Photo by flattop341
On a whim one day, while I was searching on Twitter, I found an incredible lead for a story that I immediately pitched to my editor. It was about a Los Angeles area skating rink that had been having an LGBT skate night for the last 23 years, mostly kept under wraps to give that particularly community their privacy.
When the story was given the green light, I made my way to the skating rink after an 8 hour day at work and a one hour drive across the L.A. landscape on a breezy Wednesday night. The next three hours at this rink, where I spent time interviewing around 10 gay skaters, as well as management and watching this fairly large group of people hammer out the most amazing moves on the rink floor can only be described as euphoric.
As if I needed any more confirmation that I had the word “journalist” imprinted in the strands of my DNA, this was it. I still have not managed to describe the high of talking to people about important issues in such a grand atmosphere and then going home and having the power to string all the words together to make it sound coherent.
When I left around 10:30 p.m., I was incredibly tired, wishing I could just blink myself home like Barbara Eden from “I Dream of Jeannie” but beaming from ear to ear. I loved every single minute of my time in that rink, I loved the interviews, the transcribing, the follow up calls, the writing, editing and of course the skating.
The finished result can be found here. I can’t wait to feel this rush again, which I’m hoping will carry me over to bigger and better things within the amazing realm of journalism.
Posted on 24 November '09 by liana, under Journalism, Los Angeles. No Comments.
There are few words I can use to describe the rush and thrill I feel when I’m reporting and writing. If you want a simple answer, it’s that I feel alive. I feel an incredible rush of energy, and although I don’t think I will ever shake that initial nervousness I feel when I approach someone to talk to, once I get started I can’t stop.
I somehow generate this incredible power that keeps me going - even if I’ve been on my feet for hours and I’m so tired that if given the chance, I could fall asleep. The surge of passion I have for journalism and writing is unlike anything I have ever experienced in my life. It is the opposite of apathy at its finest.
I don’t feel like it’s a job, I feel like I’m in the midst of providing an incredible civil service, talking to people who want and need to be heard, allowing people to pick up a paper or go online to discover something new that has my byline attached to it. I feel free. I become an optimist, even amidst job cuts and dwindling readership. There is no elegant way to describe the chill that runs through my body when I can introduce myself as a journalist - it’s electrifying and astounding all at the same time. It is every single emotion in me coming alive. It is what I am meant to do in this lifetime. I feel it in my bones.
If you’re wondering where this sudden state of euphoria is coming from, it’s that I was on a reporting assignment tonight (that I pitched) that really was the highlight of my week. The atmosphere was amazing, the questions I was asking got some amazing responses, the love that I was feeling was overwhelming and I know that when I’m done writing this story, it’s something that I am going to be so proud of.
After talking to a few people, I stepped outside in the almost cold Los Angeles air, my wild, curly hair dancing with the light breeze. If no one had been around, I would have let out a little happy dance, but I smiled to myself instead. I felt my soul radiating from inside. I was feeding it with passion and it was satisfied.
“I knew I was going to be a journalist, and that was it…full stop,” says Suzy Welch. Truer words have never been spoken.
Posted on 12 November '09 by liana, under Journalism. No Comments.
I have the worst case of the Mondays, and I fear it’s not going away until Friday. Oh dear.
This past Sunday, I had the chance of attending, photographing and writing about a fruit picked put on by Food Forward, an all volunteer grass roots organization that gleans fruit off of the trees of Los Angeles residents and donates 100 percent of the proceeds to food pantries. Although it required waking up pretty early, it was a thrilling experience for me, especially since I pitched the idea myself, and because I am such an advocate for sustainable food. I’ve included some photos here, but you can read the article through this link.
Posted on 15 October '09 by liana, under Food, Journalism, Los Angeles. No Comments.
