Dry Cleaning Story

American Dry Cleaner Reports that 5.6 % of locally owned Mid-West Dry cleaning Business closed on the past year.  I wanted to find out how Columbia locally dry cleaners are doing with their business.

 I talked to the locally dry cleaner and learned that their business is decline due to the wrinkled economy. Consumer are also using less dry cleaning today due to the casual dress trend in the workplace, increasing use of home dry-cleaning kits, and changing fabric trends and care labels.

First my angle was on immigrants who own the dry cleaning but it failed because there was no dry cleaner that is owned by the immigrants in Columbia. The foreigner owns most of the Dry Cleaner in the city, especially Korean and Chinese. Because

One of the hardest things that faced was to find customer who is willing to talk on the camera. Most of the customer came to dry Cleaner to drop the clothes and left.  I was at the Dry Cleaner during lunchtime so I had to go back to the Dry Cleaner afternoon and interview them again.  I learn that people are more willing to talk in the afternoon and in the morning because they have more time after they are done with their job.

One of the important things that I learn from this news package is to be open to new experience. Good reporter should be prepared to write about anything and good journalists should be able to do it with creativity and curiosity. I got net sounds of phone rings for my package and that happened because of the curiosity. Someone called dry cleaner when I was Interview my source, my source ran into the phone and answer the phone right away. I did not understand why she had to picked up middle of the interview, but she told me later that because of the economy, people don’t call her for the order anymore. Curiosity is important thing to have for journalist.