it. It's great.http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=25297Resistance: Book 1 is a graphic novel about the French Resistance movement during World War II. It is the first in a series of three books by Carla Jablonski. The main character is a boy named Paul Tessier who lives with his family in Vichy, France. He is an artist, and carries is sketchbook absolutely everywhere with him. Paul has an older sister, Sylvie- about 18 or 20, and a younger sister, Marie- about 8 or so. His father was captured and is a prisoner of war. He lives with his siblings and his mother, taking care of the house. Paul also has a best friend, Henri Levy, who is Jewish. Before the story starts, there is an illustrated explanation of what was happening in France at the time of the book. The Nazi Party had taken over the Northern region of France, while the much smaller southern region was still being run by the French government. Vichy, where the story takes place, is in that southern region that is holding onto freedom. When Henri's parents disappear, Paul and Marie know they need to help him get back to his family. They hide him, and eventually they find out that their family and friends are part of a Resistance movement. The family plans to takes Henri to his parent's hiding place in Paris.Henri is restored to his family, and it is time for Paul to say goodbye. They realize that they might never see each other again, but the reader is left with an uplifting feeling that they would all find each other again one day when the war was over. The book ends with Sylvie, Paul, and Marie getting back on the train for home, suspecting aloud that their adventures—and dangerous sacrifice—are only beginning. The book definitely fits with YAL criteria. Paul and Marie are young, and they are the main players of the story. Their mother, though a beloved and appreciated figure, is in the background. She purposely steps back in the book to allow them to make these very adult decisions, but the reader still knows that she is a solid force of love and support. It also shows incredible growth in the main characters. At first, Paul and Marie are regular children like their friends. They must deal with hearing these other children discuss the Jewish people in degrading ways, repeating rumors about them and acting like kids do when they believe someone is weird and wrong. However, the Tessier children rise above that by not only rejecting that, but by making a very difficult decision to protect Henri. Issues such as belonging, prejudice, uneducated hatred, fear, and unconditional love are present throughout. Teens could definitely relate to Paul and what he is going through, despite the fact that few of them will ever experience anything like what he goes through. Paul, Marie, and Henri act just like kids- fighting with siblings, other kids, and learning to cope with the world around them. They can connect with the essence of the feelings he has, and draw it to their own lives. Jablonski does a great job of writing the story in such a way that Paul is totally relatable.The book was incredibly creative. It was a little slow and could have been clearer. Maybe tightening up the story in the beginning would have helped. However, I loved how relatable the characters are. It relates to the ever-popular teen issue of cliques, where all of your friends are saying something about someone else that is completely untrue. You can sense Paul’s frustration. I also loved how Jablonski uses Paul’s art to convey how he is feeling. Some of the frames of the story are sketches out of his notebook, and they speak what he feels and experiences very clearly. For instance, at the story’s beginning, there is that explanation of the state of France at the time. The first frame of the story is a drawing of Paul’s—the French countryside with a dark cloud rolling over it. The cloud eventually transforms into a monster crawling across the land—a sign of present and impending danger. The drawings also convey Paul’s feelings about other people. When he hears the other children making fun of Jews, he draws one of them in a little Nazi uniform. Also, after Paul and Marie become Resistance fighters, they are nervous about being caught. As they walk through the village, the reader can see the ever smiling faces on everybody the children face. However, in Paul’s book, the people are drawn with monster-like features, dark faces, and suspicious eyes. The reader can see Paul’s fears, hopes, convictions, and real mood through those drawings.I loved the cover to the book as soon as I saw it—a boy’s slingshot aimed directly at the back of a Nazi soldier’s head. It gave a feeling that would even further connect with young readers—a feeling that young kids are capable of great things. The Nazi soldiers are such feared figures in history, and this book gives the feeling that these young kids are part of a major movement that will really screw them up. Though the slingshot cover gives the idea that these kids are going to fight the Nazis in their own little raid of water balloons and spitballs, that is not what it’s really about. Because of the connection to younger children, the book would probably be best taught to Jr. High through sophomore year. Older kids could definitely appreciate it, but they might need something a little more mature in nature.Thumbs up for this one.…
department – if your school is fortunate enough to have an IT department.
Jeff wrote me a few weeks ago about in incredible opportunity for upper elementary, middle school or high school teachers and their students. He’s looking for teachers who have an interest in having their students explore, discuss and write about China and Chinese culture with a group of graduate mentors at the University of Michigan School of Education.
Jeff has been running these online programs with schools all over the globe for over fifteen years. "China Odyssey" is one of many programs he runs though the Interactive Communications & Simulations Program at The University of Michigan - Flint and Ann Arbor.
When I was doing my MA in the late 90s Jeff and my advisor, professor emeritus Dr. Fred Goodman were way ahead of the online learning curve creating international simulations like the Arab-Israeli conflict and the early Earth Odysseys.
Dr. Goodman (who has also collaborated with MC Popper Nick Sousanis), has spent his entire life creating games. Although Fred spends more time enjoying his retirement in California than he does in Ann Arbor – his unique and playful vision clearly guides Dr. Stanzler and ICS's brilliant work.
Last year, I had a chance to witness first hand the power of another ICS program called the International Poetry Guild. MC Popper, Lauren Fardig, a former co-worker from the South Bronx (and recent UM grad) blocked out every other Friday for technology and poetry. Even though we only had one computer lab out our school Lauren found ways for her students to get online to receive feedback from the UM mentors. This mentoring inspired her students to improve both the quality and quantity of their writing.
This work with UM was a catalyst for Lauren's students to create the Bx Live Poets Ning to share their poetry with a larger audience. Last summer Lauren and her class took their show on the road by traveling to a national media education conference in Detroit. Students found there voices online and in front of a lively audience in the D with the boost they received from ICS.
You don't have to take my word for it - you can check out a write up of another ICS simulation - "Michigan Matters." While this program has a more local focus, it is another successful model of online and interactive history curriculum for elementary students.
If you’d like to engage your students with some grad students mentors up in the hand...
... "Earth Odyssey: China" is for you and your class:
China Odyssey is web-based social/cultural issues forum in which middle school and high school students discuss with peers topics including gender roles, the place of religion in society, how we calculate and think about wealth, how America is seen abroad, and a number of issues related to contrasting social mores. This issues are framed in a series of story-based reports, written by two young Americans who lived and worked in Shanghai. The project structure is simple and flexible, such that teachers can tailor their participation to suit their needs, whether it be a special "Friday Activity" in which students read and discuss only selected reports, or something more involved. In addition to University of Michigan mentors, students from Taiwan’s National Central University will also be taking part in the project and serving as mentors. The China Odyssey starts in late September and lasts approximately 10 weeks, with two travel reports posted for discussion each week, and a teacher's guide and other support materials available through the project web site. There is no cost for participating, and all you need to join us is web access. More information (including access to the ICS demo site) check out: http://umsimulations.wikispaces.com/China+Odyssey
This is not something you have to do on a daily basis. You can customize the program as Jeff and his team are always willing to work around the needs of your students, curriculum and school.
I think China Odyssey would be great for World History, English, ELL and Chinese classes. All these students could benefit from this unique program.
If you want to talk to Jeff about singing up It is NOT TO LATE! Contact Jeff Stanzler here on the Ning or at: stanz@umich.edu
Don't be shy about contacting Dr. Stazler for your class and your students. This is a rare opportunity for your students to:
1. engage a truly global educational experience
2. impress your administrators with your forward thinking use of technology.
3. show of your cool connections to institutions of higher learning :)
4. make your curriculum POP!
For those of you who might not be interested in this project you might still be interested in China. China is an economic and cultural giant that is on everyone’s mind these days, as such it seems ripe to become a larger part of American curricula.
If you teach Middle School and above, and you want to introduce them to Chinese culture, you should check out American Born Chinese (ABC) written by Gene Yang. I’ve worked with many teachers over the last three years teaching American Born Chinese. Judging from the fact that they’re already offering the book in a PermaBound edition I'd put money on this book becoming part of the 6-12 canon.
Here's a link to the second ABC discussion on the NIng.
Mr. Yang is trained as a math teacher - you may have caught an older post about his math work - Gene Yang Rocks Algebra/Factoring in WebComics - in the Math group.
In one of my favorite (but still very small groups) is for people who work with Art and Visual Cultures. In that group I posted some great images for those of you interested in using visual literacy to teach about politics and culture: Olympic Posters China Doesn't Want to See (2008)
And lastly In the World Literature group you can read about an interesting trend in Chinese literature called “the Officialdom novel” - Orwell would be proud.
Happy Monday!
RRG:)…
Added by Ryan Goble at 1:55pm on September 21, 2009
ers
a new Robin. His previous protégé had quit after his dad found out his teenage son was sneaking off to wear green tights. Then, in May 2004, a 16-year-old named Stephanie Brown stepped into comic-book history as Bruce Wayne's first female sidekick. When the caped crusader told her she got the job, she jumped in the air and shouted, "This is so totally cool!"
Stephanie's 71-day tenure as the Girl Wonder started off well. Drawn in a fun, Powerpuff Girls style, she trained hard, and even saved her mentor from a serial killer. But then, in a series of unfortunate events, Batman canned her, she accidentally set off a Gotham City gang war, and finally fell into the hands of a skull-faced villain called Black Mask, who tortured her to death with a power drill.
Her grisly demise hit fans hard, particularly the female readers who'd only just started enjoying the thrill of a Robin they could identify with. After the two previous boy Robins had retired and died, respectively, their uniforms were preserved behind glass inside the Batcave. But Baman never got around to memorializing Stephanie. More than two years later, a grassroots campaign based at the website Girl-Wonder.org is still aggressively lobbying DC Comics to give Stephanie her two-dimensional due. And the flames of discontent only grew higher when DC editor Dan DiDio told female fans at a recent comic convention that in his book, Stephanie "was never really a Robin."
Of course, sudden-death plot twists are nothing new in comic books. (Just ask Captain America, who was whacked earlier this year after an illustrious 60-year crime-fighting career.) Neither are angry readers: Comic-book fans are known for their fanatical love for their favorite characters—and their ferocious scorn for anyone who dares to mess them up. But the new wave of feminist fangirls has taken this obsessiveness even further, geeking out about the ways that superwomen are shortchanged by dumb story lines, flat characterization, and titillating art. They love their comics as much as the sweatiest fanboy—and they hate nothing more than when real-life problems like the glass ceiling intrude on their escapist fantasies.
