CJR每月編譯：8歲女孩的記者夢／朱弘川編譯

HILDE LYSIAK HOPPED ON HER BIKE and pedaled south past the old Selinsgrove Inn, past the farmers market with the Amish couple selling home-grown veggies and pies, past the local police station where no one was around to answer the door, and over the green truss bridge above Penns Creek before hanging a right onto a shady road that hugs the river. It was a brilliant July Saturday morning in Selinsgrove, a quaint hamlet of about 5,000 in Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River Valley, where Hilde publishes Selinsgrove’s only monthly newspaper, The Orange Street News.

Hilde跳上她的腳踏車，往舊的錫林斯格羅夫（Selinsgrove）旅館的南邊騎去，途中經過了由孟諾教派（Amish）夫妻，所經營的蔬菜及餡餅的農夫市場、看來空無一人的警察局，和以及賓州溪谷（Penns Creek）上面的綠色桁架橋後，再右轉進入靠近小河的幽暗小路上。這一天是7月的某個星期六早晨，錫林斯格羅夫──一個位於賓州的薩斯奎漢納河谷（Susquehanna River Valley），約有5千人的的村莊。當地唯一的報紙就是Hilde發行的「橘街新聞」。

Today was Selinsgrove’s sixth annual Ta-Ta Trot, a 5K that drew some 2,100 runners and raised more than $71,000 to fight breast cancer—a feel-good story, for sure, but Hilde wasn’t interested. There was hard news to chase.

今天錫林斯格羅夫迎舉辦來第六屆Ta-Ta Trot 5公里路跑活動，總共吸引了2千多位參賽者報名參加，也替乳癌患者募得超過7萬1千美元。這絕對是個動人的故事，但是Hilde並不感興趣，因為還有更重要的新聞等著她。

Two days earlier, a small tornado had torn through town, toppling trees and scattering debris. The street along the river caught the brunt of it, and Hilde had come to survey the damage. She parked her bike, whipped out her Moto G Android smartphone, and started snapping pictures of downed branches and limbs. Then she walked up to a white ranch house and knocked on the door.

兩天前，一個輕度龍捲風才席捲了這個城鎮，樹木被吹倒，樹葉散落滿地，沿著河流的街道影響最為嚴重，而Hilde正前往調查災情。她把腳踏車停好，拿出手機，拍下那些散落在地的樹幹及樹枝，緊接著，她走向一間白色農場小屋，並敲了一下門。

An older man with an ample potbelly answered, and apologized for being shirtless. With a mix of affability and confusion, he looked down at the freckly blonde 8-year-old standing before him. She had her pen and pad in hand. Homemade press credentials dangled from her neck. “Hi. I’m Hilde from The Orange Street News, and I was wondering if you could tell me what happened a couple nights ago.”

一位挺著啤酒肚，為自己裸著上半身而感到難為情的老翁前來應門，一臉困惑的，但親切的看著這位站在眼前，臉上布滿雀斑的金髮8歲女孩。Hilde手裡拿著筆和墊子，一張自製的記者證懸掛在她的脖子上。「嗨，我是橘街新聞的Hilde，我想了解前幾天晚上發生了什麼事？」

He gestured to his neighbor’s property. “This gentleman over here got the worst of it,” he said. “It went through his house and then went out in the middle of the Susquehanna River and went to the south.” Hilde took notes. She asked the man for his name and spelled out the letters in her notebook: “B-O-B?M-A-Y-H-E-W.”

這位老翁指著他鄰居的領地土地說：「這位先生的損失最為嚴重」，他說道，「龍捲風穿過他的家，然後掠過薩斯奎漢納河中間往南邊移動」，Hilde記著筆記，她問了那位先生的名字後，在筆記本上寫出：「包．伯．馬．修」

She walked next door, where a bearish tattooed guy in a white tank top and shorts was outside working on his boat. “The wind kicked up like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Out of nowhere. It started to rain really, really hard. The next thing you knew, the trees from both sides of the road were blowing down. Ten seconds later, as quick as it came, it was all over.”
“Was anybody hurt?” Hilde asked.

