This blog is on an indefinite hiatus while I focus my attention on UMass 101, a MassLive news blog that covers the goings-on of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
I'm taking over for former Daily Collegian and AmherstWire editor Eric Athas, who has moved on to greener pastures. Check the blog for updates real soon.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Economy woes.
I put together a piece for UVC-TV 19 and AmherstWire.com as part of my Politics, Journalism & the Web class's election coverage.
For the piece, I interviewed Robert Pollin, Co-Director at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Former Virginia Governor George Allen, who spoke about the candidates' energy policies at UMass last week and several politically-active UMass students.
The question I put to them: How is the economy playing into the choices of voters on Tuesday?
Check out the full story here.
S.P.
For the piece, I interviewed Robert Pollin, Co-Director at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Former Virginia Governor George Allen, who spoke about the candidates' energy policies at UMass last week and several politically-active UMass students.
The question I put to them: How is the economy playing into the choices of voters on Tuesday?
Check out the full story here.
S.P.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
A benchmark.
Good stories often come from benches.
Every reporter hopes they'll find themself a Forrest Gump, some plainspoken everyman who happens to be a prodigious storyteller.
Mine didn't have a learning disability. He just didn't have anywhere better to be on Tuesday than a bench on Main Street in Easthampton.
I was shooting video for The Daily Hampshire Gazette, doing the very awful man-on-the-street type work which makes any journalist feel like a lowlife. Most people, when you tell them you're doing a story about them, are happy to talk to you. In effect, you're saying: You are interesting, I want to hear your story.
But man on the street stuff isn't like that. You're saying: You are average, you are nobody. I want the nobody's perspective, and that's you. Or the next guy. Please, be rude to me. Lie to me. Tell me you're too busy, or you're camera shy.
David Farrick was camera shy. But he wanted to talk to me. I had to get some on-camera interviews, and I was on a tight deadline, but I'm in this business because I want to talk to people. I sat down and listened. The best talkers just need a body to sit next to him. I'm a good body to talk to.
Farrick was useless to me as far as my assignment for The Gazette goes, but he had some great things to say about Question 1, which is what I was asking people about, and the election in general. He had some great things to say about what a nice day it was. He alluded to problems in his past that he probably would've talked more about if I wasn't scribbling in a notebook as he spoke. Or maybe he would, if I prodded a little.
Anyway, I was able to put together a decent narrative piece for The Collegian out of it, and I made his day a little less boring. He made mine less boring, too.
S.P.
Every reporter hopes they'll find themself a Forrest Gump, some plainspoken everyman who happens to be a prodigious storyteller.
Mine didn't have a learning disability. He just didn't have anywhere better to be on Tuesday than a bench on Main Street in Easthampton.
I was shooting video for The Daily Hampshire Gazette, doing the very awful man-on-the-street type work which makes any journalist feel like a lowlife. Most people, when you tell them you're doing a story about them, are happy to talk to you. In effect, you're saying: You are interesting, I want to hear your story.
But man on the street stuff isn't like that. You're saying: You are average, you are nobody. I want the nobody's perspective, and that's you. Or the next guy. Please, be rude to me. Lie to me. Tell me you're too busy, or you're camera shy.
David Farrick was camera shy. But he wanted to talk to me. I had to get some on-camera interviews, and I was on a tight deadline, but I'm in this business because I want to talk to people. I sat down and listened. The best talkers just need a body to sit next to him. I'm a good body to talk to.
Farrick was useless to me as far as my assignment for The Gazette goes, but he had some great things to say about Question 1, which is what I was asking people about, and the election in general. He had some great things to say about what a nice day it was. He alluded to problems in his past that he probably would've talked more about if I wasn't scribbling in a notebook as he spoke. Or maybe he would, if I prodded a little.
Anyway, I was able to put together a decent narrative piece for The Collegian out of it, and I made his day a little less boring. He made mine less boring, too.
S.P.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Door to door politickin'.
This weekend I was on assignment from The Daily Hampshire Gazette and went up to beautiful Keene and Sullivan, New Hampshire, to follow around some canvassers for presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign.
The Massachusetts Democratic Party is considering Mass. a lock [though I couldn't get anyone on staff to actually admit it], so they're "outsourcing" all their efforts to New Hampshire.
