The interview was due to run in the Metro but never did. With a year passed and its hook gone, I run it here for all you grammar geeks because there just might be interest in hearing the thoughts of someone who told me: “I also love the semicolon, but that’s just my personal preference.”

Find what I submitted below.

The 125th annual convention of the Modern Language Association [came] to the Pennsylvania Convention Center from Dec. 27 to 30 [2009]. Metro speaks to Rosemary Feal, the executive director of the 30,000-member association for scholars of language and literature.

What can we expect out of an MLA conference?
A lot of professors speaking about literature, psalm, poems, TV shows and all the things that our professors teach in class.  We have sessions on the literary history of Philadelphia, sessions on the future of education. We’ll also have film showings and authors reading from their work. You can also expect eight or 9,000 of us invading all the the wonderful restaurants in Philadelphia.

Why have the MLA conference in Philly?
We ask for bids, but we’re a very big convention, so we need a convention center and the hotels that can support us. Philadelphia is one of those cities that can do it. In the past decade, we’ve been there three times. It’s located right on the northeast corridor, by New York and D.C. Plus, people like to bring their families along, and Philadelphia offers great culture. Everybody finds the city easy to get around, exciting, safe, fascinating, and near to enough of our members that people can come from a lot of nearby cities.

What are you most excited about?
I’m most excited about the convention’s focus on translation. Maybe it doesn’t excite you, but it excites me. Think of all the stuff you read from other languages. You can only do that because of the work from bright people everywhere. We’re bringing in experts from around the world to talk about that impact. That’s exciting to me.

Anyone who has done an academic paper knows MLA works cited style. What do you like most about MLA over competitor Chicago style?
MLA style uses parenthetical references, and I love parenthetical references. If I’m quoting the Declaration of Independence, I don’t have to use footnotes. No footnotes. Parentheses are the way to go.

Two pieces I wrote for NEast Philly made their way into yesterday’s Metro Northeast Philadelphia edition.

First, as depicted above, a piece on Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams’s presentation at the Northwood Civic Association meeting during which he again outlined the four main objectives of his nascent administration.

Second, as depicted below, my coverage of the second meeting of Northeast Philadelphia Now, a fledgling attempt to coalesce various neighborhood groups to fight back against quality of life crimes plauging that part of the city.

In both cases, I was due a byline but something want awry in the production — which also resulted in the wrong NEast branding. But then, I suppose it’s still the beginning of the partnership between the hyperlocal news site and the city’s most circulated daily newspaper.

I certainly hope the paper is giving the niche site the respect it deserves, a fear others have recently had with other papers.

Check yesterday’s issue here, from pages 15-22. The issue runs every other Wednesday.

The cover of a regional edition of the highest circulated daily newspaper in Philadelphia featured a news story of my own yesterday.

Rumors on the possible sale of an alleged drug-infested nuisance property veiled as a recovery home in a Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood that came out of last week’s Frankford Civic Association meeting was enough to warrant front page coverage of Metro. The property has been seen as something of a rallying call on the issue of illegal ‘recovery homes.’

I attended the meeting as a former resident and occasional contributor to NEast Philly, the Northeast hyperlocal, that started last month a content partnership with the Philadelphia edition of the international free daily newspaper franchise.

NEast Philly Editor Shannon McDonald says she entered the agreement, which features repackaged NEast content every other Wednesday, for the branding and larger distribution. Metro, which currently only pays McDonald for a feature Northeast freelance piece that usually leads the package, gets cheap content for a niche geographic readership for whom it can sell more direct advertising.

But it’s part of a growing direction for the scrappy free daily, which is likely more respected in Philadelphia than in its other U.S. markets of Boston and New York City but still takes heat for its short form, image and graphic driven product.

Since announcing the deal on April 29, Metro also has a partnership with noted cityblog Philebrity.com, which offers highlighted nightlife listings for the coming weekend, and has an agreement with election news blog pa2010 and the Philadelphia Business Journal.

It goes beyond Philadelphia.

As eMedia Vitals reported, like the Northeast for Philadelphia, the New York paper rolled out a Queens edition and uses Mashable content on Thursdays. The Canadian arm partnered with FourSquare.

The free daily is leveraging independent publishers who want to grow their reach and hit print readers to get free or low cost content and those communities and niches. It’s an angle that print isn’t dead — it just needs some cost cutting and realignment.

It seems like a brilliant strategy in my estimation.

The remains of the second largest snow storm in recorded Philadelphia history on the 600-block of Gaul Street in the Fishtown neighborhood on Sunday, Dec.

