Creative Ink is on hiatus

In light of aggressive and hostile comments and creepy online activity that I found disturbing, I've chosen to make Creative Ink a private blog for now. I will resume normal posting activity when the matter is resolved.

In the meantime, you can also visit me on Twitter.

The fork in the road

It's been a while since I've posted with any regularity here at Creative Ink. Humble apologies to any regular readers I might have. My creative and productive energies have been diverted elsewhere for the past few months into some very important and meaningful personal projects that required my full attention.

As a result, I've had little brain activity leftover to share meaningful thoughts here. I'll try to do better as life starts to settle into the normal workday/school day routine. Part of what I've done this summer is explore where I want to take my career moving forward. I have possible paths, but certainly nothing definitive. I am at the proverbial fork in the road.

I've spent four and a half years working full-time as an independent journalist from home. It's been great in so many ways. Here are some professional highlights:

• Started Creative Ink in March 2004 and through that writing began reconnecting with the dreams of my younger self.

• Traveled to New York City for the first time twice in 2004 and thoroughly enjoyed exploring the Big Apple on my own.

• Got my passport and my first passport stamps when I traveled to Seoul, South Korea in 2004. I was one of the only female speakers at East Asia Journalists Forum, which obligated me to perform many toasts during our meals.

• Had my first PD feature published in May 2004; lead to weekly book reviews in PD for 18 months before burnout set in and freelance budgets were slashed.

• Traveled to New York City and Las Vegas in 2005, both times with awesome traveling companion Jill Zimon. 

• While in Las Vegas in 2005, had exclusive interview with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller upon her release from prison.

• Discovered the beauty and soulfulness of Thomas Merton; wrote article in 2005 on his influence on modern-day Catholics that started a three-year working relationship with Catholic Universe Bulletin. Oh, and that story also won first place in religion coverage in 2006 Ohio SPJ Awards.

• Traveled to Chicago in August 2006, but I'm disappointed to say that I saw little of the city other than the conference hotel and the Billy Goat Tavern. I hope to return soon.

• Had first article published in Continental Magazine in October 2006.

• Applied for and was accepted as a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors in February 2007

• Traveled to Anniston, Alabama, in April 2007 where I met Gay Talese and Rick Bragg among a host of other wonderful southern storytellers who continue to inspire me.

• Risked much professionally, personally and financially by calling out national SPJ leadership on a bad decision that ultimately was reversed in August 2007. Still a painful memory, but something I would do again in a heartbeat because it was the right thing to do.

• Started my third year of writing about small schools transformation at Cleveland Heights High School in August 2007 and discovered a passion for urban education that may dictate my future professional plans.

• Began consulting editor relationship with Catalyst Ohio magazine in November 2007 that continues to this day.

• Applied for Peter Jennings Fellowship for Journalism and the Constitution, was accepted and traveled to Philadelphia, Penn., in March 2008. Among my colleagues there was Atlantic national correspondent and author Mark Bowden, who has been very kind and generous in providing direction and assistance when asked.

• Had my first feature published in the Christian Science Monitor in April 2008, with subsequent stories in May and July.

• Was shocked, confused and then honored to be named Cleveland SPJ Distinguished Service Award winner in May 2008.

• Won first place in feature writing for article about group of St. Ignatius High School pallbearers from the Catholic Press Association in June 2008.

Over the summer I reached a few conclusions that will alter my writing future. First, is the financial reality that with my oldest son heading to college in three years, I need a more stable and consistent form of income. Second, is that I'm exhausted—I mean could sleep for a week straight exhausted—by the nonstop hustle of getting work and trying to get paid in something resembling a timely manner. Third, is that I realize my writing has reached a point of stagnation. Stagnation is akin to death for a writer. I need new creative challenges to push me forward. Fourth is that I'm tired of working in isolation. I'd like to be a part of a more collaborative working environment that allows me to brainstorm, share and learn from others.

