Clips of the Week

Here are some great stories to enjoy over the holidays:

• Tim Persinko’s article about a rising Brooklyn boxer made the Canarsie Courier.
• Henry Stewart cites some Brooklyn history to bolster his opinion piece about plans to eliminate the B-37 bus. You’ll find all the reasons he’s against scrapping the line in the Brooklyn Eagle.
• Linnea Covington has the lowdown on New York’s best empanadas for Serious Eats.
• Maya Pope-Chappell made Essance – as an interview subject. She talks about how she won two tickets to the inauguration through Sen. Schumer’s lottery. Maya will be reporting from Washington – but she doesn’t reveal whom she’s taking.
• Damiano Beltrami’s audio slideshow about how Arthur Avenue’s merchants are weathering the economic crisis and other changes is featured on the homepage of i-Italy.org.
• Sergey Kadinsky wrote a piece about Councilmember-elect Liz Crowley’s transition effort for the Queens Tribune. (I have a copy in my office – come on by for a look.)
• Igor Kosov’s story and slideshow about half-completed ghost buildings in soon-to-be-rezoned Brighton Beach was featured in City Limits.
• Jessica Firger also made City Limits with her story about an ad campaign encouraging pit bull owners to have their pets spayed or neutered. Jessica’s companion piece and video – produced by Steve Pacer – can be found on the News Service.

Our News Service had another busy week:

• Valerie Lapinski shot a video piece about a group of bikers who made their annual holiday visit to a Brooklyn nursing home.
• Tracy Chimming’s video story features interviews with Union Square holiday market merchants who are singing the blues over slow business.
• Maya Pope-Chappell, keeping with her inauguration theme, put together a print-and-video package about a Brooklyn youth marching band whose members hope Barack Obama’s big day will be their next gig.
• Maureen Ker, Vinita Singla and Adeola Oladele combined on a print-and-video package about the push to get shoppers to use reusuable bags – and Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to hit plastic bag users with a six-cent surcharge.
• Cristiana Oliveira found a food pantry that offers the hungry more than food. Clients can get free haircuts – courtesy of volunteer pantry workers from Manitoba, Canada.

Congratulations once again to the Class of ‘08 – it was a pleasure attending that inspiring ceremony.

Have a great and safe holiday – and keep those stories coming.

I know better than to let my lede get bogged down with sentimental mush about graduation, so let’s get straight to business:

• Henry Stewart’s entertaining review of the not-so-entertaining (by his reckoning) revival of “All My Sons” was featured in The L Magazine.
• Linnea Covington offered a somewhat more positive review of the new Nolita bistro Lulu in her piece for New York Press.
• Jenni Avins profiled multi-talented artist Alex Kopps for Foam magazine.
• Nicole Turso’s profile of a real Queens character – a kiddie entertainer who calls him The Balloonatic – made the Queens Courier.
• Karina Ioffee also notched a byline in the Courier with her profile of a popular Jackson Heights sari tailor.
• Collin Orcutt and Michael Preston proved the value of follow up with this video piece about a high school hoops standout’s decision to attend Villanova. The video was featured on sports reporter Adam Zagoria’s blog — as was the duo’s earlier profile of the athlete.
• Ben Fractenberg’s opinion piece about the Internet, the Obama campaign and finding one’s self through a connection to others made The Huffington Post.

Our News Service was very busy this week:

• Nicholas Martinez and Brian Winkowski offered a video piece about the fight to save Admirals’ Row in the old Brooklyn Navy Yard.
• Nick Loomis and Jim Flood did a video on the revival of the growler – a vessel guaranteed to make for fresher and less expensive beer drinking.
• Geneva Sands-Sadowitz gets down to the nitty gritty of urban composting in this video story.
• Adeola Oladele’s latest video focuses on some immigrant grad students and what they want to see from the Obama Administration.
• Jessica Wakeman found a Harlem jazz club with hot music – and a great backstory — in this video piece.
• Joe Walker and Sophia Tewa profiled two young Brooklyn entrepreneurs who are recycling vinyl records into fashion accessories.
• Caitlin Drexler got the story behind Commerce Bank’s now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t transformation into TD.
• Stephen Bronner and Clark Merrefield obtained Margaret Truman’s FBI file for our latest I-Team special.
• Valerie Lapinski chronicled the latest clash between Central Park horse carriage operators and animal rights activists in this Sounslides presentation.
• In case you missed them, the final installments of this semester’s audio podcasts – Culture Shock, This Place Called Home and Health Pods — can be found here.

