Two new stories on education

Last August, I wrote a couple of stories about closing the achievement gap for Catalyst-Ohio magazine. Those stories are now posted.

Read how Withrow University High School in Cincinnati is achieving high graduation rates here.

And here is an update on Gov. Ted Strickland's initiative to keep African American boys in school.

Interview with Marketplace's Kai Ryssdal

From the April 2006 issue of Quill magazine, here is my Q&A with Marketplace host, Kai Ryssdal in town tonight for a sold-out appearance.

TEN: Quill poses 10 questions to people with some of the coolest jobs in journalism
By Wendy A. Hoke

If you’re a regular public radio listener, chances are you’ve heard Kai Ryssdal. He’s the voice of business reporting on American Public Media, delivering business news with a bit a sass, occasional irreverence and a whole lotta punch to the average Jane and Joe. Ryssdal came to journalism later in life after following an unconventional career path. But he leads the team of reporters breathing life into a traditionally staid beat. He’s come a long way from shelving books at his local Border’s. On March 20 [2006], here’s how he opened the show:

“Alright, now don’t get nervous but I’m going to say something that might startle you — record highs on Wall Street. The last time that phrase came up in conversation, well … we all know how things ended. But more than just a couple of people are saying this time it’s different — maybe. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.”

Q: What’s the origin of your name? It seems unusual for a broadcast name? Did anyone ever suggest you change it?

It’s Norwegian. My dad was born there and no one suggested I change it probably because I was in my mid-30s before I began broadcasting.

Q: You’ve had an interesting career path – U.S. Navy pilot, Pentagon staff officer, U.S. Foreign Service – did you study journalism and if so where?
I was a history and political science major at Emory University. In my junior year I had a fraternity brother in the Navy and thought, “That looks cool.” I took the physical and two weeks after graduation went to Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, Fla. I spent eight years in the Navy, flew for a while and then three years at the Pentagon. I had done everything in the Navy that I wanted to do, but I still wanted to travel overseas on the government dime so I took the Foreign Service test.

I met my future wife in the Foreign Service. In 1997 after a year and a half in Beijing, we both left and my wife enrolled in graduate school at Stanford University. I figured I’d get a job in Silicon Valley because it was the height of the dot-com boom. But I could have cared less about working in that environment.

So I got a job shelving books at Borders for $7 an hour. It makes for a long, grim summer when you are 34 and trying to figure out what to do. My wife suggested I try journalism, claiming I was a weird news junkie anyway. I tried print for a bit, but as you know you can’t get in unless you have clips and you can’t get clips unless you get in.

Q: So how did you wind up in radio?

One day I was shelving books in the career and counseling section (I had gotten a raise and was making $7.25 at this point) when I came across a big fat internship book. I saw the name and number of the KQED news director in San Francisco. I wrote him a letter, said I was interested in the news, gave him a bit about my background and said I would like to learn more about broadcast journalism. He called me a few days later.

I went up in my very best State Department suit and tie and briefcase. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a public radio station, but there are no suits and ties. He said he didn’t have a job, but he had an internship available. So I took it.

I cut back on my hours at the bookstore, learned all the basics that other 19-year-old interns were doing. Eventually they needed someone to help with the morning show and then asked if I could stay all day. After a year or 18 months I was on the air doing some reporting. I wound up being a substitute anchor for the afternoon news and then worked my way up to morning. I was doing the California Report (a statewide program) when someone at Marketplace called me.

Although I said I’d really love to come talk to them, my wife was about to have our second baby and I really couldn’t leave her. My wife said Marketplace only calls once, so I called them back and went to the interview. That was the summer of 2001, my wife was on maternity leave from Yahoo and so we moved the family to Los Angeles. It was absolutely, completely fortuitous. It appears, although it’s not true, that I’ve been suspiciously lucky. But my journalism career has been absolute complete serendipity.

Q: What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned on the job?
That you need to grasp opportunity when it comes. I was on a good path with KQED Marketplace called. Yes, I had to get up in the middle of night to work mornings, and yes, I had to work hard, but it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. KQED gave me training in radio; Marketplace is training me in reporting and hosting

Q: Did your entrée to business news involve a steep learning curve?
Absolutely. It was almost like they left me alone in the wee hours and said you have to report on gross domestic product. It wasn’t quite that bad, but close. You have to sit down and digest the information because really none of us on the show are business people. It’s like learning the education beat or politics. I would call Steven Beard in London or Jocelyn Ford in China if I had questions on specific topics.

