For those of you interested in hearing Tommy Wiseau speak, my interview with he and Greg Sestero airs at 5pm today on WUNH. Listen live at wunh.org.

I ran into an interesting problem while working on a Q&A piece for The New Hampshire. The person I was interviewing, Tommy Wiseau, does not appear to be a native English speaker (he won't say where he's from, but his accent suggests eastern Europe). That's not to say he was difficult to understand, or that he had any difficulty understanding me, but a lot of his responses had a lot of incorrect grammar.

I wanted people to be able to read and understand the article, so some revision was necessary. In the end, I chose to edit his answers as little as possible, while adding or revising small passages (adding an article here, fixing past/present tense agreement there, etc). I tried as much as possible to keep his voice intact.

Here's an audio clip of Tommy answering one of my questions:

And here's how I chose to present it on the page:

TW:  Well, I’ll be honest with you – I did my own research based on taking to fans and everything, what I noticed when people enjoy it ... you know, it is my work. I took everything, you know? You know some of it – I don’t know if you or anyone reading this has done any research online, but some of the stuff is misleading, so I encourage everyone to come to the screening in New Hampshire and they can ask me personal questions, whatever they want to ask. Because some of the reviewers and some of the opinions are completely off the wall. I’m very proud of my project. I worked very hard on it. And we did submit it to the Academy Awards, I don’t know if you knew that. But long story short, to respond to your question, it comes from life, you know? It comes from relationships. I’ve been there. Issues with drugs, issues with different environments. I encourage people to compare the character of Lisa to Elizabeth Taylor in “Cleopatra.” Are you familiar with the movie? 
CS: Yes, I am. 
TW: So, you know, it’s manipulation, but by the same token it’s a woman in society, you know? And again, this is why people relate to it – because it’s real. Different people compare “The Room” to other projects, and I always say, “You cannot compare oranges to apples, thank you very much.” (Laughs)

French Connection

The morning that Priscilla Smith almost witnessed a murder began like any other.

"I had just come from breakfast -- I had a croissant with Nutella -- and I had stopped at a cannoli place, so I had all these bags with me," she said. "All of a sudden this guy wearing these really awful boots speedwalked by me and stepped on my grey suede shoes."

Smith confronted the man, who eventually walked into a different compartment -- but not before giving her the finger. "I thought he was just having a bad day," she said. 

Smith was right, but she never would have guessed why: the man in the awful boots was an assassin, and his target was after him. 

The altercation had started just minutes before in a nearby park, where Frank Francis was going about his everyday routine. "I was in the park doing something -- it's not important what -- and all of a sudden I hear these shots, and this woman pushing a stoller got shot." Francis recalled seeing the man run towards a building, where he spotted a dark figure holding a sniper rifle. "I got the hell out of there," he said. "I'm pretty sure the woman was dead anyway, and the baby was gonna be fine." 

The sniper was Pierre Nicoli, a French national accused of smuggling heroin, and the man in the park was James "Popeye" Doyle, a detective on the case. 

Having missed Doyle by inches, Nicoli fled onto a train. 

(In terms of reliability, Priscilla Smith was a 9, Frank Francis a 5) 

School board meeting lead

A proposal to institute a Saturday morning detention at Portsmouth High School drew a mixed response from parents and students at last night's school board meeting.

The Scourge of New York Times Trendpieces

I thought this Gawker article was a good companion piece to our initial "what is news" class discussion. It discusses a story that appeared over the weekend in the New York Times about - gasp - a guy in his mid 30s with kids and a job. A few excerpts from the blog posting:

Again and again, the Times keeps asking the reader to be surprised by something that is not a surprise at all on its merits. So here the Times offers up Ben Smith, "the Boy Wonder of Buzzfeed." Ben Smith is a married, 36-year-old father, who after performing well in a series of journalism jobs for more than a decade has become the editor-in-chief of a fairly new publication. Less a disclosure than a statement of fact: I used to work with Smith at the New York Observer. He was diligent, productive, talented, perfectly pleasant, and ambitious. Why wouldn't (let alone shouldn't) he be successful by now?

