Crayons to Chaos

when fake journalism is the norm

My, my my. A month. How embarrassing. During my perfectly delightful lunch with Lindsay B., when she mentioned this blog I thought "Oh my gawd! I haven't updated Crayons at all!"

Racing to the end, with RW1 and everything else, I forgot to do the simplest things - like put up my last Critical Issues paper, which can encapsulate that class well enough. (I'll have a goodbye-to-RW1 post up later tonight-- I think.)

Those who cruise in here  from the SPJ page or one of the J-school blogs should envision what's below as my response to Dick Wald, the elfin TV executive with the hunky son from CNBC, and his string of guest speakers and films. 

For those who can't do that, the references to "Food Lion" in what' below refers to a 1992 ABC exposé of the supermarket chain, which was upended   by a sly, Swift-Boaty PR campaign on the part of the corporation. Their lawsuit and slick video news release cast deep shadows on a 2-year-long, solidly researched piece by ABC's investigative team.

--

One over-arching, never spoken, theme of this class is what most journalists takes as gospel – that journalism is the opposite of public relations. We're supposed to be afflicting the comfortable, comforting the afflicted, puncturing holes in the smooth stories played out by politicians, corporations, churches. And much of this class has been about taking the hallmarks of good PR – super-clear stories with exact endings, data that all point the same way – and suggesting that they don't make good journalism.

But we're in an era where PR masking as journalism has defined our politics, with sometimes tragic results. So I want to suggest a  theme that will probably dominate today's class anyway, after I've turned this in: how do we interact with power, when they've learned how to do what we do?

lombardi goes local, gets clips, and returns to the old obsessions

As I commence another all-nighter, and continue with my nearly-unbroken wail of "I can't write!", I wanted to mention some slightly more encouraging developments as well.

I guess I can start by just limning the week:

The same day as my last post, I got a call from a small Queens weekly, which had already expressed interest in my mold story. The editor (J  '04, by the way) wanted to know if I would cover a debate in the 26th City Council District - one that went on without the front-runner in this Democratic town, Eric Gioia. Still recovering from my cold, I trudged to Long Island City, to observe a debate between Robyn Sklar -- a typical Green, smart, well-meaning and a bit clueless - and Nancy Jackson of that chameleon Independence Party, who couldn't quire conceal her true wingnut characteristics. The resulting article, as well as the editor's analysis,  appears here - in addition to the mold story, which ran on the front page of the paper this week.

A poor thing, but mine own: I'm perhaps irrationally quite thrilled at my first clip in weeks. And now, he's already expressed a desire for the food pantry and even the Z Crew stories: so I'm real, in my own way. (It's nice to know if I'm not CJR caliber, I'm good enough for the Queens Chronicle.)

Also,  some good progress on reporting for the two magazine pieces: I went to this yesterday, and after the obligatory VIP breakfast, started stalking young men with very short hair and guarded expressions, in the hope I'd find people willing to be part of a piece we might as well title "The Things They Carry."  Surprisingly, allmost none outright refused to talk to me - too well bred, and maybe I'm about the age of their mom? And I met a few who might, I hope, be the characters I'm looking for. Meanwhile, my takeout story,  on domestic violence in immigrant communities, has turned up a bunch of great possibilities, including this. I'm not giving any more detail for fear of jinxing myself.

Meanwhile, the prep for the spring is beginning -- and it don't look any easier. And this morning, I went to the briefing session for this class, which sounds like it guarantees that no-easier bit - while it helps you develop a viable book proposal. I'm now worrying frantically over my one-paragraph email pitch, which may or may not get me into the class. (I also learned yesterday that the fall scholarship money hasn't actually been given out yet. Which doesn't mean I'm anywhere near the top of the class, but it somehow cheered me to feel like it ain't over till it's over.)

