Blogger Mary Ward offers a breakdown of seven  networking sites for journalists.

Mary: Without the abundance of social networking sites available, many sites are staking their claim by catering to certain groups.  Some cater to scientists and others to journalists.  Not every subgroup will have its own social networking sites, but even the popular social networking sites can still be used to further journalistic endeavors.

MySpace–MySpace is one of the big social networking sites.  While it has no focus on journalism it can be used to make connections with other members who have an interest or experience in journalism.  Of course, like most such sites you can post blogs and share your opinion on anything at any time.

FaceBook–FaceBook is a site with similarities to many others.  You post your information and your picture and you can make connections with other members of the site.  You can use your status message to promote blog entries on occasion to garner more attention for them.  You can seek out friends on this site who have similar interests to create a network of friends to share thoughts and ideas with.

LinkedIn–LinkedIn has more of a professional member base which makes it a social site different from Myspace.com and Facebook.com.  It also offers the benefit of connections being made based on some real connection to an individual.  You can keep track of your true connections in the field of journalism without the clutter of random people trying to be your friend on the site.  This is another site that can be used to promote your blogs.

Twitter—Twitter is the social networking site du jour.  Everyone is constantly checking and send out Tweets so that no event or thought is missed or left without a flurry of comments.  Nothing is too trivial or too private it seems.  Journalists can tap into the vast Twitter fan base to share thoughts, feelings, and to promote blogs or other articles.  Compelling and humorous Tweets can gain an army of followers who can be informed of any journalistic endeavour you undertake whenever you wish.

Ning–Ning.com allows you to seek out a social network related to journalism or a subdivision of this broad field.  Or you can take another approach.  If you cannot find satisfaction with the social networks that are already in existence then just start your own using this website.

Nuzgeeks.com–Nuzgeeks.com is simply a social site for journalists, students, and other journalism oriented individuals to connect with each other.  It includes videos, blogs, and group topic discussions among other features.  It is truly a social network for journalists.

About the blogger: Journalistcenter.com (in which Mary is a partner) is a social site for journalists, reporters, and editors.  It includes chances to share internationally as well as opportunities for jobs in journalism and job training.

These 7 social sites for journalists run the gamut from general social networking sites to those specifically created for those in this field.  Each has its place in forging connections and spreading written works and news.  Journalism has benefited from all these sites as the written word of countless journalists may now be seen whether they work for major publications or not.

Mary Ward blogs about how to choose among journalism degrees.

I started reading Scott Gold’s Los Angeles Times story on Nov. 26 and was ready to find a reason to go somewhere else. I’d read stories like this; I’d reported this: The rebirth of a gang-invested park.

But then Scott pulled a trick on me and started aiming and hitting me with a beautiful succession of…

…details.

This was not a monster project, just a piece in a series the The L.A. Times is running about impoverished South Los Angeles in an attempt to demystify it.

I started to feel seduced by the use of detail, starting with the snippet about the  rec-park executive approaching a gang leader to ask for help reclaiming the park. I became more attached at the descriptions of the gangs’ lack of father figures.  I got a more intimate feeling when a gang member described his upbringing.

I can’t say this is an award-winning story. But I can say it is compelling one, and if you compare one of your better stories against this one, try to analyze who reports for detail and who uses detail better—you or Scott?

Here’s the story to read, followed by some remarks by Scott about the genesis and execution of this story.

By SCOTT GOLD

Not so long ago, South Park looked like Club Med for gang members.

The neighbors had given up on the little park — ceding it, almost entirely, to the 5-Trey Avalon Gangster Crips. Gangsters smoked pot in the gym and bounced their gambling dice against the concrete steps outside the rec center. There was no grass, and, in the mornings, junkies littered the dirt with syringes and tiny, colorful balloons that had been emptied of heroin. There were no youth sports teams. There was one child — one — enrolled in the preschool program.

“It was,” said Brian Cox, the park’s senior recreation director, “not a park.”

Four years ago, a police crackdown and a decline in violent crime created an opening. Workers planted grass and hung nets from the rusted basketball rims. The park, tentatively, began to rebuild. But to accomplish any sort of rebirth, city officials were forced to admit that they needed help of a different sort.

They needed the gang.

They needed Blue.

His real name was Parie Dedeaux, but he’d always been known as Blue. No one ever had explained it to him. He’d grown up nearby, and he’d been a heavy hitter in the Avalons for two decades, since before he could drive a car. He commanded an inordinate amount of respect on the streets, officials said.

“Before we could get the kids to come back, we had to get those guys to allow the kids to come back,” Cox said. “We could pretend otherwise. Or we could start to work with them. What are you going to do? They ain’t leaving.”

So Blue, instrumental in claiming the park for the gang, would now play a pivotal role in giving it back — an unlikely partnership that would lead to a remarkable resurrection.

Deserted as youths

Blue recently sat in the empty bleachers at South Park and offered a passionate and articulate defense of the gang life, which can be an unsettling thing to hear.

