Jordan Schuman
 Multimedia Journalist
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Day  8: Weathering the Storm 

1/29/2014

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Picturewww.instagram.com/hurrigator
Well, I got 3 hours of sleep last night. I got in bed around midnight and spent the next four hours doing pretty much anything but sleeping. I don't know what kept me up, but I told myself that if I really needed to be sleeping, I would have been. At least I'll sleep well tonight. At some point during the night of non-sleep I considered changing my blog name to "The Intern Logs," like the Intern Diaries, but logs because they are the logs of the intern and also logging is something this intern does. I tried looking up if "The Intern Logs" is trademarked but couldn't figure out the website. It was also very late.

Before leaving for work, I reached into my fridge to grab some snacks (Red Bull for rare occasions like this, Naked juice, salsa for my tortilla chips) and noticed the plug had come loose from the wall at some point and there was a lack of refrigeration in my fridge.

Today I'm wearing a navy pleated skirt, a lilac sweater, nude wedges and a denim jacket. Oh, and it's raining. Because why shouldn't it rain? It made me glad that I decided to fill up my gas tank last night instead of this morning.

I slept later than usual but still made it to work on time. When I first hit the road there was a surprising lack of traffic. Did I miss everyone? Did everyone get to work already? Did people see the rain and decide to stay home? But nope. I caught up to everyone later on.

The man on Sirius XM The Pulse said the South was having weather, and corrected himself because as I pointed out on my Facebook page, there is always weather. But sometimes, it's news.

At work, I heard my Bureau Chief say my name on the phone followed by a task she's putting me on. I felt grateful because on the way to work I thought if today was going to be a slow day my exhaustion would just silently build inside of me. The winter weather in the South clearly heard my prayers.

More on weather- my task today is to scour social media for people in the South who are clearly unequipped to deal with snow. We can't really get crews places due to aforementioned weather. The first photo I found was from a producer at The Weather Channel. The next was from a web producer at our Atlanta affiliate. Next, a former producer at CNN. Where are all of the normal people? I thought. This is going well.

I didn't immediately understand the situation in Atlanta because I'd been told there's 2 inches of snow on the ground. The Long Island girl in me could not comprehend. There was a foot of snow on the ground last time I was home. All cars are made the same, there is just no reason for the cars to not make it through the two inches. But I see people have been in their cars overnight (or worse just abandoned their cars and walked home), sleeping in grocery stores overnight, separated from their children overnight because kids can't get out of school.

I'm proud of the teamwork at NBC today. I'm in an email chain between the staff here in Miami and those producing Nightly News in NY. At one point, a Nightly News producer asked me to track down a photo about the National Guard. I emailed the Manager of Social Media at the NBC Affiliate  who told me their reporter had video and pics of the Guard. I saved 6 photos off of instagram and commented to get permission from those users to air them on Nightly. I commented on 30-40 instagram posts out of Atlanta to get pics and videos from those in the storm. I was asked to track down a woman who slept in Home Depot last night. I did. I was asked the location of the photos. Roswell, GA. I received an email from Nightly in NY that said, "Rockstar, thanks." My inbox was alive with contributions to tonight's story.

I learned in school last semester that research shows Americans find weather to be the most important part of a newscast. I learned stories of kindness while researching the story: we have heat, come sleep at our place. We have gas, text us your location and we'll come to you. People were making sandwiches for drivers stuck overnight. Parents were walking 6 miles to spend the night in elementary schools with their kids.

Sure, it's 2 inches of snow and ice that this Long Islander cannot understand. But the story of community and society that it demonstrates, I would never hesitate to tell.

You heard it here first,
Jordan


See the story here.





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GAD & Dinner with Linda Ellerbee

6/29/2013

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Picture
I sat down in Linda Ellerbee's West Village living room and she told me about the first episode of Nick News on April 18th, 1992: "We had a big beach ball that looked like the globe... and we found Baghdad, and we spun it around and found the U.S. and I said 'Saddam Hussein doesn't have a plane that can get from here to here without stopping to refuel... and every country in between the two have said he cannot stop to refuel. So you can sleep safely here tonight.'"

That last line. You can sleep safely here tonight.

Let me digress for a moment- I've diagnosed myself with general anxiety disorder, which is exactly what it sounds like: a general sense of anxiety about things that really shouldn't be that scary... things that are not rationally anxiety inducing. I'm newly anxious about most things, actually. I'll never walk alone at night, and any restaurant, movie theater, mall that I walk in could really be the next Portland, Aurora, or Newtown. While a little fear and heightened awareness is healthy, it's scary and unfair and horrible to always assume the worst.

I will be taking self-defense classes and seeing a therapist regularly in the fall, for your information.

*Thumbs up; We're A-Ok.* 

I don't know where it comes from- the anxiety and paranoia and all-consuming fear. And to be honest, I feel awful when I judge the person who sits across from me on the train and assume they've decided they want to hurt me and they know how they're going to do it. I realize how irrational that is as I type it. That is part of GAD... knowing the fear is irrational but being afraid of it all the same. But I think it comes partially from the breaking news alerts that come to my phone about a person who has lost their marbles and decided to take it out on the innocent people in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But not all people are bad. I know that. And even the bad news has a silver lining. Mr. Rogers said that when scary things were on the news, his mom told him to "look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."

And when Linda Ellerbee told me I could sleep safely in this country tonight, shivers went down my spine. Because even through my self-diagnosed GAD, I believe her with my whole heart. Because sleep safely I can. Not all people are bad. And where they are bad people, there are helpers. There are also reporters, who are helpers in their own right.




I have met my match and a true role model in Ms. Ellerbee who believes curious kids deserve to know the truth, too. (And not in a dumbed down way... but that kids should truly understand things.) A genuine journalist, a sweet heart and a kind soul.





Andy Cohen tells a story about the Oklahoma City Bombing and how after 4 days of constant news coverage, he took a shower and sobbed. And then he sobbed the whole way home. Sobbed for the victims, sobbed for shutting off what he felt inside in order to tell the story for people who couldn't do it themselves.

So when I question how to do this, how to shut off the self-diagnosed-general-anxiety-disorder human inside, and become unfeeling and separated, and let the first responders respond, and let the reporters report, Mr. Rogers and Linda Ellerbee have taught me what to do. Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.

And because of them, you can sleep safely here tonight.

You heard it here first,
Jordan





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