Okay, I promised not to lede with mawkish sentiment, but I didn’t say anything about ending with it.

I want to thank the member of the Class of ‘08 for their help in bringing the News Service to new heights, especially during this historic election year. Your energy, enthusiasm, dedication and hard work have been inspiring to me – and to the Class of ‘09, which is following your fine example.

Do not hesitate to call, email or visit any time I can be of help. If you want to drop by and just shoot the breeze, that’s fine, too – one of the great parts of working in a newsroom is when friends drop by.

So good luck and congrats to all – and keep those stories coming.

Not surprisingly, there’s a strong election theme this week – a sign of much more to come. Here are some of our reporters’ latest pieces:

• Rima Abdelkader’s story about the challenge foreign-language journalists are having translating “maverick,” “Joe Sixpack,” and other colloquial campaign phrases made Off The Bus. The article became our latest election piece to get big pickup, and drove a large amount of traffic to our News Service.
• Maya J. Pope-Chappell wrote about Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama for the Amsterdam News. You’ll have to register to gain access to the site, but it’s well worth the effort.
• Adeola Oladele profiled a Kenyan woman who can’t vote in the U.S. election, but is trying to make an impact by joining a Harlem-based group that traveled to Pennsylvania to register voters. Adeola’s broadcast piece can be found on the News Service.
• Ria Julien and Sandra Roa exhibited great planning and timing with this News Service broadcast story in which they covered a swearing-in ceremony for naturalized U.S. citizens on Oct. 10 – just in time for the new Americans to make the New York voter registration deadline.
• If you missed the live This Place Called Home podcast, produced by Tyler Mitter, Linnea Covington, and Celina Fang, you’ll find it here.
• Just call Sergey Kadinsky Mr. Queens. He put a fun lede on this Queens Courier short about some teens’ sewer-diving misadventure. He wrote a piece for the Queens Tribune about a schoolyard reconstruction project – and he recently was profiled by the paper (by the Class of ‘07’s Joe Orovic). The Trib pieces aren’t on-line – I have copies in my office. Come on by for a look.
• Karina Ioffee’s powerful story about the parents of a murder victim who attended the killer’s sentencing was featured in the Queens Chronicle.
• Collin Orcutt played Friday afternoon quarterback, offering football predictions for the Men’s Fitness blog.
• Matt Townsend scored a solo byline in the Daily News with his article about the return of the Concorde – as a museum piece.
• Stephen Bronner contributed to a Daily News story about pedestrian fatalities in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
• Barry Paddock covered a fire that killed a great-grandmother for the News.

Congrats to all – and keep ‘em coming.

It was a great week for clips – and our News Service. Check these out:

• Vinita Singla and Megan McGibney’s News Service story about an email warning to Obama supporters to leave the T-shirts and buttons home on Election Day — or face problems at the polls — got big pickup. The New York Observer’s Politicker blog, Off The Bus and the Daily News’ Mouth of the Potomac blog linked to our piece. Similar stories have popped up online and in print in Pennsylvania, Alabama and Kentucky. This story, as we say in the business, may have legs. Our part of it started when Prof. Williston got one of the emails and handed a copy to Vinita and Megan with the three words that have spurred so much great journalism: “Check it out.”
• Everything old again is new again. There’s a push to rechristen the Crown Heights-Prospect Heights border Crow Hill, which was the area’s 19^th Century moniker. You’ll find Steve Pacer’s TV report detailing the neighborhood name game and Franklin Avenue’s revival on the News Service.
• Dwindling supplies at city food pantries have prompted one Bronx man to ride his bicycle from pantry to pantry in search of nourishment. You’ll find Cristiana Oliveira and Adeola Oladele’s TV report on the News Service.
• Jessica Simeone wrote about the opening of a new teen center in a Jersey City library for the Jersey Journal.
• Francesca Levy put together some great news-you-can-use articles and slideshows for two major media outlets. Her analysis of 20 business school websites can be found at BusinessWeek.com. She also put together a package about the U.S. cities with the most- and least-expensive rents for Forbes.com.
• Speaking of Forbes, Eliot Caroom wrote about the continuing fallout from the travails of America’s least-favorite couple: Fannie and Freddie.
• Mathew Warren shared a byline on this New York Times story about a couple’s mysterious rooftop plunge.
• Rebecca Harshbarger wrote about the screening of a documentary chronicling the post-9/11 violence against — and the resilience of — South Asian-Americans and Arab-Americans  for Queens Tribune.
• There’s a definite Yankees theme this week, much as it pains me to say (you’ll find me at Shea tomorrow, hopefully not weeping in my beer.): Collin Orcutt wrote about the unhappy October coming up for Bronx business owners who had been hoping for a post-season boost. His story made the Highbridge Horizon.
• Fritzie Andrade produced a video about the last game at Yankee Stadium for nytimes.com.
• Barry Paddock and Matt Townsend contributed to the Daily News’ coverage of the last game at the Babe’s  House.

