Pamela Wood

The old saying goes that truth is stranger than fiction.

It sure feels that way in Anne Arundel County lately, where my newspaper has been covering one scandal after another lately. There have been so many bizarre political stories that it’s been tough to keep them straight.

I’m not covering any of these stories, really, though I’ve contributed here and there with a spot story or a bit of background research.

I’m going to attempt to summarize all of the shenanigans. Let’s see if I can keep it brief.

Alderman Ken Kirby* of the Annapolis City Council was found living in a public housing apartment when city police officers conducted a drug raid. The cops never found drugs and the alderman was never accused of any drug-related wrongdoing.

But he’s been dogged for weeks by questions about where he really lives, whether he was improperly living in public housing and whether he’s violated any laws by apparently not really living at his official address.

Anne Arundel County Councilman Daryl Jones pleaded guilty in federal court to not filing his tax returns for multiple businesses over the course of a couple years. At last check, he’s mostly squared things with the IRS, but he still got sent to federal jail in South Carolina for five months.

Right before Jones went off to the clink, his fellow council members voted him off the council, a move that he unsuccessfully fought in court.

After that, the remaining six councilmen have been unable appoint a replacement for Jones’ seat. I think the tally now is more than 100 votes over the course of three meetings. There are various theories afoot as to why they are deadlocked 3-3 between two applicants, possibly related to who might vote for whom if they need to appoint a county executive.

And why would the County Council possible need to appoint a county executive?

Well, that’s because County Executive John Leopold was indicted last week on four counts of misconduct and one count of misappropriation. The indictment — which is well worth reading, by the way — alleges the county executive used police officers to run errands, deliver campaign signs, empty his catheter bag, compile dossiers on political rivals, drive him to sexual liaisons in parking lots and run interference when he was in the hospital so his two girlfriends would not meet.

This is all really crazy stuff. It’s so crazy that even the most creative fiction writer couldn’t have dreamed it up. And it’s keeping lots of reporters on their toes.

I’m not a personal fan of political scandal, but boy does it make for an interesting life in the newsroom.

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* I actually wrote the first story about Alderman Kirby’s situation. The news broke on a Saturday when I was on the weekend shift. I was at my cousin’s wrestling tournament in Baltimore County when I got word of the raid. In between his matches, I darted in and out of the gym, making phone calls and sending emails to the police, Kirby’s attorney, my editor and the website editor — all before I was officially “on duty” for the day.

I’ve overdocumented my love for my iPhone and how it helps me in my job.

It really is a great phone. Except for that whole thing about how it has a lot of glass in it.

For the record, this is what an iPhone looks like after it smacks into the tile floor of a Panera bathroom.

My iPhone had an unfortunate meeting with a tile floor.

Oops.

Since newspaper reporters aren’t exactly generously paid, I’m trying to hold off on repairing or replacing my phone as long as possible. (I have other things I want to spend my money on!)

Oddly enough, the phone still works beautifully. It thought for sure smashing the screen to smithereens would make the touch aspects fail, but it didn’t. I put a screen protector on it so I wouldn’t cut my fingers while using the phone.

Reporters are used to making do with less-than-ideal equipment. We’ll see how long I last with my less-than-ideal iPhone.

And if you see me using my busted up phone, go ahead and laugh at me. I deserve it!

Last week, the drama over the same-sex marriage bill in the Maryland House of Delegates developed at a frantic pace.

On Tuesday afternoon — Valentine’s Day — word quickly spread through Annapolis that a pair of committees considering the bill would hold a voting session.

I had been at the State House complex covering another story and headed back to the newsroom to file my story. Just as I was finishing up my story, our State House reporter sent back word that one of Anne Arundel’s Republican delegates was going to be a surprise vote in favor of the same-sex marriage bill.

That may not sound interesting, but in the world of politics, it was.

Supporters of the bill were squeezing every vote they could get, unsure that they could get a 71-vote majority in the 141-member House. Opponents of the bill were trying just as hard to get fence-sitters to commit to casting a “no” vote.

Our State House reporter only had his cell phone with him at the committee hearing — no laptop. He had been texting updates to our editor who handles legislative news.

But in this era of small staffs, our legislative editor also edits one of our smaller newspapers, and that newspaper was on deadline day. He had his hands full.

I volunteered to help, and the editor asked if I could stitch the reporter’s text messages together into a story. He handed his phone over to me. (Ahhh, the evil things I could have done! Just kidding, I like my editor!)