“Nope. Within 10 minutes, I heard chainsaws abuzz and everybody was getting their stuff back in order. I lucked out real good.”

Hilde walked back to her bike and smiled. “That went really well!”

Hilde走向隔壁，一個體型魁梧，身上有刺青的男人，穿著白色背心及短褲，正在他自己的船上工作。「狂風就像這樣」，他邊說邊舞動著他的指頭，「毫無預警的，然後開始暴雨，當你意識到的時候，路旁的樹都已經被吹倒，10秒後，就像它來的速度一樣，也瞬間結束了。」

「有任何人受傷嗎？」，Hilde問道。

「沒有。10分鐘內，我聽到鋸子聲嗡嗡響，而每個人開始收拾東西，我覺得我能毫髮無傷真是太幸運了。」

Hilde走回她的腳踏車並帶著微笑，「這真是太好了！」

FOR AN INDUSTRY WITH AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE, where newspapers and newspaper jobs have been disappearing like a species on the road toward extinction, where “reporter” tends to rank low on the list of desirable careers, it feels refreshing to see someone so young so interested in journalism. But Hilde isn’t just another precocious kid with a hobby. She attends town meetings. She covers crime without the police department’s cooperation. She shows up at the scenes of breaking news events. Sure, Hilde’s far from being a pro, but she still provides a public service in a town without a dedicated local news outlet.

對於一個充滿不確定性未來的產業，報紙及新聞產業的工作，就如同某個瀕臨絕種的生物一樣。而「記者」這個職業也愈來愈難得到大眾青睞，所以看到如此年輕的小孩對於新聞採訪感興趣，真是件很新奇的事。但是Hilde不像一般早熟孩子僅把它當作一種嗜好，她出席鎮上的會議、她在沒有警察協助下報導犯罪事件，她會出現在那些即時新聞的場合裡。當然，Hilde離專業記者還有一段很長的路要走，但是在沒有當地新聞業者的幫助下，她仍然為鎮上提供一個公眾的服務。

Her newspaper began as a family digest written by hand for her parents and siblings. (Children have been making such publications for as long as crayons and scrap paper have existed.) Then, Hilde explained the night before she went out on her reporting assignments for the August issue, “I realized it wouldn’t get me anywhere.” She told her father, Matt Lysiak (that’s lee-shak), a 37-year-old journalist and former New York Daily News reporter, that she wanted to do a newspaper for real. The deal was that Hilde would be responsible for all the story ideas, writing, reporting, and photography. Matt would be her editor and handle the typing, layout, and printing. Every month, the HP 7110 in his third-floor home office spits out hundreds of pages. “I love it,” Hilde says.

Hilde的報紙，一開始只是個為她父母和兄弟姊妹而寫的家庭札記（小孩們只要有蠟筆和塗鴉本就可以做出類似的讀物）。然後有一天，當Hilde要出外尋找8月份號的題材前一晚，她解釋道：「我發現這樣的方式無法幫助我得到我想要的東西。」 所以她告訴了她的爸爸，說她想要發行真正的報紙－Hilde的父親，37歲的Matt，曾在紐約日報（New York Daily News）當過記者。，37歲的父親Matt－，說她想要發行真正的報紙。Hilde跟父親談好條件，她需要負責所有的故事構想、寫作、報導和攝影，Matt則會幫她校正，並負責打字、編排版面和印刷。此後每個月，在他家裡3樓的辦公室內，數百份的報紙就這樣被印出來了。「我喜歡這樣」，Hilde說。

 
She caught the journalism bug from her father, watching with awe and excitement as he hustled for New York’s “hometown newspaper.” She’s drawn to the profession for the same reason lots of reporters are: It’s a license to ask people nosy questions and get them to tell you things. Hilde says she loves doing interviews and coming away with “all this information.” Near term, she says, “I just want to do as many issues as possible and I want to expand. I want more people reading it.” Long term, her goals are loftier. “I don’t really want to work for a newspaper. I want to do my own. I kind of want it to become as big as the Daily News one day.” For locals, it may seem more novelty than pillar of the Fourth Estate. But if Hilde were to stick with it, The Orange Street News could evolve into something more meaningful. “People think it’s cute,” says Selinsgrove borough president Brian Farrell. “As far as being taken seriously or competing with other newspapers, I don’t know if I’d go that far. But hopefully in the future it will. She could turn it into whatever she wants.”