Nothing newspapers love more than a big storm. I jumped into the fray with a few items for Metro on the second largest snowfall in recorded Philadelphia history in today’s paper.

The second worst snowstorm in Philadelphia’s recorded history welcomed John Hutchison to Fishtown over the weekend.

Read the rest of the main story here.

With intrepid photographer Rikard Larma, I trekked through the snowy streets of riverward neighborhood Fishtown and then up to some big box stores in Port Richmond.

A few extras below.

I spoke to 12 people. Eight made it into my submissions to the paper. Below some quotes and information that didn’t.

• Don Thompson, 27, who has lived in Fishtown for only a year, said the lack of plowing frustrates him, but ‘you have to expect it with the city budget constraints.
• Ryan Kennedy, 34, a single dad who bought his home on the 2000-block of Sepviva Street in 2000, said when snow comes, it always melts before the city gets to plow it. When I caught him he was pulling his son Ryan Jr. in a sled to run to the laundromat. He was concerned about having to call out of work because the storm had his car so stuck.
• Adam Cramer, 41, an on and off resident of Fishtown for 25 years and owner of neighborhood art gallery Cycle Structures, was playing with his son Max at Conrad Square. Cramer wasn’t intimdated by the snow at all. If anything, he said, it helped. “The storm made me shop locally for Christmas.”
• I met Tresmin Wyche, 21, of Hunting Park outside a Port Richmond Toys R Us. His shopping had been delayed by the storm, but he was ready to shop for his little brother.

I spoke to the city’s Streets Department head Carlena Tolson, who has been with the department for 15 years and in her position for six. Here are some items that didn’t make it into the story:

• “This is the second largest snow storm to ever the city of Philadelphia, so it requries a complex strategy. The storm lasted longer than 24 hours bringing almost an inch of snow an hour. That has required repeated treatment and re-treatment of the city’s major roadways. All of our resources are fighting this storm, but, even though it’s done, there is more work to do.”
• We have to place all of our resources into a hierarchy. That starts with keeping clear the major roads so emergency vehicles can use them. Everyone needs to be patient because we don’t know how long it will be until we can clear all the roads, given the amount of snow the storm dropped on us. Despite an initial forecast of four inches, we wound up with 23. That’s complex and challenging. We’ve had resources working for 48 hours now [as of Sunday late afternoon]. The amazing thing is that only now, just 12 hours since the snow stopped falling.
• Things are going extremely well. With a snow storm of this magnitde comapred to what was expected could have crippled the city, when, in fact, people are able to travel, able to walk, able to shop. They have to do so carefully, but given the circumstances, the way the east coast has been hit, this is nothing short of amazing.

Lots of people got out and shot video.

Including participants in the annual Running of the Santas in the Northern Liberties neighborhood.

Philadelphia Weekly online editor Joel Mathis:

And this crew from Warnock Street, a small street that runs north to south throughout much of the city.

At left, victim Rachel Fletcher after being struck by a motorist on Thanksgiving Day. At right, her working as a bicycle messenger. Both photos were provided to me by Fletcher.

Another ugly chapter in the ongoing battle for the road between motorists, cyclists, pedestrians and the law was the focus of a story I wrote for Metro yesterday.

A few days after one of their own suffered serious facial injuries in a hit-and-run crash, city bicycle messengers upset with what one courier describes as “rising anti-cycling sentiment” are rallying at LOVE Park this evening. Read the rest here.

Staff writer Brian X. McCrone contributed to my reporting and helped pen the final product. Below I share how I got the story and a lot of other reading in this increasingly heated fight.

Metro’s Web site isn’t built for real interactivity. The international paper is much more interested in its free print product, so I very rarely see comments on the stories I do for them.

Yet, this story has already garnered nine meaty reader responses, including someone claiming to have witnessed that the bicyclist was drunk and many others testifying to seeing more bad motorist behavior than bicyclists. All those cases make me wonder why newspapers aren’t leveraging the contact information they can collect via comments. As a freelancer, I don’t have access to who those commenters are, but editors could.

One commenter left a link to a YouTube video that showed how few drivers entirely stopped at a stop sign near Rittenhouse Square Park in Center City, suggesting that increasing police enforcement of bicyclists obeying such street codes was unfair. See that video below.

For disclosure’s sake, I avidly use my bicycle to commute in Philadelphia, though I also love a good walk and have been known to use an automobile or two in Center City. Still, it’s perhpas important to note that I’ve expressed my frustration with increased bicycle enforcement.

The story, as it ran on Page Two of the Nov. 30, 2009 issue of Metro-Philadelphia. Click to enlarge.

