"I Seem To Keep Falling Into Journalism Full of Controversy... But I Love It!"
We asked a number of AAAS Mass Media Fellows (AAASMMF) to reflect on what they have learned, how they have changed, and why it matters. The journal below by Krishna Sharma, who is placed at the Miami Herald, has been lightly edited. Read our other journals by fellow AAASMMFs Vanessa Vieites and Haley Dunleavy.
June 21
Today I prepared for another interview on my second story, which is a conservation project involving some of the biggest corporations plus state and federal agencies.
It is a sprawling, massive, and novel effort, and I have had the pleasure of being in a repugnantly long email chain to set up interviews.
A wonderful director of communications for a non-profit put me in contact with people from each of the partner sites in one email, and so I’ve been excavating interview times from the mudslide of responses. Tomorrow, in fact, I will be interviewing with a powerful director of one of the most famous/ wealthiest companies in the world — crazy! And today I had an interview with a very amiable and knowledgeable lobster biologist.
I finished doing more edits with my first story and had a nice, brief communication with my editor. I also got Otter.ai, at Alex Ip’s recommendation, to transcribe for me which is a lifesaver. Other tasks included cataloging my myriad new contacts into an Excel sheet (I was given a sheet like this from last year’s AAASMMF and will prepare to add more to it and share with next year’s fellow), doing more background research, and preparing interview questions for tomorrow’s interview. These days somehow go lightning fast.
June 22
If words grew like coral I could write the Earth’s new reefs
Instead today I write about
how little time they’ve left
June 23
How can one animal be such a never-ending kaleidoscope of nuance, intricacy, and confusion? The monarch butterfly is more complex than almost anything else I’ve learned about. Today I ate away hours just trying to condense it into one article, carefully choosing which parts of its life story to omit.
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June 24
A condo collapsed in Miami today
At least one human passed away
Is there space for butterflies between their bones?
To wrap them in silk
A chrysalis grave