Comment by samsolomon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by samsolomon | Hacker News Reader

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I'm a product designer and would never have fallen into this career if not for working for my college paper, The Auburn Plainsman.

A story—My first semester working on the paper I was at the bottom of the food chain as an associate news editor. So it was my job to sit in Auburn City Council meetings and fill my page with a summary of those meetings. I don't know how many of you have sat in small town council meetings, but all that really happens is they announce what restaurants are granted a liquor licenses and table interesting topic indefinitely. It's boring. On occasion there would be a heated debate about installing a speed bump on some neighborhood street, but usually nothing.

I would have an assigned amount of space to fill with city council notes and I never—never—was able to fill it. So I taught myself photoshop and started creating infographics to take up space. I started a weekly gas monitor price fluctuations and would add several other graphics to fill my section. That's how I got into design.

EDIT: Also, breaking a story about a kid stealing a Tiger Transit (Drunk Bus) to get home from the bar was a crowning journalistic achievement of mine. https://www.theplainsman.com/article/2009/09/tiger-transit-s...

I'm a PM, and I spent time as a writer and editor of my high school newspaper that was probably more useful to my career than anything else I did in high school or college. Learning how to ask the right questions, understand people's perspectives and biases and to take a bunch of related information and turn it into a coherent narrative that keeps people engaged are useful skills just about everything and certainly in this job.

Did they find out who stole the bus??

They never found out who stole it! The bus story became somewhat of an urban legend.

And I'm with ya. I learned so much working for the paper. Perhaps one unexpected skill was cold calling. In sales getting over that fear is an enormously important barrier to cross. Once you do it though, it makes a lot of things in life easier.

For stories I'd have to call people or go find them, frequently when they screwed up, frequently when they did not want to talk to me. Just like the story above—the transit manager did not want to talk to me, but I spent a day and a half hunting him down. He didn't answer my calls, so I went down to where the buses get dispatched from in the afternoon and asked a driver where to find him. That "Somebody just didn't want to wait" quote came from that interaction.

About a year later I started a coupon website. I went door-to-door trying to get local business to buy in. That's probably not something I could have done, if I hadn't worked for the paper first.

Man, good for you - I hate hate hate hate hate cold calling. I think the job I would want least in life is outbound cold calling. But I totally agree with you - I wouldn't say I ever really developed the skill, but I learned just shove the anxiety down deep and go do it, because it's gotta be done. That has served me pretty well.

I put a lot of thought into how I would respond to your comment, and I'd just like to say Roll Tide.

Did they ever find the bus burglar?

Also, funny to think there were probably multiple reporters in those city council meetings all trying to figure out their own way of filling space. While not good for people's career prospects, having a single reporter [maybe rotating each year] write once and disseminate to all (AP style) feels more optimal.

> While not good for people's career prospects, having a single reporter [maybe rotating each year] write once and disseminate to all (AP style) feels more optimal.

I find that having a single source of information too often leads to very sub optimal outcomes.

Now a days we have zero sources of information for these city council meetings given newspaper industry can’t afford to cover local news.

Teaming would be better than that.

I'm not sure there would even be anyone to team with. I've maybe been to a couple of town or selectman meetings in the 25 years I've lived in my town. Most are incredibly boring and have zero direct impact on me.

Hence how silly it would be to send multiple reporters and the point of my original comment.

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