(photo: sixth from right)

Biography

Curtis Gilbert, 27, studied communication and music at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., and worked at radio stations and newspapers during summers. Following graduation, he spent two years in collegiate fundraising, before landing a job as a producer at Minnesota Public Radio. Curtis produces a daily news and information program for MPR, as well as a nationally distributed public affairs program for its sister company, American Public Media. Both programs are long-form; they devote an entire hour to a single topic. Curtis will use his Burns Fellowship to focus on short-form work, covering news stories as a reporter, rather than crafting programs as a producer. He looks forward to hearing his voice on the radio, after three years spent mainly behind the scenes. When not at work, Curtis amuses himself trying out the elaborate recipes he finds in cooking magazines, strumming his guitar and volunteering with the alumni department at his alma mater.

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Final Report

Thoughts on leaving Germany

As I start this, I’m on a train to Hamburg, listening to sad country music and feeling wistful. My two months are up, and I’m going home. I’m supposed to be writing an essay on the Deutsche Welle placement, full of practical advice for the future fellows and the International Center for Journalists, which administers the program. I’ll get to that a little farther down the page. But first, a more personal reflection.
There’s a great line in this song:
When you run, make sure you run
to something and not away from...
'cause nothing happens that doesn't happen there

There were times I wondered if it was all a big mistake. There was that first awkward meeting in the hotel lobby, when it seemed everyone was more accomplished than me, with fluent German and few blank pages left in their passports.

"Why did they accept me?" I wondered as I stood there chatting with the Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent and the Capitol bureau chief in my thrift store jacket and tie. “How long will it take everyone to figure out that I’m a fraud?”

But as the week in Washington wore on, I managed to mute my insecurities. Frank, who founded the fellowship 20 years ago and still runs it, said in his opening remarks that “the relationships that develop this week will rival marriage.” That drew nervous chuckles from the assembled fellows, particularly the married ones. But he wasn’t far off.

It’s not often in life that you find yourself in a group of people your age, all embarking on the same adventure at the same time. The first day of kindergarten, of high school, of college. Almost every close friendship I have was born in one of those places. The situations are scary and exciting, and everyone realizes it will be easier to get through the ordeal with a buddy, or better yet a few. People open up to each other. They tell stories. They drop their pretensions and expose their vulnerabilities. That’s how you make friends. A little alcohol doesn’t hurt either.

Orientation was over too fast and I was wisked by plane to Frankfurt, by train to Bonn and by foot to the filthy and charmless dormitory that would be my home for the next two months. There again, I lucked out. My roommate and I happened to share the exact same constellation of hobbies: cooking, guitar playing and poker (in that order.) He instantly integrated me into his social life, which was like being back in college—another one of those special friend-making times.

Then there was the Deutsche Welle. It started out a little like the orientation—awkward and intimidating—but luckily it ended up the almost as well. (This is where I’ll shift over to the practical advice for some future fellow.)

The first thing you need to know about Deutsch Welle is that it’s huge. It broadcasts in 30 different languages and occupies eight maze-like buildings connected by a series of bridges. I was one of two fellows assigned to the English language service, and we were greeted by Rina, a fast-talking, fast-walking, five-foot-tall dynamo, who speaks English without the trace of a German accent. Chinese, too, apparently.

Rina has a big job. Her primary responsibility is a 25-minute-long news and public affairs show called NewsLink, which is updated every two hours, 24-hours-a-day. Deutsche Welle also has a separate features department whose programs fill out the second half of every hour. They do a science show, an environment show, a business show, a culture show, an arts show and so forth.

To fill up all this air time, both the news and features departments employ a surprising number of interns, trainees and freelancers. This is good for Burns fellows, because it means the organization is used to having people show up for a few months, do a few stories and then disappear back to their previous lives.  It also means that you’ll find yourself in a group of young people who are new to Germany (or at least new to Bonn) and eager to make friends. It’s a little like the fellowship orientation in that respect.

The downside of joining Deutsche Welle’s transient staff is that you’ll find yourself immediately lumped in with the many interns. The trick is to prove that you are not just another college student there to see what journalism is all about. You’ve actually done this before. You know what will make a good story, how to find sources, how to write a script and how to produce a piece that will make them proud.

“You can do stories here, hmmm,” Rina told us. “But you need to come up with pitches.” And I found out the hard way that if I didn’t pitch them anything, they would happily let me sit around all day doing nothing.

“So, is there anything that I could do to be of help?” I asked on my third day there.

“Nothing comes to mind,” said the producer on duty.

It also took me a little while to figure out what kinds of stories they would like. Several of my early pitches were dismissed for these reasons:

"We've already done it."
"It's more of a U.S. story."
"There's not really a good peg for it."

I was pretty discouraged at first, but just like Frank said, this would change. After a few strike-outs, they finally went for one of my pitches. Then another. And before long, they were pitching me stories.

This is an important thing for future fellows to remember: despite their initial hesitancy, Deutsche Welle has a big incentive to use you. You cost them nothing, and once you prove you’re competent, they will want to get as much work out of you as possible. Every minute of radio you give them is a minute they don’t need to buy from a freelancer. In general this is great, but make sure you’re not letting them exploit you.

I learned to say ‘no’ to them at the Frankfurt auto show. I was there to do a quick-turnaround for NewsLink: arrive when the doors open at 9 a.m., and zip back a story for the 3 p.m. news. The producer wanted something that would give people the flavor of the show, rather than dwelling on the official theme of fuel efficiency.

I gathered my tape, banged out my script and I was running back to the Deutche Welle van to transmit my story when my cell phone rang. It was one of the features producers asking if I wouldn’t mind doing an auto show story for his show as long as I was there. And the angle he wanted was exactly the one NewsLink wanted me to avoid: green machines. That would have meant going back to the convention hall and starting from scratch. I checked my e-mail and another features producer had sent me a note asking if I could do a story for her, too.

I was about to say ‘yes’ to both of them, and then I stopped myself. What exactly would I get out of doing three stories on the Frankfurt auto show? It wouldn’t be fun. I wouldn’t put more than one of them on my reel, and on top of that I was coming down with an awful cold. I fought the reflex to be accommodating and politely begged off.

On balance, I had a great experience at Deutsche Welle and I would recommend it to any Burns Fellow interested in broadcasting. The people there are friendly and easy going, and they will let you go on the radio a lot. They are also really good about paying for travel if a story brings you to another city.

The place isn’t perfect, though. Because they have a lot of programs to fill up, their editorial process is not what you would call rigorous. In fact they don’t have editors at all, just producers who have their hands full just getting the programs on the air. So don’t be surprised when you hand them a script, and they give it a cursory once over, hand it back to you and say: “Looks good!” While this makes it easy for the reporter in some ways, it probably doesn’t lend itself to the best final product.

But I can’t complain. I got to do lots of stories, and I am pretty proud of most them. But those minutes of tape aren’t nearly as precious to me as the social aspect of the fellowship was. I made more new friends during those two months than I have in a long time, and I hope to still be in touch with those people long after the Deutsche Welle stories have drifted off my reel.