Off the Record, but still obsessed!

I guess journalism was so deep in my blood, I didn’t know it was there. My mom was an investigative journalist for a local paper during my teen years, and before that served as Editor of a suburban Boston paper. At the tender and impressionable age of three, I sat atop the desk in the office adjacent hers, and holding the play phone carefully against my ear, interviewed all of her subjects.

As a young adult I was disillusioned with news media – turned off by the doom and gloom aspect of every report that came across the wires. Journalism was not in my future, or so I believed. Writing, however, was…

I honed my craft in the screenwriting program at Yale, and worked on poetry and short fiction for fun. I worked as a Script Consultant in Hollywood, which meant that I read screenplays and wrote reports about them for one of the major talent agencies. Eventually I landed in the sales and marketing department in one of 20th Century Fox’s many divisions. In addition to many other duties, I wrote marketing materials and marketing editorials to promote Fox’s latest film releases on TV.

Imagine my surprise when, a few years later, having returned to my homeland (New England), an offer to volunteer for a local non-profit organization landed me my first paid gig as a journalist. With “Landmine Removal at Origin” published in the May 2007 issue of FRESH CUP magazine, my journalistic career was launched.

Today, I am involved in a career that is rich beyond my wildest dreams. In fact, I’m becoming obsessed. Everywhere I go, I find I’m looking for or uncovering stories and asking myself “Where can I pitch this?”

Case in point – on a recent romantic getaway to Portsmouth, NH, I found myself interviewing people and taking photos for www.conscious-cow.org, the kitschy journalistic blog I started to raise awareness about waste management issues. (Thank goodness, my significant other is a patient one!)