What haven't I mentioned? My RW1 story for this week. Which I should have written after my return on Monday to I.S. 126, and Betty Pansione's library space, to hang out with the kids at Ramadan.  But  instead I tried to go to a kids' Diwali celebration on Wednesday, which didn't happen, and then to sniff at these guys' mosque yesterday, the first day of Eid, which turned out to be closed. Ultimately I wandered around the hood re-remembering stuff like the ecumenically named Allah Tawwakil Grocery, which advertises both Halal Meat and Spanish Grocery, and the park where amid all the Spanish one kid calls to another. "Wait, Ishmael!" All of the above in search of the "rock 'n'roll feature" demanded by the syllabus. I wish I'd had the stamina and nerve to go for a beer with one of the GIs, and I'd have declared a topic change.

I still might. Let's see if I can't weave something out of the gentle rabbi-voice and round face of young Naur,  who responded to a generalized question about the Pakistani earthquake with "When one of us suffers, we all suffer."  (Even the corpses, pal.) And hope that this good-reporting-energy doesn't dissolve under the conviction that I can't, actually, write a word.

reality check

Well, the Monday morning euphoria didn't last long. My evaluation from Dale and Stacy starts "Chris wants to change the world...She's going to get there, but she's going to have to work hard at focusing her thoughts." That could, I think, be a summary of the state of affairs before I got here. It hurt pretty hard, even with Dale's assurances he will write any recommendation I want, etc. (Side issue: it's painfully clear that I'm nowhere in the running for the November scholarships, though I am right this second too freaking busy to panic about it. )

Or to obsess on my disappointment.Had my Holly Hunter damp moment before sleep last night.

In a few weeks we start planning the spring semester, and planning getting out of here.  My first round of internship applications is due 11/1. And all of us are looking more plainly at a page we might have paid more attention to earlier, now posted on Dean Sree's blog. (Right now, with 2 or 3 top writers in my reporting class and a similar, sense of the rest top 15 percent feels unattainable - but we're all going to shoot for it.)

But right this second, I still have one of the three deadlines this week to fill. I liked my final draft of the Supreme Court story enough that I might not post it, in the hope that I can sell it somewhere, while for Critical Issues paper I first wrote this Book of Days post and then cut it back -- that last between the hours of 5 and 8:15 this morning. What's left is my misbegotten business story, which I think I have to just try to outline and write, inserting the highlights later. (Like I did with Father Brady's church.)

gateways, blood spatters and pen de mort

So I've sat here for six hours trying to write my story for the Covering Courts and Trials class, and ended up writing 3000 words that I posted first on Book of Days. Now I'll get to take a break before I shape 1000 words that sound more lke an article than a ramble.

-------------

Q. Do you have any recollection about anything that he said?
A. Oh, yeah, he said they had been into an argument and he slapped her and she fell and hit her
head and it killed her and he didn’t mean for it to happen.
Q. Was he intoxicated?
A. He was drinking real heavily, yeah.
Q. Was he emotional?
A. Very.
Q. All right. How very is very?
A. Well, he was crying and just all to pieces.
Q. All right. How long had he been there before he told you about this incident?
A. Maybe 10 or 15 minutes, not real long.
Q. Did he say what they were arguing about?
A. He had wanted to go to a dance or something or another and was wanting to go somewhere
else. That is what they got into an argument over.
Q. What did you do when you heard Little Hube say he hit his wife and she died?
A. I freaked out and run him off.
Q. You freaked out?
A. I freaked out and ran him off.
Q. Okay. After the party did you tell anybody about this?
A. Not that night. The next day I went to Union County and tried to talk to some law people
and —
Q. Would they listen to you?
A. Went to Union County to the Sheriff’s Department. I tried to speak to the Sheriff but he was
real busy. He sent me to a deputy. The deputy told me to go upstairs to the courtroom and
talk to this guy. I can’t remember his name. I never did really get to talk to anybody.
Q. Tried to tell them?
A. Yeah.
Q. Did you talk to your mother about it?
A. A little later on there wasn’t a whole lot said about it, but she was the one that took me to the courthouse.
Q. Your mother went with you to the courthouse that day?
A. She drove me. I didn’t have a vehicle.
Q. Did you know Carolyn Muncey?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Are you aware of whether or not Little Hube had ever abused her or beat on her?
A. She was constantly with black eyes and busted mouth.

