When one of my editors at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel walked over to my desk two weeks ago and asked, “How would you like to do a Politifact?” of course I jumped at the opportunity.

But writing the thing was easier said than done — you can read it here. Politifact pieces follow a certain writing structure: First you introduce the claim that’s being examined, then provide background on it, making sure both sides give their case, then a panel of editors vote on the claim. In this case we’d originally ruled the claim “Mostly False,” but in the end editors decided the claim was all-the-way “False” because of the multiple inaccuracies in the group’s statement.

The experience made the last week of my internship a memorable one, and made me even more reluctant to have to leave. Services like Politifact are especially important these days, when news outlets are called out for their “bias” at the drop of a hat and public disillusionment is rampant. By confronting the facts on their face and evaluating the claims public figures are making, particularly during the run-up to an election, news outlets can provide readers (or viewers, or listeners) with the kind of accountability and civil service they expect. Showing your audience the process behind the reporting can strengthen their trust in ways that a regular news piece or even an editorial simply cannot.

Feedback much appreciated!

Certainly a more interesting salutation than that dusty stand-in, “Hello, World!” — doncha think?

(Tea roses outside of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, August 2010)

I’m currently devouring “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Díaz, and in it the titular nerd greets the narrator with the painful, “Hail and well met, Yunior.”

Wikipedia tells me that variations on the phrase date back to the 16th century, and that James Joyce used it in “Ulysses” in reference to newspaper men. As I’m an (admittedly green) member of those ranks, I thought it’d be an appropriate introduction for my “professional” website. I put “professional” in scare quotes both because it so often gets equated with “stuffy,” and because I’m not a full-fledged “professional” journalist yet.

That’s where this freshly minted online presence comes in. I’ll be uploading my resume and clips in the very near future, along with (hopefully) entertaining tales of my quest for employment.

Thanks for reading!