Here’s some interesting reading on this fight in Philadelphia:

• As bicycle ridership grows, Phila. tells scofflaws: Stop!‘ in the Inquirer
• Stu Bykofsky: If bicyclists want rights, they should follow rules‘ in the Daily News
• Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia makes clear the details of the new bicycle legislation
• There’s too much wrong with Council’s proposed bike bills in the CityPaper
• The Philadelphia Parking Authority is creating bicycle parking out of recently decommissioned parking meters
• Thirty-nine bicyclists and pedestrians died in Philadelphia in 2007

In a trend that I hope continues, I was tipped late Saturday night to the storyas posted on Web forum Philadelphia Speaks. After garnering the interest of my editor, I first put a public call out on Twitter for sources. I got a primary contact that way and was sure to offer thanks for it — and then promote the story later.

“We just want to give the perspective of being a cyclist in this city,” said Jorge Brito, who was friendly with the victim and organized yesterday’s rally. “That’s not happening now.”

Naja Wigglesworth was happy to be alive after jumping from her apartment building during an early-morning fire. Photo by Rikard Larma for Metro

I was able to humanize a bit the standard spot news metro fire story yesterday, when I covered a five-alarm blaze in the Burholme section of Northeast Philadelphia for Metro.

It wasn’t the fire and it wasn’t the screaming but God who woke up Naja Wigglesworth early Sunday morning, the 23-year-old says.

She was on the second floor of the Austin Manor Apartment building in the Burlholme neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia when it went up in flames around 4:30 a.m. yesterday.

Read the rest here.

So often, because of time constraints, coverage of these tragic fires are just rehashing of deaths and times and places, without accounting for the people who endure a great deal. I was happy I got to hear from residents about their experiences.

Below, local TV news coverage of the fire and an interview that didn’t make it into the front page story.

The heat was unbelievable, the screaming seemed unreal and Brandon Underwood was in a panic.

That’s when his 2-year-old daughter said, “Daddy, we better get out of here.”

So Underwood, 25, took his wife, his daughter and 4-month-old son and rushed outside of their Jendora Apartment building in Northeast Philadelphia early Sunday morning.

Their building wasn’t on fire, but an adjacent one — just 15-feet away, Underwood said — called Austin Manor and located at 7024 Rising Sun Ave. in the Burlholme neighborhood was.

When they got outside, Underwood said he saw flames shooting out and watched that entire adjacent building collapse. They’ll be staying four blocks away at his mother’s house.

The free daily newspaper’s photography editor Rikard Larma gave me a ring and asked that I interview Naja and Brandon, whom he came across while taking photos of the wreckage.

Below watch 6ABC coverage.

I also had a brief in today’s Metro on an Old City slaying, and last week, I filed a piece on the Devon Theater canceling the rest of its inaugural season.

I was paid by Metro to parade around a rainy Center City Philadelphia last Wednesday wearing a Yankees hat, ahead of their World Series matchup with the Phillies, who won that first battle.

Diane Allman took a second glance at the only piece of Yankees memorabilia for sale at the Moell’s at 16th and Chestnut streets, turning up her nose at the Derek Jeter shirt. [Source]

See how the clip appeared in print here, and check that Thursday New York edition, which ran the experience of a reporter who dressed as a Phillies fan in Manhattan.

It’s one of those experiences that remind you why freelance writing can be a sweet gig. Below some background and extras from the story.

How seriously fans take their teams, particularly in the big and rugged East Coast cities, is a question that is often asked, so the Metro staff wanted to find out for themselves. I got this e-mail forwarded to me from my editor that preceding afternoon:

We’ve got Brayden to go out in Phillies gear tomorrow and record his experience. But to fully conduct the experiment, we need someone to wear Yankees stuff in Philly and see how much more vicious one city is vs. the other. …can you set that up for tomorrow morning?

After a few minutes of thought, I took the gig.

Despite the rain and a slow first 20 minutes, it turned out to be a fine experience. I put the hat, which I borrowed from a friend, on my head at Dilworth Plaza of City Hall, walked through and down South Broad Street and down Walnut Street to Rittenhouse Square, back up 19th Street and east down Market Street back toward City Hall.

In the drizzle and mist from 11 a.m. to just before 1 p.m., I got lots of glances and rolled eyes, but I didn’t have so much as a word said to me the first half hour I walked around City Hall.

My editor asked that I remain “a perfect gentleman,” instigating nothing, so I went on that way. Walking down the Avenue of the Arts, just about 11:30 a.m., a bicyclist whizzed by on the street, gave a small yelp that caused me to turn and there he flipped me the middle finger.

I had a story.

