Well, maybe a little.

But it’s also further schooling in areas I hadn’t specifically studied, so I guess there’s no harm in juggling what is essentially a full time job and a class. Doubling my workload while I’m at it. And subjecting me to twice the time pressures. On the other hand, given the circumstances of the offer, if it works out, how could I resist?

Does this all sound cryptic? Well, as others may note, dem’s the breaks. Needless to say, I’m a glutton for punishment, a mental masochist. And apparently someone who doesn’t treasure sleep as much as he should.

In other news, um, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick $u><0rz d00d!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’d be pure folly to say that I’ll be writing here regularly from now on, not after I sort of dropped out for about four months, but it might be nice to drop in every now and then. Time progresses, and the world has seen tectonic shifts, as has to a smaller extent the city I came to start writing about. Perhaps I’ll be able to document it again, albeit from a different angle. It’s amazing though that, prior to certain engagements, I had no idea how much the city depended on the financial sector, and yet how finance may help squelch the flavour and much of the fun out of the place. More on that later, but for now, a quick signoff.

Before I get to those, though, I'd just recommend that everyone pick up a copy of this month's Esquire and read "The School", by New York Times Moscow correspondent C.J. Chivers. While, contra Esquire's assertion that it's the most horrific terror attack of our time, it certainly is one of the most brutal, one that shows how violence begets violence and yet how none of this is done without reason. And Chivers covers it in riveting detail, all blood and sweat and cordite.

His writing style is not mine, but it is wholly appropriate–spare, clean–and cinematic. Perhaps most importantly, as much as any of the "New New Journalists" he backs everything up with comprehensive reporting. As he told MediaBistro:

Every day, whether the subject you are after is familiar or unfamiliar, you go around or call around or email around and ask people to tell you what they know, what they saw, what they heard, what they think. You ask them why any of it is important or interesting. You ask them to tell you how they know what they're telling you. And you ask them to tell you what they don't know, what they didn't see, what they didn't hear, so you can establish the limits of their knowledge. You ask them if there is anyone else you should be talking to and how to be in touch with them. You ask them if there is corroborating material to what they say. Documents? Video? Tape? Transcript? Other witnesses or participants or victims or victors? You ask them what's the best resource out there for understanding the thing you think you're writing about. (It might be an old lawsuit, or a union contract, a book of regulations, a copy of a budget or a medical record; it might be a poem or a local historian or archivist. It could be a family photo album. It could be anything. It could be many things. But there is usually something.)

If you don't know them already, you say: How do you spell your name? What's your date of birth? Where are you from? What's your job? What's your phone number and email address so I can check up on this on deadline if I'm going to use it? There are variations on this, of course, ways to keep pressure on people who need the pressure, to show you can see fishhooks in the bait and that you have no tolerance for error; there is no time today to list them all, and you get the idea.

Then, no matter how the interview went, you thank them.

Then, when you have done enough of this that you feel solid about what you've got, you go back to your laptop, think it through, back check it, talk it over with your editors, write it up, trim 10 or 15 or 25 percent so it's tighter, fact-check it and email it to the desk.

Then you get edited, maybe for a few hours, maybe for a few weeks, but eventually it's done to your desk's satisfaction, and it drops. Then you begin the next chase. That's what we do.

The Washington Post's Peter Carlson raves about the piece, and I agree. Going where I'm going, there are two obvious paths. There is the newsroom reporter who works the phones and ventures to lunches and comes home with callouses and paper cuts and perhaps a sore shoulder from cradling a phone in the crook of his shoulder. Then there is the correspondent, who heads out again and again to the action and the fury, seeing the chaos with his own eyes, sitting down with the witnesses, shellshocked or vain or, most often, simply there.

This is gross oversimplification and romanticising, of course, and both have their role to play. Still, as traditioanl journalism jostles against so-called citizen journalism and bloggers, each having their merits, it is worth remembering that reporters have the role of professional witness, taking and dispensing testimony in situations few people possess the means or sanity to go to. Chivers is but one of many who embodies this, and it is a standard I look up to.

At Lincoln Center last week, his N.Y.U. graduation ceremony had to compete with the hoopla over the emergence of David Blaine from a water-filled sphere. With graduate school and his first stories … now behind him, we hope that Michael — like Mr. Blaine — can take a moment to come up for air.

Ain't that enough to make a guy feel all warm and fuzzy inside and make the 4:30 a.m. alarms worth it? Other than the sheer thrill and satisfaction of doing what I do best, of course. Next stop, though: my own e-mail address. And more stories, of course. 

Of course, I’ll be heading to the ceremony pretty much straight from work, a situation funny only because it was made possible by this program, and sort of dampens any elation from formally concluding it. I guess in a sense, I’d already made my peace with having graduated, and the most important things–my friends, my mentors, my skills–are what stick with me the most.

Anywho, carry on.

Folks, it’s easy. It’s “de la”, not “De La”, which is not only incorrect, but an aesthetic dagger to my heart. I’ll have to look into seeing whether that can be corrected in future bylines by having the “de la” printed in lower case next time.

Of course, 99 percent of the population will tell me to shut the hell up about this, so what do I know?

1. the dean of Columbia Business School
2. former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers
3. a former candidate for Alan Greenspan’s replacement as Federal Reserve chair, snubbed for Ben S. Bernanke
4. incapable of expressing his feelings outside of a Police song

Disclaimer: this post has nothing to do with bumping up traffic for any particular blog. Nothing at all.