Lauren Rabaino and Sam Sanders field questions after their panel. Photo by Joe Grimm
By Joe Grimm

“Workin’ It,” a panel at the Online News Association’s 2011 conference, put four young journalists front and center to talk about how they landed jobs that make them the envy of their generation of journalists.

Here’s how they responded to two of the questions put to them by Douglas Mitchell, moderator of the Sept. 22 panel.

Mitchell: “What do you think was the key thing to get you the job you have now?”

Juana Summers

Sam Sanders, assistant producer at NPR’s national desk: “I think, as young people, a lot of us will make friends with people our own age who like the things we like, but a lot of times the people we meet are not in a position to help us.

“As young people, we have to not be intimidated by people who are older than us and senior to us.”

Every time he got a job, Sanders said, it was because someone who was senior to him in another company called one of his older professional friends or mentors.

Lauren Rabaino, associate producer, The Seattle Times: “Being willing to take on a ton of side projects … and being able to go without sleep,” launched her career. Rabaino proudly tells people that she zipped through college in 2.5 years and told the ONA audience that her last semester of college included at least 12 more credits than she was supposed to take and lots of side work.

“Not worrying about losing sleep for a few months or a year” helped her succeed, she said.

Andy Boyle

“If a boss knows you can teach yourself something, they’re going to love that.”

Mitchell: “What is your biggest fear now professionally?”

Boyle: “Not having managerial support in doing what you were hired to do, especially in developing new technologies. My big fear is the fear of complacency.”

Rabaino: “I’m afraid of falling behind. It is really easy to fall into the group think and the habits that are traditionally embedded in newsrooms.”

Sanders: “I’m worried about being typecast.” When Sanders blogged and wrote opinion columns for his college paper, he was worried about being seen as an opinion writer. He worried that coming from a newspaper would keep him from working in radio. And when he worked in radio, he worried that he wouldn’t be able to work on the web. Now that he is on the web, his goals are “to learn video and to code seriously.”

Summers: “Burning out. I worry that, after 2012, there is always 2016 and there is always something else. I wonder when the not sleeping will catch up with me.”

Joe Grimm, a consultant and adjunct faculty member of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, recruited for the Detroit Free Press, Knight Ridder and Gannett from 1990 until 2008. He now teaches at the Michigan State University School of Journalism. He has run the JobsPage journalism careers site at www.jobspage.com since 1996. Questions about careers? E-mail Joe for an answer.

Timelapse and audio slideshows produced by Charles Pulliam while reporting in Joplin

By Charles Pulliam

Sirens still sounded constantly when I arrived. Ambulances and other emergency vehicles sped past and over down power lines and tree branches. Numb to the noise, survivors sifting what was left of their homes didn’t even give the piercing sounds a second thought.

Residents in Joplin, Mo., witnessed one of the deadliest tornadoes on record. It took the lives of more than 130 people and destroyed nearly one-third of the city. Buildings were scooped away at their foundations, cars were crumpled like wads of paper and huge oak and elm trees were stripped bare if not uprooted and flung in all directions.

Using my iPhone and Canon 40D along with two audio recorders, I documented disaster. I experimented with mobile media and was active on Twitter and Facebook with updates.
I arrived about 36 hours after the tornado tore through the southwestern Missouri town of about 50,000. I first met Danny and Myra Martinez and watched as they surveyed the remains of their home.

Only a closet was left standing. Living room walls were ripped away, sheared from the foundation. Nails and screws, bent and headless, had anchored the walls, and splintered wood stabbed through three black couches speckled with insulation and other debris. Myra sobbed at the sight.

The pair survived with their three children in a black Lincoln Navigator, a large SUV. They were driving home from a son’s high school graduation party when the twister crossed East 20th Street about 100 yards in front of them. Later, their voices quivered as they spoke about a similar-sized truck that was swept up and hurled out of sight in an instant.

Voices of Joplin’s Survivors from Freedom Forum Diversity on Vimeo.

“It happened so fast,” Myra recalled, shaking her head. “We didn’t know where it went. It just threw it.”

Danny quickly maneuvered the Navigator into a one-story garage next to Dillons grocery off Kansas Avenue. The roof collapsed moments later, pinning the vehicle. The back of the Navigator, exposed to the powerful winds and just beyond reach of the twister’s clutches, survived with dents and scuffs.

