Gainful Employment

I do it for the…

How does working feel when it’s not for the money? As a reporter, sometimes, pretty good. A few Fridays ago after printing a respectable issue of the UB Post, I sat with my colleagues drinking a cold Chinngis ale at a beer garden. Journalism can’t get too much better.

We passed around photos, talked about travel and I heard the story of the UB Post employee who went on vacation and never came back. “He’s probably fixing roofs somewhere,” Sumiya (my editor) said.

However, as a journalist when things go badly, you find a calculator and add up how much you make. Assuming I work 50 hour weeks, I make $1.26 an hour. My Dad made $2.25 an hour at his first job, but he told me, back then a quarter bought a gallon of gas. He reminded me that my mother and he make much less than that working at our family café.

Mislead

Plenty can go wrong at an English-language weekly newspaper in Mongolia. I nearly sent my first rewritten UB Post story to the edited file with a newly added introduction: ‘Malaysia’s deputy Prime Minister (whose name again appeared in connection to a Mongolian model murder drama) is on the lam.’ I thought the author buried the lead, but I had actually invented it.

Malaysia’s number two politician probably sat in his office or spoke at a press conference while I wrote—the private detective who accused him of ties to the murder, then quickly recanted, was the missing man in the story. Somehow I confused the two. Thanks to this article’s international implications, some time on google revealed my mistake. For stories pertaining exclusively to Mongolia, however, English sources are rare and facts often difficult to check.

From Worse to Worser

Articles with less globally significant content can present other problems. Three weeks ago I reviewed a Mediterranean restaurant in Ulaanbaatar where the all-female kitchen staff tried their best, the owner took pride in her work, and the food just was not very good. I wrote a luke warm review. The meal cost $40 and now there’s a city block I avoid.

Then occasionally you get a stretch like two weeks ago when nothing seemed to go right. I missed a concert after failing to get an early ride back from a sporting event I covered; the internet went down; the office network went down; the printer didn’t print. I finished two of my four stories and we turned the paper in three hours late with less than half of it copy edited.

I looked at it the next day and realized that the front page’s weather, currency exchanges and teasers for stories inside the edition were identical to the week before. I felt grateful that journalism is a dying profession.

I Amar(k)huu I am

But, with a little distance, I forgot about what went wrong. Did I get to ask interesting people questions last week? Did I watch Mongolia’s fourth national triathlon championships? Did I to listen to and not understand a press conference with Russian Idol winner Amarkhuu? Yes I did. You can read about it in the UB Post.

Maybe things never go smoothly at a weekly and at least that always keeps life moving. If it ran at an even pace, I’ probably complain about boredom.

The Best things in life are 3 (uneditored)

This week Sumiya took his annual holiday, which left three of us (Mongolian journalist Bulgamaa, Aussie English Editor Kirril, and American reporter and layout person me) to put together a newspaper. Once Sumiya tastes freedom he may never come back. Luckily the newspaper owns his apartment.

I’m finishing this post at 10:30 pm after sending the paper to the presses. It wasn’t a disaster. We had mishaps, some heated exchanges, and 13^th hour layout help from the photo department. We sent the issue off 3 and-a-half hours late, but I’ll deliver papers tomorrow at noon just like last week.

Working over 40 hours the last three days, time never passed faster. Admittedly I was beat every night at home, but thinking about it now, I felt really good to accomplish something—maybe all the more when that something landed me a dollar and a quarter per hour.