The Tetons looked different from any other mountains I had seen. They’re much smaller than say Colorado’s crop of 14-ers, but they rise dramatically, 7,000 feet above the valley floor. Whereas Colorado has foothills that build up to the mighty peaks, the Tetons appear out of nowhere after miles of monotonous plains, where the only interruptions are giant bales of hay rolled up like cinnabuns or layered into loaves.

The range reminded me a little of the Sierra Nevada, which disappears into the barren Mojave Desert, but for some reason (maybe it was simply their novelty), the Tetons looked bolder with their iconic ridgeline and bare granite faces.

After viewing bison on our way into the park and then taking a quick pit stop at Jenny Lake, we drove up Signal Mountain, where we discovered a panoramic view of Jenny Lake and Mt. Owen. We also found an informational display about David Edward Jackson, an American explorer who was one of the first to photograph the Tetons. The display summarized how Jackson set up a darkroom on site–that is, up a mountain–to develop his photos then and there, and I realized just how easy modern photographers have it. Inspired by his black and white images, I decided to take a few of my own; all I had to do was change the setting on my Cannon T1i to monochrome.

There’s something about black and white images that alludes to the timelessness of places like Grand Teton National Park. Comparing my photo to Jackson’s, you wouldn’t be able to see much change; all you can tell is that these mountains are still standing, just as they have for millions of years.

Our next stop was Yellowstone,  but having spent the morning in Grand Teton, we arrived right in the middle of the tourist-filled afternoon. We followed behind a line of cars parading through the wild, 2.5-million-acre landscape. People pulled over abruptly to snap photos of bison or to search for what the car ahead of them had pulled off for. Visitors posed obnoxiously in front of Yellowstone Falls, oddly placing themselves at the center of nature.

But still, nature prevails when bison hold up traffic to meander across the road, sending the already impatient visitors into a panic. And luckily in a park so vast and open, there are still plenty of opportunities to get lost in the meadows among steamy sulphur springs and bubbling fumaroles. Our last stop was Mammoth Hot Springs, where we arrived just after sunset when the pools were reflecting the pinks and purples of the clouds overhead. There we found peace in Yellowstone.

“Western Wandering” is an ongoing travel series by Serena Renner on MeridianCollective.org that will feature photos, text and video from her Western U.S. road trip in August and September of 2010. See the whole series here.

What we discovered was a ghost town whose residents probably vanished with the futile quest for gold. Boarded up buildings and abandoned railroad equipment served as eery testaments to a time that came and went. I later learned from a local bartender that people still pan for gold in this canyon. While most people left town and moved on, some continue to chase the dreams of the pioneers.

A boarded up, abandoned home scares away curious visitors with broken glass, trash, and a dilapidated draw bridge.

For dinner, we headed to Nederland about five miles away which represents an altogether different era. Art galleries, funky boutiques, rock shops, a cannabis club, and a co-op grocery store line the streets, making up a liberal enclave Kevin thinks sprouted during the sixties. The town boasts some interesting history like being the recording destination for the likes of The String Cheese Incident and hosting a spring festival “Frozen Dead Guy Days” that celebrates a cryogenically frozen Norwegian man “Grandpa Bredo” who’s been sheltered in a shed in the hills for decades.

After a satisfying Indian dinner and a perfect cup of milk chai at Kathmandu Restaurant, we hunkered down in the lakefront cabin until dawn.

After exploring the train tracks and Rollinsville, we enjoyed a satisfying Indian meal at Kathmandu Restaurant in Nederland.

We arrived at Rocky Mountain National Park just after sunrise when the valleys were still resting beneath the shade of mountain peaks and the meadows sparkled with frost. Low hanging clouds seeped over the Continental Divide as marmot waddled across the roads and moose made their way through swampy fields.

Our early start allowed us to drive clear across Colorado to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area on the Utah-Wyoming border, where we camped right near the rim of a beautiful red rock canyon that outlines a large reservoir. The site is near Dinosaur National Monument and has its own share of dinosaur and marine fossils. The scenery was incredible yet there wasn’t another camper in sight. Two rangers at the visitor center told us that most people from Utah don’t even know the place exists. Kevin and I only learned about it after spotting the large body of water on a map the day before and then looking it up on his iPhone and finding some enticing pictures. While I’m usually against depending on technology while traveling, I must admit that access to sites like Yelp have helped us add spontaneity to our travels; we can learn about places on the go and divert our path at any time.

