Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Filling in the gap

Now that I've downloaded the blogger app for my iPhone, I'm sure I will begin using this more frequently (rather than next to never.)

Let me update you: I am currently one of the four New York Press Association "Rookie Reporters of the Year," an award I won the Suffolk Times for my reporting throughout 2012.

This is something I'm incredibly proud of - especially because two of the four rookie reporters are from the Queens Courier, where crime actually occurs now and again.

Obviously I'm being a bit facetious and truth be told, I am incredibly proud I received this honorable award.

So don't worry, I have made sure to tell every living creature that has crossed my path in the past few months that, "I'm one of the four New York Press Association 'Rookie Reporters of the Year.'"

I celebrated the win by consistently scooping a former colleague with crime stories, which was fun!

Now I've turned to freelancing stories, mostly for magazines and newspaper supplements.

This is something I've been avoiding (along with living in New York City.....until I have enough money to actually LIVE there..... because if I'm going to just scrape by I would rather do it with some leg room), but at this point in the game I'm beginning to wonder why.

Something I finally said out loud today while pondering why it felt like Denise Civiletti had just stabbed me in the abdomen when she suggested I turn my sights toward magazines is that my training as a newspaper writer and photographer may have led me to look down on magazines.

The gloss, the flash, the color, the broader brush employed through their diction induced a recoiling reaction from me.

I was so busy learning to kill my voice that I couldn't even think about marrying it to my facts, which is why features were actually more difficult for me when I was starting out!

Now I write features like it ain't no thang and during my tenure at Times/Review, I certainly wrote a lion's share of those bad boys.

Nowadays I get steady work with the Sag Harbor Express, will hopefully continue writing/photographing for Edible East End and the other gorgeous Edible magazines, and have just begun my relationships with the Southampton Press, Long Island Business News and Dan's Papers.

Barbaraellen Koch, a local veteran photojournalist for whom I have the utmost respect, thinks it's time for me to somehow get into The New York Times, maybe by writing a column about the two weeks I just spent being homeless on the East End or by breaking a big story............ So yeah, if you are the Long Island serial killer, hit me up at agentjanefox@gmail.com and offer me an exclusive because I'm not sure if The Grey Lady prints columns written by veritable nobodies!

I will start updating this ol' boy with my work - I swear! So people can um. You know. Read my stuff. And things.

That's all I got, so signing off, this is special agent Jane Fox aka Gianna Volpe.

Over and out


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