My counterpart in New York was sticking to Manhattan — more people and perceived to be less passionate about the Yankees than in perhaps the Bronx — so I did the same and remained in a compact central portion of Center City, rather than South Philly or the Northeast where I’d expect quite more of a response, though fewer street walkers.

Despite what I expected, it was around Rittenhouse Square — the ritzy Center City nighborhood — where I got the most response. A young woman dressed in Phillies gear,  pair of 30-somethings, two construction workers and others who didn’t even make it into my story.

After any audible or clear response to me, I engaged them, telling them I was a reporter trying to gauge the response from Philadelphians.

I’d explain it was happening in New York, too, and, usually after a laugh, these people would tell me what more vicious things they would have done if…the circumstances were different.

The lesson? Big cities are never as violent against opposing teams as people suggest, particularly in their most cosmopolitan hearts and certainly on a rainy weekday morning.

Still, I feel like I need to display my Philly love after parading around town in their competition’s garb, so I’ll share this actually fantastic Philly Version of Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” has been making the rounds on the local blogosphere.

Written and performed by local cat NeeKo and featuring a hot hook from a Deana Marie, it’s getting a lot of play for its timely Phillies reference. Like 35 seconds in: “Yeah I’m talking REPEAT, heat like Hamels/utterly amazing, Charlie wrote the manual.”

While I don’t think nearly as good, you might also check out more Phillies-centric tracks “Unstoppablee (Guerilladelphia)” by Kuf Knots from the Hustle and “Phillies Go Hard” by Jakk Frost and featuring a hook by Freeway. In an entirely different genre, how about a Phillies polka created the last time the Phillies and Yankees met in the World Series — 1950.

Second page of Philadelphia and New York editions of Metro on Oct. 28, 2009.

As I normally do for a story, last Monday I publicized on Twitter and Facebook and my instant-message status and through e-mail that I needed sources for a story for Metro, the free daily newspaper with editions in Philadelphia, New York City and Boston.

Looking for Yankee fans living in Philly and Phillies fans living in NYC for a story. Who can help me out? [Source]

Just a few hours later, after wading through the responses, I had more than a dozen examples and more trickling in.

Last Wednesday, the day that the Phillies would win the first game of the World Series against the New York Yankees, I had a small package on the rivalry’s fandom, highlighted by small profiles of three fans in each city that cheered for the opposing team.

Like pictured above, see how the print version looked in Philadelphia and in New York. As always, below some background and extras that weren’t fit to print.

ONE PHILLIES FAN IN NEW YORK CITY

I had a longer conversation with Andrew Goldstein, a supervising writer at Spike TV who grew up in Bucks County, outside Philadelphia, but now lives in Manhattan. He turned out to have graduated from the same university as I did and worked at The Temple News.

During that conversation, he shared some gems aplenty that didn’t have a place in my structured clip:

• “Everyone knows my Philly-sports allegiance, so I end every e-mail to an old boss — who is a huge Mets fan – with “go Phils!” just to piss him off.”
• “I posted a Facebook update after the Yanks blew game five: ‘not everyone can close it out in five like the world champs.’ I got like 20 replies. So yeah, I’m just as much of an instigator as Mets/Yanks fans.”
• “I used to call [Philly sports talk radio station WIP] 610 as a kid with an assumed name and age. I was Earl from Ridley just to talk Phils and Eagles. Other kids dated, I sat home and chatted with Rob Charry.
• “There’s a Philly bar called Wogies in NYC with more than a passable cheesesteak. It’s this tiny joint and was just impossible to get into last year during the World Series. [My friends and I] ended up across the street in a bar that became the overflow Wogies-Phils crew bar. We watched every game there. Cut to after the Phils win, we trash this guy’s bar. I say to the owner, ‘dude, so sorry for you bar, you’ve been so nice to us all week.’ He says, “Are you kidding me? You just paid my rent for three months. I’m a Phils fan for life.’ We may opt for apartment veiwage in all honesty due to that reason.

ONE YANKEES FAN IN PHILADELPHIA

I found Eric Walklet, a Bucks County software developer originally from Connecticut, through a friend, whose friend is Walklet’s girlfriend. Some of his stuff that didn’t get in:

• “I’d also love to put a Yankees license plate frame or bumper sticker on my car, but I’m afraid I’ll park it in Center City and come back to see it on cinder blocks.”
• “But I’m not very aggressive about it like some New York fans, so I think I’ve avoided the worst of it. No bar fights or broken noses.”

Some castmember of the reality show "Parking Wars."

I spoke to series producer Andrew Dunn and executive producer Dan Flaherty of A&E’s popular reality show “Parking Wars” for last Tuesday’s issue of Metro-Philadelphia.