Q: Traditional newspaper business reporting is often stuffy. Marketplace has a definite tone to it and it’s somewhat sassy in a good way. How do you keep it engaging?
The charge is very clear, yet not explicit. We all know that we bare the burden of making this entertaining and interesting. We work hard on it every day working with reporters crafting angles. And then I spend two solid hours choreographing the whole show.

Q: Do you write your own copy? What goes into the writing process when you know at least a segment of the listening audience is going to be tuned in on their way home from work?

Yes, I write my own copy. After the morning editorial meeting, I don’t immediately sit down and think how I can craft the show. I let it sit in the back of my brain and bubble around. Around 11:30-12, I get a sandwich and listen to the stories and the commentary that are in and then I start to write. I start with the end of the show and write it backwards. I’m at my most creative under pressure and I find I can’t get it right if I try to work from the top of the show down. So I work my way up so that by 20 to 25 minutes past 1, I’m working on my opening and commentary. I’ll do a table read with the senior producer to make sure it sounds good, but otherwise it goes from my computer to the airwaves.

Q: The east coast hears Marketplace at 6:30 p.m. Describe how you put a typical show together and when you’re taping?

The show is live to tape at 2 p.m. Pacific. If nothing changes during the day, stations will run it as is, which gives it the live feel. If something changes we’ll do an update. The gong goes off to start the show at 2 and then we run straight through. I don’t find I can do bits and pieces because it takes me out of the flow of show.

Q: You previously were on the Marketplace Morning Report. What’s the biggest change you’ve experienced in doing the morning and evening program?
Now I’m sleeping at night. I used to sleep in shifts. I would sleep from noon to 3:30 p.m., then get the kids, eat dinner and help with bedtime and then nap from 10 to midnight. Now I go to bed when I want. When you’re young, hungry and stupid you’ll do whatever it takes.

Q: What other job would you like to pursue?
I do run after my three boys ages 7, 4 and 20 months. But I’ve only been doing Marketplace for six months. I don’t really have any place I want to go right now. Former host David Brancacchio used to say the afternoon Marketplace job is the best job in broadcast today. I completely agree. We have the freedom to take this dense, arcane topic and do almost anything we want. I’m only the point on the end of that spear.

Nobody here is interested in business in and of itself. We don’t care what the trade deficit is, we care about what it means for interest rates and unemployment. We leave digesting the numbers to Bloomberg and Reuters, and prefer instead to think about the stories behind the stories. That’s what makes people listen.

UPDATED: KSU Poynter ethics seminar today

Jill is reporting today from the KSU Poynter Media Ethics seminar. Wanted to be there but couldn't swing the $50 price tag just now.

There's also a twitter feed here.

UPDATE #1: Jay Rosen is keynote today at KSU. Hope he shakes things up a bit. Keep hearing words like "timid" and "risk-averse" in describing journalism today. Certainly those are not words I ever would have associated with being a journalist.

So far seems to be a very one-sided conversation with a lot of traditional journalism angst and hand-wringing. Where are the bloggers in this workshop????

Hoping Jay Rosen can shake them out of their collective malaise. Read Jay's PressThink post today for preview/outline of his remarks.

Damn! Wish I was there.

UPDATE #2: Oy! They just don't get this. Blogging is a conversation about transparency, it's not a hierarchical top-down form of communication. It's two-way, interactive. So while traditional journalists fret about objectivity and proper filters, they are missing how transparency and the ethics of linkage perform that function for blogging.

Jay Rosen's keynote is up next. Hoping for a little common sense.

Sons and daughters of the news media...

... War has been declared on us by a hostile aggressor intent on stealing whatever piddly credibility we may yet hold with the public. Are we to run, then? Or are we to stand and fight? Will Bunch has written the journalistic equivalent of the William Wallace speech.

