I live for a living...

I used to say I was a student. Or a reporter. Or an artist. But now I know better.
I'm just a dreamer. Someone who wants to live in the moment for a while. Someone who doesn't study with a goal or work for the money, but someone who just lives for a living and enjoys what happens along the way.
I used to plan for the future. I used to have anxiety problems working all night at a newspaper while I was a full time student. I used to do what was practical. But now I know better.
I'm only 21, but I know now that this is my life. I know now that I've been given an amazing situation and am at a crossroads in my life. I know that if I don't take advantage of these chances I have in front of me to drop all those things I don't need to worry over and chase my passions that I'll regret it forever.
I'm ready to firefight as a real job, and not a summer break. I'm ready to pursue my degree at a pace right for me, and not full-time, nine months per year just because it's what I'm "supposed" to do. I'm ready to learn Spanish. To make a small difference in the lives of people around me. To have opinions again and express them. To fight for what I'm passionate about. To fall in love. To drop everything and go to South America for a few months every year. To live for a living.

Happy December!

It’s time for an update on the latest adventure. Who’s ready? Well, if you’re still reading I’m going to assume you are, so here we go!

I leave in about a week and a half and now have in my possession a lovely new residential visa in my passport (to keep that lonely Mexico City entry stamp company) and feel all ready to go. In 11 (12, sort of) days I will be in Santiago and this is finally going to be real.

Anyway, enough of that. Time for some real, tangible details. I recently learned a little bit about the family I will be staying with. It is a household of three consisting of a banker, his wife and their 25-year-old daughter who is attending university for food engineering. They live in La Reina (a neighborhood in Santiago) which, to be honest with you, I know absolutely nothing about (but Google Maps says there might be a pool in my backyard!).

In the meantime I am just sort of enjoying family time in the Mucc and trying to make a list of all the people I need to see in Reno once I’m back there (anyone know anything fun happening for NYE?).

Well, that’s about all I’ve got for now. Merry Christmas, Happy belated Hanukkah, Happy December/Winter Solstice/Secular-day-of-I’m-sick-of-feeling-left-out-celebration or whatever else you might be preparing to do around this time.

¡Chao!

All booked up

Alright, so the next chapter of my soon-to-begin adventure is written. My tickets to and from South America are all booked and I'm about to send off my visa application to the consulate in San Francisco. So here's the plan: Leave the States Jan. 4 from Reno to arrive the next morning in Santiago with a connection in Dallas. The way back is a flight from Buenos Aires about two-and-a-half weeks after school ends. That leaves, drumroll please, a ton of time for me to backpack around!


So the plan is for me to head out of Santiago the day the rest of the American students are leaving, but instead of heading north with them, I'll travel east to either Buenos, Montevideo (Uruguay) or somewhere in Brazil (São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro) or Paraguay. I'll then spend a few days in those countries, adjusting for where I prefer (meaning my primary traveling will most likely be via bus). If I run short on time, I'll knock off Paraguay (it's pretty much on the list just because it's in the area) followed by Brazil (I'll admit I'm a little worried about the whole I-don't-speak-Portuguese thing). That said, I'd really like to hit them all, but I've heard Montevideo and Buenos Aires are going to be the best cities to hit.


That's really all I've got for now. I'll have another update soon about the actual studying abroad part with the classes I'll be in and where in Santiago I'll live when I get that information. Does anyone have any other suggestions for places on the Atlantic coast of South America to hit? Or maybe a link to a good backpack I can use for this mini adventure?

A bit of explanation for my travel infatuation

I’m obsessing over this trip to Chile. Sometimes it seems like it’s the only thing in my head. If you ask me to point out the happiest thing in my life, the thing that keeps my head up and, sometimes, what gets me out of bed in the morning, I’d scream that it was the knowledge that in about 80 days, I will be leaving for South America.

I’ve always loved to travel. In the past year or so, I’ve come to realize I feel more at home when I’m living out of a suitcase, spending entire days in airports, than I do in Reno or Winnemucca. On my first solo trip out of the country, a five-day jaunt to Puebla, Mexico via D.F. to visit my then-girlfriend studying abroad, I came to find that everything I love about travel is brought into much sharper focus when I am abroad.

