Evens Smiles

Evens smiles as he walks onto a work site. He attacks jobs with enthusiasm and grasps new skills with ease. He stops to joke, laugh and talk with American volunteers from Hope for the Hungry who are in his native Haiti to put roofs on houses in the aftermath of the Jan. 12 earthquake.

He asks questions. He practices his English.

He is flirty. He is playful. He is intense. And he is smart.

But 13-year-old Evens and his twin brother Evenson had never been to school before they moved to the village of Guibert, Haiti.

Things are different now.

The two are enrolled in the Hope for the Hungry school. With the help of local pastor Jean Alix Paul, a tutor has been hired to get them caught up in classwork with kids their age.

Critics say not enough has been done in Haiti with aid money that has poured into the country.

Desperate residents claim they have not received money or enough help from the Haitian government or the non-government organizations responding to the crisis in the country.

It's true there's still many who need help and still much more to do.

Yet groups like Hope for the Hungry, Samaritan's Purse and Love A Child make a difference in the lives of individuals like Evens - and they do it everyday.

Homes are built. Orphans are loved. Children attend school, and the sick and injured receive medical care.

All because people care and choose to follow the commandment to love their neighbor.

Quotes on writing

I've been collecting quotes on writing by various authors and thought I'd share some:

Ernest Hemingway: "My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it."

Rudyard Kipling: "Words are the most powerful drugs used by mankind."

C.S. Lewis: "Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."

Eudora Welty: "Write about what you don't know about what you know."

Maya Angelou: "There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth."

Truman Capote: "To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make."

Favorite movies about reporters

There are a lot of movies in which a reporter plays a role in the plot, such as "The Pelican Brief" or "Die Hard 2" where Bruce Willis borrows the TV station's helicopter.

But there are few that are really about the nitty, gritty real-life of newspaper reporters - about the job, ethical dilemmas and newsroom tensions.

My favorite films about reporters include "Citizen Kane," which has to be on everyone's list. It's one of the best movies ever made, period. 

"All the President's Men" follows how what starts out as a small story buried on inside pages unveils a scandal that brings down a presidency.

"State of Play" is a similar film that not only has a reporter putting together pieces that don't initially seem to fit, but also deals with the more contemporary issues of the Internet vs. reporting for print.

"The Paper" is just a perfect day-in-the-life depiction of a newsroom.

Another choice of mine is not as obvious, but "Roman Holiday" is about a reporter who meets a princess. His initial intent is to use her for the big story he needs, but, of course, in the end he falls in love and doesn't expose her. It might not seem the typical newspaperman film, but it stars Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, so what's not to like.

Double check sources

When did journalists throw every basic rule out the window? Check sources. Verify information. Ask the subjects of the story.

Shirley Sherrod got railroaded by the media that should be protecting citizens against untruths, half truths and misinformation. 

In this case, the U.S. Department of Agriculture official was forced to resign from her job. By her account, she had no support from co-workers. She then faced a national outrage against her based on false reports.

According to CNN, conservative website publisher Andrew Breitbart posted an edited video from a speech in March before a local chapter of the NAACP that made it appear Sherrod was racist, saying she did not give a white farmer "the full force of what I could do" to help him save his family farm.

The story she was telling was 25 years old. That should have been enough reason to discredit it. Don't we all have the opportunity to grow, learn and mature?

But, now we know the truth. She was using the story as an illustration of how she's changed her attitude and her views. She did, in fact, help the man save his family farm and if one national news outlet reporter had tracked him down, he would have said that. He has, in fact, said that since she resigned in disgrace.

But that's after the fact. Now, everyone from the NAACP to the White House to the ag department is apologizing. That's good, they should not have condemned her prior to looking into the issue.

But, the news media should have checked the story out more thoroughly, particularly because it originated from a blog that has an agenda. (Haven't heard any of the national media outlets apologize.)

I hope she doesn't go back to work for the ag department, writes a book and makes a fortune. 

The rest of us should learn a lesson that was taught in Reporting 101. Check your sources. Then double check. Especially if your source has an agenda.

Always a student

In taking a www.newsu.org online course, I've realized how little I know about writing.

Some of the lessons are obvious: Place subject and verbs at the beginning of a sentence. Use strong, or active, verbs.

But some lessons I forgot or just don't apply. There's a difference, for example, in using strong quotes and in using dialogue. I'm big on using strong quotes - tell reporters all the time to move a good quote to the top of the story.

But implying dialogue between the story subjects makes a huge difference. The example instructor Roy Peter Clark gives is from an article about a plane and helicopter colliding over a school. "It looked like two planes were fighting, Mom," Mark Kessler, 6 of Wynnewood, told his mother, Gail, after she raced to the school.

He's not just giving a direct quote to the reporter. The reporter reflects the conversation Mark is having with his mother. By using dialogue instead of just a direct quote, the reporter puts the reader at the scene.

That's just one of many lessons I've gained so far from the course, but I plan to go back and revisit it several times.

Learning from Hemingway

I'm reading "A Moveable Feast" by Ernest Hemingway, who is able to give such detail with so few words. He says Ezra Pound taught him not to use adjectives.
The vignettes of his early life in 1920s Paris include conversations with those who thought his writing too lean, too stark. He didn't apologize.
As many writers know, it's harder to be brief than to write too long. There's a scene in the film "A River Runs Through It," where Norman gets English lessons from his minister father. Each time he turns his essay in, the father marks through several words, hands it back to him and says to shorten it. After several revisions, the writing is down to less than half a page. Then Norman goes fishing.
The easiest way to make writing more concise is to omit needless words. But, what next?
In today's instant messaging world where sound bites become the news and people don't always take time to read the whole article, it's important to get the message across quickly. The trick is learning to do that. Reading Hemingway seems like a good start.