A work-in-progress featuring random stories about my four-month experience in D.C. working for the Wall Street Journal.

First Days:

    After my hasty introduction to the bureau’s 50 or so reporters, researchers and news assistants, reporter John Wilke yelled  me over and assigned me my first story. I was to write an 8-inch brief on a lawsuit the DOJ filed against a large naval manufacturer and the story was to be finished in a scant 45 minutes. After writing the article, I thought I had set a pretty good tone. I figured, 'Wow, I might be writing almost everyday, like I did during my internship in Savannah.' Little did I know (or, more likely, refused to understand) that’s not how things work at the Journal. 

    First of all, the nature of the paper allows reporters to often spend plenty of time researching and crafting together stories, so many reporters will write only a few stories a month, let alone a year. I wasn’t to start understanding the ways of the Journal until the next day, when bureau chief Jerry Seib called me into his office and outlined a project I would work during the buildup to the war. He wanted the political go-to-guy to write an introspective, analytical story on the lack of military service most of our country’s leaders had. As he put it, these guys are about to send our nation’s youth to war, yet many of them have never seen battle. He wanted to expand it past the traditional studies of politicians and also wanted to determine if there was some kind of generational gap. 

    So, we compiled a list of American leaders – congressman, governors, university presidents, Fortune 100 CEOs, media directors and the president’s cabinet – and I asked each of them (or, more frequently, their public relations directors) whether they’ve ever been drafted, served in the military and seen the combat, and the same questions about their parents and kids. It took me a good two months to finish the project, but luckily I kept busy as well with my other duties, which included covering protests, homeland security, military recruiting, health, environment and education stories and a feature on anthrax vaccines.

Struletz meets Lisa

(Another dispatch)

I’ve had a lot of visitors come up and stay with me, and will have a few more before the month is up (sneaks is sleeping in our closet for a week). But it will be hard to compare to the arrival of Swartzberg and Struletz on March 19, the night the war started. Swartzberg has spared his dear friend and future roommate Adam of this story, but I must record this before the memory further erodes:

On Friday night, a group of young journalist friends I’ve met up here, a UGA intern, and an assortment of political interns all ended up at this crappy Hill bar called The Hawk & Dove. My friend Lisa, who’s quite attractive but also has devious manipulation skills that rank up there with the best of the JAPs you guys like, started weaving her web of deception around Struletz.

Before you knew it, the two were dancing dangerously close to one another and Struley attempted more than a dozen kisses, once even asking Lisa if she’d allow him to smooch her. Yet, time and again, she deftly avoided his advances.

Then, as we were just about to get in a cab and head back to my place, Lisa comes up to Adam, puts her arms around his waist and slowly leans in, her lips pouting as his face trembles with nervous excitement – after all, his last hookup was Amanda Frye in 7th grade.

She gets within about a hair’s width of his lips, then pulls an abrupt 180 and whisks away.

I’ve never seen something simultaneously so heartwrenching yet so funny.

Post War: