Death of a Runner

Lucas Sang was a hero to his neighbors near the Kenyan city of Eldoret, an Olympic runner known for his kindness and generosity. Yet when ethnic fighting engulfed Kenya after its tainted elections last December, Sang chose to lead a rampaging mob seeking revenge on members of a rival tribe, a decision that led to his death. "Even You?" by Wright Thompson of ESPN does a masterful job of exploring Sang's last hours, the tensions that divide his country and the limits of heroism. Here Thompson describes what life is like for Sang's wife following the violence:

Sunday morning brings the sound of hammering. The solid whack of metal on nail is a beautiful song of rebirth outside Eldoret. People are rebuilding, putting together new roof beams, fixing what has been destroyed. Along the Eldoret-Iten road, the epicenter for much of the violence, there are signs of renewal.

But down the road a bit, Pamela Sang sits alone in the grove of trees, the roosters pecking in the patchy grass for food. Every now and then, they crow. A wedding ring is still on her left hand. Her face is dark and cloudy. She looks lost. It has been five months and 19 days since Lucas left here for the last time and never came home. She knew something was wrong when he didn't call to check in. He always checked in. That night, she tried his cell phone twice. The customer you are trying to call cannot be located. She did not try again. She already knew.

For more great work by Thompson check out "Bedtime Stories for Catherine" and "The Death of a Basketball Player." The brilliant colors in the photos by Evelyn Hockstein of ESPN.com and Jose Cendon/AFP/Getty Images capture the beauty of Kenya and the tragic outcomes of the ethnic clashes. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=kenya

After the Raid

On May 12 nearly one-third of the people in Postville, Iowa, were detained in a federal immigration raid at the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant. The raid made headlines for a few days, but the repercussions continue. Nigel Duara of The Des Moines Register describes the impact on the community in a thought-provoking report, "New Hires Bring New Problems to Postville."

Ten weeks after the largest workplace immigration raid in U.S. history, this is the new Postville:

Drunken brawls. A food pantry that is almost bare. Women afraid to walk alone at night.

Postville is now home to hundreds of men and women from tough towns and tough lives, brought to this northeast Iowa community by recruiters who entered homeless shelters in dusty Texas border towns offering $15 and a one-way bus ticket.

The impact is evident: New laborers are changing Postville. The Agriprocessors Inc. meatpacking plant, the site of the immigration raid, once employed men and women with families. Now, its workers are mostly young, single people with no stake in the community and nothing to lose....

The laborers brought with them the promise of helping the plant get back on its feet.

They also brought the dangers associated with an influx of uprooted people from the margins of society to the fragile ecosystem of this small, agrarian town.

desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008807270335

The Poisons Around Us

The Center for Public Integrity has recently released two great investigations that show how consumers and workers are being exposed to toxic hazards. "Perils of the New Pesticidies" by M.B. Pell and Jim Morris reveals that the number of reported human health problems connected with pyrethrins and pyrethroids, pesticides used in thousands of consumer products, rose by about 300 percent in the last 10 years. Pell and Morris report that the two pesticides were responsible for more than a quarter of all fatal, “major,” and “moderate” adverse reactions to pesticides in the U.S., up from 15 percent a decade earlier. The EPA said it had not planned to review pyrethrins or pyrethroids until 2010 but would expedite its study after learning of the Center's investigation. The story comes with a terrific search tool that allows readers to type in the names of pesticides and other chemicals they use at home and at work to learn what adverse reactions they have caused across the country. www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/pesticides/

In "Welding's Toxic Legacy," also appearing in the July/August issue of Mother Jones magazine, the Center's Jim Morris describes how the welding-products industry hid from workers the possible dangers of exposure to manganese, a toxic metal. Morris' found evidence that the industry has been paying researchers to claim that there is no link between manganese and neurological damage despite evidence to the contrary. Here Morris puts it in a nutshell:

Court documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity show that the welding companies paid more than $12.5 million to 25 organizations and 33 researchers, virtually all of whom have published papers dismissing connections between welding fumes and workers’ ailments. Most of the money, $11 million, was spent after the litigation achieved critical mass in 2003; attorneys for the welders, meanwhile, spent about half a million.