Testimony of Kathy Parker, Nashville resident, testifying to a federal district court in Tennessed on behalf of Paul House, who is on death row for Carolyn Muncey's murder.

Is  this a Supreme Court preview, or an episode of CSI?

Well, it's House v. Bell, which turns out to be both.

Not that I've ever seen that show, actually, but I thought I'd be wrestling more with precedents than with blood spatters, missing or planted evidence, semen-stained jeans, or a theory that an entire rape-murder can be committed, in a rural area without a car, inside of 50 minutes. I didn't know that Paul Gregory House, who has been on death row since 1986, has multiple sclerosis -  of the most advanced kind, which may kill him before anyone tries to strap him down for the lethal injection or gas chamber.

It's all about the DNA, of course.
It's all about the revolution in our thinking about the death penalty thanks to the careful work of attorneys, all around the country, who have re-opened investigations that were done sloppily, or ineffectively presented, the first time.

And it's all about politics. Paul Gregory House was 2/3 of the way to exoneration when 8 of 15 appeals court judges declared he was probably innocent and he deserved a new trial. But a year later, when they could have made it official, four of those 8 judges, appointed by Democrats, had been replaced  by George Bush. Their replacements said no, he still hadn't established reasonable doubt - despite DNA evidence, despite eyewitnesses, despite affidavits that shot down, or at least seriously questioned, the forensic evidence offered by the prosecution.

And it's all about the word "no."

Specifically the "no" in the following paragraph from Sandra Day O'Connor:

a petitioner must show that, in light of the new evidence, it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The focus on actual innocence means that a district court is not bound by the admissibility rules that would govern at trial, but may consider the probative force of relevant evidence that was either wrongly excluded or unavailable at trial. The district court must make a probabilistic determination about what reasonable, properly instructed jurors would do, and it is presumed that a reasonable juror would consider fairly all of the evidence presented and would conscientiously obey the trial court's instructions requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Schlup v. Delo, the 1995 Supreme Court opinion quoted above, offered both hope and frustration to defendants with newly discovered evidence, as it instructs judges to imagine themselves that Platonic "reasonable, properly instructed juror."  In its poetry, it's  also proved a Rorschach blot, taken up by  both sides. And to Judge Dan Boggs, a grizzled veteran of the Sixth Circuit, "no reasonable juror" means exactly that: not a single juror. Basically, the Sixth Circuit panel demanded that every single piece of evidence put out by the prosecution be directly refuted  before it could order a new trial.

Is this all too arcane? Should I get back to the blood?

z crew part two

While I'm up, here's that second ed story. I actually did most of the actual writing, including the mandatory pre-blog, yesterday: 12 hours in this dayum chair.

-----------

“Shut up! I’m trying to watch the movie!”

The call came from Guillermo, the curly-haired teenager closest to the TV, to the noisiest of the dozen middle-school kids next to him.

The room, like many church basements, was dark and made darker by the wood of donated furniture. On the walls, Biblical images shared space with framed posters of traditional African art. The kitchen area rattled with the sound of popcorn popping, adding to the noise made by boisterous sixth-graders. And the noise was drowning out Samuel L. Jackson.

The youth group, called The Z Crew. was watching the movie Coach, for lessons in leadership,  though the popcorn made it challenging.

Since late last year, the Z Crew has been an invisible but real force in their local school, the Albert Shanker School of the Visual and Performing Arts. Founded last year under the auspices of Father Edmund L. Brady, six members of the team succeeded, last year, in changing the way their school handles its policies on school uniforms.

This partial victory forced the students to grow and change, before they asked their school to do the same.

one little word

I should be asleep, and will again. And checking your email when you get up for a pee break is a terrible idea.

But this email from Stacy will help me smile my way to bed.

Chris, this piece is terrific. My edits are written in the body of the story. My main suggestion is that you needed to flick a little stronger at the idea of a revenge killing higher up in the piece. But other than that, I think you nailed it. Great lead – and you very cleverly avoided the problem of whether to focus on the Valentine’s Day killing or the court case. Good job summarizing things – I didn’t feel as if you unloaded your notebook. You had clearly thought this through. And the writing is so nice. Very good story-telling.

