Talking about story tops

In my class today, we talked about the top of feature stories -- the anecdotes and the nut.  Here are the nut graphs I talked about.

Boston Phoenix: "Children of the Revolution," Dec. 9, 1999

..."People used to laugh," he says. "Now they know what you're talking about. It's gotten to the point where more people know about us than not."

Screen Shot 2021-03-24 at 5.47.35 PM"Us" is the Student Underground collective, a group of about 15 BU students who last year turned a photocopied handout into a kicky little newspaper devoted to left-wing activism and pop culture. Like the rest of the staff, Feder is smart and passionate. He's also tired. The Underground is put out between classes, jobs, term papers, meetings, parties, and protest rallies. Reporting on issues from Kenmore Square to Kosovo, the staff pull all-nighters in a windowless church basement across the river. They never know how they're going to pay for their next issue.

The new three-story Harpswell Foundation Dormitory for University Women is named for a town in Maine. But it's on an unpaved street in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, populated with fried fish vendors, motorbike taxis, and roaming chickens.Globe layout

The name is a nod to the building's founder and chief supporter, Alan Lightman, the MIT physicist and celebrated author. Lightman, a soft-spoken, deep-thinking Southerner who summers on a quiet island near Harpswell, said he now spends about a third of his time running the dorm for rural women he built in Cambodia. While working on another aid project there in 2003, Lightman learned that a lack of secure housing prevents many village women from going to college. All the schools are in the gritty capital, and few offer dormitories. Lightman saw a clear solution. He raised money, bought a piece of land, hired contractors, and built a dorm.

Now, he is "Dad" to more than 30 women. Until the dorm opened about a year ago, they faced lives as rice farmers, tour guides, or possibly brides in arranged marriages. Now they want to work for the government, earn PhDs, and study overseas.

"As unexpected as it was to find myself on the other side of the planet in the culture I knew nothing about, I felt like I could make a difference," Lightman said. "It wasn't a lost cause. This is something that was not beyond my reach."

 

 

Online instruction, unsung heroes and more

I was quoted twice this week in BU publications.

In a story in the Freep on the challenge of online teaching

Screen Shot 2021-03-16 at 3.12.47 PMAs the one year anniversary of the transition to online teaching approaches, Boston University faculty are reflecting on the mental and emotional impacts of their new teaching styles.

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And, I nominated my boss as an unsung hero of the BU pandemic for a BU Today story.

Kate designed and taught a series of lectures that allowed all students taking COM 201 to meet in person once a week. Every Saturday in the fall semester, she taught three, one-hour in-person classes in a row in the GSU. This semester she does the same thing at Morse Auditorium.

Someone from a group called BU Parents United added this comment

Faculty deserve a medal for all they were asked to handle with little support from BU in terms of at least lessening the well being challenges of students who were both LFA and in person. Many faculty felt the impact of stress and struggles emotionally for themselves and their students. We look back and wonder why simultaneously more support for wellbeing and mental health was not given despite pleas from all areas – parents, students, staff while still maintaining safety for all.

To every BU faculty member – enormous thanks for your sacrifices and resilience. And to each of you who asked how our terriers were feeling and reached out / thank you for remembering they were human beings struggling like you

 

 

 

Happy Lunar New Year at the MFA tonight

About half of our class is from or in Asia today, where the Lunar New Year is a big holiday.

Boston 2005. Photo by Boston at English Wikipedia
Boston 2005. Photo by Boston at English Wikipedia

So -- Happy Lunar New Year. Welcome the Year of the Ox.

The Museum of Fine Arts often has an all-day celebration.  The event can be super crowded and it's super cold in Boston today to stand on line. So, their 7 p.m. virtual celebration might be a blessing. More here.

 

#Lungcancer is no longer a death sentence. But only half of patients are alive after a year.

Twenty years ago, I wrote in the Los Angeles Times:

They are among the most unfortunate and least pitied of cancer victims.
First, they must face the fact that their diagnosis is almost always a death sentence. Then, in most cases, they have to come to terms with the reality that they brought the cancer on themselves by smoking cigarettes.

Each year, about 160,000 people die from the disease in the United States, more than any other cancer, yet, unlike other cancers, there are few groups for lung cancer patients who want to share stories and few advocates pushing for research breakthroughs.

Much has changed since then. New drugs and surgery have contributed to making lung cancer curable. At lease two groups now advocate for lung cancer patients. The push for lung cancer screening that triggered my reporting has led to a test for heavy smokers that can lead to a cure.

Still, fewer than 20 percent of cases are found early and only half of people diagnosed with the disease are alive after a year, according numbers from the National Institutes of Health.

The shocking lung cancer death of health writer Sharon Begley was a reminder of the shifting patterns of lung cancer. More women, more non-smokers. Here's the story she left us withScreenshot 2021-01-26 161102

 

 

More from me, from way back then. Still covering the lung cancer beat.

The Boston Globe: Are lung cancer victims second class citizens? The debate over lung cancer screening. July 11, 2000

Los Angeles Times: Lung cancer gender gap emerges and impacts younger women, including many non-smokers,  March 26, 2001

 

 

 

 

Why do they call it spring semester?

Welcome spring 2021 class.

I know the semester ends in the spring, but it starts in the dead of  deep winter.  It does give us something to look forward to.

Not sure how I'll be using this blog this semester, but know that you can set up your own if you want via BU. https://blogs.bu.edu/

It's a handy place to display your work. Blogging itself has faded but not disappeared, but this will teach you how to use WordPress. Although know that free WordPress uses a block editing system. I'm still not used to it, but I don't blog much anymore.

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