I texted our reporter to let him know that he could send updates directly to my phone. So between the texts on the editor’s phone and my phone, plus culling background information from past stories, I was able to drum up a little story.

We posted it online and it immediately drew attention. We were the first ones to nail down that this Republican was going to vote yes on same-sex marriage.

I knew we had done something good when one of the reporters from The Washington Post linked to the story on Twitter.

Of course, the excitement is fleeting. Within a couple of hours, the original story was replaced with one that lead off with the vote total from the committee. The Republican vote-changer still played a significant role in the story, but as soon as he officially cast his vote, our scoop was gone, turned into knowledge that all the other media had.

But still, it was exciting. And it was fun and a little odd to read quotes that were texted from another reporter to an editor and turn that into a story. Can’t say I’ve done that before.

Or, more accurately, that headline should be: What is your notebook?

I got to thinking about notebooks the other day at a concert. I noticed a couple of the musicians had marble composition notebooks on stage, filled with notes or maybe setlists — I’m not exactly sure.

It made me smile to see a hip band using such old-school notebooks.

When was the last time I used a composition notebook? Probably about the third grade.

Composition books are long gone from my life, but I have very serious thoughts about notebooks. Every reporter has strong opinions about notebooks!

I’ve seen my colleagues use all kinds of notebooks: legal pads, regular school-style notebooks, steno pads, reporter notebooks.

Reporter notebook -- product image from Betty Mills Co.

For most of my note-taking, I use standard reporter notebooks. For those who don’t know about reporter notebooks, they’ve got the spiral at the top. They’re kind of like steno pads, but only half as wide.

Reporter notebooks are great because they fit in the palm of your hand well. They also can be stuffed in a back pants pocket or tucked in a purse easily. (I’m not a purse-aholic, but when I do shop for new purses, I always check to see if a reporter notebook will fit.)

If you are ever at crime scenes, you might notice that police officers and fire investigators sometimes use similar notebooks. Often, they’re the same notebook, with just different lettering on the cover.

I also have a special place in my work world for steno pads.

I like to keep my phone messages all in one place and separate from my note-taking notebooks. I’ve found that steno pads work well — they have the spiral binding at the top, but they have more room for writing. Plus, the steno pad doesn’t get mixed up with my reporter notebooks.

I’m sure my colleagues have just as many reasons for their fierce allegiances to certain notebooks.

And then there are the pens. Don’t get me started about my pen preferences …

This post isn’t strictly about journalism, but bear with me, I’ll get there.

I learned through my friend Jenny about a neat project called Fun A Day. It’s geared toward creative types and the idea is to make art each and every day through the month of January.

A lot of us have the blahs in January, and it’s a motivator to get off your duff and do something creative. I loved the idea right away.

While my day job is as a reporter, one of my hobbies is photography. I’m sort of the family photographer, always photographing the little kids, the special occasions. Occasionally, I’ll do some nature photography, shooting pictures while out on hikes or out kayaking. (Photography while kayaking is a fun adventure! Try it some time … just not with an expensive camera the first time.)

When I shoot for work, I’m usually taking pictures of people in hats (watermen, biologists, cops, environmentalists) bending over looking at some sort of seafood (crabs, oysters, fish).

When I set out to take a picture each day in January, I knew I would not have my usual subjects handy. I don’t see my family every day, I don’t have time to visit parks during the week. And besides, it gets dark really early in January.

But more days than not, I found interesting, cool things to photograph. Some of my pictures were total duds. But I had a few I really liked.

I also kind of on a whim decided to make all of my pictures black-and-white. I usually shoot in color. I learned that some things look way cooler in black and white. Other times, things that look awesome in color just don’t translate well into black and white.

This is my first photo, a shoeprint in dried mud in my neighborhood:

For this one, I learned cold weather is not my friend. It was one of the few frigid, windy days we had in January (in the 20s) and I got windburn on my right wrist from shooting:

This one is my favorite from the  month, a tree branch that I kind of silhouetted as the sun set:

As I noted, the sun sets really early in January. That made outdoor pictures a challenge for me. Here’s a nighttime picture that I managed to pull off. One of the few  glimpses of snow we had this month:

I spotted these chairs near where I parked my car in Annapolis one day. If I hadn’t been doing Fun A Day, I would have noticed them, but kept walking. Instead, I took some pictures:

This one turned out cool and moody:

I made this one with my iPhone. A reminder of the saying that the best camera is the one that you’ve got in your hands:

Sometimes the picture you get isn’t the one you wanted. The creeks and rivers had an awesome fog on them one morning, but by the time I was able to get out of the newsroom on my lunch break, the fog was gone. But I liked how this picture turned out, with storm clouds moving out from over the Severn River:

Here’s one of the few with a person in it, my cousin Billy during a wrestling tournament:

And last but not least, I couldn’t go a month without shooting downtown Annapolis, could I? I saved City Dock for my last day:

So those are my favorite pictures. But I promised that I’d make this about journalism, right? This is a reporter’s blog after all.

