Just picked up a new publication (The Rockland County Times) and already love working for them. See my next post to read this week's piece on Blimpie's 50th anniversary.
The following is the woebegone tale of how I came to be united with my latest 'client.' (Man, that's really fun to write)
The day was Wednesday, March 19, and
I happened to be in the immediate area when RCT's Dylan Skriloff offered a story to the first-responder who wanted to cover one of Governor Andrew Cuomo's press conferences about property tax reform.
I'd been stranded at my father's house all day due to a case of lost keys and remember wondering aloud to myself (and the neighboring kitchen appliances), "They say everything happens for a reason, but I just do NOT understand what reason could be behind this."
A police officer had even helped me break into my car using a wooden spoon earlier in the afternoon (I think I could, at this point, write a book called "Breaking In: the 5-0 Way) to see if I'd left them inside the vehicle. I had no such luck, outside the fact that car alarms will, eventually, stop sounding/alerting everyone within a mile radius that you are the hugest idiot in the universe.
But I digress.
I had just hopped out of the shower when I was alerted that I'd received the email that I had a possible chance to do the job of journalism, and further, that I was a twenty-or-so minute drive away from doing so.
"Ahhhhhhh - so THIS is why I lost my keys," I said, triumphant finger pointed toward the heavens, as my father pulled said keys from between a chair cushion I'd already searched several times over and handed them over to me with a facial expression denoting exactly that I am the biggest idiot in the universe (But I digress)
Both this event and Katy's Courage 5K, which took place yesterday AM in Sag Harbor, taught me that
IT. IS. TIME.
for me to get new camera equipment because this Nikon D500 is just not cutting it. Not even slightly.
It will make an excellent "extra" camera, so I can FINALLY graduate to being the kind of pro who has two cameras at any given time (three counting an iPhone)
The photos were bleh and though I had taken notes, my iPhone had decided to stop recording at some point because it was crammed full of content.
(I have since upgraded to one with more space/have established back-up techniques to cull content and keep that from ever happening again)
However, I did get to interview our state governor, which is a pretty righteous rite of passage for any young journo.
I also need a new tape recorder....
Is there any rich journalist (cue the canned laughter), or at least one who now has a talk show, who wants to help me get new audio/visual/computer equipment?
(Cue the cricket reel)
Following the event, I flew to a nearby diner and began to write furiously, but as I have some horrific Dell without so much as a genuine version of Windows (which it reminds me about every two minutes) three-quarters of my copy blasted off into a nearby dimension never to return when I was nearly finished and I then spent the next few hours trying to recreate the article from memory.
I'm not sure what the moral of the story is - oh right - the moral of the story is, my dear, young journalism professionals, you need to somehow have enough money to be able to afford the best technology, or at least a computer with a genuine copy of Windows.
I haven't quite figured out how to do that as a freelancer without going into further debt than my journalism degree has me, but once I do - you'll probably be the first ones I tell.
