An award for chronicling the death of newspapers

I started this blog to vent about the depressing state of my industry. Hundreds of talented reporters and friends were losing their jobs across the country, and  investigative journalism was disappearing with them.

Now, in a moment of great irony, I’ve won a newspaper award for chronicling this problem. The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies gave me first place for media reporting for this piece: “The Rise and Fall of South Florida’s Daily Newspapers.”

So the old adage is true: It’s always best to write what you know. And I’m grateful every day for that opportunity.

Tums, toddlers, and turning 30

A few months ago, a friend of mine picked up a Tums bottle, eyed the expiration date, and let out an enormous sigh. “2013?” she said anxiously. “You know, all I can think about is, I better be married by then.”

Now, a month before my 30th birthday, I know what she means.

She was voicing that eternal frustration which — despite professional accomplishments, medical advancements, and countless hours of downward-facing dogs — is felt by single women of a certain age, who just can’t get their biological clocks to shut up.

We don’t want to imagine our eggs shriveling up and dying. We don’t mean to scare off potential mates with talk of diapers and Kindermusik. We never had any intention of displaying photos of our two-year-old nephew’s smiling face to cringing co-workers. But we do it anyway.

It seems that  every woman I know is either pregnant or has just given birth. In December, I’ll attend my fourth baby shower in five months. Even the waitress at the bar where my office holds weekly staff meetings is pregnant. So is the editor who sits beside me at those meetings.

So, one can see where my psychosis is coming from. But here’s the worst part: I know these baby-crazed thoughts are ridiculous. I’m educated and cynical enough to understand that an infant’s warm weight against my chest is not a prescription for eternal happiness or fulfillment.

Still, this past weekend, when I was visiting my two-year-old nephew, I was greeted every morning by cries of “Yeee-sa!” and an exuberant toddler hug around the knees. And it occurred to me that such a greeting could make me happy for a very, very long time.

Crime and racism at a Palm Beach country club

Flickr user: VeronicaCastillo.com

Palm Beach is a haven of wealth and exclusivity.  Home to Bernie Madoff, a former vacation spot for the Kennedys, and  a playground for  Donald Trump, this tiny island is shrouded in gossip and mystery.

Three years ago, a strange crime occurred at the island’s oldest and most exclusive country club, the Everglades Club. A white chef accused her co-worker, a Guatemalan immigrant, of raping her on the club’s campus. Suddenly, the club was thrust into the spotlight, and forced to endure scrutiny of its long history of racial and religious discrimination. The victim alleged the club’s policies bred “hostility among races.”

Her attacker, Esdras Cardona, is now serving a 20-year sentence in state prison, but many questions about the case remain. To read the full story, check out my recent feature, “The Chef and the ‘Amigo’”.

Inside South Florida’s ghost towers

Flickr user: rayhey2

When I first moved to Florida six years ago, the state was engulfed in a real estate frenzy. Every day, the newspaper I wrote for in Sarasota published another front-page headline about climbing house prices. New condo buildings seemed to appear overnight, and city leaders handed out developers incentives as if they were candy.

Now the nation’s real estate bubble has popped, and nowhere is it more obvious than in South Florida.  “For sale” signs crowd the strip malls; ghostly condo towers beg for residents.  Recently, I decided to go inside some of the most forlorn buildings, to see what life is like after the bust. Read the full story, “Postcards from the Bust.”

My love affair with Cleveland sports

During the three years I lived in Cleveland, something strange happened. I had never really cared about professional sports, or college sports, or any kind of sport at all. Until I met LeBron James.

OK, I didn’t exactly meet him in person, but I watched him on TV, and saw him transform the game of basketball into a near-religious experience for the people of Cleveland. Suddenly, I was a devoted fan. I looked forward to driving by the life-sized, “We are all witnesses” poster of him plastered on a building near the Q. I considered it a modest tribute, given his impact on the poverty-laden city. Once, I even had a dream that he was my husband. Yeah, it was that kind of crush.

And so tonight, on the eve of Game 4 of the Cavalier’s quest to win the Eastern Conference Finals, I wrote this tribute to Cleveland and its beloved basketball team.

More blogs, Florida-style

After a long and beautiful drive across the country (who knew Arkansas was so scenic?), I’ve arrived in South Florida and started my new gig as a staff writer for the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.  The good news: I’m a full-time journalist again, and enormously grateful to be drawing a paycheck for doing what I love. The bad news: I don’t have as much time to keep updating this blog.