Throughout the story, Morris does a nice job of personalizing the health risks that welders face. www.publicintegrity.org/projects/entry/358/

Diploma Mill

Two years ago Bill Morlin of The Spokesman-Review broke a major story about a diploma mill ring based in Spokane. Morlin stayed on the story as a federal task force investigated the ring and eight members pleaded guilty to federal crimes. But Justice Department officials refused to release the list of buyers who used the phony and counterfeit degrees to get jobs and promotions. Undaunted, The Spokesman-Review obtained the list and released the names. Here's an excerpt from "Buyers of Bogus Degrees Named":

Hundreds of people working in the military, government and education are on a list of almost 10,000 people who spent $7.3 million buying phony and counterfeit high school and college degrees from a Spokane diploma mill….

The list includes NASA employee Timothy Francis Gorman, who bought an electrical engineering degree using his e-mail account at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to correspond with the diploma mill, and U.S. Department of Health oncology expert Frank S. Govern, who purchased a doctorate in health care administration.

National Security Agency employees David W. Barden and Barry A. Hester both bought degrees. Hester, who was a computer Web trainer and designer for the NSA with top-secret clearance, paid $1,187 for an information systems and technology degree, the list shows.

Eric Gregory Cole, who was a contract employee for the Central Intelligence Agency, paid $3,801 for a degree in information systems management. His top-secret clearance at the CIA was revoked late last year, months after his name was forwarded to the Office of Inspector General, according to one source.

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/local/story.asp?ID=251844

http://spokesmanreview.com/breaking/story.asp?ID=15898

Goodbye Mr. Newton

"The Petabyte Age: Because More Isn't Just More -- More is Different" in the July 16 edition of Wired takes a fascinating look at how our ability to process enormous amounts of data has forever changed science as well as business, medicine and technology. Separate articles probe how mass data collection and analysis have fundamentally altered the study of astronomy, biology, diseases, agriculture, physics, politics and much more. The lead essay, "The End of Theory," by Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson argues that computers' capacity to instantly sift through a library's worth of data has made obsolete the methods — hypothesize, model, test — used by generations of scientists from Newton to Einstein:

This is a world where massive amounts of data and applied mathematics replace every other tool that might be brought to bear. Out with every theory of human behavior, from linguistics to sociology. Forget taxonomy, ontology, and psychology. Who knows why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.

"The Petabyte Age" is a great example of big-picture journalism that takes seemingly unrelated phenomena and shows how they fit together. www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_intro

We want to start including more science stories on News Gems. Leave us a comment if you have any suggestions.

A Child Must Testify

"Jessica's Trial" by Eric Adler of The Kansas City Star is one of the finest courtroom dramas we've seen. The story begins two days before the trial when prosecutor Lori Fluegel takes 12-year-old Jessica into the empty courtroom to help her work up the courage to testify about what happened in her bedroom when she was 9 years old.

Jessica needs to testify. Or else the testimony of other key witnesses won't be allowed. The case could be dismissed.

"I'll be standing right here," Fluegel says.

She tries to reassure the girl. Her voice is resolute. She nods at her spot, squarely in front of the witness stand.

Jessica says nothing….

"Right here," she tells the girl. "I'm not going anywhere."

Jessica stops spinning in her chair. She looks at Fluegel. Her voice quiets.

"Where will David sit?" she says. The accused.

Fluegel steps closer. She points behind her to two heavy wood tables that have been pushed together to form a square that the defense and prosecution will share.

"He's going to be at this table," she says.

"Where will the guards be?" Jessica says.

"The guards?"

