The Interns

I've experienced slow news days in the Multimedia Newsroom at school. I've watched producers and reporters twirling around in their chairs, waiting for the police scanner to announce any kind of minor tragedy, just so there'll be a story to cover.

And we thought we had it bad then.

Monday, my first assignment was to go to the old folks' home and take pictures of their antique car show. That was a lot of fun. The obvious typo in one of the cutlines was less fun.

Since then, I've spent the rest of the week playing phone tag with various sources. Apparently everyone who's an authority on anything is on vacation this week. Just for the sake of reporters everywhere, I'd like to make a small request: When you non-reporters out there decide to simultaneously take the week off, please let us know. We like vacations, too, and we don't like being left out and left without anyone to interview all week.

I've been talking to Scott at the Harvey County Extension Office this week a lot. We're phone buddies now. He's their horticulturist, and because his coworker, the agriculturist, is on vacation, he gets to answer all my questions about rainfall, wheat, bugs and whatever other nature-y stuff ends up on my desk. He's the only person who knows anything who's actually in the office most of the time, and that's why he's my favorite source this week. He must have finally found out about the everyone-but-journalists vacation scheme, because he's been out of the office every time I called today.

While I wait for all those return phone calls that should start pouring in any time now, I'm listening to NPR and pondering where my sudden fondness for Marketplace came from.