Christopher Wink

UWire 100: I'm on it

UWIRE REALIZED PEOPLE LOVE lists.

The 14-year-old college journalism association spent the past few months compiling their inaugural list of what they’re calling the UWire 100 – the 100 top, most promising college journalists in the country. It’s a first go of it, so it is surely not comprehensive, but an honor nonetheless. See the list here.

It also seems strange to be called a top college journalist even though I graduated on Thursday.

Here’s my page.

I am also happy to report that my good friend and fellow Temple alumnus Sean Blanda made the list. See his page here.

Check out coverage of the list by CBS News here, by CNN here, by Editor and Publisher here, by the Chronicle of Higher Education here, and by Gawker here.

Also, one of the other young journalists with whom I will be working this summer in Harrisburg made the list, David Spett of Northeastern Northwestern’s celebrated Medill School of Journalism.

Six days from now

By Christopher Wink | May 08, 2008

One week from yesterday three strangers riding beside me on the 3 bus will be dead.

But I can’t know it. It hasn’t happened, and I’ve never spoken to them before and won’t in the future. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even like know they were there, except for the boy, and that was only because his iPod was playing so loud I heard the bass of his trashy hip hop.

In just six days he will die on the same day as two others he doesn’t know.

I just want to get home without listening to what’s left of the music in some teenage boy’s ears.

I work at my uncle’s deli near Wissinoming Park. Normally my boyfriend picks me up after his afternoon class at Holy Family and has dinner with my dad and me in Port Richmond, but he has some group project. So I’m on the 3 with Jimmy Quinn.

Continue reading Six days from now

Six days from now: excerpt

ONE WEEK FROM YESTERDAY three strangers riding beside me on the 3 bus will be dead.

But I can’t know it. It hasn’t happened, and I’ve never spoken to them before and won’t in the future. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even like know they were there, except for the boy, and that was only because his IPod was playing so loud I heard the bass of his trashy hip hop.

In just six days he will die on the same day as two others he doesn’t know.

I just want to get home without listening to what’s left of the music in some teenage boy’s ears.

This is a short excerpt. To read the rest of this piece and other writing, go here.

Today I graduated from Temple University

TODAY I GRADUATED from Temple University.

Freakin’ scary.

See video of our university-wide graduation here, including my own commencement address, which I was honored to give (it begins a little further than three-quarters into the first Web cast video). Bill Cosby, a member of our Board of Trustees and one of our more famous alumni, addressed students – including a mention of my own speech – beginning at the second video.

See some photos taken by my sister here. Others to follow.

Home tomorrow: Lakota picture slideshow

I HAVE BEEN IN South Dakota since last Monday, though this blog has been running on forward posts since.

I first met the group I’m visiting now back in 2006. With some other Temple University students, I did some community work in White River – a town of 600, nearly half of whom are American Indian – just north of the Lakota Rosebud reservation. See some photos of that trip below.

JoAnne A. Epps: new dean of Temple University Beasley School of Law extended interview

As filed – without edits – for last Friday’s edition of the Philadelphia Business Journal. This is the extended interview.

Name: JoAnne A. Epps
Title: Dean, effective July 1
Company: Temple University Beasley School of Law
Education: Trinity College, bachelor’s degree, 1973; Yale University School of Law, 1976
Career History: associate dean of academic affairs, Temple Law (1989-present); professor, Temple Law (1985-2000); assistant U.S. attorney, the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (1980-85); deputy city attorney, City of Los Angeles (1976-80)

What do you see being the biggest pending change in legal education in the coming years?

I think one of the big changes in legal education is going to be to ensure legal education fully prepares our students to be practicing lawyers. We’ve had the same educational model for nearly a century. All legal educators will be asking themselves how we can improve on that model.”

Do you think law schools need to add more classes to prepare students for the business aspect of practicing law? Or does that take away from legal education?