Ever since the pulpy era of tales like "Lois Lane, Slave Girl," women in comic books have usually been stuck as tagalongs, also-rans, and girlfriends who try to tie down male heroes with marriage. With very few exceptions, comic-book writers and artists have been men, and they've assumed most of their readers were, too. But despite the genre's teenage testosterone appeal, there have always been dedicated fans like Gail Simone, who grew up in the 1970s enjoying the all-American ritual of buying comic books at the convenience store and curling up with four-color fantasies about fellow redhead Batgirl. As she got older, Simone noticed that a dark undercurrent was creeping into her favorite titles as they pushed a new "grim 'n' gritty" aesthetic. Batgirl was shot in the spine by the Joker, who then took obscene photos of her.
In the late '90s, Simone started keeping track of plot twists in which supervillains would rape or brutalize female characters on her website, Women in Refrigerators. (The name refers to one particularly gruesome incident; see "When Bad Things Happen to Superpeople," above.) Now an entire universe of feisty feminist fan sites has appeared, including When Fangirls Attack and online columns such as "Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed)." They've identified trends such as "porn face," one male artist's habit of drawing every female character with the same faking-an-orgasm expression. And they've added an estrogen-fueled spin to their passion for minutiae: Is the female leader of the Mighty Avengers really in charge, or is she just a figurehead? Why doesn't Wonder Woman know how to pump gas? Did Spider-Man's radioactive sperm really kill his wife?
Lately, they've been focusing their powers of deconstruction on Supergirl, Superman's underage cousin. After spending decades as the Man of Steel's blond, bland counterpart, she was recently recast as jailbait, trading her long-sleeved top and cheerleader skirt for a midriff-baring micro-costume (supposedly designed by Superman's Midwestern stepmom). Bloggers diligently dissected every up-skirt image of the new Supergirl gone wild, who seemed to spend more time flaunting ass than kicking it. In response to the bad buzz, in January Supergirl editor Eddie Berganza issued an open letter to his female readers. "Women," he began, "Who needs them? Well, actually...I do." He begged the "ladies" to "give Supergirl a shot," explaining that he'd gotten a "woman's point of view" on the character from a female assistant editor. He also promised that Supergirl would gain some weight and would date a "mimbo" who was as much of a mindless pinup as she was.
Clearly, Berganza was missing the point. Female fans want the same thing as male readers: well-written stories and believable—okay, sort of believable—characters. "You can't just promise to add some weight to Supergirl's frame and expect women to care about a poorly constructed character," says blogger Rachelle Goguen. DC has since replaced Berganza with Matt Idelson, who had previously revamped Catwoman from a sex kitten to a reasonably dressed badass. Idelson has promised that Supergirl soon will be "more user-friendly."
"The victory with Supergirl was important, and the stakes were high," says Valerie D'Orazio, a former DC Comics editor who blogs as Occasional Superheroine. Though she accepts some of the blame for tarting up Supergirl during her tenure, she believes that comics creators are starting to think twice about indulging the kinds of fantasies that have driven plotlines during the past decade or so. D'Orazio caused a stir a couple of years ago when she wrote about a meeting where male editors told her, "We need a rape." She says such clumsy attempts at edginess are dwindling, not necessarily out of sensitivity but because publishers want to make money. Bad publicity from vocal fans is Kryptonite for business: Supergirl's sales plummeted nearly 50 percent in the past year.
Some of the guys who write comics are listening. "I'm conscious that female characters have been treated poorly for much of comics' history, and I don't want to fall into the same traps," says Superman writer Kurt Busiek. Brian K. Vaughan, who has written The X-Men, says he's developing more interesting female characters "to raise the dialogue about comics beyond, 'Could her boobs be smaller?'"
While fans have long been content to lob criticisms from the safety of their fortresses of solitude, more women are taking the leap from critics to creators. Gail Simone has joined DC Comics and chronicles the adventures of the former Batgirl—now a paraplegic master hacker who sends female agents out to kickbox on the wings of fighter jets. She's won praise for her well-realized female characters and is slated to become the new Wonder Woman scribe. Simone says she is meeting more women who want to break into the field. "The revolution is happening," she says.
But the revolution isn't trying to change comic books' enduring appeal. Boy nerds love stories of outcasts who come into fantastic powers. Simone says that girls love these tales for similar reasons: They allow girls to imagine rescuing themselves instead of waiting for a white knight to show up. Feminists' favorite superheroes still squeeze into spandex and leather, and rely on cartoon violence and outlandish toys to solve their problems—just like the guys do. In one recent episode written by Simone, the fishnet-clad Black Canary is captured by a bunch of thugs, whose leader taunts her, "Shouldn't you be preparing my evening meal...naked?" She proceeds to lay waste to the entire gang, her fists, feet, and elbows soaring in controlled arcs of fury. "I am the Black Canary," she declares. "And I take $%$@ from precisely NO ONE."
From: http://www.motherjones.com/print/10597…
ers
a new Robin. His previous protégé had quit after his dad found out his teenage son was sneaking off to wear green tights. Then, in May 2004, a 16-year-old named Stephanie Brown stepped into comic-book history as Bruce Wayne's first female sidekick. When the caped crusader told her she got the job, she jumped in the air and shouted, "This is so totally cool!"
Stephanie's 71-day tenure as the Girl Wonder started off well. Drawn in a fun, Powerpuff Girls style, she trained hard, and even saved her mentor from a serial killer. But then, in a series of unfortunate events, Batman canned her, she accidentally set off a Gotham City gang war, and finally fell into the hands of a skull-faced villain called Black Mask, who tortured her to death with a power drill.
Her grisly demise hit fans hard, particularly the female readers who'd only just started enjoying the thrill of a Robin they could identify with. After the two previous boy Robins had retired and died, respectively, their uniforms were preserved behind glass inside the Batcave. But Baman never got around to memorializing Stephanie. More than two years later, a grassroots campaign based at the website Girl-Wonder.org is still aggressively lobbying DC Comics to give Stephanie her two-dimensional due. And the flames of discontent only grew higher when DC editor Dan DiDio told female fans at a recent comic convention that in his book, Stephanie "was never really a Robin."
Of course, sudden-death plot twists are nothing new in comic books. (Just ask Captain America, who was whacked earlier this year after an illustrious 60-year crime-fighting career.) Neither are angry readers: Comic-book fans are known for their fanatical love for their favorite characters—and their ferocious scorn for anyone who dares to mess them up. But the new wave of feminist fangirls has taken this obsessiveness even further, geeking out about the ways that superwomen are shortchanged by dumb story lines, flat characterization, and titillating art. They love their comics as much as the sweatiest fanboy—and they hate nothing more than when real-life problems like the glass ceiling intrude on their escapist fantasies.
Ever since the pulpy era of tales like "Lois Lane, Slave Girl," women in comic books have usually been stuck as tagalongs, also-rans, and girlfriends who try to tie down male heroes with marriage. With very few exceptions, comic-book writers and artists have been men, and they've assumed most of their readers were, too. But despite the genre's teenage testosterone appeal, there have always been dedicated fans like Gail Simone, who grew up in the 1970s enjoying the all-American ritual of buying comic books at the convenience store and curling up with four-color fantasies about fellow redhead Batgirl. As she got older, Simone noticed that a dark undercurrent was creeping into her favorite titles as they pushed a new "grim 'n' gritty" aesthetic. Batgirl was shot in the spine by the Joker, who then took obscene photos of her.
In the late '90s, Simone started keeping track of plot twists in which supervillains would rape or brutalize female characters on her website, Women in Refrigerators. (The name refers to one particularly gruesome incident; see "When Bad Things Happen to Superpeople," above.) Now an entire universe of feisty feminist fan sites has appeared, including When Fangirls Attack and online columns such as "Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed)." They've identified trends such as "porn face," one male artist's habit of drawing every female character with the same faking-an-orgasm expression. And they've added an estrogen-fueled spin to their passion for minutiae: Is the female leader of the Mighty Avengers really in charge, or is she just a figurehead? Why doesn't Wonder Woman know how to pump gas? Did Spider-Man's radioactive sperm really kill his wife?
Lately, they've been focusing their powers of deconstruction on Supergirl, Superman's underage cousin. After spending decades as the Man of Steel's blond, bland counterpart, she was recently recast as jailbait, trading her long-sleeved top and cheerleader skirt for a midriff-baring micro-costume (supposedly designed by Superman's Midwestern stepmom). Bloggers diligently dissected every up-skirt image of the new Supergirl gone wild, who seemed to spend more time flaunting ass than kicking it. In response to the bad buzz, in January Supergirl editor Eddie Berganza issued an open letter to his female readers. "Women," he began, "Who needs them? Well, actually...I do." He begged the "ladies" to "give Supergirl a shot," explaining that he'd gotten a "woman's point of view" on the character from a female assistant editor. He also promised that Supergirl would gain some weight and would date a "mimbo" who was as much of a mindless pinup as she was.
Clearly, Berganza was missing the point. Female fans want the same thing as male readers: well-written stories and believable—okay, sort of believable—characters. "You can't just promise to add some weight to Supergirl's frame and expect women to care about a poorly constructed character," says blogger Rachelle Goguen. DC has since replaced Berganza with Matt Idelson, who had previously revamped Catwoman from a sex kitten to a reasonably dressed badass. Idelson has promised that Supergirl soon will be "more user-friendly."
"The victory with Supergirl was important, and the stakes were high," says Valerie D'Orazio, a former DC Comics editor who blogs as Occasional Superheroine. Though she accepts some of the blame for tarting up Supergirl during her tenure, she believes that comics creators are starting to think twice about indulging the kinds of fantasies that have driven plotlines during the past decade or so. D'Orazio caused a stir a couple of years ago when she wrote about a meeting where male editors told her, "We need a rape." She says such clumsy attempts at edginess are dwindling, not necessarily out of sensitivity but because publishers want to make money. Bad publicity from vocal fans is Kryptonite for business: Supergirl's sales plummeted nearly 50 percent in the past year.
