The weekly show
Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.
Sometimes I hate this weekly deadline. Paper comes out on Thursday, right? Well, it was about noon that I got the word from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart that they're flying me out Monday to be on air Tuesday. So while I'll know how it has gone by next Thursday, I'm writing from ignorance right now.
On the other hand, by some measures, I'm the boss, and maybe I'll just have this column in place in case the plane goes down. I should have enough of my wits about me next Tuesday afternoon to tell you all about how it went.
How did this go down? Well, on Aug. 28, I got this email: “I'm a senior producer with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and I'm working on a story about the difficulty with finding accurate, objective statistics on fatal police shootings in this country. I've read about your work, and I was hoping to see if you had some time to talk about some of the challenges you've faced with your Fatal Encounters project. Feel free to call me at your earliest convenience.”
I was so floored, I didn't even realize he asked me to call him. I certainly lose some cool points there because I waited for him to call me. That's kind of hilarious. It's also peculiarly arrogant I didn't ask where he heard of my work. “Of course, those New York guys know about the RN&R. They probably fly in just to pick it up.” Anyway, we had several conversations, back and forth emails, too, and on Sept. 4, he wrote, “If we wanted to fly you in for an interview (on us, of course), what would your availability be next week?”
I told him I'd check my calendar, but I thought I could work something out, as long as it didn't make me late for my classes at the university.
At any rate, they left me hanging fire for a whole week, until today, a few hours ago, in fact. Anyway, I hope you'll feel free to mock me mercilessly if I screw this up.
If I can't get a column in on deadline, I'll tell you all about it next week. What's the proper etiquette, anyway? Am I supposed to take gifts?