So where do I see myself in the next few months? I honestly don't know. I'd like to continue being a journalist, though frankly the opportunities to do so and remain in Cleveland are extraordinarily limited. I check the job boards daily and there's little in Ohio, let alone in Cleveland. I've reached out to some colleagues, but the news is always dire about cutbacks rather than hiring. I'm not about to close off any path. I do have some potential opportunities in the works that could fall into any of the following categories:

1) Find a great job at an existing media outlet that allows me to explore narrative and new media journalism either as a writer and/or editor.

2) Get some funding and start my own new media venture that allows me to lead a team of professional, citizen and student journalists toward development and launch of a dynamic multimedia site.

3) Go to graduate school to study history and begin work on becoming a history professor.

4) Find another avenue for using my writing and editing skills outside of journalism. 

5) What every writer aspires to do: write a book. 

My path is not clear, but I hope it will be illuminated soon.  

Has blogging changed your journalism?

Take a survey here.

Paul Bradshaw of Online Journalism Blog and Birmingham City University in England is compiling research on the topic. Take a few minutes to help him out.

Foreclosure story has long legs

I never know where my stories will turn up. It's a bit disconcerting as I try to ascertain whether or not copyright has been violated. I'll share an example: Last night I was Googling myself (it's a good practice to get into regularly if you write for living) and found my latest Christian Science Monitor story on foreclosure bus tour turning up in all sorts of places. They go from simple links or blurbs (which is cool) to out and out reprints (which I'm not sure is cool).

Here's what I found:

Northeast Ohio River: A stream of posts from Northeast Ohio blogs

Seeking Alpha

World Hum: Travel Dispatches from a shrinking planet (a Travel Channel blog)

Sarasota Herald-Tribune Creating Spaces blog

Axcess News: News for the X Generation (a full reprint with credit to CSM but no permission)

Sedona.biz: Will full reprint and photos and no permission from CSM

Topix.com: Solon Wire

Foreclosure O.N.E.

The Simple Family

Digg

Business.com: With many listings from above

But then I also received an e-mail from an American living in Iran who wrote a lengthy note demonstrating the power of the Web. A writer from Cleveland publishes a story in a Boston-based newspaper that is eventually read on the news ticket of Yahoo Iran!

Go figure!

Clay Shirky on cognitive surplus

Check this out from Web 2.0 Expo. The video is about 16 minutes, but well worth the time.



The entire presentation in couched in the context of a conversation he had with a TV producer pre-screening him for an appearance. His point: media targeted at you but not including you may not be worth sitting still for. Just ask your nearest preschooler.

Word of the day
audacity: the quality or state of having intrepid boldness

Taking a shot in the dark

H/T to Michelle O'Neill for sending a link to this piece by writer Cornelia Read. It's long and somewhat winding, but if you know anyone touched by autism it is time well spent. Hell, it's time well spent if you care about good public health policy, accountability, reliable journalism, doctors/researchers with a backbone, curtailing special interests.... I could go on and on.

At dispute is thimerosal, which was used as a preservative in childhood vaccines. If you have a child born between 1989 and 2003, he or she received vaccines with this preservative containing mercury. My kids were born in 1992, 1994 and 1999. When my youngest was born, I remember expressing horror at the number of vaccinations he received at one time. Of course, he got them because that's what pediatricians recommended.

Do you remember those chubby little thighs getting poked two, three and four times a visit? The silent cry of your child, followed by the wail? The colorful band-aids quickly applied to cover up the prick? The suggestion of Motrin to alleviate any pain? The warnings of reactions to the shots that you presumed would never come? You scoop up your baby and snuggle him or her close knowing you have at least a few more weeks reprieve before they are stuck once again. I'm not disputing the great advantage of childhood immunizations (though I resisted the chicken pox vaccine for many years because of its newness and only succumbed when all my efforts to expose my children to the chicken pox had failed).

I don't know what the answer to catastrophic autism rates are, but I do know that good research must continue on all fronts and that calling a matter "closed" is scientifically unsound and could detrimentally impact hundreds of thousands of children. I have many more questions about this issue than answers.