Allow me to better explain.

I think (and this is just an educated guess because, as anyone around me knows, I really don’t have anything about myself figured out completely) that the reason I love to travel is the thrill of exploration, and not only physical exploration, either (though I enjoy that, too). In addition to finding new restaurants, buildings, neighborhoods and bars, I love getting a taste of the people and their culture in each place.

While in Puebla, D (my new blog codename for my ex-girlfriend, out of respect for her likely wish I not write about her on the Internet. Those who really care probably know who she is anyway, though) left me alone for a morning while she was interning at a hospital. During those few hours alone in a city I’d just arrived in, without knowing more than the most rudimentary of phrases in the local language, I managed to find and purchase breakfast, buy the local newspaper (which I plowed through enough of to get what I still believe were the most important parts) and strike up brief conversations with a handful of people.

The conversations ranged in complexity from a maid asking how I was doing that morning (she kindly corrected my response of “Bien… err… ¿bueno?” to a confident “Bien, ¿y tú?”) to a gentleman who saw me reading the paper and asked what I thought of the proposed Volkswagen factory expansion (through the conversation, which was actually rather long and intelligent for my beginning-level Spanish, I learned that he thought I was a German at first glance) to college students interviewing me on camera in both English and Spanish about what I thought of their city (there was three girls, one a French major, one an English major and the third a German major – they had all the languages they would need covered, I guess).

Though the entire experience lasted no more than a few hours, it is among the things I remember most vividly about my trip to Puebla. Since then, I’ve tried to do the same thing in every city I visit. A week later in Austin, Texas, I managed to strike up conversations with a number of journalists attending a conference with me and even had a (then illegal) drink with a local girl I later learned was my age and a mother of a two-year-old child and wanted nothing more than to leave Texas. While in Washington, I managed short conversations with the District’s locals in coffee shops and bars in Adams Morgan nearly every weekend and by the end of the summer I was giving directions and Metro advice to tourists from the Bible Belt.

I’ve always thought of myself as being a little shy, but something about being taken away from my home (I’d say “out of my comfort zone,” but I already said earlier I am more comfortable traveling) makes me the outgoing person I always want to be. It’s the feeling I get when I’m reporting, but better because it’s not so combative and agenda-driven. Something beautiful inside me bubbles to the surface when I am learning about a new place that I just can’t replicate at home.

I know Santiago is going to challenge my shyness again. Though my Spanish has improved since last fall when I went to Mexico, it is still only conversational. But that’s good. I want to have to work at this, to force myself to learn this language so I can get to know Chileans. I want to kill the image I have of myself as the shy kid in the corner, and what better way to do that once and for all than to live in a county – hell, a continent – I not only have never been to, but don’t even fully know the language of? I’m ready for this.

OK, so that was sort of a long (and, against what I said in the last post, a little self-centered and narcissistic) post. If you read the whole thing, thanks, and feel free to leave me some feedback. Oh, and Mom: It’s not that I don’t want family to read this; it’s just that I’d like some friends and others to see it as well.

Drumroll please...

After almost no thought, and in the face of few other viable options, I have found a new purpose for this blog! IT ... WILL ... BE ... about my upcoming study abroad trip!
Yes, ladies (lady?) and gentlemen (gentleman?), you read that correctly. I will now join the huddled, unthinking masses of middle-class white kids writing about their traveling adventures as if anyone cared what they did. I promise to do my best to make it the least narcissistic, least stereotypical of all in this overdone category.
For those of you that don't know (look at me pretending like anyone I'm not related to reads this thing), I will be spending a semester abroad in Santiago, Chile beginning in January. I'm in the process of completing forms and submitting my visa application.
More details to come soon.

Under construction

This blog is currently under drastic conceptual renovations. I plan on using it again, and updating with some regularity (heard that one before, eh?). You will soon see a new theme and new posts.

