Goodbye News Gems

I started News Gems in August 2005 as a way to praise the efforts of hard-working journalists around the country. The news industry was enduring a barrage of criticism at the time, and I wanted to show that thousands of reporters, photographers, broadcasters and other journalists continued to create great work every day.

As we reach the end of 2008, I wish I could say that things have gotten easier for journalists. Of course they haven't. But after producing this blog for three and a half years, I'm heartened by the tremendous stories we've had the honor of showcasing, from the first News Gem about nola.com's coverage of Hurricane Katrina to brave reporting of the Iraq War to groundbreaking investigative scoops and beautiful profiles, narratives, photos and videos. I worried at first that there wouldn't be enough good stories to fill the blog on a regular basis. I've had the opposite problem: too many great stories and not enough time to highlight them all. I salute everyone who's worked so hard to put them together.   

Now it's time to say goodbye to News Gems. I've had a blast researching and writing it, but I want to put my energy into other ventures (look for a book on investigative reporting and Watergate from me some time in 2010, I hope). I'm grateful to all the people who made News Gems possible. The Society of Professional Journalists has been a wonderful sponsor, with Christine Tatum, Joe Skeel and Terry Harper deserving special thanks. My colleagues at the Medill School of Journalism have always been supportive, and my wife, Laurie, and three sons have provided inspiration and been understanding when I disappeared to my basement office for hours on end to work on new posts.

Most of all I want to thank you News Gems readers who have been so generous with your loyalty and suggestions. One person in particular stands out. Soon after News Gems began, Brian Summers starting sending me suggestions of stories to use. His advice was so invaluable that eventually I invited him to be a co-author of News Gems. Fortunately, he agreed and since then has helped write the blog and edited our columns in Quill magazine with great skill. Everyone should be lucky enough to work with someone like Brian.

Farewell my friends and please keep up your faith in quality journalism. I'm convinced that the tools made available to us by the digital age will make our stories more powerful and offer new opportunities to make a positive difference in the world.  

Abuse in Hawaii

"Crossing the Line" by Rob Perez of the Honolulu Advertiser does a terrific job of investigating the frequency of domestic violence in Hawaii. Among his findings:

What Miami-Dade Taxpayers Didn't Know

In June we highlighted a Miami Herald series, "Taken for a Ride.'' Their latest installment, "How Miami-Dade Transit Tax Went off Track" by Larry Lebowitz and Rob Barry, seems both timely and timeless.

It was Nov. 1, 2002, four days before a historic election aimed at reshaping the transit landscape in Miami-Dade County, and a backroom deal was quietly being cemented at County Hall.

Four times in 26 years, voters had rejected county attempts to raise taxes for transit. This time would be different, county leaders vowed as they laid out a detailed, overdue expansion of the bus, rail and road network. Voters bought the sales pitch, ratifying a new 0.5 percent sales tax by a 2-1 margin.

What they didn't know: Just before the election, then-Transit Director Danny Alvarez and then-County Manager Steve Shiver inked that secret deal with a powerful labor union that had campaigned hard for the tax.

The pact with Local 291 of the Transport Workers Union delivered double-digit raises for 274 minibus drivers at the bottom of the pay scale just five days after the election. It vaulted 731 veteran TWU bus drivers to the top of the scale at least eight years faster than they would have gotten there before.

None of it was disclosed to voters. County commissioners never voted on it. Even former Mayor Alex Penelas, who spearheaded the 2002 campaign, said in a May interview that he was unaware of the agreement his transit director and county manager had cut.

That pre-election deal was just the beginning. Instead of ''New Money for New Projects,'' as the campaign promised, the new revenue stream contributed to ballooning salaries, overtime and fringe benefits at Miami-Dade Transit, where the payroll has swelled 63 percent since the tax took effect.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/front-page/story/821329.html

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/5min/story/821322.html

http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/news/transit/

Holiday Cheer

Parolees Don't Pay

A Houston Press investigation, "Crime Doesn't Pay(back)" by Chris Vogel, reveals that more than 90 percent of the 5,133 Texas parolees who have been successfully discharged in the last five years still owe their victims court-ordered restitution. For example:

Roz Rockowitz and her husband, Ed, used to own a small sports memorabilia shop on Long Island, New York. They were comfortable, but not wealthy, earning enough to take several vacations a year and afford a modest four-­bedroom home. They lived a contented, middle-class existence.

Then they ran into Bryan Woodson of Deer Park, and the life they knew ended forever.