So I wasn't wrong, to feel good about when I was finished that one.

Maybe I can do this after all.

a uniform what?

A warmup to my second education story, which will now be an unholy marriage of reporting done in August, phone follow-ups through September, and then a PUSH that started with my visit last Friday to an actual meeting of the Z Crew  - or some facsimile thereof, since there were a lot of new members, some of whom were only 6th graders -- and ended, for now, with a quite dramatic flourish, in a quite evocative visit yesterday to I.S. 126, which I saw last when it was quite empty. Then,  I was able to sort of ambush the principal into giving me a very quick comment for the Father Brady story, butI didn't linger - no one else was there, and I was afraid the security guards would give me the heave-ho.

Today was different. Today I knew where the school was, approached it in the pouring rain with a name in mind - a counselor I wanted to see. I told the guards "I'm here to see Miss Smith," which was true (nevernomind that she didn't at that point know I existed).

"And you're from?"

"Columbia University," I said, leaving out the J-School part; they nodded and gave me a yellow visitors' sticker, and sent me upstairs. I rejoiced silently; whether I found Ms. White or not, I would keep my promise to the student I've been calling Jessie to meet her at 10:37, would walk the halls and see the kids (and see how many wore what's loosely known as a uniform there). I had already won.

And since I was feeling serene, serendipity commenced.

a filigree of stories

I'm supposed to have a draft tonight, of my second story on the Z Crew. But my brain is stuffed with too many stories competing for space - two of which are due next week, two of which need to be started next week - bouncing against one another like ping-pong balls. In short, the messy plate sliding off my brain's crowded table:

• Z Crew in Action.  Or How a Bunch of 12-Year-Olds Started a Movement. I'm going back to the same school I invaded in August, but tonight (after this spill) I need to sketch out the story as I see it. Due Saturday noon, setting me up for a Friday all-nighter at this rate.




• House v. Bell.  Since the supreme court keeps refusing to agree to hear Hamdan v . Rumsfeld, despite all the reasons it should, I've taken on a different case for my first story for the legal reporting class: House v. Bell, one of the scores of death penalty cases where DNA evidence has emerged to challenge these sentences. The story told me by House's attorney yesterday, which I'll spill a little on Sunday as I get ready to write, sounds like an episode of CSI:  spilled vials of blood, evidence disappearing and re-appearing, and fantabulous stories by the prosecution, along with a political subtext that reminds you that court-stacking is about more than Roe v. Wade. (That last point, citing House, was made elegantly in a Times editorial last year.) Due Wednesday, October 19. at 4:30 p.m.




• Astoria business story. A new power plant is going up - reportedly so  mean, clean and environmental that even NYPIRG loves it, after years of opposition. Peter Vallone, the local poo-bah, and a coalition community groups fought it until the New York Power Authority agreed to also shut down,  by 2008,  the much dirtier plant next door. I talk to Vallone Friday, and go poke around the site Monday, while trying to get 2 or 3 person-at-the-plant interviews.  Due 7 p.m. Thursday, October 20 at 7 p.m.


• Rant for "Critical Issues in Journalism." I haven't written much about this wild strange class of ours, led by Richard Wald -- wherein 235 students (combined full and part-time) listen to speakers and then engage in a sort of Oprah/Donahue open mike. I'll likely talk about it further as I'm breeding that paper, 750 words on "something we've talked about."  One of which was "Are bloggers journalists?" I'll likely talk mostly about my hero Lindsay, 18 yrs younger than I, whose lovely blog served as the base for an investigative trip to New Orleans -- and inspired her to quit her big pharm job for the freelance life. Due Friday, October 21 - and you can be sure I'll be writing it in the middle of the night, too.


