Clips

Reporting

Editing
Document-based pieces
A tip from a source in Paterson’s city government led me to start looking into a deal in which the mayor sold liens against scores of abandoned lots to a developer. By digging through hundreds of documents and county land records, I pulled together data to analyze the $13 million in potential revenue that the city lost in the deal.

Two years ago, Paterson faced fiscal ruin.
Mayor Jose “Joey” Torres needed to find a windfall to make up for a $9 million deficit in the municipal budget, and he needed it fast. The full story

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Many taxpayers complain about conventions and junkets that public employees go on each year. For this fun story, I pored through piles of travel expense reports and receipts I received through an open public records request to show how Paterson officials were spending taxpayer money at conventions in Atlantic City.

When Mercer County Assemblyman Bill Baroni needed an example of wasteful spending and political profligacy, he found exactly what he needed in Paterson. The full story

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Data-driven stories
In the wake of a corruption scandal in Paterson’s Section 8 office, we looked at how the federal rental subsidy program was being administered locally. I built a database of Paterson’s Section 8 payment records and the properties offered to needy renters in the program. By mapping the properties against Census data, we were able to demonstrate that Paterson officials steered voucher recipients into the poorest neighborhoods in the city, in opposition to the intent and regulations of the federal program.

When Michelle Jamison and her family lost their apartment in a fire, they were given a list of Section 8 properties by the city to find a new place.
“The list that they gave us was all horrible areas — all in the 4th Ward,” Jamison said. Jamison said she questioned why the city agency, seeing that she had a teenage daughter, would only recommend what she considered high-crime areas… “They said that’s what they had available, and this was their list, and pretty much take it or leave it.” The full story

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Immersion reporting
I wanted to find a compelling way to illustrate the challenges that face the working poor and immigrants in North Jersey. For one month, I gave up all my money, moved out of my apartment and got a low-wage job. The resulting story of how I made ends meet resonated with readers across the socioeconomic spectrum, won several state contests and was a finalist in the Deadline Club’s annual awards.

In just two days, my $424 dwindled to $110. It all adds up: jitney rides to look for apartments, phone cards to answer job ads. I eat a dinner of $2 cheeseburgers… The full story & the layout

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Municipal coverage
After covering the city of Paterson for more than 18 months, I had developed the kind of sources that make a story like this possible. Several officials and employees tipped me off and then related a discussion that took place in a confidential, closed-door council session about a longtime city lawyer fired for harassing a secretary at a public meeting. The incident ended up costing the cash-strapped city hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Alston, who serves as secretary to Council President Kenneth M. Morris, Jr., alleged that Gordon removed his shoes during a meeting to run his feet up and down her leg under the council table. The full story

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Deadline writing
One morning, while covering a court case, a lawyer whispered to me, “Did you hear what they found at the Meadowlands?” (Not Jimmy Hoffa’s body) I raced back to the newsroom and broke this story, beating the state’s two major dailies. This case of unsecured, hazardous chemicals sitting along the rail lines was a timely warning from a neighboring town that came just as similar rail transfer stations were popping up in our area.

He later said he found that federal standards label the powder as 10 times as poisonous as hydrogen cyanide.
“This is nasty stuff,” Oelrich said. The full story

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Readers
Paterson is the kind of failed industrial town that has bred generations of poverty and violence, gangs and drugs. I found a young filmmaker whose work both chronicled and helped to define the city’s street life. The irony was that Rob Jackson hoped that the success of his homemade DVDs would allow him to escape the crime and violence his films banked on.

His camera bounced erratically and leapt out of focus. Lit only by street lamps, he stopped in the middle of an intersection to capture a shot of the loser curled up on the ground as three acquaintances punched and kicked him.
When another man tried to intervene, he, too, was knocked to the ground and pummeled. The full story

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Assigned to cover an event commemorating Black History Month, I heard a retired police officer make an off-hand remark about playing on a segregated basketball team nearly 50 years before. His comment led me to this story of Lawrence, Kansas’ forgotten history of inequality.

“I didn’t have a chance to buy a yearbook in 1933,” Newman said. “I didn’t have the money to have my picture put in it. My name is in there, but my picture’s not in there.” The full story

Editing

Document-based reporting

One of my reporters had begun looking at a local sewer authority that serves a number of the towns in his municipal beat. The sewer rates kept going up each year, and some town officials complained that a promised new power plant was way behind schedule. With the help of background sources, the writer dug deep into internal audits and memos that showed the body’s professional staff believed that $30 million had been wasted on the power plant that would never operate. It took weeks to bulletproof the story, but it provided a good service for the sewer ratepayers in 14 towns across two counties.

