A reporter's best friend

I was sick in bed on Monday, anxiously awaiting my next visit from Dr. Ibuprofen, when I decided to write a column about my notebook.

This could have been a hallucination. After all, David Letterman once described the sort of fever I was running as “the point at which you start to see flying monkeys.”

Yet even after the drugs had kicked in, I was still taken with the idea. Why not write about our slender, pocket-friendly, made-in-Mexico reporter notebooks? They deserve some recognition, and I say to them: “Thanks.” Or, “gracias.”

In a communications field top-heavy with electronic toys, those of us who report the news for The News & Advance still rely heavily on our notebooks. Sometimes, low-tech can be more effective.

With a “stealth notebook” riding out of sight on your hip, you can casually begin a conversation with someone, take a few minutes for them to relax, then slowly slide the pad out and say something like: “I hope you don’t mind if I just jot a couple of things down so I don’t forget them.”

That level of informality is hard to achieve when you’re advancing on someone with 60 pounds of TV gear. The look of fear crossing their face says, clearly: “Bad hair day!”

The best thing for me, though, is that notebooks tell their own story. They not only help you remember what was said and seen, but the surrounding circumstances.

A middle page of one of my current notebooks, for instance, is decorated with four startlingly bright splotches of red. For however long I keep this notebook, I will remember that this decoration came courtesy of a Roanoke boxer named David “D-Hop” Hopkins.

I will remember that I was sitting ringside at the Lynchburg Armory in late August, and that it took me several minutes to realize that a cut over Hopkins’ eyebrow had turned my notebook into a crime scene.

I will remember that Craig Shaffer, a freelance photographer sitting next to me, flashed me an evil grin and said: “Wow, that’s iconic! Now, you’re a real boxing writer.”

I will remember that the cut didn’t keep Hopkins from winning the fight.

My handwriting ranges from barely legible to horrific, and it’s always interesting to follow its progress during an interview. Carefully crafted at the beginning (I print, like a lot of left-handers, which is similar to speed-walking), it quickly tumbles downhill as the brakes fail until it shatters into disjointed syllables at the end. I get behind the flow of conversation and start cranking out half-sentences (“As soon as I get out of college, I want to …” “The biggest problem … had … was …”)

Notebooks have their downsides, of course. They are easy to lose, compared to a tape recorder. They aren’t waterproof (one of our reporters once saw a day’s worth of batteau festival notes sink beneath the surface of the James River). They don’t make very good defensive weapons if you’re attacked.

Nevertheless, I’m hooked. Now, if I could just find the one I brought home …