I’m not entirely sure that law schools must include a course on the business of practicing law, althoiugh I do think it is important that students do acquire that education. I am not against it, but I don’t think that it’s urgent or mandatory. I am of the view that what’s needed is more introduction to practicing law, not introduction to the business of practicing law, including the handling of moral and ethical dilemmas, understanding how to take our place as leaders in the community, understanding collaborative problem solving. For all of that law schools are ideally suited. Part of my hesitation in thinking of the business of practiing law is that we can intellectualize that topic and we can seek to help our students, but the practicing part will be a better teacher than we can.

What effect does the high cost of law school education, specifically the prohibitive loans students are saddled with, have on students making choices about which school to attend and what career path to pursue afterwards?

Continue reading JoAnne A. Epps: new dean of Temple University Beasley School of Law extended interview

Linda Rosanio: raising money for Susan G. Komen with Mama Nancy Catelli meatballs

As filed – without edits – for last Friday’s edition of the Philadelphia Business Journal.

IF PHILANTHROPY ALWAYS HAD this much to do with meatballs, everyone would get involved.

Looking for a new way to raise money for Susan G. Komen Philadelphia Race for the Cure, Linda Rosanio enlisted her mother “Mama” Nancy Catelli to sell her homemade meatball sandwiches in the cafeteria of the Star Group, a marketing and communications company in Center City.

“I don’t think she realized how many sandwiches she would have to make,” Rosanio, who is CEO of the company, said of her 82-year-old retired mother.

Continue reading Linda Rosanio: raising money for Susan G. Komen with Mama Nancy Catelli meatballs

Last major Philadelphia Business Journal clip… for now

YESTERDAY THE LAST OF my clips for the Philadelphia Business Journal during my internship, which ended May 5, appeared. Read it below as I filed it.

Delaware County Community College has launched $60 million in renovation and new construction to better outfit its Marple Township campus for science, technology engineering and math programs by 2009.

The community college broke ground on a 105,000-square-foot science building and a 32,000-square-foot technical building on April 18. Its mission is to reconnect students with a regional business community increasingly in need of skilled labor.

“We complain about outsourcing, but what you need to do is keep these companies from going overseas. They don’t have a skilled workforce,” said Dr. Jerry Parker, president of the community college. “We need to increase young people coming up through high school going through science and technical fields.”

Read the rest here.

I am currently traveling. This was forward-posted on May 6.

Susan Barnett: bringing local news to CBS 3

As filed – without edits – last week for today’s edition of the Philadelphia Business Journal.

YOUR LOCAL TV NEWS usually isn’t all that local.

Anchors travel from market to market, like Susan Barnett did, geography be damned.

She had worked in Miami, Pittsburgh, West Virginia and Champaign, Ill. But the new co-anchor of CBS 3’s 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts has finally landed the big spot in her native region.

“You have to travel all over the country and earn your stripes, especially when you come from a huge city like Philadelphia, it is hard to get here at all,” the Bucks County native said. “Making it to this level is really the ultimate for me.”

Barnett grew up in Levittown, graduated the University of Delaware and now lives with her husband in Delaware County, but does her job better here because she’s done it elsewhere, she said.

“The Philadelphia news style was ingrained in me,” she said. “But, in my travel, I got to see how news is reported around the country.”

Continue reading Susan Barnett: bringing local news to CBS 3

Lakota reservation reflections

I WAS FIRST IN SOUTH DAKOTA in 2005. I returned in May 2006 for a service immersion trip with a small group of Temple University students. It was then that I met a gaggle of friends from the Lakota Rosebud reservation near White River, S.D. It has led to lots of adventures, including two years and nearly 600 miles of hitchhiking, but that’s for another day.

Since Monday I’ve been traveling back there again and, if all went correctly, I should be in White River now. Check Google Maps here.

Read my reflections after first interacting in an American Indian community two years ago.

This region of Dakota’s limitless expansion is only interrupted by flurries of elevation change. Once on ground, the pavement of interstate 90 appeared to have tamed the land into a consumable table of gentle slopes and caressing ridges. All of which leads me to offer muddled explanations of the region’s geographical features: endless plains with small, yet punctuated elevation changes interjected regularly. Read more here.