He grew up just a few blocks away, near Avalon Boulevard, back when the area was known as South-Central — before City Hall figured out that the name had become shorthand for urban decay and changed it to South Los Angeles.

He is 38 now, with a barrel chest and Popeye forearms that belie the gray hairs in his goatee. In the gang world, he and his contemporaries are of a specific age. They were the first to become men during the truly terrible years in South L.A. 20 years ago, when crack cocaine came through like a tempest and gangs were averaging a killing a day.

Everyone, he said, seemed to desert them at once. Many of their parents were lost to drugs; his own mother was murdered and his father was addicted and absent, like most of the fathers he knew at the time. The police, he said, became cruel and combative. The schools offered little hope. The factory jobs on Alameda and Slauson — the jobs that had lured his grandparents from Louisiana, like thousands of other African American families — were gone. Blue and his friends had hustled a little cash by offering to pump gas for customers at the local stations; soon, even that was taken away, as crackheads kicked the boys out and took over.

“We didn’t have a man at home. I never had a single man walk through the door and say, ‘I paid the light bill today.’ None of us did,” Blue said.

“So now your mom is getting high. The lights get turned off. The house is getting stinky. We all looked at each other and said: ‘Well, I guess it’s just us now. We ain’t got no malls, no colleges, no jobs. But everybody wants to be a part of something. All we could do is claim . . . this.”

He stretched his arms wide; he meant the park.

A steep decline

It became a headquarters of sorts for the Avalons, and some of them soon began selling the same drugs that had sullied their lives a few years before. The park began a precipitous and notorious decline.

“They owned the park,” said Los Angeles Police Officer Cathy Emestica, a 14-year veteran who has devoted much of her career to South Park and its regulars. “You couldn’t come in or out unless they let you.”

Four years ago, shortly before Cox took over, an Avalon took a shot at a cop. The bullet missed, but for the LAPD, it was the last straw.

The department took the unusual step of erecting five surveillance cameras at the park. Emestica began monitoring the everyday crowd: addicts fresh from the methadone clinic; dealers; gangsters who stared up into her cameras, alternately waving or flipping her the bird. The pace was relentless; in the first year and a half, the LAPD made 1,140 arrests.

Cox, sensing a shifting tide, had begun cracking down. No more pot in the gym. No more dice outside his office. The park started filling up on weekends. It was time to talk to Blue. They sat in the bleachers one day, just the two of them, staring into the caramel-colored dirt in the empty infield on the other side of the fence.

“I’m going to be real with you: I don’t condone what you do,” Cox told him, carefully. “But we’ve got to come to common ground.”

It was a tense conversation, but one that Blue was ready for.

He looked around. The park had been his proving ground, the place where he’d darted between the shaggy palm trees that formed a once-proud promenade leading to the swimming pool. Where he’d earned his first taste of respect behind the rec center, in a little shady spot where the boys went to resolve their disputes. Through all the pain that came with growing up in the neighborhood, the park had been one of the few constants in his life. It had, in a very real sense, sustained him. And now, he realized, he could repay the favor.

“We’re tired,” Blue told Cox. “We got to find a new way.”

So Blue went legit.

A ‘double life’

Truth be told, it wasn’t that much of a stretch.

For years, until he got laid off in a downsizing, Blue had been leading what he called a “double life” — working a respectable job in hardware sales, something he chose to shield from the Avalons as if it were a badge of shame. He cashed in his 401(k) and bought exercise equipment, including a heavy punching bag, which the park allowed him to install in a small courtyard near the office, mostly for the Avalons’ use.

The park also gave him a key to a dank storage room; Blue bought a hot plate and a microwave and began preparing breakfast for the park’s homeless residents.

He also launched a tradition called “Spread Friday.” Each week he and his friends make a goulash of sorts, using only ingredients that are also available for purchase inside local jails: ramen topped with smoked oysters and canned beef, honey, jalapeños and crushed Doritos, tossed inside a garbage bag and doled out to all takers, who are surprisingly many — and eager. The meal, said Blue — who in his 20s served 22 months in prison for robbery — is a reminder that life will always be better on the outside.

Once Blue had signed off on the notion of the Avalons cooperating with the city — or at least allowing the community unfettered access to the park — the floodgates opened.

Using grants and money routed from City Councilwoman Jan Perry’s office, the park built a playground, replaced the gym floor and refurbished a band shell. The park launched a series of music performances. During the first concert, featuring blues and jazz, “everyone held their breath,” Cox said. Nothing happened. So at the next show, Cox asked Blue and his comrades — “the big, bad Avalon Crips,” Cox said with a grin — to provide security. It worked without a hitch.

Today, there are talent shows, tutoring programs, toy giveaways at the holidays. An aerobics class has exploded in popularity; more than 200 women are registered, making it one of the city’s largest park programs for adults. The class is so large that the instructor had to develop hand signals to telegraph dance moves. There are more than 700 children enrolled in classes and sports programs. And there are 18 kids in the preschool.

“Do we still have our problems? Yeah, of course we do,” Cox said. “This ain’t Westwood or Brentwood, and it ain’t never going to be. But we made it work.”

By last year, it was time for the final chapter.

Blue learned that a football program called the Demos was losing its permit to practice at another nearby park. He wanted to bring the program to South Park. Here, that was a radical idea. Many of the players’ fathers were from rival gangs: Pirus, Outlaws, Blood Stone Villains.

“You guys have shot at each other,” Cox told Blue.

“I’ll make it safe, homie,” Blue told him. “I’ll do it.”

‘Showtime!’

It is a Saturday morning in November, early enough that the fog hasn’t yet burned off. The Demos will play six games today — six age brackets — against the mighty Compton Vikings. Blue has been up since 6 a.m. washing uniforms, and as he climbs out of his 1975 Buick Skylark, which is the color of asparagus, he is already champing at the bit.

“Showtime!” he screams.

The city rolled the dice on Blue, and so far he has delivered. At first, parents who brought kids in from other neighborhoods sat in their cars with the engines running during practice. Eventually, they ventured out.

There are now 300 kids in the program — among them Blue’s 11-year-old son, P.J., a running back, and his 7-year-old daughter, Paris, a cheerleader.

On this morning, the first person Blue encounters is Vernard Payne, whose white “P” on his cap says what no one needs to say out loud: that he is affiliated with the Pueblo Bishops gang. Blue and Payne are Crip and Blood; here, they embrace.

“Once you root for my son . . . ” Blue explains.

” . . . It’s over,” Payne says.

“It’s like rehab for gangsters,” Blue says.

Blue walks in as though he’s the mayor, beaming, teasing, high-fiving. “It’s on!” he shouts.

“The mouth is in the house,” someone mutters.

The league is not for the faint of heart. The players’ helmets are gouged and duct-taped, their socks and sleeves full of holes and bloodstains.

“Wake the . . . up!” a coach shouts after Compton makes a big gain on a busted play — he’s talking to a 7-year-old. Another boy seems to wilt under his oversize helmet and misses a tackle. “Tear his ass up!” a coach screams at him, the veins on his neck taut beneath a tattoo of a roll of money.

The early games do not go well for the Demos; Compton seems able to move the ball at will. Blue tries bribery; he offers to buy players hot dogs if they recover a fumble. When that doesn’t work, he bumps his offer up to $5.

Blue erupts when P.J. storms 30 yards on a kickoff return. But when the Demos throw an interception on the next play, Blue hurls his bag of sunflower seeds to the ground.

“We’re out here to win!” he yells. “You’re playing like little punks!”

Soon, though, perspective regained, Blue finds himself in the center of a scrum of players, firing them up for the next game. He has many roles in the league, chiefly that he is its head booster.

“Whose house?” he bellows.

“Our house!” the boys shout.

“Where we from?”

“East side!”

“Where?”

“East side!”

It’s the last bit that always gets to him, he said later.

In the parlance of South L.A., “east side” has long referred to gangs east of Main Street. All of a sudden, the words mean more.

They mean that the east side now gathers in peace, if only once or twice a week, and if only to watch kids play football.

“I’m not just part of a gang. I’m part of a community,” Blue said. “It’s the first time I ever felt that. I’m part of . . . this.”

He threw open his arms again, and fell silent, which doesn’t happen often.

“We’re in the middle of the ghetto,” he whispered. “You hear that?”

Then he smiled, knowing full well that the only thing you could hear — at least for now — was the sound of a lawn mower on the new grass, and the birds in the trees.

HOW I WROTE THE STORY:

scott.gold@latimes.com

I’m been reporting from South Los Angeles for almost a year now for a series of articles looking to reassess the place of this storied, troubled neighborhood in the structure of the city, following a period of transformative change. This article, about the resurrection of South Park, was our 14^th installment. We’ve treated this series as a project with a small “p” – a modern, nimble undertaking that would wed longer narratives like this one with quicker pieces where we break news, as well as multimedia presentations for the web. That’s a lot of elements, so we’ve known from the start that we would need to find ways to make each element in this series stand out – and stand up on its own.

The best way to do that is to take readers into corners of South Los Angeles they’ve never seen before, and hold up a mirror to elements of this neighborhood that brush against the conventional wisdom. And the best way to do all of that is to report, report, report and then report some more until we can offer the public a level of detail that makes it difficult to turn away – even in such a famously fractious and diffuse city, where your life can look nothing like the life of someone who lives a half-mile down the road.