A new direction

I’ve always wanted to help people. Sometimes I think my ego has gotten in the way of that a little bit. When I first declared journalism as a life goal, I convinced myself pretty easily it was a job that helped people as much as any other. I would be a government watchdog, protecting scores of people from any abuses of their governments. While a noble undertaking, I am starting to realize that the idea of this doesn’t quite satisfy the hunger for service inside me. And while seeing a byline (or two… or three…) on the front page of a newspaper every week has definitely been satisfying my ego, even I’m not fame-hungry enough to face a career of mediocrity and diluted service to big media like journalism professionals keep promising me.

There’s always been another option that I’ve been holding in my pocket as a backup plan, though. A few days after I graduated high school, I fell in love with another job and have been struggling with saying “no” to it ever since. Firefighting is exciting, helps people in the direct way I’ve always wanted and satisfies my ego almost as well. While my experience is in wildland fire and I would almost surely prefer a career as a structure firefighter, I am beginning to feel more like this is the path I was meant for every day.

Over the past weekend, I spent Thanksgiving with my family, both immediate and extended neither of which sees much of me since I left home. While talking to them about my career conundrum, my mom butted into the conversation to tell an aunt something that has been stuck in my head since: “His face just lights up when he talks about firefighting, but he gets this pained look when he talks about the newspaper.”

She’s right, but I’ve been telling myself firefighting was just a college kid’s summer job, albeit a good one, since the day I applied for it. I know I’m wrong. I know that as much as I enjoy writing, journalism is not where I belong.

That is why I’ve decided (and I’m only 20-years-old, so anyone who doesn’t expect this to change again is probably crazy) to begin working toward a paramedic’s certificate in preparation for a career in emergency services. I am still going to work toward a bachelor’s degree at UNR, probably even in journalism, but I’ll start looking at classes that can transfer to the paramedic program at TMCC for either after I graduate or part-time if that’s an option.

I don’t know if this is the right decision. I don’t know if I’ll turn around and come back to reporting. But I know that for right now, I’m happier with this decision than I have been the past two years with journalism. I suppose it’s just a good thing I found out now.

Well there’s that…

Google Wave

So I finally got the Google Wave invite I've been actively courting from the Internet community (thanks Chelsea!). Now that I have it though, I'm completely lost. I feel like this is a wonderful tool, but only if the other people you need to work on things with also have it. Unfortunately, it's in such an early testing phase it is invite-only and the user base is small, at least with my friends. So I am embedding a Wave in this post (see how cool it is?) and if anyone reading this happens to have a Wave account and can offer me some suggestions on how to learn this tool when I have nobody to learn it with, add to it!

Downtown Reno at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night

I'm so worn out I can barely keep my eyes open. Friends at the Sagebrush, notorious for causing all employees to forget the comforts of a night's sleep, are telling me I look unusually tired. My body will soon rebel if I don't rest soon. Right now, I'm not terribly busy and where am I? If you guessed curled up between the sheets, you're wrong. In fact, I'm at a 24-hour coffee shop in downtown Reno sipping a Mocha to stay awake. Why would I want to stay awake you ask? I have no idea, but I'm happy. Genuinely happy. I think my mind needs to unwind, something sleep just doesn't cut it for.
I'm sitting in this cafe downtown and I'm surrounded by things that make me love this city. Seeing as how this is the only moderately large city I've ever lived in, I'm not sure if it's any city or just Reno. That's not important though. Time to get back on track.
Right now I'm in an old brick building in an older district of downtown near the river. There's a wine bar conjoined to the building I'm in and a beautiful cathedral-style church across the street. It's a part of town with an artistic feel, and the people around me mirror that. There's Beatles music playing and for some reason it seems strangely fresh despite the fact I know all the words already. There's a couple of girls in the corner obviously in love and a young man bringing a girl to the end of a mid-week date. There's people reading, students working on homework and two construction workers stopping in for coffee (no idea why they're working this late). This place is genuinely alive at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night.
Of course, being Reno, this is all accompanied by the near constant din of sirens in the background and a faint neon glow from the skyline that is just barely blocked by the buildings. Also, being Reno, less than a block away the city feels much less inviting but that only seems to add to the charm of where I am. A sort of shelter in the dirty city, so to speak.
I can honestly not tell you what persuaded me to come here alone with my laptop to write this. It would have been just as easy to head home and unwind in a much more domestically comfortable way. Something tells me I wouldn't feel as at home as I do now, though.
I love Reno. I love cities. I love feeling like I'm surrounded by thousands of people I may never see again.
I want to hear what they have to say. I want to hear their stories and tell them mine. I want to know why they're in this coffee shop in downtown Reno at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night. I want to ask the girls in the corner about love and the girl who just walked in where she got her bag (an old-looking bag with a Pan American Airlines logo on the side). I want to talk politics with the man reading the news on his laptop and coffee with the woman behind the counter.
So there's that.