Particularly, why does the headline writer suppose there's something unusual about his age? Plenty of people have been editors in chief in their 30s, especially at publications that aren't clogged up with a lot of seniority. Harold Hayes was 37 when he took over Esquire. Harold Ross was 32 when he started the New Yorker. Henry Luce, a genuine boy wonder, founded Time at 24.

And later:

Nor does Ben Smith have any of the affectations commonly identified with "youth"—an unusual hairstyle, a flamboyant substance-abuse habit, colorful athletic shoes, and so on. If he did, those things still would not actually make him young, but he does not even try. He is a grownup who has a grownup job. Take away the false implication of precociousness, and what's left is the news that BuzzFeed exists, and that someone has to run it. You might think that the Times, busily purging its employees over age 50 to save money, would be more comfortable with the notion that people in their 30s can do things.

The entire post on Gawker is worth the read. I can't say the same for the original Times story.

 

In class lead exercise

Summary lead:
An African grey parrot known for his unique mastery of the English language died last week of natural causes. He was 31.

Soft lead:
For survivors and relatives of the Station nightclub fire victims, the pain is still there.

"People that weren't here don't really understand why we can't let this go," said Walter Castle Jr., who survived the fire caused by pyrotechnics at the Station nightclub in 2003.

The 100 victims of the fire were remembered by friends and family, many of whom spoke through tears during a somber gathering, held where the club once stood in West Warwick, R.I.

"My mom lives in me in everything I do," said Angela Bogart, who was 19 when her mother perished in the fire. "I hear her voice everywhere I go."

Summary lead: 
Just one year after Boston Living Center was on the brink of collapse, the HIV refuge center is back on its feet, thanks in part to the hiring of advocate Larry Kessler.

Delayed lead:
Larry Kessler has always been quick on his feet. When asked his age, the 70-year old longtime advocate for people living with HIV replies: "I'm 39."

But Kessler's quick thinking extends beyond his wit, as the 1,200 members of the once-ailing Boston Living Center will tell you.

The region's largest HIV refuge was on the brink of collapse just one year ago, with an embezzlement scandal leaving the center nearly bankrupt.

Little Red Riding Hood Story

A local girl and her grandmother were devoured by a cross-dressing wolf earlier today, only to be dramatically rescued by a passerby.

The girl, whose real name is Elisabeth, but who is known locally as Little Red Riding Hood, was on her way to care for her ailing grandmother when she was approached by the wolf. Feigning sympathy, he was able to ascertain her grandmother's location from the girl.

The wolf, impersonating Elisabeth, was able to gain entry into the grandmother's home and quickly devoured the grandmother in a single gulp. When Elisabeth arrived, she met the same fate.

But thanks to the quick thinking of a passerby, both Elisabeth and her grandmother are alive and well.

What is news? Group discussion reaction

I thought the saying "when a dog bites a man, it's not news; when a man bites a dog, it's news" was a well known one, but my group thought otherwise. Still, the folksy saying proved to be more or less in line with what my other group members thought. Catie said that news is anything that deviates from the norm, which I would argue is a slightly more scholarly way to say what I had said. James' definition differed slightly; in his view, news is in the eye of the beholder. "If my brother is coming to visit me, that's news to me, but you don't care," he said. I think both are correct if you are trying to define the word. However, from a journalist's standpoint, news must be more clearly defined. For that reason, I stand by my folksy saying.

What is news?

1) This is daunting.

2) News is any event that is either important to the public or important for the public to know. 

3) If a dog bites a man, that's not news. If a man bites a dog, that's news. 

4) Trend pieces about the death of courtship are apparently news, even though it seems like the writer just kind of made this whole thing up. 

5) NPR reporting from Syria definitely feels the most like news.

6) The paparazzi are allowed to exist because the lives of celebrities are considered news worthy, and reporting on any public figure is covered by the first amendent. 

7) I think.