Congrats to all – and keep ‘em coming!

Looks like everybody has really earned the Spring Break respite. Here are the latest fruits of your labors:

• Linnea Covington wrote a very timely story about Passover cooking for The Brooklyn Paper.
• Cristina Alesci wrote a piece for the Daily News about a program that helps train high school students for the business world.
• Claudia Cruz reported on efforts to break gridlock on 181st St. for the Manhattan Times Meeting Tackles 181st St. Gridlock(PDF).
• Joe Filippazzo’s piece about the effects of record high oil prices on fishing in Sheepshead Bay made the Bay News.
• Coney Island is filled with characters and Henry Stewart found one of them: a guy who wants to bring trolley service to the area. His story made Bay Currents (PDF).
• So, what does Eliot Spitzer do next? Carl Winfield takes a shot at that question in the latest issue of The Capitol (I have a copy in my office for anyone who wants to read the article).

Meanwhile, I just posted a slew of new TV pieces to the news service site, including stories by:

• Abimbola Ishola (About a proposed solution to traffic problems in East New York)
• Emily Mayer (On challenges faced by women boxers)
• Megan McGibney (On the Staten Island sushi boom)
• Tyler Mitter (On the increase in organic food sales)
• Adeola Oladele (On how the weakened dollar is hurting folks abroad who rely on money sent from the U.S.)
• Steve Pacer (On a new bar that’s trying to buck the economic odds)
• Djenny Passe-Rodriguez (On efforts to landmark a Chelsea building that may have been a stop on the Underground Railroad)
• Jennifer Saavedra (About confusion encountered by seniors trying to navigate the Medicare Part D prescription plan)
• Anna Limontas-Salisbury (On a Brownsville businesswoman who specializes in personalized party favors)
• Vinita Singla (On the downtown in business faced by Spa owners in Brooklyn)

Check out their great work!

Speaking of video… Be sure to watch alum Chika Osaka’s very lively piece for Reuters (I’m sorry, that’s Thomson Reuters, now) on Tokyo’s cross-dressing maid cafe.

• Our graduation speaker Angela Hill was busy until the very end of the semester, placing an article in the Hunts Point Express about plans to turn a small island off the Bronx into an environmental study center. She also wrote a story about a Queens jump rope competition for the Daily News.
• Tanzina Vega, Matt Sollars and Ana Toro touted their fine multi-media capstone projects on the Brian Lehrer TV show on Wednesday. You can also check out their work on the News Service site.
• Tanzina notched a New York Times clip with her solo byline story about a young man turning his life around – along with an accompanying slide show.
• Mathew Warren also made the Times by contributing to the Ground Zero construction accident coverage.
• Eliot Caroom wrote a piece for The Hunts Point Express about an anti-gay hate attack on two men – going beyond a paint-by-numbers crime story.
• Loren Bonner, writing for the Brooklyn Paper, chronicled the latest chapter in Victory Memorial Hospital’s fight for life.
• Matt Townsend wrote about community opposition to a liquor license application for a hotel slated to rise on E. 5th St. Check out his story in The Villager.
• Our latest podcast focuses on the shrinking music club scene – and features our own Ben Levisohn’s band. Tyler Mitter, Adeola Oladele and Jennifer Saavedra contributed reports.
• Claudia Cruz wrote about the rock ‘em sock ‘em roller derby revival for the Manhattan Times.
• And, appropriately ending on a holiday note, Shuka Kalantari made the pages of Chelsea Now with her story on Operation Santa.