The past two weeks (June 14 - 28)

The past two weeks are interesting, but not much related to my training plan.
I had a chance to do a story on the local income statistics release in the early days of the first week. The procedure of doing stories here is similar with what I'm used to back home (interviewing researchers or professors and putting together the most useful information in a logical way), but due to my English listening problems, it's a bit challenging for me to communicate with economics professors through phone. The most difficult part, as always, is writing, which is no longer one with straightforward lead after the Internet rises nowadays. It took me two hours but I still failed to figure out an acceptable featurish lead. I felt ashamed (also, of course, guilty, in Gary's words). I had no way out and finally submitted my version to the editor, who made an eight-word lead for me. It's good, at least to me, not only for its succinctness, but its being meaningful. It may be the shortest lead under my byline: The first quarter wasn't kind to Minnesota's wallet (http://www.twincities.com/ci_12625456?IADID=Search-www.twincities.com-www.twincities.com).
The rest of the two weeks have gone as usual, with me reading the pioneer press newspaper trying to find out interest and thought-provoking stuff, discussing such topics as Iran with my colleages and reading books. I happened to buy a book called Bias, an old book by Bernard Goldberg published in early 2000s on liberal bias in the US media. I've glanced through some chapters and found it interesting and provocative.