This Just In!: November 2012

Friday, November 16, 2012

My Sex n the SUNY column this week

Internet dating is not just for older people. College students can find love on the Web, too. Not everyone is into the party scene. Those of us who are more shy or reserved make friends slower than others. I am definitely a home body and prefer to spend my evenings vegging out with a book or on the Internet. I met my boyfriend on the Web over a year ago. It will be two years on Nov. 19.

I started speaking with Will in an atheist discussion page on Facebook in August 2010. We took things slowly by speaking on MSN and Skype. At first, I was nervous about meeting him in real life because I was afraid my mom would be mad at me for dating someone I met on the Internet. I was very hesitant, but after mulling it over for a month, I decided I wanted us to meet in person. We physically met in November 2010 and spent a wonderful weekend together.

It was also my first time having sex. I was nervous, but he was gentle and considerate of my feelings. I sat at the end of the bed, and he took my boots off for me. He sat next to me and lifted me onto his lap so I could be closer to him.

We started out slowly and then we got into it.

We spent the night learning what the other person liked and did not like to do sexually. After we finished, Will introduced me to Battlestar Galactica. I fell in love with the show as quickly as I fell in love with him.

From the beginning, I felt like I knew him my entire life. I felt like he was that best friend I had always been searching for.

We share so many interests, but we have our differences, too. We both like science fiction, such as Dr. Who and Star Trek. I love vegetables, and he hates them.

It took me a while to get up the courage to tell my mom about Will. I was nervous about telling her because I thought she would freak out. Not that it would matter what she thought, but I wanted her to accept it because it would take a lot of stress off me. I wasn’t ashamed of the relationship, and I would still keep dating Will no matter how she felt.

It took weeks of discussion with my therapist and Will about how to break the news to my mom.

My therapist gave me a couple suggestions. She told me to either send my mom an email saying that I have something to share with her. I could also wait until I saw her on spring break.

Come spring break, I was not calm when I told her. I was hesitant, and I cried.

However, I breathed a sigh of relief.

When I broke the news to her, she wasn’t mad at all. She was thrilled.

Now Will and I spend many days and nights together cuddling and watching science fiction shows and art films.

I am grateful that I met Will because he is an extremely calming force in my life. He helps me through the panic attacks and depression I suffer from. He is my anti-depressant.

Society is slowly beginning to accept the idea of Internet dating. However, I would like to tell everyone out there that it doesn’t matter where you find love. It just matters that you find it.

A Pulitzer Prize winning piece

Crossing Over

Here is my analysis of this piece.

