“Live From My Childhood Bedroom”: How Working From Home Has Made Me a Better Reporter
The saying goes, “Beggars can’t be choosers.” But in the age of COVID-19, 1,200 miles from my beat, reporting feels a lot like begging, and I can’t afford not to be choosy.
I came to Columbia with minimal journalism experience. Like many of my peers, I had to work to overcome imposter syndrome. The mistakes I made in these first months stemmed from a lack of assertiveness in the field. It was too easy to get caught up in the excitement of someone, anyone, willing to speak with you. I spent many trips on the A train beating myself up for forgetting to push harder or follow up on a question.
And then, unexpectedly, COVID-19 shut the campus and I found myself finishing up my classes online. What started as a short trip home for spring break became an extended stay at my parents’ home in Florida, trying desperately to hold on to the life as a reporter I had built in New York. Instead of doing our weekly broadcast for the Radio Workshop class in the school’s professional radio studio, my classmates and I were going to have to figure out how to pull it off from our homes, thousands of miles away from one another.
In my first week reporting for a full newscast from home, I quickly learned to ask for what I need to make a story come to life, and ultimately, I think that’s a lesson that has made me a better reporter overall. It turns out there are advantages in spite of the stress that comes with trying to build a sound booth in your closet and keeping your dog from barking while you’re recording.
The first is knowing your sources aren’t going anywhere. You’re relying on them to help you with a lot of the aspects audio reporters are trained to handle themselves — quality of tape, saving things correctly, getting things in on time — so it’s important to know you can come back to them if you need them to resend or re-tape a comment.
This means communication, an important skill on its own, is crucial for audio reporters who are working from home. I made sure to walk my sources through each step of recording themselves and letting them know how they could ensure they’d sound their best on air. When I received a file with “hot” or distorted tape, I quickly let my source know why I couldn’t use it and how they could help me by recording again.
Which leads me to the next and probably biggest advantage right now, which is sympathy. In these trying times, it’s important to recognize that we’re all doing our best. Our sources get that too, which is why I think they’ve been so willing to help us. Each day, I’m seeing communities come together in remarkable ways. The collaboration among our newsroom has never been stronger, even across different time zones.
Reporting a day story — a story that a reporter has to start and finish on the same day it will air — is hard enough under normal circumstances. I never would’ve accomplished mine without my classmates. For instance, our other “day” reporter, Sarah Gelbard, graciously connected me with sources who had previously agreed to speak with her. Distance hasn’t stopped any of us from working as a team.
A few months ago, I would’ve been mortified at the thought of asking a valued source, someone who had already sacrificed their time to speak with me, to do anything I needed, let alone re-record something. Living in a time where millions of people are learning to do things on their own has made it easier to believe in what I can accomplish from home, and more importantly, believe in my sources to help me be a better reporter.
Janmaris Perez is a student in the M.S. Class of 2020 at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She is sheltering in place in Miramar, Fl.