N.H. is perhaps New England's only battleground state; in 2004, it went to Senator John F. Kerry, but just four years earlier it was considered the G.O.P.'s only red state bastion in liberal New England, going to George W. Bush in his race against Al Gore.
So the Obama campaign - although comfortably ahead, according to recent polls - isn't taking any chances.
400 college students from across New England - and a few from Canada - came out to campaign for Obama as part of the Mass. Dem's "Student Invasion weekend."
The McCain camp had its own "Super Saturday" as well - encouraging McCain supporters to canvass and phone bank across the state.
I followed around Mara Meaney-Ervin and the rest of the Smith Democrats as they canvassed in Keene and nearby, super-rural Sullivan. I saw a lot of closed doors, some beautiful scenery and a very crowded campaign office full of dedicated New England liberals.
I also saw a trailer park owner kick Smithies off his property, despite protestations that they "weren't soliciting."
For the record, they weren't. They weren't selling anything.
Here's a video recap of the event that I put together for The Gazette:
The Massachusetts Democratic Party is considering Mass. a lock [though I couldn't get anyone on staff to actually admit it], so they're "outsourcing" all their efforts to New Hampshire.
N.H. is perhaps New England's only battleground state; in 2004, it went to Senator John F. Kerry, but just four years earlier it was considered the G.O.P.'s only red state bastion in liberal New England, going to George W. Bush in his race against Al Gore.
So the Obama campaign - although comfortably ahead, according to recent polls - isn't taking any chances.
400 college students from across New England - and a few from Canada - came out to campaign for Obama as part of the Mass. Dem's "Student Invasion weekend."
The McCain camp had its own "Super Saturday" as well - encouraging McCain supporters to canvass and phone bank across the state.
I followed around Mara Meaney-Ervin and the rest of the Smith Democrats as they canvassed in Keene and nearby, super-rural Sullivan. I saw a lot of closed doors, some beautiful scenery and a very crowded campaign office full of dedicated New England liberals.
I also saw a trailer park owner kick Smithies off his property, despite protestations that they "weren't soliciting."
For the record, they weren't. They weren't selling anything.
Here's a video recap of the event that I put together for The Gazette:
Friday, September 19, 2008
There's no need to fear.
My last column for The Collegian was a reflective piece on the unsuccessful campaign of Ed O'Reilly, who challenged Senator John Kerry for his seat for the first time in over 20 years.
O'Reilly is a UMass alumnus, former Amerst firefighter and Kennedy lookalike whose underdog campaign occupied a multicolored house on North Pleasant St. in downtown Amherst for its western Mass. base of operations.
Last year, I spent some time with the O'Reilly campaign on assignment for The Collegian [and putting together an ill-fated narrative piece for my nonfiction writing course].
I found O'Reilly and his staff to be committed, unpretentious grassroots organizers. They had little illusion about their longshot candidate, but were more concerned with keeping former presidential candidate Kerry honest and beholden to the voters of Massachusetts.
Check out the full thing here.
Do underdogs still have a place in our political process?
S.P.
*photo courtesy umass.edu
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
War crimes and conferences and professors, oh my.
Last week, I interviewed Christopher Pyle, Mount Holyoke constitutional law professor, for The Daily Hampshire Gazette. Pyle attended the Justice Robert H. Jackson Conference at the Massachusetts School of Law in Andover this past weekend.
"This conference is really about accountability. This is the first thoroughgoing criminal administration in history," he told me in an interview. Pyle said he doesn't throw words like "war criminal" around as hyperbole, but that there are legitimate grounds for criminal and civil charges to be brought against the Bush administration.
The Jackson conference's namesake, Supreme Court justice Robert H. Jackson, who served as chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.
"He saw to it that war criminals were prosecuted and not just executed," Pyle said. He told me that in the spirit of the conference, and in the tradition of Jackson, legitimate legal measures should be taken against the "high level perpetrators" in the White House. He also said that the United States cannot regain its legitimacy on the world stage until it "starts to follow its own laws."
You can check out his speech and the rest of the conference on their website here.
Check out my full story here. It got buried in today's Gazette under a feature photo of kids blowing bubbles. So it goes.
Pyle raises some interesting points about the lack of accountability and the steady erosion of civil liberties that have resulted from the ongoing war on terror.
What do you think?
S.P.