The tornado “couldn’t get a good enough grip, but it was trying to suck us out and the car was moving like this,” Danny said, swiveling his hand to show how the Navigator was moving. “I can’t believe we were in it. The buzzing sound is the ugliest sound you can hear.”

Stories like this echoed throughout my time in Joplin.

Darian and Shelli Holtsman and their 14-year-old son survived as their one-story house on Indiana Avenue crumbled around them. Darian and his family laid under a mattress in the hallway. Sections of walls and roof crashed down as the tornado passed, but in a few chaotic minutes neighbors dug them out from under the shielding mattress.

Kelvin Baker and Susi Hurn jumped into Hurn’s bathtub moments before the twister peeled back the roof of her apartment complex.

“I remember looking at Kelvin and thinking I was about to die,” Hurn said. “I looked at him and said, ‘I love you,’ thinking those would be my last words. But it wasn’t our time.”

In another area of town, Baker’s home was also completely destroyed. He said the trauma will stay with him for life.

“I still can close my eyes and hear the wood splitting,” Baker said, clenching his fists. “I jerk. It’s not a memory because with every bang I relive it.”

Hearing such stories helped survivors. In the aftermath, the people of Joplin shared tales of survival because so many had miracles to describe. Folks digging through rubble often approached me as I walked by with my camera gear.

This was extremely rewarding but simultaneously terrifying. I had driven more than 500 miles from Nashville on a whim to see the aftermath of a tornado. I expected traumatic encounters and flowing emotions and was overwhelmed as survivors sought me out and told me very personal stories filled with emotion.

My journalistic instincts remained constant in the disaster zone. I listened. I took notes. I created images and captured audio. I was respectful and ethical. I maintained a journalistic identity, knowing I would contribute to the coverage but not aware survivors would make such personal connections with me.

Each night, despite many stories to share, I could only stare numbly at my computer. Stories I could depict about raw emotion and chaotic destruction were great multimedia, but I couldn’t begin. I had to step away and recharge.

The weight of information gathered in three days of reporting had drained me. I was becoming emotionally connected, jeopardizing my credibility. Perhaps I’ll return to Joplin. I hope my words and images won’t be forgotten.

Ask the Recruiter

Q. I’ve been a reporter at a daily newspaper for seven months and I really like my job. My bosses are great mentors and I’ve been learning a lot. I’m also a recent graduate. Before I graduated, I applied for a position with a start-up that appears to be really innovative and is reporting on various platforms, primarily the Web and radio for now.

They recently called me and offered me a position that I like. It pays a considerable amount more than what I currently make. I don’t do this for the money but I also know my family could use the extra income.

Despite me enjoying my current job we recently took a pay cut, had furlough days and layoffs. I know my boss likes me and my work, but in the end it’s not up to him if I get laid off because of budget cuts. So this offer seems tempting.

It would be a shift from a mainstream reporting job to a start-up that focuses on communities of color, which I love doing. I also like doing the cops and city council reporting I currently do and probably won’t do as much any more at my new position.

I’m worried that I’m leaving my job to soon and would be upsetting my editor who has been nothing but a great mentor to me. If in a few years I want to work for a print daily again do you think it will be hard for me to make the jump back? I realize it’s a risk, but no job in our industry is certain any more.

Thank you for your time.

A. Great questions and you have analyzed the situation well. The immediate supervisors have very little say in the when and who of layoffs. We have seen some very good people leaving traditional newsrooms, in part because that may be all that are left or because a bottom-up cut puts the people with the latest skills at the greatest risk. It is not a great way to evolve and grow.

I like that you appreciate what your mentor has done for you and that you understand issues of loyalty and longevity.

When the industry was stable, I recommended that everyone stay in a job for at least a year — even two — especially if they were learning and growing, as you are.

Part of my rationale is that we should keep the deals we make. However, we are in new times. When employers cut base pay and then compound that with payless furloughs, they break the deals. No question this is a hard decision to make and managers treat it as a last result. But, in the final analysis, if the employer agreed to hire you at a certain rate and then cuts the pay, there has been a unilateral and non-negotiated change in that agreement.

If the employer is also laying people off and you are low in seniority, you would be crazy to not think about a next step. Do as much reporting as you can to find out whether this startup has the funding so you don’t run into the same problems there. People seldom go to startups for the stability.