My long, self-pitying rant

I really hope my life this year isn't a preview of what life as a journalist will be like after college. I've been so busy I barely have time to do anything that's not work. I'm desperately trying not to fall behind in my classes. While I feel like I'm succeeding with that, it means I have no time to exercise, eat anything that requires more than 30 seconds preparation time, do my own laundry, read anything that's not for school or news, partake in any hobbies or see friends with any frequency at all. I know it's kind of a special circumstance, I am pretty much doing the entire news section by myself (for those that don't listen to me complain every day, the news editor usually has two assistants, I have none) and that the job of a "section editor" for the Sagebrush actually means being a section editor, lead reporter, design assistant and Web technician, plus going to school full-time.
Ok, so as I'm writing this I'm realizing that there's no way being a reporter in the real world will be this much work, because it's not four jobs thrown on top of school. I'm still getting close to burning out though, and I'm trying to work through it because I know I want to be a journalist. I would quit the Sagebrush, but I signed up for a year and have a sense of obligation. That and I genuinely like the people I work with, and don't want to completely screw them over by leaving. I guess I am just kind of going through the motions to get through the year though.
I'm sorry to anyone who is reading this, I know nobody wants to read my ranting complaints, but writing it down helps me. I would keep it to myself but being a journalist, part of writing is publishing.
Moving on though. So being an editor has made me realize that I HATE managing people who don't know what they're doing. I am an absolutely dreadful teacher. That aside, how do you get to college without basic writing skills? And worse yet, how do you expect to specialize in journalism (or English, I have a few of those) without the same basic writing skills? I literally had a writer who didn't use apostrophes until his third draft! And he got mad at me when I edited his copy because he was editor of his high school paper and thought that made him hot shit. Sorry bud, but that just makes you sound pathetic, not cool.
The worst part about this is all the behind the scenes crap. I spend at least 20 hours a week doing stuff people aren't even supposed to notice. If you think making a newspaper is just writing and reporting, you're only about .0000001 percent of the way there.
To top all this off, I'm way behind in trying to find an internship for this summer. Sidenote: I'm killing myself to be more appealing for an internship where I will make no money and live in a (most likely) very expensive city. So long cushy firefighting job that makes me rich compared to my peers, I'll miss you. End sidenote.
I'm trying to look forward to things though. Danyelle comes back from Mexico in December, and next fall I'm going to be studying abroad (if all goes well). I honestly love journalism and the Sagebrush, but hate being a section editor.
So there's that.

It's weird how sad this makes me...

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

iNews is not the answer

Well, I've been invited to post to a blog moderated by a professor at the Reynold's School of Journalism called Fix Journalism. The blog, as its name indicates, looks at possible ways to avoid what seems to be the news industry's coming Armageddon. Lately, the blog has been dominated by Mike Higdon defending the idea of charging micropayments for online news content (like iTunes for news). Time ran a cover story recently on the same subject, as did the Reno News & Review.

While I like that an idea to save the industry I hope to enter is finally gaining speed, I fundamentally disagree with it. Don't get me wrong, journalism needs to be fixed, it's very broken and I am a firm believer that the status quo is NEVER the best option. That being said, I feel that journalism is a public service, and forcing people to pay for the news they consume does a grave disservice to the public sphere.

