At the Mercy of Sources

Just one story online today about computer outages because of monthly server updates. The story isn't really all that interesting, it's just to let the lab know when and why they won't be able to use certain site computing functions. But the story behind the story is kind of interesting…

My editor asked me to go to the computing help desk to ask about the topic. The entire site had received an email saying when the outages were occurring, but not really explaining why very well. Seems like a simple enough assignment to go to the help desk and ask a few questions and write it up… right?

Wrong!

The first guy I talked to was pretty helpful, but informed me he wasn't really the guy to talk about it, and all the information was second hand. Instead I contacted the person who sent the email out originally, but he was not easy to get a hold of. And because I was on deadline, I badgered him, probably to the point of stalking, with phone calls, emails, and notes left taped to his office chair…

Hey, a writer has got to do what a writer has got to do…

Eventually he got back to me, I whipped something out, got it edited, and sent it back to him asking for any revisions to be sent to me by 10:00 am on Wednesday morning.

So far, so good.

Get an email Wednesday morning saying he has sent it to some other people in his group for edits and suggestions and will have it to me soon. Super, I can wait. But then 11:00 rolls around, and nothing. Lunch come and goes with no word. And then before I know it, it's 2:30 in the afternoon and my editor has to have the story to publish the next day! It's extremely bad form to publish something without letting the contacts have their say in this line of work.

So I go into panic mode and start stalking…

Eventually, at around 4:15, I get the edits back. They have basically doubled the length of the article and ruined the creative flow I had so delicately pieced together! (OK, so it wasn't really that bad, but it did contain a lot more information that probably wasn't necessary…)

But if they think people need to know it, then I need to leave it in. So after some editing, I chop out some words, rearrange some lines, and soften some of the language. I send it off to my editor and back to the source and head for home…

Next morning I find out that my source had sent me yet another edit after I had left work. Ahhhhh!!! I hope they're all happy with what we published that morning…

"Ken,
Allowing us to shed some light on our internal processes definitely helps to keep our users informed and feel more empowered. Thank you for writing the article, you did a great job."

Whew! Another crisis averted. But it just goes to show you, in this line of journalism when you really want to make everyone as happy as possible, sometimes you are at the mercy of your sources. This usually isn't a problem, but occasionally, they are either busy or you're simply not at the top of their to-do list, and things can get hairy.

All of these problems would go away if there simply weren't any deadlines…

Hmmmm….