The show, which has followed staff of the Philadelphia Parking Authority for two seasons, is back for a third, which will also include scenes from Detroit’s parking enforcement agency. Unfortunately, that piece only ran in print, not online, although the week before I had another story on the PPA that was put on the newspaper’s Web site.

Because of space limitations, my Q&A with those two producers was additionally slashed, leaving just a few questions with Dunn. Below, I share what Flaherty, the show’s co-executive producer, had to say.

Answers from Dan Flaherty, co-executive producer of “Parking Wars,” unless otherwise noted, and questions transcribed for, but not used by Metro

This season also followed members of Detroit’s parking authority. Why the change?

“Our first two seasons were shot exclusively in Philadelphia and in getting a third season, we said ‘Let’s see what we can do.’ And Detroit is Motor City. It’s all about cars and about parking there.”

What has your experience with PPA been?

“We’re on the street. Really the show is on the ground. It’s the day in and day out with the men and women who do the job.”

Andrew Dunn, series producer: “What impresses me with the ticketing and towing and the working in the impound lot are hard jobs. They keep a lot of good people there. Somebody has to do it. They do a remarkably good job training folks and having people be efficient. I wouldn’t want to be a ticket enforcer. I have a great respect for the doing the jobs.”

How did you guys select who was in the show?

“There are a lot of folks who work at the PPA. Before we engaged in full-time shooting, we just met with as many people as we could. We interviewed them, we spoke to them, we talked to them, and from there we thought who would be good, who could articualte their experiences and the normal experiences of someone with a job with the PPA the best.”

Anything you’d like to change with the first two seasons?

“One thing  you don’t ee as often on the show is get people who thank the Parking Authority. Those who enjoy watching the show and enjoy watching and learning, they’re yelling to say ‘hi.’ People come to the impound lot to take photos of these guys you see on the show. There are a lot of fans, and we don’t see that. We don’t get to show that as often as it happens.”

Do the PPA employees on the show get any perks?

“They get the personal satisfaction of being able to communicate that this is my job. This what is boring and what is difficult about my job. They are very proud of the work they do, and in terms of job satisfaction that is in a way  no different than anyone else with a job they like. Those folks are not just clocking in, and I think they like to share that with our viewers.”

It’s easy to get a ticket and think of the person who is writing the ticket is just a creature, but the show does a good job of humanizing them as people with a job and responsibilities.”

Below see a clip from an earlier “Paring Wars” episode.

Metro: Rikard Larma

In today’s Metro-Philadelphia, I covered the always vitriolic response to the Philadelphia Parking Authority, ahead of next week’s debut of the third season of “Parking Wars,” though I’ll have a more directly related piece next week.

Clarence Shippen Jr. keeps watch outside his office at 8th and Locust streets.

Read the rest here.

Below check some quotations that didn’t make it into the piece.

I asked Linda Miller, PPA spokeswoman, about some criticism that the “Parking Wars” show puts a bad image of Philadelphia out nationally and about the general negative perception many have about the PPA.

• “Sometimes we forget that the people who have a problem [with the PPA] are people who broke the law.”
• “If you don’t want a ticket, don’t break the law.”
• “The reason we were first interested in doing the show was to basically let folks see what takes place on the daily basis of having this very difficult job. I think that has done very well.”
• “It has helped with morale. They can relate to someone, with people on the street. It brought a human side to it. It brought national attention to the Parking Authority, and I think that helps a lot.”
• “People have reached out and said, ‘Hey we saw what you do there with the booting, that’s something different, how does that work?”
• Are there some bad things that occur on the show? Yes, but we’ve been pleased.
• “We’re just enforcing the laws that are there. It’s nothing we’ve created.
• “If somebody gets a parking ticket, they didn’t get that parking ticket because they parked legally.”

My PPA package included some data about salaries and parking violations, which I got from the agency after submitting a right to know form. It took a week to get the data.

I found Clarence Shippen, who co-founded an anti-PPA group in jest with some co-workers, on Facebook, a great tool for journalists trying to find sources.

• A good deal of the anger against the PPA is warranted. I don’t think it’s the line staff, like the meter attendants, to blame. It’s the fact, the way in which they have to do their jobs. Really part of the reason people don’t like to come to town is the parking authority. It’s bad for the city. Parking isn’t a pleasant experience.
• Shippen may have started a group about the PPA, but that interest doesn’t translate into any desire to watch “Parking Wars.” “There are better things to watch on TV than people getting tickets. That would stress me out. I watch TV for information and entertainment, and I don’t think I get any out of any show about the parking authority.”

Below watch a promotional video from the first episode of the first season of “Parking Wars.”