I've graduated!!!

As of today, I'm officially Inihtar, BA, MS. Well, not officially. . . because I did kind of fail one class -- haha, just kidding. Not officially, because the "BA, MS" follows my real name, not Inihtar, silly! That's all!!

I am, as Caveboy puts it, a "young graduate" -- the second time round!

So, J-school is done, and I'm ready to conquer the real world with my A+ journalism skills that my $40,000 master's degree has equipped me with. Now, if I end up at a piddly little newspaper in some equally piddly litte town, I will have a few choice words for the folks at Columbia J-school.

But anyway, I now have 12 days to take in the sights of NYC before my internship starts, and before I have to start paying back good ol' Access Group. Watch out, NYC. . .here comes Ini!!

(I'm sure a more introspective, and possibly nostalgic, post will follow at some point. But right now, I'm just happy to be done).

A little family on my window-sill

Everyday for the past couple of months, I've woken up to the sound of pigeons cooing outside my window. They make quite a racket. . . at least two of them, flying up and down, alighting on the air conditioner, making enough noise to wake the dead. One day wondering why they kept coming back, I peered down under my air conditioner . . . to find that they had made themselves quite at home there -- they'd built themselves a tidy little nest.

But over the past two days, the sounds have changed. I've been hearing higher pitched chirping in addition to the huskier cooing, and the chirps are even more constant and insistent. At first I thought it was just other birds flying around, and alighting outside my window for some sort of bird conference. But I lifted the blind this morning and peered out to see . . . little baby pigeons in the nest chirping away.

Trying to teach our little feline something about other species, I picked him up, took him to the window and pointed to the nest. "Look, Weds, tiny little birdies!" But, although he has been fascinated by the sounds and stands staring at my air conditioner for hours, he didn't realize that the sounds were coming from OUTSIDE. He looked up and down and all around -- everywhere but down where the birds were. . . until I put him down, when he resumed staring at the AC in undisguised fascination. Sigh!

Anyway, it's quieted down now. The parents are away finding food. Looks like I'm baby-sitting:)

Loss. . . and healing

Have you ever really sat down and come to the realization that life really is what you make of it? Not in the cliched, off-the-cuff way that people say it to make you feel better about things. . . but in a serious, eureka kind of way.

I've found that many times, when something you've had slips away from you, it's because you were so afraid to believe that you actually had it and are so filled with fear that you are going to lose it, that you either cling too tightly to it, or don't hold on to it tightly enough. You are either afraid to claim it because of the loss you are convinced will inevitably follow, or you do take it and worry so much that you are going to lose it than you end up creating a situation where do lose it.

And when that loss finally comes, it's almost a relief, because the anxiety and the waiting for the inevitable is finally over, and you can get on with the business of dealing with it -- of telling yourself that you were never meant to have it in the first place and you always knew you were going to lose it, and you were right, and now you can move on.

But even with loss, life goes on, doesn't it? You pick up the pieces, and you trudge on, and you learn to live life without that all-important thing/person. And that's the thing about humans. . . that we do move on, we do get used to what seems even the most un-get-used-to-able things, and we are healed by time. We might occasionally feel a little tug at the mention of a name or a circumstance that brings back a poignant memory, but at the end of the day, we can get used to anything. . . and we can even learn to be happy with something that one day we thought we could never settle for, or be happy without something we thought we could never live without.

Cheesy and sappy as this is, these extracts from this poem by Veronica Shofffstall do make some sense, so don't look down your nose at me (Caveboy and Nev -- I can almost see the rolling eyes)!!

After a while you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
and company doesn't always mean security
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and eyes ahead . . .
And you learn to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans
and futures have have a way of falling down in mid-flight. . .
And you learn that you really can endure
that you really are strong
and you really do have worth
And you learn and you learn
with every goodbye you learn..

What am I?

Have you ever wondered what a person with black hair is called? A person with blond hair is a blonde/blond, a person with brown hair is a brunette (well, a woman with brown hair is, anyway. . . what IS a man with brown hair called? Can't very well call a man something that ends with "ette"). And a person with red hair is a red head. So what is a person with black hair called? A blackhead? A noirette? I refuse to be lumped into the same category as brunettes. If they all get their own name, I demand one too!!

Emotional anesthetic?

With all the advances of modern science, they still haven't been able to come up with a drug that can temporarily numb emotions (as far as I know anyway. If they have, any LEGAL ones, that is, point me to it!!).

Because, you know, with deadlines and finding jobs and finding a place to live and dealing with visas and having to take a writing test that requires a lot of preparation, a girl could sometimes do without those unruly, unwanted emotions. Sometimes, one just needs a little emotional numbage to make it through life. . .

Wed's other personality emerges

On Friday, after my plans with Bobbis, Ficali et al. fell through, I settled down with Okia, Mits and Le Dernier Mot to watch the Ms. USA pagent (yes yes I know). LDM was bringing her own girl kitten, ACE (she and Okia found ACE, a little frightened kitten, on the A-C-E subway line, hence the name), and Okia and I were excited at the prospect of reuniting Weds and ACE, who hadn't played together since they were wee little babies. The two have been fixed, so we even entertained the possibility of some romance between them without any undesirable consequences. But it was not to be.

Weds was in the living room, terrorizing poor Mits (he was just being his usually friendly self, you know, but Mits, traumatized as he was by a dog bite when he was little, doesn't take too kindly to friendly animals) when LDM and ACE arrived. LDM let little ACE out of her bag, and we all played with her a bit. I went off to the living room to fetch Weds to re-introduce him to his old friend. He sat serenely as I picked him up and walked down the hallway -- that is, until his eyes landed on ACE. Our little angel instantly turned into a monster. He hissed and snarled, leaped out of my arms, and fled for dear life back to the living room at one end of the hallway. Poor ACE, flustered by this unexpected reaction on the part of her host, sadly scurried off in the opposite direction, deposited herself in between my boxes at the other end of the hallway and refused to emerge all evening long.

Weds refused to come round as well. The spent the evening hiding under the chair, behind the TV, making not a peep (afraid, probably, that any sound he made would be mistaken by his unwelcome guest for a sign of friendliness). Feeling sorry for him at one point, I picked him up and held him in my lap. He sat quietly, but always with a wary eye on the other side of the corridor, where Okia and LDM were, playing with ACE for a bit. As soon as he saw them walking back, he started squirming again, assuming that they were bringing his enemy with them, and only calmed down when he realized that ACE was, in her quiet, demure way, as stubborn as him, and still firmly lodged in between the boxes.

The evening ended, with our hopes for a joyful reunion between the two of them dashed. As Okia, LDM and I were lamenting this, LDM looked on the bright side. "Oh well, I guess it's for the best. Because otherwise, ACE would have been heartbroken when Weds leaves for Japan next month." True, I suppose.

I still gave Weds a stern talking to about his manners and his abominable treatment of his guest after they left, but I'm sure it didn't make much of an impression on our fiesty little feline -- who incidentally, was back to his playful, friendly little self as soon as ACE departed.

Okia and I had thought that Weds was becoming a moody teenager -- because of his occasional penchant for climbing to the top of the highest cabinets in the kitchen and pointedly ignoring us when the mood took him. But I suppose he's still in the pre-teen stage, where girls = eeeewww!

A fire alarm. . . but nobody cares. . .

I was blissfully jogging away on the treadmill today, with my i-pod blaring into my ear, when all of a sudden white lights began flashing all over the gym. My first thought was "Oooh, I'm going to be on TV!" But I soon realized that the flashes were coming from fire alarm systems on various walls. "Hmmm," I thought, "I wonder what's going on."

It took me a while to hear the accompanying fire alarm through my music, but, when I finally did, I whipped around in panic, almost getting thrown off the treadmill in the process. But no one else seemed the least bit perturbed by noise, or even reacted to it. The runners around the track continued running, the elliptical people continued their elliptical thing, and the weight lifters continued their lifting. Across the gym, the aerobics class continued as if nothing was happening. Oh well, I thought, I'll just keep running, and if I get burned to a crisp, at least it will be with a 100 other people.

So, the alarm continued clanging away, and I kept running away. Soon I didn't even notice it. Which made me wonder: what if there was a real fire somewhere in the building? Would we all just keep working out, completely oblivious to the impending danger and waiting for someone else to be the first to go running out of the building, until the ceiling came crashing down on us?

A scary hairy tale

Once upon a time, there was a silly girl named Inihtar, who decided she wanted beautiful long black curly locks. But alas, her hair was straight as a broomstick's sweeper. So, she decided she would take herself off to a hair salon and get her hair permed, so she could achieve her heart's desire. All the warnings of well-wishers, who cautioned that her hair would be fried, and become dry as a desert bush, fell on deaf ears. For our friend Ini had made up her mind and there was no changing it. So off she went to the hair salon and, four hours later, walked out with the curls her heart had so desired.

Fast forward a couple of years: Ini's hair is a sight to behold: the top part is straight and fine; the bottom part, however, is a nightmare: dry, coarse, and split ends galore. So Ini decided she was going to chop off the remainder of the permed hair. And off she went to her favourite hair salon, where when the hair dresser held up the amount she wanted cut, Ini shook her head and said "more" and "more" and "more" again. So clip clip when the scissors, and when the cutting was all done, Ini realized in shock that her hair was half of its original length. She hid her shock, admitted that it didn't look too bad, and took herself off home.