Hilde之所以這麼喜愛新聞是因為她的父親，她對父親能在紐約的「家鄉報」工作，覺得敬畏又興奮。Hilde響往專業的新聞領域，原因跟大多數記者一樣：這是一種特權，可以去詢問人們一些問題，並使他們回答你。Hilde說她喜歡做訪問和帶著這些「消息」離開。短期來看，她說：「我想要盡可能做很多議題，而且我想要擴展規模，我想要更多人可以讀它」。長期來看，她的目標更遠大，「我真的不想只為一個報紙工作，我想靠自己做，有朝一日能像紐約日報一樣。」

當地人看來，這感覺比第四階級的棟樑（pillar of the Fourth Estate）還要新奇。但如果Hilde想要繼續做下去，橘街新聞也許會發展成更有意義的事。「民眾覺得這很可愛」，錫林斯格羅夫區的市長Farrell說道，「只要能被認真看待，或能與其他報紙競爭，我不曉得我是否講太遠了，但希望未來是可以的，她可以把它變成任何她想要的發展。」

The Orange Street News, which debuted last December as a full-color, four-page digest folded on 11- by 17-inch sheets, was named for the street where Hilde lives in a former bed and breakfast with her mom and dad, her three sisters, and the family’s two mutts, Bismarck and Archie. It’s an impressive enterprise for someone who’s barely cracked the third grade. “All the News Fit For Orange Street,” reads the paper’s New York Times-inspired slogan. (Hat tip to Matt for that one.)

橘街新聞在去年12月第一次亮相，是個全彩色、折成11*17吋大小4頁摘要的報紙，它的名字是源於Hilde以前住的街上，那時候Hilde與她的父母、3位姊妹以及兩隻叫Bismarck和Archie的小狗都住在這。對於一個還不到3年級的小孩能做出這樣的事業是令人佩服的。橘街新聞的標語是「所有的新聞都為橘街而生」，這是一個受紐約時報所啟發的標語（這也是對Matt致敬）。

Two hundred copies of each issue are distributed around town in local businesses, like a cafe where Hilde is known to hunker down on deadline with her usual toasted bagel and side of bacon. More than 40 people pay $1 to $2 a year to have Hilde hand-deliver The Orange Street News to their doors, many of whom the Lysiaks had never heard of before subscription letters began arriving in the mail. “We are very proud of you for taking on such a big project at such a young age,” wrote Mike Garinger, who enclosed an additional $5 to help with production costs. “We look forward to new issues,” wrote Susquehanna University education professor Anne Reeves. In particular, Reeves is a fan of the recurring short story on page 2. (Recent installments: “Dolls in the Attic”; “Elephant Makes a Friend.”) “The fiction she writes is creative and sometimes spooky and somewhat dark, always interesting,” Reeves told me over email.

每一期約有200份被送到當地各個店家，有一間是Hilde很常去的咖啡店，她總是點著烤貝果及培根，在那裡趕截稿時間。每年大約有40人，會付1到2塊訂閱Hilde的橘街新聞，並請她親自送到門口，這裡面有很多都是她的父親Matt，從來沒聽過的人。「我們都為你在這年紀能有如此成就，而感到驕傲」，Mike Garinger寫道，並附上額外的5塊幫忙支出發行費用。「我們很期待看到更多新的議題」，一位薩斯奎漢納大學教育系教授Anne Reeves寫道，尤其，Reeves是第二頁短篇連載故事的粉絲。最近連載的故事為「閣樓上的娃娃」(Dolls in the Attic)、「大象交朋友」(Elephant Makes a Friend)。「Hilde寫的小說很有創造力，而且有時候令人毛骨悚然又帶點黑暗，總是令人感到有興趣」，Reeves在email上這麼告訴我。

