So far from home: excerpt

She enrolled in St. Joseph’s that summer, her first time away from home.

She didn’t grow up too far away – she went to Merion Mercy – but college is about the time, not necessarily the place, and so, for her, Sourin Hall could have just as well been about a million miles away.

“I was the apple of my father’s eye,” she wrote me once, which either showed her complete lack of personal phrasing or was a better characterization than even a thousand poets working a thousand years could develop.

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

My Harrisburg Internship

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Well, I am taking another swing at this whole ‘getting a job’ upon graduating in May.

Today, I am submitting my name for an internship in capital city Harrisburg, Pa., with the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents Association, associated with the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, the group that awarded me, among others, a Keystone Press Award earlier this month Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association.

It is a 12-week program paying $500 a week. Interns spend two- or three-week rotations writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer (350,000 circulation) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (214,000 circulation) Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa., 109,000 circulation)) and The Patriot-News in Harrisburg.

So, I just packaged my resume, an academic transcript and five clips, including my recent-most byline on accountants serving abroad for the Philadelphia Business Journal, a story I wrote for the Inquirer on a portrait of Pope John Paul II in April 2006, and my well-received profile of a Temple alumnus who fought in World War II, and a story I wrote for the Inqy on accidentally acquiring hepatitis in March 2006. I also submitted the initial story I wrote on Temple University seeking a new dean for its Japan campus.

Wish me luck!

Your grandmother playing nintendo

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(Photograph by Charles Fox/Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer)

In last Sunday’s Inquirer, Pulitzer Prize-winner Mike Vitez, who is always good for a great trend or human interest story, had one of his best of recent memory.

It was the story of residents in retirement homes bowling… with Nintendo Wii.

Below check this video for the new media that the Inqy isn’t providing but totally should be. ..How can you not enjoy it?

New York Times gets down, plagiarizes

mp_20030420_2.jpg Slate.com got the latest scoop.A New York Times story from last Saturday on paco, an illicit drug that is apparently causing all sorts of havoc in Argentina, lifted two lines from a story that ran in the Miami Herald, more than a year and a half later from August 2006.In the Herald it ran as follows:

Paco is highly addictive because its effect is so short—a couple of minutes—and so intense that many users resort to smoking 20 to 50 cigarettes a day to try to make its effects linger. 

Paco is even more toxic than crack cocaine because it is made mostly of solvents and chemicals, with just a dab of cocaine, said Jim Hall, executive director of Up Front Drug Information Center, a Miami nonprofit that has been tracking cocaine abuse for more than two decades.”

 In the Times, 18 months later, it ran as follows:

Paco is highly addictive because its high lasts just a few minutes—and is so intense that many users smoke 20 to 50 paco cigarettes a day to try to make its effects linger. Paco is even more toxic than crack cocaine because it is made mostly of solvents and chemicals like kerosene, with just a dab of cocaine, Argentine and Brazilian drug enforcement officials said.” 

Continue reading New York Times gets down, plagiarizes

Christopher Wink reports on Bill Clinton speech

Yesterday, for The Temple News, I went with a staff photographer to the campus of the University of Pennsylvania to see former President Bill Clinton give a speech.

I wrote a quick summary, grabbed a photo and had it on our site before any other media.

Continue reading Christopher Wink reports on Bill Clinton speech

Attendance spotty at event to improve attendance

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How about having an event to increase attendance and… no one shows up? Ouch.

Well, that’s what happened for a consortium between the business school and the athletic marketing at Temple University. For The Temple News, I covered the finals of a competition that asked Temple students to make suggestions of how to increase fan turnout for athletics event. Outside of me, the pep band, the judges and the contestants, there were scarcely more than ten people there at the widely publicized event. Read the full story here or check its start below.

Earlier tonight, a pep band member submitted his name three times to a raffle in the Fox Gittis Room of the Liacouras Center. He won each time.

Attendance was indeed thin at an event intended to help improve just that, attendance at Temple athletics.

“We are very disappointed,” said Jaine Lucas, who coordinated the event, the finals of the Temple’s sports enthusiasm competition. Lucas is director of the university’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute.

At times, less than 30 people, including just a scattering of fans, watched five Temple students present the six top ideas to help further attract fans to the games, matches and meets of NCAA sports at this university.”

Read the full story here or check its start below.

Photo courtesy of Ron Davis of The Temple News.

Kate Flynn: the health of the Philadelphia region

Interview and article prepared for the Philadelphia Business Journal, as filed last week, without edits, to run in this Friday’s edition.

The Health Care Improvement Foundation works with all of the Delaware Valley’s 60 hospitals, each year, in one capacity or another, in the hopes of improving common best practices in and around Philadelphia.flynn-kate-j.jpg New president Kate Flynn only hopes to carry on the nonprofit’s mission.

“I want to continue the work that we’ve started, extending beyond the walls of the hospital, to embrace and engage other parts of the health care community,” she said. “What we have in common is the patient.”

Early January saw Flynn moving to HCIF in Center City, after consulting for the group while with VHA East Coast in Trevose.

“We engage hospitals and health care providers to work towards standard approaches across, if we can, the entire region,” she said. “We convene and act as facilitator.”

The group, which receives funding from Independence Blue Cross, is aligned with the Delaware Valley Health Care Council, and works with the ECRI Institute, among other partners, organizes forums and workshops for the region’s health care leaders.

The group has been a leader in the fight against MRSA, a staph infection, by working with communities and health care facilities to educate the public on its dangers.

“It takes a village to make that happen,” she said.

An ongoing task of theirs is to increase collaboration between the region’s medical facilities to increase patient safety.

“The specialization of medical care has done so much, but the unintended consequence is a ton of communication issues,” she said. “Philadelphia has world class medical institutions and medical research and education for all kinds of medical and allied health. We want to bring Philadelphia’s reputation for patient safety to that same world class level.”

They involve themselves in broader concepts of safety, too.

Currently, the group is working with 20 regional health care providers on an environmentally friendly pilot hospital. They’ve also assisted in coordinating disaster preparedness strategies in Philadelphia and beyond.

Now Flynn is charged with these tasks and more.

“Our goal, as an organization,” she said. “Is to make the Delaware Valley the safest place in the world to receive medical care.”

See other reporting by Christopher Wink here.