Clips of the Week

I got word yesterday that we’ve received a Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence award in the Best All-Around Independent Online Student Publication category for Region 1, which covers Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Central/ Eastern Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont. Long story short, we have a shot at the SPJ’s national award in this category come September.

The well-deserved recognition is a tribute to all your hard work and dedication, which also can be seen in this latest batch of clips:

• Rebecca Harshbarger reported on the controversy over redeveloping the Bowery for The Villager.
• Joe Filippazzo’s piece about a split in a Manhattan Beach civic group made the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
• Dan Macht noted the 20th anniversary of the Campaign Finance Board for City Hall News.
• Linnea Covington’s profile of musician Shara Worden found a home in the Brooklyn Paper.
• Mathew Warren contributed to this New York Times congestion pricing story.
• Kate Lurie’s story about seemingly recession-proof pet pampering made Chelsea Now. Kate also notched a Daily News clip with her story about a program that aims to keep troubled teens out of juvenile lockups.
• AnnMarie Costella also made The News with her story about Brooklyn librarians and parents banding to fight RIF program cutbacks.
• Annie Shreffler’s been working on a cool poetry project for WNYC.
• In our alumni corner, Heather Appel’s slice-of-life feature about a Passaic store graced the front page the Herald News.

• Matt Townsend placed stories about Orchard Street’s struggles – and Hillary Clinton’s struggles – on the New York Observer’s website.
• Loren Bonner followed up on the Victory Memorial Hospital closure saga for the Brooklyn Paper.
• Linnea Covington also made the Brooklyn Paper with her profile of a local karaoke king.
• Henry Stewart and Joe Filippazzo shared the front page of the Feb. 25 Brooklyn Daily Eagle with stories about Coney Island and Gerritsen Beach, respectively.
• Stephen Bronner did a quick turnaround for amNY, covering a City Council hearing on a new wireless information system for cops and firefighters.
• Cristina Alesci’s story about picking insurance policies made the Daily News’ Your Money section.
• Barry Paddock also was busy for the Daily News, earning three contributor tags in one day, and sharing a byline on this murder story where he trounced the competition.
• Two multimedia packages from Sandeep’s class, featuring some impressive teamwork, made the news service site: Lakshmi Gandhi, Christiana Oliveira and Dana Oliver combined to tell how 1,000 more fruit and vegetable carts are coming to city streets.
• Linnea Covington, Dan Macht and Mellissa Seecharan teamed to cover a protest of a company that runs senior citizen housing in New York and around the nation.

Our alumni were hard at work, too:

• Sebastian Bednarski produced a video on some young chefs for NYpost.com.
• Angela Hill reported this very timely story about racial identity and political power for WNYC.

• Check out Dana Oliver’s story about Chinese New Year’s celebrations in Sunset Park. (PDF)
• Daniel Macht and Rosaleen Ortiz put together a multi-media piece for Off The Bus on what some voters of the future (already gearing up for the 2020 election) are thinking about during the current campaign.
• Joe Filippazzo’s neighborhood profile of St. Albans made amNY.
• Lakshmi Gandhi’s guide to a podcast interview with author Manil Suri appeared on SAJA’s website.
• Mathew Warren was part of the team that produced the New York Times’ front-page story on the arrest of a suspect in the slaying of an Upper East Side therapist.
• Eliot Caroom’s story about a controversy over a composting toilet found a home in the Daily News.
• Stephen Bronner joined Eliot in the News’ Bronx section with his story about a Valentine’s Day push to teach teens how to avoid abusive relationships.
• Cristina Alesci pointed out how credit card companies aren’t following the fed’s led in cutting interest rates in this Daily News business section piece.

Our alumni also are going strong:

• Sweet Georgia Brown! Sebastian Bednarski produced a video about Harlem Globetrotters legend Curly Neal for NY Post.com. He also put together a story on the man behind the White Flag clothing line.
• Heather Appel had the honor of writing the obituary of an extraordinary colleague at the Herald News.

• 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.