Rockowitz says Woodson approached her husband in 1996 with a deal to unload baseball cards and other merchandise for a huge profit. All they needed to do was front Woodson the goods and he would later forward the eager couple their earnings. The New Yorkers gave Woodson nearly $80,000 worth of supplies to sell. But they never got their cut.

As it turned out, Woodson was scamming loads of folks. By the time a Harris County jury convicted Woodson in 2003 of theft, 17 people from across the country had their hands out waiting to be paid back. In all, Woodson was ordered to pay nearly $1.7 million in restitution, $77,000 of it to the Rockowitzes….

Woodson was paroled in June 2004 after serving 16 months of his 69-month prison sentence and is scheduled to be discharged in May. According to the limited parole records obtained through the Texas Public Information Act, in nearly four years as of last March, Woodson had paid back a total of $1,718, distributed among his victims. During that time, Rockowitz says she's received two checks totaling $106.

http://www.houstonpress.com/content/printVersion/1019960

How Primary Fund Broke the Buck

"A Money-Fund Manager's Fateful Shift" by Steve Stecklow and Diya Gullapalli of The Wall Street Journal tells the story of Bruce R. Bent, co-founder of the first money-market fund, whose "low-risk" Primary Fund collapsed in September.

For years, Mr. Bent railed against investing money funds' cash in anything riskier than Treasury bills and bank certificates of deposit. He singled out for scorn commercial paper, short-term corporate debt that's commonly unsecured.

"Commercial paper is anathema to the concept of the money fund," Mr. Bent told Reuters in 2001. "People prostituted the concept by putting garbage in the funds and reaching for yield." The following year, he told Investor's Business Daily that "we don't drink, smoke or buy commercial paper."

Yet in 2006, with the Primary Fund underperforming rivals, it went on a commercial-paper buying spree. It acquired so much of this higher-yielding but riskier asset that by September 2008, the fund's yield was tops in its class. But $785 million of that paper was Lehman's….

Mr. Bent didn't stop talking about investment caution. On Sept. 5, in commenting to the SEC on a regulatory proposal, he wrote: "When I first created the money market fund back in 1970, it was designed with the tenets of safety, liquidity and a reasonable rate of return. What the past year has demonstrated is that these have fallen to the wayside as portfolio managers chased the highest yield and compromised the integrity of the money fund."

Eleven days later, Primary Fund's net asset value fell to 97 cents.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122869788400386907.html

Schools in Toxic Hot Spots

"The Smokestack Effect: Toxic Air and America's Schools" by Blake Morrison and Brad Heath in USA Today is a talkable special report that should have an impact for years to come. Here's the lede:

ADDYSTON, Ohio — The growl of air-monitoring equipment has replaced the chatter of children at Meredith Hitchens Elementary School in this Cincinnati suburb along the Ohio River.

School district officials pulled all students from Hitchens three years ago, after air samples outside the building showed high levels of chemicals coming from the plastics plant across the street. The levels were so dangerous that the Ohio EPA concluded the risk of getting cancer there was 50 times higher than what the state considers acceptable.

The air outside 435 other schools — from Maine to California — appears to be even worse, and the threats to the health of students at those locations may be even greater.

Using the government's most up-to-date model for tracking toxic chemicals, USA Today spent eight months examining the impact of industrial pollution on the air outside schools across the nation. The model is a computer simulation that predicts the path of toxic chemicals released by thousands of companies.

USA Today used it to identify schools in toxic hot spots — a task the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had never undertaken.

The result: a ranking of 127,800 public, private and parochial schools based on the concentrations and health hazards of chemicals likely to be in the air outside. The model's most recent version used emissions reports filed by 20,000 industrial sites in 2005, the year Hitchens closed.

The report's website further connects with readers by offering a searchable database that ranks the air pollution outside each school.

http://content.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/smokestack/index

Cuba's Revolution at 50

The Miami Herald is running a 10-part series, "The Cuban Revolution," marking the 50th anniversary of Fidel Castro's ascent to power. The first stories, written by Frances Robles, Andres Oppenheimer and Fabiola Santiago, show great promise.

Fifty years ago, an attorney turned bearded guerrilla marched triumphantly into Havana and declared victory over a departing dictator. Then he became a despot himself.

Fidel Castro forever changed the landscape of both Cuba and Miami. He jailed or executed his enemies, seized private property, divided families, and drove nearly two million Cubans into exile. His nation became a Cold War pawn.