Some of the guys who write comics are listening. "I'm conscious that female characters have been treated poorly for much of comics' history, and I don't want to fall into the same traps," says Superman writer Kurt Busiek. Brian K. Vaughan, who has written The X-Men, says he's developing more interesting female characters "to raise the dialogue about comics beyond, 'Could her boobs be smaller?'"
While fans have long been content to lob criticisms from the safety of their fortresses of solitude, more women are taking the leap from critics to creators. Gail Simone has joined DC Comics and chronicles the adventures of the former Batgirl—now a paraplegic master hacker who sends female agents out to kickbox on the wings of fighter jets. She's won praise for her well-realized female characters and is slated to become the new Wonder Woman scribe. Simone says she is meeting more women who want to break into the field. "The revolution is happening," she says.
But the revolution isn't trying to change comic books' enduring appeal. Boy nerds love stories of outcasts who come into fantastic powers. Simone says that girls love these tales for similar reasons: They allow girls to imagine rescuing themselves instead of waiting for a white knight to show up. Feminists' favorite superheroes still squeeze into spandex and leather, and rely on cartoon violence and outlandish toys to solve their problems—just like the guys do. In one recent episode written by Simone, the fishnet-clad Black Canary is captured by a bunch of thugs, whose leader taunts her, "Shouldn't you be preparing my evening meal...naked?" She proceeds to lay waste to the entire gang, her fists, feet, and elbows soaring in controlled arcs of fury. "I am the Black Canary," she declares. "And I take $%$@ from precisely NO ONE."
From: http://www.motherjones.com/print/10597…
is issue, I'd still go with the visual Food Inc. but Safran Foer is a fun (read post-modern, funky fonts, pictures) writer so I'm sure some excerpts would be high interest for students.
And no, I'm not a vegetarian, but I often wish I could find a way to be (I have health issues that make that option nearly impossible).
In the meantime, read on...
Should you eat meat?
by Elizabeth Kolbert
Americans love animals. Forty-six million families in the United States own at least one dog, and thirty-eight million keep cats. Thirteen million maintain freshwater aquariums in which swim a total of more than a hundred and seventy million fish. Collectively, these creatures cost Americans some forty billion dollars annually. (Seventeen billion goes to food and another twelve billion to veterinary bills.) Despite the recession, pet-related expenditures this year are expected to increase five per cent over 2008, in part owing to outlays on luxury items like avian manicures and canine bath spritz. “We have so many customers who say they’d eat macaroni and cheese before they’d cut back on their dogs,” a Colorado pet-store owner recently told the Denver Post. In a survey released this past August, more than half of all dog, cat, and bird owners reported having bought presents for their animals during the previous twelve months, often for no special occasion, just out of love. (Fish enthusiasts may bring home fewer gifts, but they spend more on each one, with the average fish gift coming to thirty-seven dollars.) A majority of owners report that one of the reasons they enjoy keeping pets is that they consider them part of the family.
Americans also love to eat animals. This year, they will cook roughly twenty-seven billion pounds of beef, sliced from some thirty-five million cows. Additionally, they will consume roughly twenty-three billion pounds of pork, or the bodies of more than a hundred and fifteen million pigs, and thirty-eight billion pounds of poultry, some nine billion birds. Most of these creatures have been raised under conditions that are, as Americans know—or, at least, by this point have no excuse not to know—barbaric. Broiler chickens, also known, depending on size, as fryers or roasters, typically spend their lives in windowless sheds, packed in with upward of thirty thousand other birds and generations of accumulated waste. The ammonia fumes thrown off by their rotting excrement lead to breast blisters, leg sores, and respiratory disease. Bred to produce the maximum amount of meat in the minimum amount of time, fryers often become so top-heavy that they can’t support their own weight. At slaughtering time, they are shackled by their feet, hung from a conveyor belt, and dipped into an electrified bath known as “the stunner.”
For pigs, conditions are little better. Shortly after birth, piglets have their tails chopped off; this discourages the bored and frustrated animals from gnawing one another’s rumps. Male piglets also have their testicles removed, a procedure performed without anesthetic. Before being butchered, hogs are typically incapacitated with a tonglike instrument designed to induce cardiac arrest. Sometimes their muscles contract so violently that they end up not just dead but with a broken back.
How is it that Americans, so solicitous of the animals they keep as pets, are so indifferent toward the ones they cook for dinner? The answer cannot lie in the beasts themselves. Pigs, after all, are quite companionable, and dogs are said to be delicious.
This inconsistency is the subject of Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals” (Little, Brown; $25.99). Unlike Foer’s two previous books, “Everything Is Illuminated” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” his latest is nonfiction. The task it sets itself is less to make sense of our behavior than to show how, when our stomachs are involved, it is often senseless. “Food choices are determined by many factors, but reason (even consciousness) is not generally high on the list,” Foer writes.
Foer was just nine years old when the problem of being an “eating animal” first presented itself. One evening, his parents left him and his older brother with a babysitter and a platter of chicken. The babysitter declined to join the boys for dinner.
“You know that chicken is chicken, right?” she pointed out. Foer’s older brother sniggered. Where had their parents found this moron? But Foer was shaken. That chicken was a chicken! Why had he never thought of this before? He put down his fork. Within a few years, however, he went back to eating chickens and other animals. During high school and college, he converted to vegetarianism several more times, partly to salve his conscience and partly, as he puts it, “to get closer to the breasts” of female activists. Later, he became engaged to a woman (the novelist Nicole Krauss) with a similar history of relapse. They resolved to do better, and immediately violated that resolve by serving meat at their wedding and eating it on their honeymoon. Finally, when he was about to become a father, Foer felt compelled to think about the issue more deeply, and, at the same time, to write about it. “We decided to have a child, and that was a different story that would necessitate a different story,” he says.
Foer ends up telling several stories, though all have the same horrific ending. One is about shit. Animals, he explains, produce a lot of it. Crowded into “concentrated animal feeding operations,” or CAFOs, they can produce entire cities’ worth. (The pigs processed by a single company, Smithfield Foods, generate as much excrement as all of the human residents of the states of California and Texas combined.) Unlike cities, though, CAFOs have no waste-treatment systems. The shit simply gets dumped in holding ponds. Imagine, Foer writes, if “every man, woman, and child in every city and town in all of California and all of Texas crapped and pissed in a huge open-air pit for a day. Now imagine that they don’t do this for just a day, but all year round, in perpetuity.” Not surprisingly, the shit in the ponds tends to migrate to nearby streams and rivers, causing algae blooms that kill fish and leave behind aquatic “dead zones.” According to the Environmental Protection Agency, some thirty-five thousand miles of American waterways have been contaminated by animal excrement.
Another of Foer’s stories is about microbes. In the U.S., Foer reports, people are prescribed about three million pounds of antibiotics a year. Livestock are fed nearly twenty-eight million pounds, according to the drug industry. By pumping cows and chickens full of antibiotics, farmers have been instrumental in producing new, resistant strains of germs—so-called superbugs. As soon as the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of a class of drugs known as fluoroquinolones in chickens, for instance, the percentage of bacteria resistant to fluoroquinolones shot up. Officials at many health organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control, have called for an end to the indiscriminate use of antibiotics on farms, but, of course, the practice continues.
A third story is about suffering. Intuitively, we all know that animals feel pain. (This, presumably, is why we spend so much money on vet bills.) “No reader of this book would tolerate someone swinging a pickax at a dog’s face,” Foer observes. And yet, he notes, we routinely eat fish that have been killed in this way, as well as chickens who have been dragged through the stunner and pigs who have been electrocuted and cows who have had bolts shot into their heads. (In many cases, the cows are not quite killed by the bolts, and so remain conscious as they are skinned and dismembered.)
Foer relates how, one night, he sneaked onto a California turkey farm with an animal-rights activist he calls C. Most of the buildings were locked, but the two managed to slip into a shed that housed tens of thousands of turkey chicks. At first, the conditions seemed not so bad. Some of the chicks were sleeping. Others were struggling to get closer to the heat lamps that substitute for their mothers. Then Foer started noticing how many of the chicks were dead. They were covered with sores, or matted with blood, or withered like dry leaves. C spotted one chick splayed out on the floor, trembling. Its eyes were crusted over and its head was shaking back and forth. C slit its throat.
“If you stop and think about it, it’s crazy,” she later told Foer. “How would you judge an artist who mutilated animals in a gallery because it was visually arresting? How riveting would the sound of a tortured animal need to be to make you want to hear it that badly? Try to imagine any end other than taste for which it would be justifiable to do what we do to farmed animals.”
One day while in Berlin, Franz Kafka went to visit the city’s famous aquarium. According to his friend and biographer Max Brod, Kafka, gazing into the illuminated tanks, addressed the fish directly. “Now at last I can look at you in peace,” he told them. “I don’t eat you anymore.”
Kafka, who became what Brod calls a strenger Vegetarianer—a strict vegetarian—is one of the heroes of “Eating Animals.” So is the philosopher Jacques Derrida, and a vegan theology professor named Aaron Gross, who is working on plans for a model slaughterhouse. “This is not paradoxical or ironic,” Gross says of his slaughterhouse work.
Foer’s villains include Smithfield, Tyson Foods, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and—rather more surprisingly—Michael Pollan. There is perhaps no more influential critic of the factory farm than Pollan, and Foer acknowledges that he “has written as thoughtfully about food as anyone.” But when Pollan looks at animals he doesn’t feel worried or guilty or embarrassed. He feels, well, hungry.
“I have to say there is a part of me that envies the moral clarity of the vegetarian, the blamelessness of the tofu eater,” Pollan observes toward the end of his book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” shortly after describing the thrill of shooting a pig. “Yet part of me pities him, too. Dreams of innocence are just that; they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris.”
According to Pollan, it is naïve to see domesticated animals as victims. Some ten thousand years ago, “a handful of especially opportunistic species discovered . . . that they were more likely to survive and prosper in an alliance with humans than on their own,” he writes. The results speak for themselves. Domesticated chickens have never been more numerous, even as the Red Burmese jungle fowl from which they descended is disappearing. Meanwhile, if animals have had to make adjustments to live with people, the reverse is also the case. Humans developed the ability to digest lactose into adulthood, for example, only as a consequence of keeping cows.
