Karen Kleiss

I’m late to the party on this one, I know. But I’ve just read Pearls Before Breakfast by Washington Post reporter Gene Weingarten. In this piece, he persuades one of the best violinists in the world to stand in a subway station and play a multi-million dollar Stradivarius violin built in 1713.

Did anyone stop?

This is a lyrical, engrossing and persuasive read that reminds me how powerful journalism can be, and of the kind of stories I dreamed of writing when I took up the craft.

If you decide to read it, I recommend listening to Sarah Chang play the Chaccone while doing so. She may well break your heart, and it will give you some sense of the beauty that people charged past on their way to work.

I’ve been thinking a lot about motivation in these trying times, and how news organizations might inspire reporters to continue fighting for big, bold stories when everything around us in at state of troubling, incomprehensible flux. I came across this amazing talk by Daniel Pink, who studies motivation. If you’ve got 10 minutes to spare, watching this may well be the most fascinating 10 minutes of your day.

While you’re watching, consider this: Journalism does not just require rudimentary cognitive skill, it requires high level cognitive skill. So what Pink is saying definitely applies: money doesn’t drive journalistic performance. What does? Autonomy, mastery and purpose. It makes perfect sense. So give reporters autonomy. Practice what Stephen Covey calls stewardship delegation: set clear expectations, and let reporters own their work. Provide opportunities for mastery, like training and projects. Don’t let reporters lose sight of their purpose.

Pink says people give themselves over to work when they can experience “challenge and mastery, along with making a contribution.” Journalism — unlike many other fields — has these components built in. Journalism already has a transcendent purpose. Journalists already have a purpose motive. Newsroom managers just need to invest in keeping it alive.

I just asked my editors to send me to the phenomenal Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Orlando next month. I went to the site to grab the URL and realized they’re screening Page One there, the lauded documentary about the New York Times and the future of journalism. Can’t wait to see it, whether I’m in Orlando or in Edmonton.

These are tough times in the journalism business. I think often of the people who built the newspaper I write for and who are no longer working there. Often these thoughts are accompanied by sadness, but when I watched the trailer for the movie Lemonade I thought: There is life after journalism, and it might be pretty damn good. So I thought I’d share.

I have recently discovered that I am an introvert. As it happens, I’m also a journalist,  and I like to think my introversion makes me better at my job.

Let me explain.

First, let me point out that I am not the only one. My hero, Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, was an introvert. Diane Sawyer is an introvert: she once told People magazine that “people assume you can’t be shy and be on television.” Barbara Walters is an introvert, and so is Jonathan Rauch, whose wildly popular 2003 Atlantic piece, Caring for your introvert, helped me put a name to my experience. Mahatma Ghandi was a journalist and an introvert. Some people say onetime journalist Pierre Trudeau was an introvert, along with New York Times reporter James Reston. Pittsburg Post-Gazette reporter Samanatha Bennett was surprised to learn she is an introvert, but Jennifer Kahnweiler of the Introverted Leader says 98 per cent of the reporters she interviews are self-proclaimed introverts.

So yeah, I’m not the only one.

What is introversion, anyway? Just for the record, it’s not a mental illness. It is a normal, though misunderstood, personality trait. Here’s an edited version of what Wikipedia has to say:

Introversion is the state of or tendency toward being wholly or predominantly concerned with and interested in one’s own mental life. Introverts are people whose energy tends to expand through reflection and dwindle during interaction. … An introvert is likely to enjoy time spent alone and find less reward in time spent with large groups of people, though he or she may enjoy interactions with close friends. …

Introverts are easily overwhelmed by too much stimulation from social gatherings and engagement. They are more analytical before speaking. … Introversion is not the same as shyness or the social outcast. Introverts choose solitary over social activities by preference …

My friends call me a hermit, but the fact is I’m just an introvert. You may be surprised to know that 25 per cent of people are introverts. I am happiest and most energized after a day alone in the garden or a day immersed in work, reading and writing. Reporting — doing the interviews, attending the galas, schmoozing — is the toughest part of the job for me. I can fully relate to Rauch, who said in a 2009 interview that he would have been an academic historian if he hadn’t been so reluctant to specialize in one subject:

Reporting doesn’t come naturally to me, since I have to screw up my energy level every time I pick up the phone. So that’s something of a handicap. I’ll never be a natural journalist. On the other hand, introverts are good questioners and attentive listeners. After a thoughtful, probing interview that I feel has touched marrow, I feel exhilaration, along with exhaustion. As if a tough hike had been rewarded with a new vista. I’m not a great hiker but I do enjoy the views.

Certainly there are drawbacks to being an introverted journalist. I’m seldom out schmoozing at lunchtime and I don’t spend my evenings traipsing from one event to another. But there are some benefits.

1. I crave depth. My instinct is to get beneath the surface and truly understand what I’m writing about before I start typing. I’m never satisfied with stories that barely scratch the surface. Perhaps this is what has driven me toward investigative reporting, what with its long, solitary hours reading documents, entering data and contemplating connections.

2. I listen well. Introverts are good listeners, and I think that’s a key trait of great journalists. How can you learn anything if you’re always telling your sources what you think? I’ll never understand that. I know very well the exhilaration Rauch is talking about after a long interview that “has touched marrow.” I also know the exhaustion.

