Egads, time is haulin ass

Preparing a job packet yesterday, I pulled out a letter of recommendation from my old supervisor and noticed something a bit jarring ... the date. Oct. 25.

That means it's been more than three months since I began my job hunt, and here I am still plugging away. Now, an optimist might note that I actually do have a full-time job, one that even gives me benefits and lets me take a week off each month to do some consulting.

But as much as I love working at the bookstore cafe, I have to say it just won't pay the bills if I ever give up this freeloading lifestyle of living with family. Karen's new job will be a big help; now it's just my turn.

I have a good feeling about the coming month, though. The consulting work in Illinois will get my juices pumping just by putting me back in a newsroom. There are also a lot more jobs popping up in the "media" category of the Birmingham classifieds.

Obviously, our options were somewhat limited when we decided to stay here. Birmingham was originally supposed to be a waystation while we figured out what to do with ourselves. But we soon realized that we actually love it here. The town has matured a lot in the decade since I lived here (or maybe it was me that matured....nah). Being so close to my family has been great, and the flight to visit Karen's folks is now an easy peasy 1.5 hours direct.

Thanks largely to my sister, we've landed amid a fun group of friends who keep a pretty frenetic social calendar. We're picking up new skills, too. Karen, somewhat ironically, is taking up yoga now that we're out of California, and she's re-learning the trumpet. I've started playing drums and am steadily getting more practice on the guitar by playing with my brother-in-law. We've taken some dance lessons, and we've all started knitting. I have to say, I'm pretty good at the knitting, but that's another blog post entirely.

So yes, it's been three unexpected months. But it's been a valuable time for us, one where we can take stock of what we really want out of life and start working to get there. Two years ago, maybe even a year ago, I would have laughed at you if you said I'd be at my happiest if I moved back to Alabama. I guess it just shows that you never know what's waiting for you around the corner. Hopefully my next nice surprise will be the one that, you know, cuts me a check.

Oh, and in case you're curious, today's picture is a graph of fecal coliform levels from the San Lorenzo River in Santa Cruz. That's what you get when you do a google image search for "three months," apparently. That, and tons of baby pictures.

Well about time

OK, OK I promise it's my last post on this topic. I just wanted to make sure everyone saw Oprah go nuts on James Frey about the inaccuracies in his memoir. What's most interesting to me is that she admits being brainwashed by that immediate reaction from fans, who defended Frey to the wall without bothering to read the Smoking Gun article about his lies.

So, huzzah to Oprah. In case you're wondering (and I think the article mentions this), we're still selling copies of his book pretty regularly at the store. I always wonder if it's people who just haven't heard about the controversy or if they just want to see what all the fuss is about. Obviously, I keep my mouth shut when I ring them up. It's their money to do with as they please.

I'll post more soon, as I recover from several days of truly obnoxious head cold. I used my sick time to apply for two jobs today -- an advertising copywriting position and an assistant editor spot at a local magazine company. So wish me luck.

Some big job news

Two big pieces of news, avid readers (and random Web voyeurs):

First, Karen has a job! Today's her third day as development assistant for the Alabama Wildlife Center. Obviously she's still feeling out the duties, but it sounds like it'll be a good fit. She's organizing fund-raising, PR, the Web site, etc. It's a small organization, so she'll be a huge part of it. We're both excited, and soon we'll have a real, full-size paycheck rolling in.

As for me, it looks like I'll be flying to Kankakee, Ill., for a week to do some consulting work. Rich, my longtime mentor and three-time employer, has gotten an agreement to do more readership growth work with some newspapers up there. That means I'll likely spend one week a month there, starting at the beginning of February.

I'm stoked. Apart from the added money, this is a great learning opportunity for me and a good chance to expand Media Foresight Associates, which already is doing better in its first year than I could have expected.

Of course, I'm not sure what the Barnes and Noble folks will say today, but I'm sure they'll be cool with me taking the time off, if I agree to give up my benefits and drop to part time. I'll let you know.