Before you take that step, make sure there is not a penalty for people who leave within a year or two. Some companies will take legal action to recover moving expenses from employees who leave early, and they ask new hires to sign an agreement acknowledging this.

If you leave the newsroom now, after seven months, you have a defensible position, explained by the pay cuts, furloughs and risk of layoffs. It is impossible to say how the people you talk to, if you try to make a return to newspapers, will look at this. Much will depend on what your mentor says about this, so have a good conversation with him as you try to make this decision and leave on the best terms possible.

It may be you are embarking on a new journalism path, anyway.

Best of luck.

Joe Grimm, a consultant and adjunct faculty member of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, recruited for the Detroit Free Press, Knight Ridder and Gannett from 1990 until 2008. He now teaches at the Michigan State University School of Journalism. He has run the JobsPage journalism careers site at www.jobspage.com since 1996. Questions about careers? E-mail Joe for an answer.

By Joe Grimm

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, in more than a hundred internship interviews, I asked journalism students how the attacks had affected their career plans.

Most said that this story of a lifetime had reaffirmed their commitment to journalism

Others said that the attacks made them question their plans because they felt they would be relegated to the sidelines.

A student at the University of Missouri told me that he and a friend jumped into a car and drove to New York City in pursuit of stories. That student wound up working at The New York Times.

But the answer that struck me came from Erin Uy, a graduate student at the University of Maryland at College Park.

Uy said that, as she watched the towers burn and collapse, she couldn’t help but think of the people inside. Everyone else spoke of how stunning it was to see the towers fall, but Uy was right inside the towers with the victims. Her commitment to journalism was growing.

“We need this in journalism,” I thought. She had empathy.

Uy, who hails from Hawaii, has since worked the mainland from coast to coast – from the Orange County Register to the D.C. area, where she covered education. She is now communications and marketing manager at the National Association of State Directors of Career and Technical Education.

With this month’s killing of the man who masterminded the attacks, celebrations broke out at the White House, Ground Zero and in other places.

Clerics and commentators debated the appropriateness of the reactions to Osama Bin Laden’s death. I wanted to know Uy’s reaction to this event, almost 10 years after the one she had seen so differently from so many others.

But when President Barack Obama made his late-night announcement at the White House, Uy was not in D.C.

She was at a friend’s wedding in Mexico.

“We got a call from one of our friends about what had happened, so we were watching the coverage and we were watching D.C. and New York and … the different reactions and I felt I was missing out a little.” She said. “One of the things I missed about journalism was seeing an event from a different perspective. When you are at an event, you feel a little closer than when someone is telling you a story.”

I asked questions like the ones I had asked 10 years ago.

“My personal reaction … wasn’t quite celebratory. I was more reflective. People said, ‘Hey, we’re so glad it happened before the 10th anniversary.’ I looked at more where we are as a nation 10 years later … and how Sept. 11 impacted us. What have we learned? What has changed about us since then?

“I thought about where I was at that time … and whether I have become a better person in that time and whether I have grown.”

Uy said, “I like to think that I am resilient and that no matter what happens, even if something strikes you down — and let’s use 9/11 as an example – you’ll find the strength to keep going. I still believe in making things better, and that’s what keeps me going.

“I’ll always be a journalist at heart.”

Joe Grimm, a consultant and adjunct faculty member of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, recruited for the Detroit Free Press, Knight Ridder and Gannett from 1990 until 2008. He now teaches at the Michigan State University School of Journalism. He has run the JobsPage journalism careers site at www.jobspage.com since 1996. Questions about careers? E-mail Joe for an answer.

Q. About 16 months ago, I quit being a reporter to become a writer at a university.

I want to go back to reporting, but trip over the fact that my clips are all pretty old. The ones I’ve written more recently are all about the work the school is doing and are more like press releases than stories.

There is a job I want to apply for, but I don’t know if I should since my clips are old. (They also want to see 12 clips and while I have more than enough, I don’t want them to all be dated 2009.) I’ve contacted people about freelancing and am getting that ball rolling but is it inexcusable to send old clips?

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.

Best,

Elana

A. Dear Elana:

Apply, and use those old clips. They are a better reflection of your work as a reporter and will be of more interest to the employer.

You should keep trying to spin some new clips, but I would not stay off the job market until you have enough new clips. That could be a long-term proposition, and we do not know whether the age of your clips is a killer until and unless we try them.

