Clips of the Week

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 Team New Hampshire — Eliot Caroom, Joshua Cinelli, Claudia Cruz, Lakshmi Gandhi, Daniel Macht and Matt Townsend rocked the Granite State, contributing print pieces, pictures, slideshows and videos to offthebus.com, an off-shoot of the Huffington Post. (Their fine work, by the way, is the latest product of a relationship forged with Off the Bus at Prof. Jarvis’ October Networked Journalism conference.) Check out results of one wild weekend — including Joshua’s video of the Bill O’Reilly-Obama aide tussle.
  • Paulites Raid Their Piggybanks To Support Ron Paul
  • Obama Takes Subtle Jab At Hillary In NH
  • Kucinich Attacks ABC News And Decries “Dittos”
  • Bay Buchanan, Tom Tancredo Shill For Romney
  • Off the Candidate Track: Voices from Plymouth, New Hampshire
  • Steelworkers Sold on Edwards
  • One Latino Voter For Obama
  • Michelle Obama Poaches Voters From Rival Camps
  • Chewing the Fat at Munce’s
• Loren Bonner proved the value of follow-up in this piece for the Brooklyn Paper about the effect of Victory Memorial Hospital’s turmoil on moms-to-be.
• In just his second day out, Barry Paddock scored the wood (front page story) for the Daily News, contributing to this piece on the surging Giants.
• Barry’s neighborhood beat piece about a dispute over a community garden in East Harlem made yesterday’s paper.
• Maureen Ker also notched a Daily News clip by reworking her live-in piece about a Flushing fortune teller.
• Chika Osaka had a TV piece about bringing French to public schools and Megan Kelty had one about using laser surgery to battle a serious eye problem suffered by diabetics – both among the latest additions to the News Service.
• Heather Appel went far beyond the general findings in a report on infant mortality and turned in this great story for the Daily News.
• In the you-saw-it-here-first department. Remember our Election Day photo project? Check out this New York Times link.

• This week’s NYPulse podcast tackles a disturbing rise in hate crime. Chika Osaka produced the show and contributed a report. Jego Armstrong and Djenny Passe-Rodriguez also reported pieces. Check out the NYPulse on the News Service.
• AnnMarie Costella found a great story pounding her Maspeth beat: anger over plans to put a 27-foot-plus cell phone tower — disguised as a flagpole — atop a residential building. AnnMarie did some digging and learned that in Arizona, cell companies have been know to try to disguise the towers as cacti! Her piece made the Queens Courier.
• Damian Ghigliotty joined AnnMarie in the pages of The Courier with his contribution to an ongoing four-part series about day laborers.
• Erin O’Neill proved a double threat for the Greenpoint Star with her stories on an unsolved murder and the latest community v. developer clash over plans for the old Dominos Sugar refinery.
• Vinita Singla also covered the Dominos controversy in a follow-up story for Brooklyn’s Courier Life papers.
• Tanzina Vega scored a solo byline in the Times with her first contribution to the Neediest Cases series.
• Georgia Kral notched a solo byline of her own in this Times piece about a push in New Haven to put a time limit on public makeshift memorials for crime victims.
• Dan Rivoli contributed to this Daily News story about the tragic death of marathoner Ryan Shay.
• Laura Silver earned a full-page treatment in the Daily News for her profile of an inspiring young woman from Kosovo who’s making her mark in New York and beyond.
• Mariel DiSibio interviewed filmmaker Hope Dickson Leach for Independent magazine.
• Danny Massey got local reaction to the Pakistani crisis in a Newsday article. He also wrote about a would-be robber who messed with the wrong bodega owner and got caught, well, red handed.

• Check out the latest two editions of our new NY Pulse podcast on the News Service site. The current very timely podcast about flu shots was produced by Megan Kelty, with stories reported by Carolyn Nardiello and Laura Silver. You can still catch last week’s edition about the challenges running enough phys ed classes in city schools. The program was produced by Angela Hill, with reports by Megan and Chika Osaka.
• Daniel Macht did a story about the impact of the lowest Social Security increase in several years — giving the reader a combination of real people and hard facts. The piece was published in the Queens Courier.
• Vinita Singla got two clips in Brooklyn’s Courier Life. She covered the opening of a new wing of a Williamsburg school, and reported on two students’ alternative plan for the old Domino Sugar refinery.
• Keeping with the waterfront revival theme, Cristina Alesci also made the News Service with a Downtown Express story about a glass hotel planned for the old Battery Maritime Building.
• Georgia Kral scored a solo byline on the front page of the Times’ Connecticut section this past Sunday with her fine news feature on the possible New England casino war.
• The J-School also was represented in the Times by Mathew Warren who shared a byline on this story about Gov. Spitzer’s controversial plan to grant illegal immigrants driver’s licenses.
• Heather Appel went to Japan for this great video piece about the first Power Soccer world championship, in which player compete in motorized wheelchair. She reported the story for AP’s asap service.
• Heather also found time to report and write this Daily News story about the 21st anniversary of a non-profit housing group in Mt. Hope.
• Cathy Jedruczek has been busy as a bee at BCAT (try saying that 10 times fast!), and our reward is getting to see these three fine stories: go here and click on “A Polish Empire in Greenpoint”. For the other two, go here. Cathy’s stories are titled “Prepping For Parenthood” and “Sleep Disorder Lab.”
• Dan Rivoli got right to this point with a three-word lede in this very timely health story for the Daily News.
• Marelene Peralta, writing for Newsday, outlined the debate over a proposal to cut flights at JFK.
• Danny Massey also was busy for Newsday with this piece about the unveiling of a memorial for a fallen soldier.

• Tanzina Vega scored a single-byline piece in the Times, profiling a cabbie with an only-in-New-York story.
• Danny Massey covered the opening of the controversial new Arab language/Middle Eastern Culture middle school in Brooklyn for the News Service – and got the story published in Newsday.
• In another story that originated in the News Service class, Brigid Bergin found a great local angle on the taxi strike – and her reporting made it onto WNYC.
• A TV report by Jego Armstrong and Chika Osaka about a state campaign to help Ground Zero workers get worker’s comp now leads the News Service.