Given this history, Pollan says, it’s too late for people to start worrying about eating animals. The problem with factory-farmed meat isn’t the meat; it’s the factory. The solution is to return animals to the sorts of places where they can graze and root and fly—or at least flap around—before being dispatched. “I don’t eat industrial meat anymore,” Pollan recently told Newsweek. “I eat grass-fed beef, organic chicken from a place I know.”
Foer finds Pollan’s account of inter-species alliances unpersuasive. “Chickens can do many things,” he notes, but they cannot make “sophisticated deals with humans.” And, in any case, if they could, shouldn’t the same terms apply to pets? Once we’re done showering Kitty and Fido with trinkets, let’s bleed them out and fry them up: “If we let dogs be dogs, and breed without interference, we would create a sustainable, local meat supply with low energy inputs that would put even the most efficient grass-based farming to shame,” Foer writes.
Meanwhile, the notion that factory-farmed meat can be replaced with boutique-bred beef depends on its own denial of reality: “There isn’t enough nonfactory chicken produced in America to feed the population of Staten Island and not enough nonfactory pork to serve New York City, let alone the country.”
Foer seems particularly incensed by the suggestion that deciding not to eat meat represents a delusion of innocence or, worse still, sentimentality. “Two friends are ordering lunch,” he writes:
One says, “I’m in the mood for a burger,” and orders it. The other says, “I’m in the mood for a burger,” but remembers that there are things more important to him than what he is in the mood for at any given moment, and orders something else. Who is the sentimentalist?
Of the nearly two billion chickens currently being raised in the United States, a dozen live in my back yard.* They were shipped six months ago as chicks, and arrived at the local post office in a cardboard box. Now full-grown, they spend their days laying eggs, pecking around in the grass, and shitting on the walkways. The chickens are happy, or so I dream, as I sit at the window when evening falls.
Much of the credit (or blame) for the back-yard-chicken fad belongs to the “local food” movement, which Pollan helped launch. When I ordered my chickens, from a hatchery in Missouri, it was with the idea that my children could learn what it’s like to raise what you eat. I also hoped, in a more Foerian vein, that the experience might prompt a reëvaluation of their relationship with chicken fingers. Recently, I asked whether they would consider becoming vegetarians. One of my sons proposed that, instead of dropping meat, we eat it exclusively. We could, he suggested, call ourselves “mea-gans.”
By this point, my kids certainly know that “chicken is chicken,” and also that beef is cows and pork is pigs. About a mile away, there’s a farm with its own little store. Every so often, some piglets arrive at the farm. My sons like to go watch the piglets roll around in the mud. Then they like to go to the store and purchase the sausages that have been made from the piglets’ predecessors.
In this way, the boys are a lot like the chickens. Though the hens have plenty of feed in their coop, they prefer to scratch in the dirt for living things. They are especially fond of centipedes and grubs. More than once, I’ve seen them pick up a red-spotted newt by its neck, shake it dead, then toss it aside. (The newts are poisonous, something the chickens apparently discover too late.) A few weeks ago, they cornered a small rabbit under a neighbor’s car. Whether or not they were hoping to kill it, the creature was clearly terrified.
Very broadly speaking, there are two arguments to be made on behalf of eating animals. One is that people are animals. Different animals naturally have different diets; in our case, this diet includes meat. Our ancestors certainly liked a nice bone to gnaw on. Indeed, one theory of human development posits that a diet high in animal protein was what allowed human beings to become human in the first place. (As hominids’ brains grew, the theory goes, they became better hunters; this allowed their guts to shrink, which facilitated further brain growth.) Studies of hunter-gatherer societies show that anywhere from twenty-six per cent (in the case of the Gwi, of southern Africa) to ninety-nine per cent (the Nunamiut, of Alaska) of their caloric intake comes from eating meat.
The second argument is that animals are not people. People may have obligations toward animals—to enforce these, there are laws against animal cruelty—but these obligations do not preclude ingesting them. Pollan contends that “people who care about animals should be working to ensure that the ones they eat don’t suffer, and that their deaths are swift and painless.” Similarly, the author and livestock expert Temple Grandin, who designs what are often called “humane slaughterhouses,” argues, “We owe animals a decent life and a painless death.” We “forget that nature can be harsh,” she has written. “Death at the slaughter plant is quicker and less painful than death in the wild. Lions dining on the guts of a live animal is much worse in my opinion.”
Foer’s position is that all such arguments are, finally, bogus. We eat meat because we like to, and we devise justifications afterward. “Almost always, when I told someone I was writing a book about ‘eating animals,’ they assumed, even without knowing anything about my views, that it was a case for vegetarianism,” he says. “It’s a telling assumption, one that implies not only that a thorough inquiry into animal agriculture would lead one away from eating meat, but that most people already know that to be the case.” What we know about eating animals is that we don’t want to know. Although he never explicitly equates “concentrated animal feeding operations” with the Final Solution, the German model of at once seeing and not seeing clearly informs Foer’s thinking. The book is framed by tales of his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor whose culinary repertoire consists of a single dish: roast chicken with carrots.
Foer’s novels are pointedly postmodern; they play with voice and genre, language and typography. (“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” ends with a flip book of a body either falling out of or flying away from the World Trade Center.) “Eating Animals” is written in a similar po-mode; it is constantly shifting among formats—a glossary of terms, interviews, personal vignettes—and each chapter is introduced with a page or two of graphic art. The chapter titled “Hiding/Seeking,” for example, opens with an outline of a box, sixty-seven squares in area, which is supposed to illustrate the amount of space allotted to a typical laying hen. Some may object that Foer’s style is too playful (or gimmicky) for what he contends is a deadly serious subject. Others will argue that he lacks the courage of his convictions.
For much of “Eating Animals,” it appears that Foer is arguing for vegetarianism as the only moral course. Then, it turns out, he isn’t—or, at least, not quite. In the middle of the book, Foer becomes friendly with a farmer named Frank Reese, who raises what are known as “heritage” turkeys. (It is for Reese that Aaron Gross, the vegan theology professor, is trying to design a model—and also mobile—slaughterhouse.) Evolutionarily speaking, heritage turkeys fall somewhere between the wild variety that the colonists encountered and the obscenely large-breasted breeds that now fill the meat aisle. A heritage turkey is probably what your great-grandparents served if they celebrated Thanksgiving.
“I have placed my wager on a vegetarian diet and I have enough respect for people like Frank, who have bet on a more humane animal agriculture, to support their kind of farming,” Foer writes. “This is not in the end a complicated position.” But it is, or at least it’s complicated to parse. If the problem with nonfactory chicken is that there isn’t enough of it, how can heritage birds represent a solution? (There are barely enough heritage turkeys being raised in America to feed Tottenville, let alone all of Staten Island.) And what does it mean for Foer to “support” Reese’s kind of farming while urging his readers to boycott his product?
Meanwhile, it could be argued that even a vegetarian diet falls short. As Foer is well aware, some of the animals that suffer most from the factory-farm system aren’t the ones that end up on the table. Most dairy cows spend their lives in sheds, where they are milked two or three times a day by machine. Many develop chronic udder infections. Laying chickens are kept in cages, jammed in so tightly that they don’t have room to spread their wings. To prevent them from cannibalizing one another, their beaks are trimmed with a hot blade. When their production begins to decline, they are starved for a week or two to reset their biological clocks. Foer never says anything about forgoing eggs or dairy, which seems to imply that he consumes them. In “The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food” (Norton; $24.95), Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson offers many of the same observations about factory farming as Foer. To align his food choices with his ethics, Masson writes, he had to take the “final step” and become a vegan.
But is even veganism really enough? The cost that consumer society imposes on the planet’s fifteen or so million non-human species goes way beyond either meat or eggs. Bananas, bluejeans, soy lattes, the paper used to print this magazine, the computer screen you may be reading it on—death and destruction are embedded in them all. It is hard to think at all rigorously about our impact on other organisms without being sickened.
“Eating Animals” closes with a turkey-less Thanksgiving. As a holiday, it doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. But this is Foer’s point. We are, he suggests, defined not just by what we do; we are defined by what we are willing to do without. Vegetarianism requires the renunciation of real and irreplaceable pleasures. To Foer’s credit, he is not embarrassed to ask this of us. ♦
*Correction, November 4, 2009: The number of chickens currently being raised in the United States is nearly two billion, not four hundred and fifty billion, as originally stated.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/11/09/091109crbo_books_kolbert?printable=true#ixzz0YH22WyRl…
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By Andy Reid
Daily Sports Editor On September 9th, 2009
PAHOKEE, Fla. — It’s not quite summer, but the first twangs of the dog days are already snaking through the warm spring months. It’s hard to escape the heat in a place like this, and although its endearing residents affectionately call it “Muck City,” the ground and air are dry and thick with chalky dust.
Dusk is just beginning to set in as we walk into a small, square, grey box of a house. It’s across the street from one of the most dangerous areas in town, and we have been repeatedly told not to be outside after dark. We walk through the tile-floored living room and kitchen and into a cramped bedroom.
The floor, bed, desk, nightstand and every other flat surface in the room are all covered in a thick layer of rewritable DVDs, anything from "Superbad" to "Terminator: Salvation" (a movie that would not come out in theaters for another week) to Pahokee High School football highlight tapes, which the owner is particularly proud of.
He pops in one of the myriad discs. It’s a guerrilla-style video called “Palm Beach County: Gangstas and Thugs.” Local gun-toting gang members flash across the screen, beating each other senseless and shooting AK-47s into the air.
“That’s my cousin; he’s in jail,” he says pointing, to the screen. “Oh, and that kid’s dead. He was 17.”
Every five minutes or so, a new customer wanders unannounced into this makeshift Blockbuster and sifts through the pile of ripped movies. One acts surprised when he pulls out his wallet and finds that it’s empty.
“Don’t even worry about it — just pay me back later,” the owner says.
It’s not about the money with an operation like this. Sure, it’s illegal, but what are the residents of this small, flailing farm town, where the median family income is almost $25,000 below the national average, supposed to do? There’s one movie theater along a decrepit strip of buildings, the only area that could remotely be described as “downtown.” Its windows are boarded up tightly, and one can only guess how long the marquee has been blank. The next closest cinema is in Clewiston, Fla., more than a 40-minute car ride away.
