Week 3 at the Union Tribune: Overcoming Obstacles

My editor and I had a really good conversation about writing leads today. The leads I have written for my stories so far have been straightforward and not super exciting. She told me that it’s okay to struggle with leads but also take chances. Especially writing features, you need to make the audience excited and aware. This was a motivating and encouraging conversation.

A task that I found challenging this week was over the phone. I am writing a story about a dessert shop that features shaved soy desserts. The only point of contact they have is a phone number and when speaking on the phone they don’t speak a lot of English and do not understand who I am or that I want to write a story about their shop. After calling multiple times and speaking with multiple people they were finally able to get me the phone number of the owner of the shop. As challenging as it can be to contact strangers for interviews I learned to be confident in my job and preserver if you don’t hear back from someone. After speaking to the owner he said he wanted me to feature his ramen shop instead of his dessert shop, I told him I would talk it over with my editor. Personally I really think the unique story is within the soy dessert, not the ramen shop. I explained this to my editor and she told me to trust my gut and not let the owner change the direction of my story.

Another lesson I learned was that you should never hesitate reaching for a story. The shaved soy desserts were something my friends enjoy and I had noticed getting popular in the last two years. I thought it was a weird idea but pitched it to my editor anyway and she loved it. I can’t wait to see where the story goes from here. My first interview is Tuesday.