Most my journalism career has been spent as a sportswriter or science/environment writer. Much of that work appears elsewhere on either the Science or Sports pages. However, some of the more newsy items that I've written while assistant sports editor and outdoor columnist for The (Petersburg, Va.) Progress-Index appear here. Some columns appear on the Opinion page, and the sports reports and features appear on the Sports page.

My first real 'news' experiences were from the first class students at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism take: Reporting and Writing I. We worked a beat -- usually a neighborhood in one of the boroughs of New York City, but in my case Englewood, N.J. -- and worked on stories on assigned topics throughout the semester. Some of the stories I filed for the class are also below.

On Saturday, April 3, 2004, a group of volunteers gathered at several sites along the Appomattox River to help clean up the riverfront. I initially wrote a news story about the cleanup for the Sunday, April 4, edition of The Progress-Index, then followed up with a column about the effort the following day.

Appomattox River Cleanup

River cleanup a good first step

Not all of my time spent at The Progress-Index was spent covering games or writing features on athletes. One of the high schools in the paper's coverage area, Colonial Heights, was contemplating reclassification so that it could compete with schools with lower enrollments. We published a series of stories on the proposal. This March 14, 2004, story was a preview of an upcoming public meeting -- one in which the school board made the suprise announcement that the reclassification proposal was being dropped. (I was in San Francisco when the meeting was held, so don't have an article to refer to.)

I'd like to think our coverage helped the board reach its decision. Some years after I left, I learned that the paper's reporting (including mine) on the issue won a Virginia Press Association second-place award in sports news reporting.

CH Board seeks more input on move

In 1996, churches, synagogues and mosques across the country were targeted by arsonists. Shortly after an Baptist church was attacked in New Jersey, the Rev. Alfred E. Steele, an assemblyman from Paterson and the only clergyman in the state legislature, announced a bill that would stiffen penalties for arson attacks on houses of worship:

Snuffing out wildfires of hate

The Roman Catholic Church may be the dominant religious institution in Latin America, but evangelical Protestant denominations are making progress in recruiting converts.  I visited a service held for a Pentecostal congregation made up primarily of Latin American immigrants in Englewood:

Rockin' religion

Immigrants used to feel like valued members of the American melting pot, but no more.  I talked to a some long-time residents of Englewood about how unwelcome they now feel in their adopted country:

The new enemy

In a related story, I talked to people who work with recent immigrants about why the newest Americans get blamed for causing so many of society's problems:

Guilt by recent arrival