We jumped on the chance to say hello to Utah again before a long journey north.

There's nothing like a sun lit gorge after a long day in the car. Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, Utah. Photo: Kevin Schnepel

“Western Wandering” is an ongoing travel series by Serena Renner on MeridianCollective.org that will feature photos, text and video from her Western U.S. road trip in August and September of 2010. See her first installment Utah’s Color Country here.

It looks like Will and I had similar ambitions for the summer: to breathe some fresh air, rediscover open space, and set out on a wind-blowing-through-our-hair car adventure to explore our own Western United States. My summer began with a mini road trip from Santa Barbara to Denver and will resume next week with an excursion through Yellowstone, Glacier and Banff National Parks before touring the Pacific Northwest.

My boyfriend, Kevin, and I did a quick road trip from Denver to Oakland a few months back and decided to take a different route this time through Utah’s color country. Like Will, we had our eyes set on Zion National Park and Hwy 12, which runs through Bryce Canyon National Park and The Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monument–1.7 million acres of multicolored cliffs, buttes, and canyons shaped by eons of sedimentation, uplift and erosion. In attempt to see the national parks before they’re overrun with mostly foreign tourists, Kevin and I got up before sunrise every morning and visited either very early or later in the evening when they are most pristine. About an hour outside of Zion, we camped for free at the Kolob Reservoir right near the water’s edge, and on our second night, we stayed at Kodochrome Basin State Park near Tropic, which greeted us with an incredible sunset featuring unique pinnacles that rose abruptly out of the earth. On our way back to the I-70 on day 3, we did a quick drive through Capital Reef National Park (most of which was closed on our visit) and a detour to Goblin Valley State Park off Hwy 24.

I was most inspired by the region’s amazing color contrasts. Red-and-white-striped canyons stood out against the vibrant green vegetation that grew in their folds. Charcoal roads cut through butter yellow meadows and each sunrise and sunset outdid the last. Here is a glimpse of what I saw.

“Western Wandering” is an ongoing travel series by Serena Renner on MeridianCollective.org that will feature photos, text and video from her Western U.S. road trip in August and September, 2010.

Connections are the bridge to your next opportunity, perhaps in Brooklyn? Photo: Dave Kliman.

If ever I doubted the importance of connections in the media industry, I’m now a believer. I’m a week and a half from being back on the job market, and after months of sending out applications with little to no response, an opportunity may have reared its shiny head. I had a successful interview yesterday for an associate editor position at a magazine whose name I won’t mention as to not jinx myself. It ended with an invitation back next week to meet the publisher. Before jumping up and down and giving myself a big pat on the back, I need to pay credit where credit is due: to an editor.

It just so happens that this editor works at VIA (where I’m finishing up a six-month internship) and she’s a friend and former colleague of the editor-in-chief at this anonymous magazine. In fact, she’s a big part of why I applied to this magazine in the first place, and she was kind enough to phone the editor early on to sing my praises. This scenario reminds me a lot of my application process for VIA–where my former editor from the UCSD alumni magazine knows two editors (including the editor-in-chief). Are we starting to see a pattern here or am I having a deja vu? There may well be seven degrees of separation, but to get a journalism job these days, it’s better that you only have two.

I’m so convinced of this pattern, in fact, that I’ve almost given up applying to jobs where I don’t have a strong referral. In case you’re still skeptical, let’s take a few other examples of interconnectivity. Two editors at VIA used to work together at Stanford magazine, where (surprise, surprise) my former editor at the UCSD alumni mag also worked. Three editors are also former colleagues at Men’s Health and they followed each other, one-by-one, to VIA.

In my most recent round of applications, besides this magazine whose name I will not mention, I only got one other call back–from the editor at the Monterey County Weekly, for which I interviewed in the past. While I’m not too much more qualified to work at the paper than I was the last time around, I think I got a call simply because I was a familiar name and face. In today’s economy, when editors are deluged with hundreds upon hundreds of resumes, they’re going to latch on to those people who provide even an extra ounce of comfort. Maybe it comes from a friend’s stamp of approval or a prior meeting that proved the applicant isn’t crazy.

Knowing this, I even contacted my friend’s mother’s co-worker’s brother who worked at Surfer magazine to try to get an upper hand on that application. (It didn’t work out, but it was worth a shot.)

