journalism

Reflections on a bowling alley

Posted on by Mollie Barnes

This weekend I covered the Show-Me State Games. It was rather enjoyable, actually. You can read my article here.

I woke up (at 10:30, no budgets on Saturdays) and got ready slowly. Then I picked up the schedule of events and just picked one I could go to right then and there at noon. I chose bowling mostly because it would be inside and not hot and I didn’t want to have to take another shower before my friend Dawn from St. Louis came to visit.

When I got there, I tried talking to some of the organizers to no avail. They just weren’t having it and I wasn’t about to force conversation with an official. Okay, so find real people.

At first I tried to talk to a couple both wearing pink shirts matching their teammates down below who were warming up. It was a cool idea so I thought it would be something to talk about… but they weren’t having it either. She answered my question with a yes and walked away.

Moving on… I tried to talk to another group of people and then someone asked me if I was a cop here to keep the peace. I kindly corrected him, man people really are afraid of anyone wearing a badge!

Then I finally started talking to one man and another man turned around to join in the conversation and mentioned that their local bowling alley in Moberly shut down in May so his son hasn’t had anywhere to practice. BINGO. There’s my story… so I sat down and talked with this big man about his son being in the MU Summer Transition program for minorities and his bowling habits. He was hilarious and so was his son, Isaiah, who told us that he was “Smexy” (smoking and sexy for those of you who aren’t 11 year old boys and don’t know these things).

All in all it was a good experience and then when I called to do accuracy checks the boy actually ended up winning, which was odd because he had thought he did really bad. But as my editors keep telling me the story isn’t always just about who wins.

It’s us against the man

Posted on by Mollie Barnes

Yesterday I covered a meeting about a new CVS that wants to open up downtown, which would demolish three old buildings. One of these building currently houses McAdams’ Ltd. Fine Jewelry. It felt to me like a classic part of history, where big corporations shut down smaller local businesses. To further play into the stereotype the man representing CVS was a lawyer wearing a business suit who introduced himself with a firm handshake and a business card. He even answered a question with, “I know, but I’m not allowed to say.”

Like hello big bad stereotype coming to demolish the building that houses the local store owned by an older woman, which has been in business for 40 years. I felt like I was helping to play a role in the pre-Wall-E era, or if not playing a role, just sitting by and watching it happen.

After the meeting, the lawyer was fine with talking to me, but the owner of the shop said she didn’t want to be quoted in the paper and just wanted to go about this quietly.

I went back to the newsroom and used what I had to write up a story. Since she was at a public meeting, I could use her quotes from there.

As I walked out of the newsroom afterwards though, I wondered if I had just lost her chance at winning this fight she was silently preparing. I felt bad about it. I guess there’s nothing I can really do about it though, except hope that more awareness about the situation actually helps her cause rather than hurt it.

I personally am only concerned because I’m a horrible driver and I hate hate hate traffic restrictions that don’t let you turn left because they really only should be in use during peak traffic times, but half the time I run to a store like that it’s at weird times in the day, when making a left would be completely fine.

Overall, I’m satisfied with the story, and I think it was one of my best at the Missourian yet. Next up: Boone County Fair stories!

Falling into reporting.

Posted on by Mollie Barnes

This week I started work as a reporter for the Columbia Missourian as a class. Though, the term class may be misleading seeing as it’s more a job where we just get paid with a grade rather than money. Because who likes money? Not I! I’ll take the grade any day over money!! Completely kidding.

My editors’ first advice was “dive right in.” Well I can’t say that I actually did that. I think if you would picture it in a swimming metaphor, it would look more like I stood on the diving board and looked down (because I’m terrified of heights) and some smart ass kid who was tired of waiting for their turn came and pushed me in so I kind of performed the pencil dive which looked more like a not too painful, but not very beautiful belly flop. 

I took on a story, which was more of a topic than a story to be honest, of a Memorial Tree/Bench program. Which is proving to be quite a slow topic to move on, due to me relying on a lot of logistical people to get the main part of the story to even just FIND if there is a story there to report on. 

To update any new readers, I just returned from a semester abroad in Italy. When I say “just” I mean literally I came home on June12/13ish *long story that I don’t want to hash out* and had about a week in St. Louis and then moved myself to Columbia Monday to start class on Tuesday. I haven’t read much about culture shock but I think it probably would correlate to a lot of my fears of diving in. 

I spent the past five months not understanding or really being able to communicate completely with the majority of people around me. Yes I could get by and speak bare minimum Italian, but FAR less than the communication abilities I am used to. As a result I sort of lived in my own little bubble there which I occasionally left when I could understand and add something to the fast Italian conversations going on around me.

So going from that to being expected to talk to lots of strangers all the time about things they might not want to talk about was QUITE a change. I spent the better parts of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday pondering my existence as an extrovert and wondering if Italy had changed me to an introvert permanently. This due mostly to my parents obsession with the Myers Briggs Personality exam, which I am labeled an ENTP and my mom is an E but my dad is  an I. So they are in a constant battle to prove which one I really am… E (extrovert) or I (introvert). I take pride in my E rating, and so pondering to admit if I really am an I after all made me feel like a complete failure. 

But then yesterday when I took a handoff on a short brief about the Eliot Battle funeral which allowed me to get something up on the Missourian site (even if it didn’t involve much work or reporting) allowed me to take a deep breath and remember that I really do enjoy the feeling of reporting. 

So although I might not have published anything of substance yet, I know it’s on the way. I am not used to hard “news” reporting. I wanted the Vox beat. I’m just getting back in the swing of things, but I know that I’ll be able to be a hard hitter soon. Although it is hard not to compare myself to others in the newsroom who have already produced several stories, I have to step back and remember that everyone is different and these topics that they are really engaged in just aren’t the topics for me. I don’t have much interest in politics or crime or business reporting, so obviously coming up with ideas for that isn’t going to be as easy for me as a lot of the newsie people in the class. 

I could go on and on about my fears for this class but that would be wasting time and I must get back to work!