Margaret was kind enough to answer your final questions via email and asked me to share them with you.

Q: Hello, I wanted to know how long have you been a reporter? And my next question is that what challenges have you had to deal with since coronavirus has affected us? I enjoyed to learn more about journalism and it was very helpful.

 

Reply

A: Hi, thank you for your question. I’ve been a reporter for 32 years, a long time! Reporting news and storytelling has been my lifetime work, and sometimes it has amazed me that I got paid all these years to do what I love. I am grateful for that.

Coronavirus has changed everything. For one thing, so many events and activities have been cancelled. So no covering those community activities we normally would have. It’s also meant writing all the time about the virus, masks, the numbers. I’m as sick of the virus as everyone else, and I’m sick of writing about it, and I, like everyone else, wish we could have normal again. It hasn’t been that big a deal in terms of meeting up with people for interviews. We just social distance and mask.

October 13, 2020 at 12:04 am | Permalink | Edit

hlu13 Q: Hello, It really took me a long time to read your blog, I can see you are a very careful and passionate journalism. I want to ask you that in this industry, do you prefer to write hot topic or something less popular but true? Also, what do you think of some international political issues, such as the trade sanctions imposed by the United States on China? Do you take the initiative to find out what people in China or even other countries think? Thank you!

A:  I like covering hard news and breaking news, although I’m not big on crime, police and the courts, which I did a lot of in my early years. Right now I like covering Local government and the projects that are undertaken so people know how their local services are being improved to make life better for them. I very much enjoy covering community events as a feature, but those have been shut down by the virus.

I don’t cover any international news now. When I did, in Caracas, I covered what people said on many sides, it might be a Japanese minister talking about their mining investment in Venezuela, or someone from the World Bank talking about the urgency of third world debt, or a Venezuelan finance minister attacking first world countries for devaluation of the local currency, or an American oil executive saying the Venezuelan national oil industry should privatize some locations.

 

If I were writing a big picture piece on U.S. trade policy for the New York Times, yes I would solicit opinions from the relevant countries, but that’s not something I’ve ever written.