While I recognize that you still have to prove yourself, and I haven’t given up all hope on personal merit, sometimes connections are the only way you’ll get a chance. If nothing else pans out for me, at least this experience has been a good reminder to treat every opportunity as a stepping stone to the next bigger thing. Even if you don’t see your current job or internship leading anywhere, foster relationships with your colleagues, and they just might help you land a job at an unnamed magazine a few years down the road.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to jump for joy.

I may have had to jump through hoops to get there, but at least I got a second interview!

Serena’s finally got her hands on a new camera all her own! After some dastardly coward stole her camera, along with a lens I had bestowed, Serena has been watching from the sidelines as Will and I do our monthly reviews. No more! Serena sent me along some photos from a mini road trip she went on. Out of the 20, these nine spoke to me. Sure, they are without people, my usual favorites, but I think Serena did a great job making landscapes interesting and with plenty of character-quite a feat without a large format setup. Since Serena is about to embark on yet another road trip, I expect good things.

Here’s to many more new pictures from Serena.

For the past two and a half months, I’ve been interning at Via, AAA’s travel magazine for Northern California, Nevada, Utah, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Alaska. On top of adding several new destinations to my travel list, I’ve already learned a lot about magazine production, from pitching and assigning stories through the various levels of editing, and I hope to share my discoveries over the next few months.

During my first few days of work, I learned that it’s nearly impossible for freelancers to get feature pitches accepted at Via (you have a better chance of getting accepted to Harvard). There are a number of reasons for this, including the magazine’s bi-monthly frequency and small size, the fact that editors map out feature stories as much as a year in advance, because the magazine has grown to depend on a group of tried-and-true veteran freelancers who are given regular assignments, and because it’s very rare that you and I have heard of a must-see destination that a travel magazine editor has not.

Getting your name in one of these is tricky business. Flickr photo courtesy of Longzero

A new writer’s best bet is to pitch the front-of-the-book section called On the Road, which includes short travel-related roundups, interviews, hotel and museum openings, neighborhood rundowns, etc. I sat down with the On the Road editor, Dan Warrick, last week and he shared some tips on pitching etiquette.

• Forget the old model: cover letter, attached queries, full set of clips, and a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Send an email instead.
• Call the magazine to get the email address of the best person to send pitches to (it’s very unprofessional to send an email blast to every editor on staff!) Ask for the writer’s guidelines and what issue is being assigned. Then pitch to a later issue.
• In your first email, introduce yourself quickly. It doesn’t matter whether you start or end with your bio; you just need to sell your idea and you as a writer. Have a specialty? Say so.
• Show that you’ve read the magazine. Small gestures like “for your trailblazer section” will let an editor know that you’re planning on the magazine’s own terms and not just striving to sell a story on a cherished topic.
• Make up your mind. Shotgun-blast pitches with loads of scattered ideas will just overwhelm an editor. Focus on one section and don’t pitch more than five topics at once.
• Keep your pitches brief but dense with relevant detail. Research just enough to sound authoritative, compose your pitch, then go back and cut needless words.
• Don’t play peekaboo with key facts. It’s unlikely that a magazine will steal your idea and if you’re unwilling to spell out the details of your idea, you won’t have a chance of landing the assignment. Give away the good stuff.
• Write well. Match the length and depth of the pitch to the kind of assignment you’re hoping to get (e.g., don’t write hundreds of words for a piece that will run very short in the magazine). Show–with active verbs and precise nouns–that you’re in control of the language.
• Don’t try too hard. You don’t have to compose snappy headlines or cute come-ons. Lead with strong facts and keep the blurbs tight.
• Proofread, or get someone else to proofread for you. Giving an appearance of grammatical ignorance or simple sloppiness is a fatal mistake.
• Attach just a few clips that are most relevant to what the magazine prints. Be sure they’re clear and easy to read. Live web links are an alternative.
• Cite your blog or Web site only if it’s elegantly designed, cogently composed, and wholly up to date. Remember, you’re trying to get an editor to trust you. If your last entry was a year ago–or even four months ago–skip it.

Of course, underlying it all is your idea, which must wow an editor while fitting the magazine’s scope. Even OTR receives hundreds of proposals annually but only has the ability to assign a dozen or so freelance pieces every two months–less than 100 a year. Most assignments are between 100 and 200 words, so don’t get your hopes up too high, but hey it’s a start. Read the magazine, read the magazine, read the magazine (and in Via’s case get out there and explore) and you’ll be on your way to successful pitching.