Hilde wants to increase circulation so she can start selling advertising. Don’t laugh—a member of the local swimming pool’s board of directors told Matt that when the pool’s ad budget was discussed at a meeting this summer, The Orange Street News came up as a publication in which they should advertise. Apparently, board members were familiar with the News, but not all of them knew it was made by a kid.

Hilde想要增加發行量，這麼一來她就可以開始賣廣告。這可不是玩笑話，一位當地游泳池店家董事會成員告訴Matt，這個夏天公司在開會討論廣告預算時，有討論到要把廣告放在橘街新聞上。顯然的，董事會對於新聞業很了解，但不是全部的人都知道這是一位小孩所發行的。

Aside from The Orange Street News, Selinsgrove and its neighboring communities are covered by several small media outlets. There’s wkok, a radio station that broadcasts out of nearby Sunbury at frequency AM 1070. There’s also The Snyder County Times, a free weekly that appears to be a repository for press releases, municipal announcements, and calendar blurbs. The area’s newspaper of record is The Daily Item, a 78-year-old broadsheet serving roughly 20,000 print readers in the Central Susquehanna Valley. Hilde’s 11-year-old sister, Izzy Lysiak, is the Item’s kids columnist, having successfully pitched “Ask Izzy” as a must-read for the under-13 set. She gets paid $25 a week.

除了橘街新聞，錫林斯格羅夫和它鄰近的社區都由一些小媒體商家所包辦。有一間靠近Sunbury的電台叫做wkok，調頻為AM1070；也有一家The Snyder County Times的免費週報，似乎是一個發佈新聞、提供市政及廣告資訊的報刊。這個地區銷售最好的是The Daily Item，有著78年歷史，它在Central Susquehanna Valley約有2萬名讀者。Hilde的11歲姊姊，Izzy Lysiak，是這間報社的孩童專欄作家，她的＜Ask Izzy＞被視為是13歲以下孩童必讀的專欄，她一星期可以賺到25元。

Hilde’s publication—its 8-year-old worldview notwithstanding—is replete with the type of hyperlocal headlines that grace the pages of small-town periodicals the world over: a fundraiser for a neonatal intensive care unit; a new music store on Selinsgrove’s picturesque main drag; a local kindergarten teacher who won the 35th Long Island Marathon. They’re shorter than what you’d expect to see in a professional neighborhood newspaper, but they do the trick.

Hilde的出版物，縱使只有8歲小孩世界觀，卻充滿了有別一般本地化的新聞題材，使得這份小鎮刊物與眾不同。像是，一則為新生兒重症監護病房的籌款的新聞；有關錫林斯格羅夫大街上新開幕的音樂商店；贏得第35屆長島馬拉松的當地幼稚園老師。這些文章比你在其他專業社區報所看到的內容還簡短，但有它的成功之處。

It’s not all softball. In June, after Hilde’s competitors reported there had been a break-in on Orange Street, Hilde paid a visit to the police station to ask for the address. The cops wouldn’t give it out, so she went knocking on doors until she found the right house. Hilde landed an interview with its resident, who gushed that her dog, Zeus, had saved the day: “Hero Dog Thwarts Intruder!” Hilde’s headline proclaimed. As for the perpetrator, Hilde dubbed him (or her) “The Orange Street Bandit.”

這不是件簡單的事。6月的時候，Hilde的競爭對手報導指出，橘街上有一戶人家遭闖空門後，她馬上去拜訪警察局並要求提供案發現場的地址。但警察不願意給，所以她只好挨家挨戶去敲門，直到找到那間房子。Hilde立刻進行訪問，而住戶則滔滔不絕的講起她的愛犬宙斯，是如何幫忙阻止小偷。「神犬大戰入侵者」， Hilde的標題是這麼寫的。至於小偷，Hilde則稱他（或她）為「橘街的大盜」。

About a month earlier, on the evening of May 4, Hilde got her first taste of breaking news when she learned there was a fire raging at a nearby church. She raced over with her pen and notebook. “It could have been a lot worse,” a firefighter told her at the scene. “But we are all glad there were no people inside.”

