Diverse Routes: Taking the Bus, Walking with Friends

Painted stories line the walls of Chicano Park in San Diego’s Barrio Logan: a multitude of arms embracing the earth, an infant sitting in the palm of one’s hand, faces of dictators from years past. The murals serve as reminders of the justice Chicano activists sought when trying [...]

‘Is Racism Making Us Sick?’

I wrote a Diversity at Work blog item this week about a new documentary, “Unnatural Causes.” The documentary reveals that minorities are often unhealthier than their white counterparts, in large part because of racism and discrimination:
When I think about racism, I think about emotional pain, ignorance, the need for equality. So when I recently saw [...]

In One Word: Finding a Focus for Stories

When I write a story, I try to sum it up in one word. It’s a strategy that helps me stay focused on what’s important. What is this story really about? I ask myself. After I pick a word, I write toward that word. When I wrote about adults playing kickball, for instance, I decided [...]

Singing in the Car … and on Stage

One of my favorite songs to sing for a crowd …
“Ugh, it’s such a long drive,” I used to tell myself when thinking about my commute from Clearwater to St. Petersburg. Whereas the commute used to make me think of traffic and money spent on gas, it now makes me think [...]

MTV’s ‘The Paper’: Where Teens, Journalism and Coolness Meet

My friend Laura called me Monday night to break the news.
“Hey Mal!” she said in a message. “There’s a new show on MTV called ‘The Paper,’ You should check it out because I think you’d find it really, really humorous.”
Considering the average age of newspaper readers is nearly 60, I find it odd that there’s [...]

Live Blogging: The Benefits for Journalists

I just wrote an article for Poynter Online about reporters, page designers and journalism professors who believe live blogging makes them better storytellers — by teaching them to be better listeners, note takers and deadline writers.
While at the Nieman narrative journalism conference earlier this month, I live blogged for the first time. The experience led [...]

The Ultimate To-Do List

I’m the type of person who likes to-do lists. Most of my to-do lists remind me of what I haven’t yet accomplished but need to do. I want to create a to-do list of what I haven’t yet done but want to do — a check list full of things that are wild, crazy and [...]

Some Story Updates

Last week, I wrote two Diversity at Work posts for Poynter Online — one about being biracial in today’s society and the other about the work that went into Laura Sullivan’s two-part series on the sexual abuse of Native American women. Click here for more Diversity at Work entries.

Books: Deal Breakers or Deal Makers?

I’ve heard my friends spew off lots of deal breakers — one of my friends has a whole list of them — but I’ve never thought of deal breakers in terms of books. One of The New York Times‘ most e-mailed stories this week is a piece by Rachel Donadio about how books play into [...]