my clips now so that I can save my stories. (Note: I have clip books of my school newspapers from elementary, middle, high and college – they are my personal scrapbooks.)
I’ve always organized my clips by cutting out the stories and pasting them on white paper – then I put those in sheet protectors and photocopy as needed. But that doesn’t seem to work that well anymore. What about all my Local cover stories that ran five columns wide – those don’t fit on 81/2 by 11.
One idea I’ve tooled with is creating a resume Web site for myself. I could add stories as links and organize them by category – I could even add pdfs of those large stories. My Boston buddy Jaclyn has a personal Web site she made – it’s very cool and I wonder how many others have resume sites.
Please share your thoughts!

As a tap dancer, we’re told to “dance like nobody’s wathcing.”
But as a reporter we know (or really hope) that somebody is watching our work.
Building a beat is not just about learning information and then telling an audience.
In what some call the good ol’ days journalists were in control. They got the information and mostly people needed to read the newspaper to find that information.
But now we have this thing called the Internet.
It has and is changing everything about information.
Busy people don’t need to go to City Hall to follow the City Council’s directions – that can be seen with the agendas online, watching the meetings live on the web and read on a city’s Web site about the directives.
So what do we do in all of this?
We prove our worth.
Want to prove that you are worth reading for the council news  – go in person to the meeting, get quotes, tell a balanaced story about what happened.
And most of all – learn how to integrate reader participation into your news packages.
It can be discussion forums, polls, reader comments, asking people to send in their thoughts as letters to the editor, etc.
Today – more than ever – we cannot forget that we have an audience. If we forget that – we may not have much of an audience in the future.

Being a reporter can be at once exciting, overwhelming, exhausting and exhilarating. The job comes with both community praise for a good piece, and complaints (sometimes for the same good piece). There’s a byline, peer recognition and overall the feeling that you’ve done something to make a difference in the community directly through reporting.

It’s no wonder young people are often drawn to the lifestyle and passion inherent in reporting.

I’m on the other side. Copy editing has its stressful deadline moments and the quiet quest for the perfect headline, but it is admittedly a  behind-the-scenes job that is not often praised or appreciated by those who haven’t been copy editors or aren’t currently fellow copyeditors. Yet, finding a headline that fits perfectly in its space, or cutting a story but retaining the essence of the writer’s intent brings with it a sort of accomplished and peaceful feeling. Much like writing the ‘perfect’ lead, but from the comfort of one’s desk and without all the energy reporting requires.

So I wonder, what has pulled YOU to your current job, be it reporting, copy editing, blogging, or whatnot?
Is it the quest to create change in the community? The quest for the perfect headline? A need for the world to know your name? The excitement of chasing down a story? Or all of the above?

My tip this week comes straight from my personal experience.
Feeling stressed, tired and overwhelmed? Well I certainly was.
Last week I dreaded each day’s workload and worried about how I would get everything done. Lately I’ve been either covering a meeting each night or brining work home or working past 8 p.m.
My solution was to take some time off. Not a bunch, just Friday.
But what a difference a day makes!
I’ve been able to get caught up on SPJ stuff, was able to go to LA to pick out my new glasses(!), cleaned at home, cleaned both my laptop and desktop computers and even got caught up on some sleep.
No, not everything is fixed. But with the crazy work week I have coming up – the best solution for keeping my sanity was to take a day off. You should try it every now and then!

This blog post is a more personal extension of my Quill column here.

When I interview victims of tragedy or trauma, it’s usually very fatiguing because I’m basically being asked to share in that person’s grief. I don’t begrudge having to do so, but what I’ve noticed over the years is that I never really reach closure for the grief I feel that day.

During the interviews, I have to share in what is more than likely that person’s worst day of her or his life. And usually there will be no follow-through meeting or interview with the bereaved. The victims will cry and continue to live their lives, but I’m only there for them when their lives are momentarily shattered. I am not there when they piece it together.

Granted I often do enterprise pieces that talk to the bereaved maybe a year or several years after the incident, but it’s usually tied in with a story analyzing the larger issue. Those don’t happen as often as the tragedies hit the desk.

So often times I feel like a victim of compassion fatigue. I try to empathize with my sources to try and tell a better story, but at the same time I unconsciously invest so much of myself that I start to feel depressed or tired. My feelings and theirs sometimes blur and I just end up confused by the end of the day.

It’s a phenomenon being recognized in doctors, but there’s not much mention of it for media professionals. Maybe “someday this war’s gonna end,” and we’ll see more journalists expressing similar feelings, since the current conflict is likely the most heavily covered and analyzed war in history.

Cali as in calendar.

So, not to sound like your mom, but how do you keep events organized? I think that for journalists blocking out time is really important.
Why? Because not only does it help you plan out your stories, but it helps you to know when you can make personal commitments with friends and family.
I’ll share my system and then I hope many of you will join in.
I started with pen and paper. But, in the digital age – my pocket pc/phone is my second brain. It helps that it’s small and I always have it with me. Sure I miss writing on paper – but I still use paper for my to-do lists.
And a great thing about using my pda – for all you government beat reporters – is that my city’s online calendar has every event and meeting available for download to a Microsoft Outlook calendar.
Of course……I truly can’t wait until the iPhone comes out, just because my pda I have now is so unreliable.
At work – I also keep a paper calendar. One because it has funny cat jokes, and two because it allows me to put stickies all over it on important events to be held on certain dates or in certain months. This means that when, like now, I’m beginning to plan out my June coverage – I just flip the calendar and have all that information ready to start my planning.

As a police and public safety reporter, most of my work days are wildly unpredictable. One day I could just be working on a humble profile of a top cop, and another day I’d have to cover a botched robbery and shootout.

That’s why it’s important for me to maintain routine when I’m off work. I absolutely despise changes made in my after-work plans, because things are always morphing during my work hours.

It probably makes me a predictable person outside of the office, and I think it irks my girlfriend to a certaine extent. But I really treasure my days home where nothing really happens, which is exactly what I expect and want. Everything is in its right place when after a long day of chasing ambulances and crime victims, I can come home, crack open a beer, loosen my belt and worsen my posture by reclining back on my couch.

Sorry guys. Just needed to write out my thoughts on why my girlfriend sometimes wishes for more excitement on my time off.

Anyone out there struggling to find story ideas?
I’m not, but that’s just because there are plenty of things happening on my beat to keep me writing usually 10 stories a week. (And….that workload is why I’m writing this Tuesday.)
But….sometimes beats can go dormant – and there’s still space to fill. Sure you may not write as much, but you still need ideas.
I’m sure most people have systems for organizing files, but organizing ideas is just as important.
My new thing is a little memo book I bought in a three-pack. I keep it in my purse and whenever I have an idea – I grab the notepad and a pen and write it down. No more lost ideas!
So what inspires me for story ideas? Anything – but usually it involves me looking around the city as I drive to cover stories.
Good luck going out there and finding stories!