“Crossing Over” is a feature story about a town called Gee’s Bend and follows the life of a woman named Mary Lee Bendolph. Moehringer combines literary elements with journalism, giving an essay feel to the story. He uses journalistic skills and literary elements to report the facts and to portray his subjects as the human beings. He observes his environment and speaks with a lot of people. He uses the river to portray the racial tensions between blacks and whites in Gee’s Bend since before the Civil War. He also uses the river as a metaphor for “crossing over” to the other side because Mary Lee was always preoccupied with dying.
Moehringer’s reportage is very thorough because he speaks with all the right sources and he carefully observes his environment to portray the subjects as human beings. Moehringer follows Mary Lee around to focus on her life so he can write about Gee’s Bend. The analysis said that Moehringer had trouble writing the story until he realized that in order to write about a place he needed to focus on someone who lives there. He did a lot of historical research to learn about Bee’s Bend, too. His research shows in his use of background information about Gee’s Bend. Moehringer writes that the river in Gee’s Bend has divided blacks and white in Gee’s Bend for 180 years. He wrote that Gee’s Bend is where the Civil War came and went, but the slaves of Gee’s Bend stayed. Moehringer brings in other historical examples of places like Gee’s Bend. He said that the South was once “dotted” with such places, where slaves remained after Lincoln abolished slavery. He explains that Gee’s Bend is so isolated because of the geography. The land is U-shaped, dividing it from the 20^th century. Moehroinger incorporates these facts to put Gee’s Bend into perspective for the readers. He did his research on it so he could better understand it. When the reporter understands what she is writing about, she can better explain it to her readers. He interviewed Hollis Curl, the racist reporter who fought against the Civil Rights movement. Despite is regrettable past; Moehringer does not show bias toward Curl. Instead, he presents the past Curl and the Curl of the present. He interviewed Curl to show that he is a changed man and he regrets his past. Moehringer’s reportage portrays the human qualities of the people in Gee’s Bend. Specifically focusing on Mary Lee, Moehringer shows her “many strengths and few flaws”, as the analysis said. He uses few quotations, but when he does he shows Mary Lee’s quirky foibles. One example is her botching of certain words such as “confusionment” and “interpretate”. Moehringer does not do this to show her ignorance but to show how charming and sweet she is.
Moehringer does not interview a lot of people in the story, but he does do a lot of research and focuses on the people that matter to the story. He focuses on Mary Lee to give the story focus. Moehringer said in the analysis, “When you write about a place, it’s often best, or at least easier, to write about one person’s experience of that place.” He gets the background information by researching the history of Gee’s Bending. He interviewed Curl about the newspaper he wrote for and its relevance to the area. He probably interviewed Mary Lee and the people who live in Gee’s Bend to understand the relevance of the river and the ferry. It is important to explain the relevance of the river to the readers because there are rivers everywhere, so what makes this one so special? Moehringer did a thorough job of showing the reader’s the relevance of the river. He interviewed Mary Lee and found out that the Benders would ride the ferry into Camden for groceries and medicine. He discusses how, like Mary Lee, “rivers have their faraway looks too”. Despite the dangers that lurk at the bottom, Mary Lee describes it as a “strong brown god”. Camden was the only place the Benders could go for their basic needs, and the ferry took them there. He researched why Martin Luther King Jr. was important to Wilcox County. This is all information he could have gotten by interviewing Mary Lee and the people who live in Gee’s Bend. Because her memory may not be accurate, Moehringer would need to confirm the historical information with texts and documents. Moehringer quoted the neighbor Lucy about the quilts the slave women made. Lucy told him it was their only way to keep warm.
The story is very detailed and written like prose. He uses a lot of details and literary elements. He frequently uses a literary element called anaphora to create an emotional impact on the readers. Some examples of anaphora are, “lonelier than a leper colony”, “like a raindrop down a dirty window”, “The headstones tilt this way and that, like the earth's rotted teeth”. The first example refers to how the whites did everything they could to make the Gee's Bend “lonelier than a leper colony”. Moehringer writes that the Benders were proud of their capacity for solitude, but the racist whites made them lonely by segregating them with the river. He personifies the river, “”But rivers have faraway looks too. Slow, timid, her river typically keeps to itself...On hot summer days, it goes through the steaming fields at about the speed of a Model T, giving no signs of its quick temper.” Here Moehringer compares the river to Mary Lee's temperament. It has a “faraway look too” like Mary Lee. The river seems calm on the outside, but it is guarded by venomous snakes and alligators at the bottom in the summer. Moehringer also uses a lot of repetition to create sentences that stop the readers their tracks. “She” is repeated a lot in the lead paragraph. For instance,

“She hopes the ferry won't come, but if if it does, she'll climb aboard. She'll tremble as she steps off the landing because she can't swim, and she can't forget the many times she's crossed this ugly river only to meet more ugliness on the other side.”

