Ancient history -- WHC 2007

[zhai]

In 2007 I attended World Horror Con with thehollowbox, and for all of the sessions we made it to, I kept pretty extensive notes. I'd gone with the intention of doing a bit of an experiment -- a news-style writeup of the sessions, similar to conference writeups I've done for Gamasutra. There was nothing like this available for spec fic conventions, as far as I

Comments

[zhai]

True enough! For some reason I actually enjoy this kind of journalism.

I actually did not have a backup method of an audio recorder, because I was doing this on the down-low (ie with no support from the con) and didn't have access to the audio recordings nor permission to make my own. I do, though, essentially turn myself into an audio recorder -- when I hear something I repeat it verbatim in my head and write as I'm repeating it, or type, in some cases here -- and I type about 160wpm. If I lose something because I'm listening to the next phrase, I just skip it, or paraphrase, as you can see in some of the sections above. But the key thing for me is that I don't put anything in quotation marks unless it's exactly what I heard.

The end effect is that I do lose some comprehension while I'm actually in the session -- but because I get all of it in notes, I can go back through and re-appreciate it later -- and I usually discuss the session with whomever I'm with right after recording it. I also go through and mark up my notes, put numbers, stars, etc around major points to get a sort of narrative emphasis on the things that the speakers seemed to gravitate around.

The misquoting is probably more boring than it sounds -- it was through the series of press interviews I did for the whole ea_spouse thing. I was misquoted SEVERAL times, and the sheer casualness with which journalists would misquote awakened me to the fact that inaccurate quotations are a staple of that industry. It was a very surreal experience, actually, realizing that the vast majority of what you read in the news isn't exactly what people said, but some journalist interpretation that has more to do with THEIR level of thinking than the speaker's. (IE -- I use too many big words when I speak, and I usually think carefully about what I say, so when it gets simplified by a journalist but it still has "my" quotation marks around it I tend to get stymied -- which I'm sure is largely my foible, since the point is to capture the spirit of what a person says, but then, isn't that what paraphrasing is for? They are instead delivering a semblance of accuracy.) So I made a sort of stubborn internal vow thereafter never to quote inaccurately if I could avoid it. I also switched to a strong preference for email interviews (I just did one recently for Windows' game magazine), where, with copy-paste, it's a lot harder to get misquoted.

[elenuial]

160wpm. Man, I thought I was fast. People usually hate being on the other end of an instant messenger from me.

My problem, when the words start flying, is that my notes are sparse and I lose comprehension. I'm at my best when I can jot some shorthand down to remind me what was said, and picking out juicy quotes to copy down without articles (and occasionally prepositions) to keep it fast.

If you seriously are going to start something like this up, give me a ping. It sounds like something I'd love to get my fingers into.

It was a very surreal experience, actually, realizing that the vast majority of what you read in the news isn't exactly what people said, but some journalist interpretation that has more to do with THEIR level of thinking than the speaker's.

I suppose journalists for major media outlets have to balance between "qft" and "making sure even the quotes can be parsed by our retarded monkey reading public." I mean, the lj_ea_spouse thing became pretty high profile, and misrepresenting specialized knowledge for public consumption is pretty common in journalism.

I've never run into this problem, though, as I've just assumed that anybody who's reading my stuff is going to be intelligent, and can digest specialized info given proper context. I've yet to have an editor tell me to tone it down (except once, but that's a different story altogether...).

[zhai]

I go in bursts with the typing -- I know I hit that rather crazy 160 mark once, but I probably actually average somewhere around 120, which is much more reasonable. I've always been tempted to learn Dvorak, where the speed records are up over 200 IIRC, but I've heard it's difficult to keep both styles in your head at the same time, and I don't want to lose Qwerty.

I actually did take most of the notes for this in shorthand on paper (not 'real' shorthand but my own abbreviations), because part of my typing speed also results in my typing very *loudly* and disturbing the people around me. Pen+paper much less invasive. :)

That's an excellent point I hadn't considered about the misquoting. The language was simplified and it could have been for reading comprehension. All I knew is it drove me crazy to see these inane quotes attributed to me. I honestly think the majority of it is laziness and the fact that they're reporting on so much -- the quality necessarily goes down with the quantity. But some of it may have been for reading comprehension or the fact that if they did quote what I said some of their readers might have no idea what I was talking about. But I don't think the knowledge was that specialized. Still, it's a good point.

If you're interested in covering spec-fic events in this sort of style, definitely drop me a line. Even if I'm not going live with something right away, I do intend to, and I'd like to start compiling an archive of reports in this style, that focus on pulling out the expertise of the speakers and preserving it. I'm also willing to help you fight for a press pass to events if you're interested in that kind of battle, too, though in my experience it's pretty uphill.