A couple of days later, Ini decided she wanted layers. Her hair was shorter, and she figured this was the time to do it. So, unable to wait once her mind was made up, Ini went off to a nearby hair salon, and asked for layers. Clip clip went the scissors again, and Ini smiled, thanked the hair dresser, and went off home. On the way home, she peered at her reflection in shop windows, and in occasional mirrors, and realized that she wanted more layers in the front.

She decided to fix it herself. She arrived home, picked up a pair of scissors and a newspaper and headed for the bathroom. Snip snip went the scissors for a third time in a week. And the results this time were not so pleasing. Ini had overestimated her ability to fix her hair. Snip snip, went the scissors again, as she tried to make up for the disaster. To no avail.

"This is becoming like the tale of the monkey and the cake*," she told herself. She decided to leave it, pronounced her hair the latest fashion statement, put away her apparatus and went about her work. Ini might, of course, change her mind about the fashion statement, once she starts getting horrified stares, but she will just have to deal with it then, won't she?

*For those readers unfamiliar with the tale of the monkey and the cake, it goes something like this: Two birds had found a piece of cake and wanted to split it between them, but not trusting each other's ability to split it evenly, took it to a monkey to do it for them. The monkey broke the piece in two, then decided one was bigger than the other, and took a bite of the larger piece. Then that piece was smaller, so he took a bite of the other, and so on, until he had eated the entire piece.

Looking back. . .

I have just realized that, by this time next month, all my classes will be finished. The final version of my last story for by Business and Economics reporting class is due on May 9. The final story for Columbia News Service will be done on April 28. And I have no idea what's happening in my Computer Assisted Reporting class, and don't care much, to be honest.

So, a year. . . somewhat turbulent and horrible at times, but also one where I've learned a great deal, personally, academically and professionally, is coming to an end. I suppose my feelings throughout this year have been primarily negative, mostly because of the sheer stress of depending on others to determine how well I do, and not having the strength of a real publication behind me to lend me some credibility. It's been tough at times. . . heck, most of the time. . . but it's been a sort of baptism by fire. It is one of those experiences that are difficult while going through it, but afterwards, you look back and realize how much it helped you grow. Approaching the end of this year, I am looking back and realizing that I am coming out having learned a lot more than I expected, and prepared to learn a lot more as I go on. In some ways, I'm tougher, both as a person and as a journalist; in others, I'm a lot softer, more empathetic, more aware of the state of affairs in the world, and wanting to make a difference.

For a long time, I lived -- somewhat deludedly -- telling myself, "Je ne regrette rien," perhaps because I did have a lot to regret, but chose not to face it. But now, I accept that there are many things I wish could have done differently during the past year, in school, work and in relationships. . . most of which were within my control. But since there is not much to be done about these, the key is to look forward. I still have one more month, and as I look at my bookshelf full of unread books, the freelance stories I never got around to writing or selling, and the friends I never managed to make -- or managed to lose -- I tell myself. . . I still have a month to do all these things. Will it happen? I don't know. Probably not. But, one can always try. . .

*If you are wondering what the point of this vague post is, I'm not entirely sure myself. Just looking back and randomly reminiscing. . .

The death of objective journalism?

The New York Times ran an article about Lou Dobbs, an anchor on otherwise subdued CNN (which cut the debate show Crossfire, because its viewers want facts and not opinions), who expresses his opinions in no uncertain terms. Slate points to Anderson Cooper whose ratings rose after he gave Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu a tongue-lashing for not doing enough after Hurricane Katrina. And Robert Fisk, British journalist and author, said in a talk at Columbia last year that journalists would be better off shedding the veneer of objectivity, and pointed out that papers on the other side of the Atlantic are already adopting this approach, successfully.

The American media has come under much criticism for being too credulous of the current White House and for leaving holes in the reporting of several issues related to this administration. The argument is that the majority of the media didn't look hard enough, didn't examine the statements made by the government closely enough, because doing so would have made them seem opposed to the administration, instead of passive observers. All too often, journalists do hide behind the excuse of objectivity to avoid hard-hitting journalism.

In the Columbia Journalism Review, Brent Cunningham argues that "objectivity" leads journalists to become passive recipients of news, rather than active analysers. For example, he writes, when Bush announced divident tax cuts, because he said people shouldn't be taxed on the same income twice, most of the media covered the story, but reported pretty much just what he said. Very few actually went deeper to find that there are several other taxes that could also apply to the same income, and actually questioned why he was proposing cuts only on dividend taxes and not on other taxes.

Cunningham points out that, often, editorials are much better researched because the editorial writer has to know and understand the subject well to be able for form an opinion. Thus, if this need for objectivity didn't exist, then journalists would be forced to examine the issues they write about in greater depth, and thus raise more potent questions. http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/4/objective-cunningham.asp

I think the answer to this problem lies in the approach a journalist takes. When starting out, and when reporting a story, the reporter should approach it with no bias, with no preconceived notions. They must ensure that every angle is covered, and every side has a say. Then, when they are fully educated about the subject and understand it clearly, and begin the writing process, the opinion - well-researched and educated - can come in.

Particularly with the onslaught of blogs and other non-traditional media, news media do need to change the way they operate to compete effectively. These new forms of communication are changing the way people view and receive news, and makes them more receptive to opinions in their news. In fact, I think the way mainstream media can compete with bloggers and other sources today is to use their vast resources and already-established credibility (which relatively few blogs still have) to offer well-researched stories that do offer some well-informed opinion. But they also need to beware of leaning too far to the other side, and become vehicles of rants for or against an issue.

A dorkess on the loose in New York City. . .

I learned a valuable New York City lesson today -- when you take a yellow cab, you wave vigorously (jumping and with both hands if possible), leap into the back seat as soon as one pulls up and tell the driver in no uncertain terms where he is to take you. You don't stand off to the side and wave timidly, go up to the driver of the fifth cab that's driven past and only stopped out of pity, and quietly ask if he'll take you to 72nd and Park.

How did you come to learn this magnificant lesson, Ini, you might ask.

Good reader, let me enlighten you. . .

I had an appointment this morning at 11:30 with a neurosurgeon, after waiting for a week (it was just for an interview, there's nothing wrong with me -- nothing, anyway, that a neurosurgeon can help with; then again. . . perhaps there is). But anyway, I digress. . .

I got off work at 10:30 and took the subway to 72nd Street with half an hour to get to the east side -- plenty of time. It was such a beautiful day that I decided to walk through Central Park, instead of taking the crosstown bus. Disastrous decision, I should have known -- no one with my sense of direction should attempt to walk through any place that doesn't have roads that form right-angled geometric shapes.

But, blissfully chosing to ignore this knowledge, I proceeded, with a smile on my face and a spring in my step. Twenty minutes later, I was still in Central Park, still walking, minus the smile and spring. Panic began to set in. I was not going to make it by 11:30, and you don't keep a busy neurosurgeon waiting. I pictured myself telling him why I was late ("Ummm, I'm really sorry, doctor, but I got lost in Central Park) and started walking even faster.

Finally, at 11:30, I emerged on the other side of the park, and saw a sign saying "Fifth Avenue." Oh thank God! But I immediately realized that I had thanked the Almighty too soon. I looked at the cross street -- 59th Street.

I decided to take a cab, and it took me another ten minutes to figure out which direction I needed to go in, that the cabs were all going in the opposite direction because I was on a one-way street going the wrong way. I got my bearings, sprinted over to the right street, and finally, after missing five cabs because I was too timid to stand up and WAVE, one pulled over.

As I climbed in and collapsed, the driver turned around and with a stern look, gave me my first lesson in New York City Cab Hailing.

Need a hole in the head? Just might!

I had quite an interesting interview the other day. . .

I'm working on a story on people who have drilled holes in their heads to increase the blood flow to the brain. I wanted to talk in particular to one man who runs a web site that advocates this practice and that links to writings and publications that support the theory that doing this gives a person a "permanent high," a completely altered consciousness, and a general feeling of clarity and happiness. When I first started working on this story, I called him, and he absolutely refused to talk to me, because he assumed the story was going to contain opinions of people who called people who do this a bunch of kooks and his role would be to refute them. I managed to convince him otherwise, and, as he was going out of town, arranged to talk to him on his return.

I called him last week to do the interview, and he was more than forthcoming with the information, which surprised me, given the fact that he initially refused to talk and pretty much hung up on me. But halfway through the two-hour interview, he said suddenly: "I had a dream about you last night."

"Oh?" This was a new twist. What kind of dream? Should I hang up now?

"Yeah," he went on. "I didn't know it was of you though until you called this morning."

"Oh."

"Yes, it was a good dream. . .I mean, it had a good feeling."

"Oh."

"Yes, it definitely was a good dream."

"So. . ." I ventured. "What was it about?"

"I dreamt that there was this person who had a tumour in their brain. And they had a hole drilled and the tumour was removed and they were fine," he said.

"Oh."

And then, "And you think that was me?" I asked.

"Yes, I do," he said. "I mean, I didn't know until you called, like I said, but now I know it was you. But, not that you have or will get a tumour or anything. But just that you would get it, get what this practice is all about."

"Oh."

"You do get it, right?"