This story was unusual in that the park itself was a central character, in a sense – the only true, faithful companion of a man named Blue, who has spent the better part of two decades as a heavy-hitter in a gang called the Avalons. Both of these “characters” – Blue and the park – needed to resonate to make the story work. And it would not be enough to offer a familiar, bleak story of either one – of a park in the interior of Los Angeles that had fallen into disrepair, nor of a man who grew up in rotten circumstances and then became a gang member. So we needed details. We needed to know exactly what the park was like just a few years ago – gang members throwing their gambling dice against the steps leading to the rec center office, the pitiful fact that there was a single kid enrolled in the preschool. And we needed to know everything about Blue. It wasn’t enough to say that he now feeds the homeless and the junkies after turning over a new leaf. We needed to know this: “Each week he and his friends make a goulash of sorts, using only ingredients that are also available for purchase inside local jails: ramen topped with smoked oysters and canned beef, honey, jalapeños and crushed Doritos, tossed inside a garbage bag and doled out to all takers, who are surprisingly many — and eager.” And it wasn’t enough to know that Blue recently started a youth football program. We needed to know that here, in the heart of the city, even this kind of marked progress comes with rough edges. We needed to see a coach yelling at a 7-year-old: “‘Tear his ass up!’ a coach screams at him, the veins on his neck taut beneath a tattoo of a roll of money.” In the end, it was an imperfect story in an imperfect business. But I do think that because of that detail, we were able to explain, reveal and surprise, which is a pretty good standard.

Got a good example of detailing? Send it to Bob via Newsthiking.com

Julia Scott makes the transition and shares her tips

Julia Scott is a reporter turned blogger who adapted her print skills for the web. She currently writes a savvy-spending blog called BargainBabe.com. I asked her to describe the transition. Read on:

Print journalists may have a hard time transitioning to blogging if they are not willing to let go of some of the basic tenets of traditional newspaper writing. While there are many similarities between the two forms, the difference are striking. Let’s start with what works in both forms:

–Classic, good storytelling

–Solid reporting, great quotes, salient details

–Concise writing

Writing for print vs. blogging

Now let’s talk about the differences:

–Bloggers write more frequently. While there are exceptions, successful blogs generally have multiple posts everyday or each weekday. Some Sports bloggers regularly post a dozen-plus times a day.

–Blog posts are typically shorter. Think 2-8 paragraphs for most posts. The goal is to provide nuggets of information as soon as you get them. Forget about crafting one long story that has complete information. Break up big topics into separate posts so readers can go directly to the information that interests them.

–The structure is simpler. Worry less about a beginning, middle and end than with providing a polished tidbit.

–The style is even more informal and conversational. Remember what your editor said about writing a story like you were telling it to your grandmother? Bloggers write as if they are talking to their bff. –Slang is not uncommon, and the writing often reflects the blogger’s internal dialog in their head.

–Bloggers use first person. Readers want to connect with bloggers and enjoy hearing your opinion, how a particular post relates to your life, and other personal details. Some of my most popular posts are personal stories that have little or nothing to do with my blog topic.

–Bloggers share opinions. Telling readers what you think of an issue can create great discussion via comments, which keeps readers coming back. Be open to dissent and respectful disagreements.

–Bloggers encourage interaction. Readers love to share their two cents and great bloggers embrace this. Feedback via comments, polls, live blogging sessions, Google map mashups, videos, and more can generate tips, create loyalty, and increase the time readers spend on your blog.

Those are the basic similarities and differences. To get a better idea of what makes a good blog post, I encourage you to check out: http://www.bargainbabe.com/

Try finding a watchdog these days

L.A. Times media writer James Rainey did a simple but heartbreaking story: He wandered over to the Los Angeles County Hall of Administration and ticked off how the number of reporters covering county government had plunged. It’s another measure of where we’re going and why capitalism and journalism don’t seem to be very good for each other.

Punch this into your browser:

Recommended reading

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-onthemedia18-2009jan18,0,2214604.column

When to Use Quotes, and When not to

As you develop your writing talent you develop a technical appreciation of quotes–when they help and when they hinder.

Here, from two stories published today, are a couple lessons.

The first was a feature by the Los Angeles Times’ Peter H. King, who is making his way across the nation, sending back mood pieces tied to the Jan. 20 inauguration of Barack Obama.

Watch how artfully the quotes are presented, set up. This is a good example of a writer with his own distinctive voice stepping out of the way and letting the characters have their say.

Recommended reading

Total length: 1,015 words. Total words in quotations: 297, or 33%.

For contrast, read DeeDee Correll’s sidebar reconstruction of a plane’s crash landing in Denver, published in the Chicago Tribune. The recounting of what happened could not be left to the victims–they knew only the small universe that was their chaotic world; the reporter’s voice needed to be the dominant one, and it was.

Total length: 514 words. Total words in quotations: 35, or 7%

Check’em out.

NO LOVE FOR OBAMA IN THE OIL FIELDS
By PETER H. KING

MIDLAND, TEXAS–Here in the heart of the Texas oil patch, where the presidential voting ran about 4 to 1 for John McCain, where the latest tourist attraction is President Bush’s boyhood home, and where, according to a recent report in the Midland Reporter-Telegram, the election has produced an unparalleled run on assault weapons by gun owners fearing new federal bans, the notion of a Barack Obama honeymoon appears to be a nonstarter.

This was driven home with a visit to the Petroleum Club in downtown Midland, where each day at 9:30 a.m. a handful of Permian Basin heavyweights gather around a poker table for coffee and conversation.