約一個月前的5月4號晚上，Hilde得到她第一個突發新聞，在聽到附近的教堂有大火肆虐時，她隨即抓著筆和筆記本衝去現場。「這本來可能會更嚴重」，一個消防隊員告訴她，「但我們很慶幸沒有人在裡面。」

Judging by the front page of the April issue, a career in media reporting might be in store. “Print is dead—at least at Selinsgrove High School,” Hilde wrote. “Journalism students at Selinsgrove say they would like a printed paper but there isn’t enough money in the budget.” Matt told me Hilde got tipped to the story when she was at the local cafe talking to a high school girl she’s friendly with. Superintendent Chad Cohrs pushed back, telling Hilde: “An electronic version can be done more frequently and with more current information than a paper version. For those who still want a paper version, I would suggest they hit the print button on their computers.”

從4月份號頭版新聞開始，Hilde的記者生涯就此展開。

「紙本已經絕跡了，至少在錫林斯格羅夫高中是這樣」，Hilde寫道。「錫林斯格羅夫的新聞系學生說他們想要紙本的刊物，但是他們並沒有足夠的預算把它印出來」，Matt告訴我Hilde在寫這篇報導時，和一位在咖啡廳的高中女生交談，並因此得到內部消息。學校的主管Chad Cohrs則反擊，告訴Hilde說：「電子版可以較頻繁地被完成，而且能比紙本提供更多的資訊，至於那些想要紙本的人，我會建議他們直接從他們電腦上列印出來。」

The Orange Street News traffics heavily in earnest community journalism. But it also exudes a certain garishness that seems natural for someone who grew up visiting tabloid newsrooms and accompanying her father on stakeouts. Exclamation points and “exclusives” abound. Hilde makes sure to have eyeball-grabbing images for “the wood.” Nor did she hesitate to float a reader-submitted photo of a “mystery beast” that was supposedly spotted in a local park. Her July issue featured an expose on Piano Palooza, in which visitors to Selinsgrove’s picturesque downtown were invited to play artistically refurbished pianos positioned among the stately brick colonials on Market Street. “Selinsgrove Piano Palooza is hitting all the wrong notes,” Hilde reported in a story headlined “A Real Piano Pa-Loser: Orange Street News Investigation Reveals Pianos Don’t Play.” The article continued: “On seven of the fourteen pianos its [sic] impossible to even push some of the keys down.” Matt admits to jazzing up the headlines and throwing in some tabloid flair, but that’s to be expected of any editor worth his salt, and it’s a valuable lesson for any aspiring newswoman.

橘街新聞認真，而且詳實的報導和社區有關的新聞，但它也流露出某種華而不實的感覺，這對一個在小報編輯室和父親陪伴下長大的小孩來說，是再自然也不過的事。到處都是驚嘆號和「獨家新聞」。

Hilde必須確保人們所關注的，是有意義的。她不願意發表一張由讀者提供，有關當地一個公園發現了所謂的「神秘野獸」的照片。她 7 月份所報導的主題，是關於一場當地鋼琴盛宴（Piano Palooza），有非常多的遊客受邀到錫林斯格羅夫市區，在帶有莊嚴殖民風格的市場街上，來彈奏用藝術手法翻新的鋼琴。「鋼琴盛宴真糟糕」，Hilde 報導的標題是這麼說的，「本州的鋼琴之恥，橘街新聞揭發鋼琴爛品質」，這篇報導接著說：「14架鋼琴中有7座，連彈奏都不太可能」，Matt承認標題很聳動，運用了些許小報的元素，但也符合讀者對編輯的期許，對新聞報導來說是很寶貴的經驗。

