Emerging from the Hole

I’m not a parent, but I feel like a team of us at The Texas Tribune just birthed a baby. We launched early Tuesday morning, and to follow the metaphor, we know the hard work is just beginning.

Together, we worked 12 to 18 hour days for something like two and a half weeks straight. The developers were given 90 wireframes of designs and features to code, and only three to four weeks to code it. We didn’t outsource the work to Bangalore, and we are a site run on all custom systems – from our content management system, down to the widget all staffers have on their laptops in order to link stories to “TribWire”.

By the wee small hours of launch, my eyes looked like roadmaps, it was Tuesday but I thought it was Thursday, my emotional bandwith ran so low that I would start crying spontaneously, and all of us survived on food being brought in to us so we wouldn’t have to leave the building in order to eat.

I realized how removed from the world I became when someone told me there was a Michael Jackson documentary coming out, and I’d never heard of it before.

The site is now live, and the incredible response we collectively received from the national press and tech geeks and smarmy lobbyists and people who don’t even like politics has been enough to induce tears — this time, the happy kind. This is the hardest I’ve ever worked, but the most fulfilling work I’ve ever done. We mean it when we say this has purpose.

Those of us who graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism know Walter Williams’ creed well. It begins like this:

“I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of responsibility, trustees for the public; that acceptance of lesser service than the public service is a betrayal of this trust.”

Ever since the day I graduated from college and started working in journalism, I’ve observed the slow whittling away of the public service part of what we do in order to meet the high stakes demands of turning a profit. Our founder, John Thornton, who started the Tribune as his personal form of philanthropy, decided that you can’t serve both God and mammon. That journalism plus business equals business, and in starting and being a non-profit-by-choice we can throw every dollar we raise straight back into the product and our mission – journalism that matters.

This whole experience has been nothing short of a series of small miracles. In my personal life, had this not come along, who knows what Stiles and I would have had to sacrifice in order to be in the same city. In my professional life, had the Tribune’s Evan Smith and Ross Ramsey not called, I may have wandered out of this craft that I love. On many, many fronts,  I am so grateful. We’re exhausted but exhilarated.

More than 1,000 people crowded an Austin bar last night to celebrate our coming out. I cried (again) when I saw my friends who I’ve missed seeing so much. Thank you a million, gazillion times for supporting this financially, intellectually and in spirit.

Finally, I think y’all know that part of the reason I love my new job so much is because I get to mess around a little and exercise creative freedom as much as there’s time in the day. Our site developers are so awesomely geeky that I used my little pocket Canon to catch some moments in the early morning hours before launch. Here’s to the boys.

The Hole

Decided to title this post “The Hole” since it is both the multimedia room where I stow myself away and the vortex in the time-space continuum many of us at The Texas Tribune have disappeared into as we make our final push toward next Tuesday’s launch. Whoa. Next Tuesday is November 3rd. Conceptually, it’s tough to wrap my exhausted and excited mind around.

It’s a significant date because it’s launch day… the unveiling of the first iteration of what will be many versions of The Texas Tribune.  The goal is a rich, satisfying site full of context – which our founder will explain much, much better on day one.

I’ve never worked on a campaign. But a lot of commenters on our Facebook site have made that comparison. I guess we’re working for a cause (public service, the reason why we wanted to be journos in the first place) and toward a certain drop dead date (the aforementioned November 3rd), but perhaps the most apt similarities are the frenetic pace, sleeplessness of staff and piling up of food containers everywhere.  I took a picture of a typical end-of-a-working-weekend trash pile yesterday, but decided it was too gross to put up, even in this personal blog space.

I haven’t seen or talked to many of my closest friends in the past few weeks. So I’m really sorry, and I miss you. Also, a huge thank you to the friends who have already supported or are planning to support The Tribune in one way or another. This is a non-profit organization dependent on support from ‘viewers like you’, so it means a lot. Until we can come up for air, I’ll make better use of this cyberhole to communicate. Much, much more to come.

Confrusted

Converting to Snow Leopard operating system created a mountain of problems for me and all the video/audio programs we rely on. Various device driver downloads solved most of my camera compatibility issues, but now my hub for my podcasting mics is unable to be read as an “aggregate device”, because Snow Leopard won’t make that a choice.

This is a situation our technology grand pubah calls “confrustion”, the unfortunate hybrid of confusion and frustration. You can see it on our faces, below. I’m guessing since we’re a startup trying to build a new public media brand, being confrusted will become the norm for the next few weeks.

Muddled

Outrage! I started a new personal blog only to abandon it for professional pursuits. At least for the last few weeks, that is. Everyone at the new office is working nonstop to be ready for our November 3rd launch, so, you know how it goes.

We are allowed to have weekends, though. Last weekend was one of the bigger ones in Austin, because it was the annual ritual where 90,000 people converge on a lush, green lawn to listen to hundreds of bands play three days worth of live music. A drenching rain on Saturday turned the newly-turfed Zilker Park lawn into a thick, sewage-infused mud sludge, so thick you’d easily lose your shoes to it and be forced to wander the open swamp barefoot. (Note someone’s Crocs casualty, pictured. And let me digress to argue that losing your Crocs is perhaps not a casualty at all.)

Barefoot did me in. Sometime between Raul Malo or Ben Harper and before Michael Franti, something sharp pierced the arch of my foot, then made a three-inch-long lateral cut I didn’t get to see for several hours, because a.)my feet and legs were buried under several layers of mud and b.)I had to stay to see Pearl Jam, because, come on.