What happens when all of these autistic children become adults? What happens to the veracity of research when findings are whitewashed to benefit a desired outcome? How does that impact researchers in general, not just for autism? Search for the cure for cancer...unless you discover something financially devastating...and then we'll have to alter your findings.

As a journalist, if you take a look at some of the mainstream news articles about this issue, journalists are quick to point to the CDC as the authority on this issue, often discounting the parent perspective or that of researchers or even public officials who have expressed concern. In addition to the failure of the public health community, it appears the mainstream media may have added insult to injury. Better scrutiny to studies, statements, legislation and money must be paid.

Read's post references articles in:
Time
Rolling Stone (see related on MSNBC)
Dr. Marcia Angell, who took a parting shot at pharmaceutical companies when she left her post as editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine

Kennedy is an attorney and environmentalist who has spent years working on issues of mercury toxicity. He frequently encountered mothers of autistic children imploring him to look at the link between mercury-based thimerosal and autism rates. He was skeptical, until he read the Simpsonwood transcripts referenced below.

From Kennedy's Rolling Stone article informed by documents obtained through Freedom of Information request.

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.

The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. "I was actually stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.

Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. "You can play with this all you want," Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results "are statistically significant." Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting's first day, was even more alarmed. "My gut feeling?" he said. "Forgive this personal comment -- I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on."

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line. "We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits," said Dr. Robert Brent, a pediatrician at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware. "This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country." Dr. Bob Chen, head of vaccine safety for the CDC, expressed relief that "given the sensitivity of the information, we have been able to keep it out of the hands of, let's say, less responsible hands." Dr. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, declared that "perhaps this study should not have been done at all." He added that "the research results have to be handled," warning that the study "will be taken by others and will be used in other ways beyond the control of this group."

… The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been "lost" and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.

And then there's this conflicting statement in the New York Times following the vaccine court's decision in favor of Hannah Poling:

“Let me be very clear that the government has made absolutely no statement indicating that vaccines are a cause of autism,” Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Thursday. “That is a complete mischaracterization of the findings of the case and a complete mischaracterization of any of the science that we have at our disposal today.”

Sure would be nice to get to the truth or even some approximation of truth. The government phased out thimerosal in vaccines by 2003, the CDC and FDA bought up a bunch of the leftovers and shipped it off to developing countries (!!). Some it left here to be used in vaccines for older children (presumably better able to tolerate the mercury levels). Lost in all this discussion of mercury levels and public health policy and who pays what are the hundreds of thousands of children who have been diagnosed with autism and their families.

I'll leave you with this snip from Cornelia Read in the comment section of her post:

Brett, as you no doubt know I've got fraternal twin girls. They had the same shots at the same ages--same lots, same doctors, etc.

One was the "dominant twin" the first year--hit all her milestones first, etc. Between 12 and 13 months she stopped looking up when we said her name, stopped most of her babbling (they'd both been using words by that point), stopped looking us in the eye, stopped playing with her sister. By the time she was two and a half, she had completely lost her language. She's never spoken again, except for repeating a phrase someone else said twice, over the last 12 years.

...

I try really, really hard not to imagine what life would have been like if they were BOTH okay, because if I think about that, it makes me break down and sob every damn time.

When I read that description of Hannah Poling, I had to leave the computer for about an hour, because I know just what that was like for her parents--to watch a child recede from you when there's not a DAMN thing anyone can tell you about it, and certainly not a damn thing they can do to stop it.

To find out over the years that there might have been a way to stop it, that the government might have been able to act in time to save several hundred thousand children from this horror (and probably millions more around the world), is goddamn heartbreaking.

Word of the day
obtuse: lacking sharpness or quickness of sensibility or intellect

Foreign correspondence, Medve-whatever, female blogger contest and more

In college, my plans were to become a foreign correspondent. And then I met my husband and, well, my perspective changed a bit. But I still fantasize about living abroad and writing for publications. So I was saddened, though hardly shocked, to read this piece about the declining future for foreign correspondents by a Dutch journalist.

