Chart of unemployment rates in Washington, D.C. and the nation, during January and February 2009.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Yesterday, I had my fourth article published by USA Today. It was about paratransit systems and how they are being forced to cut back on service hours and increase fares because of their budget constraints.
Cities’ paratransit services face cutbacks, fare increases
2006 photo by Deirdre Hamill, The Arizona Republic Brenda Vance, left, helps Desirrie Ramirez into a paratransit van at Central Phoenix Adult Day Care. It's hard for many cities to maintain the services.
By Rebecca Kern, USA TODAY
Jean Moriki of Phoenix has relied on the city’s Dial-a-Ride paratransit service since she suffered a stroke in 1996.
Starting July 1, she’ll pay $1 more for each trip. The Phoenix Public Transit Department will increase one-way fares from $2.50 to $3.50 to help cover losses in sales tax revenue, spokesman Mathew Heil says.
Tonight I went to see Anne Hull, the Pulitzer prize winning Washington Post journalist speak at AU. Hull was a reporter at the St. Petersburg Times for 15 years in Florida, and then began writing for The Washington Post in 2000. She won the 2008 Pulizter for Public Service with Dana Priest for the enterprise reporting they did on the military’s care of wounded soliders at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. She also won awards from the he American Society of Newspaper Editors Awards for Local Coverage and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Grand Prize Award. She’s written about immigration, class, race and the War in Iraq.
Tonight she read from excerpts from two narrative journalism pieces she wrote which were both Pulizter Prize finalists. The first from a three-part series written in 1999 for the St. Petersburg Times called Una Vida Mejor, A Better Life. In this series, she followed 12 immigrant women from Mexico who spent 6 months working in the North Carolina crab industry with guest worker visas. The second from a 2004 three-part series for The Washington Post called Young and Gay in Real America. This series, she followed the lives of a young black lesbian girl in Newark, NJ and a young white gay boy in Tulsa, OK. The girl’s story dealt with survival of Felicia Holt in Newark where just two years prior her best friend was stabbed to death because she was a lesbian. Whereas the boy’s story dealt with his conflict between his sexual orientation and his Christian upbringing.
Hull is a rarity in a sea of mediocre news writers today. Her descriptive writing style is appeals to all of the senses and places the reader exactly in the scene of the story. This narrative writing style involves a talented writer who has a great deal of time and resources – two things the journlism industry is lacking these days. Hull covers stories topics that are not being reported on by mainstream news, but are important for the public to know about. For instance, her Walter Reed story led to a Congressional hearing and complete revamping of the Medical Center. She says the industry can’t afford to pay for her to 8 months researching, interviewing and writing her in-depth narrative articles. In the future, she says journalists like her will exist, but in much smaller numbers.
Hull’s comments about the future of the news industry seem to be following what others are predicting. Many jouranlists are saying there’ll be much more inexpensive online and twittering of news stories that take hours to write and much less expensive analytical and investigative stories that can take months to develop. I think both could still exist in the future, but more funding must first be found for in-depth reporting like Hull’s. Already, there are investigative journalists forming non-profits as a venue to to continue their work. More time and attention must be spent on preserving this unique form or journalism because these important stories must continue to be told.