"Because there is a war for the soul of this nation going right now, and we the media are involved -- not as some would like to think, as some kind of passive UN peacekeeping force -- but as a party that is in the acrid smoke of combat, under attack in a manner that's little different from the way that parts of Georgia were overrun by the Russian Army a few weeks ago. And frankly, American newsrooms face a situation that could be described in similar terms to that former Soviet Republic -- nearly defeated, and demoralized, with few if any allies that are willing to come to our aid. And despite the dire situation, most journalists are cruising along toward Nov. 4 as if it's business as usual, and that is what I personally find most alarming."

...

Remember, they declared war on us for the same reason that anyone declares war: Because they perceive us as weak. And why wouldn't they? Newspapers have gone from cash cows to an ink-stained version of Lehman Brothers in a couple of short years; there are fewer reporters on the campaign trail and fewer reporters at the conventions (it didn't look that way from afar, but my paper, the Daily News, has gone from four to three to two to one reporter since 1996. There are fewer reporters in Washington and, regarding a major issue in the 2008 race, fewer reporters giving a true picture of what's going on Iraq.

At the same time, consider the run-up to Iraq as the war games where the current tactics were proved so effective -- the time when we showed it was more important to let one side, the White House, set the narrative, and tried feebly to balance it with a response way down in the story, rather than trying to investigate what was the truth about Iraq's ties to al-Qaeda or weapons of mass destruction. They know that we can be crushed with our own antiquated rules -- established in a different era, when the Internet didn't exist and when newspapers had a different, monopoly role, and when politics...well, OK, I know it wasn't beanbag, but it wasn't quite the bloodsport it is today, I believe."

So what is our call to arms? Bunch encourages us to use our time-tasted battle arsenal, but also to use the weapons of modern reporting warfare between now and November 4—and beyond.

1) Make fact-checking our number one priority in reporting.

2) Don't be afraid to call a spade a spade and a lie a lie.

3) Don't be compelled to cover either candidates' video press releases as if they were news. Ditto for their families—the good and the bad. If they are deemed off limits, then let it be so.

4) Make truth-telling fun and lively. Think: "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

We may lose our livelihood as we know it, but they can't take away our freedom to report! Bloggers, journalists, citizen journalists, editors, freelancers and pundits—UNITE against the tyranny of campaign lies!

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.  

Join the Monitor in real-time reporting on "Little Bill Clinton"

Here's another reason why I'm so proud to be a contributor to the Christian Science Monitor. Last night I received an e-mail from my editor about a new project called, "Little Bill Clinton: A School Year in the Life of a New American" by reporter Mary Wittenberg and photographer Melanie Stetson-Freeman.

According to the editor: "This year-long narrative project about a refugee charter school in Atlanta, the International Community School. The face of the project will be Congolese third-grader Bill Clinton Hadam – but it will also include story threads from refugees from 35 countries."

I'm thrilled to see that this kind of unconventional, in-depth reporting is taking place and would jump at the chance to be involved in such a project here. 

ABC News and the anthrax story

In the years since 2001, I had largely forgotten what it felt like to live under the sustained fear of unimaginable terrorism hovering over our collective conscience. But it all came rushing back in the wake of suicide death of Bruce Ivins, the FBI's lead suspect in the anthrax attacks of October 2001. 

Salon's Glenn Greenwald has two compelling pieces (here and here) that call into question ABC News' role in perpetuating the Islamic extremist, Saddam Hussein, Iraqi biological weapons role in perpetuating that fear and the warmongering against Iraq that resulted. There are many serious questions to be asked of ABC News, namely who were its unnamed sources. 

Jay Rosen and Dan Gillmor have posted three questions for ABC News and I'll add my voice to the chorus of those seeking accountability in the reporting process. 

Three Vital Questions for ABC News About its Anthrax Reporting in 2001

1. Sources who are granted confidentiality give up their rights when they lie or mislead the reporter. Were you lied to or misled by your sources when you reported several times in 2001 that anthrax found in domestic attacks came from Iraq or showed signs of Iraqi involvement?

2. It now appears that the attacks were of domestic origin and the anthrax came from within U.S. government facilities. This leads us to ask you: who were the “four well-placed and separate sources” who falsely told ABC News that tests conducted at Fort Detrick showed bentonite in the anthrax sent to Sen. Tom Daschle, causing ABC News to connect the attacks to Iraq in multiple reports over a five day period in October, 2001?

