Tag: about me

I was looking at my résumé this afternoon and struck by a strange realization: the thing is three pages long, including references and clips. Ideally, I’d like it to fit on a page. So what follows is an exercise in brevity: my work in journalism, in one — albeit very long — paragraph.

When I was 14, I decided I wanted to be a journalist. It seemed like a good idea at the time. ❡❡ At 15, though I had no idea what I was doing or how to do it, I got an internship working at States News Service in D.C. By summer’s end, I’d been published in The Boston Globe. This gave my parents the unfortunately false impression that I was talented. ❡❡ Then I started working as a stringer at Redskins games. I became good at interviewing people who were wearing towels. I still consider it one of my most developed skills. ❡❡ I spent the next summer working for The Nantucket Independent. While journalists from The Globe and the AP were mocking John Kerry for his windsurfing skills, they were citing my opus on Nantucket politics in their stories. I also improved my in-towel interviewing technique, only this time, I was the one wearing them. ❡❡ The Kansas City Star gave me an award for sports writing the next year. In K.C., I tried the local barbecue for the first time. I selected the University of Missouri as my college destination that same day. ❡❡ That spring, I interned at The Business Gazette in Maryland. Four years later, some of my articles still show up the later pages of my Google results. If you go even deeper into those results, you’ll find out that, apparently, I have children and am bald. ❡❡ I showed up at Mizzou in the fall of 2005 with a dream: to learn how to tell stories via any number of platforms. I also wanted to see ESPN’s “College GameDay” come to campus for a football game. I was ambitious back then. ❡❡ Soon after, I worked at The Washington Examiner, where I learned how to cover the Nationals in less than 350 words per night. Non-Nats fans still wonder how I managed to fill those 350 words. “They lost, again” is only three. ❡❡ Back at Mizzou, I became a student senator so that I could change the school’s ticketing policy for sporting events. I started DJing at the college radio station, too. In four years, I have still yet to figure out how to work the station’s phone line. (573) 882-8262 is the request line if you’d really like to test me, though. ❡❡ The next year, at CBS News, I produced radio stories about Presidential frontrunners Hillary Rodham Clinton and Fred Thompson. We were all quite sure that one of those two was going to win. ❡❡ Last summer, I worked as a political exile multimedia journalist for The Rocky Mountain News in Beijing. They let me do stuff that I’d prefer the Chinese not know about. ❡❡ Now I’m graduating from Mizzou next month with a degree in convergence journalism and minors in spanish and sociology. ❡❡ I’ve mastered a number of technologies — like Final Cut Pro and Photoshop and Flash and CSS/HTML and Audacity — as well as digital photography. ❡❡ The only thing I didn’t learn, I suppose, was how to get a job. ❡❡ Maybe I should’ve taken classes in that instead.

Dear Prospective Employer,

I am not particularly good at following directions.

Or perhaps I should say: it’s not that I’m bad at following directions. It’s that I tend to follow them too seriously.

I mention this because my professors seem to think that these introductory letters shouldn’t be about what I’ve done; they should be about who I am. Right about here, I’m supposed to say that if you’d like to know more about my experiences – about the time I spent as the Rocky Mountain News’ multimedia man-about-town in Beijing for the Olympics; or the summer I produced radio stories for CBS News; or the months covering pro baseball for the Washington Examiner – well, you should just turn to my résumé.

This, instead, is what my professors would like me to tell you:

I am a 6’5’’ Jewish kid from Bethesda, Md. I have the wingspan of someone who is 6’9’’. To answer your questions in advance: I do not play basketball, and I do not know what the weather is like up here.

After a lifetime of air guitaring, I started playing for real three years ago, though I haven’t given up on the occasional air soloing. I put Old Bay and garlic into nearly everything I cook. Two years ago, I spent the better part of a month training for a pizza eating competition that was later canceled when the restaurant ran out of oven space to cook the needed amount of pizzas. One year, I ordered the ESPN Full Court package, watched hundreds of college basketball games, developed an encyclopedic knowledge of every NCAA Tournament team, and still finished in the bottom third in my office pool.

I’m not particularly fashion-conscious, though I am the proud owner of a yellow, pinstriped jacket that I’ve worn to every University of Missouri football game since my sophomore year. I’ve never used the afro pick that came with the jacket.

I come from a large, lovable family of well-to-do Washingtonians who, for lack of a better term, are crazy. My grandparents used to paint their lawn green in the winter. We used to have a nanny who walked her pet guinea pig outside on a leash. My father has been known to bring back stacks of Waffle House waffles as his “personal item” on flights.

Which brings me to the jewel of my family: my mother.

My mother once wrote an essay explaining that her favorite Jewish moment involved the time Noah led the Jews out of Egypt. Once, upon my return from a semester abroad in Spain, she waited for me at the airport with a sign for me that read, “Hola, Dan, mí puta grande,” mistakenly believing that the words were a standard Spanish greeting. Recently, my mother fulfilled her lifelong dream of riding around on a fire truck dressed as Mrs. Claus. She is also a lover of animals, which is why this elephant currently resides on the front steps of my house.

I’ll cut this letter short now; I wouldn’t want to spoil any stories for future psychiatric visits. I do hope this letter gives you a more personal look into who I really am. And if for whatever reason any of this makes me more desirable as a candidate for this job, then I must say: journalism is clearly in worse shape than I’d ever imagined.

Sincerely yours,
Dan