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April 2008 - Posts

Wednesday, April 30, 2008 8:00 AM

Nameless No More

Two top writers recently covered the Doe Network, which attempts to match missing persons with unidentified bodies. It's fascinating to compare their two stories. The AP's Helen O'Neill, in "Amateur Sleuths Name Anonymous Dead," focuses on the Doe Network's
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008 8:00 AM

Views From the Street

The Los Angeles Times recently published two stories that provide local perspectives on international problems. "Gas Prices Box in an Alabama Community," by Richard Fausset, describes how soaring gas prices have affected the people of Coy, Ala., where
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Monday, April 28, 2008 8:30 AM

The Crime of Reporting

Hurray for Barry Bearak of The New York Times! Two weeks ago we learned that Bearak was finally free from a Zimbabwean jail after being arrested in early April on charges of "committing journalism." In this Sunday's Times, Bearak gives us a riveting
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Friday, April 25, 2008 8:00 AM

Behind Bars

Talk about a tough job -- how about working as the IT guy in San Quentin? In "California Prison Reform: Inmates, I.T. and Health Care," Kim S. Nash of CIO Magazine explores the challenges faced by information technology workers as they try to improve
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Thursday, April 24, 2008 8:00 AM

The Condemned

"Islamic Schools Lure African Boys Into Begging," by the AP's Rukmini Callimachi, is a powerful, disturbing story. While Callimachi builds dramatic tension by describing 9-year-old Coli's attempts to escape from a Quranic instructor, she takes us into
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Wednesday, April 23, 2008 8:00 AM

Ouch!

For some excellent investigative work on consumer and worker safety, check out The Sacramento Bee's "Nail Gun Safety under Fire as Injuries Soar" by Andrew McIntosh. His stories describe how nail gun accidents are sending 42,000 people
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Tuesday, April 22, 2008 8:00 AM

The Hunger

The war in Iraq, the presidential campaign and the slumping economy have been the big stories so far this year, but they may soon be eclipsed by one with a more devastating impact: a worldwide hunger crisis. Marc Lacey of The New York Times
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Monday, April 21, 2008 8:30 AM

Double Dippers

Lucy Morgan of the St. Petersburg Times has been writing an outstanding series of reports on Florida officials who are double dipping — holding state jobs while collecting state pensions. In many cases, officials have "retired" and returned to the same
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Friday, April 18, 2008 8:00 AM

Wartime Perspectives

For a daily dose of hard-nosed reporting on the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan from the perspective of the troops who've served there, check out the Military Times and its kin at the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy Times.
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Thursday, April 17, 2008 8:30 AM

Attacking the Teachers

Gabriel Sherman has a fascinating story in New York magazine about what happens at an elite prep school when its students begIn writing vicious attacks on a teacher using their Facebook pages. Sherman's "Testing Horace Mann" explores how social
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008 8:30 AM

Ticket to the Past

The only thing Charlie LeDuff of The Detroit News had to work with was a scrap of paper with the signature "R. Kelley." It had been blowing through the abandoned Michigan Central Depot, the Detroit train station where tens of millions of people
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Tuesday, April 15, 2008 9:05 AM

Mad Enough to Kill

There has been a spate of murders linked to mental illness, from shooting rampages on several campuses to a psychiatrist hacked to death in her New York office. "Dangerous and Mentally Ill," by Carol Smith in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, examines the
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Monday, April 14, 2008 8:30 AM

War Without End

"Combat That Never Ends" by Alysa Landry of the Farmington, NM, Daily Times is an outstanding series on post-traumatic stress disorder. Landry describes the causes, symptoms and treatments, and explains why as many as 40 percent of veterans from
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Friday, April 11, 2008 9:00 AM

Dancing With a Star

Cindy Lange-Kubick at the Lincoln Journal Star writes some wonderful human-interest stories. Her latest, "Cancer Patient Gets Night at the Prom," is a heart-warmer about a high-school senior named Adam Field and the girl he decided to ask to his prom.
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Thursday, April 10, 2008 8:00 AM

Confronting Cancer

"Facing Fatal Genes," by The Oregonian's Julie Sullivan, is a nicely written three-parter about a genetic mutation that greatly increases women's chances of developing breast or ovarian cancer. Part one tells the story of four sisters whose family carries
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Wednesday, April 09, 2008 7:00 AM

Pulitzer Praise

I'm thrilled that many of the stories we featured in News Gems last year just won Pulitzer Prizes. The Washington Post, which News Gems lauded in January for having the best stories of 2007, won a remarkable six Pulitzers. These include News Gems
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Tuesday, April 08, 2008 8:30 AM

Back to Mexico

The Record in Stockton, Calif., proves that you don't need to be a big newspaper to put together lively Web packages. "And a Song Shall Carry Them Home" by reporter Jennifer Torres and photographer Victor Blue follows three musician brothers as they return
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Monday, April 07, 2008 8:30 AM

Autism Alert

CNN and its partners at Time and Parenting magazines have put together an impressive package on autism. "Autism: Unravelling the Mystery" features more than two dozen print stories and videos along with an audio slideshow. Some of the highlights
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Friday, April 04, 2008 8:00 AM

Winning Pictures

The National Press Photographers Association has finished its 2008 competition, and the winners show us the best of photojournalism on the Web. John Moore of Getty Images captured first place in the still photo category for a portfolio showing the causes
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Thursday, April 03, 2008 8:30 AM

When Daddy Goes to War

In "Bedtime Stories for Catherine," Wright Thompson of ESPN.com offers us a haunting portrait of Matthew Conley, a high school quarterback from Alabama who joined the Marines, went to Iraq and didn't come back alive. Thompson shares Conley's
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Wednesday, April 02, 2008 8:30 AM

Painful Policies

Two magazines have done terrific jobs recently of examining torture from the perspective of American soldiers in Iraq. "Exposure: The Woman behind the Camera at Abu Ghraib" by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris in the March 24 New Yorker profiles Army
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Tuesday, April 01, 2008 8:15 AM

A Looming Lack of Doctors?

In a two-part series, "Physician Shortage on the Horizon" and "Primary-Care Providers Lose Money Treating Medicare Patients," Mike Dennison of the Helena Independent Record examines our system of reimbursing doctors for their work, and how it contributes
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