"What are you talking about, stupid kid?" some of you may be asking. "We've always paid for news. 75 cents a paper. $1.50 on Sundays!"

Now now, don't fall off your wheelchair, gramps. You were never paying for the news, you were paying for a pile of cheap paper and bad ink. The coupons advertising your buy-one-get-one-free laxatives paid for the news. Since the advent of the Internet, people have been given the option of skipping the paper fee, making news not only more accessible, but arguably more convenient.

I know nobody's arguing the advantages of the Internet here, I just have to preface things a little. Ok, so picture a scenario with me. We have Joe. Joe is a poor college kid in Topeka, Kansas. Now, despite Topeka's status as a bustling international port city, it's a little hard for Joe to get international and national news. The national news he does get is often from either the local paper, which only takes Kansas-related stories off the AP wire or from The New York Times, the only other paper in town. I'm discounting TV news because it sucks. Anyway, Joe hardly has comprehensive information due to the lack of sources. Even then, we established he is poor, so he probably can't afford to buy The New York Times with his Venti latte at Starbucks every morning.

But then the Internet comes to town.

Suddenly, Joe has access to a thousand different newspapers absolutely free. Joe can make informed decisions about life. Joe can be a responsible citizen, not only of Topeka (as I'm sure he was before the Internet man rolled into town), but of all of Kansas, the United States and most importantly the world.

This world citizenship is, in my opinion, the most important thing the rise of the Internet has brought humanity. The free flow of information has expedited the understanding, free-trade and border less interactions that are requirements of a true global economy. Like it or not, globalization is being fueled by cheap infrastructure (fiber optic cables everywhere) and the free flow of information. If you doubt me here, read Thomas Friedman's The The World is Flat.

The effects of the free flow of information are much more valuable than the information itself. Basic economics teaches us that price raises, even the most minute, cause a drop in consumption. Making free information cost even a few cents has the potential to reduce its consumption by millions on a global scale. The resulting drop in education on current events and world issues sets the formation of the peaceful, productive global community back years. The poorest lose all access to the news that technology may gain for them in the future. The Joes of the world are robbed of the opportunity to become world citizens. Politics and issues that affect the entire global populaiton remain localized.

We as journalists have a public duty to educate the public on what is happening around them. A free press is essential to survival of democracy, but just as important is access to that free press. A solution needs to be found to save the journalism industry, but I cannot morally support any solution that denies access to even the smallest of minorites. Our goal as public servants should be to educate as many people as possible, not just those who can afford to pay.

I believe in what I'm doing, but am not naive enough to think I or anyone else can deserve to do it for free. The idea of micropayments for news content fundamentally compromises what I view as the very core idea of our profession. The business model of the news industy is broken, but this is not the way to fix it.

Time for school...(A random rant about what I'm thinking right now)...

Alright, so my nice, lazy break is all but over. I kind of want to cry. Not really, but I really enjoyed sleeping all day and not having to worry about people calling me back for the Sagebrush or remembering to go to class. Not that I don't like my life in Reno, I do. I love my job and I really like school, it was just nice to have six weeks of nothing.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to this semester going a bit more smoothly than the last one. I'm pretty sure I've gotten most of the time-management kinks hammered out. Even though my classes are a little harder, I know I can handle them. Things with the girlfriend are going smoothly. Yep, I can't really complain about too much.

Things at work might be a tad bit stressful coming back though. We're missing an A&E Editor and a Managing Editor. On the upside though, We finally have a second News Assistant, so now three people will be doing the job of four, instead of just two. So section=good, overall paper=shorthanded. We'll see how that all works out on the print-fest Monday.

Let's see, what else? Snowboarding with a little on-the-mountain reporting thrown in tomorrow. That should be interesting. My two favorite things all in one day with my favorite person, sounds like heaven, huh? Haha, I'm such a nerd. Snowboarding with a notebook in my hand and a phone to my ear, and somehow that's my idea of a perfect day.