"This conference is really about accountability. This is the first thoroughgoing criminal administration in history," he told me in an interview. Pyle said he doesn't throw words like "war criminal" around as hyperbole, but that there are legitimate grounds for criminal and civil charges to be brought against the Bush administration.
The Jackson conference's namesake, Supreme Court justice Robert H. Jackson, who served as chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.
"He saw to it that war criminals were prosecuted and not just executed," Pyle said. He told me that in the spirit of the conference, and in the tradition of Jackson, legitimate legal measures should be taken against the "high level perpetrators" in the White House. He also said that the United States cannot regain its legitimacy on the world stage until it "starts to follow its own laws."
You can check out his speech and the rest of the conference on their website here.
Check out my full story here. It got buried in today's Gazette under a feature photo of kids blowing bubbles. So it goes.
Pyle raises some interesting points about the lack of accountability and the steady erosion of civil liberties that have resulted from the ongoing war on terror.
What do you think?
S.P.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
The price of life.
This past Thursday, Sept. 11, I covered a speech delivered by Kenneth R. Feinberg for The Daily Hampshire Gazette. Feinberg was in charge of the September 11 Victims Compensation Fund, a $7 billion fund enacted by congress less than two weeks after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Feinberg has had a fascinating - though, even he admitted, slightly morbid - career as a mediator in settlements involving the allocation of compensation funds to the victims of tragic events. He started with Agent Orange litigation after the Vietnam War, and has also handled cases involving the Minneapolis bridge collapse of 2003 and the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007.
Feinberg certainly seemed unsentimental about his job. But he was not the cold-hearted number cruncher one might expect to tackle such complicated work. He said that at times his job - which often involved meeting individually with families; 1,500 in the case of 9/11 - seemed better suited for a rabbi or a priest. It seems he was both counselor and accountant, and from many reports the fund - under his leadership - was an unprecedented success. Government money went to people who needed it in record time. Feinberg even worked pro bono - he said the overhead costs of the fund were minimal - I believe [don't quote me] he said around three percent.
The University of Massachusetts set up The Feinberg Institute to tackle the question that has been the focus of Feinberg's work: What is a life worth?
I was able to shoot some video in addition to getting an interview at the pre-speech press availability. I'd like to think that my handling of the story was what got it on the front page, but I'd have to give the credit to the fact that it was a Sept. 11 story, one which was compelling by nature of the fact that the event, especially on its anniversary, is still significant.
In any event, Feinberg had a lot of fascinating things to say about his experience with the 9/11 Fund, and it's summed up here in a package I put together for The Gazette. If you're wondering why the B-roll is all the same shots of the UMass Old Chapel, it's because the hard disk camera died about five minutes into the B-roll-gathering process. Here it is:
Read the full story here.
S.P.
Feinberg has had a fascinating - though, even he admitted, slightly morbid - career as a mediator in settlements involving the allocation of compensation funds to the victims of tragic events. He started with Agent Orange litigation after the Vietnam War, and has also handled cases involving the Minneapolis bridge collapse of 2003 and the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007.
Feinberg certainly seemed unsentimental about his job. But he was not the cold-hearted number cruncher one might expect to tackle such complicated work. He said that at times his job - which often involved meeting individually with families; 1,500 in the case of 9/11 - seemed better suited for a rabbi or a priest. It seems he was both counselor and accountant, and from many reports the fund - under his leadership - was an unprecedented success. Government money went to people who needed it in record time. Feinberg even worked pro bono - he said the overhead costs of the fund were minimal - I believe [don't quote me] he said around three percent.
The University of Massachusetts set up The Feinberg Institute to tackle the question that has been the focus of Feinberg's work: What is a life worth?
I was able to shoot some video in addition to getting an interview at the pre-speech press availability. I'd like to think that my handling of the story was what got it on the front page, but I'd have to give the credit to the fact that it was a Sept. 11 story, one which was compelling by nature of the fact that the event, especially on its anniversary, is still significant.
In any event, Feinberg had a lot of fascinating things to say about his experience with the 9/11 Fund, and it's summed up here in a package I put together for The Gazette. If you're wondering why the B-roll is all the same shots of the UMass Old Chapel, it's because the hard disk camera died about five minutes into the B-roll-gathering process. Here it is:
Read the full story here.
S.P.
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