The Newspaperman

The non-profit Texas Tribune launched yesterday, and I must say:...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:33:00 -0500

The non-profit Texas Tribune launched yesterday, and I must say: Wow. So that is what a newspaper’s Web site can look like when it’s designed well and not cluttered with advertising. Great story placement, great three-color scheme, great infographics … Texas Trib, by design alone, you have made a reader out of me. Plus, I’m pretty interested to see how this whole non-profit media model pans out.

Yet another thing I love about Texas: gettin’ tased at...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:18:00 -0400

Yet another thing I love about Texas: gettin’ tased at the media police academy.

(Photos by Dave Ryan/The Enterprise)

Alternately …

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:18:00 -0400

Alternately …

Louisiana official denies marriage license to interracial couple

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:59:46 -0400

Louisiana official denies marriage license to interracial couple:

“I don’t do interracial marriages because I don’t want to put children in a situation they didn’t bring on themselves,” Bardwell said. “In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer.”

If he does an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

“I try to treat everyone equally,” he said.

To this day I vividly remember the emotions that washed over me...

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:26:00 -0400

To this day I vividly remember the emotions that washed over me when I first saw Smiley N. Pool’s photograph of a body floating in post-Katrina floodwater. I’ve been a fan of his work ever since.

He is a seven-time regional NPPA Photographer of the Year and has covered the aftermath of 9/11, hurricanes Katrina and Ike, the dragging death of nearby Jasper, TX man James Byrd Jr. and has covered the last three Olympic games.

Blind Willie Johnson - Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the...

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:29:00 -0400

Blind Willie Johnson - Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground

From Austin360:

Johnson’s haunting masterpiece “Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground)” was chosen for an album placed aboard Voyager 1 in 1977 on its journey to the ends of the universe. Foreseeing an extraterrestrial intercept, astronomer Carl Sagan and his staff put together “Sounds of Earth” - including ancient chants, the falling rain, a beating heart, Beethoven, Bach and Blind Willie.

From his Wikipedia page:

Johnson remained poor until the end of his life, preaching and singing in the streets of Beaumont, Texas to anyone who would listen. A city directory shows that in 1944, a Rev W J Johnson, undoubtedly Blind Willie, operated the House of Prayer at 1440 Forrest Street, Beaumont, Texas.^[2] This is the same address listed on Blind Willie’s death certificate.

Ian Fisher: American Soldier Denver Post photographer Craig F....

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:28:36 -0400

Ian Fisher: American Soldier

Denver Post photographer Craig F. Walker follows a soldier from recruiting through his return from a second tour of duty in Iraq.

Punk Rock and Trailer Parks, a semi-autobiographical graphic...

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:23:00 -0400

Punk Rock and Trailer Parks, a semi-autobiographical graphic novel about Akron, Ohio’s part in 1970s punk music. While in high school, the book’s author worked at the Bank, a highly regarded punk club that hosted shows from The Ramones, Joe Strummer and Wendy O. Williams, amongst dozens of other major 70s music influences.

All of the major punk figures depicted in the book have since died. The Bank was demolished in 1996 to make room for a ballpark for minor league baseball team the Akron Aeros.

Be my friend?

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:44:38 -0400

Be my friend?

The Enterprise before and after our massive redesign that...

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:02:17 -0400

The Enterprise before and after our massive redesign that happened earlier this year.

"Did anyone call Jesse Jackson?! Again, did anyone call Jesse Jackson?… I’m sorry Rev. Jackson,..."

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:06:24 -0400

““Did anyone call Jesse Jackson?! Again, did anyone call Jesse Jackson?… I’m sorry Rev. Jackson, nobody here called for you.””

- Overheard in the Newsroom

I have come here today to die, not make speeches.

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:59:00 -0400

I have come here today to die, not make speeches.:

A database of executed Texas inmates and their final words.

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there."

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:37:23 -0400

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”

- Rumi

30 Mosques in 30 Days

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:50:00 -0400

30 Mosques in 30 Days:

Fellow Kent State alum Aman Ali is currently working on 30 Mosques in 30 Days, wherein he and Bassam Tariq visit 30 New York mosques and document their experiences. It’s a very cool project, so check it out because it ends soon - on Sept. 19, the last day of Ramadan.

I had been in Golden Gate Park only two hours and already I had found my gang. Or more importantly,...

