We now have four — count ’em, four — interns at the Hesperia Star this summer. Starting with this week’s issue, you’ll see bylines from the new interns, photo credits and more. Frankly, it’s depressing how good at this these high school kids are, given that it’s taken me this long to be barely better than them.
In addition to producing more stories, Peter and I are also looking forward to the addition of more points of view to the paper, which will hopefully include coverage of summer sports and stuff that’s of interest to people under 30. (Quick way to know you’re old: When one of the interns has never looked up a phone number without the Internet and has to be told what number to dial for information. I’ll be off measuring myself for a casket, thanks.)
The Hesperia National Little League story now has more comments (410 as of this moment) than any other story this week across the Freedom Communications media empire. Click here and click on “this week” under Most Commented.
Here’s a nice smile for a Monday: Soldiers’ family reunites for graduation:
For months, Stephanie Delgadillo was on an emotional seesaw, not sure whether her mother, Staff Sgt. Claudia Hernandez-Smith, and stepfather, Staff Sgt. Gary Smith, would be granted leave from their deployments in Iraq in time to attend her graduation from Hesperia High School.
In their absence, Stephanie’s older sister, Audrey, now 21, had tended their younger siblings: Grace, 10; Ashley, 5; and Emily, 3. Stephanie had also lived at home until mid-April, when she moved in with her boyfriend after turning 18.
Now, as a sun-splashed afternoon gave way to dusk at the Hyundai Pavilion in Devore this past Thursday, the ovation at the end of the ceremony signaled the culmination of a nearly two-day, knee-aching plane trip that took the parents from Iraq to Kuwait to Scotland to Dallas and finally home.
“I didn’t want to miss it,” Hernandez-Smith said. “To me, it’s like a wedding. They only do it once. It’s a big step, and we wanted to make sure we were here.”
Nearly a year ago, Hernandez-Smith and her husband were deployed with a Black Hawk helicopter division of the Army’s 131st Aviation Regiment stationed at Balad Air Base, about 50 miles north of Baghdad. The Hesperia couple requested to serve together because Smith, who’d previously done a tour in Iraq, was concerned for his wife’s safety during her first deployment.
The deployments prompted a family meeting at which Audrey Delgadillo volunteered to watch over her sisters.
Though Ashley and Emily begged to know when their parents were coming home, Audrey kept their pending arrival secret, even when she picked them up at LA/Ontario International Airport on Tuesday.
“They looked at us like they wanted to make sure it was us before they did anything,” Hernandez-Smith said of the homecoming. “They didn’t run and hug us, it was more like I came to them.”
It was Stephanie, working at Baskin-Robbins, who became teary during a surprise reunion.
“I was in the back and going to take out the trash,” she said. “I looked at the monitor and saw people dressed in military gear come in. It took a second and then I realized it was them and started crying.”
“We still had to pay for our ice cream, though,” Smith joked.
I read this article in the American Journalism Review a few weeks ago, and it’s kept me irritated ever since. At first, I wasn’t sure what bothered me about the twentysomethings working at the Charlotte Observer referring to the newspaper as a “dying industry.”
Finally, it hit me: No one in Charlotte was going to say “OK, I know all the news I’ll ever need to know, no more news for me.” Charlotteans still want to read news, but the newspaper industry doesn’t want to sell it to them except in one format they’ve been using for two centuries.
(more…)
Well, now I can officially say I’ve heard everything when it comes to saving money in the journalism biz:
Pasadena news site outsources local coverage to India
The job posting was a head-scratcher: “We seek a newspaper journalist based in India to report on the city government and political scene of Pasadena, California, USA.”
A reporter half a world away covering local street-light contracts and sewer repairs? A reporter who has never gotten closer to Pasadena than the telecast of the Rose Bowl parade?
Outsourcing first claimed manufacturing jobs, then hit services such as technical support, airline reservations and tax preparation. Now comes the next frontier: local journalism.
James Macpherson, editor and publisher of the two-year-old Web site pasadenanow.com, acknowledged it sounds strange to have journalists in India cover news in this wealthy city just outside Los Angeles.
But he said it can be done from afar now that weekly Pasadena City Council meetings can be watched over the Internet. And he said the idea makes business sense because of India’s lower labor costs.
“I think it could be a significant way to increase the quality of journalism on the local level without the expense that is a major problem for local publications,” said the 51-year-old Pasadena native. “Whether you’re at a desk in Pasadena or a desk in Mumbai, you’re still just a phone call or e-mail away from the interview.”
The first articles, some of which will carry bylines, are slated to appear Friday.
OK, I hear him on the whole Webcasting thing, but from personal experience, I have to say there’s no substitute for being able to clarify things after a meeting with residents, elected officials and staff. And, of course, residents coming in to vent at meetings are an invaluable source of story leads and you miss out on those entirely if you don’t go to meetings, even if you watch the Webcast of people who will never have your business card pressed into their hands.
Still, I bet this idea spreads.
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