• Astoria feature. This week I need also to start reporting on a long fuzzy feature, a "mood and feel" piece: I'm thinking about the food pantry I've visited; a profile of a Muslim woman I'm about to interview;  or a comparison between Fr. Brady's two parishes - the one by the housing project, which is scheduled for closure, and the one that has services in 5 languages and a more middle-class congregation. Due: full draft noon Thursday, October 27, t work on in  lab.
• Take-home. A long, more complex story, perhaps relating to the masters' project (see below).  I have to generate 3  and send them to Dale and Stacy tomorrow (when??).


• Masters' project. The first draft isn't due till January, but a proposal is due 11/18 and we need to be doing an interview a week. Next week, I'm talking to the gatekeeper at the New York Veterans Administration Centers -- my way into the returning soldiers coordinators, and the lives of those who try to help vets sort out their lives when they come home. Whose story will emerge from all that is anyone's guess.

I'm tired even writing this. Will I have the energy for the girls and boys of the Z Crew? I just wish I already had a camera-phone, for my trip to the school tomorrow.

How can I possibly juggle so many stories? How can so many characters vie for attention? How can I do justice to any of them? Is this phase of the program meant to be like stroke recovery, and have us grow new neurons?

I talked to Sree, for just a moment, yesterday. He said this is much more overload than in a real job. But is that really true? No wonder I want to write books - though I bet most who do are doing that on top of all of the above.

the train coming from the other end?

Wow. I came home last night from RW1 and didn't feel like s&^&&*t.

I don't want to jinx myself here, and may soon be caterwauling as usual - but today was the first day of RW1 since early August that I haven't gone home feeling like a compleat failure. Not that the story I got back, from Stacy, wasn't justly chopped up; not that I didn't flee screaming from the Boston Globe guy calmly outlining how their famed summer internship was only available to people who'd put in time at a college  newspaper. and anyway had odds that make Ph.D. programs in literature look welcoming. Not that i didn't sweat the drill.

But actually - the drill was using data from a homeless survey and details of a case study. It may be 17 years or so since I shilled for the Maryland Food Committee, but if I couldn't write a quick sketch of the kind of story I once tried so hard to get others to write, I really would have been a sorry excuse for a writer.

And I was irrationally happy to be a B student, for once.

Of course, next week we get our mid-term evaluations (and with them, the likely stake in the heart of any new scholarship allocation. I won't let myself talk personal finance here, as that's the easiest path to immobility..). God knows how I'll feel after those.

But this second I'm making phone calls about a death penalty case for my Covering Courts and Trials class, and veterans groups for my masters' project, and running off to Astoria in the rain. And I can't stop a smile from sneaking around the edges.

This bubble will burst too. But it would sure be nice to take a break from the kind of gasping, racking sobs that have been my unfortunate companion of late.

If fear is an indispensable aspect of courage and courage is an acquired taste, like caviar,  then these weeks have been a festival of acquiring a taste for your own whiny tears. Here's to hoping that that phase is in a waning point (at least until I become completely convinced my masters' project is a failure).

God what would I do in real basic training, busting bones as well as ego?

and now for something completely different

and this is what I did with it all. With Dale's blessing, I'm channeling Truman Capote/Philip Gourevitch. (Everything in here is supported by statements made in the courtroom, including the description of the conversation at the arrest.)

And it sounds more like me, I think, than anything I've done for RW1.
-----------

Call it the 2003 Valentine’s Day Massacre, with a body count of 3.

The morning of February 14, 2003, Seann Duconn – also known, according to police, as God Bless – was found dead on the stoop of his house on Huxley Avenue in Queens. Not content to shoot him, his attacker had also cut his throat, and left the body splayed on the steps for all to see.

By noon the block was swarming with police. Detective Salvatore Molino, of the 105th Precinct Special Victims Unit, knelt by the body, while officers tried to string yellow CRIME SCENE TAPE past the debris in the front yard.

Molino squinted when he saw the $100,000 Mercedes slide into the driveway, ignoring the tape and the squad combing the scene for evidence. The slim driver slowed down, but didn’t speak; Molino gestured to the passenger, whose wide shoulders and muscular neck hinted at numerous hours at the gym. “Why are you here?”