It’s 11:30 p.m. and I have been watching my new favorite show “Parking Wars” for a few more hours than I planned on. In between commercials, it dawned on me that I haven’t written here in close to a month. I feel pretty guilty about it, because I hate wasted space, especially wasted internet space. If you’re going to take the time to occupy a portion of the web, at least have the decency to update and properly run your blog or site. Yes, I know I’m being a Nazi. So sue me.
I’ve been busier than usual lately, trying my best to climb the faltering vines of the journalism industry. I am regularly contributing to the features section of a newspaper here in Los Angeles, running my own news site and focusing on pitching to magazines and other publications, all the while trying to maintain a full-time editing job.
Let me tell you, it’s not hard out there for a pimp. It’s hard out there for a writer, ok?
There are times when I want to come here and just write in big block letters: “Los Angeles Times, PLEASE hire me. I can do this. I have the passion. I have the skill. I will not let you down.” But I can’t because journalism is in dire straits right now. Every time I read the tweets of various editors of publications I admire and would die to write for, like the New York Times or Huffington Post or LA Weekly, I just want to send out an SOS. “Look, I know things aren’t looking good for us reporters at the moment. But I have the chops and I have the ideas and I know the web. I live social media. I can even take my own photos!”
But life isn’t that simple, especially when you throw writing into the mix. I consider myself slightly lucky, because I have a job that allows me to be involved in the industry and I’m getting published in print - that’s shocking in 2009. But I want more. I want so much more. I want to be actively involved in investigative journalism and human rights and social causes. Call me naive, but I still think that journalism has the capacity to change the world.
When I was a college student a few years ago, one of my journalism professors told me that to be a journalist, one must be intrepid.
Intrepid.
Characterized by resolute fearlessness, fortitude and endurance.
It’s true. People don’t become journalists (at least the ones that don’t go into broadcast) so that they can be rich. They become journalists because they have the same combination of passion and skill that I do. They’re intrepid. They want to change the world. And no matter how many people lose their jobs or how many publications close their doors, I still believe journalism can and will change this world.
We just need to find a way to pull it back from its boot straps. And we will, it’s the how and when that are still up for debate.
Posted on 7 October '09 by liana, under Journalism. No Comments.
I find it bittersweet and strange that I have lived in this area of Los Angeles practically my whole life and haven’t really had the chance to get to know my neighbors or talk to them - unless a disaster strikes. The past few days, I have taken every opportunity to document the relentless fire that’s practically burning down my humble neighborhood, and in my outings, I’ve developed a rapport with a few of people who I share this street with.
One man spoke to me about how difficult it was to get fire insurance on his house. Another told me he was visiting his sister who was all but terrified of the fires. As I stood there, with ash and smoke all around, he told me that tile roofing was the safest in this type of situation, having to reach unthinkable temperatures before being affected by fire. I wish interactions like this didn’t occur only in a time of emergency.
The Station Fire has currently reached more than 122,000 acres with what seems like no end in sight. Helicopters are buzzing above, and we’ve woken up to more ash and smoke than ever before. I find it pretty unnerving that surrounding streets on both sides have been evacuated, yet we haven’t been told to move. I’m not too frightened of the fire, it’s when I start to think about the items in my house that could go up in flames that I get panicky.
Last night, I took a trip around the neighborhood again, running into a dozen closed off streets and citizen journalists taking photos and setting up their video cameras of the fire all along Foothill Blvd. in La Crescenta. The Station Fire it seems, has its own set of paparazzi.
I made a stop and bought pet food to take to the Pasadena Humane Society, where animals whose homes were threatened by the Station Fire have been brought. As I pulled up into my driveway, there were fire trucks galore. I soon heard the fire chief trying to explain to a couple why the enormous amounts of water drops do not produce immediate results.
“When it rains, does your bedroom get wet? Is your living room soaked?” he said.
I asked if they needed water or food. They thanked me and said they were all taken care of, but something tells me they would have appreciated my mom’s Armenian cooking.
