February, 2009

The last few times I’ve hung out with Alex and his posse of teachers I’ve met someone who is fascinated with my project. Last night I was the listener who had a million questions. Sometime during the fourth quarter of the Superbowl (after the best commercial + outtakes) I met a guy who got his masters in journalism from Georgia. He worked for a few small papers before his current job scanning news coverage for mention of his employer: New Orleans’s favorite government agency that starts with F and rhymes with the capital of Peru.

He wakes up at 5:30 a.m. to read the papers and news Web sites. By late morning he gets around to watching taped TV news broadcasts from the night before. Anytime the F-bomb is dropped, he notes its significance, analyzes it as good or bad and adds it to a digest he’ll send out at the end of the day. Officials use the digest to respond to editorials, craft PR statements, etc. I understand why they would add this position after Katrina, but its existence still surprised me.

More evidence of an information overload: the need for a human search engine. In a way, it’s a full-time research position (content analysis) and in another a wire editor/gatekeeper. For those interested in this line of work: some experience required. He was offered the job because of he wrote newspaper stories about emergency trailer parks in the state.