One tetanus shot and many bandages later, I’m in pain every time my foot hits the ground. Like the man sings: “Lifetimes are catching up… with me…”

My Office

My first project for my new job, The Texas Tribune, was never assigned. The startup ethos in the newsroom is such that we’re free to go down the roads of interest to us, explore, and even fall on our faces should that happen. In this case — my teammates and bosses were great sports in just ‘going with it’, despite having little idea what I was doing.

Anyway, I thought it would be perfect, conceptually, to ‘introduce’ our team members by putting them in scenes straight out of NBC’s ‘The Office’ opening sequence. Thanks to some outdoor shooting help from my photog friend Justin (who almost got a ticket for riding on my back bumper while shooting an Austin City Limits sign off the side of a tollway), it actually turned out as I imagined it in my head.

Back in the USA

With mom in Budapest.

We lost constant internet connectedness for the last week as we traveled Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary by cruising down the Danube River. While we managed to check our emails once a day, not being tethered to the iPhone and other communications devices was a welcome break. I instead relished human connectedness – the kind with my family, the kind all too rare now that my mom, dad and brother are spread out across the globe.

The flights proved exhausting and frustrating as usual (but at least I didn’t have to spend the night in a baggage claim like that one night on the way back from China in 2007). Loved the Hungarians. One of our guides explained that being on the losing side of every war since the 17th century makes the people quite authentic and realistic — something that made us want to go back to Budapest, or as the locals say, Budapescht, quite soon.

Travel log:
Passau, Germany
Wachau Valley, Austria (includes cities of Melk and Dunstein)
Vienna, Austria
Budapest, Hungary
Esztergom, Hungary
Sturovo, Slovak Republic (just across the border from Esztergom)
Bratislava, Slovak Republic
Grein, Austria
Linz, Austria

And without further delay… the PHOTOS!!!

Europe Sept 09

Donau-ing It

This may be the only blogpost I get up this week, since we’re slowing floating down the Danube River in a skinny boat full of German senior citizens. Mom/Dad/brother Roger/Roger’s girlfriend and Mr. Stiles are all here; today we’re in Vienna, yesterday we were in the vinyeards of the Wachau Valley.

Internet access from the boat costs 40 euro an hour so we decided to live without it this week, with the exception of this current sojourn into a Viennese coffee shop to get amped up on caffeine and get a wifi fix.

Vienna’s shockingly beautiful — much like Paris but a totally different feel. Went on a long run along the Danube this morning and things were going well until my brother Roger joined and I suddenly tripped over a metal hook thing jutting out of the concrete. Bit it. Hard. But managed to not-seriously injure myself.

Should mention that the best part of this place, for me. Hot dog stands. Everywhere.

Thanks @austinchronicle!

The long-awaited Austin Chronicle Best of Austin 2009 awards are out, and I’m amused and honored to win in a category for tweeting. (Love me some co-winners Reagan and Flener, too. Rock on with your social media selves, boys.) And thank you, Austin Chronicle critics!

Best Televised Tweeters: Matt Flener, Reagan Hackleman, and Elise Hu
Twitter offers endless opportunities for info, elucidation, and, yes, embarrassment. But three local TV journalists have embraced the format wholeheartedly: city-beat reporters Matt Flener and Reagan Hackleman and Lege watchdog Elise Hu. KXAN’s Flener can be found on Twitter teasing stories and sussing out interviews; News 8’s Hackleman expertly balances his personal and professional Tweets; and we’re looking forward to tons more 140-character dispatches from Hu as she leaves KVUE for the new journalism nonprofit Texas Tribune. twitter.com/mattflener; twitter.com/rhackleman; twitter.com/elisewho

Office Space

“You see, what we’re actually trying to do here is, we’re trying to get a feel for how people spend their day at work… so, if you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?”
—’Bob Slydell’ in Office Space, by Mike Judge

Day one in the offices of Texas Tribune. Highlights included finalizing the camera equipment for my multimedia adventure, not getting mauled by any birds that like to fly inside Whole Foods at lunch, and the morning trip to OfficeMax for our notebook rations!

Entering OfficeMax for the big supply summit

I’ve never worked at a brand new operation before, so I guess I always took for granted the trash cans and desks that were already in place before I started. Today, we actually bought stuff like that, which gave the day a certain student council feel to it. (Anyone who went to high school with me knows I love me some student council. We took  Plano vs PESH week very seriously.)

Launch isn’t happening until November, but I know fellow reporters are eager to get past these first days and start getting to the nitty gritty.  I’m just glad Lumbergh isn’t going to make me come in on Saturday.

Paneling It

Spoke for the first time at Social Media Breakfast Austin this morning. While 7:30am is too early for my taste, good discussion, smart people and Torchy’s Tacos made it worth it.

SMB Austin 9

We got questions about whether PR professionals should use Twitter to communicate with reporters (yes, but not obsessively), how media can monetize social media (it probably can’t) and what the future of journalism looks like (Google Wave, wikis, context).

The most interesting question we’ve all confronted in journalism panels of late is this idea that there’s a vast ’sewage pipe’ of information out there, and it is difficult for consumers to sort the waste from the valuable pieces of information. How should we best help people find the news they need? Curation/aggregation is a good start, so long as the readers grant the curator or the news organization credibility. I’m also interested in advanced, dynamic tagging. But let’s have a conversation about this… reliable information is hard to measure and hard to find. What’s the best way journalism organizations can get it to the people who want it?