Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Stonewalled

I made two dozen phone calls today to rural northern Minnesota, as I'm writing a news story on the Red Lake school shooting. Talk about a closed community. Trying to get information on this Indian reservation, which is, admittedly, deluged with satellite trucks and rude TV reporters, is like an ant trying to scale an impregnable 200-foot fortresss wall.

About 20 people, from the director of public safety to the waitress at the local casino cafe, either hung up on me or very coldly told me they would not talk to me. Three others said they would get back to me. Only one person talked to me, and he wasn't from Red Lake.

No run tonight. Too busy working the phones. I wish I were actually in that cold, northern rural community, only because it's harder for people to avoid you in person.

Had a wonderful dinner tonight with two friends here, which is appropo, as they're going to Paris in June. Drank too much wine. Gotta be in the office at 7 tomorrow morning for the school shooting and to make final edits to two other big stories. Such is life.

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, you can see how they'd be sick to death of answering questions to people from the outside. Must make it incredibly tough to get good enough information to publish anything.

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  2. Hi Bex,
    Haven't heard from you for a while. I guess you've been really busy. So you are writing an article about what happened on the recent school shooting. It's very sad. I would think it would be hard to get anyone to give you any info right now. Hopefully you'll be able to get through. Good luck! :-)

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