"Where will the guards be," Jessica repeats, "if he tries to get at me?"

http://www.kansascity.com/848

The Big Collapse

I've seen two excellent and innovative Web packages commemorating the first anniversary of the terrible bridge collapse in the Twin Cities. The StarTribune.com's "13 Seconds in August" features an aerial shot of the bridge taken soon after the disaster. You can navigate up and down the photo and see the vehicles that were stuck on the bridge or among the debris in the river and riverbank below it. If you click on one of the vehicles, it will show you a video, photo and short story about what happened to each occupant. The result is a compelling look at how the collapse affected individual lives. Pam Louwagie, Jane Friedmann, James Shiffer, Rhonda Prast, Jamie Hutt, Dave Braunger, Jaime Chismar, Vanessa House, J. Pinkley, Regina McCombs and Vickie Kettlewell worked on this project. A big thank you to News Gems reader Kate Giammarise for recommending it. www.startribune.com/local/12166286.html

"The Bridge" by WCCO-TV in Minneapolis is also terrific. The Web page allows you to click on photos of survivors, emergency responders and public officials to watch and hear videos about their experiences. A tip of the hat to the Poynter Institute's Al Tompkins for suggesting this one. http://wcco.com/thebridge

 

The Bishop and the Rabbi

No, this post about a bishop and a rabbi isn't an attempt to repeat one of the old jokes my grandpa used to tell. Instead, it highlights two very different profiles that I've enjoyed recently. Andrew Corsello's "Let God Love Gene Robinson" in the July issue of GQ describes with extraordinary depth the emotional and spiritual struggles of the Episcopal bishop whose homosexuality is dividing the Anglican community. The profile is full of scenes where Gene Robinson must explain his true identity to himself and others. Here Corsello narrates an encounter between Robinson and Ron Prinn, a colleague who had bitterly shunned him when he first learned that Robinson is gay:

By the time Prinn finally accepted one of Gene’s group-lunch invitations, three years ago, Parkinson’s disease had ravaged his body. He could no longer eat—liquid nutrients had to be pumped directly into his stomach through a stent—and had neared the point where he could no longer walk or talk. Another of the guests ushered Prinn and his wife, Barbara, through the garage, where Gene and Mark had installed a handicap lift years before. When he rolled his walker into the kitchen, Prinn beheld Gene with a bewildered look. A gurgling sound emerged from his throat. Barbara put an ear to her husband’s mouth, then translated.

“Ron wants to know who in your family is handicapped.” No one, Gene said.

It clearly pained Prinn to muster the words, but he managed.

“Who did you build that lift for?”

The lift had been used only once before. Gene hadn’t thought twice about installing it. His theology of inclusion had structured not only his ministry but his idea of what a living space should be; the lift hadn’t been built with anyone particular in mind.

“We built it for you,” Gene said.

Prinn began to cry quietly, then motioned for Gene to come close. When he did, Prinn whispered that he wanted Robinson to kiss him.

Barbara Prinn says that in her husband’s final months, when he could no longer speak, Robinson would sit with him in silence for hours at a time, holding his hand and, before taking his leave, kissing the dying, smiling man on the crown of his head. http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_6948

In contrast with this thorough and moving profile of Bishop Robinson, Jeffrey Toobin's portrait of Rabbi Dennis Shulman is short and funny. Here's how Toobin begins "First Timer":

Throughout American history, the number of blind rabbis serving in Congress has remained steady at zero. In a cluttered campaign office next to the Naturoll sushi takeout in Haworth, New Jersey, Dennis Shulman is trying to change that.

I couldn't stop reading after that start. www.newyorker.com/talk/2008/07/28/080728ta_talk_toobin

Are there other profiles that you've enjoyed recently? If so, you can share it with a comment or an e-mail to us.

The Searchers

David Filkins of the Albany Times Union and Lane Degregory of the St. Petersburg Times have written excellent short narratives that place readers in the middle of searches for missing persons. Here's an excerpt from Filkins' "In Fog's Cloak, a Search for Missing Man" in which search crews grope through the fog in New York's Thacher Park.

Less than 100 yards down the road, a search crew crashed through the woods at the Cliff's Edge Overlook. Rescuers used walkie-talkies to make sure they stayed the correct distance apart.

"Hey, where are you?" a man said as he made his way through the dense forest.

"Right here," a woman said.

"I can hardly see. It's thick, huh?"