"Ummm." I thought about it for a little while. And I realized that, in some strange way, I did get it. I mean, I'm not going to run out a drill a hole in my head -- not unless his dream actually comes true. But, after talking to him and three others, and reading all the literature about it, it actually does seem to make sense. At least I'm at a point now that I don't think they're all a bunch of crazy people. But I'm also not a die-hard advocate. Which means that I'm completely objective, which is a good thing to be when writing a story like this.

And, if his dream ends up coming true, I can point to yet another benefit of drilling a hole in the head!

Another story link

Trend spotting story in Arizona Republic

With apologies to the Bart. . .

Ok, I know I'm dangerously close to becoming the crazy cat lady. . . but I had to put these up. I only have the little guy with me for two more months, so have to gather as much evidence of the "awwwww" moments as possible before then. . .

Good night. . . it's time for my
beauty sleep. . .


Look what they're selling in shoe stores now
. . . apparently he's an 8W!

Seek and ye shall find? Maybe not. . .

Over the past few days, one message has been hammering away at me - don't obsessively seek and you will find. First it was in church - yes, the pastor did say DON'T seek, and Jesus did say DO seek, but I'll get to that . . . which I've been mulling over, and today, in an email that was forwarded to me, and in the events of my life over the past couple of weeks.

This is a good message for me - because I am an extremely impatient person. I am not really used to getting my own way all the time, but for some reason, when I have consciously gone after something, I want to see the effects of that action right away and sometimes go to great, even embarassing lengths to find them.

So in church, Pastor Tim told us that we shouldn't seek what we want, but rather, something greater than what we desire. "If you seek joy, you won't get joy. But if you seek God, you will get both God and joy. If you seek blessings, you won't get blessings. But if you seek to be righteous, then you will get both righteousness and blessedness."

In other words, if you seek selfishly, you will not get what you are seeking. But if you are selfless, if you look for something greater, something that transcends your smaller desire, that will ultimately have a much larger impact than the selfish thing you are seeking, you will achieve both.

And I realized that I have spent a lot of time seeking that good job, those (seemingly) perfect people in my life and that ever-ellusive perfect happiness. But, if I focus on serving God, a job that will make a difference (or at least not obsess so much about a job, period), and reaching out to people who need me, those things I am tempted to seek will come by themselves.

So what does this have to do with my impatience and need to have and know what I want NOW, NOW and NOW? Well, this need in me, I think, satisfies a small goal - will I get that internship I want? Or will that person I'm waiting to hear from write? Or will that one great connection I have do something to get me a good job? My impatience stems from my need to stay in control of my life, to have no unknown variables. Instead, if I learn to live with the unknowns, and aim for the things mentioned above, then the other things will fall into place.

Or so I hope anyway. . . because it takes a big person and lots of moral discipline to strive for such noble goals. . .

Life changes for a little guy. . .

Weds has found himself a new home. . .






















. . .and a new best friend

Celebrating St. P's day in style

Letting my hair down. . . or not

After promising Ficali for weeks that I would go to Keats to see what this Irish bar to beat all Irish bars was all about, I finally decided to make good on that promise last night.

So I joined her, Ilajna and Doobie at Keats, smack bang in the middle of the drunken revelry of St. Patrick's Day - and Karaoke Night. By the time I got there, the three of them, and a few friends of theirs, had already been there for several hours, belted out at least three songs and imbibed a signicant amount of alcohol. So, when I, a "karaoke virgin," as one of the staff of Keats christened me, arrived on the scene, stone sober and not inclined to making a fool of myself, Ficali seriously informed me: "You know we've been here since 5:00. So, you'd better gulp down your beer quickly so you can catch up with us."

"Oh ok," I said.

But, as the evening progressed, I could not get down more than a couple of beers in my efforts to "catch up." And, I could not bring myself to get up on stage even once, or loosen up more than to move a little bit to the music, and let out the occasional "whoo!" I'm not particularly conscious about my voice - I've sung in school productions, choirs and have even taken private singing lessons. But I just couldn't bring myself to even open my mouth, even from the floor - even to Ficali's plea of "One line, please, just one line."

I still had fun - I laughed a lot, which I hadn't done for a while, I was tickled pink by some of the performers (not excluding Ficali, Ilajna and Y, who certainly didn't share my trepidation) and I had an interesting coversation in the loo line with a blind drunk Indian social work student from NYU.

But I couldn't let go.

On my way back home, I reflected on this, and I came to the conclusion that I'm an observer. Whether by choice or otherwise, I am unable to lose myself in situations, no matter how intense or engrossing. On almost every occasion when others around me let go and throw all caution to the winds, I find myself an onlooker - part of the proceedings, but still somehow detached from what is going on around me, almost giving myself a running commentary on what is happening. I still enjoy myself, but much like one would enjoy a movie: looking on, enjoying what is happening on screen, but not participating.

I can only remember one instance - which, I must admit, involved a significant amount of alcohol - when I came anywhere near forgetting myself, and letting go completely. One time! And I've lived a quarter of a century!

I am very disturbed by this knowledge. Why am I so unable to let go? Why do I always feel the need to step back and be an observer, rather than participate? Why am I so unable to lose myself, to completely let go, and be willing to get totally into a situation? Is it because I'm boring? Uptight? Self-conscious? Old? Or do I just plain not drink enough? Any budding shrinks want to take a stab?

Links to some stories

Moving online: The trend in trendspotting

Senior movements

Ageing boomers hit gym

Spirituality in strange places

How can you not love him?!?!?!

My Columbia News Service (CNS) prof has officially become my favourite. This is the email he sent out to editors of newspapers who use our stories. . .(the first line is to the students)

Dear CNS Crew--Wouldn't you be moved? bp

Begin forwarded message:


TO: FEATURE EDITORS

FROM: COLUMBIA NEWS SERVICE

SUBJECT: PLEASE REMEMBER TO SEND BACK CLIPS

SOME OF YOU HAVE EARNED PERMANENT PLACES IN THE HEARTS OF COLUMBIA STUDENTS FOR RESPONDING TO OUR PLEAS TO SEND BACK TEAR SHEETS OF CNS STORIES THAT RUN IN YOUR PAPER.

FOR THE OTHERS, WE ARE RESERVING A PLACE FOR YOU IN THEIR HEARTS, BUT WE HAVE YET TO RECEIVE ANY CLIPS!!

DON'T YOU REMEMBER YOUR FIRST BY-LINE? THE THRILL OF SEEING YOUR NAME IN PRINT? HOW LARGE IT LOOMED IN YOUR LIFE?

SO, PLEASE, REMEMBER THOSE WITHOUT CLIPS AT THIS JOB-HUNTING TIME OF THE YEAR. AND TEAR OUT THE CNS STORY AND PICTURE WHEN THEY RUN IN YOUR PAPER, SLAP A STAMP ON THE ENVELOPE AND RETURN IT TO ME.

OUR STUDENTS WILL REMAIN ETERNALLY GRATEFUL.

And some people are as enamoured of the class. . . clearly



>>>>

I'm not cut out for this kind of work. . .

This semester is proving to be a real trial. Frankly, I'm enjoying the classes a lot more, and it's so much less work than last semester, when I had to go down to my extremely fun and happening beat in Jamaica, Queens - or the ends of the earth as I prefer to call it - constantly. Add to that classes during the day, and work, all of which took up huge chunks of time, allowing me very little time to actually go down to Jamaica. So, I was constantly running around like crazy, staying up till 2 or 3, and then waking up at about 7 again the next morning, trying to catch up, and always feeling like I was behind. My source of stress last semester was that I had more work than I could keep up with.

This semester is a completely different story. I have three classes, all of which are in the evenings, and one of which requires minimal work outside of class. The other two do have a significant amount of work, but most of it is done on the phone or by email. Which means that, aside from the about 15 hours I spend at my job, I'm sitting at home in front of the computer. I don't dare move more than a six foot radius away from my computer, for fear that I might get abducted by aliens and never return and thus not meet my deadlines. I am afraid to step outside even to do some reading for class, for fear that I'll lose my precious "reporting time". The problem is that there are a lot of down times when I'm waiting for someone to call me back, or when I literally don't have much to do. But, neurotic as i am, I'm afraid that if I use this time to do other things, then I'm wasting my "reporting time" on things that can be done outside of the 9-5 slot when my sources will be at work, and thus accessible. My stress this semester, therefore, comes from the fact that I feel like I am not busy enough - surely I should be tearing my hair out, since that was what I was doing at this time last semester (remember, Emio?!?!)

This is not fun. I am an introvert and I like my "me" time, but there is also only so much of "me" that I can take - and frankly "me" is starting to get on me nerves. And all this is resulting in posts like the one about Google chat, which I felt so stupid about that I felt compelled to take down.

Save me from myself!!

Am I an ESL student?

The other day, as I left my Computer-Assister Reporting class, I found myself marching down the stairs in step with the professor who teaches that class. It was an awkward moment - I've never spoken to him outside of class, and was not sure whether to try to make conversation or continue on silently. I decided on the former, especially since he kept glancing my way, as if expecting me to say something.

"I think I'm starting to get it," I said, referring to what we were learning in the class. Now, this might seem like a strange thing to say out of the blue, but I've been a little confused in that class, and he knew it, so it didn't startle him too much.

"Well. . ." he ventured. "That's good."

I decided to plunge ahead. "Yeah, I know. I think I just needed some practice. Sometimes, the problem was that I'd look away from what you were doing, and then I wouldn't know what to do and then not be able to keep up after that. But now, I get it more, so I can figure it out."