Another perspective

I got a great e-mail from the reporter whose story I recently used as a cautionary tale of a source (or wildly popular author) possibly fudging the facts in the name of story telling. David, the writer, had this to say about his profile of a pastor whose story of post-Katrina aid seemed a bit too dramatic:

I, too, was troubled by that piece of
journalism, especially after the reports were
circulating that no one had been raped or killed
because of the violence. I read a lengthy AJR piece
recently written by New Orleans Times-Picayune
reporter Brian Thevenot that essentially said media
outlets, including his, were wrong about the carnage
that supposedly happened in New Orleans.

The (pastor) piece worried me in part because he
said some of the same things to me about New Orleans
that he had said to me after working at Ground Zero
after 9-11: that he was in counseling, that it was the
worst thing he'd ever seen, etc., etc. You hate not to
believe a guy who's giving you such vivid detail,
especially a man of the cloth, but I'd more likely
believe Don Kaput's allergy to electricity now than I
would believe (the pastor). Because I WANT to believe a
guy like (the pastor), a man who even blessed me in the
parking lot of The Union after our interview in
September.

Was that guy a fraud? I don't think so, but in the
heat of the storytelling moment, I think he took
liberties that he knew we probably would never try to
verify and thus take at face value.

Just as a side note, I've deleted the pastor's name because, for all I know, he could have been telling the truth 100 percent, and I'd hate for this post to come up when someone googles his name. But of course you can find his name in the link.

The AJR story (that's American Journalism Review, for the non journalism-obsessed) that David mentions is great reading, by the way. In case you don't plow through all of it, though, here's a good summary paragraph about a New York Times writer who tried to confirm the stories of rape and murder in the aftermath of Katrina:

The paper also dispatched stringers to shelters in Houston and Austin, Dwyer says, where they found no shortage of secondhand or thirdhand accounts of rape and murder – but none that seemed credible enough to discount Dwyer's original thesis. "Nobody could say they saw rapes and murders. It was always three or four steps removed, like 'my sister's uncle's cousin'" had seen the violence, he says.

A little more fallout

Some stiff defensiveness today at Barnes and Noble as fans of "Million Little Pieces" stood up for embattled fiction/memoir author James Frey. I wasn't too surprised...as I mentioned in my last post, it's easy to feel that way until you read the Smoking Gun article.

Here are a few more fun follow-up links:

The last-minute letter from Frey's attorney, hoping to kill the story. It includes a bizarre warning that putting the letter on the TSG Web site would be a violation of the copyright act. That's a new one on me...and the repercussions of such a legal precedent would be staggering.

Also, someone on Fark.com linked to this hilarious review from an American writer at a Moscow paper.

And yes, yes, I promise this is my last Frey post. If this blog is ever going to have a focus, I don't want it to be this.

Hoodwinked...by a drug addict?!

Like your Aunt Mary, that guy next to you on the plane, and the punk rock chick at the hair salon, I have been reading "A Million Little Pieces," a memoir that basically reads like an Upton Sinclair book about drug-induced vomiting.

As you might have heard by now, the book was skewered this week by The Smoking Gun in an expose that's quickly getting national attention. I won't linger on the investigation, which seems to be thorough and appropriately biting. If you've read the book, the TSG article should be required reading. If you haven't, I don't know if you'll get much out of it.

Now I'm at a strange crossroads. I've been reading this book on my breaks for the past two weeks, and I'm about three quarters of the way through. It's good, but I can't quite see myself finishing it now, knowing that it's probably a lot of horseshit.

I'm likely experiencing the same emotions that many of his millions of readers did: Defensiveness at first ("well, of course he changed up the story a bit from real life...that's to be expected), then reluctant skepticism ("I guess I did wonder how he got on an airplane unconscious, covered in vomit and with a hole in his cheek...") and finally resignation ("And he happened to befriend a mob boss? Whose adopted father was gunned down the day the mob boss was going into rehab? WTF?")