However, I am blogging several times a week for New Times‘ blog, The Juice. You should check it out. It’s really funny, and I’m only half saying that for self-promotion purposes.

In the last few weeks, I’ve blogged about KBR’s arrival in Palm Beach County, a state proposal that would make it illegal to use a mirror to look up a woman’s skirt, a hip-hop dating coach, and so much more. If you need a daily dose of my ramblings, please bookmark The Juice.

Otherwise, I’ll try to update this site a few times a month, just so you know I’m still kicking.

One last note:  The links to my Cleveland articles on this site should all, finally, be current. Scene is under new ownership, but the online archives have finally been updated. So all those years of pissing off Cuyohoga County’s politicians won’t be erased from cyber history.

As military sexual assaults rise, the lack of outrage continues

Last year, I wrote one of the most wrenching stories I’ve ever had to report, about female contractors who were sexually assaulted by their co-workers in Iraq. These women–ranging from a Catholic mom in her 50s to a 20-year-old from Texas whose attacker left her drugged, bleeding and bruised–chose to work in a war zone. They chose to walk into a kind of danger most of are too frightened to imagine. But they never signed up to be attacked by the men who worked beside them.

I’ve already complained once on this blog about our government’s astounding reluctance to prosecute these crimes. In today’s New York Times, columnist Bob Herbert adds his voice to the cause.
He notes that the crimes are increasing:

“New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of sexual assaults reported in the last fiscal year — 2,923 — and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

And he wonders, as I do, why a government institution as tightly controlled as the U.S. military acts so helpless in the face of this disgrace. As the rapes go unreported, and the perpetrators escape punishment, exactly what kind of message are we sending? Apparently, it’s imperative to spread human rights and democracy throughout the world, but those rights don’t apply to American women.

Good news, and apologies

I have some good news to report: I’ve accepted a job as a staff writer for New Times, the alt-weekly in Broward/Palm Beach Florida. I’m thrilled about the opportunity to keep writing feature-length, investigative pieces in one of the best news town in America.

These last few months have taught me that getting paid to commit journalism, to speak up for the voiceless and expose the slimy underbelly of the powerful, is a precious gift, and I’m so grateful for it.
I’d also like to apologize for my hiatus from this blog over the past few weeks. I’m still trying to sort out what’s appropriate for me to write here now that I’m employed by another company. Also, I’m a tad busy preparing to move across the country.
So please bear with me, and thank you for all your kind words of encouragement!

What is Mother Jones doing right?

Everyone’s talking these days about turning newspapers into non-profits. To me, that’s rather short-sighted. Non-profits generally pay very little and struggle in their own way to stay afloat. Smart, experienced print journalists expect to be paid well–they’re accustomed to a comfortable salary and good health benefits. Even in these trying times, it might be hard to find serious, investigative reporters willing to work for $30,000 a year.

I’ve been kicking around the idea of setting up an online investigative journalism publication that instead relies partly on small subscription fees and partly on funding from foundations. It would draw on the enormous labor pool of laid-off journalists now accumulating throughout the country, and put them to work doing serious digging in their own backyards–keeping an eye on local governments, the police, the sleazy developers, the Madoff wannabes.

Would readers pay for that? Well, look at Mother Jones. A story in the New York Times today explains how the left-leaning, hard-hitting magazine has managed to avoid massive layoffs–so far. Its small donations and subscriptions have remained steady, even as the economy crashed and Obama was elected, eliminating some of the urgency behind liberal muckraking.

A Mother Jones editor points out that her magazine’s work is essential, even in a world of uber-blogging. Without journalists to do time-consuming, original investigative reporting, bloggers would have nothing to pontificate about.

She’s right. And as someone who has spent seven years doing that original, sweaty, dirty, infuriating and exhilarating reporting, I sure as hell hope we can keep doing it.

No coffee for you!

In these trying economic times, newspapers are doing everything they can to cut costs–layoffs, buyouts, shutting down 401 (k) contributions. Somehow, they think they can slow the death of their industry by investing in cheaper funeral bouquets.
At my former paper, they removed all the light bulbs in the newsroom a few weeks before they announced the layoffs. Here’s another recent example, submitted by an employee at a once-proud daily paper. She got this memo in her inbox, courtesy of one of the big bosses:

We simply can’t afford to continue to pay for coffee. We’ll keep the coffee pots that have been used in the newsroom in case some of you want to bring your own and make it here. But we will no longer purchase coffee for employees.

No more coffee! Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid the end is near.