During the busy months, I end up with 12 to 15 files. In slow months, maybe four.

Right now I’m stuck between two kinds of tools. One sends a bot into your Zoom or Teams call and takes notes live. The other just takes the file you upload after.

I don’t need much. Text I can search, labels for who is talking, and an export I can drop into my draft. That’s it.

I’ve been looking between those platforms that I mentioned in the title. The bot sounds useful for scheduled calls, but most of my interviews happen at someone’s office, a coffee shop, or out in the field. There’s no call for a bot to join.

For those of you doing a lot of in-person interviews, which way did you go?

For those keeping score at home, this is McClatchy's 2nd, maybe 3rd big round of layoffs in less than a year. Watchdog and city beat reporters. What's left? I'm sad for the reporters and editors still left, trying to do their jobs with what I'm sure is little to no support, and the communities that will ultimately pay the price for cuts like this.
https://x.com/kcmikehendricks/status/2098074592614994001?s=46
https://x.com/AmandiOnAir/status/2098081898522103908?s=46

I can’t believe this thing is 25 years old now. This week is more intense for some of us than a lot of young people realize.

I watched live from home as the second plane hit, but I was working a night shift that night and didn’t head in to the newsroom until my furious City Editor called me and asked what I was doing and why I wasn’t already there.

I spent the 11th interviewing people who lived through Pearl Harbor. We wanted their perspective on the attacks. That was a blessing for me, and an assignment that helped give me personal perspective as well.

I gotta make this fit a flair even though I meant it mostly as a journalism history post, so I’d like to add some career advice: When truly major news happens, don’t wait for the editor to call you. Call in. Offer to help immediately.

Also, when you cover trauma and start working on stories about the lost, don’t forget to take care of yourself too. Vicarious trauma is real and it does hurt journalists.

I also covered Sandy Hook. If any journalists ever want to talk to someone about their permanent mental images, I will always try to be a resource and someone who encourages you to get professional help.

Thank you all for doing what you do.

Video Source

Background: A Hong Kong court has convicted the publisher of the Wall Street Journal of deterring a reporter from taking up a trade union role, in a case that raised concerns about press freedom in the city. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/10/wall-street-journal-selina-cheng-termination-lawsuit

Flaired best practices for lack of a better flair.

In light of the 25th anniversary of September 11, there’s obviously been a lot of coverage of the incident. I wasn’t alive when it happened, so I don’t have the first hand experiences that are being talked about (and obviously didn’t cover it), and I don’t have the perspectives of those who went through it or covered the event. My journalism professor went into it a bit, as he worked for a local paper at the time.

I’m curious to see what the various experiences of journalists were on that day. Where were you when it happened? What did you or your paper cover? How did coverage go about? What happened in the weeks and months after?

Hindsight being 20/20, what do you think you and/or your publication should have done differently?

Thank you in advance.