"Hmmmm," he said. Then, perhaps sensing that that wasn't enough, and he needed to express more sympathy for a struggling student, he plowed on. "Well, if I had to learn all this in a second language, I would have a hard time too."

It took a second for that comment to sink in. When it did, it took another one for me to react, to decide whether to be angry or amused. It's been a while since I have received comments on my "surprisingly good English", and while I used to laugh and shrug it off before, I was shocked to find that the comment bothered me more than it ever had.

Not knowing how to respond, I continued walking down quietly. Sensing the awkward silence, he seemed to realize that what had been intended as a sort of compliment had somehow gone awry. "Or is it your third or fourth language?" he stumbled on.

Now I felt a little sorry for him. "Well," I said, "I speak a couple of other languages, not very well. But English is more like my first language. I've been speaking it almost all my life and know it better than my own language."

"Oh," he said. "But still. . ." He gave up and changed tactics. "I know a little Russian," he went on. "But only the bad words."

I laughed politely.

Mercifully, we'd reached the outside of the building by now, and we both beat hasty retreats in opposite directions after hurried goodbyes.

As I walked home, I played that conversation, and my reaction to it, over in my mind. I generally laugh off incidents like this, but I was shocked at the anger I had felt at his assumption that I had difficulty understanding English because my accent is not American. Is it because I have become more insecure about my own identity? Or because I expected better from a professor at Columbia University - and a New York Times reporter, no less? Or was it simply because I have become more sensitive - and less forgiving - in the time that has elapsed since my college days? Or perhaps a mix of all three?

I feel like I did overreact, but I also think that, especially in today's increasingly globalized world, people like me are more entitled to become angry at assumptions like this. And people like him, especially reporters (that part probably annoys me more than anything else) need to stop putting people in boxes and labeling them based on the way they look or speak.

I had the same class again yesterday, and perhaps because I'm finally getting what we're learning, or perhaps because of a determination to show him that I am not lacking in English skills, I found myself speaking up a lot more - both answering and asking questions more boldly than I have done so far. So I guess some good came out of that:-)

But it will be a while before I forget this incident, and my own surprising reaction to it.

Thinking in emoticons. . .

You know you’ve been spending too much time online when you make a face in your head in reaction to something, and you find yourself picturing one of those little IM smileys -- like the :-S or :-D or the :-( or even the :-/. Or you hear or think something funny or silly, and the first thing that pops into your head is “LOL”.

Of course I don’t think like this. I’m just saying. . .

The last sign of Christmas. . .

I was walking down Columbia's College Walk today, from Broadway, where I live, to Amsterdam Avenue, where I work, and noticed a couple of workers taking down the Christmas lights that have been up on the trees (the tree trunks to be precise, since there are no leaves), since a couple of weeks before Christmas. I felt a twinge - of sadness, nostalgia, I'm not sure, as I saw the last holdout from the holidays disappearing. It's silly really, considering that Christmas was over two months ago, but in some way seeing those lights as I walk through school gave me some comfort, representing as they did the last reminders of the Christmas spirit and cheer.

As I watched them come down, I thought back to my past Christmases. I know March is a little late to be reminiscing about Christmas, but for most of us, the hustle and bustle of the holidays don't allow for much thinking at the time itself.

When I was living in India, I used to watch American and British shows, and always feel that our Christmas celebrations weren't adequate, weren't real. There was no snow, no Christmas lights in shops and gaily wrapped presents in store windows, no need for wandering around in coats, hats, boots and scarves. We had our different celebrations: setting up a tree - albeit a pretty scraggly one most of the time (one time Nev and I dubbed it "our Christmas branch"), getting out the little creche my father had built himself when I was about six or seven years old, and the tiny statues of baby Jesus and Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the Wise Men and the animals, many with limbs and other body parts broken off and glued back together.

But when I moved to the U.S., I realized how wrong I'd been to translate the outer signs of Christmas as representative of Christmas itself. I had all that - the snow (too much of it, in fact - it was Minnesota, after all), the Christmas lights and presents, the coat, hat, boots, scarf. But my family wasn't here, and in most of the celebrations, I realized that the real reason for Christmas was absent as well - was, in fact, taboo.

I was never alone at Christmas. Especially from my second year onwards, I had my host family, who went completely out of their way to wrap me in love, and include me in all their family traditions, so I would experience both the real American Christian Christmas and deal with being away from home at the time when it bites the most. And in London, there were always my cousins and aunt to spend Christmas with.

But as grateful as I am for their openness and generosity, and happy as I was to finally have what I'd always considered the ideal Christmas, I always felt a little like the outsider, that I was looking in at someone else's family Christmas. I had a picture in my head - I think it came from reading The Little Match Girl when I was little - standing outside in the cold looking into other people's warm homes, and their happy Christmas celebrations. I'm being completely melodramatic here, because my life was perfect compared to hers, but I felt a little bit like her, like this was all fascinating, but that I wasn't supposed to be a part of it. . .

Despite what seemed to be lacking, however, that time of year still holds a special place - particularly because I've realized how precious the Christmases at home were, and how much people went out of their way for me here and in London. So, as I watched the lights come down, and the little bit of the security I'd felt - that even after the Christmas presents and Christmas trees were long gone, there was still this one reminder - evaporated, I realized that it really is time to get on. After all, it is Lent now, and I suppose it is a little inappropriate to have Christmas lights up at this time. And I also realized that, for the lights to go up again, they have to come down first. . .

An update on the UN Human Rights Commission

This was a story put out by UPI today on progress on the HR Commission. Nayma, sorry it took me so long to follow up on my previous post.

Analysis: U.N. reforms will move forward
By WILLIAM M. REILLY
UPI U.N. Correspondent

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 21 (UPI) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and General Assembly President Jan Eliasson say that even though there are deep differences among member states they expect real progress in reform of the world organization.

A formal proposal for a Human Rights Council to replace the disgraced Human Rights Commission was expected to be presented later in the week, U.N. officials said Tuesday.

The main differences stem from members of the 191-member assembly fearing a power grab by the 15-member council, particularly by its five permanent, veto-wielding members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

Annan and Eliasson met to discuss "the need to move forward with the whole reform agenda."

"We live in a world of turmoil, and we must keep in mind that we have work to do in so many areas," the assembly president said Monday, reminding reporters at U.N. World Headquarters in New York of pending issues such as the Economic and Social Council, new development initiatives, management and the proposed Human Rights Council.

"This is the year of reform, and we are pressing ahead," Annan said. "Between the two of us we are in touch with many of the member states, individually and in groups and I am really hopeful that we will see real progress on human rights this week."

He is also expected to press ahead with management reform, the review of mandates, discussions on fighting terrorism and the terrorism convention.

"Of course the development issue, which is of great concern to many of our members is very much on the table, and we have made good progress, and I hope we can put that to bed, as well as the strengthening of ECOSOC," the secretary-general added, referring to the Economic and Social Council.

When asked about members of the Non-Aligned Movement, states which consider themselves not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc, which have grown fearful of becoming marginalized by the Security Council, Annan said, "Yes, there is some suspicion that some organs are reaching out for a power grab," the secretary-general said. "There is unhappiness with the Security Council, particularly.

"There is some mistrust among the membership on the whole issue of reform, and the reasons behind the reform, but I think from my discussions with member states almost all of them realize that reform is necessary, and would want to see the (United Nations) reformed and strengthened," Annan said.

The secretary-general continued that when the general membership sees issues they believe should be discussed in the General Assembly being discussed in the Security Council, "again it leads to tensions."

He said the two bodies should be able to "find a mechanism for discussing an issue of great interest" to all the members.

"Peacekeeping, procurement, sexual abuse, are issues that should be of concern to all of them, and we should find a way of discussing them openly and publicly, and not fight over which forum should have it," Annan said, referring to scandals under investigation by the Office for the Internal Oversight Services.

Eliasson agreed, saying: "I share the concern that, if there is an encroachment of the functions and power of the General Assembly that are on the agenda of the General Assembly, we need to deal with that, and I have discussed this matter with the president of the Security Council," a post filled this month by Ambassador John Bolton of the United States.

"I think it is important that we respect each other's functions and powers, and we will of course prove this point that the secretary-general has just made... that the General Assembly is accepting this responsibility to take very important reform decisions," Eliasson added. "I would hope also that we would increase that sense of respect and that importance of dialogue, so that we bring down these tensions."

To publish or not to publish?

The Prophet Mohammed cartoon issue has been on my mind lately, as it has on several others, I'm sure. And I've been debating how I feel about this issue. On the one hand, there is the press' right to freedom of expression, which I strongly believe in, for obvious reasons. This is also why Jyllands-Posten published the cartoons, media reports say - to show that they will not be cowed by religious dogma and fundamentalism. As such, I think that they should stand by their right to express themselves freely. For, if they give in now, they will only help spread the belief that, if sufficient pressure is exerted, the press can be controlled and moulded the way the powers-that-be want.

However, I do think this newspaper, and the others that reprinted the cartoons, acted rashly and without thought to the consequences of their actions. Because, Islam across the world is in a volatile state today. With fundamentalism reaching heights above what it has been for a long time, and with the West's tenuous standing in several Muslim countries, any action that appears, even remotely, to be spurred by anti-Islamic views can stoke the smouldering embers and start a flame that could very quickly spread out of control.