By the time I went to sleep, it looked like the fire might have calmed down. By morning, it was a different story. Smoke yielding cloud bombs descended around my house, making me feel like I was either on Mordor or Mars. The yellow tint outside made it seem like I had stepped into a photograph from 1976.
It wasn’t long before it started to get bad enough that fire trucks showed up and the helicopters became more prominent, along with the firechasers who came up to my street to capture it all.
As helicopters swarm and make the houses underneath them shake, and the people in them shake with fear of an impending fire, the citizens of this small town are hoping for the best.
Posted on 1 September '09 by liana, under Journalism, Los Angeles. 1 Comment.
The absence of presence of posts on this here blog of mine has been due to the fact that the raging fires in Los Angeles have literally engulfed my life. I woke up both Friday and Saturday in the wee hours of the morning because the horrid smell of smoke had managed to penetrate throughout my entire house. From 4 a.m onwards, I couldn’t go back to sleep, a phenomenon confirmed by my neighbor who also woke up at the same time.
It wasn’t until another neighbor across the street came to knock on our door early Saturday afternoon that I realized the capacity of these fires, especially when all I had to do was walk out to my driveway and see this:
Oh my God. Fire behind my house.
Stay calm. Stay calm.
A quick browsing of all local news channels revealed nothing, everyone was preoccupied with the funeral of Ted Kennedy, which was fine - the man deserves it, but suddenly hours started going by and houses were severely threatened by this fire raging literally in my backyard and beyond and no single channel was on it. So I turned to what I usually turn to in situations where I need information fast: print and online. The Los Angeles Times, LAist and the various Twitter accounts of fire departments and city officials came to the rescue. Broadcast journalism got a big fat FAIL.
Then a journalistic instinct hit me pretty hard. I barely had time to grab everything I needed and head out the door. I decided I was going to go firechasing. It didn’t matter that I had to be ready in an hour for an event I was covering, I had to go. I drove around La Crescenta for about 45 minutes, going up to areas near Briggs Avenue that hadn’t been sealed off yet.
I saw deer and coyote escaping the fire, and more people on the streets of Los Angeles than I had ever seen before - some with cameras, others with their pets, all watching in awe as the mountains violently burned in the visible distance. Near an area closer to the fire, residents hosed down their roofs while police directed traffic.
The air was thick with plumes of gray smoke - ashes strewn on every which way you can imagine.
It got out of control enough that a few of my relatives were evacuated and came to spend some time with us. I decided I wasn’t taking any chances and packed up a few bags just in case. On my drive to Burbank later that night, the fires were glowing, completely out of place in the night sky.
On Sunday the fire had pretty much doubled in size and as I write this (Monday, August 31, 2009), the fire has doubled again from Sunday, having destroyed around 87,500 acres.
Twitter Follows For Fire:
LATimescitydesk
LATimesFires
SCVS Sheriff
Angeles National Forest
California Fire News
L.A County Fire
Maps and Visuals
Los Angeles County-area fires near Mount Wilson, La Canada Flintridge, Altadena, La Crescenta, Glendale, Pasadena, Acton, Agua Dulce
Station Fire Updates from City of Glendale
Mt. Wilson Cam
Los Angeles Air Quality
News and More
How You Can Help
L.A Times - L.A Now
More later!
Posted on 31 August '09 by liana, under Journalism, Los Angeles. No Comments.
“The great sadness of my life is that I never achieved the hour newscast, which would not have been twice as good as the half-hour newscast, but many times as good.”
Goodnight Walter Cronkite, you contributed more to journalism than you will know. Thank you. It is truly an end of an era
Posted on 17 July '09 by liana, under Journalism, News. No Comments.
“Mousavi we support you. We will die, but retrieve our votes,” they shouted, many wearing the green of Mousavi’s campaign- BBC
By now, mostly everyone around the world, that is if you care for the news and utilize Twitter, not counting those who fall into my age group who do not see the resourcefulness of such a powerful tool with the world’s voices at your fingertips has been following the election and subsequent protests, rallies and chaos taking place in Iran.
