Let Emma know what you want her to cover in Lynchburg! Fill out this brief survey.
You might think that we journalists spend our off-hours at a posh restaurant by the lake drinking martinis and talking until the sun rises about the behind-the-scenes stories of our latest award-winning investigation. Well, I’m gonna tell you like a friend, as my father-in-law used to tell me right before he said something problematic, that’s not the case.
First thing: off-hours, you say?
Second thing: when journalists do talk, they often talk about the ones that got away.
Misery loves company, they say, and journalists love to talk about the walls they’ve run into, the promising avenues of investigations that led to a dead end, the source who suddenly went off the record.
I’ve conducted over a hundred job interviews over the years. When I get through a reporter’s qualifications and talking about their best stories, I always like to ask them about an assignment that didn’t go as well. That really shows you what a reporter is made of, how they operate when things go wrong, how they pivot, what they learn.
I asked that question when I interviewed Emma Malinak, a reporter and editor who graduated from Washington & Lee in May and was applying for a reporter role here. Emma started working for Cardinal News on July 7, supported partially by Report for America, to cover Lynchburg. Here’s how she answered the question.
In a story from last July, when she was a summer intern at VTDigger, a renowned nonprofit newsroom covering Vermont, Emma wrote about a small training facility tucked deep into the woods where talented rowers from across the country come together to train for international competition:
CRAFTSBURY — Hidden in the backroads of the Northeast Kingdom, rowers seem to effortlessly glide across Great Hosmer Pond as they slice through streams of cool wind, beams of blinding morning sun, and ripples of wakes left by other boats.
But for all the grace and power visible on the surface, thousands of calculations tumble in athletes’ minds at Craftsbury’s Green Racing Project rowing program, said Assistant Coach Hillary Saeger. Every muscle, joint and movement must be intricately coordinated for rowers to get the perfect stroke.
As she moves her boat to check in with each student in the water, she never leads with critiques — how elbows could be angled differently, how wrists could snap faster, how core muscles could be held tighter. Instead, her first question is always, “How did that feel to you?”
The story goes on to tell how six of Craftsbury’s “sprigs,” as they call themselves, were at that moment competing in the Olympics in Paris.
As smooth as that opening is, as strong a sense of place as we get, the road to the final draft was anything but smooth.
The Olympians had already left and were in Paris. Emma and her editor decided the story was still worth the trip. That summer, Vermont (much like Virginia) suffered tumultuous flooding. The idea was that some good news would be helpful.
The thing was, Emma’s visit was Friday and she’d have to turn the story in the same day, before the rowers hit the water in Paris on Saturday. It was still very possible; Emma thought that after the hour’s drive from her apartment in Waterbury to Craftsbury, she would be quick in and out, get some photos, talk to the coaches to convey a sense of the philosophy and craft they imparted on their athletes. Then drive the hour back to the office and have the afternoon to write the story.
The next thing she knew, she was on Great Hosmer Pond in a motor boat with the coaches, watching them give tips to the rowers in real time, being bounced around and sprayed with water. Note directly from the reporter: “Don’t bother taking notes on the back of a motor boat.”
And the next thing she knew it was already past noon, and she was an hour away from the newsroom with only a few hours before deadline. Emma opted to just write: “I found the nearest library and cranked out a short news update on the competition schedule with a few golden quotes from coaches.” Golden, indeed.
Until, she told me, her editor sent it back. When I coach my own reporters, I often tell them that they have the opportunity to bring their readers with them, to a place they’ve never been and to meet people they never would have met otherwise. Emma’s editor delivered a similar sermon, and Emma went back to work, to, in her words, “transport readers to Craftsbury and to open their eyes to a world they’ve never experienced before.”
Emma remembers digging into a new version of the story, and digging into a granola bar she found at the bottom of her backpack. “Libraries have Wi-Fi, but no food,” she said. It was time to write.
The story came out on time, accurate and well-told. Emma puts you right on the surface of the pond with the rowers and coaches, whose first question before giving advice to their charges was always, “How did that feel to you?” Which strikes me as a great question to ask people as a reporter when you want to know their experiences from their point of view. As the journalist, private investigator and podcaster of Rumble Strip, Erica Heilman, once told my team, “People are experts in their own lives.”
Emma drove back home around 6 p.m. She was exhausted and hungry. The sun sat low on the horizon, “just over the rolling green mountains that the Northeast Kingdom is so well known for,” she told me. When I asked her what lessons she learned from the experience, the first thing she said made me want to hire her on the spot.
“Reporting is the best job ever.” Where else, she said, could your boss tell you to go spend a beautiful day out on a lake learning something brand new and then sharing it with others?
Lynchburg is getting that type of reporter in Emma Malinak.
And you can help her get started on the stories most important to you in Lynchburg. Fill out a quick survey with your story suggestions. Thanks. We’re glad to finally have a reporter in Lynchburg, and glad that reporter is Emma.