The employer will see that you are currently out of journalism, so save conversation about that for the interview.

Use the cover letter to describe your passion for journalism, what you have learned and why you want to come back. Do not be defensive. Express the qualities that editors want to see in reporters.

It is fairly unusual for an employer to ask for so many clips. Half that number is more the norm. So, dust yourself off, dust your clips off and start applying.

It is bad strategy to eliminate yourself from consideration without even trying.

Joe Grimm, a consultant and adjunct faculty member of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, recruited for the Detroit Free Press, Knight Ridder and Gannett from 1990 until 2008. He now teaches at the Michigan State University School of Journalism. He has run the JobsPage journalism careers site at www.jobspage.com since 1996. Questions about careers? E-mail Joe for an answer.

Photo by © Biliana Rakocevic, iStockphoto

By Joe Grimm

One of the newest ideas to bubble up in the effervescent New York City media market is a site with a tight focus and a wide reach.

OurChinatown, launched this spring, is an Asian American Journalists Association demonstration project.

The strategy for OurChinatown is to distribute news – and to let the community contribute – by smartphone. Phones are a next-up tool for journalism and are the technology of choice for some communities. They are everywhere in sight on the streets of Chinatown.

The vision is a low-cost, mobile news network where a reporting team writes, takes photos and videos, edits them and posts them on the fly with smartphones. It is envisioned that community members will be able to see where reporters are on a digital map, feed them information or post their own news updates and photos.

OurChinatown is intended to be in English and Chinese and to unite a dispersed multilingual community within a big city. The builders of this mobile-to-mobile site say they want to knit the community together with street-level beat reporting, something that many traditional news outlets have had to curtail because of budget cuts.

Paul Cheung, a director of the OurChinatown project, said that the website lets people access news by phone, tablet or computer. The long-range idea is to have news be in English and Chinese. The team has experimented with cross-language aggregation, bringing five top stories a day from Chinese-language publications into English. The same could happen from English to Chinese.

The project is one of three demonstration projects proposed by Dinah Eng, former director of AAJA’s Executive Leadership Program. The McCormick and Ford foundations funded her ideas.

Project leaders are AP Global Interactive Editor Paul Cheung, freelance writer and editor Cindy del Rosario Tapan, and Jeff Yang, founding publisher of aMagazine and aOnline, and now Global VP of Iconoculture.

The top team and staff of contributors have many roots in New York’s Chinatown. Cheung grew up in Chinatown. Yang worked there for several years. Most of the staff is Chinese-American. The range of media experience includes broadcast and cable TV, newspapers, magazines, online, graphics, writing, video, photography and music.

Jeff Yang leads a planning session with other members of the OurChinatown team.

Contributions by citizens are welcome.

The site carries five content channels: news, people, living, eat and sea & do, serving up timely and cultural events.

The website has spots for ads that it is hoped can sustain OurChinaown beyond the startup phase, which extends into August. Ads might also display just on phones. Cheung, however, said that the most powerful sustaining feature might not be the technology or the ads, but the community that OurChinatown was designed to serve.

Cheung said that the advisory board created for the project will likely want to see the OurChinatown continue to keep Chinatown connected.

Disclosure: Joe Grimm is co-director of The Living Textbook, an AAJA demonstration project, with middle-school students in Dearborn, Mich. He will write about that in a couple weeks.

All photos by OurChinatown © All rights reserved by OurChinatown

Joe Grimm, a consultant and adjunct faculty member of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, recruited for the Detroit Free Press, Knight Ridder and Gannett from 1990 until 2008. He now teaches at the Michigan State University School of Journalism. He has run the JobsPage journalism careers site at www.jobspage.com since 1996.

When a Quran-burning Florida pastor traveled to Dearborn, Mich., to denounce Islam at North America’s largest Muslim center, he found a fierce defender of his First Amendment rights.

She is a member of the religion that Terry Jones demonizes, and she has lived in Dearborn since her family moved there from Lebanon in 1986 when she was 4 years old.

She is 2003 Chips Quinn scholar Rana Elmir. She spent that summer as an intern with The Californian in Salinas, where she wrote lots of stories about rodeos and gang violence.

Rana Elmir with religious symbols in a mural at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Detroit branch.

