Jordan Schuman
 Multimedia Journalist
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Day 5 at Work; Day 4 at School

1/24/2014

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If you're wondering how many days it takes to memorize your way to a destination such as work, it's 4.5. The 4th day, you'll be fairly certain you can get to work without your GPS but leave it on anyway, and the 5th day, you'll leave the GPS off.

On the always riveting commute into work, a gorgeous black puppy was fearlessly running across traffic on US-1, an extremely busy main road by school. I felt so sad for this puppy but I watched cars slow down to try to let her get to the other side safely. I'm not sure what ended up happening, but I sure do hope the puppy made it home.

On Day 5 I wore a navy wrap dress with flowers and birds printed on it, and coral heels to match the flowers. I just could not with my contact lenses so I wore glasses instead. Lasik is sounding better and better by the day.

Nothing too big was happening at work except the follow up to the George Stinney, Jr. case. Mark Potter was with producer Erika in South Carolina for the hearing. We logged and logged and logged, hearing from relatives and witnesses. I realized how painful it must be for these people to have to dig up these memories 70 years later. I've been very fortunate in this life but even I understand closing the book on a painful chapter when the time is right.

I really was hoping for a positive outcome for the Stinneys. It was shocking to me to hear how similar the details of the case were to every fiction story I've read about a town like Alcolu in a time like 1944. The more I listened and logged, I hoped, for the Stinneys' sake, that the aforementioned-imagined painful digging will be worth it. The judge decided to give 10 days to both sides to evaluate legal issues of the case. No timeline has been set for when the two sides will return to court. I could empathize with Mark Potter's imagined defeat. I really hate showing up to a story and finding there might not be one.

We continued to log tape just in case we do revisit this story. I'm not sure how it'll play out- check back in 10 days. For the Stinneys, I hope justice, closure and peace. For the intern and producers who logged the hearing and still logged the hearing and still logged the hearing, I hope a really wonderful story.

I was once again proud to work for an organization that places value on news-gathering, and allocated funds for a reporter and crew to cover a hearing, while understanding there might not even be a story.

I left work exactly at 5 to get to a meeting at school that started at 6. Sirius XM The Highway played "No Hurry" by the Zac Brown Band exactly as I hit a ridiculous amount of traffic. I questioned what Sirius XM was actually trying to do to me, and then I chuckled at the irony.

In other far less important news, the day after Day 5 was Day 4 at school- also known as Justin-Bieber-Gets-A-DUI-Day. The same Mark Potter who was in Alcolu the day before was now outside of the courthouse, like many other reporters who I imagine were not too thrilled to be there. I laughed when Fusion's morning show covered the story with an "Insignificant Breaking News" chyron. You go, Fusion. You go.



I wondered how many times Justin Bieber's mugshot was posted to instagram, and I really disliked any time someone asked me if I had heard about it. I dislike myself as I type this for giving more time to it this morning. I also want it on the record that the first time I wrote this blog post I misspelled Justin Bieber's last name and I'm pretty proud of that fact.

Today is Friday which is, no pun intended, very good news. I was on RA duty again last night. The good news there is that I'm almost halfway done with duty nights, and I think that was my last one on a night before work. Duty tours on weeknights require you to be awake until at least 12:30 a.m., and as I walked into my room I turned to a resident who was in the hallway and I said, "be quiet tonight, okay?" They were.

No duty calls, but a call from a friend in need. Yes, he was "sexiled*". This is college, after all. So at 2:38 a.m., I converted my couch into a futon, threw the extra comforter down, opened the door, felt like a really good friend, and said, "go to bed."

And then we did.

You heard it here first,
Jordan

*Sexiling: the act of being isolated or exiled due to your roommate taking someone home with whom sexual relations could occur.


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Day 3: The Kindness of Strangers 

1/17/2014

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As a Resident Assistant at my University, I have the obligation to be on duty 8 nights a semester. My second night on duty was last night. Being "on duty" is essentially being "on call." At 8 p.m. you pick up the duty phone and you along with one other RA are the on call people for the building. If anything comes up, you will for sure get a phone call in the middle of the night.

I got a phone call at 1:30 a.m. or so (?) which I didn't mind so much because it was a quick deal and I probably was only 45 minutes into sleeping. I also didn't mind it because my alarm was set for a whole 45 minutes later than it usually is for work.

Remember the news gathering I was telling you about on Day 2? The not-dead-actually-quite-alive news gathering?

My first task Friday morning was to complete the assembly and sending of the letters. I left home around 8:45 and went to Publix to buy more stamps, completed the assembly in the car and went to the post office on the way to work.

I wasn't sure where the drop box was for the letters and I had 147 of them. The woman who worked at the post office showed me where it was, but then was nice enough to take all 147 letters from me and take care of them herself. She called me "darling" and wished me a good day.

I appreciated all of that.

More on the kindness of strangers: the parking attendants at the garage at work are always the kindest. I'm sure their job is boring sometimes but they always ask how I'm doing and then wish me a good night. It's the exact send off from a day at work that everyone deserves. I bet they know that.

Today at work, I met Mark Potter. Mark Potter is an extremely impressive NBC correspondent (with a wonderful news reporter voice.) Mark walked up to me and said "I don't believe we've met," and gave me a handshake. Introduced himself, and said "I'm one of the reporters here." As if I didn't know.

Took a mental note to always introduce myself followed by who I am. Because who really is even Oprah to make the assumption that everyone knows?

It was the perfect touch of humility.

Mark Potter asked me a few questions about UM and explained a bunch of the ties he had to the broadcasting department there.

Mark (although I think everyone here calls him Potter) showed me the package he did in South Carolina about the new details in the case of George Stinney, Jr., the 14-year-old sentenced to death by electric chair in 1944.

Check out the story here.

This isn't a spoiler, by the way. NBC is teasing the heck out of it, rightly so. I watched the story and said out loud, "this is big."

I slowly learned a lot of the new witnesses and details in the story came out of the woodwork because of NBC's coverage of the story, and witnessed the kindness of strangers at work once again.

The attorneys have planned a retrial for Stinney, Jr. on Tuesday, and will assess the potential clearing of his name after he was killed for the accused rape of two dead white girls. To me, it was the justice that rang as 3 Scottsboro Boys were pardoned posthumously 80 years later.

That's why this is big. In the piece airing on Weekend TODAY, Stinney's cellmate says Stinney told him, "why would they want to kill me for something I didn't do?"

And because of the kindness of the strangers at NBC and the justice they are working to reconcile, the world might ask the exact same question he did.

You heard it here first,
Jordan




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