“I’m scared to death,” one of the oilmen offered for openers in what would be a two-hour airing of their brief against the president-elect, which included complaints about liberal policies, inexperience, automaker bailouts, creeping socialism and so on.

“Obviously,” explained equipment supplier Jack Hunnicutt, choosing his words with care, “this part of the country is totally Republican. And we foresee probably some heartache before this is over. More giveaway programs, probably.”

I had described Hunnicutt in print, after a similar visit years ago, as a “balding bear of a man,” and his cronies still tease him about the line. Teasing is very much a part of the daily banter.

“Ronnie, get in here,” Hunnicutt sang out to a latecomer in his slow Texas twang. “We need your ex-per-tise. Whatever that is.”

“You-all don’t realize it,” the man responded, “but I could have been a brain surgeon.”

“And you damn sure could have practiced on this group,” Hunnicutt shot back.

This was not an insignificant bunch. As an oil industry lobbyist explained the first time I stopped by: “These aren’t the guys who get their boots muddy. These are the guys who pay the guys who get their boots muddy.”

Their meeting place, on the ground floor of a sand-toned building on Wall Street, was a windowless cavern done up richly in tan granite, dark woods and deep carpets. At other poker tables in this private sanctuary, an eavesdropper could hear deals being arranged, drilling strategies mapped.

There wasn’t much in the room to suggest hard times, and in fact until recently Midland — called the Tall City for its 20-odd-story office towers that rise out of the West Texas plain — had bucked many of the economic trends gripping the nation. Skyrocketing oil prices will do that in a city built on the stuff.

Six years had passed since my last visit. On that tour, I had been sent across the country to report on what Americans were saying about the prospect of a war with Iraq. The Petroleum Club of Midland, where Bush himself had spent time in his oil-patch days, had seemed to offer a certain bastion of support.

I received a surprise.

While the president had their general backing, some of these oilmen harbored serious doubts, citing a lack of a clear endgame and questioning the wisdom of injecting American troops into a region where internecine hostilities had flared for centuries.

“It’s kind of like stirring up those damn fire ants,” Hunnicutt had said. “They go underground for a while and then they come back and eat you up.”

Of all the people I talked to in that pre-invasion period — including noted historians and spring-training peanut vendors — the old boys of the Petroleum Club had seemed the most prescient.

I wondered if they would surprise me again with their thoughts about Obama and what his election might mean for America. They surprised me, all right, but only with the degree of their dissatisfaction.

“This country is not made up of a lot of happy campers right now,” said drilling consultant Johnny Mulloy. “Some of his ideas are so foreign to the way we think. Everything owned by the government. It doesn’t work. The government is going to own all the banks. Medicare is going to be screwed up like it is in Canada.”

Much of their ire this morning was directed at recipients of federal bailouts. After a few robust years, the Permian Basin oil region was again in retrenchment as oil prices fell back to earth.

“There are probably 100 less rigs running today than there were two months ago,” Hunnicutt said. “That is at least 15 to 20 people per rig who are suddenly out of work.

“You don’t see them marching in Washington saying, ‘Hey, where is our damn bailout?’ Not one driller have you seen up there, begging like these car people and these banking people.”

That the bailouts — and, for that matter, the universal fiscal crisis Obama must confront — had occurred on Bush’s watch did not seem to count for much.

“It’s only going to get worse,” Mulloy grumbled.

“You are going to have some old boy over here who is making $22 an hour as a roughneck,” said one participant, who like many did not want his name published. “And some guy is going to be reading his paper and having a sweet roll at $80 an hour in Detroit. “That is the perfect storm for someone to start a revolt.”

They wanted to make clear that their objections to Obama had nothing to do with race, only with politics and what they saw as a lack of experience. Most of all, in their view, the president-elect had simply made too many promises to too many people.

“He is going to be a whole lot less popular with some of the disenfranchised and downtrodden,” one said, “because he is not going to be able to deliver all that he has promised.”

And what of the Americans who voted for Obama, who saw him as an agent of hope with the potential to lead the nation to a new epoch of less-fractured us-against-them politics?

Mulloy, the drilling consultant, fell into oil-speak to answer that one.

“There is,” he said, “a term in the oil field about having your suction in the wrong pit. I’ll leave it at that and let you figure it out.”

ABOARD PLANE, ‘WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD
Passengers, firefighters recall scene in Denver
By DeeDee Correll

DENVER–Gabriel Trejos wasn’t a nervous sort of passenger. He enjoyed flying. So when he and his wife, Maria, settled Saturday into their seats on Continental Flight 1404, heading to Houston to spend Christmas with his father, he felt relaxed. He hoisted his 13-month-old son, Elijah, onto his lap to point out the lights on the runway.

Minutes later, the plane gathered speed for takeoff. Then it hurtled off the runway, sliding down a gully. Maria, pregnant, gripped her seat.

“It was the worst feeling in the world,” said Trejos, one of 115 on the Boeing 737 at Denver International Airport.

As it slid downhill, Trejos saw flames in the engine outside his window. Finally the plane stopped. The air grew smoky. “Get out of the plane,” passengers began to yell.