Today's Dutch foreign correspondents report enjoying their work -- although they have to work harder and provide material for a multitude of media. Also, since most of them are freelancers, heavy competition for exposure in the major media has undermined their negotiating position.

He writes about how low wages, competition and the need to produce multimedia has impacted the profession. I don't think producing multimedia is bad, but the low wages are clearly a problem.

How to survive? I decided to quit the foreign correspondent business and have started a speakers' bureau. In financial terms, that's a bit of a different league. Today, many foreign correspondents survive because their partner has a decent job.

I'm not sure that is a sustainable strategy for quality foreign coverage.

Hardly indeed.

How will history view Vladimir Putin?
Victor Erofeyev believes history will look kindly on Putin In his New York Times column, he wrote that in addition to throwing out proponents of democracy in Russia, Putin also did away with the oligarchs, which the Russians really hated. He is credited with bringing about more prosperity and more peace to Chechnya. Where he failed, according to Russian author Erofeyev, was in his "longing to make Russia the successor to the Soviet Union."

This gave rise to the imperial discourse that so frightened neighboring countries, his defense of the Soviet Union’s aggressive foreign policy and the damage to Russia’s image in the world. What’s worse is that our next president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, whom President Putin chose as his heir as if he were a czar, will have to deal with the Russian weaknesses that were hidden from the population under propaganda slogans. The failure to modernize industry or agriculture, the growing corruption in government, the ubiquitous drunkenness, the record numbers of murders and suicides, the terrible state of Russian health care and the problems that come with a shrinking population will fall on Mr. Medvedev’s young shoulders.

We'll be watching Medve-whatever to see what he does.

Favorite female blogger?
I'm not schlepping for votes, but I think this is a worthwhile venture from the folks at Women's Voices Women Vote in honor of Women's History Month, which is March. You can vote for your favorite female blogger here .

H/T to Jill for sending this along.

Tip of the iceberg
As any good writer knows, much of what gets researched and reported doesn't get included in the final draft. That is by design and a hallmark of good writing. To wit:

"If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water." — Ernest Hemingway

Word of the day
resonance: a quality of richness or variety d: a quality of evoking response

Guest blogging at Deep Muck Big Rake

I was honored to be asked by Becky at Deep Muck Big Rake to guest blog today while she's on vacation. Check out my post here.

Happy New Year! Creative Ink will return next Wednesday.

Wide Open is closed shut

Let me add my voice to the cacophony of bloggers lamenting the events of the past 24 hours that resulted in the implosion of The Plain Dealer's experiment with bloggers on its Web site.

I'll let Jill, Jeff and Tom explain the details of what happened. In a nutshell, the PD did not think through this Wide Open experiment with bloggers. It held the bloggers (whom it hired to write in a partisan fashion about the issues) to the same standards to which it would hold newsroom journalists.

I won't presume to speak for the four bloggers who participated, but my guess is if the PD wanted them to work as "journalists" they would have been less likely to join in the experiment. Their charge was fundamentally different from those working in the newsroom. They were paid for their partisan views and those views (two conservative, two liberal) were supposedly balanced. It was naive of the PD editors to believe that partisan bloggers would not have contributed to or worked for some campaign.

The PD has a bigger problem on its hands in that the public, specifically the blogging public, has discovered how political power holds sway over editorial product. That's a PR problem for Ohio's Largest Daily. No matter how valid or invalid were Congressman Steven LaTourette's complaints, the public perception is that the PD caved because a public official, who should have a thicker skin about such things, whined about unfair treatment.

I'll be honest. I'm not a political blogger and I rarely spend much time reading political blogs. They are not my cup of tea. For the most part, my dissatisfaction in the experiment largely stems from the reality that the arguments routinely fell along partisan lines. I find reading such diatribes tiresome and not informative enough to convince one way or another to support any one side.

There were exceptions—moments when real, honest, authentic dialogue took place and it usually revolved around issues other than politics, such as religion. Of course one could argue that the religious questions were also political, but the comments really tried to dig deeper into the why, which made compelling reading. Credit is due to the four bloggers who took those issues and addressed them in such an intelligent fashion.