• Lakshmi Gandhi and Daniel Macht contributed pieces to the Huffington Post’s Off the Bus political blog. Look for a lot more this weekend on Off the Bus from Lakshmi, Dan and the rest of our Team New Hampshire as they head north for the pre-primary hoopla.
• Dan also was busy for the Queens Courier, writing a story about a Jesse Jackson-led demonstration decrying the foreclose crisis, which is hitting Southeast Queens particularly hard.
• AnnMarie Costella also contributed to the Courier with this story about shortages at food pantries.
• Annie Shreffler covered a Haitian community holiday party in Spring Valley for the Journal News.
• Shuka Kalantari wrote an article for Chelsea Now about holiday cards designed by folks with mental illness.
• Mathew Warren contributed to a bunch of Times stories during the holiday week, including this local take on the San Francisco tiger tragedy.
• Check out David Chiu’s piece in the NY Press on British singer Kate Nash.

• 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.

• Two of our reporters scored solo bylines in the Times this week: Mathew Warren covered the funeral of a Queens soldier that combined elements of the young man’s Buddist background with U.S. military ceremony. And Carolyn Nardiello wrote about vintage car buffs on Long Island who are keeping the tradition of “cruise nights” alive.
• David Chiu was a busy man, publishing two “Critic’s Picks” in New York magazine here and here as well as a short profile for the New York Resident of a Dylan- and Warholian-era figure who sounds like she came right out of the movie “Almost Famous”.
• Annaliese Griffin wrote a great profile of eccentric “Bad Lieutenant” director Abel Ferrara for The Reeler.
• Kate Pastor held NYCHA’s feet to the proverbial fire in a City Limits piece about how new flexibility in federal funding regulations may mean a hit for Section 8 rent subsidies.
• Dan Rivoli wrote about a century-old great-grandmother who seems to have packed in about 200 years of living in this Daily News story. He also contributed to this fun political piece on which presidential candidates are shaping up as Halloween favorites.
• Dorian Davis revealed how the city is clamping down on its controversial practice of allowing architects to self-certify building plans in this article for Architectural Record.
• Danny Massey was there as the ousted principal of Brooklyn’s new Arab language school broke her silence and revealed she had reapplied for her job. He published the piece in Newsday.
• Brigid Bergin covered the Asian Harvest Moon Festival in Flushing for the Daily News.
• Andy Hawkins, writing for City Hall, was on the union beat this week: He chronicled the fight to start a union at the mayor’s media firm, Bloomberg LP, and described the cold war between the mayor and the PBA.
• Annie Shreffler wrote about a community push to make sure that jobs generated by retail stores planned for the Kingsbridge Armory pay a living wage. Check out her lead piece in the Norwood News.
• Matt Townsend and Barry Paddock helped fill the pages of The Villager this week. Matt wrote about community cries to restore the old LaGuardia Bath House and about how a stalled, partially completed construction project on the lower East Side has brought vermin and chased away business. Barry’s piece — about a lower East Side shop makes “designer” doughnuts, is guaranteed to bring out the Homer Simpson in you (well, at least in me).
• In another story with Meet-the-Editors-night origins, Kathryn Lurie described merchants’ distress over how new, wider bike lanes on a stretch of Ninth Ave. are taking away parking spaces – and chasing away business. Check out her article in Chelsea Now.
• Long story (not-so) short: Amanda Michel, who runs Off the Bus, a Huffington Post offshoot dedicated to using citizen journalists to help cover the presidential campaign, attended Prof. Jarvis’ conference and spoke with me (among others), about getting our reporters involved. An opportunity came up this past Saturday and Daniel Macht answered the call. The story he contributed to can be seen here. Here are the reports Dan and others filed. A story – about the story – made the Christian Science Monitor.
• Here’s a birthday shoutout to Manny Jalonschi who is marking the release of the latest issue of Beyond Race magazine, where he serves as deputy editor. He also wrote profiles of Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron and Tommy Chong (Cheech’s old partner).