3. A substantially false story that helps make the case for war by raising fears about enemies abroad attacking the United States is released into public debate because of faulty reporting by ABC News. How that happened and who was responsible is itself a major story of public interest. What is ABC News doing to re-report these events, to figure out what went wrong and to correct the record for the American people who were misled?

Greenwald's columns also illustrate other questionable actions, such as the tip Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen received about taking Cipro to ward off deadly effects of anthrax. He accepted privileged information and used it for his personal benefit. 

Interestingly, Greenwald's column also sheds a bit of insight into the federal shield law debate. Readers of CI know that I am opposed to legislating reporter's privilege because I believe the First Amendment applies to everyone. The press should not receive a special privilege. As it's written the Free Flow of Information Act does more to protect journalism as a business (in other words the large media organizations) than it does to protect individual journalists. And there are enough exclusions and exceptions to render its protection meaningless.

Good journalism, particularly investigative journalism, is hard work and any notion that the government is helping to make that job "easier" is abhorrent to me as a journalist. Greenwald writes:

Source confidentiality is premised on a model of journalism where the media is adversarial to the Government, and safeguarding the anonymity of sources is the only way to find out what the Government is doing. But these days, so frequently, the media serves as an arm of the Government -- the Government uses the establishment media to disseminate propaganda and outright lies to the public (Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman, Saddam's aluminum tubes) or even uses leaks to the media to commit crimes (as it did in the Plame case). When the journalists who are used to spread these lies or commit these crimes then conceal who it is who has done such things, they are complicit in the Government wrongdoing, key enablers of it.

By endorsing the sanctity of that Government-media relationship through shield laws and the like (which I've always supported in the past), it's actually -- perversely -- bestowing the Government with yet another tool to shield its misconduct from the public.

(Bold is mine.)

Why citizen effort is needed on Cuyahoga County story

Ed Morrison just sent me a link to a new site called Map the Mess: Cleaning Up Cuyahoga County.

It' s a citizen journalism effort using social networking software to map the many business and civic connections among Cuyahoga County's leadership. This is the perfect story in which to use the mapping technology, social networking and crowdsourcing. 

The vastness of this story will never be fully understood if people don't report and explain connections. A quick chat with friends and neighbors usually brings forward more connections that have yet to be reported in the mainstream press. However, this type of effort only retains credibility if the information posted can be verified.  

Cuyahoga County: What's next?

There's a certain thrill to watching the unraveling of the Cuyahoga County political patronage machine. We (Dan and I) spent the evening speculating with neighbors about how deep the deception lies, what the FBI and IRS are searching for, when (if?) charges will be filed, how long this has been going on and who will benefit.

Today's PD is reporting that D-A-S Construction CEO Steve Pumper is singing. Russo's attorney, Richard Lillie, claims there was no quid pro quo. But as Valdis Krebs has shown here and here, there are ways around direct quid pro quo.

The question percolating in my mind today, in addition to when will we learn more, is what kind of long-term impact this will have on important county services that residents depend on—MetroHealth Medical Center, Board of Mental Retardation/Developmental Disability, Children and Family Services and Support Enforcement Agency. Cuyahoga County residents, dwindling in numbers, are not going to support tax increases without some serious changes in how government is delivered and held accountable.

Yesterday's reporting focused primarily on the scope of the search warrants executed. Now it's time to look deeper into the fallout from this public corruption.

The Sound of Ideas will be discussing shortly.

Journalism's self-inflicted woes

From Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard earlier this summer. Rosenberg is a co-founder of Salon.

"There’s no question in my mind that the woes of the journalism profession today have been at least partially self-inflicted. At the very historical moment that the news pros faced relentless new scrutiny from a vast army of dedicated amateur watchdogs and expert critics, they offered up a relentless sequence of missteps and disasters. Some were failures of professionalism, from the Jayson Blair meltdown to the Dan Rather screwup. But the biggest — the absence of a stiff media challenge to the Bush administration’s Iraq war misinformation campaign — was a failure of civic responsibility. With that failure, the professionals forfeited their claim to special privilege or unique public role as challengers of official wrongdoing and ferreters of truth. The democracy still needs these roles filled, of course. But after the Iraq bungle, the professional journalists’ claim to own them exclusively became much harder to accept."

