some of these are true, some of these are not applicable in the philippine setting. but journalists all over the world are the same: we are overworked, underpaid and always in a hurry. and i don’t even know why we’re still here.

got this list from my cousin’s (who is taking up her MA in columbia univ) facebook status:

stuff journalists like:

—

reporters’ notebook:

Today’s journalists have so many tools at their disposal: Google, the Internet, computers, GPS devices and Blackberries.

But none of these are as iconic or important as journalists’  No. 1 tool in their arsenal - the reporter’s notebook. It’s always at a journalist’s side -  through press conferences, court hearings, breaking news and even while sleeping. Because unlike other devices, the notebook doesn’t need batteries or service or a USB connection. All it needs is a pen or pencil and a hard-working journalist attached to it.

The reporter’s notebook is unique given it’s its shape. It’s longer than it is wide, making it the perfect size to slip into a back pocket and makes taking notes an ease since a journalist’s hand doesn’t have to swoop across the entire length of a full-page while writing.

Reporter’s notebooks are also essential to journalists because of the fact that they contain every number, lead, quote and scoop collected while in the field. So important these are to one’s work that journalists have defied court orders, subpoenas, threats of physical violence and even gone to jail to safeguard the contents of their notebooks.

While vital to any journalist, finding a reporter’s notebook in a newsroom can prove to be a harder task than finding an uncorrupt Illinois politician. Because of this fact, journalists have been known to hoard notebooks, hiding them from fellow journalists.

The reporter’s notebook has proven its necessity by outlasting such tools of the trade such as typewriters, the printing press and fedora hats.

unfortunately, no one sells/make them here in the philippines. i only used/owned a reporter’s notebook when a friend from bloomberg gave me one. that size and shape is really convenient for me and it’s so easy to scribble notes on the fly with that notebook. i was able to encounter another type of reporter’s notebook in fullybooked, but DAMN, they’re so expensive–MOLESKIN kasi.

and since i’ve been pulled out of the field, no one gives me free notebooks anymore. hah.

some of my questions yesterday were answered by some of the comments at lifehacker. and just like what i wrote about twitter during the height of ondoy, some twitter users use the microblogging facility to cover/read about news items scantily covered by traditional news media. as viatro said:

It’s much more useful for breaking news than other sites and services. For instance, I used it to follow my local (town government) elections. They were hardly covered at all in the media, and no one will wiki about it until the final results are in. But the candidates themselves will Tweet the counts as they come in from polling stations. Another example are local traffic problems. Google doesn’t cover traffic flow very well in my area yet, but drivers can send out a tweet saying “There was an accident on I10, @ Exit 32″. They just send it as a text message from their cell. It’s also great for “subjective facts”. You can ask for opinions and get fast responses. I can say, “I’m in Brooklyn, where is the best Chinese restraint [restuarant]?”

it’s a good way also for companies to get instant feedback from their customers. it’s easier to troubleshoot customer relation problems through twitter, although it’s harder to filter out the hurtful, angry ones.

on a personal level, twitter can help you with, as viatro said:

Twitter is becoming a great way for people to get advice, find the answer to questions or just blow off some steam. I can say, my life is a bit more peaceful now that my friends and family are using it (and other such services). For example: I don’t get dragged out of the house to help people shop for stuff anymore, they can send a tweet asking “is this a good price?” and I, or anyone following their tweets can respond. Combined with SMS, it’s a good way to broadcast questions and comments to many people and get helpful responses back. If I’m not around to give valuable input on a subject, someone else will be. In all likelihood many people will respond.

question is, isn’t that we do already wit facebook?

i don’t think i’m the only one here in the country and i guess a lot of my colleagues don’t even have the time for other social networks.

i couldn’t really get the point of twitter. forgive me, but isn’t it like text messaging on a cellphone where you are just limited to 140 characters? if so, why not just blog? what’s the point in tweeting “i ate 5 marshmallows this morning”? i don’t know if i can even have a good conversation there when i’m gonna be tweeting a lot of people, following different conversations on my twitter page.

and what if i don’t have a follower? what if i don’t have internet connection? what’s the point?

i am having a hard time figuring this one out. i am pondering these life-shattering questions *sarcasm* because i am curious as to what twitter means for the traditional media. yeah, i already wrote about it for my newspaper during the height of ondoy but on other circumstances, what does twitter really do ba?

should i try it just to satisfy my curiousity?

