news

You are currently browsing the archive for the news category.

For about two weeks I studied abroad in Dubai. It was winter break of the 2009-2010 school year and the trip included environmental, design and journalism students who rang the new year in together on a beach with expatriots from around the world.

Through the whole trip, one image dominated – literally. Even when we couldn’t see the tallest building in the world, we were surrounded by reminders. From the scale Lego model at Dubai World to the gift shop postcards and newspaper headlines, it was everywhere.

We couldn’t wait for the January 4th opening and a chance see the view from the top. We knew it would be spectacular – and we weren’t disappointed. From big lights to big noises, the event had everything. There was even the twist of a last minute name change from Burj Dubai to Burj khalifa.

What I didn’t expect were the little things – the individual voices and faces that made up the crowds pooling in streets and courtyards all over Dubai to gaze upwards together and form something even greater than the fireworks.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

From instagr.am

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” — Mark Twain

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Concepcion Tlatenchi Laura Elizabeth Delgado

My phone rang tonight with an unfamiliar area code, and from a noisy room, a woman’s voice came through : “I’m calling on behalf of Leonicio Delgado, who spoke to you this summer…”

It took me a few moments to understand.

“About his daughter, about Elizabeth?” I ask.

“Yes, about Elizabeth – he’s calling to see if you’ve heard any news, have you heard anything?”

Laura Elizabeth Delgado went missing over a year ago, in August 2009. She called her family from Nogales, Sonora and told them she would be crossing the border soon with her neighbor, Concepcion Tlatenchi. Concepcion also contacted her family just before they crossed.

No one has heard from either woman since.

I stumbled across this story learning about the border, the risks people will take to cross it – and what happens to their families.

Concepcion’s daughter called agency after agency looking for her mother before she turned to the press. She spent hours on the phone with me and sent me family photos by email before agreeing to let me visit her on the east coast. She also told me about Laura Elizabeth, and gave me Leonicio’s contact information.

I don’t speak Spanish – I say I’m working on it and I am, but it’ll be ages before I have the fluency to talk comfortably or do a thorough interview. But for people with common purpose, there’s always a network.

My phone call was answered by a family friend, whose email I trouble shot in exchange for help translating questions and answers that slid back and forth electronically until Laura Elizabeth’s story and then her photograph appeared on my laptop screen.

I finished the story, and told my editor I wanted the photographs to run as large as possible – they can never run too often or too large for me. If anyone responded with information, I promised the families I’d pass the information on.

I didn’t know what to expect – where the articles would run, who would see, who would care. I didn’t know if anyone knew anything. The desert doesn’t pick up the phone and call in.

And it’s been silent.

With other stories and assignments – and the rest of modern day life – competing to fill the gap, I’ve only thought about the story when people ask what I did this summer or what I’ll do next. It’s been far too easy to think of the project as complete because the edits are finished and the story hasn’t been picked up. It seems to float, motionless, on the site – static. Over.

But for Maria and Leonicio, it’s not. For Maria’s three children, her husband, her brother, her sister and their father, it’s not – just as it’s not over for Leonicio and Laura Elizabeth’s young daughter, who’s two or maybe three by now.

Tonight, Leonicio’s friend called me on his behalf from a noisy restaurant in New York, asking if I had news. Through the upbeat music in the background, I couldn’t help but picture the father who has missed his daughter ever since she didn’t arrive at his door.

I live with someone’s stories for a few hours, a few days, maybe, if I’m lucky, a few months. I won’t forget that you live with your story every day.

Concepcion Tlatenchi

Concepcion Tlatenchi with her husband in Mexico

Laura Elizabeth Delgado

Laura Elizabeth Delgado before leaving Mexico

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Extra photos from Tuesday’s reporting trip to San Luis with Cronkite NewsWatch reporter Laura Yanez (the story about SENTRI is here, and check out other Arizona news at the main Cronkite News page).

Tags: , , , , , ,

Extra photos from weekend reporting on Bicentenario celebrations in Phoenix’s Barrios Unidos Park (the story about the Bicentenario is here, and check out other Arizona news at the main Cronkite News page).

Bicentenario de la Independencia de México – Phoenix (September 2010)

We had sources to interview on both sides of the border in Nogales, and ended up seeing both sides of the security fence there.

We crossed…

… and walked west along the wall and found out that in many places it has become a canvas

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

looking forward

looking left

looking right

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Here’s what I’ve been up to – to see the rest of the my team’s updates, go here.

Amid southern Arizona’s vast landscape of dry foothills, valleys and mountains it’s easy to feel very small.

The people that I’m writing about move through this land, sometimes on a daily basis — they include hikers and hunters, law enforcement and humanitarian volunteers, and the people illegally crossing Arizona’s section of the U.S.-Mexico border.

With the land playing so much of a role in the stories I'm reporting, I decided early on that I needed to see it and experience it for myself. On my first trip I was confident that I'd kept track of where we'd parked the jeep — only to be completely wrong. During the second trip I witnessed dramatic shifts in weather and vowed to be better prepared next time. Most recently, exhausted from the heat, I felt my head swimming despite all my efforts to stay fit, rested and hydrated.

There are rewards — glimpses of elusive wildlife, the fiery wildflowers, unforgettable sunsets. But people who underestimate the harshness of this area are taking a huge risk.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Things here in Phoenix have been heating up lately, and not just because it’s May and the temperatures are steadily, inevitably climbing towards the 100’s. There’s this little thing called SB-1070 that has been in the news recently, and now this is the hotspot for politics as well as border crossing traffic. It’s the perfect summer to be in the newsroom looking at border issues – and having a bit of a travel budget is the icing on the cake.

Let’s take a quick rundown of last week, for example. On Monday, we rose early to be downtown in Phoenix by 4am to see Telemundo broadcast a live immigration special and the audience’s reaction. (they covered the issue in-depth again two days later)

Next, my teammates and I made a run to Tucson, Arizona to interview several contacts there and sit in on Operation Streamline hearings. Operation Streamline started in Del Rio, Texas, but is now operational all along the border and making news and encouraging debate again along with SB-1070.

Finally, while my team headed back to cover Saturday’s protest events, I spent one more day in Tucson to ride along on a Samaritan patrol. My classmates and I have been in talks to do a Border Patrol ride along too, as both are great ways to get out and see the landscape and understand what people are literally going through.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m working on a big project for one of my classes – one that’s been growing and growing and growing to the point where it’s spilled over into two other classes! The project involves many locations along the US-Mexico border and will have a number of media components to show different parts of the story and the data. There’s going to be a major mapping component, and I’ve started posting some of the locations with Google Maps since they can be embedded into the final website for one of the classes.

Google Maps does not have a layering feature, so I’m experimenting with simulating a layering effect through creating multiple maps. Each will have a different component of the story – cities, boundaries, etc. – and will go on the same section of the final webpage. The last map includes all layers from the previous maps. Here are the first two – let me know what you think, and if you have suggestions for what I should include, leave me a comment telling what and why!

Border Boundaries

American and Mexican states along the US-Mexico border.

Border Cities

Cities that play an important role in border policy and migrant travel routes.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

« Older entries

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox

Join other followers:

%d bloggers like this: