Monday morning I went to the EPA to talk to a guy about what they’re up to with the e-waste situation, and I got some mostly good info. They’ve got a strategy that has not been approved yet. From what the guy said, the issue has been on the table even before the Greenpeace report a year ago, and I feel like more than a year is sufficient even for a bureaucracy to approve a plan of some sort. But he seemed nice and shared most of what he knew with me, although he did not email me the power point he told he’d share with me, so in general not the most helpful of people. He also told me he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be talking to me, which is mostly his problem (his boss said answer all the questions, but he wasn’t sure he was supposed to answer directly to me or send them back to the boss). So he asked me to let him see the story before it went to print – which honestly I don’t think I have a too-big problem with, because letting him see it and letting him change it are different things, and if I got a name or fact wrong I’m happy to correct it if it seems like I actually got it wrong. That might just be my natural affinity for bureaucrats though. Anyway, I made sure to run the idea by my editor first, and he said no absolutely not, so it’s mostly a lesson for the EPA guy not to trust the press.
The story got rushed to print for Tuesday because I got scooped by the London Times, which printed this story: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6718658.ece. So that story got altered a bit and coupled with mine, and made the centerfold of the paper Tuesday morning (this is very exciting, because along with the front and back pages, the centerfold is the only page in color, and it got a tag on the cover saying where to turn for the story). I’m terribly excited about it and bought an extra copy to bring home. (It would have been several extra copies, but my money’s pretty tight in the last three days. If I get specific requests by the time I leave work, I’ll consider buying a couple more, but the story should be online for interested parties to print out a copy.) I’ve got the byline and half credit on the pictures – my neighbor Tony did the actual snapping, so I can’t take credit for framing, but I told him what and where to take and picked out the good ones, so I felt ok taking half credit.
I feel sort of bad about the headline though – I don’t get to write the headline (in fact I don’t get final say over any of the copy, so some of the words are not my own), and the headline is “EPA appears helpless” (connected to the previous story’s headline, “UK linked to e-waste dump in Ghana”). I don’t know if “helpless” is the word I would have used – more glacially slow.
That took up most of my day and was exciting enough so that I didn’t feel the need to do anything else blogworthy : ) Fell asleep by around 8pm and only half woke up when Matt called. I hope he and his grandparents and brother are having a lovely time with my kitties and apartment, which I look forward to seeing soon.
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