Guisepi Spadafora of Freeteaparty.org infuses community cup by cup

By Serena Renner

A man’s voice sounded from inside the short white school bus. “Free tea!” the voice declared to the outside world passing by. Guisepi sat perched on a cooler, tending a kettle of tea. He looked so comfortable in his makeshift kitchen of storage tubs and wooden shelves that you could actually believe he had spent the last four years trekking up and down the West Coast serving free tea.

It was a warm night in Eureka, California when I met Guisepi. The streets were teeming with people for the monthly Arts Alive! event. I almost kept walking, eager to check out the next gallery, until I peeked inside the bus and was offered my first cup.

“What kind of tea would you like?” Guisepi asked graciously. I was taken aback that a perfect stranger was not only serving me free tea but also giving me a choice. I asked what kind was already on the stove, to which he replied “green.”

“Green sounds perfect,” I responded, still unsure about what kind of bus I had stepped into.

Guisepi has served over 5,200 cups of tea in the past four years. PHOTO/JACKIE SNOW

Guisepi was a tall man in his late twenties. He could have passed as a waiter taking custom orders in his brown slacks and navy button-up shirt and vest if it weren’t for the long dark hair, mustache and glinting salmon handkerchief that suggested a more gypsy-like existence.

But Guisepi’s not your typical van dweller either. He does video editing, carpentry and other odd jobs to deck out his tea bus “Special Edna” and pay for his time on the road. He’s well spoken, animated and works hard to gain sponsorship from a variety of organic tea companies. Mostly, he’s just a generous host who enjoys mixing a hodgepodge of people and witnessing the result.

The tea parties started in 2005 on the streets of Hollywood Boulevard, where Guisepi would serve food and tea off the tailgate of his truck. What began as a defense against the loneliness associated with being on the road, he realized, was also a way to break down barriers of race and social class, uniting people of all colors and creeds in dialogue around steamy pots of tea.

He noticed community forming between a mish-mash of cultures right there on the pavement, and people left more energized and inspired to create positive change of their own.

These experiences motivated Guisepi to invest in a school bus and dedicate his life to hosting tea parties in every city he visits. He’s served over 5,200 cups out of his four-wheeled tea house to date from San Francisco’s Tenderloin District to Reggae on the River, and he can’t wait for the day Edna is ready to voyage cross country.

The bus’s brewing station surrounded by donated materials. PHOTO/JACKIE SNOW

It’s not an accident that tea has played the central role in all these interactions, Guisepi says. Many cultures from England to China already incorporate free tea parties into their daily lives to slow down, take a break and connect with people on a common level.

“That’s why tea came to me in that fashion,” Guisepi said. “Tea just is that. I’m only helping bring tea culture to North America.”

On this particular night, a group of high school kids, a dreadlocked man and his girlfriend, four women in their early twenties, an old bearded man playing a bongo drum and a Hispanic cook who hardly spoke any English all shared opinions and inspiration.  The bearded man even laid out plans for his idea of serving tofu burgers out of a van.

A fellow tea drinker appearing out of the steam. PHOTO/JACKIE SNOW

As the group was dispersing for the night, Guisepi pulled out a paper bag full of misprinted tea from Traditional Medicinals. He encouraged every one to take a bag or two — but only if they promised to share it with a stranger.

I took two and I keep them in my purse at all times as a constant reminder to be open to new experiences, to spark conversation with people I don’t know and to treat every situation as an opportunity to host a free tea party of my own.

You can find Guisepi and Edna every Tuesday in the Arcata plaza, at the next Arts Alive! event in Eureka or in a city near you (check Free Tea Party’s blog for exact dates and locations).

Change.org is hiring full-time bloggers to write about social causes from human rights to environmental issues to social entrepreneurship. Best of all, positions are paid and your posts would be viewed by over a million users. Check out the ad here.

MediaBistro also recently launched a user-generated blog “We the ‘Bistro” which allows any one to submit posts via email to a large audience of fellow media professionals. You can submit photos, video or anything relevant to media workers. I just sent in an old Meridian post to the email address post@mediabistro.posterous.com just to get my name out there and see how it works.

I hope to open up Meridian in a similar fashion so that readers can email posts containing their work or musings on issues facing young journalists. We’ve also been talking about starting up a guest post series to add more voices to this blog, so look out for that in the coming weeks!

