Today, St Patty’s Day, I have three stories on the web. Two of these are breaking fluff pieces on Beer.
Breaking fluff are stories that follow the calender. For St Patty’s day that means a story on beer. For Valentines it could be a story on love or chocolate. I think you get the idea.
Rather than write about each story individually, I’ll just link back to the two stories I did on seed; one on the health benefits of beer and the other a feature on ethanol fuel.
What I will go into more detail about is the Beer story I wrote for Wired News, because there is an interesting little tid-bit which I left out of the story (This Green Beer’s The Real Deal) but is very relevant to this blog.
While working on my Greenpoint beat for Columbia J-school I was informed that the Brooklyn Brewery is %100 wind powered. I saved that information and when St Patty’s day came around I thought it would make for an interesting piece on environmentally friendly brewed beer.
While interviewing the president of the Brooklyn Brewery, Steve Hindy, I noticed his answers were all very reporter friendly. It was almost as if he anticipated the details to questions that I was going to follow up with next.
Perhaps Hindy did anticipate them, since it turned out that he was a reporter himself. Our conversation turned to how he started the Brooklyn Brewery and sure enough, Hindy discovered his love for brewing while he was on his beat as a reporter. He started out with small newspapers and, if memory serves me, he was working for Newsday when he became a foreign correspondent.
He was working in Muslim countries, where buying beer is outlawed, and that’s why he began brewing his own beer. When he returned to the states he kept on brewing himself and eventually decided to leave the journalism business for the beer industry.
Being a nice guy and a former journalist Steve was a pleasure to interview. He even helped me with some research by photocopying stories from Beer industry magazines on environmentally friendly beer.
(Side note: Isn’t it interesting that every business has an industry mag — once I saw a pizza delivery industry mag).
If any journalists are reading this, I think Steve’s story is somewhat inspirational. Although he isn’t a practicing journalist anymore, it was while on the job that he discovered his love for brewing beer. Who knows, maybe I’ll find out that I want to be in the crayon business one day. At least with journalism every story is an opportunity to learn something new and uncover a new interest.