Hilde picked up everything she knows about reporting from her father. Matt taught her things like how to structure a news story, what a “lede” is and why you need a “nut graph.” She listens to him interview people when he’s working on freelance assignments. When she comes back from a reporting assignment of her own, they talk it over. There’s a bulletin board in his office with index cards mapping out what stories she’s working on for each issue. If he thinks one of her ledes is no good, he tells her so, and either tightens it up himself or works with Hilde to make it better. As much as possible, though, Matt tries to let Hilde stay in the driver’s seat. “The minute I get too involved,” he says, “it’s not a kid’s paper anymore.”

Hilde對新聞報導的知識，都是從她的父親那邊學來。Matt教她像是要如何架構一個新聞故事、什麼是「導言」，及「主題文」的重要性。當Matt因為工作需要與人面談時，Hilde會認真聆聽，當她完成自己的報導工作後，他們也會聚在一起討論內容。在他的辦公室裡有一個公佈欄，上面有許多索引卡，標註著Hilde正在進行的新聞主題。假如Matt覺得她哪一個導言不夠好，他會直接告訴她，然後自己幫她修改，或與Hilde討論如何寫得更好。盡可能的，Matt還是會讓Hilde擁有主導權。「我越是參與」，他說，「就會越不像小孩的報導了。」

MATT LYSIAK WAS 19 WHEN HE DROPPED OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL in 1997, after recovering from cancer, to start his first newspaper—a tabloid that “attempted to tackle local corruption,” as he now puts it, in his hometown of Danville, about 20 minutes northeast of Selinsgrove. It was called The Danvillian, a framed copy of which hangs on the wall of Matt’s study, along with various Daily News front pages carrying his byline. To bankroll the paper, Matt took a job waiting tables at a nearby Denny’s. One day, a young woman named Bridget walked in and ordered a coffee. It was practically love at first sight. They moved to New York together later that year so Matt could pursue journalism. (The wedding followed in April 2003.) They settled down in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where Matt started yet another small independent newspaper. That publication, The Bay Ridge Conservative, caught the eye of Gersh Kuntzman, then editor-in-chief of The Brooklyn Paper. Kuntzman offered Matt a job. “The paper was filled with preposterous neo-con musings, but I could see from how it was put together that Lysiak was a serious newspaperman,” recalls Kuntzman, now an editor at the Daily News. “I could tell he was going places.”

Matt於1997年時自高中休學，當時他才19歲，之後他的癌症痊癒，在他的家鄉Danville，（位於Selinsgrove東北方約20分鐘車程），開始了他第一份報紙，一個「試圖對抗當地腐敗」的小報，Matt 是這麼期許的。這份報紙叫做The Danvillian，其中有一份被裱框掛在Matt書房的牆壁上，牆上還掛有他在Daily News新聞作品。為了負擔做報紙的費用，Matt在Denny’s餐廳當領班。有一天一個叫Bridget的女孩走進餐廳並點了一杯咖啡，那幾乎是一見鍾情。之後他們一起搬到紐約，所以Matt可以繼續他的新聞工作（婚禮在隔年2003年4月舉行）。他們在布魯克林的Bay Bridge定居下來，在那裏Matt開始了另一個小型獨立報紙，叫做The Bay Ridge Conservative。這份刊物吸引了The Brooklyn Paper的主編Gersh Kuntzman的目光，他提供Matt一份工作。「報紙充滿了荒謬的新保守主義思想，但從它的編排我看的出Matt是一位多麼認真的新聞工作者」， 目前擔任Daily News主編的Kuntzman回想著。「我看的出來他很有天份。」

Matt jumped to the Daily News in 2006. He was the guy who’d parachute in whenever the editors needed someone to, say, trail Chelsea Clinton on her holiday in Martha’s Vineyard, or rush to the scene of Trayvon Martin’s killing in Florida. In late 2012, Matt covered the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. He spent the next four months reporting on the aftermath, churning out enough scoops and front-page stories to land him a book deal for Newtown: An American Tragedy, which Simon & Schuster published around the time of the one-year anniversary. By then, he’d left the News and moved his family out to the country.