And that is what is happening now. As rioting and violence spreads across the world, the question, from a practical point of view, is "Is it really worth it?" All this to prove a hazy point about freedom of expression? That too in Denmark, where the press' freedom hasn't really come under any real test in the first place.

Or perhaps this whole reaction has proven a point. That maybe freedom of expression is not completely unequivocal, and the press can't get away with saying anything under this protection. Perhaps there are some things that are more important than freedom of expression.

I have also been thinking about how I would react if the depictions had been of Jesus. I would have been furious as well. Journalist or not, I am a Christian first, and my loyalty to Christ comes before my loyalty to my career and even my rights. So, I can see very clearly where the anger is coming from. I would definitely have written some angry letters, maybe even protested, and exercised my own right to freedom of expression. But I would not go so far as to riot and use violence, simply because that would be hypocritical and dilute the very point I'm trying to make. And this is what the rioters themselves are doing. By resorting to violence, they are going against their own religion, the very religion that they claim they are trying to protect - they are being hypocrites.

And there are others trying to fan the flames -- such as those who have publicized cartoons that weren't even in the original publication, including one of Mohammed with the face of a pig. Others are printing cartoons desecrating experiences that, while not always religious, still hold strong, poignant significance for other groups -- such as that of Anne Frank in bed with Hitler, published by the Arab European League. And in Iran, newspapers have announced a contest for cartoons mocking the Holocaust. In the latter two cases, those responsible are exercising their own right to freedom of expression. But again, at what cost? What are they really proving? That they can be as irresponsible and offensive as the European newspapers?

So, when I said that I strongly believe in freedom of expression, I do. But, I also think that it is up to the media to be responsible about how far they take this right, and to decide that, in cases like this one, where the publication of the cartoons was gratuitous, they should relinquish this right for the greater good. But, now that the deed is done, giving in will only give the impression that, under sufficient pressure, the press can be manipulated, which will have strong implications for the future of free expression.

Any thoughts, my phantom readers?!?!?

My weekend's adventures

So, being the enterprising reporter that I am, I decided to go down to Washington D.C. to report on the story I'm working on for my wire service class. And being the fiscally responsible wonderwoman that I am, I decided that I would take . . . the Chinatown bus!!

I confidently booked my ticket to leave on Saturday, and to return Sunday, without bothering to book anywhere to stay and having no idea where I would spend the night. Thankfully, I managed to talk to my old Kodai friend Meri the night before I was due to leave, who graciously extended an invitation to stay with them. Otherwise it would have been an all-nighter at Union Station, which might have led to another very interesting story.

My bus was at 3:00 on Saturday afternoon, which, of course meant that I would only arrive at the bus' departure location at 3:15 p.m. and find that it had already left. If you, oh reader, are shaking your head and thinking, "Tsk, tsk, Ini, late as usual," I hasten to put you right -- it was all part of the plan. Of course I wanted to wait for an hour in the pouring rain for the next bus.

I finally got on the bus, and after waiting another long hour, in delirious anticipation of my first long distance bus ride ever in the U.S. -- which included a frightening moment, when the bus driver and one of the several women selling tickets got into a heated argument in Chinese, which resulted in the driver stalking off, and my own conviction that we would all have to get off the bus and enjoy the rain and the -- ahem -- scenery, for another hour -- we finally took off (whew, that was a long sentence).

We arrived four and a half hours later in this great nation's capital. Meri and hubby arrived to pick me up and we proceeded to Big Bowl restaurant, where I ate a lot more than I should have, as usual, and then off to Blockbuster to pick up "The Fantastic Four" and then on home. Watched "The Fantastic Four" -- well, I did, M and hubby fell asleep, and then off to bed.

Woke up today, a little too leisurely, and after dilly dallying over breakfast and telly, proceeded to Union Station, to the theater church, and said goodbye to M and hubby, and set off to do my reporter thing. Managed to disrupt most of the entire service by first walking in late (again all part of my plan for making a dramatic entrance) and then proceeding to walk up and down the aisle taking pictures).

By God's grace, the sermon was absolutely perfect for my story, and I got several quotes just from listening to the pastor who wasn't there -- he was projected on the screen, but the sermon was recorded earlier, which all adds spice to my story.

At the end of the service, a couple of people, who had seen me at work taking pictures, approached me -- which saved me the trouble of being a real reporter, and approaching them -- to invite me to a photography group that meets every week. I explained what I was doing there, and they agreed to talk to me and tell me their stories.

When I finished talking to them, it was about 1:00 and I walked back to Chinatown, only to discover that the next bus was at 5:00. I almost sat down on the pavement and started crying. My shoulders ached from my heavy backpack, thanks to my laptop and I stood there for half an hour trying to figure out what to do. I did entertain the thought of being a trooper and joining the Chinese New Year parade, but my aching shoulders dissuaded me. I decided to trek back to the station and see if there was a train I could take back. Walked all the way back, and found that, yes there was a train, but no, it was way too expensive for my poor student budget.

I had one more option left -- the Greyhound. So I trekked another three long blocks to the Greyhound station, by which time my shoulders were ready to dislocate themselves from the rest of my body. But there was a bus leaving right as I got there, so I promptly hopped on it, and 4.5 hours and a splitting headache later, I was home. Home sweet home. It never felt more welcoming.

And now, I'm contemplating a career change. Something along the lines of a lady who lunches.

Laa dee dah. . .

We think life is profoundly unfair. Because, when the last thing we want to do is blog, ideas simply flood into our head, and knock us over. But at times like this, when we know we need to blog, and even want to blog, our brain refuses to co-operate and come up with something truly blog-worthy.

We could blog about the story we're working on now, but what if some enterprising reporter goes and steals our idea and writes the story before we finish it? We could blog about our extremely eventful and happening life (?!?!), but that would just cause you, oh reader, to go green with envy, and we don't want that. Or we could blog about something profound and inspirational, but that would require profundity (??) and inspiration, and we lack both.

So, then, what shall we blog about? Any ideas would be most welcome, otherwise this blog will fade into non-existence, and that would indeed be tragic.

Some cool pics!!

These pictures were emailed to me and I thought they were quite cool!

Sigh!

I'm in that no man's land between being the holidays and getting back into serious work, and am having a hard time leaving it. Which means that the work is piling up, and while I'm aware of it, my brain is still in holiday mode, and doesn't want to start functioning yet. Which does not bode well for my grades, considering the fact that deadlines are fast approaching. I did stay home on Saturday night, instead of joining Ficali, Ilajna and Doobie for karaoke (which might have been a good thing in more ways than one) to work on a story that was due Monday and to catch up on some reading). So maybe that's a sign that I'm on my way out of this lethargy.

On the other hand, I'm taking a class in which we run a wire service, which means that my stories stand a remote chance of being picked up by other newspapers and actually published. Of course, knowing my luck (and my story ideas), I'll be the one person in the class whose stories never get picked up. But, according to my prof, the only person who never got any of her stories in any newspaper last year ended up with a job at Reuters, so maybe that's the way to go!

Sigh! I want a job! I wish someone at some fancy schmancy newspaper or wire would call me and say, "Inihtar! We think you are a fantastic reporter, and we would like nothing better than to have you come work for us and to get you a work visa! So hop on board!!" Wouldn't that be nice? But the fact that I sent in my resume with a glaring error on it to the only media company that is actually hiring wouldn't help now, would it? :-(

Is J-school - and journalism itself - worth it?

A disillusioning view of journalism and a disparaging commentary on my beloved school (sniff sniff!) by Hugh Hewitt in the Weekly Standard. Should I be thinking, "What was I thinking?"?!?!? Or should I brush this off, and say (or hope that), "This too shall pass" ?

The Media's Ancien Régime
Columbia Journalism School tries to save the old order
by Hugh Hewitt
01/30/2006, Volume 011, Issue 19



New York
To enter Columbia University's graduate school of journalism is to enter the highest temple of a religion in decline. A statue of Thomas Jefferson guards the plaza outside the doors, and the entry room is suitably grand. Two raised platforms proclaim the missions in bold gold letters: "To Uphold Standards of Excellence in Journalism" and "To Educate the Next Generation of Journalists." The marble floor tells you that the school was endowed by Joseph Pulitzer and erected in 1912 in memory of his daughter Lucille. A bronze quotation from Pulitzer's 1904 cri de coeur in the North American Review is on the wall:


Our republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve the public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. . . .
There is a new high priest in the dean's office on the seventh floor--Nicholas Lemann, veteran writer for the New Yorker, and before that the national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, where he spent 15 years after stints at the Texas Monthly, the Washington Post, and the Washington Monthly. Lemann began his scribbling for a New Orleans alternative weekly, the Vieux Carré Courier, while still a high school student, covering everything from boxing to city hall to the private school network of the region. Upon entering Harvard in 1972, he immediately "comped" for the Crimson, only to be rejected in his application to join the editorial board of the greatest brand in undergraduate newspapers. "Harvard is filled with this sort of humiliation," Lemann told me in a conversation last fall that capped a two-day visit to the school. He reapplied for a position as a reporter, and the second time was successful, rising through the ranks to become the paper's president in the 1975-76 academic year. Now 51 and two years into a new career, Lemann will need the same persistence if his legacy as dean is to be something other than a footnote in the history of the decline of American media power.