At the same time, Castro launched a massive literacy campaign. The island churned out armies of new doctors. Cuba became an international player, inspiring guerrilla movements and supplying soldiers for ''anti-imperialist'' wars around the globe. Castro's refusal to kowtow to the United States won him praise.

As the Jan. 1 anniversary of the revolution's triumph approaches, many of the social welfare achievements that were the trophies of the communist regime have rusted. Years of failed economic policy, waves of mass exodus, and Cuba's inability to recover from the collapse of its patron, the Soviet Union, have dulled Castro's touted crown jewels -- the advances in health and education.

Still, the revolution that ousted Fulgencio Batista and transformed a tropical getaway into a communist state remains one of the Western Hemisphere's most significant events of the last century.

http://www.miamiherald.com/revolution/

The Sad Soldier and Other Stories

American RadioWorks is producing some excellent documentaries that mix sound, photos, text and videos to create powerful stories. Recently it has looked at the dawning of the conservative era during the 1968 presidential campaign, the transformation of public housing in American cities and the impact of immigration on a small Colorado town. For an example of American RadioWorks multimedia storytelling, check out "What Killed Sergeant Gray" by Michael Montgomery and Joshua E. S. Phillips. In this passage, they introduce us to Adam Gray, a gung-ho soldier who returned from Iraq a different man after his unit abused Iraqi prisoners.

He was a boisterous kid, prone to getting into trouble. His parents nicknamed him "The Bomber."

But once he enrolled in the Army, he was "heart attack serious," recalled his mother. "He wasn't going to do it for a stint just because he had nothing else to do. This was a life commitment."

Shortly after he turned 23, Adam Gray served a tour - about a year - in Iraq. He came home physically uninjured. He spent some time with his mother and stepfather in California. And then he went to a base in Alaska for more training. He said he wanted to go back to Iraq.

But on August 29, 2004, Gray was found dead in his barracks. A plastic bag was cinched around his neck, and can of Dust-Off - a cleaner used for electronic equipment - was lying beside him.

In addition to investigating what happened to Gray, Montgomery and Phillips weave together  the voices, photos and videos of other soldiers in his unit. http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/vets/index.html

Probation's Fatal Flaws

The News & Observer is running an excellent series, "Losing Track: N.C.'s Crippled Probation System," written by Joseph Neff, Sarah Ovaska, Anne Blythe and David Raynor.

North Carolina's probation system, designed to help low-level offenders rebuild their lives and stay out of costly prisons, is risking public safety by neglecting or losing track of thousands of criminals.

The results can be deadly, a News & Observer investigation has found.

Since the start of 2000, 580 people have killed in North Carolina while under the watch of state probation officers -- 17 percent of all convictions for intentional killings.

Documents and interviews indicate that probation officers -- poorly paid, overworked, some inexperienced -- routinely lose contact with the people they are required to supervise and guide toward more productive lives. Probation leaders have failed to take advantage of technology advances, for years leaving their officers with no automatic tracking of the people under their supervision. Officers often weren't aware when probationers were arrested on new charges….

Statewide, probation officers can't find nearly 14,000 of the 114,000 criminals on probation.

http://www.newsobserver.com/probation/

A Fine Serial Narrative

"Finding Forgiveness" by Tom Hallman Jr. in The Oregonian is the haunting story of a woman whose violent father was killed by a police officer. Here's the opening scene, in which Hallman begins to point us toward his powerful climax.

The message that would finally free Heather Brown from the shadow of her violent father arrived unexpectedly.

Brown, 28, spotted it late the first Sunday in June, just before bed. She was checking e-mail in the living room of her Wilsonville apartment, sitting in the dark so she wouldn't disturb her 13-year-old son, sleeping in the lone bedroom, or her fiance, asleep a few paces away.

A strange subject line caught her eye: "Retirement ..." Her heart began to race. She opened the message and began to read.

For most of her life, Brown fooled herself into thinking she had come to terms with her father's death. She was 7, four days shy of 8, when a Portland police officer responding to a frantic 9-1-1 call found Brown's dad hiding behind a Southeast Portland apartment building. Officer Tadd Kruger needed four slugs to bring down the man known as Wild Bill Brown.

The e-mail -- inviting Heather Brown to Kruger's retirement ceremony -- was a sharp reminder that her past was still bleeding into the present. Yet here was an opportunity to face her past and, maybe, break free for good.