Matt 2006年跳槽到紐約日報，他是那種當編輯需他去追新聞，他就會奮不顧身前往的人。例如，去追雀兒喜（Chelsea Clinton），在Martha葡萄園渡假的新聞；或是趕去Trayvon Martin被殺的佛羅里達命案現場。在2012末，Matt去採訪康州小學大屠殺的新聞，他花了整整4個月的時間做後續報導，挖了很多獨家報導和頭版新聞，也完成一本書，書名叫做《Newtown: An American Tragedy》，由Simon & Schuster出版社在案發滿一年的紀念日發行。在那時候，Matt離開了紐約日報，並和他的家人搬去鄉下。

Hilde misses New York. “There’s barely any news around here,” she says. “There’s never any crazy murders. In New York, it’s like there was something every day.” Then again, Selinsgrove’s sleepiness and walkability is the reason Matt and Bridget are comfortable letting Hilde traipse around town on her own. “There are some people who probably feel like we’re really irresponsible parents,” says Matt.

Hilde很想念紐約，「這裡幾乎沒什麼新聞」，她說。「這裡不曾發生瘋狂的謀殺案，在紐約，幾乎每天都有事情發生。」。再一次，錫林斯格羅夫的寧靜和良好的治安，是Matt和Bridget為什麼放心讓Hilde自己一個人在鎮上遊蕩的原因。「有一些人可能覺得我們是很不負責任的家長」，Matt說。

When news does happen in Selinsgrove, it tends to be about robberies or other small-bore crime. Last year, a home security company released data appearing to show that Selinsgrove was Pennsylvania’s seventh most dangerous city, ahead of Philadelphia at No. 8. Locals scoffed, claiming the report was cooked up as a marketing ploy. “Selinsgrove is probably one of the safer places,” one resident (who happened to be a local gun-shop owner) told The Daily Item. Farrell, the borough president, describes Selinsgrove as the type of vestigial American idyll where people still leave their doors unlocked—an occasional break-in like the one Hilde covered notwithstanding. “It’s a very safe community,” Farrell said in an interview.

當錫林斯格羅夫有新聞發生時，通常都是一些搶案或無關緊要的犯罪。去年，一家保全公司的資料顯示，錫林斯格羅夫是賓州最危險的城市第7名，比費城還高了一個名次，當地民眾笑稱這是記者捏造的營銷手段。「錫林斯格羅夫或許是最安全的城鎮之一」，當地一位居民（這位居民剛好是當地販賣槍枝的商家）回應The Daily Item。行政區長Farrell描述錫林斯格羅夫是碩果僅存的美式田園，是個人們不會鎖門的地方，只是偶爾會出現像Hilde所報導的闖空門事件。「這是個很安全的社區」，Farrell在一次的訪談中說道。

That’s lucky for Hilde, because she seems to thrive when pounding the pavement. It’s part of her dna. In a funny twist, she even shares a first name (though not the same spelling) with Hildy Johnson, the investigative reporter in Howard Hawks’s 1940 screwball comedy, “His Girl Friday.” (Total coincidence, says Matt, though he watched the film with Hilde for the first time recently; there is now a “His Girl Friday” poster hanging in her bedroom.) Hilde is also known for asking heady questions apropos of nothing. “Is the sun really going to burn out one day?” “What does it mean to be radioactive?” “Do you know what my biggest fear is? That people can read my mind.”

對Hilde來說是很幸運的，因為她似乎對於徘徊街頭感到非常興奮。一切都是她的DNA使然。一個有趣的聯想，Hilde甚至與Hildy Johnson有著相同的名字（雖然拼法不同），Hildy Johnson曾在Howard Hawks執導的喜劇片《His Girl Friday》裡，飾演一位調查記者。Matt說這真的是個巧合，雖然他最近才和Hilde第一次看這個片子，而且現在Hidle的房間正掛著這部電影的海報。Hilde也是個愛發問的女孩，像是「太陽會有燒光的一天嗎」、「什麼是放射性」、「你知道我最大的恐懼是什麼嗎？就是別人能知道我在想什麼。」

“She wants to talk, and she wants to talk about meaningful things,” says Bridget. “It comes from a sincerely curious place,” adds Matt.