I think there are lessons I learned in this art project that I can apply to being a reporter.

Reporters aren’t exactly creative types. We aren’t fiction writers — we can’t make up our characters or the situations they’re in for our stories.

But we can think differently. We can be always on the lookout for new or interesting things.

I found that when I was doing Fun A Day, I always had my eyes on. By that, I mean that I didn’t just rush from Point A to Point B as I went to the newsroom and interviews and ran errands and did the 8 million things we all do. As I was out and about, I tried to keep my eyes open, to look for interesting things.

Sometimes I took detours. One day, on my way to the State House, I took a lap around the grounds before I went in. It took just a few minutes, but I saw and photographed interesting things I had never noticed before.

That’s what I should be doing as a journalist — peeking around corners, going down a different hallway. You never know what interesting photo — or story — you might find.

… and I don’t actually have a joke for that.

What really happened is that three governors walked into a room  and a bunch of journalists wrote down what they said and took their pictures.

Gov. Martin O’Malley held a press conference in December to give the formal OK to a controversial state growth document called Plan Maryland.

The gov called in two high-powered Democratic buddies to bolster his case (and probably draw some more media attention, too): former Gov. Parris Glendening and former Gov. Harry Hughes. That’s half of the living former governors we have in Maryland — the other two are Gov. Marvin Mandel and Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.

Three governors in one place about five minutes from the newsroom meant that we definitely needed to be there.

I see Gov. Hughes at environmental events from time to time. He did a lot of environmental work when he was governor in the 1980s, and he remains connected with environmental causes.

Gov. Glendening, however, has kept his life much more behind the scenes. He’s not often at public events, though he’s still active in the smart growth issues he first championed as governor.

In addition to covering the press conference and writing about the controvery of Plan Maryland, I took the time to make a few pictures of Gov. Hughes and Gov. Glendening. It’s nice to have photos showing the post-gubernatorial life of these guys for our archives.

And also, it never hurts to have up-to-date pictures of people who might be in the news. They might say or do something interesting, and if we don’t have a camera there, at least we’ll have recent pictures.

Gov. Parris Glendening

Gov. Harry Hughes

Journalists love press contests. And we hate them, too.

January is contest time of year in my newsroom. By Monday, we have to turn in a list of our best stories for about 8, 724 different categories for the state press association.

(OK, technically it’s the press association for Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia … three small states combined is kind of like one normal-sized state. And it’s technically not 8,724 categories, of course.)

The categories really do seem endless: business story, environment story, feature story, profile story and so on. There’s now even a category for weather and natural disasters. (That should be an interesting competition this year!)

Sometimes journalists would like to skip the whole contest thing altogether. But you never know how much current bosses or prospective bosses might like to see those awards on your resume. So it’s smart to take the time to thoughtfully enter contests.

It’s daunting to sift through 200-plus stories to find a few gems.

The best of the best are obvious. Off the top of the head, I immediately thought of my profile of a skipjack captain and my many stories on the late Gov. William Donald Schaefer as my best work of 2011.

But what about other good — but not necessarily spectacular — stories?

Often, reading through old clips reminds me of stories I enjoyed reporting and writing. Or I find stories that were better than I remembered. I remembered meeting Orioles superstar Adam Jones at the local Boys & Girls Club. And I remember how a budget dispute highlighted how power works in the state capital.

But are those stories good enough for awards? Maybe, maybe not.

One thing I thought I did well this year was covering many citizen challenges to a proposed crematory. I covered every step of the way and I felt my stories were thorough and readable and fair. Other news outlets covered the issue somewhat, but no one was as comprehensive as my newspaper.

But is that worthy of an award? Or is that just what I should be doing every day? Solid work isn’t worthy of awards.

So the self-evaluation will continue.

In between interviews and meetings and phone calls, the reporters in my newsroom read and reread. And reread some more.

And after Monday, we’ll breathe a sigh of relief.