Aitamurto is researching the way crowd funding and crowd sourcing change the journalistic process, and as both an intern and reporter for Spot.Us, I wanted to share my experience. First, I want to make one very important disclaimer:  I’m a young reporter with little experience in the “traditional journalism” field. As such, I don’t have much to compare Spot.Us with. I also have a unique set of interests (i.e. getting my piece published in print because for some reason that still seems to matter in the job world) which a more established journalist may  not worry about. I think the Spot.Us experience is different for each reporter, but here are the things I discovered along the way:

Transparency

Spot.Us was built out of founder David Cohn‘s desire to pitch stories to the world and get the public more involved in journalism, rather than have the whole process occur behind closed doors between a reporter and editor. With this goal comes transparency, where every thing from pitching, to fundraising, to investigative research happens in public domain. Cohn often echoes the sentiment of David Weinberger when he says “transparency is the new objectivity,” helping news organizations gain trust and credibility in the “age of links.”

Transparency also leads to another one of Cohn’s motos: “journalism is a process, not a product.” While media outlets have traditionally tried to cram all relevant information into one finished piece, web technology like comments and blogging  allow for continuous reporting that exposes facts and perspectives as they come to light, creating a more complete picture of a story than say one article with a limited word count can produce.

Collaboration

Another strength of the Spot.Us model is the potential for collaboration. Spot.Us strives to be a platform to connect reporters, news organizations and the public in a symbiotic relationship, where the community can help source information and fund stories they care about, the reporter can sift through facts and breaks down issues, and the news organization can score a quality investigative article with the help of public funds. While I didn’t witness a whole lot of collaboration with my story in particular, all one needs to do is look at the long list of donors and read the thread of comments on the investigation into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to see Spot.Us’ potential to galvanize the public around an issue of interest.

Personal Benefits for a Young Reporter

Some of you may be thinking that transparency and collaboration are all fine and dandy, but how does Spot.Us help freelancers in today’s tough economy? First, I think it’s easier to get an “in” with Spot.Us than with a traditional media outlet. While Spot.Us still has some editorial control about pitches they accept, the organization tries not to be exclusive and will take chances on good ideas, even if you’re young or your credentials are not entirely in line. Some may argue that this is a weakness, but it definitely helps young, ambitious reporters get a foot in the door, and through transparency, reporters will be held accountable.

The pay’s not bad either. If you can last the time it takes to fundraise, you will be rewarded with competitive freelance rates. I also didn’t have to go through the sometimes grueling pitching process! Cohn pretty much single-handedly promoted my story and used his connections to get it placed in a paper. I question whether I could have been published if I would have pitched the story on my own.

Room for Improvement

In the spirit of transparency, let me also share a few areas I think could use some improvement.

Outreach

As it stands, fundraising through Spot.Us is usually a pretty slow process only suitable for long-term investigations rather than more “news worthy” issues. There are often many communities and nonprofit organizations interested in the issues at hand, but due to limited staffing, these groups are not always taken advantage of.

News organizations are also hesitant to make partnerships with Spot.Us, possibly out of discomfort with being transparent since they’ve historically been concerned about being “scooped” or beaten to a story by a competing news organization. I think other news outlets see Spot.Us as an unnecessary middle man between the reporter and editor without seeing the added value of transparency and collaboration that Spot.Us can create.

Editorial Oversight

I think one of Spot.Us’ greatest challenges is its nonprofit status and subsequent lack of adequate staffing. While I think Cohn, with the help of Kara Andrade and others, has done an incredible job creating the organization from scratch, things like editorial oversight and fact-checking can be left up to “peer editors” or no one at all if a news organizations does not step in, which could compromise the accuracy of a story and the credibility of the organization.

Organizational Structure

Lastly, I think more emphasis needs to be placed on creating a more streamlined organizational structure through a defined business-development plan. It seems like stories are often tackled on a case-by-case basis in terms of fundraising, promotion, publication, and distribution rather than undergoing a consistent process from pitch to publication. I was initially wary about Spot.Us’ recent expansion to Los Angeles without all the organization ducks in a row; however, I think working with the USC Annenberg School of Journalism will be a great opportunity to bring more staff and student volunteers into the fold and hopefully help Spot.Us create a more sustainable structure the any city can replicate in the future.

This is the kind of journalism I want to one day produce–the gripping, heartfelt stories of injustice that draw people in through sight, sound and subject matter. My eyes were glued to the screen. Check the videos out here. This is a story that needs to be told.