On my first day at Columbia's graduate school of journalism (CSJ), the poster boy for all that has come to plague elite American media--former CBS anchor Dan Rather--took to the podium at Fordham Law School to denounce the "new journalism order." On day two, the New York Times Company announced a cut of 500 employees from its already pared down workforce of 12,300. (The company employed 13,750 as recently as 2001.) On that same day Knight-Ridder slashed its Philadelphia papers' editorial staff by 75 positions at the Inquirer and 25 at the Daily News. "I get 50 calls a day about the crisis in journalism," Lemann deadpanned when I posed the "crisis" question. "Only 50?" I thought.

The story of what is going on at CSJ cannot be separated from the collapse of credibility of the mainstream media, also known as "elite media" and "old media" among its detractors. The fortunes of the big five papers--the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the Wall Street Journal, as well as the old TV networks and big weekly newsmagazines--are visibly in decline. The upstart blogosphere is ever at the ready to "deconstruct" the work product of the old media's old guard. The very best investigative reporting is being done not by big names at the big papers, but by people like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies' journalist in residence Claudia Rosett, who almost singlehandedly unraveled the U.N.-Saddam Oil-for-Food scandal, with much of her work published online. Dan Rather's CBS, eager to impugn George W. Bush's service in the Texas National Guard, got duped by fraudulent documents it took months to obtain and only hours for bloggers and readers to shred.

This story in its small way partakes of the seismic shift underway. Its origin is an email request from Lemann last spring: Would I be willing to be the subject of a New Yorker profile? I agreed, on the condition that I could have reciprocal access to Lemann and the Columbia Journalism School for this piece. Hedged with some qualifiers--he could not commit any of his faculty to talk to me or guarantee access to classrooms, though everyone proved to be very welcoming--Lemann agreed. Reactions to his profile of me varied among family and friends, but I thought it complete and fair. Before I sat down with Lemann I had read everything he'd written for the New Yorker and was impressed with his profiles of Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. (The Cheney profile earned Lemann some animosity among colleagues, who thought him too gentle with the only man the left fears as much as Rove.) The scorn on the center-right for the "objectivity" and "professionalism" of the mainstream media is deep and sincere. I went to Columbia to see if Lemann was the exception that proves the rule, and to test the rule itself.

What's the rule? That the elite media are hopelessly biased to the left and so blind to their own deficiencies, or so in denial, that they cannot save themselves from irrelevance. They're like the cheater in the clubhouse, whose every mention of a great round of golf is met with rolling eyes and knowing nods.

PULITZER'S ACOLYTES at Columbia undoubtedly believe that they are members of an "able, disinterested, public-spirited press," and not a "cynical, mercenary, demagogic" one. But the widespread perception in the country is that the prestige newsrooms are filled with the latter pretending to be the former. "Public attitudes toward the press, which have been on a downward track for years, have become more negative in several key areas," the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press reports. It is beyond argument that Pulitzer's dream of the press preserving public virtue has been abandoned, but Lemann is on a mission to help restore credibility to a "profession" without licensing or standards or governing bodies of any sort.

The first person I met on campus, Bruce Wallace, is a student enrolled in the school's traditional program, intended to result in a Master of Science degree after an intensive year of studies. Lemann has also instituted an ambitious new Master of Arts course of study, which has provoked deep suspicion in many of the school's alums and among the faculty. But with 205 students in the M.S. program and 27 in the M.A. division, there is no doubt that the training of front-line reporters is still the core mission. "How to cover a fire in Brooklyn on deadline" is one catchphrase I hear repeated. It is difficult to picture Pat Buchanan, Newsweek's Rick Smith, CBS's Susan Spencer, or writers Mitch Albom and James McBride--CSJ grads, all--covering fires in Brooklyn on or off deadline. But the M.S. program is in essence a 10-month education in the details and practice of that craft.

Wallace is a native of Baltimore who left his job as the manager of the classifieds at the San Francisco Guardian, an alternative weekly, to hone the skills that he hopes will take him to a daily to do local political reporting. The 1999 graduate of Kenyon College had done a little campus radio before heading off to tend bar in Alaska. In San Francisco he got hooked on city hall gossip, and though he was no fan of Mayor Willie Brown, or of "corporate power allied with politicians" generally, he's certain he'll be able to bring fairness to his future job as a political reporter. When I trot out my list of "parameter" questions I use to test for basic ideological disposition--Wallace doesn't own a gun; he favors same-sex marriage--there are no surprises.

Soon Mike Hoyt, executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, arrives. With Michael Shapiro, Hoyt team-teaches the class "Advanced Reporting," into which Wallace and 15 other students are headed, and introduces me to Shapiro, who quickly welcomes me to observe the hour. Shapiro is a gifted teacher who, three weeks into the term, already knows all of his students' names and engages them with ease and good humor. The first half of this hour is given over to outlining a large assignment--a profile of some recently deceased person or the reconstruction of a crime. Shapiro is clearly hoping the students will go for the profile, and spends considerable time instructing his charges on how they might go about selecting their subject. He fences his instructions with cautions about engaging the bereaved ("You need to know, but you can't be a vampire") and tips on tracing the details of the life to be profiled. Hoyt contributes key bits of experience, and the students are curious and attentive to these practical lessons. "You need to make your first phone call today," Shapiro insists. "Tomorrow becomes the next day, which becomes next week. Good reporters make the first call on the first day."

The 16 students are not evenly split--there are 14 women and just two men. Two-thirds of the M.S. class this year are women, a reflection of what Lemann calls the "feminization" of journalism programs across the country. Robert Mac Donald, the assistant dean for admissions and financial aid, ran down the demographics for me: The average age of an M.S. student is just shy of 28, the mean is 26, the youngest is 20, and the oldest is 63. Whites make up 69 percent of the new class; 11 percent are African American, 7 percent Hispanic, 6 percent Asian, 3 percent Middle Eastern, and 4 percent South Asian. The school doesn't yet keep stats on religious background, though Mac Donald believes there has been a significant increase in Muslim students post 9/11. A fifth of the students are from the New York area, and between 37 to 40 percent are from "the corridor"--from Boston to Washington. Another fifth are from the west coast, and 10 percent are foreign. It is a pretty "blue" student body, and willing to pay handsomely for the privilege of their credentials. A year at CSJ--tuition, living expenses, incidentals--comes to $59,404 according to Mac Donald, though 85 percent of the students receive some financial aid, with packages ranging from $1,000 to $50,000. The average scholarship is $5,200, which means that these students are putting a lot of money into the program.

The "blue" nature of the student body is further confirmed by my polling of the class I attended, done with the permission of Shapiro. Six of the 16 were English majors, two studied history, and the balance spread across the humanities. No one had a background in the physical sciences. No one owned a gun. All supported same-sex marriage. Three had been in a house of worship the previous week. Six read blogs. None of them recognized the phrase "Christmas Eve in Cambodia"--though Shapiro not only got the allusion but knew the date of the John Kerry Senate speech in which he made the false claim about his Vietnam war experience. Three quarters of them hope to make more than $100,000 as a journalist, 11 had voted for John Kerry, and one for George Bush (three are from abroad and not eligible, and one didn't vote for either candidate). I concluded by asking them if they "think George Bush is something of a dolt." There was unanimous agreement with this proposition, one of the widely shared views within elite media and elsewhere on the left. The president's Harvard MBA and four consecutive victories over Democrats judged "smarter" than him haven't made even a dent in that prejudice.

The intake valve at the elite media's equivalent of the Army's war college isn't pulling in many conservatives. In fact, it isn't pulling in many moderates. After the class, a few students linger. Their backgrounds are interesting. Rachel Templeton is from Alaska, graduated from the University of Washington, and has spent a few years at the Henry Jackson Foundation. She's moving to Israel after this year, where she hopes to pick up freelance work. Bree Nordenson is from Freeport, Maine, a graduate of Minnesota's Carleton College, and is transitioning from her work as a psychiatric counselor in Boston. Andreea Plesea is from Rumania and her Facebook entry announces her goal is to "become a top notch investigative reporter" and to "pursue a degree in law." Stina Lunden is from Sweden, and spent her last year as a Washington Post intern in France working for Keith B. Richburg. Lanie Shapiro was in PR for Simon & Schuster and Random House. Sophia Chang, originally from Texas, has been a reporter for the past four years.

These six want to pursue the idea of "objectivity," and most had read Lemann's profile of me, which included my very skeptical assessment of the objectivity of the mainstream media. Lunden is particularly animated. "You can't draw conclusions that our opinions will influence our reporting," she says, launching into a familiar defense of the ability of journalists to put aside their points of view. Shapiro stresses that all of her professors have been teaching "the value of objectivity," but Nordenson isn't buying it. "It is dangerous to think you are objective." Plesea is cynical: "You don't get truth in political reporting," an opinion she didn't confine to the countries of the former Soviet Union, with which she is familiar.

I am not here to debate the proposition, but find it interesting that the three-week wonders are already committed to the defense of their new profession's reputation for objectivity. With a faculty that does not appear to count among its number even one prominent name from the center-right, but does include respected voices of the left such as Todd Gitlin and Victor Navasky, it is difficult to see where they will acquire any useful skepticism about their own craft's motives and abilities.