The firefighters of Station 31 were just sitting down to dinner when the red alarm connecting them to Denver International Airport’s control tower began flashing.

That means a plane in trouble and it goes off frequently enough that no one was nervous. Real trouble is rare. But this time, at 6:18 p.m. Saturday, a voice from the tower announced a crash. “Did he just say what I thought he said?” asked firefighter Jason Cole.

From the four city fire stations spread around the 53-square-mile airport, firefighters stopped what they were doing.

At Concourse A, Cole and Capt. Mike Benton had been awaiting a passenger arriving with a medical problem. They took off running.

Inside the cabin, passengers rushed for the exits, and to Trejos’ disbelief, several first tried to retrieve luggage. Trejos, with Elijah in his arms, climbed onto the icy wing of the plane resting on its belly and dropped to the ground. His wife followed.

As the firefighters arrived, they saw passengers hiking toward them, some weeping, others eerily calm. Most shivered in their shirt sleeves in the single-digit temperatures. Those who had jackets offered them to Trejos to keep Elijah warm. One flight attendant had a sprained ankle and several people had head injuries, said Capt. Tom Gliver. In all, 38 were injured, with The New York Times reporting that five remained hospitalized on Sunday.

Cole, 37, clambered up the slide, which was already slick with foam that other firefighters had sprayed on the plane, and braced himself.

“I was expecting the worst,” he said.

So was Benton, 55, who entered after Cole.

It was black within. Cole, breathing through an oxygen tank, started down the aisle on his knees, groping with gloved hands for anything that felt human. Outside, firefighters aimed foam at the plane, and the spray blasted through the skin of the aircraft, dousing Cole in the face. An obstacle blocked the aisle, so he started climbing over the seats, running his hands over cushions, patting luggage.

Benton followed holding a thermal imager, a device that looks like a camcorder and detects body heat. He pointed it down each row of seats. Nothing.

“I was overjoyed,” he said later. “Not a soul was on that plane.”

By Sunday, the National Transportation Safety Board had begun an investigation.

The disease that haunts our lives

A portrait of a struggling newspaper—are there any other kind?—by New York Times’ Dan Barry.

Go to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/us/15land.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=bristol&st=cse

Recommended reading

Another take on life without newspapers by T.J. Sullivan. Go to:

http://www.laobserved.com/intell/

A perfect game and an imperfect relationship

Dear readers of Newsthinking,

I thought I’d use the site to recommend good stuff, stuff that print journalism has to do more of if it expects people to continue subscribing. We’ve got to recognize that this is becoming an artistic performance test: Can print offer enough surprises, enough goodies that lead a reader to say: Hey, I never thought about that? With that, two recommendations today:

Poignant New York Times story on bowler who dies immediately after throwing his first perfect 300 game. Watch how judicious the writer is about not larding the story up with quotes. He used his own voice. And wrote a great small-town-America piece. Paste address into your browser:

Recommended reading

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/sports/othersports/08bowler.html?scp=1&sq=300%20bowling&st=cse

Three-parter in Los Angeles Times about a weird romantic relationship between Aryan Brotherhood prison inmate and his sister-in-law/lawyer. Very long but worth getting lost in it.

Part 1

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/cal/la-me-pam30-2008nov30,0,2664112.story

Part 2

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-pam2-2008dec02,0,4270960.story

Part 3

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-pam4-2008dec04,0,5843828.story

A speech to put the L.A. Times’ bloodbath into perspective

Dear Pals,

I woke up this morning needing a battery charge, something to remind me that there is still a kind and knowing heart beating in a world controlled by Sam Zell and his simple-minded idiots. I read the list of old friends departing the Los Angeles Times, a depressing number of whom were laid off. God, I was blue. The Tribune Company and Zell have taken a very good newspaper and set it on the path to becoming a very adequate newspaper in record time. It makes you want to give up.

Then I got an unrelated e-mail from a friend who works with cancer patients. It was a copy of a speech that North Carolina State basketball coach Jimmy Valvano gave in 1993 at ESPN’s awards dinner. Everyone knew Valvano was dying of cancer; he would be gone within weeks. Here is what he said in accepting an award named after tennis legend Arthur Ashe:

‘Don’t Give Up. Don’t Ever Give Up.’

Thank you. . . I can’t tell you what an honor it is, to even be mentioned in the same breath with Arthur Ashe. This is something I certainly will treasure forever. . . I’m going to speak longer than anybody else has spoken tonight. That’s the way it goes. Time is very precious to me. I don’t know how much I have left and I have some things that I would like to say. Hopefully, at the end, I will have said something that will be important to other people too.