The lead is gripping because of Moehringer's use of repetition. He repeats “she” so many times that the readers know the story will be about this woman he refers to. The end of the lead stops the readers in their tracks because it is unexpected. I was not expecting to see that sentence when I finished reading the lead. I wanted to read on to find out what he meant by the “ugliness”. The ferry is used as a metaphor for death. Moehringer writes, “She'll board that ferry, if it comes, because something tells her she must, and because all the people she loves most will board with her...When the time comes to cross your river, you don't ask questions. You cross.” This is how Mary Lee sees life. She may not want to die, but when her time comes she will be ready. She is not afraid to die because the people she loves most will meet her on the other side. Her loved ones will cross over with her. Moehringer uses few quotes, but the quotes he uses are powerful. Referring to her lack of education, Mary Lee said, “I loved-ed school, but I loved-ed mens more.” The quote is powerful because it shows that she made mistakes in her life that she regrets.
Moehringer uses a lot of details in his writing to bring out the beauty and history of Gee's Bend. He focuses on details of Mary Lee's life to give the reader a better vantage point. He used a lot of the details form his research, interviews and observations. For instance, at the beginning of chapter four he wrote, “Mary Lee rises with the river birds and changes her 87-year-old mother's diaper, then straightens the house, then feeds her three grandchildren...” Moehringer uses these intimate details to convey that Mary Lee is tied to Gee's Bend. She will not leave because there are so many people who need her. Moehringer uses concrete details to give the story focus. He includes intimate details about Curl to show how rampant racism was. Rather than focusing on racism in general, Moehringer focuses on Curl as an example. He write that Curl was the owner of a Camden newspaper that published racist articles. Curl was also city court judge and jailed black for marching without a permit. Sheriff Lummie is another concrete example of racism. When King visited Gee's Bend the church was “a sagging barn with planks for pews” and “a pot-bellied stove gave off scant heat. A bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling”. Moehringer got these details from speaking to the people who live in Gee's Bend. He used these details to recreate the moment when King arrived in Gee's Bend. Moehringer recreates the moment when Mary Lee drank from the “whites only” water fountain. She told him “it was no different than other water. But it was colder.” This quote shows how much segregation effected society. The water in the whites only water fountains was colder than in the black only fountains., so the government must have showed more favor to the whites. Moehringer could not have gotten all of these details just by doing research at a desk. A story of this caliber requires the writer to create relationships with the subjects. A writer needs to gain the trust of the people he speaks with to get such intimate details. Moehringer writes that when the Benders boarded the ferry to join King's movement, the boat nearly capsized. This detail allows the readers to visualize how many Benders there were and how much of an impact King had on them.
The story is organized into chapters to break the information down for the readers. Each chapter takes the reader into a different aspects of Gee's Bend and Mary Lee's life. Each chapter title reflects what the chapter is going to be about. For example, chapter one is titled “Mary Lee's Vision”. Moehringer explains in the chapter that Mary Lee has prophetic visions. Moehringer wrote in the fifth paragraph that “Mary Lee has already seen her self crossing”. In the same paragraph he writes that Mary Lee sees the future in her dreams. In the beginning of the chapter he establishes ideas that are all related to each other and give meaning to the title. The second chapter titled “The Road To Freedom” is about Martin Luther King Jr.'s influence on the blacks of Gee's Bend. The chapter titled “A Change of Heart” is about Curl changing his mind about black people. Every chapter is titled to reflect its content. The chapters break the information down so the readers have a better vantage point. Readers can digest the information more easily.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

The Last Abortion Doctor

The Last Abortion Doctor is a journalistic piece that we can use to examine reportage, use of information and sources, writing, details and organization.

Here are my insights on the piece:

“The Last Abortion Doctor” is an investigative story about the last abortionist in Wichita, Kansas after the other one was assassinated. John Richardson reports on what life was like for Dr. Hern after Dr. Tiller was killed. He reports the details of the Hern's homelife and work life. There are a lot of anonymous sources because printing their names would have endangered them. His style is poetic at times, but Richardson's style captures the emotion and chaos of Dr. Hern's life.
The reportage was thorough because Richardson asked all the right questions and did his research. He read Dr. Hern's essays and spoke to Hern's wife and mother. He spoke to Hern's receptionist and one of the patients. Over the course of the story it is clear that Richardson developed a good repertoire with the doctor. Richardson gained Dr. Hern's trust. He gained Hern's wife's trust. More importantly, Richardson gained the trust of a patient who went through a painful and traumatic abortion. For privacy reasons, he does not name the patient. Richardson observes and listens to his surroundings. He records the receptionist's quotes on the phone with a patient. He recorded every time the receptionist answered the phone and when patients entered the clinic. Also, Richardson's questions are specific. He asks about relevant information such as why the patient chose the abortion, if the pregnancy was planned, what she did when she arrived in Wichita and what the complications were. He asks Dr. Hern if referring to man as a malignant ecotumor invites hate. Richardson demonstrates his ability to incorporate relevant information into the interview. The question is based on one of Dr. Hern's papers. Richardson asks Hern why doesn't he retire and what the limits are to performing abortions. Richardson reports details that humanize the characters. For example, he writes that Hern's wife likes good coffee so he interviewed her in an Italian coffee shop. Instead of cutting to gist of things, Richardson takes the time to use his observations to his advantage. Intimate details like that humanize the subjects. The focus of the story is clear. Hern is not just another abortion doctor facing death threats. He is the last abortion doctor in that town. He was close to Dr. Tiller who was murdered. Richardson's reporting answers the question about why this is relevant. He goes beyond answering the five W's.
Richardson got his information from the people he interviewed and from Hern's scientific papers. He spends a great deal of time around Hern. Richardson also interviewed Hern's wife and mother. He spoke to a receptionist and patient. Richardson did research about the antiabortion and pro-choice conflict. He demonstrates that he researched laws concerning abortion. He writes, “The opponents of legal abortion often use the phrase 'abortion on demand,' implying there are no restrictions at all. This characterization is untrue. It has always been illegal, even under Roe v. Wade, to perform abortions after viability without a compelling medical reason.” Richardson refutes the antiabortion advocates’ logic with historical facts. He follows up with an example related to Wichita and Dr. Tiller. Richardson writes, “In Kansas, for example, where Dr. Tiller practiced medicine, the law for any abortion after twenty-two weeks requires two doctors to agree that failure to abort would put the mother at risk of 'substantial and irreversible harm'.” Richardson spoke to a receptionist referred to as Amanda in the story. He did not use her last name for safety reasons. Richardson asked the right questions when he interviewed Dr. Hern. When Hern told Richardson about a woman who had to get an abortion due to fetal anomalies, Richardson asked, “What kind of fetal anomalies are we talking about?” He interviewed Hern about his personal life asking him about whether he likes to cook or not. Richardson asked this question because Hern did not have a lot of time to eat. Richardson was not able to talk to a lot of patients because they were traumatized and Hern did not want him to. However, there was the one couple that he focuses on at the beginning and end of the story. The couple arrived in Wichita the day Dr. Tiller was shot.
Richardson’s writing is very detailed and captures the emotions of the people around him. He records what the receptionist says on the phone, what the patients look like, their demeanors, their reactions and their communications with the doctor. Richardson does not write the quotations in the traditional format. He puts quotations in italics to give the piece a more conversational tone. The readers can put themselves in the situations when they do not feel like they are reading normal quotations. Richardson also writes his questions into the story to convey a conversational tone. His writing puts the readers into the story because of the descriptive details. When Richardson enters Hern’s house, he devotes two graphs to describing the inside of the house. He writes, “Inside there's a beautiful Bösendorfer piano with Beethoven on the stand and a primitive bow and arrow from the Amazon rain forest, where the abortionist has traveled to cure diseases and conduct ethnographic studies for more than forty years.” Richardson describes the house instead of cutting to the chase. Another example of this is when Richardson describes the nurse's office with “a soft felt flower” weaving through the inbox. On the wall is a poster of the female