A police officer drove through the parking lot on a four-wheeler. Nearby, a man wearing an orange vest walked along the edge of the cliff. He stopped every few feet, leaning forward and squinting as he stared into a thick fog.

 

Degregory's "Where Did She Go?" focuses on the distraught husband of a woman who disappeared from their home in Lithia, Florida.

As hope faded, he began to blame himself. Had he done something to drive her away? Why hadn't he done more to take care of her?

By 8 p.m., he had to get out of that trailer. He couldn't stand being there, doing nothing. "If she hears my voice," he told his children, "I know she'll come home." So his kids helped him make his way out the door and into his daughter's car. It was the first time in two months that he'd left the house. The moon was just peeking above the orange grove.

"Meg!" he shouted through the window. "Meg, where are you?"

His sisters stayed by the phone. He had been gone 10 minutes when it rang.

The Florida search had been resolved when Degregory wrote her article, but nothing on the page reveals the outcome until the story ends.

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=706115

http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/article706028.ece

Summer Vacation

We're taking a break from News Gems for a week to enjoy a little vacation time. We'll be back with more stories on July 28. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions of great journalism you think we should feature, leave a comment below or send us an e-mail at newsgems@sbcglobal.net.

Treatment or Abuse?

In Boston Magazine's "The Shocking Truth," Paul Kix does a masterful job of investigating the use of electro-shock therapy at the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC), a Massachusetts home for mentally handicapped and behaviorally impaired youth. The story explores the controversy surrounding the use of the machine, the only one of its kind in the country, and reaches some surprising conclusions. As Kix puts it, "Spend enough time around the machine and it will test everything you know about right and wrong." The writing is strong throughout the story. Here Kix describes the man who runs the home and invented the machine, known as the Graduated Electronic Decelerator, or GED:

He is an unassuming old man, short and with a slight potbelly, rounded shoulders, half a head of curly white hair, and warm eyes. He looks as if he could be Fred Rogers's older brother. Matthew Israel, 75, is the founder and executive director of JRC, which he incorporated under a different name in 1971. Israel responded to questions for this article only by e-mail, but while watching the school's promotional video one notices the softness of Israel's voice, just above a whisper and even-toned, even while describing the GED's purpose. One notices the academic's indifference to dress: Israel often wears suits when he's photographed, but the tie droops a few inches below his belt line and the jacket fairly engulfs the tiny man. In Israel's writings on the school's website and in interviews he has given, one notices his dream, as grand as anyone's in Hollywood but documented and executed better than most scientists'. Matthew Israel is out to save those that society discards.

www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/the_shocking_truth/

The Front Lines

Reading most American magazines, you would never know we're a nation at war. The July issue of Texas Monthly doesn't let us forget, however. Matt Cook's brilliant "Soldier" gives a first-hand narrative of what it was like to start basic training the day America was attacked on September 11, 2001, and then endure multiple tours of duty in Iraq. Cook spares us none of the grit of what it's like to serve in the Army. Here he describes his first encounter with a drill sergeant:

I make eye contact with Drill Sergeant Jones. He is tall, husky, and black. I have never seen a more unpleasant scowl.

“Did you just eye-*** me, white boy?”

“No, Drill Serg—”

“Shut your ***-holster, Private!”

“Roger, Drill Serg—”

“Oh, I see. You a funny motherfucka, huh? I gonna remember you, Private!”

A dozen more drill sergeants enter the formation area. I pull my patrol cap low and watch their reflections pass in the spit shine of my boot. I want to be Drill Sergeant Jones.

Cook carries this no-nonsense storytelling style to the end of his story, sharing the horror and the glory of what he experiences in Iraq as well as what it's like to come back home. www.texasmonthly.com/2008-07-01/feature2-1.php

Where's the Sheriff?

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona's Maricopa County boasts that he's the "toughest sheriff in America." Two years ago he began a highly publicized crackdown on illegal immigration, and last month he announced that deputies had booked their 1,000th suspected illegal immigrant. But in a comprehensive East Valley Tribune series, "Reasonable Doubt," Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin report that while illegals are being rounded up, serious felonies are being ignored.