But, I can’t help it. . . People ask me all the time about how you go through your life and how’s your day, and nothing is changed for me. . . I’m a very emotional and passionate man. I can’t help it. That’s being the son of Rocco and Angelina Valvano. It comes with the territory. We hug, we kiss, we love. When people say to me how do you get through life or each day, it’s the same thing. To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. Number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special

I rode on the plane up today with [Duke basketball coach] Mike Krzyzewski, my good friend and wonderful coach. People don’t realize he’s ten times a better person than he is a coach, and we know he’s a great coach. He’s meant a lot to me in these last five or six months with my battle. But when I look at Mike, I think, we competed against each other as players. I coached against him for fifteen years, and I always have to think about what’s important in life to me are these three things. Where you started, where you are and where you’re going to be. Those are the three things that I try to do every day. When I think about getting up and giving a speech, I can’t help it. I have to remember the first speech I ever gave.

I was coaching at Rutgers University, that was my first job, oh that’s wonderful (reaction to applause), and I was the freshman coach. That’s when freshmen played on freshman teams, and I was so fired up about my first job. I see Lou Holtz here. Coach Holtz, who doesn’t like the very first job you had? The very first time you stood in the locker room to give a pep talk. That’s a special place, the locker room, for a coach to give a talk. So my idol as a coach was Vince Lombardi, and I read this book called “Commitment To Excellence” by Vince Lombardi. And in the book, Lombardi talked about the fist time he spoke before his Green Bay Packers team in the locker room, and they were perennial losers. I’m reading this and Lombardi said he was thinking should it be a long talk, or a short talk? But he wanted it to be emotional, so it would be brief. So here’s what I did. Normally you get in the locker room, I don’t know, twenty-five minutes, a half hour before the team takes the field, you do your little x and o’s, and then you give the great Knute Rockne talk. We all do. Speech number eight-four. You pull them right out, you get ready. You get your squad ready. Well, this is the first one I ever gave and I read this thing. Lombardi, what he said was he didn’t go in, he waited. His team wondering, where is he? Where is this great coach? He’s not there. Ten minutes he’s still not there. Three minutes before they could take the field Lombardi comes in, bangs the door open, and I think you all remember what great presence he had, great presence. He walked in and he walked back and forth, like this, just walked, staring at the players. He said, “All eyes on me.” I’m reading this in this book. I’m getting this picture of Lombardi before his first game and he said “Gentlemen, we will be successful this year, if you can focus on three things, and three things only. Your family, your religion and the Green Bay Packers.” They knocked the walls down and the rest was history.

I said, that’s beautiful. I’m going to do that. Your family, your religion and Rutgers basketball. That’s it. I had it. Listen, I’m twenty-one years old. The kids I’m coaching are nineteen, and I’m going to be the greatest coach in the world, the next Lombardi. I’m practicing outside of the locker room and the managers tell me you got to go in. Not yet, not yet, family, religion, Rutgers Basketball. All eyes on me. I got it, I got it. Then finally he said, three minutes, I said fine. True story. I go to knock the doors open just like Lombardi. Boom! They don’t open. I almost broke my arm. Now I was down, the players were looking. Help the coach out, help him out. Now I did like Lombardi, I walked back and forth, and I was going like that with my arm getting the feeling back in it. Finally I said, “Gentlemen, all eyes on me.” These kids wanted to play, they’re nineteen. “Let’s go,” I said. “Gentlemen, we’ll be successful this year if you can focus on three things, and three things only. Your family, your religion and the Green Bay Packers,” I told them. I did that. I remember that. I remember where I came from.

It’s so important to know where you are. I know where I am right now. How do you go from where you are to where you want to be? I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. You have to be willing to work for it. I talked about my family, my family’s so important. People think I have courage. The courage in my family are my wife Pam, my three daughters, here, Nicole, Jamie, LeeAnn, my mom, who’s right here too. That screen is flashing up there thirty seconds like I care about that screen right now, huh? I got tumors all over my body. I’m worried about some guy in the back going thirty seconds? You got a lot, hey va fa Napoli, buddy. You got a lot.

I just got one last thing, I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have. To spend each day with some laughter and some thought, to get you’re emotions going. To be enthusiastic every day and as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nothing great could be accomplished without enthusiasm,” to keep your dreams alive in spite of problems whatever you have. The ability to be able to work hard for your dreams to come true, to become a reality.

Now I look at where I am now and I know what I want to do. What I would like to be able to do is spend whatever time I have left and to give, and maybe, some hope to others. . . .We need your help. I need your help. We need money for research. It may not save my life. It may save my children’s lives. It may save someone you love. And ESPN has been so kind to support me in this endeavor and allow me to announce tonight. . .we are starting the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research. And it’s motto is “Don’t give up, don’t ever give up.” That’s what I’m going to try to do every minute that I have left. . .I’d like to think, I’m going to fight my brains out to be back here again next year for the Arthur Ashe recipient. I want to give it next year! I know, I gotta go, I gotta go, and I got one last thing and I said it before, and I want to say it again. Cancer can take away all my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever. I thank you and God bless you all.

Those who took buyouts, those who got fired, those who are left behind comprising a shrunken, skeletal staff–and to the rest of us readers shocked by what has happened to the L.A. Times, take a deep breath and repeat after Coach V: Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.