The rehashing of events by the likes of me would be more than unnecessary and not very useful, since I have no first hand knowledge of the events that occurred. What I lack in personal experience, however, I make up for in personal connection.
Born in Tehran, I am a post-1979 Revolution child, who slept through bomb sirens, spent nights in the basement with my parents and eventually left as a refugee to Los Angeles by way of Greece.
At 24, I don’t even have to worry about more than half the things my parents did when they were my age. I’ve been told more stories from those fateful years where a once revered and liberal Iran - the Paris of the Middle East, turned into a extremist country with no regard for human or women’s rights. My uncle, who was one of the Shah’s guards, saw so much violence that he used to tell my mother the smell of iron from the blood would not leave his nose.
And now, I feel as though whatever I did not and could not retain as a very small child is replaying before my eyes. There is something so deeply personal about watching the passion, commitment and fury happening in the streets of Tehran, where my parents grew up and my grandparents before that. I wish I could be there, as a writer and as an Iranian citizen - these are the moments in the world and in life where I realize why I wanted to become a journalist. These are the moments when I think, I want to be where the action is, I want to talk to those involved, to be a part of something so instrumental in causing change.
I still have relatives in Tehran, and a call to them tonight didn’t go through but I’ll try again soon. Hearing first person accounts would be amazing and the only vessel I have to do that now is Twitter, which has been the most useful tool in this entire process.
First three photos by .faramarz, last one by Hamed Saber
Posted on 16 June '09 by liana, under Journalism. No Comments.
The Los Angeles Times blog - Jacket Copy, had a great post on a new volume that’s come out titled “First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process,” by Robert D. Richardson. Of course the Emerson he’s referring to is Ralph Waldo, whose thoughts on writing have been collected from letters and essay by Richardson.
The best single bit of practical advice about writing Emerson ever gave — best because it is a cry from the heart, because it focuses on attitude not aptitude, and because it is as stirring as a rebel yell — is this: “The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.”
This was a phrase I had to read twice, as literary theory and analysis from my college days have been unwillingly replaced by a foray in service journalism. When it finally sunk in, it made so much sense. “The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.”
In other words, go all the way, push yourself all the way, until there’s nothing left.
This is how I feel about almost every aspect of my life, except maybe laundry and cleaning. I will exercise the utmost degree of lazyness I can muster in regards to the aforementioned things, but when it comes to writing, to the creative process, to even baking and most certainly relationships, I want to go all the way with as much passion, ambition and drive I can conjure up.
This reflection brings up two important things I’ve been thinking about a lot: my reasons for writing and landing an assignment.
For the former, I have many reasons - it’s what I love, where I belong, where I give 110 percent, where it’s not a job, not even a career, but a full fledging burning passion that I can’t ignore. For the latter, it’s something I’ve been struggling with lately. I have too many ideas, not enough outlets and a lack of responsive editors all standing in the way.
As an editor, I get a lot of emails from writers, most of which are cordial, and a handful which are so irritating and annoying. I disregard my feelings however and reply to them, because when I put myself in their position, I wouldn’t want an email I’ve sent to go unanswered forever. While I understand that editors are national and local publications receive hundreds of emails from people just like me, it just doesn’t seem right that even after at least two follow ups, they still don’t respond. I don’t need a “yes,” I just need a reply-either way. It baffles my mind.
I have one story lined up and due in the summer which I’m excited about, I’m working hard on my own ezine, ianyan, trying to use this place as an outlet, all the while working a 40-hour a week editorial position. But I want more. As any freelancer knows, committing to writing dozesn of emails and even worse-coming up with idea after idea which cannot in anyway guarantee an assignment is nerve wracking. I’m hoping something will bite, sooner rather than later.
Posted on 20 May '09 by liana, under Journalism. No Comments.
