Around 8 a.m. EDT, from his home in Reston, Virginia, my co-conspirator Steve sent an email informing the country's public radio and TV stations that the "Census of Journalists" was now open for business.
There was an immediate rush to the online site. And immediately there was trouble.
Immediately there was trouble...
Around 5 a.m. MDT, at their headquarters in Denver, Colorado, our vendor SurveyGizmo apparently lost their "response processor."
When I logged on, around 7 a.m. PDT, from my home in Santa Barbara, I was unable to see any census traffic whatsoever.
Freak out.
This is a national project on which I've been spending all waking hours since the contracts were signed in late June. The idea is to count the number of journalist dedicated to local news and public affairs at U.S. public broadcast stations. Two veteran consultants, Steve Martin and Ken Mills, and I are toiling for Public Radio News Directors Inc. PRNDI is on contract to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
Today, after weeks of countdown messaging -- and every possible beta-test -- we finally launched. Live! Online! Nationwide! My very career lashed to this census project!
My very career lashed to this census project!
I called Denver in a hurry. There had to be data. They better see them even if I couldn't.
In fact, I could see from our supplemental survey (an add-on survey built on SurveyMonkey and linked to our census so that when respondents finished at one site they are redirected to the other) that we had already received over 40 responses to the supplemental. No doubt the actual census numbers were even higher. But were people just filing their numbers in space? Would we have to call a "do over" on our first day?
Embarrassment pending.
Well, I was assured the data was somewhere. Yet it would be several nerve-wracking hours before I had actual proof. (Finally: actual data around 4:30 p.m. EDT!)
Thanks to Farland at Survey Gizmo's hotline for keeping me calm. But in the future, I might prefer the 'Monkey to the 'Gizmo.
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