3. I cultivate strong connections. I don’t have a long list of sources, but those I do have are rooted in strong and often longstanding relationships that are built on a bedrock of trust. Some of my best stories come from people I’ve known for years, and worked with over and over again.

4. I have wicked concentration and great analytical skills. A few weeks ago I ripped through six boxes of legal files in under four hours, and emerged with the nut of a story and a raft of key documents. I quite often rely on this ability to beat my competition. According to Marti Laney, who wrote The Introvert Advantage, these are two of to top 10 advantages of being an introvert.

5. I am creative. Journalism is often about connecting people with each other, about evoking compassion and understanding. Often, when I sit down to write a story, I find myself thinking about how to get readers to care about the people affected by the issue I’m writing about. This is particularly challenging when the issue is complex, and it can require tremendous creativity to make that connection happen. I’m pretty good at that.

So for folks out there who wonder why I don’t come to the Christmas party, it’s not that I don’t like y’all.

I’m just an introvert.

Two weeks ago I was sent up to Fort McMurray, Alberta to do a 5,000-word feature on the fate of the 300 people evacuated from the Penhorwood condo complex. The seven-year-old boomtime buildings were evacuated around midnight on March 11, after and engineering report raised questions about the safety of the buildings.

Over the course of two weeks I interviewed politicians, board representatives, lawyers, the builder and folks who were directly affected by the evacuation. Listening to people who have lost everything is a humbling and heartbreaking experience.

The project gave me an opportunity to edit and produce a video for the first time, with the phenomenal help of The Journal’s video guru, Ryan Jackson. Here’s the video, and if you’ve got some time you can read the Sunday feature, Evicted at midnight.

In the four years since I last posted, I did a tour of duty as the Edmonton Journal’s legal affairs writer and I travelled to Africa on a fellowship from the Canadian Association of Journalists.

Then, a few months ago, I took a job as the paper’s provincial affairs writer. This new position came with a new hovel at the legislature, a vertical learning “curve” — and a blog. Writing for Capital Notebook has been so much fun, I thought I’d revive this site and start blogging for myself, too.

Here’s hoping it’s not four more years until I post again.

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach’s government announced today that the flight manifests for Alberta’s government-run air service will now be posted online.

The move followed more than a decade of controversy surrounding the air service, which culminated in a four-part series concieved by my colleague Charles Rusnell and published in March, 2005. This was my first computer-assisted reporting project: I spent several late nights building a rudimentary spreadsheet that told us who the frequent fliers were, and how many kilometres the taxpayer-funded planes flew empty. CAR made those numbers accessible for the first time.

The series triggered a review by the province’s auditor general and earned former premier Ralph Klein’s government the 2005 Code of Silence Award, an annual award given to the most secretive government in Canada by the Canadian Association of Journalists. The flight logs were released two days after a provincial election, and the delay is the subject of an ongoing inquiry by the province’s Information and Privacy Commissioner. An email allegedly doctored and submitted to the commissioner in that inquiry is also the subject of a criminal investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Check out the manifests online at Service Alberta’s website.

Kudos to Ottawa Citizen reporter Glen McGregor who today made Canada’s National Gun Registry searchable online as part of a top-notch series about the country’s gun policies.

McGregor has posted a video that gives some insight into how he did the series, and how he got the data (through an ATI request to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police). The presentation takes great advantage of the web, including an interactive game where readers can navigate Canada’s gun jargon and a series of YouTube videos of semi-automatic guns being fired.

Read the six-part series here, on the Ottawa Citizen’s website.

What are your neighbours watching on TV? My Journal colleague Elise Stolte answered that question with data from the paper’s own advertising department. No freedom of information wars, no huge costs, no long wait — the data was already bought and paid for. The resulting story, written as a traditional print story, provided a nifty look into your neighbour’s livingroom. About the data, Elise writes:

“The Print Measurement Bureau does annual surveys of TV-watching habits. They sell the results to the digital-mapping company, MapInfo, which combines it with data from thousands of other sources, including credit and debit card transactions, membership cards and Statistics Canada surveys. MapInfo sells its information to businesses such as The Journal’s advertising department, which uses it to help clients.“

The Journal did the story in traditional print fashion: they pulled two or three bits of interesting data out of each postal code area, listed them, and invited readers to find their area of town. It turns out people in the richest part of town are more likely to watch Entertainment Weekly. Who knew. It was a fascinating glimpse — but only a glimpse.

Think of what could have been done with that data online. As Derek Willis writes, the web is the best canvas for CAR. We could have made it possible for readers to search the data themselves, for them to insert themselves into the story, to giggle over their neighbours’ prediliction for celebrity news. The link might have zipped from inbox to inbox, bringing repeat visitors to the site, engaging readers from different parts of the city in a lunchtime-email battle of the wits, or fostered a goofy comraderie, as in: “Hey Lucy, looks like we’re not the only ones who are obsessed with Coronation Street around here.”

It’s not investigative, not world-changing, but it would have been fun to dig around in. I’m not aware of the restrictions — maybe there was a reason the paper didn’t take it a step further, maybe our licensing agreement with MapInfo prevented it.

Still, it’s a neat little story that can come from data you already have.