"So, what do you do?"
I never thought I’d say this, but I’m happy to be back in Indianapolis. Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with the Circle City, but it’s been difficult for this boy from the West to adjust to Midwestern living … though I am slowly beginning to appreciate Bob Evans and Cracker Barrel for their kitschy novelty (despite not eating meat other than fish, which, according to my Catholic upbringing, is not meat). Thus, when my plane landed at good ol’ IND the other night, I found myself breathing a strange sigh of relief. Truth be told, I had enjoyed my Christmas vacation in the Northwest – complete with infuriating amounts of snow. However, I’d grown tired of answering the persistent question from friends and family: “So, what do you do?”
That’s a good question. What do I do? Discounting time spent on Facebook and Twitter, I do many productive things throughout the day (if, by chance, my superiors are reading this, the Facebook thing is entirely related to work). In the spirit of brevity, here’s a condensed version: SPJ Leads. Ethics Hotline. Grants Committee. Press releases. SPJ Report. Media inquiries. Marketing plans. More friggin’ press releases. That’s some of what I do. But I can’t just spout a litany of SPJ/PR/journalism terms to people largely unfamiliar with the industry. Rather, I simplify.
“I write for a journalism trade magazine,” is my typical response after trying – usually unsuccessfully – to explain that SPJ is not the same thing as the AP.
In reality, I spend less than 15 percent of my time on Quill-related content, but the magazine route is the quickest way to satisfy the endless inquiries from those I’ve not chosen to update on my life, which is everyone.
There’s a deeper reason, though. When I first started at SPJ, I was called a “spin doctor” by a working reporter. If there’s one way to stop a confident, often cocky aspiring writer in his tracks, it’s by using the dreaded “spin” term. Spin is an art in which bloviating commentators on cable television excel. I may not file stories on the daily wire, but there is a copy of the AP Stylebook on my desk, and that has to count for something.
After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and if I can’t be a cub reporter, I’ll sure have a good time pretending. In the meantime I’ll keep sending those friends and family bylined content from Quill, just to keep them up to speed on what I do, or at least what I do less than 15 percent of the time.
Hopefully my next visit out West will come with fewer questions. Or perhaps I’ll go to Florida instead. At least there’s no snow there.