Not that many Pahokee residents could afford a trip to the movies, anyway. Vast sugarcane fields surround the town, and when United Sugar closed its Pahokee-based plant about five years ago, it took away a major lifeline, according to city commissioner Susan Feltner. Many people left, and those who stayed are still suffering through an even more crippled economy.
“A lot of these kids hardly ever leave Palm Beach County, and a lot of them haven’t even been 45 miles east to West Palm, to the beach,” Pahokee defensive coordinator Rick James said. “So all they know is Pahokee.”
It’s hard to imagine a place in America where children can’t see movies. Or go bowling. Or hang out at the mall, eat French fries with friends at a Burger King, play mini-golf or go to a skating rink. But for Martavious Odoms, Vincent Smith and Brandin Hawthorne — three members of the Michigan football team — that was life.
Without the normal childhood distractions, Pahokee natives have two options:
One is dedicating your life to the high school football team, which has won five of the last six state championships and could see as many as 14 seniors earn Division-I scholarships this year, and Michigan is in the hunt for many of those kids.
The other isn’t so promising.
Former Pahokee coach Don Thompson, who earned a scholarship to The Citadel after playing for the Blue Devils in his heyday, said it best:
“You know, if it wasn’t for Pahokee football, I’d probably be in jail or prison somewhere.”
Local gangs recruit boys as young as 12. At that age, kids are used as “jitterbugs,” transferring weapons and money from one party to another. It’s safer for the thugs and raises fewer red flags with the police.
Once you get into it, it’s hard to get out.
“There’s nothing to do here,” Jawarski Boui, Smith’s half-brother, said. “It’s easy to get into smoking weed, robbing, they even started killing around here.”
Boui said that in order to stock up on the more serious weapons like the AK-47s, teenagers will drive pickup trucks into the front of a gun store, load the bed with as much as they can grab in a few minutes and speed off to a safehouse.
Rarely do the Pahokee Blue Devils — who attract the entire 6,500-person town on game days — and the area’s gang life interact. Instead, the football team bands together. Smith, Odoms and Hawthorne have known each other since they were small children. They’ve played football together since age eight. Smith dated Hawthorne’s sister when they were 10 years old. And through it all, the three players have worked toward an eventual common goal — a scholarship to the University of Michigan.
But when Pahokee football and Pahokee gangsters do butt heads, it can rock the community, which has invested so much — physically, emotionally and spiritually — in its Blue Devils.
James — who’s at the local Rec Center helping kids whenever he’s not on the football field drilling them — remembered, with a heavy sigh and teary eyes, Leonard Pitts, an electrifying running back that played in the early 2000s.
“He was one of the most gifted athletes I’ve ever seen,” James said. “But I could drive you ‘round these streets right now and point out 10, 15 guys that should be playing in the NBA or NFL right now and didn’t make smart choices.”
Somewhere along the line, Pitts’s God-given abilities on the field weren’t enough, and he started mixing with the wrong people in Palm Beach County. His grades slipped and he left the football team. He eventually stopped showing up to school altogether. A week before James recalled this story, he briefly caught up with Pitts — as the former running back painted the County Commissioner building with his fellow prisoners.
In 2004, Pitts was arrested on first-degree battery charges, and he has been in jail since. But he might be the lucky one. According to James, someone shoved a shotgun in Pitts’s younger brother’s mouth and blew the back of his head onto the pavement. One of Pitts’s older brothers is dead, too — another victim of the West Palm Beach gang community, one of the most hostile and violent in the United States.
If Pitts had stayed with the Blue Devils, who knows where he’d be today. With Pahokee’s track record — one look at a Youth League photo from 10 years ago reveals eight or nine current Division-I players — it’s easy to imagine a better life for such a gifted athlete.
“That’s how we save them from the gangs — the game of football,” James said.
But sometimes, football isn’t enough.
On Sept. 27, 2008, Brandin Hawthorne was in Ann Arbor for an official visit before committing to Michigan. It was the perfect Saturday for the freshman linebacker to make the trip north. A hint of summer still hung in the fall air on a crisp afternoon, perfect conditions for a football game in the Big House.
He saw the 500th game in Michigan Stadium history, one that will hang in fans’ minds for years to come — a 19-point comeback over Wisconsin in the most exciting game of the season.
Some might point to the energy on the corner of Stadium and Main as the reason Hawthorne chose Michigan. Others might say it was the immaculate facilities or enthusiastic meetings with members of the team and coaching staff. But none of that was on Hawthorne’s mind that day. Hours before his flight, he sat in a hospital waiting room with Pahokee head coach Blaze Thompson and the mother of one of his best friends, Norman “Pooh” Griffith.
That Friday, Pahokee had beaten Jupiter High School 34-10. It was a big night for Pooh — he was named the team’s Most Valuable Player after the game, and according to James, Iowa State had called to give him a full-ride scholarship offer that day. To celebrate, Pooh went to a dance at Glades Central High School, the Blue Devils’ fiercest rival. There was a scuffle when people found out Pooh, one of Pahokee’s best players, was at the dance. Pooh did what he was supposed to, exactly what Pahokee coaches preach to their kids from youth club football to high school. He left at the first whiff of trouble.
As his car was leaving the parking lot, six shots were fired from at least two guns. Pooh died later that night.
There’s an 18-year-old sitting in jail for the shooting. His name is Carl Booth Jr., a kid who came through the Rec Center with Coach James and everyone else. He knew Pooh, was friends with Pooh. He is the son of the director of The Pahokee Church of God, Pooh's church.
He had tried out for the Pahokee High School football team for the 2007 season. Even though the staff doesn’t like to cut players — the more kids they can help, the more that stay off the streets — they had to trim the roster out of necessity.
Booth didn’t make it.
“It kills me dead, man. It kills me dead,” James said. “It hurts for the simple reason that, you can’t save them all. For some, it’s not going to happen. And this is what happens when you don’t do all you can for these kids. It’s a tragedy.”
And there was Hawthorne, exhausted from the game and the swell of emotions, sitting in the hospital’s waiting room and adamantly deciding against flying to Michigan. He had already softly committed to the school. He was comfortable with the program but wasn’t 100-percent set, and felt that being with Pooh’s family was much more important.
But Pooh's mother Jackie and the Pahokee coaching staff convinced him to go.
“When I got (to Michigan), they knew what happened,” Hawthorne said. “They embraced me. They asked me if I needed anything. They asked me how I was feeling. It was great. They took me in like I was already here, a player already here.”
To make Hawthorne feel even more like a family member, the Michigan coaches promised he could wear No. 7, Pooh’s old jersey number.
“I was telling his parents, ‘When I get to college, I’m going to wear No. 7 and dedicate it to Pooh,’ and I kept my word,” Hawthorne said. “It’s a great feeling to wear No. 7, because when I wear it, I feel like he’s looking down on me, like, ‘You gotta do it for me.’ ”
Hawthorne was home. He committed and enrolled early. It was hard to move to Ann Arbor and leave his one-year-old daughter, Brandi, behind. But with a good education and a chance to play at the next level, Hawthorne knew Michigan could give him the opportunity to “raise my daughter and be the father to her that my father was never to me.”
The way the linebacker was treated by Michigan bolstered the bond between a college football powerhouse and a small town in Florida that, even after all it has gotten from football, would never take the sport for granted.
But that relationship had to start somewhere.
The Pahokee-Michigan connection began, in many ways, almost 15 years ago, when a young Martavious Odoms displayed all of the characteristics Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez, who first started recruiting the area while still at West Virginia, looks for in a slot receiver.
As a kid, Odoms was, and still is, small for his age, shifty, strong and fast.
“I used to tell him, ‘You know no one can outrun you in Pahokee,’ ” said his mother, Gloria.
That’s quite a statement when you’re in Muck City, where the kids have a well-documented tradition of chasing and catching rabbits with their bare hands.
To this day, the sophomore wide receiver says people underestimate him because of his 5-foot-9 frame, but when he was little, his grade-school friends Jay, Keevie and Shorty Redhead just made fun of him.
After a while, like any kid, Odoms had enough of the jeers about his height. So one day, he and Gloria devised a plan.
“I used to tell him, ‘Look here. When they’re talking, you shut them up. When they’re talking, this is all you got to do: you hit them first, and I’ll be home,’ ” Gloria said. “I said, ‘You know they can’t catch you. Run. All you gotta do is make it here, and I’ll be in this house.’ ”
The next time someone made fun of him, Odoms jumped up, hit the kid square in the nose and sprinted home, panting on the safe side of the Odoms’ front door. Other than punching his boyhood friends — and even that was at the request of his mother — Odoms was a “good, humble child … like a little man,” according to Gloria.
But even the best can’t always resist temptation. Gloria remembers three straight nights during Odoms’s high school years when the receiver broke curfew. Gloria was afraid that her son might be hanging around the wrong people in The Projects, a neighborhood right around the corner from his home.
So Gloria called Coach James, who came over immediately.
“Rick James, he don’t play,” Gloria said. “I was like, ‘Oh, Lord. Don’t talk to my boy that rough,’ but I left and went out the house. But after that, he didn’t break curfew no more. No more.”
Added Odoms: “Coach J, all the coaches pretty much love us like we’re their own child, so they take care of us a little bit and try to, like, make sure we’re doing the right thing.”
When his senior year rolled around, schools around the country took note of Odoms’s stellar work ethic and behavior — but what they really craved was his 4.5 40-yard time. Unfortunately for him, Odoms’s dream school, Miami, thought that speed could be used on the track.
“We thought they insulted him when they walked into our office with a damn track scholarship for Martavious,” James said. “And the reason I say that is because they had already offered a lot of receivers from Miami-Northwestern (High School) that I know can’t hold Martavious’s jockstrap.”
Michigan saw his football talent, and the tight-knit Pahokee football community respected the school for giving him a chance.
But it’s about more than just football. When Rodriguez came to Pahokee to visit with freshman Vincent Smith’s family, the running back’s cousin, Tyrone, stopped by the house to meet the coach.
His son, Tyrone Jr., tagged along, and when Rodriguez met him, he ruffled Tyrone Jr.’s hair a little, smiled and joked, “Is he the next Vincent Smith? We might as well give him a scholarship already.”
It was a small gesture, but in Pahokee — where the high school principal banned Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin from school grounds after Kiffin made some unkind comments about the town — it means a lot to see a coach who genuinely cares about the kids.