Be sure to click on the thought-provoking video where Hallman puts such stories into perspective.

http://www.oregonlive.com/special/index.ssf/2008/11/finding_forgiveness.html

The Man who Stopped a Nuclear Attack

"The Assault on Pelindaba" is a great "60 Minutes" story about the boldest raid ever on a site containing weapons-grade uranium and the man who stopped it. Reporter Scott Pelley and producer Michael Karzis take us to South Africa's Pelindaba plant, which stores highly enriched uranium, the fuel used to make nuclear bombs. They describe how one November night last year two teams of armed men crawled under an electrical fence and attacked Pelindaba's control room. Anton Gerber (who was only in the control room because the man who usually watches it at night--a paraplegic--was drunk after an office party) had to fend off the attackers. Pelley and Karzis do a masterful job of building up the story's suspense, exploring the consequences of what might have happened if Gerber wasn't there and, as "60 Minutes" does so well, confronting South African officials who have been hiding the incident. www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4628643n

These Automakers Mean Business

“India - Driven to Compete” by Steve Eder in The Toledo Blade is an eye-opening series on India’s surging auto industry.

Yet another challenge is facing the U.S. auto industry. And this time, it isn’t coming from Japan, South Korea, or Germany — or the meltdown of the economy.

In the next few years, Indian automakers and parts suppliers, long outcasts because of lackluster innovation and stagnant technology, have ambitious plans to sell cars to American consumers and peddle parts to carmakers in this country.

India’s anticipated foray into the downtrodden U.S. automotive market poses an immediate threat to Detroit’s Big Three and their domestic suppliers, already teetering on the brink of bankruptcy because of lagging sales stemming from a tightening credit market and competition from Asian automakers.

Indian automakers, aggressively recruiting top homegrown engineers and ramping up research and development teams, are emphatic that their entrance into the U.S. and global markets should be taken seriously.

For the first time, they believe they can compete globally.

http://www.toledoblade.com/indiaautos

The Dolphin without a Tail

The St. Petersburg Times is running a wonderful story by John Barry about an injured baby dolphin who swims again despite losing her tail in an accident. Barry's "Winter's Tale" introduces us to Winter, the dolphin, and the people who rescued her, nursed her, and made her a prosthetic tail. Best of all, he shows us the many children who are inspired by the animal who manages to survive and even thrive while living with injuries, just like they do. In this scene, Barry describes the two men who made Winter's new tail:

Dan Strzempka works in a lab cluttered with loose feet, legs, hands, arms — all made of plastic and steel. Most are adult size. Some are sadly smaller — the size of a child's foot or hand.

Dan has worn a prosthetic leg since age 4, when he slid under a lawn mower. He now makes them for Hanger Prosthetics & Orthotics. His lab is in Sarasota.

Two years ago, Dan got a call from Hanger Vice President Kevin Carroll about a baby dolphin that lost her tail. She was now in the custody of Clearwater Marine Aquarium. The baby was doing all right, except she had developed scoliosis from moving her stump in an unnatural motion — side to side, like a fish.

How about going partners with me to design a prosthetic tail, Kevin asked. Think it will work?

The idea wasn't outrageous. Dogs and cats have been fitted with new legs. An elephant named Motala in Thailand stomps around on a prosthetic foot. A stork in Bucharest sports a fake beak. Hanger once designed a leg for an ostrich. But Hanger had never had a client whose world is salt water.

Dan didn't hesitate.

"Of course it will work."

The Web package opens with a lively video that introduces us to the people who rescued Winter and aided her recovery. You might need a box of tissues for this story; it sure brought tears to my eyes. www.tampabay.com/specials/2008/reports/winter/

Lesley's Choice

"A Hard Choice" by Patricia Meisol in the Washington Post Magazine follows pro-choice medical student Lesley Wojick as she tries to decide if she has what it takes to become an abortion provider. Here's a scene in which Lesley sees one her first abortions.

In the procedure room, the patient had been sedated, but her eyes were open. As Lesley watched, the doctor grabbed the tenaculum, numbed the cervix with a needle, grabbed the specula for dilation, then the suction machine. He was methodical and very fast. The patient was in obvious pain. Her screams gave Lesley the chills, and she thought she might throw up.

"I'm getting dizzy," she said aloud. The doctor told her to sit down. She backed away, found a bench and sat. She was hot and sweaty.

The procedure took five minutes, and when the doctor was done, he took off his gown and threw it into the trash. Lesley apologized for being squeamish. "I don't want to seem like a baby," she said she told him.

He started to ask if she was "one of those who don't agree" with abortion, but before he could even finish the question, she interrupted. "No, no," she said she told him. "I'm one of the Medical Students for Choice. I'm not one of those."

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/14/AR2008111401698.html