My little white reporter’s notebook is half- full after a week here. I’ve got notes and ideas and contacts crammed up against doodles of cartoon characters and directions for getting from here to there. The notebook is a handy news-making tool to be sure, but I never understood the importance of that little book until the other day, when I went to a press conference at the National Archive.
I had no reason to be there, I was just shadowing an editor for the experience. He collected the sounds of the small press room as camera men set up their cameras and photographers took their pictures. Everyone was doing something except for me, because I had forgotten my notebook.
It is true that I would have just doodled pictures, but I would have been spared the awkwardness of looking like a useless intern, when I could have looked like a useless intern doing something. As a fresh face at NPR, I don’t really have any clue what I’m supposed to be doing in any given situation. The beauty of the reporter’s notebook is that it allows you to look busy and professional in any given situation and no one has to know what you’re actually writing down. So while you’re drawing pictures of Optimus Prime, everyone in the press room will think you a young, hip, high-powered, jet-setting, serious, news reporter.
Now I take my notebook with me everywhere, regardless of whether I think I’ll need it or not. I pull it out on the metro sometimes. I walk around DC with it in hand. It’s a confidence booster, and makes me look like I know what I’m doing, even if I am just a useless intern with nothing to do.
Benjamin Frisch
Arts and Information Desk
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