The bond is there — and it seems to be there to stay. When the Odoms family visited last Saturday for the home opener against Western Michigan, friends and Pahokee football fans gave them money so they could bring back Michigan T-shirts and hats.
“I can almost all but guarantee you that Michigan is going to land some more of our kids,” James said. “Martavious has set the tone. Michigan, on the other hand, has given them a justified chance to get out there and play, to turn that program around.”
It’s a warm spring afternoon in the local Rec Center, and students, most of them athletes, are already starting to trickle in. By 8 p.m., the brand-new computer lab will be full to capacity; the library, which currently holds just a few shelves of books, will house kids studying for finals; and a group of Pahokee football players will pack into a small recording studio to cut rap songs to be used as study guides. The gym will be full of kids who would rather play basketball or lift weights in the infamous “House of Pain” with the solid Rec Center support staff than go outdoors.
But for now, the building is dominated by a group of senior citizens, almost all of whom have grandsons playing either college or professional football, enjoying a game of Bingo in the back room. Here on the shore of Lake Okeechobee, a winning card in the ladies’ game seems more out-of-the-ordinary than a full-ride scholarship to play football.
James says hello to all the women. This is his haven — after nearly 15 years, he can’t count the number of kids he has helped escape the streets of Palm Beach County. He realizes that he can’t help them all, but, in spite of everything surrounding him, he remains optimistic about the city’s future.
In fact, Pahokee’s success on the football field in the last 10 years seems to be having a positive effect on the youth community.
“The kids that don’t play football now see the kids that play football and are getting the opportunity to get out of Pahokee,” James said. “It’s like a domino effect. Kids that don’t play football are trying to get their education so they can get up outta here.”
He even says one of the kids he helped tutor at the Rec Center has earned a full-ride scholarship to the University of Florida this year — not for athletics, but for academics.
But as much pride as James takes in the Rec Center’s educational guidance programs, his heart will always be in Pahokee football. Last January, Pahokee native Janoris Jenkins, then a starting freshman cornerback at Florida, invited James to the BCS National Championship game, all expenses paid.
For Jenkins, one of Odoms’s best friends growing up, and every other player that’s ever donned the blue-and-red, it’s not about football. It’s about life, death and suiting up for a town that doesn’t have anything but football to cling to.
But mostly, it’s about earning a future — at Michigan or otherwise.
“Sitting there with Janoris’s dad and mom and first cousin, watching him come out of that tunnel, hearing them introduce him, seeing him play on that level, I got teary-eyed,” James said. “It brings back memories of all the hard work, just trying to make sure these kids stay in line, to the point where they put themselves in position to be on that grand stage. And to see one of the ones that I coached from a baby, to see him in this grand finale, it just — tears of joy. I mean, National Championship. Janoris Jenkins, from the good ole town of Pahokee.”
Origional Article here.…
the Multimedia Age
Photojournalism is changing, propelled by newsroom budget cuts, multimedia possibilities, and the ubiquity of digital images. In Visual Journalism, photojournalists write about emerging digital business strategies and their efforts to expand the reach of their photographs online and on gallery walls. They also share ideas about how to fund projects of personal passion and societal value. Their words tell vital stories about how they do their work; slideshows of their photographs—exclusive to our Web site—and multimedia presentations convey their visual stories. Read and watch as the future of photojournalism unfolds. – Melissa Ludtke, Editor
Visual Journalism
Introduction By Melissa Ludtke, Editor
Envisioning Digital
Failing to Harness the Web’s Visual Promise Today, too many news organizations still don’t take advantage of digital media’s capacity to give readers contextual information and to engage them in finding out more about the story the pictures tell.By Fred Ritchin
Meditating on the Conventions and Meaning of Photography By Jan Gardner
Journey to a New Beginning As the doors of established media slam shut, a photojournalist knocks on new ones to find the promise of more authenticity in his storytelling and greater control over his work.By Ed Kashi
Multimedia Adds New Dimensions to the Art of Storytelling By Ed Kashi
A Different Approach to Storytelling ‘… photographs require context to tell a more complete narrative. The best thing for photojournalists to do is to slow down, become a little more engaged, and spend a little more time on their projects in a much more intimate way.’
44 Days and the Portrayal of History in Tehran Words and Photographs by David Burnett
Steps Learned Along the Way: Redefining Photojournalism’s Power ‘Even in the best of times, even when highly recognized within the field itself, our images are only tools, not an end in themselves.’ By Wendy Watriss
Agent Orange: Pressing the Government to Take Responsibility Words and Photographs by Wendy Watriss
New Pathways
In Pursuing a Personal Project, Global Dimensions Emerge ‘As photojournalists casting about for creative and meaningful direction in the face of … an industry shifting beneath our feet, we may be best served by following the threads of our own experience and then going deeper.’By Kael Alford
Finding Common Themes in Louisiana and Iraq Words and Photographs by Kael Alford
Newspaper Employee to Nonprofit Director: A Photojournalist’s Journey The idea behind Wéyo ‘was to capitalize on our collective years of journalism experience and turn our narrative storytelling abilities toward work with nonprofits.’By Christopher Tyree
‘Lost Boys’ Return to Sudan as Doctors Words by Christopher TyreePhotographs by Stephen Katz and Christopher Tyree
The Impact of Images: First, They Must Be Seen Through photographs transformed into comic images and other creative collaborations, the work of a photojournalist is connecting with new audiences in creative ways.Words and Photographs by Marcus Bleasdale
Photojournalists Reach Viewers in Different Ways Using emerging funding strategies and finding fresh venues to display their work, photographers bring foreign news reporting to new audiences.By Iason Athanasiadis
Shifting Strategies
Partnership of Photojournalist and Writer ‘With our close collaboration, I felt for the first time as a photographer that I was working with a writer who really wanted to hear what I thought about the story.’By Melissa Lyttle
Finding an Extraordinary Moment During an Ordinary Ride Words and Photographs by Melissa Lyttle
Our Emotional Journey—Traveled Together ‘Journalism, at its best, is collaboration. No single reporter can ask every question. No photographer can capture every scene.’ By Lane DeGregory
The Camera—It’s Only the Starting Point to Change ‘So how does a global news organization such as The Associated Press get this technology working for us? In short, how do we train our photojournalists to use it?’By Santiago Lyon
Crossing the Line: From Still to Video—to Both at the Same Time Words and Photographs by Julie Jacobson
Gift of Training + Shift in Newsroom Thinking = Multimedia Storytelling Words and Photographs by Evan Vucci
Being a Photojournalist Doesn’t Equal Job Security After taking a buyout, a longtime newspaper photographer thinks about her future direction in an industry where multimedia now rules and technological know-how is essential.By Nuri Vallbona
Recognizing the Special Value of Still Photos in a Video World By Nuri Vallbona
Visual Literacy
The Still Photograph: Embedding Images in Our Mind With his large-scale images, Edward Burtynsky seeks to ‘bring viewers to that point where they begin to grapple with their own consciousness about being in that space.’Words and Photographs by Edward Burtynsky
A New Focus: Adjusting to Viewers’ Increasing Sophistication About Images In an age when visual literacy is common, photojournalists may need to bring fresh sensibilities to their work.By Jörg M. Colberg
The Fluidity of the Frame and Caption (1 comment)When keywords become invisible captions and cameras increasingly do what darkrooms once did, how photojournalists approach their job changes.By Venkat Srinivasan
Rethinking
What Crisis? (1 comment)‘It’s not about finding new ways to do old things, but time to radically rethink our business models by redefining our products, our partners, and our clients.’ By Stephen Mayes
Too Many Similar Images, Too Much Left Unexplored Excerpts From an Address by Stephen Mayes
Music Lessons Inform Photojournalism’s Future ‘The record business died as the digital music business was born. Photojournalism finds itself at a similar juncture now.’By Ian Ginsberg
Demotix: Inventing a New Marketplace Photographers—amateur and professional—send their images to this Web site and split the fee if they are sold for publication.By Turi Munthe
Remembering
Documentary Photography (1 comment)The impact that photographs can have is illuminated in a look back at iconic images.Excerpts from a presentation by Glenn Ruga
Documentary Photographers Have Their Say in Words and Pictures By Glenn Ruga
Words & Reflections
What Changed Journalism—Forever—Were Engineers ‘Like the other engineer that has succeeded in killing journalism’s economic model—Craigslist’s Craig Newmark—Google’s founders have nothing against journalists, newspapers or our search for truth, justice and the American way.’By Joel Kaplan
A Journalist Joins the Nigerian Government—If Only for A While ‘I wanted my freedom back—the freedom to be able to tell truth to power.’By Sunday Dare
When Journalists Were Targets
Digital Stories Are Being Chosen and Consumed à la Dim Sum In the absence of a front page—or even a home page, will readers confront a crisis of context? Or will convenience and a self-confidence in judgment triumph?By Michele Weldon
It’s Not the Assignment: It’s the Lessons That Come From It By Michele Weldon
Connecting What Happened Then With What Happens Now (1 comment)‘To focus on Don Hollenbeck’s death is to miss the lessons of his life.’By Stuart Watson
Are Newspapers Dying? The View of an Aspiring Journalist ‘In The Republican’s newsroom I experienced something of a disconnect between the old vanguard of journalists who filled the paper’s top posts and younger staffers who were frustrated by the few opportunities they had for using multimedia.’By Sam Butterfield
Moving Across the Border: Teaching Journalism in Hong Kong ‘As a student from Shenzhen, an industrial city just across the border, said: “Once I’ve discovered all the resources out there, I don’t want them taken away from me.”?’By Michael J. Jordan
Curator's Corner
Global Health Reporting: Expertise Matters For three years global health fellows have been a part of each Nieman class, and the great value rendered by their study and subsequent reporting is measurable.By Bob Giles
…
the Multimedia Age
Photojournalism is changing, propelled by newsroom budget cuts, multimedia possibilities, and the ubiquity of digital images. In Visual Journalism, photojournalists write about emerging digital business strategies and their efforts to expand the reach of their photographs online and on gallery walls. They also share ideas about how to fund projects of personal passion and societal value. Their words tell vital stories about how they do their work; slideshows of their photographs—exclusive to our Web site—and multimedia presentations convey their visual stories. Read and watch as the future of photojournalism unfolds. – Melissa Ludtke, Editor
Visual Journalism
Introduction By Melissa Ludtke, Editor
Envisioning Digital
Failing to Harness the Web’s Visual Promise Today, too many news organizations still don’t take advantage of digital media’s capacity to give readers contextual information and to engage them in finding out more about the story the pictures tell.By Fred Ritchin
Meditating on the Conventions and Meaning of Photography By Jan Gardner
Journey to a New Beginning As the doors of established media slam shut, a photojournalist knocks on new ones to find the promise of more authenticity in his storytelling and greater control over his work.By Ed Kashi
Multimedia Adds New Dimensions to the Art of Storytelling By Ed Kashi
A Different Approach to Storytelling ‘… photographs require context to tell a more complete narrative. The best thing for photojournalists to do is to slow down, become a little more engaged, and spend a little more time on their projects in a much more intimate way.’
