Alumni angle
The story behind the stories
My memory strained for a detail. Was her dress black, brown or, perhaps, burgundy? I thought it might’ve been black. As the bus pulled away from our interview in Berkeley with restaurant icon Alice Waters, someone said maroon.
I remembered that a photographer took pictures of Waters during the interview. As the bus stopped and we filed out, I chased her to the elevator, and she pulled up a photo. I went with “charcoal.”
Two days earlier, I landed in San Francisco and checked into the way-way-out-of-my-league Palace Hotel, which offers fluffy, terry-cloth robes in your room and an indoor garden courtyard beneath sedan-sized chandeliers. After dropping my bags in my room about 4:30 that Monday afternoon, I trotted to the hotel bar to meet my support team – Master Lecturer Mike Foley, JM 1970, MAMC 2004, his wife, Suzette, and former Freedom Forum Distinguished Visiting Prof. John Marvel – for a snifter, as I felt like I should call my drink in the classy, century-plus-old pub.
The welcome dinner started at 6:30. I cut myself three or four times as I hustled through a shave and shower.
After dinner, it began. The Hearst writing competition invites the eight top finishers in that year’s contests to write an on-the-spot story, a profile and a news piece in less than 48 hours (44:30, to be exact) for the national championship. After dinner, the judges explained the write-off rules and the subject of our first assignment – an on-the-spot story covering how the city had “gone green.”
When the meeting ended, I went to my room and searched the Internet for story ideas. I found a listing of green-certified companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, and one stuck out – the first and only green bar in San Francisco. I sent out e-mails that evening until I passed out around 1 a.m. and slept, kind of, for six hours.
After a frustrating morning that included about two dozen unanswered calls, I contacted two local green-savvy sources at noon and headed to the bar for two hours of observing, interviewing, and in the name of research, a shot of the world’s only organic tequila.
Even after that, I panicked. My worst fear throughout the competition – aside from fact errors, a lack of sources, misspellings, writing too much, writing too little, getting lost in the city, oversleeping, insomnia, vomiting, choking and developing carpal tunnel syndrome – was failing to finish my stories on deadline. One minute late meant disqualification and shame.
The next morning, after a 2 a.m. bedtime, my fellow competitors and I took the bus to Berkeley to interview Waters, the subject of our profile and news piece.
When the Hearst organizers informed us six days before the competition that we were writing two stories on Waters, I called seven sources, including a cookbook author, a food critic and two farmers, took 3,500 words worth of notes and drafted a lead.
To set my stories apart, I planned to pepper them with details, like the color of Waters’ dress. So, after the press-conference-like interview, I pulled her assistant aside and asked what brand of coffee Waters was drinking. Then I waited for the other contestants to shuffle out of the room and approached Waters. I asked her about the source of her restaurant’s wooden walls. She turned red and shook her head. They were built from redwood trees, the environmentally conscious restaurateur admitted with an embarrassed look. She quickly noted that the downstairs walls were made with recycled lumber.
That afternoon was one of the most intense experiences of my life. My strategy reinforced the most basic journalism idiom – write, edit, revise. One by one, the other participants turned in their stories and left the designated writing room, where we penned and printed all of our entries. At 4:59, the lone competitor still working, I printed, stapled and turned in my last story.
Since the night they called my name as the winner, turning my brain to jelly for a few hours, I’ve had trouble grasping the honor. It validated some of the unorthodox risks and decisions I made in college. It made me thankful for my inspiring professors and loving family who invested and still invest in me. And more than ever, it made me appreciate that four years ago, having run out of majors, I wandered into Weimer Hall and discovered what I’ll do for the rest of my life.
John Cox, JM 2008, is a reporter for Vermont’s Valley News.
This article was originally published in the Fall 2008 issue of communigator.
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