On the web: http://www.jimmyv.org/

What? He recorded a CD? Best of all, it comes with money-back guarantee

If you’re intrigued with the blurb on the right side of Newsthinking’s March 11 home page devoted to promoting my CD, here’s the explanation. It grew out of some demo songs I recorded at home and then re-recorded with studio cats in Nashville. You can read the whole story in the New York Times.

The Newsthinking blurb will also take you to my MySpace page , which has 6 of the tracks and the CD’s liner notes.

To hear all the songs, click here.

To read my essay on the links between songwriting and newswriting published on the Poynter website April 23, click here.

I’ll gladly buy back the CD if you’re disappointed. If you love the outlandish, the neurotic, the heart-felt…if you like alt-country or rock ‘n’ roll, this one’s for you.

WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING

Translated from a Dutch alt-country website:

The 58-year old Bob Baker gives up his job as an editor with the Los Angeles Times, puts together a music demo at home and travels to Nashville twice to record his songs with the help of studio musicians. When the CD is finished, he writes an interesting article for the New York Times about the making of “Low Expectations” (self-released). To summarize: The pros dedicate a few sessions to Baker’s songs, who initially fears losing control of his work, but soon starts to realize that they are taking advantage of opportunities that he himself had not yet seen. The singing process is a dramatic experience for Baker, but after some cutting and pasting in the mixing room, the songs are finally ready. Baker’s doubts don’t disappear until he listens to the songs on his car stereo while cruising through his own neighborhood. And what does he hear? A successful recording that defines his style as a rocker similar to Dave Edmunds or Dan Baird. In a way, it’s a little disconcerting that professional studio cats can so easily crank out a fun rock record. But of course that has everything to do with Baker’s writing, who knows that rock ‘n roll is all about nonsense with a serious twist. This results in songs such as “Handicapped,” about a young man who requests a handicapped parking permit for a broken heart. Or the Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis-inspired “I Got an E-mail from a Female,” where the protagonist tries something with a minor girl.

. . .interesting things happen. In this case, powerful details blossomed

Nobody says a word in the following story, published in today’s Los Angeles Times. Nobody has to. The writer sensed that the absence of public comment when the body of another dead soldier arrived at the hometown airport was the key to making you feel you were there.

Writing without quotes forced the writer to concentrate on observational detail. Watch how the absence of quotes makes the 534-word story more emotionally powerful.

Once you begin killing quotes. . .

A SOLDIER’S FINAL HOMECOMING
By Paloma Esquive

They stood on a small landing strip for private aircraft at Long Beach Airport. A mother and father, a wife, family and friends. They gathered for the arrival of the body of Army Sgt. David J. Hart, who was killed in combat in Iraq.

There were no speeches, no eulogy. Those will come later. On Tuesday afternoon, there was only the quiet, methodical ceremony of a soldier’s final homecoming.

Framed by a clear blue sky, eight members of a military honor guard stood at attention, waiting for a small charter airplane. The group’s leaders walked down the line, adjusting hats to sit just so, wiping away the faintest smudge. To their right, police officers and sheriff’s deputies stood, hands behind their backs, waiting to lead Hart’s casket in a procession from the airport to a Boyle Heights crematory.

Just before the aircraft made its final stop, 47 members of the veterans group Patriot Guard Riders filed out of a terminal reception room and fanned out, forming a long line with fluttering American flags.

Across the way, a group of airport workers in faded gray uniforms left their jobs when they saw what was happening and stood quietly observing, at attention in their own way. Even air traffic seemed to abate as everyone waited in silence.

Hart, of Lake View Terrace, died in Balad of wounds suffered in a firefight with insurgents Jan. 8 in Samarra, north of Baghdad. He was 22.

Two other soldiers also were killed: Pfc. Ivan E. Merlo, 19, of San Marcos, Calif., and Pfc. Phillip J. Pannier, 20, of Washburn, Ill.

They were all assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) at Ft. Campbell, Ky.

Hart’s family and friends waited just outside the terminal door. His mother, Sheri, stood with her arms wrapped around his widow, Nicole, quietly whispering words of consolation. They watched as the plane pulled up and its door opened.

Army Spc. Richard Gilbert, who served with Hart in Iraq and who escorted his body home, walked out of the plane and stood at attention nearby.

The honor guard’s leader whispered instructions to other members, who quietly made their way, marching in lock-step to the plane, where they lowered the flag-draped casket onto a stand.

Arm-in-arm, Hart’s widow and mother made their way up. They hesitated for a minute, and then Nicole draped herself over the wooden casket. Her mother-in-law held her.

Soon, they were joined by the rest of the family — Hart’s father, Jack; brother, Daniel; sister, Sarah; and his in-laws, Ruth and Ramiro Gonzalez, and their son, Ramiro Jr. Each of them laid a hand on the casket, every once in a while whispering words to each other. They did not let go until the driver of the hearse gently said it was time to go.

The honor guard, whose members had been waiting quietly at attention, made its way again to the casket and carried it to the hearse.

The last soldier in line closed the door softly. She saluted and whispered final instructions to her group before it marched away. The click-clack of dress shoes on the pavement was the only sound.