I've never trusted narrative memoirs, which of course have been huge best-sellers since "Angela's Ashes." I loved Ashes, but I just have trouble believing that one writer can remember so much about when he was a little boy.

I even felt the same inklings of doubt with "Devil in the White City," a brilliant book that (while not a memoir) purports to be straight nonfiction based entirely on historical documents. Here's the author's note from the intro of Devil:

In the following pages I tell the story of these men and this event, but I must insert here a notice: However strange or macabre some of the following incidents may seem, this is not a work of fiction. Anything between quotation marks comes from a letter, memoir or other written document.

I added the emphasis because that section is tantamount to a wink at the reader, one that you don't notice until you've gone back after finishing the book. Author Erik Larson vividly describes the thoughts and actions of people who died alone and were found only as charred bones. Why bother? Well, it makes good freading, something that "Million Little Pieces" author James Frey seems to have learned himself.

As a journalist, I was occasionally hit with a dilemma about a story that seemed a bit too good. There weren't quite enough records to back up someone's story, but why would they lie, right? Truth is stranger than fiction, right?

With the crunch of deadlines, I likely was responsible for printing several stories that deserved more thorough investigation. I often focused such energies on politicians, who have nice, easy paper trails to follow. But what about the others?

I still have concerns about one in particular...

Something about this story that I assigned and edited always sat funny with me. Editors develop a spider sense of sorts for things that don't seem to add up. This story was a run-of-the-mill tale of a pastor's work helping victims of Katrina in New Orleans. The first thing that bothered me was that he mentioned helping rape victims, and the story was running at a time when people were challenging the stories of rapes in the Superdome. Here's an excerpt from our story:

More than once, Nelson and his crew delivered babies while standing in raw sewage inside a triage center just steps from the Superdome. Where the National Football League has hosted numerous Super Bowl championships, Nelson saw women, too weak to move, urinate on their defibrillators as he prayed for them.

Although authorities are still attempting to determine if people had been raped inside the Superdome, Nelson said his team treated a few. "There were so many rape victims, and we had to turn (most all) of them away because they had life-damaging, but not life-threatening wounds," Nelson said.

I'm not saying any of this is untrue, but it just seems....I don't know, a bit too much for real life. Couldn't you take a few steps out of the sewage to deliver the babies? The story also mentioned this little anecdote:

And yet, Nelson saw signs of hope and humor inside the stadium home of the New Orleans Saints.

One hurricane survivor, wary of the lawlessness pervading throughout the stadium, posted a sign.

"Don't even think about it. I'm sleeping with an ugly woman, two shotguns and a claw hammer," the sign read.

The next day, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a picture of this same sign, except it was on the side of a building across town. The reporter checked his notes and confirmed that the pastor had said it was in the Superdome. Weird...

I talked briefly with the reporter and copy chief about how to handle this, and we agreed that it required an intensive set of follow-up interviews and scrutiny. But we were a small paper with tremendously limited resources. In the end, we had to move on to the other 100 stories waiting to be written. But I still feel that spider sense tingling, and I feel responsible for not doing more.

Now, going back to "Million Little Pieces," the question of the hour is WWOD. What will Oprah do? Her choice of the memoir for her book club made it an international sensation. What if it's little more than an embellished lie? His story is one of scoffing at the 12 Steps and instead trying to out-tough addiction. What if that actually hurts or kills those who are turning to it for inspiration?

Something tells me this storm is just starting to crackle.

Anonymous benefactor?

Hey, did one of you fine folks get me a Best Buy gift certificate by mail? One arrived anonymously, and I put it toward a new gig of ram and a new video card. So let me know whom I have to thank.

Quick work updates: Karen had a great interview for a job that doesn't sound like it would pay a living wage, but she's going to try negotiating. I'll keep you posted. Someone also threw my name in the hat for a Web content manager position at a locally based insurance company. While not the most thrilling job ever, it would help me toward my goal of learning more about Web design, and would still leave some time for free-lance journalism (or sleep and video games).