Being the subject of a news story

About 2 weeks ago, I was interviewed by a Daily Illini writer for a story about volunteering at the Champaign County Humane Society. This was my first time being interviewed for a story and it was interesting to see how I felt once it was published. I'm used to being the one collecting the quotes and writing a story about a person. It was weird to have the tables turned.

Overall, I think the writer did a great job. My name wasn't spelled wrong, the picture wasn't embarrasing and she wrote the story she said she was going to write. She told me it was a "Dirty Jobs" peice that the DI was planning to do every Tuesday. There was nothing on the DI that said it was a dirty jobs column or anything, but I think it went well anyway.

She definitely just paraphrased my words when I was talking and filled in the quotes with what I basically said because some of the quotes were definitely not exact quotes. But she didn't misquote the basic meaning so I wasn't bummed.

The story did give a wrong fact, however. In a photo caption it said I volunteer one day a week at the shelter, when I actually volunteer twice to three times a week. It's not a very important fact so I wasn't angry, but I do wonder where the writer got that information because she never asked me how many days I volutneer. Did she just assume or what? But again not a big deal. It just makes you think how many small facts you read in papers aren't actually true. I'm sure they check the big important facts, but kind of pass by the small ones.

All in all, I was happy with the story. And it taught me to make sure that even the smallest facts are correct when I am writing or editing a story about a person/place/event. Even though my fact was unimportant to me, a small fact may be important to someone else.

The quote they higlighted and put in big font was:

"Sometimes the dogs will kiss you after they have eaten poo or mud but you learn
to deal with it," Scott said.

Kind of an embarrasing way to go down in DI history, haha.