First Field Site Observation

On Friday I made a trip to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the field site I had chosen to observe for my subculture. When my original escort of the newspaper was not able to take me on a tour of the newsroom, I was directed by her assistant, Ms. Hoffman to the desk of Mr. Ernie Suggs, rover reporter for the Atlanta area. As I first looked around, I instantly took in all the clutter and linked newspaper journalists to being hoarders. There were desks, papers, copiers, pens, headphones, headsets, and phones everywhere. Each desk was decorated with some personal artifact of the person who at the time inhabited it whether it was snow globes, stuffed animals, masses of books, small flags decorated with someone’s college letters on it, and name tags on the top of their desks. Staffers sat typing away, talking on phones or chatting quietly with those near them. Supposedly today (Friday) was a “slow” day.
As we sat down he asked me why I was there. When I told him subcultures, he laughed. He questioned me first, on a couple of things like where I was from, where I grew up, and where I went to school, which I thought was interesting. He was a reporter after all.
It was easy to open up to Ernie which I guess makes him a good reporter, and he gave me ideas on questions to ask him. He told me a lot about his life as a journalist, and gave me a general idea of the process that journalists usually go through (well those that work at the AJC). I was able to get his definition of the word “beat” which I later on learned as I did research on the word, had a couple of definitions in the world of journalism. Mr. Suggs had opened up to me a lot more easily than I thought he would, but I still got the idea as we made our way through the three departments of the newsroom, that journalists liked to keep things on the hush hush. Ernie seemed to know everyone and was fully aware of what all the other divisions of the newspaper did. He’d say things like, “They do arts, and they do investigative reporting.” As we headed to the staircase he pointed out Sonia Murray, music writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. As he said, “she was one of the first, and the best.”
Mr. Suggs then showed me the first five minute video clip in a series of three that noted the fortieth anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in April of 1968. It was a collaborated work done with him and three other reporters.
My tour went on like this for the next half hour. I was able to grasp the fact that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was used to attaining some of the best reporters in their fields as journalists as Ernie pointed out other people and their jobs. Everyone was very courteous, but I knew I was being mocked. They laughed as Ernie repeatedly told fellow staff members that I had chosen to study journalists as a subculture.
Another thing that the journalists liked to laugh at was my age. When I first sat down with Suggs, he told me that he started writing soon after he graduated, and had done work on the newspaper at his college (he was the editor). I asked him when he graduated from school. He told me in 1990. I told him 1989. He laughed and told me that that was the year he pledged. As we met with others the years that had past them by became a joke. He shouted out to one man that I was born in ’89. The man responded by saying that he graduated then.
During the tour and as it came to the end, any question that even popped to my mind was answered promptly by Ernie. After that I got to meet Ms. Angela Tuck (the lady who was supposed my original escort). It was her job to deal with the readers and any complaints that they about things that were written in the newspaper.
I really liked my trip to the AJC. It brought back for about the first five minutes of my walk back home, the dream I had as a pre-teenager to become a newspaper reporter.