When my husband was working for himself, he wrote up a summary of what he had accomplished at the end of the year. Without a manager and without anyone evaluating your work, it’s easy to think that you’ve gone through the year doing everything right, or worse still, nothing at all.
So, I decided to try and summarize what I accomplished this year, as well as set a couple goals for next year.
In 2010 I:
- made The New York Times most e-mailed list a few times
- reported from Denmark for The New York Times about their advanced health IT system and contrasted it with the U.S. system.
- wrote a challenging piece about Amish farmers. It was *extremely* difficult to get interviews with the farmers.
- did a fun story about offshore wind power, and the rivalry between states vying for rights to build the offshore farms.
- temporarily wrote Henry Fountain’s Observatory column in Science Times while he was off covering the massive BP oil spill. I officially took over the column in the fall.
- was discussed on Rush Limbaugh's talk show for a piece I wrote on gas prices.
- started writing obituaries on famous scientists for The Washington Post. These are advance obits. So yes, though it’s a little creepy, the people I write about are still alive and the pieces are kept on file until they are needed.
- did a couple pieces for Yoga Journal, where my friend Carmel Wroth works. They'll be in print early next year.
- started using the funding from my Kaiser Media Fellowship, which is to study how privacy is affected by developments in health technology. I'm using it to produce stories for KALW. The first of those recently came out.
- had a few fellowships: Aside from Kaiser, I was also funded this year through a Metcalf Fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in Rhode Island and a McCloy Fellowship from the American Council on Germany.
Some goals for next year include:
- Doing more local radio, and trying my hand at pieces for national shows.
- Reporting from abroad. I’ll be winding down most of my projects in March for a few months but I’m hoping I’ll be able to do at least one outstanding international piece in 2011.
- Pitching to magazines. I haven’t really attempted to explore the world of magazine journalism, but I’d like to give it a try next year.