—

as for other social networks, i haven’t visted my friendster page in a looooooooong time. i’m keeping it for the sake of keeping the contact details (and by chance, still keep in touch) with long-lost people, like the friends i made in highschool who are based in iloilo and bacolod, my gradeschool classmates and other people i haven’t talked to or seen in 15 to 20 years.

i opened up a friendster page because i was stalking sisa at that time (issues with bf at that time). by the way, she is still a lesbian, as far as i know.

i did not bother having a linked in page because my professional contacts are in facebook. the reason i tried facebook was that it was a venue where i can share the photos i had with my colleagues. i usually take a lot of photos of events and gimmicks i have with colleagues and i didn’t have any easy way to share them. i tried sharing these through multiply but colleagues couldn’t be bothered to open up a multiply account. now, my multiply is just a repository of photos for friends to download.

time to discover other time-wasting things on the internet?

i am now experiencing envy. i somewhat envy colleagues who are still out there in the field, being out there in the middle of the action. writing stories that matter. asking questions of utmost importance. writing stories that could rock the world.

but then, just thinking about the effort…and as someone said, i should prioritize the things that are most important in life.

i am stuck between a rock and a hard place.

but i am afraid of being forgotten, buried under the printing press.

there are people who can write about anything. unfortunately i am not one of those people. if there are stories that i have to say no to i think it would be sports and police stories.

i know i would suck at sportswriting.

i don’t know what makes good sports writing but i kinda liked this one from LA Times.

Pacquiao had won with yet another epic performance. The pride of the Philippines has now become the pride of all boxing. The Puerto Rican Cotto, one tough customer, was reduced to spending the last four or five rounds simply running, surviving, maybe hoping for enough energy for one lucky shot.

maybe because i was not inundated with technical terms/jargons and it was descriptive enough for me to understand what was going on in the ring.

another story from yahoo sports also didn’t give me the jargons, but just described to me how manny owned the ring:

Pacquiao’s performance here was a thing of beauty, the continuation of a run of brilliance. He chopped a big, powerful opponent down with a combination of speed, smarts and toughness to take shots of his own.

He didn’t shy away from leaning on the ropes and mixing it up with Cotto because he said he wanted to prove he can fight a physical fight and was tired of hearing about Cotto’s supposed strength.

“I yelled at him every time, why are you fighting his fight?” Roach said. “Manny says, ‘I can handle it.’ I said, ‘Well, prove it.’ And he did.”

and writing without the jargons doesn’t make you make look less knowledgeable about your beat/topic. it helps you make your audience feel closer to what you’re seeing and feeling. you’re engaging your audience.

to manny, thank you. you’re one great fighter.

my boss, a co-worker and i were talking last night about the rise of online news entities and the eventual eclipse of the traditional print (with online component). my co-worker told me that the reason why my boss hasn’t jumped the bandwagon yet was because “he said he is a romantic, that’s why he’s sticking with the traditional format…”

then my boss said, “no. it’s not true anymore.”

anyway, i told my boss that i told a colleague from another paper that the online/real-time news format is “fast and furious” but it’s like junkfood since you can only muster so much intelligence in a matter of minutes. you are concerned about the speed—you have to put it up there quickly to beat the competition, therefore, depth is only secondary. that is on a daily basis.

and that’s where newspapers should position themselves. they may not be able to provide the up-to-the-second updates that online news organizations can dish out, but they can give you more in-depth analysis or give more context to stories given the nature of the medium, as newsweek had said. that is, you can have a few hours to do those kinds of stories before they go to press, whereas online real-time news editors/reporters only have minutes before they can upload their stories.

if real-time news is like junkfood, then newspapers should provide something that online news organizations can only do occasionally: dish out more nutritious food i.e. news with depth. the competition played out now among print/newspapers here is NOT who comes out first with such and such stories BUT who can provide the most meat that would mean something to the everyday reader.

the traditional role of news magazines is being encroached now by the newspapers. so what are news magazines to do? as i’ve discussed in my older entry, news magazines like newsweek had to reformat and provide more analyses. as i’ve blogged before:

let me first cite what newsweek said in their editorial about reformatting the magazine. in their obama on obama issue, newspapers had to do more analytical or in-depth pieces to justify their existence since the role of coming out with spot news is already addressed by the internet and cable TV. so newspapers had to find their place(s) in the world.

to differentiate/separate themselves from what newspapers are doing, news magazines like newsweek had to reformat how they bring the news and what kind of news they should come out with. i say, they did away with the kooky celeb news and other pop culture shluck. (but Time is still doing it and funny, i find Time more fun to read even though i’m a newsweek subscriber).

and with this, i hope, our publisher realizes where we could place ourselves. we cannot beat the news organizations with more resources so they can provide the audience with quick or “fast and furious” news. what we can do is provide our readers with more meat. more in-depth news that would matter to the public. as exhibited by the washington post-nixon saga, newspapers are agenda setters. why not harness that power?

and that is why i believe there is more premium on having your name (as a journalist) out on the printed paper. i believe it is harder to land your name on  printed format than have it all over the internet. everybody can do that. look at those famous bloggers.

yeah, i may be romantic in that sense but i believe the sooner the local newspapers realize this, the better we are in terms of surviving this changing media landscape.

thank god i am finished with that report that i’ve been working on for 4 months. it has already invaded my life to the point that my thesis was stalled because of it. and what did it gain me?

nothing.

the people i should be affecting were not bothered at all and from what i heard, they virtually ignored me.

i had been snubbed many times but this was the worst. i worked my ass off. put my ass on the line. i did not do it because i can win awards but because i want to make a difference. i wanted to call the attention of those who are in power. and this is what keeps me going, despite the lousy pay. stories like these make me feel alive.

but it seems like my voice is just a small one in the wilderness. because i belong to a school of small fish in a small pond.