reproductive organs that remind him of the mother alien from Aliens. Details like these increase the reader's vantage point because they will that the doctor is a sympathetic human being in the story. He wrote that the doctor goes home in a bullet-proof car surrounded by U.S. marshalls. Richardson describes the patients' facial expressions to show that they are human. He describes a 15 year old girl's voice as so high-pitched that it would remind you of Beanie Babies in your daughter's closet. He describes the receptionist's voice as carefully modulated as described in Hern's book: “sufficiently involved to make full use of his/her own emotional experience and sufficiently detached to differentiate his/her own emotional experience from those of the other." Richardson shows the sympathetic side of the doctor when he interviewed him in his home. In response to a question the reporter asked the doctor responded, She was raped. I'm very sympathetic, but I can't risk my medical license for someone who just didn't get around to doing anything about it. I've done some cases over thirty-six weeks, but very few. This quote shows that the doctor does care about his patients, but he needs to keep his medical license so he can continue to help women in need.
Richardson uses a lot of details that he obtained through interviewing and observing. Richardson writes that Hern's seaweed process is gentler and safer of the cervix. Richardson describes why the seaweed procedure is safer on the cervix. He writes that the tissue dehydrates, the tissue starts to pull apart, the uterus gets softer. If you do a forceful dilation, you're going to tear the cervix. All around, his way is safer.” Richardson uses these details to clarify for the reader why the method is safer. He answers almost all questions the reader would ask while reading the story. The reporter asked if it was safer for the mom, but the doctor “snapped”, “Not the mom. The woman. Till she's had a baby, she's not a mom.” Richardson emphasizes throughout the story that the woman is not a mom until she has a baby. This is what Hern emphasized to Richardson, so Richardson relays the message back to the readers. When Richardson interviewed Hern's wife, he wrote that she likes good coffee, so they met in an Italian coffee shop. He wrote that she has a “strong Roman nose and black hair that breaks against her cheeks in an ebony wave. Her earrings are shaped like dolphin tails.” These are details from his observations of her. Richardson goes on to discuss her life in Cuba which is information her interviewed her for. He uses details about her life that are relevant to the story. For example, he spoke to her about the women she saw trying to induce miscarriages and bled to death. Here is one of her quotes that is important to the story, But I know that many women don't feel nothing when they're pregnant and many women feel sad, feel angry. In this situation, you never can judge who's God. You need to respect women. This quote coveys the message of the story. It is wrong to judge a woman for wanting an abortion if she does not want a child. Not all women want children, so when they accidentally get pregnant they need to get abortions.
The story is organized so that each begins with another source Richardson interviewed. For example, the lead of the story opens up with the couple arriving in Wichita on the day Tiller was killed. The second page begins with Dr. Hern heating his microwave tamales. The third page is about his mother. The second starts with his wife. The fourth page goes back to the inside Hern's office. The fifth page is about Richardson interviewing Hern at the clinic. The sixth page starts with the reporter attempting to speak with the reluctant clinic staff. On the seventh page, Richardson reports what he overhears in the clinic waiting room. On the final page Richardson jumps back to the young couple he describes at the beginning of the story. Richardson broke up the story like this because it is easier for the readers to digest the information. The story starts with the young couple, but he does not elaborate on their situation until the very end of the story. All of the information in between is about the doctor and his life. The information about the doctor is important to understanding why the young couple are in Wichita. Understanding the events surrounding Hern is important to understanding why Tiller was killed. It is important to know why Hern performs abortions for a living. All of this information leads up to the young woman's abortion so when the readers get to the end they understand the situation.

What is journalism in the 21st century?

This is a question that we journalists should be thinking about because it defines who we are as reporters. How do we define journalism in the 21st century?

I think that no matter how we look at it, journalism is about balanced reporting. Reporters need to get the voices of people on both sides of the issue to tell the story. Journalists need to use humanizing details to convey the message of their story (whatever that message may be). They need to have good observation skills and ask the right questions. Even if that is not the journalism we commonly see today, I think that is what true journalism should be. However, we cannot always uphold the ideal image of the art we practice. No matter what your job is, the ideal is not always attainable. We can only get as close to the ideal as possible.