Today, Elmir is communications director for the American Civil Liberties Union branch in Detroit. Under normal circumstances, she would have had nothing to do with Jones and his associate, Wayne Sapp, who came to use her town as a soapbox to inflame people against her religion and what they called the threat of “sharia law.”

“I vehemently disagree with him,” Elmir said, but, “this is blatantly unconstitutional” to prevent him from speaking.

She said, “I stand up for his right to express himself because I value my right to express myself. … There’s nothing more empowering for me than to defend the right of someone to express themselves when I so passionately disagree with them.”

In Florida, Jones had held a mock trial of the Quran, or Koran, a book he says he has never read, and declared it guilty. He and Sapp soaked a copy in kerosene and set it on fire. Muslims around the world protested. About a dozen were killed in rioting at a United Nations compound in Afghanistan.

Jones’ next move was to protest in Dearborn at the Islamic Center of America.

Terry Jones talked about “sharia law,” rights, Islam, Obama and other issues on the steps of Dearborn City Hall on April 29.

A thousand Muslims, Christians and Jews linked arms, prayed and marched to demonstrate their unity and to protest Jones’ planned speech.

One organizer of the interfaith response was Michael Hovey, coordinator of ecumenical and interfaith relations for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit. Hovey said a protest against an imagined threat of sharia law was planned by a Michigan group called the Order of the Dragon. The group backed out after Jones said he would join it and Dragon leaders visited Dearborn and met with local clergy.

Dearborn residents did not, however, plan to stop Jones. Elmir said, “the Muslim community understands the First Amendment and that you counter hate speech with more speech, and not censorship.

“The Muslim community has been saying since this whole thing came up, that he has the right to say this and they are not going to stand in his way, but that they have that right, too.”

Dearborn’s Islamic Center of America is the largest Muslim center in North America.

Elmir said Jones’ words cannot hurt her. “His speech, as bigoted and wrong as it is, doesn’t make me any less of a Muslim.”

The City of Dearborn, however, used a 19th century law to require Jones to post a $45,000 “peace bond.” He was called to court, ordered to pay the bond and put in front of a jury. It ruled that Jones and Sapp planned to breach the peace and they were handcuffed and jailed on a bond of $1.

They posted the $1 and flew back to Florida, having been tied up in court all day on the Christian Good Friday when they had planned to speak.

“He came for his 15 minutes of fame and our city officials gave him hours,” Elmir said.

Jones and Sapp returned on April 29 and spoke on the steps of Dearborn City Hall.

In his speech, Jones said, “Free speech is only valid when it allows us to say what you do not like, what I do not like … free speech is only good when it allows me to say what makes you mad, what angers you, what you do not like, what you do not agree with.”

Elmir savored the irony that she was a prime defender of Jones’ right to speak. “A woman who is a Muslim from Dearborn is his lead defender from the ACLU,” Elmir said. She said she is not sure he understands that irony.

“There’s no question that I’m at the ACLU for a reason,” said Elmir. “It’s for the First Amendment and it’s why I became a journalist.” When she came into journalism, she said, “I don’t think there was room at the time for what I do now: advocacy and social justice. I deal with systemic problems and solutions. I didn’t want to just count the bodies.”

A lifelong storyteller, she holds tightly to the right to do that. “If the First Amendment means anything, it’s when people with unpopular opinions get to express them,” Elmir said.

“I put a human face on the Bill of Rights.”

Joe Grimm, a consultant and adjunct faculty member of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, recruited for the Detroit Free Press, Knight Ridder and Gannett from 1990 until 2008. He now teaches at the Michigan State University School of Journalism. He has run the JobsPage journalism careers site at www.jobspage.com since 1996.

Send your journalism career questions to Joe Grimm at joe.grimm@gmail.com

Q. I’m a TV reporter in a large market.

Recently, I was sent on an assignment—a news feature—at a local school. The story idea came from a newsroom manager whose relative was part of the class I was covering.

When I went on assignment, I decided not to interview the relative. I interviewed five people for my story, a considerable number for a minute-and-a-half report.

After my return to the station, I got a call. My manager was upset I didn’t interview the relative. I was asked to apologize to the relative and schedule an interview with that student. “I didn’t think I’d have to ask you to interview” the relative, my manager said.

The tone on the phone: cold, harsh. I felt belittled.

The part that really threw me over the edge? When my manager told me, “I wouldn’t (care) about this story if (the relative) weren’t involved in it.”