—

speaking of pay, somebody called me up yesterday and he was trying to convince me to leave my present job and jump ship. he was pirating me.

i know the pay would be higher—but not that significantly higher. there are employee benefits that are non-existent in my present company.

but i know he is in desperate need. people had been leaving and i think he’s at his wits’ end.

what does the job entail? well, i think i would do field work to cover everything on top of editing jobs. 8 hours a day. no holidays (even holy week). requires me to be glued to my computer screen forever. could not be entitled to a vacation leave for quite some time (company policy). no mentor to speak of. because of the stress i would be experiencing if i take on the job, i think i will never get pregnant.

and Other Half even said it is a dead-end job.

so it seems like i’m already decided that i would stick to my current job.

but what makes me think twice, thrice—maybe a hundred times—is that i maybe i’m making a big mistake in letting this opportunity slip away.

but then again, my gut feel has not let me down so far. i was offered another job around 2 years ago but i turned it down because something was not right deep inside me. had i accepted it, i wouldn’t be here now, doing what i’m doing right now and achieve what i have achieved so far.

what is my gut telling me?

I just turned thirty yesterday. I don’t know if that should be cause for celebration.

My mother had me when she was thirty. She was having problems making ends meet then because both she and my father were just university instructors/researchers with 3 kids. They were also pursuing their masters degrees.

I am thirty but it seems like I’m going nowhere.

Didn’t go to work yesterday. I thought i deserved a “news-free” day so I just spent my birthday in bed. The whole day. 90% of the time I was horizontal. Just reading.

At 5pm I went to the salon for hair and make-up and donned a fire-engine red little wrap dress that made me look like i was a hotdog and drove to makati to attend an awards ceremony. of course, i did not win anything.

then i spent the rest of the night with two colleague-friends at ice bar in greenbelt. they danced while most of the time i just watched. my shoes were killing me and i really don’t dance. plus the only button in my dress just popped out so the only thing that was standing in the way between nakedness and the public was the belt i was wearing. it was wiser to sit and just chug beer.

anyway, i spent my birthday the way closer to how i would want it. the past three birthdays were horrible. i was working myself to the ground, those three years. i couldn’t even enjoy the food that the pr people gave me for my colleagues to feast on because i was horribly busy, filing at least 4 stories.

the years prior to that were equally pathetic. in 2005 i was unemployed so i couldn’t even spare myself enough funds for a good massage. i cannot remember the past years before that. probably they were really pathetic.

i am now thirty but it seems like i haven’t changed: i am still the immature, selfish self i had been 10 years ago. maybe that’s why i couldn’t get pregnant. God thinks i am still incapable of being responsible for another human being who would be totally dependent on me.

people keep asking me if i am pregnant/trying to be pregnant. and when i say yes, we’re trying, then they would ask bakit wala pa. “i don’t fucking know!” i wanted to scream.

people are just so nosy.

found a new addiction: MANGA

for the past month, i’ve been glued to the computer screen until 5 am in the morning reading scanned and translated manga online. i finished samurai deeper kyo (and the manga–which is 308 chapters long–is waaaaaaaay better than the anime) and now finishing fruits basket. i have other mangas in the pipeline as well.

my cousin, potatochips, told me she is worried about me.

i’m turning into a dork, she said.

“we must go out. you are already living in fantasyland. come on, we must go out this week.”

i told her i’ve been escaping to fantasyland for a loooong time with all anime and young adult fiction i’ve been reading.

“come, we must go out. you have to touch base with reality,” she cried.

but i’ve been too entrenched with reality, i told her. day in and day out, problema ng pilipinas pinoproblema ko din. My job requires me to *know* and internalize world and local issues. Everyday I monitor the day’s news on BBC, CNN, Bloomberg and the online news services while getting dressed and/or eating brunch. By the time I get to the office, I am already inundated by local issues and news from around the globe. At night I still need to read my copies of Newsweek and Forbes. When I get home to the province, I read Time.

“Ah yes, your life is already full of “reality”,” my cousin conceded. “But still, you need to get out to escape it and I have to wean you from your fantasyland. I don’t want you to become a dork.”

I am already in chapter 85 of Fruits Basket. I am reading it right now while waiting for tomorrow’s issue to be closed.

it’s only now that i am seriously thinking of applying for a scholarship…to japan. just to get back.