'60 Minutes' was riveting last night

Most Sunday nights I may hear a bit of CBS's "60 Minutes" while I'm cleaning up the kitchen or folding laundry or tending to any of a number of household chores. It's my husband's favorite news program and, after making Sunday night dinner, he watches faithfully every week. Last night, I saw the story teasers and decided to sit down to watch with him.

I'm glad I did because the stories were riveting and incredibly diverse, not something that usually can be said about network news. What's amazing is that these stories were rebroadcast from earlier this spring, but we must have missed that week.

The story out of Darfur was chilling, compelling and challenging. We're in bed with the Sudanese government for intel info so we've looked the other way at the genocide occuring there. Is that intelligence worth the extermination of an entire region of people?

The Kanzius Machine was an amazing look at how some people see solutions when most others see problems. A retired businessman and radio technician suffering from leukemia, John Kanzius sought to find a better treatment for cancer involving no side effects. He may be on to something that uses radio waves and metallic nanoparticles to destroy cancer cells. I hope the funding builds and he lives to see his invention work on humans.

Finally, what an uplifting and inspirational story out of Venezuela about the National Youth Orchestra and El Sistema (The System), which teaches and saves impoverished Venezuelan children through classical music from very young ages. This kind of unusual approach to poverty is life-changing and I'm sure could be replicated here in the United States.

Back Up, Back Up, Back Up!

Seriously, how many times do we have to be told to back up our computers? And how many times do we get lulled into thinking all is well? That happened to me this week. My MacBook hard drive crashed. I'm OK with having to get the new hard drive, but I think it's been several months since I backed up my drive on an external drive. That may not seem like a long time, but in the career of a writer, it represents hundreds of thousands of words in note and story form.

Fortunately, I have most of the articles as attachments in gmail. But the note files are a big loss indeed. So are the photos, the few that I bother to take these days.

My oldest son is mourning his 800 songs on iTunes. His iPod was stolen from the locker room at school this spring so he doesn't have a back up on all of them. He does have some of his latest favorites on CD.

Can't ever seem to learn this lesson enough. Now I'm gonna upgrade to Tiger OS so I can get the automatic backups.

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.

Monday odds and ends

I'm trying to keep my Mondays and Fridays as "office" days so I can sift through the myriad items requiring constant follow up. I spent the weekend proofing pages for a book project so my tired eyeballs could really use a break.

In addition to following up with folks I haven't seen in a while (thanks to the SPJ DSA), I'm also going through my reviewer checklists for fall titles from publishers, getting my writer's group submission together and setting up interviews for upcoming story assignments. Once the mail arrives, I'm also hoping to update my May receivables.

Meanwhile, I found an interesting contradiction in today's Plain Dealer that I thought I'd toss out for your reading and commenting pleasure. Did you happen to see the full-page ad on the back of the A-section for St. Martin de Porres High School? The ad states that every one of the 50 seniors of this private school for those of modest means was accepted into at least one college or university. Cool, huh?

There's no story in the paper on this school, but there IS a cover Arts & Life story on idol nonsense. Are you kidding? It's not as if "American Idol" is some new phenomenon sweeping the nation. It's a tired TV show with sinking viewership. WHY give valuable editorial space to Idol when the achievements of students at an alternative inner-city school are reduced to having sponsors (Forest City) buy ads for them?

If Idol is deemed such a cool story by the editors, throw it up on the web, where the cool "Idol" fans are anyway. I highly doubt they are reading the print version of the paper.

A new kind of urban school, committed to transforming students and preparing them for college deserves better than an ad.

This Catholic college-prep school is not run by the Diocese of Cleveland, but is one of 19 schools across the country in the Cristo Rey Network. Check out the 60 Minutes video about Cristo Rey in Chicago and tell me if you could get through the last 30 seconds without tears. Students, some of whom lack supportive home environments, are in school four days a week for a longer period of time during the day and then work one day at local companies, such as Forest City and even The Plain Dealer!

It's founding supporters are: The Detroit Province of the Society of Jesus, The Sisters of the Humility of Mary, The Cassin Educational Initiative Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I spoke with Kim Mantia, associate director of advancement for St. Martin de Porres, who tells me that she scheduled a college signing day with the top 11 students in the class of 2008 (the school's first graduating seniors) and no one from media showed. Now if this involved athletic scholarships, you can bet the city's sportswriters would be there.