If I were covering a parade or a crime story, I would never interview a person close to my coworkers or myself. Unless that person plays a pivotal role in the story, they will not make it on air.

I realize I’m a young reporter in my newsroom, but I know an ethical red flag when I see one—or so I thought.

Now I wonder if I made the right decision.

Stunned
A. Your manager is out of line.

This is an obvious conflict of interest. Here is what the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics says about this:

Act Independently
Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know.

Journalists should:
—Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.

— Disclose unavoidable conflicts.

— Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.

And these are some passages from the Radio Television Digital News Association says about this type of situation:

INTEGRITY: Professional electronic journalists should present the news with integrity and decency, avoiding real or perceived conflicts of interest, and respect the dignity and intelligence of the audience as well as the subjects of news.

INDEPENDENCE: Professional electronic journalists should defend the independence of all journalists from those seeking influence or control over news content.

Professional electronic journalists should:
• Gather and report news without fear or favor, and vigorously resist undue influence from any outside forces, including advertisers, sources, story subjects, powerful individuals, and special interest groups.

* Determine news content solely through editorial judgment and not as the result of outside influence.

It is unethical to use a news outlet to do a story as a favor for a relative. This is especially so when, as your manager said, there is no good editorial reason to do the story.

It is dishonest with viewers and readers to parade as a news story something that would not even get produced if it did not have the relative in it. If we are doing a story just to get publicity for a relative, we should tell the audience that. I doubt that this was part of the plan.

Keep these codes of ethics close, keep your manager at arm’s length and keep your resume fresh.

Joe Grimm, a consultant and adjunct faculty member of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, recruited for the Detroit Free Press, Knight Ridder and Gannett from 1990 until 2008. He now teaches at the Michigan State University School of Journalism. He has run the JobsPage journalism careers site at www.jobspage.com since 1996.

Photo by © P Wei, iStockphoto

By Joe Grimm

Write a great business thank-you note and be remembered

Snail mail has been on my mind lately.

One reason is that I have heard some complaints recently about the way colleagues at Michigan State University have been addressed, sometimes by people they don’t know, in emails, and the offhanded way those emails are written. One, a professor with a doctorate, was put off by a student who began a simple request for a favor this way, “Hi, Kevin.” Typos followed.

The other reason is that I walked into my reporting class with some boxes of thank-you notes and told the class we were all going to thank one of the sources who had helped us with the stories we had written on our beats.

It turned out to be a lesson for me.

I asked the students whether they were prepared to write a thank-you at all times, with a box of cards and a strip of stamps in a place where they could find them. A few of them were that prepared.

“Why am I having you write thank-yous?”

The answers spilled out: “To be nice.” “Because it is the right thing to do.” “So they will talk to us again.” “To get more clicks on our stories.”

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

We also wrote snail mail notes, rather than sending emails, with the idea that a high-touch approach like handwritten notes has power in a sometimes impersonal high-tech world.

We navigated the tricky waters of thank-you writing: Lousy handwriting, finding the right person to address the envelope to, making sure that we did not turn the envelope upside down before we addressed. The thoughtfulness of having someone else lick your envelope because you’ve been eating chips in class and don’t want the thank-you “to be all chippy.”

It was fun.

But there are some strategies:

THANK-YOU SALUTATION

Do I write, “Dear So and So?” That sounds too intimate. I think this is generational. My 50-plus generation is still used to “Dear” as a standard salutation and we don’t read anything into that. But letter writers must be comfortable with what they write, so we talked about surrogates like “Thank you, So and So” or just diving in with the name and a comma. Commas, we felt, were warmer than colons, but not too presumptuous.

I saw some beautiful lettering and some that showed a lot more care than what we put into emails.

One person had a Whiteout emergency. Who buys Whiteout these days?

THE STRUCTURE

A good thank-you need not be long. Three sentences are enough if they are specific.

Thank you, Ms. Source,

I appreciate the time you took to show me the library’s new swimming pool. I had never before seen a swimming pool in the library. The time you took to show me the pool and explain how it has helped with the low humidity in winter really helped me write a good story.

Sincerely,

Form-letter thank-yous, even if written by hand, are insincere.

Thank you, Aunt Janice for the lovely gift.