「她想要發聲，而且她想說有意義的事物」，Bridget說道，「這是發自內心深處的」，Matt補充說。

That curiosity took Hilde back to the center of town after she wrapped up her tornado interviews. She rode her bike west to an interview at the Selinsgrove Dance Studio, a small New Yorker tote dangling from the right handlebar. (The tote bag used to be Bridget’s, although Hilde said she’s flipped through the magazine once or twice.) Next stop was the police station to see if there were any updates on the elusive Orange Street Bandit. (No dice.)

好奇心使得Hilde在完成她的龍捲風採訪後，又趕回去鎮上。她騎著她的腳踏車往西邊的錫林斯格羅夫舞蹈教室去做採訪，右邊手把上還有本紐約客（New Yorker ）雜誌晃來晃去（手提袋原本是Bridget的，雖然Hilde說她只有草草翻閱過雜誌一兩次而已）。警察局就在眼前，Hilde想知道，是否有在逃的橘街大盜的最新消息（答案是沒有）。

Afterwards, Hilde popped into a local diner for a late breakfast. She ordered a large pancake, opened up her notebook and started working on an outline of the storm story: “Lead. Nut. Quote. Kicker.” A man with a close-cropped gray beard and glasses was sitting at the table to Hilde’s left. Hilde didn’t know him, but he leaned in and asked, “Are you working on your next edition?”

後來，Hilde去了一家當地的餐廳享受遲來的早餐，她點了一個大鬆餅，並打開筆記本開始寫暴風雨事件的大綱，嘴裡唸著「導言、主題文、引言、小標」。此時，一個留著整齊灰色鬍子，帶著眼鏡的男人正坐在Hilde左邊的桌子，Hilde並不認識他，但是他傾身靠近並問：「你正在忙你的下一期嗎？」

Meet Mayor Jeff Reed. He’s a 63-year-old painter halfway through his second year as the town’s top elected official, and while he may not enjoy dealing with reporters, he’s gotten used to that part of his job. Unsurprisingly, Reed said Hilde was the youngest reporter he’d ever encountered. He thinks she’s good for her age. “I saw her paper before she came to her first meeting,” he said. “I thought it was very well done.”

這是鎮長Jeff Reed，他是個63歲的畫家，目前是他第2年的任期，雖然他並不是很喜歡跟記者打交道，但他必須習慣這是他工作的一部分。不意外地，Reed說Hilde是他遇過最年輕的記者，他認為以她的年紀來說是很棒的。「在她來進行第一次開會時我已經看過她的報紙」，他說道，「我覺得這做得非常好。」

I told Mayor Reed that Hilde needs to learn how to interact with vips like him, to ask the right questions, and to get the information she needs. What wisdom might Reed impart to his community’s youngest working journalist? He paused to think about it, then looked down at Hilde, who was busy writing about those uprooted trees. “To report the news, not try to create the news,” he said.

我告訴Reed，Hilde需要學習如何面對像他一樣的大人物、問對的問題，及如何得到她想知道的答案。Reed該如何教導這位社區裡，最年輕的新聞記者呢？他想了想，然後看著正忙著寫有關被連根拔起的樹木的Hilde。「試著去報導新聞，不是去創造新聞」，他說。

Hilde nodded. Before getting up to leave, the mayor agreed to be interviewed at some point. A few minutes later, by the time her last bite of pancake had disappeared, Hilde’s first draft was complete.?

Hilde點點頭。在離開前，市長答應做一些採訪，幾分鐘後，當Hilde把最後一口鬆餅吃完，她的草稿已經完成了。