44 Days and the Portrayal of History in Tehran Words and Photographs by David Burnett
Steps Learned Along the Way: Redefining Photojournalism’s Power ‘Even in the best of times, even when highly recognized within the field itself, our images are only tools, not an end in themselves.’ By Wendy Watriss
Agent Orange: Pressing the Government to Take Responsibility Words and Photographs by Wendy Watriss
New Pathways
In Pursuing a Personal Project, Global Dimensions Emerge ‘As photojournalists casting about for creative and meaningful direction in the face of … an industry shifting beneath our feet, we may be best served by following the threads of our own experience and then going deeper.’By Kael Alford
Finding Common Themes in Louisiana and Iraq Words and Photographs by Kael Alford
Newspaper Employee to Nonprofit Director: A Photojournalist’s Journey The idea behind Wéyo ‘was to capitalize on our collective years of journalism experience and turn our narrative storytelling abilities toward work with nonprofits.’By Christopher Tyree
‘Lost Boys’ Return to Sudan as Doctors Words by Christopher TyreePhotographs by Stephen Katz and Christopher Tyree
The Impact of Images: First, They Must Be Seen Through photographs transformed into comic images and other creative collaborations, the work of a photojournalist is connecting with new audiences in creative ways.Words and Photographs by Marcus Bleasdale
Photojournalists Reach Viewers in Different Ways Using emerging funding strategies and finding fresh venues to display their work, photographers bring foreign news reporting to new audiences.By Iason Athanasiadis
Shifting Strategies
Partnership of Photojournalist and Writer ‘With our close collaboration, I felt for the first time as a photographer that I was working with a writer who really wanted to hear what I thought about the story.’By Melissa Lyttle
Finding an Extraordinary Moment During an Ordinary Ride Words and Photographs by Melissa Lyttle
Our Emotional Journey—Traveled Together ‘Journalism, at its best, is collaboration. No single reporter can ask every question. No photographer can capture every scene.’ By Lane DeGregory
The Camera—It’s Only the Starting Point to Change ‘So how does a global news organization such as The Associated Press get this technology working for us? In short, how do we train our photojournalists to use it?’By Santiago Lyon
Crossing the Line: From Still to Video—to Both at the Same Time Words and Photographs by Julie Jacobson
Gift of Training + Shift in Newsroom Thinking = Multimedia Storytelling Words and Photographs by Evan Vucci
Being a Photojournalist Doesn’t Equal Job Security After taking a buyout, a longtime newspaper photographer thinks about her future direction in an industry where multimedia now rules and technological know-how is essential.By Nuri Vallbona
Recognizing the Special Value of Still Photos in a Video World By Nuri Vallbona
Visual Literacy
The Still Photograph: Embedding Images in Our Mind With his large-scale images, Edward Burtynsky seeks to ‘bring viewers to that point where they begin to grapple with their own consciousness about being in that space.’Words and Photographs by Edward Burtynsky
A New Focus: Adjusting to Viewers’ Increasing Sophistication About Images In an age when visual literacy is common, photojournalists may need to bring fresh sensibilities to their work.By Jörg M. Colberg
The Fluidity of the Frame and Caption (1 comment)When keywords become invisible captions and cameras increasingly do what darkrooms once did, how photojournalists approach their job changes.By Venkat Srinivasan
Rethinking
What Crisis? (1 comment)‘It’s not about finding new ways to do old things, but time to radically rethink our business models by redefining our products, our partners, and our clients.’ By Stephen Mayes
Too Many Similar Images, Too Much Left Unexplored Excerpts From an Address by Stephen Mayes
Music Lessons Inform Photojournalism’s Future ‘The record business died as the digital music business was born. Photojournalism finds itself at a similar juncture now.’By Ian Ginsberg
Demotix: Inventing a New Marketplace Photographers—amateur and professional—send their images to this Web site and split the fee if they are sold for publication.By Turi Munthe
Remembering
Documentary Photography (1 comment)The impact that photographs can have is illuminated in a look back at iconic images.Excerpts from a presentation by Glenn Ruga
Documentary Photographers Have Their Say in Words and Pictures By Glenn Ruga
Words & Reflections
What Changed Journalism—Forever—Were Engineers ‘Like the other engineer that has succeeded in killing journalism’s economic model—Craigslist’s Craig Newmark—Google’s founders have nothing against journalists, newspapers or our search for truth, justice and the American way.’By Joel Kaplan
A Journalist Joins the Nigerian Government—If Only for A While ‘I wanted my freedom back—the freedom to be able to tell truth to power.’By Sunday Dare
When Journalists Were Targets
Digital Stories Are Being Chosen and Consumed à la Dim Sum In the absence of a front page—or even a home page, will readers confront a crisis of context? Or will convenience and a self-confidence in judgment triumph?By Michele Weldon
It’s Not the Assignment: It’s the Lessons That Come From It By Michele Weldon
Connecting What Happened Then With What Happens Now (1 comment)‘To focus on Don Hollenbeck’s death is to miss the lessons of his life.’By Stuart Watson
Are Newspapers Dying? The View of an Aspiring Journalist ‘In The Republican’s newsroom I experienced something of a disconnect between the old vanguard of journalists who filled the paper’s top posts and younger staffers who were frustrated by the few opportunities they had for using multimedia.’By Sam Butterfield
Moving Across the Border: Teaching Journalism in Hong Kong ‘As a student from Shenzhen, an industrial city just across the border, said: “Once I’ve discovered all the resources out there, I don’t want them taken away from me.”?’By Michael J. Jordan
Curator's Corner
Global Health Reporting: Expertise Matters For three years global health fellows have been a part of each Nieman class, and the great value rendered by their study and subsequent reporting is measurable.By Bob Giles
…
the Multimedia Age
Photojournalism is changing, propelled by newsroom budget cuts, multimedia possibilities, and the ubiquity of digital images. In Visual Journalism, photojournalists write about emerging digital business strategies and their efforts to expand the reach of their photographs online and on gallery walls. They also share ideas about how to fund projects of personal passion and societal value. Their words tell vital stories about how they do their work; slideshows of their photographs—exclusive to our Web site—and multimedia presentations convey their visual stories. Read and watch as the future of photojournalism unfolds. – Melissa Ludtke, Editor
Visual Journalism
Introduction By Melissa Ludtke, Editor
Envisioning Digital
Failing to Harness the Web’s Visual Promise Today, too many news organizations still don’t take advantage of digital media’s capacity to give readers contextual information and to engage them in finding out more about the story the pictures tell.By Fred Ritchin
Meditating on the Conventions and Meaning of Photography By Jan Gardner
Journey to a New Beginning As the doors of established media slam shut, a photojournalist knocks on new ones to find the promise of more authenticity in his storytelling and greater control over his work.By Ed Kashi
Multimedia Adds New Dimensions to the Art of Storytelling By Ed Kashi
A Different Approach to Storytelling ‘… photographs require context to tell a more complete narrative. The best thing for photojournalists to do is to slow down, become a little more engaged, and spend a little more time on their projects in a much more intimate way.’