THE CLOSER

A simple “sincerely” can always get you out of a thank-you. If you’d like to be a little warmer, you can write, “Thanks again.” I love the numbers of up-and-coming adults who say “thank you so much” and really seem genuine about it. This is a great quality.

THE CARD

I brought in four kinds of cards. Because we are a class from Michigan State University, two were university cards and the other two kinds were pretty basic designs. One was blue and brown with “Thank you” on the outside; one was a business-style cream card with an embossed “Thank you” and no ink at all.

For the kinds of thank-yous we were writing, bunnies and kittens are out. They look childish for business thank-yous.

If you want to get carried away – and I suggest you do – invest a little money in personalized stationery that conveys the brand you are projecting. People will be sure to remember you in this post-snail-mail age.

One student asked, “May I have a second card to thank someone else?”

“Yes, you may.”

“Thank you.”

Joe Grimm is a professor at the Michigan State University School of Journalism and creator of the JobsPage journalism careers site at www.jobspage.com.

Commentary By Joe Grimm

The first of about a hundred minority journalism conventions I attended was the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in 1991. I didn’t know what to expect. But I did know that a Mexican-American journalism senior at Wayne State University was about to graduate and should be there.

I called him to tell him to go.

“Oh, Mr. Grimm, I can’t go to New York. It’s too expensive.”

Ignorantly, I hadn’t thought of that. I told him that if he could register and get there somehow, he could stay in the room the Detroit Free Press would cover for me and we would eat on the Free Press’ tab.

He later called me: “I got a bus ticket.”

That convention became Louis Aguilar’s ticket out of Detroit and the dangerous neighborhood where he had grown up. He got a job in Colorado and planned never to live in Detroit again. But roots hold us.

Aguilar kept coming back to visit his mother in that shabby, dangerous Detroit neighborhood, and on his trips he would go to see this magnificent fresco mural that Mexican artist Diego Rivera had been commissioned to painted on the walls of Detroit Institute of Art in the early 1930s. This vortex of family, home and art sucked Aguilar back in.

He returned in 2004 to work at The Detroit News.

For years, Aguilar looked for a way to express the power of all this. He was intrigued by Rivera’s epic murals of industrial Detroit and riveted by the lesser-known tale of Frida Kahlo. Rivera’s wife, she, like Aguilar, had been bruised by living in Detroit, yet found it to be a creative crucible. Some of the masterpieces that propelled her to world renown were painted during her short stay in Detroit, waiting for Rivera to finish his murals.

Aguilar wrote in The Detroit News that the couple argued in Detroit. Rivera, who had been hired by Edsel Ford to do the work, regarded Henry Ford as an artist and a poet. He admired the manufacturing process and power of Detroit. Kahlo saw a “shabby old village” with Depression-era unemployment, bread lines and racism.

The dichotomy captivated Aguilar, who has seen Kahlo’s work is celebrated around the world. He applied for a Kresge Literary Arts Fellowship to develop the story journalistically.

He premiered his multimedia story April 16 beneath Rivera’s “Detroit Industry.” Aguilar called his show “The Troublemakers.”

When the couple arrived by train in 1932, Aguilar said, news coverage was soppy. “We treated them like rock stars.” By 1933, owing in large part to Rivera’s politics as a communist in a town that had serious doubts about capitalism, “there was rancorous, bitter debate. ‘Why are they even here? Communists! Tear it down.’” Edsel Ford and popular support stopped those who wanted to whitewash the frescoes.

The debate between Rivera and Kahlo was not so easily resolved. “Their fight was like a prototype for the way people in Detroit fight today and the fight in my own head,” Aguilar said. He is still torn by conflicting feelings about his hometown.

Aguilar said he tried to let the story tell itself and to bring in the context of the times. He used material from the Ford factories that Rivera visited and from photographs that the labor organizing Reuther Bothers took in an embattled city. Aguilar used lots of newspaper articles and editorials.

Aguilar narrated the artists’ story, which echoes his own feelings, to an over-capacity crowd enclosed by Rivera’s imposing murals. At the end, the audience stood and applauded.

In time, someone would have told the story of Freda Kahlo in Detroit. But maybe that story is told best by a journalist, a journalist with Mexican roots who feels the way the city can push you away and pull you closer all in the same moment.

The crowd filled Rivera Court for Louis Aguilar’s “The Troublemakers.” Photo by Mandy Moran