In Guadalupe, grocery store employees waited in vain for help during an armed robbery.

In Queen Creek, vandalism spread through a neighborhood where Maricopa County sheriff's deputies rarely patrolled.

In Aguila, people bought guns in the face of rising crime that deputies couldn't respond to quickly enough.

And in El Mirage, dozens of serious felony cases went uninvestigated.

Response times, arrest rates, investigations and other routine police work throughout Maricopa County have suffered over the past two years as Sheriff Joe Arpaio turned his already short-handed and cash-strapped department into an immigration enforcement agency, a Tribune investigation found.

Response times on life-threatening emergencies have slowed across the county, with residents on average waiting 10 minutes or more in most patrol districts. The County Board of Supervisors has set five minutes as the expected standard.

Detectives' arrest rate on criminal investigations plunged, from 10 percent in 2005 to 3.5 percent last year.

The series includes a searchable database of criminal immigration cases, interactive graphics, maps and several videos.

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/page/reasonable_doubt

Thinking Outside the Box (or Going Ape)

Yesterday we featured a story about gorillas. Today we want to give equal time to orangutans.

 

At first glance, it seemed like a simple story. A baby orangutan battered by his mother in a Colorado zoo was moved to a surrogate mother in the Milwaukee County Zoo. But in the hands of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Jan Uebelherr, editor Mark Katches and other innovative thinkers at the Journal Sentinel, "Ambassador Mahal" became much more. Here Katches outlines the project and describes some of the creative work that went into it.

The online package at www.jsonline.com/mahal includes video, slideshows, orangutan sounds and interactive graphics from Enrique Rodriguez. Interactive guru Bill Schulz set up a camera outside Mahal's enclosure. We call it our "Good Morning, Mahal Cam." The camera is on 24/7, but the best viewing times are in the morning, when Mahal wakes and is feeling playful. We also have downloadable desktop wallpaper featuring Mahal.

My favorite bonus features online are part of the "Children's Nook" on the Mahal series page put together by Web producer Alison Fonte.

The nook includes a wonderful coloring page created by graphics editor Lou Saldivar, a drawing contest for kids and a children's book version of Mahal's story that Jan and I co-wrote. The book is titled "Little Mahal and the Big Search for a Real Mom."

Did I mention that we're having fun with this?

http://www.jsonline.com/mahal

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=769486

Gorilla Murder Mystery

"Who Murdered the Virunga Gorillas?" by writer Mark Jenkins and photographer Brent Stirton in the July edition of National Geographic is a fascinating tale of intrigue set in the majestic mountains of central Africa. While tracking down the killers of seven gorillas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they explore the impact of war, poverty, greed, and environmental destruction on these rare and beautiful creatures. To capture the story, Stirton and Jenkins endured conditions few journalists encounter. Here Jenkins describes what happens after a rebel commander accused of war crimes, Laurent Nkunda, invites them to visit a family of gorillas:

The next morning we decide to test Nkunda's offer. Apparently, neither he nor his commanders thought we would go to the trouble, for they fail to tell us they have mined the road to Bukima. Alone and on foot, Brent and I set out across no-man's-land along the ominously empty road before finally being warned. And despite satellite-phone calls to Nkunda's commanders, we wind up walking right into the barrels of his frontline soldiers, none of whom has been told who we are or what we're doing there. Luckily we are captured rather than killed by the rebels, and that night we share warm milk straight from the cow in a smoky dirt bunker and fall asleep to the surreal sound of soldiers singing a cappella in camouflaged trenches.

The story comes with a video and Stirton's amazing photos of the gorillas and the local people. A tip of the hat to Investigative Reporters & Editors for publicizing this story. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/07/virunga/jenkins-text/1

For another great magazine story about Africa, check out Richard Behar's special report "China in Africa" in Fast Company. As Behar puts it, "The sub-Sahara is now the scene of one of the most bare-knuckled resource grabs the world has ever seen." www.fastcompany.com/magazine/126/special-report-china-in-africa.html