alexinwords.com

by Alex Russell

In the doldrums of interview transcription, and still almost six hours of audio left to go.

It’s amazing how much time it takes to transcribe interviews. Audio transcription is a profession, I know, and even with great interviews and a very interesting subject, it’s a struggle for me, a non-pro, to get through it. After the first hour of audio took me almost three hours to transcribe—time evaporates while doing this kind of work—I looked at Craigslist to see how much the pros charge. Even at $60 an hour it’s tempting to hire it out, looking at the 6,000-word file I’ve got so far, knowing how much more there is to transcribe. But I’m a writer, and therefore would rather spend my money on other things, like coffee and pizza and books.

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by Alex Russell

Marketing is a funny thing. When it’s done right, you shouldn’t really even notice it. It should blend into the environment to work its persuasive magic, to make you walk into a store and leave with much more than you hoped to buy.

Walking through Barnes&Noble today was the first time I really looked around at the images on the walls—the original book cover reproductions of classics like Death of a Salesman and The Great Gatsby. Over the Starbucks counter was a mural of a café scene with all the giants up to about the 1950s—Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, James Joyce, George Orwell, and Issac B. Singer among them. While I never really thought about this use of the canon, they’re in the book business after all, it seems more strategic and well thought-out now.

It seems they’re after a direct link between their company brand and “Literature.” It’s coat-tail association—the images of literary figures and their classics all over the store function like endorsements. Mark Twain seems to wink at you when you pick up the new Twilight book, and Gertrude Stein nods her head as you page through a David Baldacci. It’s almost like they’ve taken a text like the Illiad and act as though they were the first to put to bring it to market. And nobody seems to notice the disingenuousness of this, or really even care. I think I may be the only one forced to smirk when I walk in and see E.M. Forester smiling down at me.

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by Alex Russell

Journalism is not always a safe profession.

Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi was arrested and recently convicted of espionage by an Iranian court. Just last month, journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling were detained by the North Korean government and are to be put on trial for undisclosed crimes. American journalists are being arrested by foreign governments and clear US-government action to protect them is non-existent.

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Every day I’m up by seven. I start my day at home and leave the house as soon as I’m ready, head straight to my café.

I don’t own it, but it’s mine. It’s ours, really, belonging to me and others who end up here like I do. I could stay at home. We all, I’m sure, could stay at home. We could go to the library, to the park. We could go to the Laundromat, to the airport, anywhere, really. But why here?

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by Alex Russell

I was recently interviewing a source and was asked near the end of our conversation, “Can I see the article before it’s printed?”

I hadn’t expected the question, stammered, “Yeah, sure, well…” and realized I had forgotten how to answer.

I’ve been asked this question before, and maybe it’s my shortcoming as a journalist, this weak stomach I have over telling people no, but I never like it. When a source asks to see how he will be written about, he is really only after his own protection. It’s easy to forget in a conversation, especially for a person not used to talking to writers, that everything he says and does is completely fair game.

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