Experiences – Page 7 – Christopher Wink

First to report Rendell named Obama’s vice presidential running mate: how an entire newsroom tricked me

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. AP Photo by Carolyn Kaster. Edited by Christopher Wink

This is the story of how more than 20 statehouse reporters fooled me into believing I had a hot-breaking story – for the second time in a month. Last week I posted that a personal essay of mine was accepted by the Columbia Journalism Review and appeared on the CJR Web site. My essay touched on a story that I think is worth telling more deeply.

Enjoy.

This past summer I was honored to serve a prestigious post-graduate internship with the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association, the country’s oldest state government reporting society. For three months I covered Pennsylvania state government in the Harrisburg Capitol, home of the largest full-time state legislature in the country, representing the nation’s sixth most populous state. On a rotating basis, I worked for six media outlets, including Pennsylvania’s three largest dailies. I worked with serious, accomplished journalists, a handful of them ranked among the state’s most influential.

Yeah, and they screwed with me a lot.

Continue reading First to report Rendell named Obama’s vice presidential running mate: how an entire newsroom tricked me

In Washington D.C. for Obama inauguration, Franklin birthday

I am going to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington D.C. tonight, to get settled and look around town, where I will be covering the inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday.

CJR: How Vice President Rendell makes me want to be a journalist

The Columbia Journalism Review finally came to its senses and realized it can’t survive without my work. …Sorta.

On Wednesday, a personal essay of mine was featured on the CJR Web site.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell will be named Sen. Barack Obama’s vice presidential running mate, a high-ranking source in the administration told the Patriot-News.

That was my lede after being tricked into believing Rendell was Obama’s No. 2 man by a famed newsroom of top-flight state government correspondents in the Harrisburg state capital.

This isn’t the story of the Pennsylvania governor being named Obama’s running mate. This is the story of how the economy is in free fall, newspapers are on life-support, and yet they still can’t get rid of me. Read the rest here.

Go read the story and comment there! Spread the word and show interest in the story.

Below see some portions of the story I cut.

Continue reading CJR: How Vice President Rendell makes me want to be a journalist

SHRM: Smart Wireless Connectivity Key to Data Protection

My first story for the Society of Human Resource Management magazine appeared online yesterday. It focuses on the dangers that face mobile employees who use unsecured wireless networks and what human resource professionals need to know about the trends.

You can’t read it because it’s by subscription. Instead, I’ll give you my lede and what I cut from my first clip in a trade publication.

Continue reading SHRM: Smart Wireless Connectivity Key to Data Protection

The boy in the train station coffee shop

By Christopher Wink | Oct. 8, 2008 | WeDontSpeaktheLanguage.com

Worlds – yes, disparate worlds – come to some form of a cross-section in red-eyed, late nights in train stations.

Early Tuesday morning, we were doing that, surfing the intersection of the young and the acutely itinerant – being reminded of the sociological difference between situational and generational poverty.

We, three, were in a 24-hour coffee shop just before 1 A.M., waiting on a 6 A.M. train. A security guard recommended the spot, a few modern chairs off to the side where people buy cups of foam and cream. A young man, a year or two my junior, sat beside me, tapping his foot and twitching in his chair, regularly, if subtly. The kind of movements you might expect at 1 A.M. in a late-night train station coffee shop.

Continue reading The boy in the train station coffee shop

I’m home from Europe, WDSTL

Sean Blanda (right) and I on Oct. 1, leaving from Newark Airport to begin our trip in London.

I returned this past week from more than a month of backpacking Europe with college buddy Sean Blanda. While there, he and I travel blogged and podcasted at WeDontSpeaktheLanguage.com.

This week I am going to roll out some highlights and lessons learned, though Sean beat me to the latter.

One of those lessons, I’m afraid, will involve being hacked, as we were just that. (Check WDSTL, we may not have corrected by the time you read this).