THE WORST MOMENTS in recent history for the mainstream media--Rathergate, Jayson Blair's fabrications at the New York Times, the slander by CNN executive Eason Jordan that the U.S. military in Iraq was targeting journalists for assassination--were all still in the future when Columbia president Lee Bollinger was presented with an opening in the deanship by the retirement of Lemann's predecessor, Tom Goldstein. Bollinger, a First Amendment expert, former president of the University of Michigan, and former dean of its law school (I took media law from him in the spring of 1983, and the quiet, brooding, and even moody Bollinger hasn't changed much in 22 years, according to reports) seized the moment. He launched a controversial top-to-bottom look at the journalism school, empaneling a committee that met a dozen or so times to debate the future of the school. Lemann was among the panel's members, and delivered a paper to the group in the spring of 2003 that urged the one-year M.S. degree be replaced by a two-year Master of Arts program. Bollinger obviously warmed to some part of the Lemann pitch, and offered him the deanship.

Lemann quickly realized that alumni and faculty would unite to kill any idea of a uniform two-year degree at CSJ. "Of 24 or 25 faculty," he told me, "I'd have had maybe two votes." But there are other ways to pursue change and reform. After another year of meetings with industry types, he launched a second degree track: a year-long Masters of Arts program open only to practicing journalists, aiming to enhance and deepen their skills. Lemann is clearly hoping that the best and brightest of the M.S. grads will be willing to stay a second year and also go for the M.A. This year a pool of 70 applicants yielded a class of 27. The goal is a class of 60 drawn from 250 applicants.

My second classroom experience is in an M.A. class, "Evidence and Inference," which includes all 27 students. It is the meta-class for the new track, and is co-taught by Lemann and associate dean Evan Cornog, as well as a series of academic and media guest-lecturers. Today marks the third in three lectures by the former director of the U.S. Census Bureau, Columbia's Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs Kenneth Prewitt, on the use of race as a classifying device. Prewitt's lecture is a fascinating look at the introduction of racial categories into the census and the evolution of those categories, as well as the limits of the utility of that data. An interesting and provocative 90 minutes later, though, I am left wondering how much the Prewitt lecture will do for these students unless they are fortuitously assigned some future story on the census or a related topic having to do with, say, racial classifications in university admissions.

Lemann's hope for this course is to cultivate in his students a capacity to discover and analyze data. He repeatedly uses the term "power skills," and he has in mind a deeper appreciation, and use, of more sophisticated research and analytical skills than most journalists bring to the table. "Regression analysis is the best example," he tells me. "Every social science study in the United States depends upon regression analysis, but almost no reporters understand it. You can't read and understand these studies if you don't know how regression analysis works. I taught myself how to do it, and we are going to teach the M.A. students, equipping them to go beyond their ordinary reliance on dueling experts interpreting studies."

That, in a nutshell, is Lemann's grand plan for salvaging the profession: Teaching reporters new skills that will make them more competent amateurs in the worlds of other professionals. The school's newsletter, 116th & Broadway, carried a letter from Lemann on its front cover for the summer '05 issue. Lemann noted that the spring of 2006 would see the school of journalism confer its first new professional degree in 70 years. He was eager that alums understand what the M.A. program was all about. Among other points, he wanted to emphasize:


* The M.A. program will accept not only holders of the Journalism School's M.S. degree, but also journalists who can demonstrate to us that they are already working at a level of skill commensurate with that of M.S. holders.
* For the first couple of years, the program will be tuition-free to students for whom paying tuition imposes a financial difficulty. . . .
* The program involves greatly deepening the ties between the Journalism School and the rest of the university, mainly by bringing academic faculty people here to teach in partnership with the journalists on our faculty, so as to marry deep substantive knowledge to journalistic practice.
If ever a class is given on the elegant insertion of the thin edge of a wedge, this would make a fine piece of assigned reading. The M.S. holders are assured of the status of their credential; the applicant pool sees a hint of tuition deals; Columbia faculty are given their props; and the industry gets a promise of "deep substantive knowledge" on the way. In that last phrase is the figure in the carpet, the grand design for saving journalism. And also an admission of great significance about all that ails the craft today.

LEMANN'S PROJECT is either a masterful flanking of the dominant critique of the mainstream media--thoroughgoing left-wing bias among its practitioners--or an irrelevant and doomed exercise in beside-the-pointism. The big battle in American journalism is over the very idea of objectivity. Lemann assumes that objectivity is possible, but that the skills of reporters need burnishing if their reputation for disinterestedness is to be recovered.

The genuine enthusiasm for a new program's launch is always difficult to gauge, but one measurement that simply does not lie in the world of academia is donor support. CSJ's associate dean of university development and alumni relations, Jeffrey H. Richard, briefed me on Lemann's work as change agent and chief fundraiser. Three $5 million gifts do not a conclusion render, but are more than a good start. David and Katherine Moore have given a $5 million gift to endow a faculty position to cover government and public affairs in both the M.S. and M.A. programs. David is the grandson of Joseph Pulitzer, so that sounds to an outsider like a crucial endorsement of the innovations underway. Another $5 million is arriving from Leo Hindery, formerly of the YES Entertainment Network, and the father of a CSJ grad--another category of endorsement crucial to the school's constituencies. This gift is available for scholarships, an underfunded and pressing need for new and old programs alike. The third of the big three came to found a Center for Investigative Journalism, and came via a big name in that business, Toni Stabile, whose reporting on the cosmetics industry in the '60s and '70s set a high bar for future practitioners of the craft.

"Fundraising," says Richard, "is about relationships, about earning people's trust. They sense the excitement about what we are doing here." Lemann "has a vision," he adds, and "there's a general consensus that having journalists who better understand what they are doing is needed." Richard expects that corporate America will welcome--and fund--the emphasis on more sophisticated skills, but is careful to underscore that no gift from industry can be accompanied by any hint of compromise or strings attached.

"Authority is a construct," Lemann tells me on my second day at the school. And the "authority" of journalism with the American public is clearly at a modern low point. Lemann intends to reconstruct journalism's shaky reputation via an infusion of specific and measurable skills--either you can or you can't do regression analysis; either you can or you can't follow a case citation sequence or decode an annual audit report--and thus ignite a demand among editors not for the bright young reporters from campus newspapers, but for really smart alums of graduate schools of all sorts who can be tempted into the field despite its pay and present status somewhere near the carnival barker's.

This objective is both large and novel. Joseph Pulitzer wasn't a skills man, though his detour from reporting to law school suggests at least a hint of Lemann's recognition that reporters are often overmatched by the complexities of the stories they are assigned. Pulitzer was very much a crusader, though, and his 1904 North American Review article "The College of Journalism," which Lemann points me to, is almost hilariously optimistic in its aims for the profession:

There are many political reformers among the clergy, but the pulpit as an institution is concerned with the Kingdom of Heaven, not with the Republic of America. There are many public-spirited lawyers, but the bar as a profession works for its retainers, and no law-defying trust ever came to grief from a dearth of legal talent to serve it. Physicians work for their patients and architects for their patrons. The press alone makes the public interests its own.

"What is everybody's business is nobody's business"--except the journalist's; it is his by adoption. But for his care almost every reform would fall stillborn. He holds officials to their duty. He exposes secret schemes of plunder. . . . He brings all classes, all professions together, and teaches them to act in concert on the basis of their common citizenship.

The Greeks thought that no republic could be successfully governed if it were too large for all the citizens to come together in one place. The Athenian democracy could all meet in the popular assembly. There public opinion was made, and accordingly as the people listened to a Pericles or to a Cleon the state flourished or declined. The orator that reaches the American democracy is the newspaper. It alone makes it possible to keep the political blood in healthful circulation in the veins of a continental republic. . . . Virtue, said Montesquieu, is the principle of a republic, and therefore a republic . . . is the hardest of all to preserve. For there is nothing more subject to decay than virtue.

This vision, from which the quotations in the school's entrance lobby are excerpted, can hardly be read with a straight face these days. And it has very little in common with Lemann's project. Pulitzer wanted reporters to push for virtue. Lemann endorses, first and emphatically, "truth-seeking." They are very different projects, proceeding from very different ideologies. Virtue, as Pulitzer understood it, was not so difficult to figure out. Truth is elusive.

Lemann also recommends to me the 1920 Walter Lippmann essay "Liberty and the News," but curiously not Lippmann's better known 1922 opus, Public Opinion, which opens this way:

There is an island in the ocean where in 1914 a few Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans lived. No cable reaches that island, and the British mail steamer comes but once in sixty days. In September it had not yet come, and the islanders were still talking about the latest newspaper which told about the approaching trial of Madame Caillaux for the shooting of Gaston Calmette. It was, therefore, with more than usual eagerness that the whole colony assembled at the quay on a day in mid-September to hear from the captain what the verdict had been. They learned that for over six weeks now those of them who were English and those of them who were French had been fighting in behalf of the sanctity of treaties against those of them who were Germans. For six strange weeks they had acted as if they were friends, when in fact they were enemies.

You can put Lippmann's book down after page one, his 1920 essay, and Pulitzer's vision statement for his school as well. Lippmann's world, Pulitzer's world, even Nicholas Lemann's world of the Harvard Crimson from 1972 to 1976--they are all gone. Every conversation with one of the old guard citing the old proof texts comes down to this point: There is too much expertise, all of it almost instantly available now, for the traditional idea of journalism to last much longer. In the past, almost every bit of information was difficult and expensive to acquire and was therefore mediated by journalists whom readers and viewers were usually in no position to second-guess. Authority has drained from journalism for a reason. Too many of its practitioners have been easily exposed as poseurs.