A PD photographer who was covering the school during its first year in 2004 did come and he admitted it had been a while since he saw the students (as freshmen), when the paper was committed to observing and writing about its efforts. I certainly hope the PD plans to follow up because if you have any inkling of how difficult education reform is, you'll realize that success of this kind is truly inspirational and contagious.

Regardless of what they do, I plan to write about St. Martin de Porres because I happen to know a little something about education reform efforts. And the school's success is a BIG deal.

Word of the day
dichotomy: a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities

Christian Science Monitor carries my story on John Boyd

My profile of Cleveland Ward 6 City Council candidate John Boyd just went live on the Christian Science Monitor Web site. The story is teased on the front page of tomorrow's print edition and will run on page 20 as the Backstory feature.

The Monitor also includes a two-minute audio interview with me, which was nerve-wracking on a Sunday morning when the whole family is home, but ultimately a very cool experience.

Thanks to Bill Rieter, whom I've worked with many times on Catholic Universe Bulletin stories, for being available to shoot photos on short notice.

UPDATE 4/21 / 8 am: I had hoped the article would generate discussion, but that seems to be taking place this morning over at Writes Like She Talks.

Getting a taste of the writer's challenge

Last night I printed off a draft of a story I'm working on for my husband to read. It was 2,000 words and needed to be shaved down to about 1,200. He balked at first. "I'm not a journalist, what would I know about what needs to be cut?"

"Just give it a read and see where there are places that don't move the story forward," I told him, with pleading eyes.

I've never asked this of him before, but this story is for a new (to me) national market and I really needed someone to give me another perspective. I know he's very interested in the subject, so I felt he was the perfect first reader. Well, there's that and the fact that I've threatened on occasion to leave him out of my book acknowledgments (when I eventually write a book) because he never reads what I write.

He was a captive audience and I took advantage. I'll hand you your dinner when you read my draft.

Immediately he started in and noticed a missing word or two. I handed him a red pen and the power that comes whence. He kept shaking his head and I'll admit I was worried. When he finished he said, "I don't know how you're going to cut this. Everything flows and it all seems to be so important to the story."

Welcome to my world, to the journalist's world. Where half is the most we are permitted sometimes.

He was good at identifying main themes in the story and really good and picking up those missed words (a, is, in, etc.), the ones we tend to lose when our fingers and brains move too quickly.

I was glad to have his comments. But I still needed to make cuts. So I slept on the story and ripped into it again today. It was tough, but there's a point in rewriting when you're less sympathetic to your own writing, but only a tiny bit and only because you eventually want to be finished with the story.

When he called I was just finishing the final touches. I read it to him over the phone. "What did you cut? It sounds like you didn't lose anything?"

That, my dear, is the point.

Word of the day
riposte: a retaliatory verbal sally

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

Two interesting charts from State of the News Media 2008

Public Interest vs. Media Coverage

2007

Least Covered Domestic Issues Percent of Newshole Topic Education 1.0% Transportation 0.8 Religion 0.7 Court/Legal System 0.4 Development/ Sprawl 0.2

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007 Check out the complete State of the News Media here.

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

"The way station, the midwife" for reporters closes

There's a great little piece in the New York Observer about the closing of The New York Times Recording Room.

I'm surprised it hadn't already perished as e-mail and cell phones became tools nearly as important a pen and notebook. Still, there's a lot of history there and I sure hope someone at the NYT thinks to preserve for posterity.

Years ago, the Recording Room was, as Gay Talese put it to Off the Record, the “way station, the midwife” for foreign, national and even New York-based reporters who needed to phone in copy in a pinch. Without the aid of e-mail—let alone a laptop—the ability to dictate copy to a Recording Room operator was a reporter’s safety net, at a time when blowing deadlines and missing the morning paper carried a greater cost than it does in today’s electronic age.

[snip]

Mr. Talese said he used the Recording Room for civil rights reporting in Alabama; Mr. (Arthur) Gelb said he used it to dictate reviews from Off Broadway plays from a phone booth on Second Avenue; and Mr. (Max) Frankel said he used the paper’s London Recording Room (which no longer exists) for his dispatches from Moscow. Mr. Frankel said he would take care to slur some of his sentences so as to foil the Soviet censor on the line.