Well, that's all I have now. Maybe I'll be better about writing this next semester. Probably not as good as Dodi has become (you write like, three a day, how do you have time?), but hopefully a few a week. So there's that...

I'm tired

Man am I tired. I just really want finals and this semester to be over. I want to sleep right now and I don't want to have to get up tomorrow and do all the crap I have to do. Of course I'm going to, but I'm going to complain a little bit along the way...
So there's that...

So...

You should all follow me on Twitter!

I made one and lately I've been posting to it a lot more regularly than this.

My ID is jbalagna, so go read it!

But still read this...New post coming (hopefully) tomorow!

Live election coverage...BY ME!!!

Hahaha! Go to nevadasagebrush.com for up to the second coverage of the county Politico, Yahoo News and CNN (and probably a few others, just guessing there though) have branded the most important district in the nation, Nevada's own Washoe County.

Jessica Fryman and I will be live-blogging the Washoe County Democratic and Republican watch parties, Nick Coltrain will be offering in-depth analysis and multimedia will be streaming from the cameras of Casey Durkin, Amy Beck and Devin Sizemore.

So there's that...

Where exactly am I going?

So as I have progressed in my Journalism 101 class and worked for the Sagebrush for a while, I have gradually realized that the news media, and more specifically the newspaper industry, is in a period of rapid and defining change.

With the evolution of new technologies and the speed at which information is transferred, many have declared newspapers as dead. In fact, broadcast stations, cable news networks and even to a comparable degree internet news compilers are dead as well. What is now being created in their place are news outlets, in the very broadest sense of the term. TV stations and newspapers are no longer just TV stations or newspapers any more than phone companies are just land line providers. Communications have evolved, and are continuing to do so at a rapid pace. The news media, up until recently, had failed to keep up. They are paying the price, but are also deep in the process of catching up.

The delivery of news is changing to second-by-second updates and alerts, a far cry from the morning and evening papers of our parents' generations. While nobody in the industry seems to know exactly what form this evolution will take, it seems to be a common consensus that the next generation of journalists, of which I am a part, will be the ones to solve this problem.

I'm excited.

So there's that...

HOLY SHIT!!!

ONE OF MY STORIES IS ON CBSNEWS.COM!!!
hahahaha! I'm so happy!!!
Click here to read!

Dear Blog...I have returned, and this time, I bring a real post.

I know, it's weird. I'm actually going to start blogging again. It may seem as though I had forgotten you old friend. For a short time, you were my only dabble in public writing. Now, every week, I write articles that are published in a real newspaper and read by, quite literally, thousands of people. And while I have been busy, honing my skills as a journalist and learning the ins and outs of the newspaper business, you have always been in the back of my mind. I always tell myself, around two in the morning on a Monday somewhere between checking jumps on A4 and wondering how the hell we missed deadline again, that I will someday get my life organized to the point that I can again post at least a weekly message. Well, that time is here.
I'm sure you're asking yourself why I would have committed myself to something that would tear me from your loving jumble of semi-generic HTML code. Allow me to explain. I am getting a chance that most people don't ever get. I am not only involved with something much more successful and respected than myself, but I am getting a taste of my career while I still have the opportunity to change it. And change it I never shall.
All doubt that may have lain in the corners of my mind that I may want to do anything else with my life has been erased by my experience with the Sagebrush. I get to talk to people as different as a homeless man living in a tent in downtown Reno next to the train trench, to the mayor of that same city in his 15th floor corner office for the same story. Every week I get to learn something new, with topics ranging from third-party political volunteers to budget crises facing UNR.
I am stressed out for at least an hour or two every day, but I wouldn't trade the fast paced nature of my job for anything. I love what I'm doing even before I am out of college. I cannot imagine a time in my life I will not enjoy going to work, and that is something most people take a lifetime to find. And here I am, 19 and I've already found it.
Lucky me. Lucky me.
So there's that...

I wonder if anyone still reads this...

Seeing as how I haven't really posted for what amounts to eons, I wonder how many people still check this...