Lemann understands completely what has happened. I think he regrets it. He is certainly trying to salvage the situation. And there is simply no way he can succeed.

What if. . .

As I lay in bed the other night, engaged in my pre-slumber musings, a strange thought occured to me. It has actually come to my mind many times before, but I've never completed the thought. And it was: what if everything over the past four years or so has been a dream, and I wake up and I'm back to a day four years ago? I chose the four-year mark, because that was a pretty big turning point in my life.

I wondered if, having seen everything unfold in my life in the past four years, (in my supposed dream) I would make the same decisions I have made so far, or if, knowing the consequences, I would choose to go a different route. And it occured to me, that, despite hind sight being 20-20 and all, I would probably have made the exact same decisions. Not really because things couldn't have been better than the way they've turned out - quite the contrary, in fact. But because I think I would dismiss my "dream" as being just that - a dream, and hence of little consequence. And because I would convince myself that, in real life, things could not possibly work out the way they did in my "dream".

I would overestimate my strength, and my ability to deal with problems, and think that, in places in my "dream" where I fell apart, I would be able to cope just fine. I would overestimate my wisdom and the ability to do "the right thing", and believe that I would act with caution, and know when to get out of a sticky situation. And I would overestimate my levelheadedness (which, dream or no dream, would have been a far-fetched assumption!), and think that I would always remain rational and think with my head.

But I think most people would do the same, no? I don't believe in destiny and all that, but I do believe that we are all somehow wired to make certain kinds of choices, and that these choices are what lead us to the situations we get into, and ultimately to the kind of life we lead. So, when it comes to making decisions, we will almost always choose to go a certain direction.

Which is why, no matter what happens, and how many "dreams" I have, I will always remain an impulsive character that, when faced with a choice to think with my head or my heart, will throw caution to the winds (pardon the cliche) and choose that wretched heart, and inevitably land up in trouble.

Today's woes

Today has been an infuriating day. I woke up late, and after hooing and and haaing away three hours, finally decided to sit down and prepare for my Arabic class tonight. After writing down about three words, it suddenly dawned on me that perhaps I should look into paying my tuition and fees for this semester. So, I looked at the due date, and realised it was January 5. Oh well, I thought, I might as well go pick up my loan check, and try to pay it off as soon as possible. Now, since I was on a roll of productivity, I decided to look into replacing my drivers license as well (which I lost about two years ago, when someone kindly swiped my bag at a work Christmas party in London).

So I tried to call the MN Driver's License people (my driver's license is from Minnesota, since that was where I was living when I got it), and, in true government office fashion, I got an engaged tone. I tried several more times, and got the same result. So gave up on that, and went off to the financial services office at the uni, only to find that my loan check hadn't arrived. So called Ye Olde Access Groupe and was told by the kind machine lady that the check had only been disbursed today.

So, having solved that mystery, I thought I'd try my luck with the Minnesota folks again to see if I could get any response. This time, when I dialed the number, I got through! Yaay! Only problem was, this machine lady told me that to move things along faster, I would need my drivers license number. Hmmm, I thought, I'll walk home while I'm on hold, and find it.

Now I keep my old documents in an antique green folder that has travelled around with me everywhere I've gone. But, while I could picture the folder I had no idea where it was. So I went home, and phone in one hand and ice cream cone in another (I gave in to a craving on the way home while on hold), I began hunting for my green folder. And, as is always the case, I couldn't find it.

I rummaged through my boxes which I'd shipped from London (yes, I still haven't unpacked them, but I figured I'm moving again in a few months, so why bother), and, while in the process of rummaging, dropped my phone, which promptly disconnected itself. Oh well, I thought. I'll just sit down and enjoy my icecream and continue looking and call again when I've found the documents with my drivers license number. So I finished my ice cream, and in the process determined that I had, at one time, put the green folder in my green bag. Now the question: where is the green bag? Finally, after considerable head-scratching, followed by some truly admirable acrobatics, which sent little Weds fleeing to safety under my bed, I managed to locate the green bag INSIDE my brown suitcase on the top shelf of my closet.

And, you guessed it. . . no green folder. So I gave up my search, and resigned myself to the fact that the green folder had probably gone the way of my long-lost portfolio. And decided to call the MN folks again and confess that I could not locate my drivers license number, and could they please please please give me another license without making me taking the test (my aversion to taking the driving test again stems from my fear that I've forgotten how to drive, and don't want to disgrace myself - of course I'm aware that this presents a slight problem when I actually have to drive, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there).

So I sat down, dialed the number, and. . . beep, beep, beep. I've been trying and trying and the same result. . . so I decided to sit down and lay my woes down in my blog, as I continue my fruitless attempts at replacing my license.

To settle or not to settle. . .

I've been pondering the idea of settling lately. As in, settling for someone or something, not settling in a place. The mere word is so negative - that you are giving in, giving up, not aspiring towards something higher, something greater, that could be yours. But I've been thinking: wouldn't it be easier to settle for something, for someone, within reach, than to always be thinking that there's something better, something greater, and never being content?

If you're always aspiring towards something better, you are never happy with what you have now. Sure, what you are aspiring to will, if achieved, make you happy, but what if you never get there? What if you are deluding yourself that you will attain it at some point, and spend your life chasing something that might never become yours? Or perhaps not even chasing, but just in the conquest of some vague idea that there's something better out there, and what you have now is not good enough.

After all, where people are concerned, aren't we told that it's better to settle, to be with someone who loves us than with someone who we love? We are told that we should, in essence, settle for someone whom we might consider mediocre, because they love us, rather than look for someone who might seem to be a better option, be better looking, have a better job, a better income, and more importantly, be someone we love? (assuming that all of these don't come in one package for many). Should we follow this piece of advice, or throw it to the winds and wait for that person who will make us love them as we've never loved before? And if we never do find that person, well, at least we refused to settle, right?

Which is the better option?

I don't know where I'm going with this. I've just been thinking about this, as I've been a little disturbed about where my life is headed, and because I always seem to be wanting something better, always feeling as if there's something better just within reach, and if only this one thing would happen - or, in my case, if I can keep myself from doing that one thing that always seems to mess everything up - I could be that much happier.

As a Christian, what I should be doing is to trust that God knows what He's doing, and leave it up to Him. But, while my heart wants to do that, my head wants to be its own boss, and continues to wonder and worry and fret and fear. Or perhaps it's the other way round?

Anyway, looks like where I'm headed at the moment is a post about the meaning of life. So dear readers, be ready!

What is true tolerance?

I've been thinking, over the past few days about tolerance, after reading an article in the Opinion Journal about how the West is heading towards extinction. Although the writer, Mark Steyn, discusses a lot of issues, one sentence in particular, stuck with me. He mentions a statement made by British barrister and Queen's counsel Helena Kennedy, that "our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people's intolerance, which is intolerable."

And it got me thinking. Having attended an ultra-feminist, liberal women's Catholic college (where, in my, and several others opinions, the Catholic part was mere decoration), I've often found Kennedy's statement to be true. I found a great deal of tolerance and acceptance - and claims that all are welcome - there. . . as long as it was towards those with a similar mindset. As soon as the tolerant encountered any form of intolerance, the tolerance went out the window.

I looked up the definition of tolerance, and the definition that would fit our purpose was this: Willingness to recognize and respect the beliefs or practices of others. It does not say "willingness to recognise . . ." as long as they fit with the beliefs of the person claiming to be tolerant. Tolerance does not allow for exceptions. Tolerance is not tolerance if it does not tolerate intolerance.

The brand of tolerance practiced by those who claim to be extremely tolerant is this: as long as you agree with us, we will be tolerant; but the moment we encounter any sort of intolerance - towards homosexuality, towards abortion, towards certain religious practices, - away with our tolerance. Then we will just be right, and you wrong.

But, if they were truly tolerant, they would be tolerant even of views with which they don't agree, wouldn't they? Even of extreme views, which most people would find difficult to tolerate. Are they not being as hypocritical as they are claiming that their opponents are, by claiming to be universally tolerant and accepting, and then picking and choosing what they are tolerant towards?

New Year!!

First order of business: Happy New Year to all my readers!! (Unlike Caveboy, I remain optimistic that I have more than one reader:-))

Second: I know I haven't blogged for ages, partly because I haven't had anything earth-shattering to say. And I've been lazy, because I was in Atlanta, visiting (and fighting) with Nev for a week. And I've realised that when I have a lot to do, I want to do more, but when I have nothing to do, I don't want to do even the little that I do need to do. I even wrote up an entry, but realised that my mind was too numb to reach any sort of coherent conclusion, so I decided to not post it. Though I might post it if I do figure out how I feel about it when my mind thaws a bit.

So, it's been a good few days. It's actually been reunions galore. First in Altanta, visiting Nev. Then coming back and finding out that Majda my friend from London, was in town, and wandering around Times Square in the craziness of New Years Eve with her; then hanging out with Nayms and Okia for New Years Eve; and hanging out with Caveboy and Ficali on New Years Day. So, overall, it's been a good few days.

And now, after a nice relaxing few weeks, I am petrified at the thought of going back to school. I'm stressing about everything - my master's project, how I'm going to get through 2 six-credit classes and intense Arabic classes three times a week. Plus job hunting and applications galore:-(

So that's my life for now. And if you find this post mind-numbingly boring, then read Ficali's New Year's blog entry. It will more than make up for it.