Journalism gives you magical powers!

When recruiting teens to work with ThreeSixty, I often tell them that being a journalist means you get a backstage pass to the world.

Even working for a paper in a smaller town – about 100,000 people – I was able to interview Nobel prize winners, famous authors, distinguished researchers – the movers and shakers of our society.

On Monday night at ThreeSixty’s News Team meeting at the Star Tribune we were working on refining story angles for the reporters’ first story. One reporter, Kristen Marvin, had been ill when we first developed ideas so she and I had to find one for her.

When brainstorming I’ll often ask students questions about things they’ve been wondering about or if they’d read any books that got them thinking. This last question sparked a series of mystical-seeming coincidences that often happened to me when I was a reporter.

Kristen mentioned that she’d really enjoyed reading Mary Karr’s memoirs “The Liar’s Club” and “Cherry” and that the author would be making an appearance this week at the Edina Barnes and Noble store. Here’s where the magic starts. I’d just heard of Mary Karr the previous day when I listened to a podcast of National Public Radio’s Fresh Air in which Terry Gross interviewed Karr.

Kristen said she’d love to interview Karr. I said we should give it a shot. The reporters seemed a little shocked that I thought we actually had a chance. “Who do you work for?” a reporter named Ricardo asked me.

“What do you mean? I work for ThreeSixty. This is it, what we’re doing. I work with you guys,” I said.

“No, I mean, how can you get access to people like that,” he asked. “Can you get me an interview with Pitbull?”

Pitbull is a rapper who will be appearing in KDWB’s Jingle Ball 2009. Musicians are harder to get, I told him, but if you sell yourself as a reporter for a teen online magazine that serves about 4,000 unique visitors a month and they want that age group to buy tickets for a show, there’s a chance.

I’m not making false promises. As of 3:30 p.m. yesterday afternoon, Kristen had interviewed Mary Karr.

The impact on budding journalists of landing a big interview is something I know first-hand. When I was the local/national news editor at the Central High Times – the school newspaper of Central Senior High School in St. Paul – I asked my newspaper advisor, Jack Schlukebier, if he thought we could get then-mayor Norm Coleman to do a news conference at Central about his campaign for a new Twins stadium.

Call his office, Schlukebier told me. That one phone call resulted in not only the mayor coming to Central the day before the vote on the stadium, but also Twins superstars Kirby Puckett and Paul Molitor.

We invited two history classes to observe the press conference. When word spread that Kirby Puckett was in the building, Central’s auditorium filled with students. Local media covered the event.

That success stayed with me and showed me that anything is possible. I think that was a major turning point for me when I realized that I truly wanted to be a journalist. I hope Kristen has the same experience today.

So, we got Mary Karr for Kristen. Now how am I going to get Pitbull? I have no idea. I guess I’ll just have to depend on journalism’s magical powers, our backstage pass.