Hey Elise // by Elise Hu

I like to pretend I don’t actually have any real responsibilities, but I actually did move to DC last year to take a job. It called for launching a new news brand — StateImpact — a local-national network headed up by NPR in DC and staffed by NPR member stations around the country. Last year, StateImpact hired two reporters in eight pilot states to launch a new site in each state. Now it’s off and running.

We continue to train, edit and support the sites and their journalism. In addition, the team here in DC regularly develops features for a customized WordPress platform that is used by every site in the network. The customized platform was first built two years prior, by our sister project, Project Argo.

Argo has now open-sourced its theme(s) and all the plugins they developed to make their reporters lives easier. (StateImpact has more fun tools, mostly geared toward data-driven reporting, which we have yet to open source.) One of the now-public plugins is for link roundups — curated aggregations of the best links on your beat. Team Argo identified these roundups as an important part of a blogger’s daily or twice-daily routine, but a pain in the ass to actually put together because it involves a lot of cutting and pasting and hyperlinking. The Argo Link Roundup tool, which all our StateImpacters use regularly, allows you to create a roundup without ever cutting or pasting a thing.

This is my test drive of the plug in here on HeyElise. But it actually is a collection of the best pieces I’ve read in the last 24 hours. (Especially the story about draft bust JaMarcus Russell.) Assuming this goes well, I’ll be doing more link roundups in the future.

Ryan Gosling Appears Wherever There Is Trouble – “Will Gosling continue to magically appear whenever the lives of New York City’s normals are in danger? Yes, he will. “ New York Magazine

The Life and Death of the Therapist Bob Bergeron – “‘I’ve got a concise picture of what being over 40 is about and it’s a great perspective filled with happiness, feeling sexy, possessing comfort relating to other men and taking good care of ourselves,” Mr. Bergeron said on his Web site. “This picture will get you results that flourish long-term.’ But right around New Year’s Eve, something went horribly wrong.” The New York Times

The Man Who Isn’t There – “The No. 1 pick in the 2007 draft should be out on the field commanding an NFL team this Sunday. JaMarcus Russell, though, is home in Mobile, absorbing shots to his character and resting on what’s left of his $39 million. The most maligned figure in football tells his side.” Sports Illustrated

A couple of days ago the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists, featured a blogger named Stephen Robert Morse’s post in which he claims that a.) The Texas Tribune is destroying journalism and b.) Reporters are soft on donors. Some excerpts:

“It never dawned on me until I had a chance conversation with a reporter from The Austin Chronicle at South by Southwest who accused “The Trib,” as he called it, of creating an unfair playing field for journalists who work at for-profit news organizations in Texas … A TT insider, whose anonymity I will protect here, told me that because it is important for The Trib to maintain positive relations with donors, the organization rarely takes strong stances on issues.”

I left Morse a comment yesterday afternoon but it’s nearly 11am the next morning and it still awaits approval, so I’ll just share it here.
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And have yourself a good cry.

That giant horn of plenty was the highlight of my weekend.

Over the weekend, Photographer Brad and I made a quick trip to Des Moines to drop in on the presidential campaign trail, where six of the eight GOP candidates took part in a social issue-themed roundtable discussion while seated behind a gigantic cornucopia. Other observations:

Christmas is really around the corner. At the county GOP event in the morning, where Ron Paul was the featured speaker, there were lots of ill-fitting holiday sweaters and sweatshirts. The expected number of American flag-themed polo shirts turned up, also.

How about that cornucopia, people. Tell me it is not distracting. I have no idea what happened during some of the forum because I was so fascinated with that thing. A sample of the tweets and comments I got about it:

• What’s with the “horn of plenty” in front that looks like the trash heap from Fraggle Rock?

• From here, it looks like a homeless person sleeping.

• On the floor, is it a body in burlap??, a conservative conceptual yule log?

Christmas card photo?

The horn-of-plenty was not just a draw for me and Brad. Rhonda and Kent, a couple from Des Moines wearing these matching Christmas colored flannel outfits asked Brad to take several photos of them in front of the cornucopia in hopes of getting a good Christmas card photo. Posing in front of the cornucopia actually made us late to the next thing, the governor’s birthday party.

While rushing to the Iowa governor’s bash, which all the candidates were planning to attend, we accidentally crashed a wedding at the Altoona Adventureland Hotel. We asked the bar staff where we were SUPPOSED to be, and they said, “You need to go to AdventureLAND, not Adventureland.” Yep.

Newt Gingrich is most definitely the man of the moment. People mobbed the guy as soon as he came in, even though he wasn’t that nice to them and was generally surly during the forum.

After the long day of work, all the boys ignored me at the microbrewery place to instead pay attention to their cell phones. We watched two college football games on the TV screens but that wasn’t enough. They followed the other two on their phones. To be fair, Young Danny was actually focused on final edits to his story.

In perhaps the most amusing part of a weekend of amusement, a Democratic fundraiser who came into the bar for a nightcap started complimenting us on our fashion. He started talking us up about football, but then pivoted to asking about our various backgrounds. “I wanted to get at where you’re from cause you all are dressed pretty sophisticated for Iowa,” he said. To photographer Brad, he said, “I pay attention to fashion, and you’re pants aren’t Carhartts, so I figured you weren’t from here.”

A scene from The Paper, one of my fave newspaper movies.

A few weeks ago I rounded up some friends — at the last minute — to take part in the pub quiz at The Argonaut, an H Street bar that’s annoying to get to and yet always packed. My sorry teammates will probably never forgive me for sharing this, but of the 12 teams that took part in a seven-round pub quiz, our team — Quantitative Pleasing — placed last. We blame the small size of our team (four players compared to the 10 plus that other teams boasted), and two ridiculous categories: “Name that Cat Breed” and “Comic Books.”

The ignominious “prize” for coming in last place is the losers get to choose a category for the next week’s contest. We chose “Movies About Newspapers” and quizmaster Michael was nice enough to send me the questions, even though our team was unable to make it to see these questions presented live. See if you can answer them. In true pub trivia fashion, no cheating with your mobile devices!

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Assignment Editor Kim Deal, me and Andy Still. Had WYFF's then-news director Andy not given me the chance to cover the legislature and campaigns, who knows what I'd be doing today.

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Television news is inherently a team sport. Reporters are nothing without their photographer partners, and the visual stories created in the field are nothing without the teams of producers who craft them into something larger — a newscast, a series, a documentary.

One of the most high-functioning and family-like teams on which I’ve played was in my early twenties, in South Carolina. It was on that team that I was first given a chance to cover politics with regularity. And South Carolina is a place that’s shaped my perspective in indescribable ways.

I moved away five years ago after a couple memory-packed years here, and hadn’t returned until yesterday.

Yesterday would have been the 40th birthday of Chris Gulfman, a talented and reliable photographer who was an even more reliable friend. His gruff exterior masked one of the kindest hearts, a heart that is still beating somewhere, in the recipient of one of Gulfman’s many organ donations after he died suddenly half a decade ago. An undiagnosed brain tumor ruptured in his brain overnight, and more quickly than we could say aneurism, he was gone. (more…)

Like any self-respecting journalist, I spend 90% of the run-up to a deadline either procrastinating or scouring the internet for ways to procrastinate. These are the aids in my deadline avoidance this weekend:

Esquire’s Guide to Marriage (complete with a quiz!)
Writers take on the beginning, middle and end stages of marriage with short essays. I love the “middle” essay, about fighting. As for the quiz, my husband-of-nearly-one-year Matty scored in the “she’s probably not going to leave you anytime soon” range, which is respectable. He did lose 100 points somewhere in the middle for saying “guy time” within the last six months.

Jimmy Lai Animates the News
My first exposure to Taiwan’s NextGen Animation was after the Tiger Woods scandal, when an avatar for Elin Nordegren chased the cartoon Woods with a golf club and bashed in the front window of his Suburban. By 2010, I was fully obsessed and went to NextGen’s YouTube page after any major news event, to see how the animators imagined things going down. The man behind the cross-cultural meme tells the NYT, “I could make a big business out of recreating the amazing images of the news, because what we get on TV is always the last bit of image. What happened before that image is always missing.” The interview gets really funny when he starts talking about the inspiration for his Asian clothing line, Giordano.

The Queen Pop Needs Her to Be
The Times runs a piece similar to a NY Mag cover feature of a year ago, about the workaholism and artistry and post-modern brilliance of Lady Gaga. Fun fact: Even with all the costuming and elaborate stagecraft and dancing, Gaga never lip syncs at her shows. I really gotta go see her live sometime.

What the Frack is Going On?
If you haven’t seen it yet, you gotta check out The Fracking Song, which is both an educational and entertaining explainer of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas. No, really.

Unless you’ve been in a cave, you know the news. Special forces killed public enemy number one, Osama/Usama bin Laden this morning and recovered his body. A spontaneous crowd flooded to the front gate of the White House and just after President Obama’s address to the nation, we started seeing some shots of the revelry on the T-V. So, being the news junkies that we are, Mr. Hu-Stiles and I drove the three miles to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., illegally parked and literally ran to check out the action. The air was thick with the smell of winning and weed. The crowd was dominated by drunk, fratty types and what appeared to be foreign journalists. We heard lots of “U-S-A, U-S-A” chants and an occasional rendition of the national anthem. A quick slideshow:

“New jobs, and more jobs, good-paying jobs.” -Haircare magnate and former Democratic candidate for Texas Governor, Farouk Shami

Want a job in journalism? Have the patience to deal with me and Ken Rudin? Apply to be a part of the NPR project I’m working on! It’s called Impact of Government (for now) and it’s a local-national collaboration between member stations and NPR to do broadcast and online news focused on how state government affects people. So far, four states are hiring for digital and/or broadcast reporters, and their job descriptions will tell you more (or I can, too). Here’s what we have so far. Questions? Email me.

FLORIDA
Digital Reporter (WUSF Tampa)

PENNSYLVANIA
Multimedia Reporter (WHYY Philadelphia)
Multimedia Reporter (WITF Harrisburg)

OHIO: Cleveland
Broadcast Reporter
Digital Reporter

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Concord
Broadcast Reporter
Digital Reporter

INDIANA: Bloomington
Broadcast Reporter
Digital Reporter

More jobs in more states coming soon.