What’s up?! An average Thursday reality check
People often ask me what I am up to, what story I am currently working with. I am almost always a little confused by that question, because there are always so (too) many different things going on.
But this is what I am working with this week:
• Pitching of a news story on Chinese labour market conflicts, an article written by my collegue Ola Wong in Shanghai. We’re trying to get it into some American publication, such as Newsweek, because it has US ramifications. My role here is that of an agent and translator, sort of.
• Research for a book on the gentrification process in Harlem. Yesterday, I visited a rally at Columbia University’s campus, arranged by The Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification and The Coalition to Preserve Community. They are protesting the University’s plan to build a bio-tech-lab in an area where lots of people have small businesses and homes, and don’t want to move away.
I took pictures, interviewed some people, and primarily gathered contacts for future interviews to the book. I am also trying to pitch the story to Ordfront, a Swedish magazine fond of stories on social justice.
• Interview with Jenny Nordberg, a Swedish star investigative reporter, who is part of a team at New York Times that recently won a Pulitzer prize for their reporting on American railway companies. Very impressive, she is probably the first Swede ever to *win* that award, and very likely the first Swedish journalist to become employed by the Times. I am writing a profile of her for this Swedish media business trade weekly:
Pressens Tidning
• Pitching of story ideas to various publications: a constant process and indeed a cumbersome hassle for any freelance journalist. This week, I am mailing editors at TT, Ordfront, LO-tidningen, Svenska Dagbladet, and lots of others about articles I would like to write…
• Wheeling and dealing with a story on Trani, an Italian city that I visited in the fall of 2002 (!). Two years ago, I pitched this as a photo essay to Svenska Dagbladet, on the life of fishermen. Now the editor wants it in another format - less space, and less money to me. And I had to go through all of my hundreds of pictures again, because he had changed his idea about photos as well. I think my hourly pay is less than zero, and it definitely become a huge deficit if I count all of my travel expenses for it. But it will nice to finally see it published…
• Pitching of a news story on the Electrolux factory currently being built in Juárez, Mexico. As readers of this blog know, I was there a few weeks ago. My editors at TT wanted the story, but bizarrely enough changed their mind - so now I have to find some other publication for it.
• Fact checking for an investigative story that I have been covering since December, on a Swedish woman who is detained in a prison in Los Angeles.
And lots of other things, too… Well, what I really should be doing is to arrange all of my receipts for my accounting..! Book-keeping is always a mess: I have several heaps with strange little receipts from various parts of the world that will take days, if not weeks, to organize in chronological order. Also, I should focus on learning the programme ProTools (=sound editing on my computer), so I can work with doing radio stories, and write the manuscript for my web site. Hmmm…
/Gunilla