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:55:00 -0400

I had been in Golden Gate Park only two hours and already I had found my gang. Or more importantly, I found Tober.

Tall and lanky with bleach-blond hair and a knotty, weathered beard, his baby blue eyes caught the California sun in a way that made me suddenly regret not having my Nikon D200 with me.

“I’m hungover as hell because I just got out of prison yesterday. Pleased to meet you,” Tober said, extending a hand covered in homemade tattoos of words you can’t say on television.

We sat on a patch of sunlit grass, and I started right into it. I explained that I was a journalist, that I was in San Francisco for the William Randolph Hearst Foundation’s annual National Writing Competition, that we had received our topic – Golden Gate Park – the night before, and that, it being Thursday at 11 a.m., I had until Friday at 5 p.m. to finish it. I explained that I had chosen one of the Lower Haight’s most dangerous gangs, the Scum Fucks, as my focus.

And then I waited. I waited for him to laugh at me, to tell me to Scum Fuck off, to break my jaw with a pair of brass knuckles hiding in the pocket of his tattered leather jacket. He smiled.

“Well, what do you want to know?”

For the next eight hours I sat with Tober under a grove of trees as he sold marijuana to 20-somethings, breaking only to answer my questions and take long pulls from a Colt 45 in a brown paper bag.

And answer my questions he did. Nothing went unanswered, from his recent incarceration (for nearly beating to death a man who mistreated Tober’s pit bull) to gang life (“Our retirement plan ain’t so good.”) to family (“We may sell pot, drink booze and fight, but we have kids, too.”).

As the sun began to set—and Tober began to threaten drunken violence on passers-by—I finally trudged out of the park and into a bus stop on Haight Street, sunburned and exhausted, my mind abuzz with quotes and story structure. It had been a long time since I worked on a piece like this.

After leaving reporting positions at the Daily Kent Stater and Akron Beacon Journal in 2006, I switched my major and graduated in December 2008 with a degree in photojournalism.

And now here I was: six months unemployed, in San Francisco with the most talented young journalists—and reputable editors—in the country, handing out my “Beth Rankin: Photojournalist” business cards while competing as a writer. What was a career-identity crisis to me was a point of interest to editors I met, who commented that 10 years ago they might have told me to make up my mind. Not anymore.

I left Kent State with the ability to write news, take pictures, shoot video, create multimedia and post it all to the Web at the end of the day. I left San Francisco with the knowledge that there is a place for me in the post-Apocalyptic landscape of American journalism.

And it is with that knowledge that I have taken my first steps into the realm of the unknown by applying for jobs not as this or that, but as this and that: Beth Rankin, multimedia journalist.

And if that doesn’t work out, well, maybe Tober’s gang is in the market for a 125-lb. enforcer. Multimedia enforcer, anyway.

——

I wrote this piece for Jargon Magazine, the alumni publication of the Kent State University School of Journalism and Mass Communication. To read my original piece, “Meet the Scum Fucks,” click here.

My friend Brian Frank - and a few other photographers - recently...

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:51:00 -0400

My friend Brian Frank - and a few other photographers - recently started the collective Razon, and Brian’s images from the drug war in Mexico are pretty amazing.

Child hit by SUV near Caldwood Elementary

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:02:00 -0400

Child hit by SUV near Caldwood Elementary:

“He just, like, jumped out and you didn’t even see it coming,” said Drummond, who sat in the grass next to the accident scene, shaking and crying into a blood-stained paper towel.

Drummond had just picked up her 9-year-old son from Caldwood when the accident occurred.

She left the vehicle and rushed to help Thomas, picking him up and screaming for neighbors to call 911.

Witnesses and friends at the scene attempted to comfort Drummond, but each time her eyes drifted to her SUV, she dropped to her knees, burying her face in her hands and saying, “I don’t know, I don’t know, please, God, let him be OK,” again and again.
———

This was my first real attempt at both shooting and writing major spot news at the same time.

I photographed Mikey and Amanda’s wedding this weekend in...

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:26:00 -0400

I photographed Mikey and Amanda’s wedding this weekend in Peninsula, Ohio. It was a beautiful, sincere and very fun wedding. Congratulations, you two!

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:48:00 -0400

Dead presidents. Houston, TX

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:26:00 -0400

Dead presidents. Houston, TX