I wrote about people taking trains, instead of planes, to lower their carbon emissions. I try to do the same thing whenever possible. Last year, I went to a conference in Boston, and I took a bus and overnight train from North Carolina; and I also went to New Orleans for another conference, this time nearly a full day on the train.
Just by coincidence, one of the people I interviewed in my article was on that very same train! I have never met her, and I didn’t know she’d been on that very same train until I had done some research, tracked her down, and was talking to her.
Being a journalist means I can finally put my online-stalking abilities to good use – abilities that I have carefully crafted and improved upon by 10 years of steady and completely legal spying on people’s lives. My family always made fun of me with me giving them updates of strangers’ lives, and told me I was weird; but see what’s come of it!
New University Rules Encourage Scientists to Avoid Air Travel
As far as I can tell, apart from some essays or personal blogs people have written, mine is the very first news article about this topic 🙂 And, it’s been shared on Twitter and Facebook a lot, which is very exciting, and people have left comments and everything.
I was a little sad, and at times heart-broken, during the editing, because I interviewed a lot of scientists, and they told me the coolest stories about their trips by train/bus. And I wanted to include all the information, all the cool details. But instead, the word count didn’t even let me include all those scientists. The final article is less than 1/3 the size of what I’d originally written. Oh dear. And me and the editors and fact-checkers went back and forth so many times, trying to pinpoint the exact correct meaning. So by the time we were editing the same paragraph the 30th time, I wanted to toss of my hands in despair. But in the end, I think – I hope – it turned out alright. Of course, I am sad that not all the nuances are there, but I guess I’ll just keep learning how to make the best of the word count limits I have.
mejshasan.com 