Maybe the experiment started with the wrong kind of blogger. Politics are always fraught with questions of ethics, conflict and bias. Some of the best political blogging, after all, comes from people within the political system. I've not had a problem with blogger transparency on this issue, but I know others have.

Maybe what the PD should've done was start such a new/old media experiment with more feature-ish topics—books, food, arts, education, religion.

I had high hopes that such a collaboration would work. Hopefully, this doesn't turn traditional media off of the experiment for good, but rather provides lessons for how to do better in the future.

UPDATE: Here are some links to more on this story:

Poynter Institute E-Media Tidbits

Bad American

Plunderbund

Daily Bellwether

Wide Open discussion

I'm sure the minds behind the PD's Wide Open blog envisioned a forum where great discussion took place, where arguments could be made from both sides with such finesse that readers would flock and jump at the opportunity to join the fray.

It's taking a while, but I think what I see there today between Jill and Dave is a fascinating example of how blogs can encourage dialogue. Sadly, the focus of the conversation is Ann Coulter, but I think the questions raised and the arguments being made make for good reading.

On another sad note is word of St. Peter Church "assimilating" into the cathedral. Never have I been to a Catholic Mass that spoke to me more deeply than that of St. Peter's. It is a huge loss. I am sorry we're not able to support it regularly as a family. Perhaps we should have made more of an effort to do so.

All of these churches closing downtown...what happens to the buildings? The artwork? The families? The tradition? The stories? Maybe that's what we need to do now. Gather the stories of these parishes before they leave us forever.

Tuesday Tidbits

This week has been a bit crazy, so I'm once again left with a few quick hits.

1. Howard Kurtz did not refer to CNBC anchor Erin Burnett as "Money Honey" and "Business Babe." The flipping title of his Media Notes column is "Looking Good at CNBC (Pretty, Too)." Almost did a spit take on this line:

Under the lights, in a smoky blue dress that matches her eyes as well as her shoes, her flowing dark hair perfectly teased, she is not exactly hard on the eyes.

And then there's this!!!

During an MSNBC interview this month, Matthews egged her on: "Could you get a little closer to the camera? . . . Really close." When Burnett expressed puzzlement, Matthews exclaimed: "You look great! . . . No, you're beautiful. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. You're a knockout." Burnett now calls it "a strange moment."

Jesus, Chris! Thing is, Howard's column is really about how smart and quick-witted Burnett is. Of course, he can't resist taking the sensational route to get you to that point.

2. Want to give a shout out to PunditMom, who commented here recently and proves (along with Jill) that the words Mom and politics are not oxymoronic.

3. What the heck was Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson talking about today on The Sound of Ideas? Props to Dan Moulthrop and callers for attempting to get at a meaningful conversation. Afraid is not very successful.

4. Teachers have such a powerful impact on our lives. This came back to me as I listened to Alec Klein, author of "A Class Apart: Prodigies, Pressure, and Passion Inside One of America's Best High Schools," on Diane Rehm (with Steve Roberts) this morning. He shared this lovely tidbit: "I'm reminded of another teacher I had, Dr. Binman, who returned a creative writing assignment to me when I was about 15 years old and on it he said, 'Become a writer one day!' I actually still have that paper because it meant so much to me as a 15-year-old to be told that I was good at something. Sometimes that's all you need is some positive reinforcement."

Paper Cuts

Kudos to the New York Times for its new book blog Paper Cuts. Dwight Garner, senior editor of The Book Review, has done a great job (in only a week of posting) bringing in a mix of the newsy, the gossipy and the offbeat of the book world.

Friday's post has a great photo of the now old New York Times building and a bit about the book review office's move. He also dredges up some terrific archival stuff, such as original ads promoting specific books and authors.

I'm adding to the link list here. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Best of Ohio blogs

Sincere thanks to Into My Own down in Southwest Ohio for adding Creative Ink to the Best of Ohio Blogs this week for Scooter Libby trial coverage.