Continue reading I’m home from Europe, WDSTL

My internship with the Philadelphia Business Journal

philadelphia-business-journal-editorial5-5-08 — With the editorial staff of the Philadelphia Business Journal on May 5, 2008.

Last Thursday, during a week revisit to Philadelphia, I shared happy hour with a few friends from my internship with the Philadelphia Business Journal, with which I had a great six month-internship the last semester of my college career.

With a little work, I got tons of solid clips and great experience (detailed below) with the Journal, and so I thought it was worth pointing that out.

The primary responsibilities of editorial interns with PBJ, owned by American City Business Journals, are to keep up their pages that follow the region’s philanthropic community, profile business leaders and all managerial movements in and around the city. While I pitched other stories of greater size, these base-level jobs never offered anything more than a few hundred words. Still, I worked hard to make them worth reading – if only to keep me focused and interested.

The internship meant a lot more than all of that, though.

Continue reading My internship with the Philadelphia Business Journal

My Commencement Address (Temple University: 5/22/08)

By Christopher Wink | May 22, 2008 | Temple University Commencement Address

Seventeen hours ago I got off a plane from South Dakota, having spent my last week as a Temple student working with members of the Lakota Nation. It was another lesson in community.

Temple University’s graduating Class of 2008, today, we are graduating together from a long series of such lessons. Indeed, we are not just graduating from a university, but an entire community, something I have learned with a wonderful intimacy through my tenure here.

As I have learned about community, I have learned of the true expansiveness of Temple. See, the neighborhoods of Philadelphia, too numerous for me to know in entirety, have taken on a richness and a vibrancy like I never before realized they could.

Continue reading My Commencement Address (Temple University: 5/22/08)

False Story — Rendell named vice-presidential nominee

I was tricked into writing this story by the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association in the Harrisburg, Pa. state capital newsroom on Aug. 15, 2008. This article is not true. All those interviewed were in on the joke.

Sen. Barack Obama embraces Philadelphia City Councilman Bob Brady and is applauded by Gov. Ed Rendell before speaking during a Democratic Unity Rally at Temple Universitys McGonigle Hall October 21, 2006 in Philadelphia. (Photo by William Thomas Cain/Getty Images) — Sen. Barack Obama embraces Philadelphia City Councilman Bob Brady and is applauded by Gov. Ed Rendell before speaking during a Democratic Unity Rally at Temple University's McGonigle Hall October 21, 2006 in Philadelphia. (Photo by William Thomas Cain/Getty Images)

By Christopher Wink | Harrisburg Patriot-News | Aug. 15, 2008

Gov. Ed Rendell will be named Sen. Barack Obama’s vice presidential running mate, a high-ranking source in the administration told the Patriot-News.

“Next Monday could be a very exciting day for Pennsylvania,” said Mary Isenhour, the commonwealth’s Democratic Party executive director. She wouldn’t corroborate the offer or Rendell’s acceptance of the position, but confirmed the governor was meeting with high-level Democrats in Washington D.C. Friday.

Continue reading False Story — Rendell named vice-presidential nominee

How the Harrisburg bureau of the Philadelphia Inquirer tricked me

I believe there is some line of thought that only those who like you enough will take the time to prank you. If this is true, it is entirely possible that the Harrisburg bureau of the Philadelphia Inquirer, one of the largest and oldest metro dailies in the country, loves me.

Late last month, I was working on a large story for the Inquirer when influential Harrisburg correspondent and noted… prankster (the kindest way to put this, I think) Mario Cattabiani told me to drop everything and get on an assignment. He and his fellow Inqy Harrisburg staffers were launching a state government blog at the behest of their editors – which I already knew – and it was going live that day – news to me.

The editors didn’t want to seem to be biting off on the series of already established Harrisburg government blogs so they wanted to profile one of the more respected bloggers and suggested John L. Micek of the Allentown Morning Call, who hosted the popular Capitol Ideas.

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