44 Days and the Portrayal of History in Tehran Words and Photographs by David Burnett
Steps Learned Along the Way: Redefining Photojournalism’s Power ‘Even in the best of times, even when highly recognized within the field itself, our images are only tools, not an end in themselves.’ By Wendy Watriss
Agent Orange: Pressing the Government to Take Responsibility Words and Photographs by Wendy Watriss
New Pathways
In Pursuing a Personal Project, Global Dimensions Emerge ‘As photojournalists casting about for creative and meaningful direction in the face of … an industry shifting beneath our feet, we may be best served by following the threads of our own experience and then going deeper.’By Kael Alford
Finding Common Themes in Louisiana and Iraq Words and Photographs by Kael Alford
Newspaper Employee to Nonprofit Director: A Photojournalist’s Journey The idea behind Wéyo ‘was to capitalize on our collective years of journalism experience and turn our narrative storytelling abilities toward work with nonprofits.’By Christopher Tyree
‘Lost Boys’ Return to Sudan as Doctors Words by Christopher TyreePhotographs by Stephen Katz and Christopher Tyree
The Impact of Images: First, They Must Be Seen Through photographs transformed into comic images and other creative collaborations, the work of a photojournalist is connecting with new audiences in creative ways.Words and Photographs by Marcus Bleasdale
Photojournalists Reach Viewers in Different Ways Using emerging funding strategies and finding fresh venues to display their work, photographers bring foreign news reporting to new audiences.By Iason Athanasiadis
Shifting Strategies
Partnership of Photojournalist and Writer ‘With our close collaboration, I felt for the first time as a photographer that I was working with a writer who really wanted to hear what I thought about the story.’By Melissa Lyttle
Finding an Extraordinary Moment During an Ordinary Ride Words and Photographs by Melissa Lyttle
Our Emotional Journey—Traveled Together ‘Journalism, at its best, is collaboration. No single reporter can ask every question. No photographer can capture every scene.’ By Lane DeGregory
The Camera—It’s Only the Starting Point to Change ‘So how does a global news organization such as The Associated Press get this technology working for us? In short, how do we train our photojournalists to use it?’By Santiago Lyon
Crossing the Line: From Still to Video—to Both at the Same Time Words and Photographs by Julie Jacobson
Gift of Training + Shift in Newsroom Thinking = Multimedia Storytelling Words and Photographs by Evan Vucci
Being a Photojournalist Doesn’t Equal Job Security After taking a buyout, a longtime newspaper photographer thinks about her future direction in an industry where multimedia now rules and technological know-how is essential.By Nuri Vallbona
Recognizing the Special Value of Still Photos in a Video World By Nuri Vallbona
Visual Literacy
The Still Photograph: Embedding Images in Our Mind With his large-scale images, Edward Burtynsky seeks to ‘bring viewers to that point where they begin to grapple with their own consciousness about being in that space.’Words and Photographs by Edward Burtynsky
A New Focus: Adjusting to Viewers’ Increasing Sophistication About Images In an age when visual literacy is common, photojournalists may need to bring fresh sensibilities to their work.By Jörg M. Colberg
The Fluidity of the Frame and Caption (1 comment)When keywords become invisible captions and cameras increasingly do what darkrooms once did, how photojournalists approach their job changes.By Venkat Srinivasan
Rethinking
What Crisis? (1 comment)‘It’s not about finding new ways to do old things, but time to radically rethink our business models by redefining our products, our partners, and our clients.’ By Stephen Mayes
Too Many Similar Images, Too Much Left Unexplored Excerpts From an Address by Stephen Mayes
Music Lessons Inform Photojournalism’s Future ‘The record business died as the digital music business was born. Photojournalism finds itself at a similar juncture now.’By Ian Ginsberg
Demotix: Inventing a New Marketplace Photographers—amateur and professional—send their images to this Web site and split the fee if they are sold for publication.By Turi Munthe
Remembering
Documentary Photography (1 comment)The impact that photographs can have is illuminated in a look back at iconic images.Excerpts from a presentation by Glenn Ruga
Documentary Photographers Have Their Say in Words and Pictures By Glenn Ruga
Words & Reflections
What Changed Journalism—Forever—Were Engineers ‘Like the other engineer that has succeeded in killing journalism’s economic model—Craigslist’s Craig Newmark—Google’s founders have nothing against journalists, newspapers or our search for truth, justice and the American way.’By Joel Kaplan
A Journalist Joins the Nigerian Government—If Only for A While ‘I wanted my freedom back—the freedom to be able to tell truth to power.’By Sunday Dare
When Journalists Were Targets
Digital Stories Are Being Chosen and Consumed à la Dim Sum In the absence of a front page—or even a home page, will readers confront a crisis of context? Or will convenience and a self-confidence in judgment triumph?By Michele Weldon
It’s Not the Assignment: It’s the Lessons That Come From It By Michele Weldon
Connecting What Happened Then With What Happens Now (1 comment)‘To focus on Don Hollenbeck’s death is to miss the lessons of his life.’By Stuart Watson
Are Newspapers Dying? The View of an Aspiring Journalist ‘In The Republican’s newsroom I experienced something of a disconnect between the old vanguard of journalists who filled the paper’s top posts and younger staffers who were frustrated by the few opportunities they had for using multimedia.’By Sam Butterfield
Moving Across the Border: Teaching Journalism in Hong Kong ‘As a student from Shenzhen, an industrial city just across the border, said: “Once I’ve discovered all the resources out there, I don’t want them taken away from me.”?’By Michael J. Jordan
Curator's Corner
Global Health Reporting: Expertise Matters For three years global health fellows have been a part of each Nieman class, and the great value rendered by their study and subsequent reporting is measurable.By Bob Giles
…
the Multimedia Age
Photojournalism is changing, propelled by newsroom budget cuts, multimedia possibilities, and the ubiquity of digital images. In Visual Journalism, photojournalists write about emerging digital business strategies and their efforts to expand the reach of their photographs online and on gallery walls. They also share ideas about how to fund projects of personal passion and societal value. Their words tell vital stories about how they do their work; slideshows of their photographs—exclusive to our Web site—and multimedia presentations convey their visual stories. Read and watch as the future of photojournalism unfolds. – Melissa Ludtke, Editor
Visual Journalism
Introduction By Melissa Ludtke, Editor
Envisioning Digital
Failing to Harness the Web’s Visual Promise Today, too many news organizations still don’t take advantage of digital media’s capacity to give readers contextual information and to engage them in finding out more about the story the pictures tell.By Fred Ritchin
Meditating on the Conventions and Meaning of Photography By Jan Gardner
Journey to a New Beginning As the doors of established media slam shut, a photojournalist knocks on new ones to find the promise of more authenticity in his storytelling and greater control over his work.By Ed Kashi
Multimedia Adds New Dimensions to the Art of Storytelling By Ed Kashi
A Different Approach to Storytelling ‘… photographs require context to tell a more complete narrative. The best thing for photojournalists to do is to slow down, become a little more engaged, and spend a little more time on their projects in a much more intimate way.’
44 Days and the Portrayal of History in Tehran Words and Photographs by David Burnett
Steps Learned Along the Way: Redefining Photojournalism’s Power ‘Even in the best of times, even when highly recognized within the field itself, our images are only tools, not an end in themselves.’ By Wendy Watriss
Agent Orange: Pressing the Government to Take Responsibility Words and Photographs by Wendy Watriss
New Pathways
In Pursuing a Personal Project, Global Dimensions Emerge ‘As photojournalists casting about for creative and meaningful direction in the face of … an industry shifting beneath our feet, we may be best served by following the threads of our own experience and then going deeper.’By Kael Alford
Finding Common Themes in Louisiana and Iraq Words and Photographs by Kael Alford
Newspaper Employee to Nonprofit Director: A Photojournalist’s Journey The idea behind Wéyo ‘was to capitalize on our collective years of journalism experience and turn our narrative storytelling abilities toward work with nonprofits.’By Christopher Tyree
‘Lost Boys’ Return to Sudan as Doctors Words by Christopher TyreePhotographs by Stephen Katz and Christopher Tyree
The Impact of Images: First, They Must Be Seen Through photographs transformed into comic images and other creative collaborations, the work of a photojournalist is connecting with new audiences in creative ways.Words and Photographs by Marcus Bleasdale
Photojournalists Reach Viewers in Different Ways Using emerging funding strategies and finding fresh venues to display their work, photographers bring foreign news reporting to new audiences.By Iason Athanasiadis
Shifting Strategies
Partnership of Photojournalist and Writer ‘With our close collaboration, I felt for the first time as a photographer that I was working with a writer who really wanted to hear what I thought about the story.’By Melissa Lyttle
Finding an Extraordinary Moment During an Ordinary Ride Words and Photographs by Melissa Lyttle
Our Emotional Journey—Traveled Together ‘Journalism, at its best, is collaboration. No single reporter can ask every question. No photographer can capture every scene.’ By Lane DeGregory
The Camera—It’s Only the Starting Point to Change ‘So how does a global news organization such as The Associated Press get this technology working for us? In short, how do we train our photojournalists to use it?’By Santiago Lyon
Crossing the Line: From Still to Video—to Both at the Same Time Words and Photographs by Julie Jacobson
Gift of Training + Shift in Newsroom Thinking = Multimedia Storytelling Words and Photographs by Evan Vucci
Being a Photojournalist Doesn’t Equal Job Security After taking a buyout, a longtime newspaper photographer thinks about her future direction in an industry where multimedia now rules and technological know-how is essential.By Nuri Vallbona
Recognizing the Special Value of Still Photos in a Video World By Nuri Vallbona
Visual Literacy
The Still Photograph: Embedding Images in Our Mind With his large-scale images, Edward Burtynsky seeks to ‘bring viewers to that point where they begin to grapple with their own consciousness about being in that space.’Words and Photographs by Edward Burtynsky
A New Focus: Adjusting to Viewers’ Increasing Sophistication About Images In an age when visual literacy is common, photojournalists may need to bring fresh sensibilities to their work.By Jörg M. Colberg
The Fluidity of the Frame and Caption (1 comment)When keywords become invisible captions and cameras increasingly do what darkrooms once did, how photojournalists approach their job changes.By Venkat Srinivasan
Rethinking
What Crisis? (1 comment)‘It’s not about finding new ways to do old things, but time to radically rethink our business models by redefining our products, our partners, and our clients.’ By Stephen Mayes
Too Many Similar Images, Too Much Left Unexplored Excerpts From an Address by Stephen Mayes
Music Lessons Inform Photojournalism’s Future ‘The record business died as the digital music business was born. Photojournalism finds itself at a similar juncture now.’By Ian Ginsberg
Demotix: Inventing a New Marketplace Photographers—amateur and professional—send their images to this Web site and split the fee if they are sold for publication.By Turi Munthe
Remembering
Documentary Photography (1 comment)The impact that photographs can have is illuminated in a look back at iconic images.Excerpts from a presentation by Glenn Ruga
Documentary Photographers Have Their Say in Words and Pictures By Glenn Ruga
Words & Reflections
What Changed Journalism—Forever—Were Engineers ‘Like the other engineer that has succeeded in killing journalism’s economic model—Craigslist’s Craig Newmark—Google’s founders have nothing against journalists, newspapers or our search for truth, justice and the American way.’By Joel Kaplan
A Journalist Joins the Nigerian Government—If Only for A While ‘I wanted my freedom back—the freedom to be able to tell truth to power.’By Sunday Dare
When Journalists Were Targets
Digital Stories Are Being Chosen and Consumed à la Dim Sum In the absence of a front page—or even a home page, will readers confront a crisis of context? Or will convenience and a self-confidence in judgment triumph?By Michele Weldon
It’s Not the Assignment: It’s the Lessons That Come From It By Michele Weldon
Connecting What Happened Then With What Happens Now (1 comment)‘To focus on Don Hollenbeck’s death is to miss the lessons of his life.’By Stuart Watson
Are Newspapers Dying? The View of an Aspiring Journalist ‘In The Republican’s newsroom I experienced something of a disconnect between the old vanguard of journalists who filled the paper’s top posts and younger staffers who were frustrated by the few opportunities they had for using multimedia.’By Sam Butterfield
Moving Across the Border: Teaching Journalism in Hong Kong ‘As a student from Shenzhen, an industrial city just across the border, said: “Once I’ve discovered all the resources out there, I don’t want them taken away from me.”?’By Michael J. Jordan
Curator's Corner
Global Health Reporting: Expertise Matters For three years global health fellows have been a part of each Nieman class, and the great value rendered by their study and subsequent reporting is measurable.By Bob Giles
…