Woodbridge Mayor John E. McCormac, a vocal critic of the authority, said the RVSA’s commissioners should be embarrassed. “They’ve literally cost their residents millions of dollars unnecessarily,” he said. An early draft and the full story

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A freelancer pitched a story about a popular new chain of ultracheap thrift stores popping up in former big box locations around New Jersey. As she dug into the story and got deeper, she realized there was more to it. The thrift chain was using charities to solicit donations. In turn, it paid the charities pennies on the dollar for goods that it resold to bargain-hunters, without disclosing to donors or shoppers the relationship. The reporter dug through federal tax and corporate filings and state charity records to piece together the complex business dealings of the company and its non-profit partners.

“I would hope people who have something valuable to donate wouldn’t donate this way.” A very early draft and the final story

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Looking for stories about people who live in her beat, my reporter found a Google News item that mentioned in passing the arrest of a teenager accused of attacking the Church of Scientology’s website. No one had covered his trial in federal court, where he was the only person who pleaded guilty to participating in an online war between a group of hackers and Scientology. She dug into the young man’s voluminous online activities, sifted through court documents and interviewed experts in the case to piece together how a childish prank landed the college student in prison for a year.

The cyber vigilantes kept up the attack for at least 12 days…. Others made prank calls to the “mother church” in Los Angeles and sent faxes of black paper to use up the toner in the fax machines. A rough draft, a later draft and the full story

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Deadline writing

When Hurricane Noel hit in the fall of 2007, it ravaged the Dominican Republic. Paterson, N.J. has one of the largest Dominican expatriate communities in the U.S., and its residents jumped to collect donations and supplies for relief. One of my reporters tapped into a group of local Dominicans headed to the island to help, and she tagged along. On her first overseas reporting experience, she lost her suitcase en route. When she arrived, she reported and wrote this story in a day and a half, transmitting it via email over a dial-up internet connection threatened by sporadic power outages. The edited story turned out to be a great tale.

The 31-year-old scrambled to his roof. As the water rose, he clung to the branches of a nearby avocado tree to keep from being swept away.
For four hours, 15 others clung there with him. The rough draft and the full story

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Before going to the Dominican Republic, my reporter had heard concerns about a town with a baseball stadium that regularly hosted barnstorming Paterson teams. She traveled to the town to survey the damage even as Dominicans in New Jersey were raising money to rebuild. She found it was hit far worse than expected and turned this story around in one day.

The stadium here, with its manicured outfield and roofed bleachers, was the pride of this rural province…. But overnight, the stadium vanished, swept away by Hurricane Noel. The rough draft and the full story

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A Google alert from a Wisconsin newspaper tipped us to this story of a family that had its bags stolen on vacation and caught the thief while posting for a snapshot. My reporter tracked down the vacationing family’s grandfather who put her in touch with them, and she turned it around in an afternoon.

Sure enough, there he was behind them: A man in a baseball cap, black shirt and brown dress shoes, in the process of picking up their bag. The unedited draft and the full story

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Municipal coverage
A councilwoman in one of my reporters’ beats came up with a novel way to squash criticism from borough residents. She floated a proposal to stop airing the public’s comments during the council’s televised meetings. Without this story, the public could have been blindsided by the unusual political maneuver.

“Frankly, the message that it sends is that the council doesn’t value the public’s comments as much as their own.” The first draft and the full story

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Readers
My reporter received a press release for a photo op at a local business that had gotten a contract to work on the rebuilding of the former World Trade Center site. I coached her to dig into the story and talk about the unique experiences this company had working on one of the most high-profile projects in the world.

When Jim Murray got the contract to provide steel for the base of one of the buildings planned for Ground Zero, his Orange-based company faced a series of challenging requirements.
The structure must be constructed of steel, but be open and airy.
It must be assembled without a modern crane, using a block and tackle system.
It must pass bomb-blasting tests. An early draft and the full story

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One great place to mine for stories: the death notices. We spotted this run-of-the-mill obituary that mentioned a dying woman’s love of travel and her hope to see the world. I worked with the reporter to go to her grieving family and ask the right questions to get the telling details to tell this woman’s touching story.

Three years ago, facing a terminal illness, Teresita Canete quit her job, and she and her husband embarked on a quest to visit as many of the world’s great landmarks as they could. Before she died last month, she managed to see more than a dozen on four continents. An early draft and the full story