PHXations--Thursday, April 22, 2010
Now US Airways says it has broken off those talks with United about merging. A couple of weeks ago the WSJ and NYT scooped the Republic on the talks, which made front-page news across the country.
No word still on whether Brewer will sign the immigration bill. Meantime, former Mesa police chief Gascon is continuing his opposition to the bill. Today in the Republic, various business leaders whack it:
Tourism executives say the bill doesn’t help their cause in luring business and leisure travelers, and their dollars, to the state.
“I don’t see anything good for tourism in this,” said Bruce Lange, managing director of the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa and former chairman of the Valley Hotel & Resort Association.
“It’s just one of those issues that makes people uncomfortable. When people get uncomfortable, it’s a lot easier to say, ‘I don’t want to go there,’ ” he added.
Diane Enos, president of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, which last week opened the 400-room Talking Stick Resort and casino east of Scottsdale, said the bill is not good for Arizona.
“It does not put our best face forward to visitors, particularly to international travelers,” she said in a statement.
Well duh. The story also notes this:
Several key organizations, including the Arizona Office of Tourism and the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, have so far remained silent, at least publicly, on the political hot potato.
7:06 AM
One of the more dispiriting things about the immigration bill...
…comes from this Laurie Roberts blog post yesterday:
A new Rasmussen Poll reports that 70 percent of likely voters in Arizona approve of the illegal immigration bill now on Gov. Jan Brewer’s desk.
Contrary to the national uproar, just 23 percent of likely Arizona voters oppose Senate Bill 1070, with six percent unsure. The poll of 500 people was conducted last week and has a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.
7:17 AM
Confidential to Young Martin Cizmar™
… Alice Cooper is not a “shock rocker”.
He, uh, stopped doing that thirty years ago. Now he’s a vague cartoon no one outside of Arizona has thought about in thirty years.
Many readers, however, may find Young Martin’s wise-beyond-his-years careful and authoritative ranking of celebrity-themed restaurants useful.
Cooperstown, you might not know, is Cooper’s jarringly conceived sports bar cum goth restaurant. It’s on Jackson just behind the basketball arena.
The waiters wear funny eye makeup but the rest of the place is all sportsy.
It. makes. no. sense.
They have a menu item there called a “‘Caesar’s’ Salad.” We couldn’t figure out why the word “Caesar’s” was in quotes.
Once when we were there someone ordered some sort of “super wiener” and the poor staff had to run around while sirens blared to deliver it.
How goth. How … “shocking!”
Anyway, Young Martin Cizmar, Discriminating Celebrity Restaurant Aficionado™, says that Cooper’s place isn’t as good as Carlos Santana’s Maria Maria, but that he would “concede it’s better than, say, a Planet Hollywood.”
8:42 AM
Cronkite student wins an RFK journalism award
It was in the college category. The awards, given by the the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, are fairly respected.
The story, by David Kempa, was called “Crossing Borders”, and was about a guy who helps Mexican farmers.
The piece was presented online in an innovative way; as you scroll through it, photos, video and maps appear in a field above.
Kempa graduated last year and now works for Reuters in NYC.
Full press release from the school below.
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY News
Cronkite Student Wins International RFK Award
PHOENIX (April 22, 2010) – A Carnegie-Knight News21 reporter from Arizona State University won a prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights announced today.
David Kempa’s story “Crossing Lines,” about one man’s mission to help impoverished Mexican farmers, won the RFK Award in the college print category. It is the second consecutive year a student at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication won the award.
Kempa, who earned his master’s degree from Cronkite in December, was part of a team of Cronkite students who participated last summer in News21, a national journalism education initiative funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation. As part of the program, students from 12 universities around the country take part in topic seminars and summer-long reporting projects. The program has been headquartered at the Cronkite School since 2008.
Kempa, 26, of Pulaski, Wis., traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border and deep into Mexico to tell the story of Jesus Hernandez Arias, a Mexican native who almost died while trying to cross the desert. Hernandez, convinced that no one should have to take such chances to earn a decent living, decided to devote himself to helping farmers in a small Mexican town develop markets for their produce.
The story is presented in an innovative way on the News21 website with photos, maps and video interspersed. Text versions of the story appeared in a number of newspapers as well, including the Taiwan News and the Sacramento Bee.
The RFK Journalism Awards program honors outstanding reporting on issues that reflect Robert F. Kennedy’s concerns, including human rights, social justice and the power of individual action in the United States and around the world. The awards were established after the U.S senator’s assassination by journalists who covered his history-making presidential campaign in 1968.
This year’s winners in the professional categories included The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and ABC News’ 20/20 program.
The awards will be presented by RFK’s widow, Ethel Kennedy, and Committee Chair Margaret Engel at a ceremony May 26 at The George Washington University in Washington. Winners receive a bust of Robert Kennedy created by sculptor Robert Berks.
Last year, Cronkite students also won the college RFK award for a project on families divided by the U.S.-Mexico border.
In honoring Kempa’s work, judges said that he addressed the complicated issue of immigration “in a fresh way that contributes to efforts to solve the problem. The reporter found engaging characters and compelling situations. He connected their stories seamlessly, capturing readers’ attention on a vital and heart-rending social issue.”
Kempa said Ethel Kennedy called him personally to tell him he had won the award. “She was very earnest and friendly,” he said. “I felt like I was speaking with a family member, but the thought kept bouncing around in my head: ‘I’m talking to an American icon!’”
Kempa, who now works in New York City writing the global markets and equities newsletter for Thomson Reuters, said he hopes to have more chances to write in-depth about topics like immigration. “I was able to talk to families of Mayan descendents who were telling me that a large proportion of their town … had risked their lives to earn a living,” he said. “Winning this award … makes me feel like I was writing about the right thing.”
Kempa worked under the direction of Rick Rodriguez, the Cronkite School’s Carnegie Professor of Journalism, and Jason Manning, ASU’s director of Student Media, who served as managing editor of the ASU project.
Manning described Kempa as a talented reporter and writer “whose work ethic and dedication to good journalism shine through in this story, which challenges the easy assumptions that are so often made about immigration.”
“The students participating in this project are being given a rare opportunity – the time and means to do thoughtful, in-depth and challenging journalism,” Manning said. “We knew from the beginning that this story would be important, compelling and difficult to do. The News21 project provided the necessary support and resources, and David provided outstanding effort.”
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12:17 PM
An editor in Flagstaff is missing
Timothy Lawrence Hendricks, also known as Larry Hendricks, was last seen leaving his home Monday morning in east Flagstaff and headed for work. Police say he never arrived, and he hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
Police spokesman Lt. Ken Koch (coke) says there’s no indication of foul play.
Hendricks is the assistant city editor at the Arizona Daily Sun in Flagstaff and covers crime and courts.
7:01 PM
Gratehouse: Speaking of Barnett Lotstein ...
I opened up the Republic this morning and what gift did the LTTE section bear for me? Unbelievably, a petulant missive from none other than Barnett Lotstein!.
Praise of Rick Romley is unmerited
The Editorial Board’s praise of Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley as a peacemaker illustrates how selective memory can distort the truth (“Can Rick Romley ‘calm the waters’?” Tuesday).
As one who, for 15 years, served as one of Romley’s closest aides, I had a bird’s-eye view of his volatile temper, his disdain for the Board of Supervisors and members of the judiciary, his ridicule of civic leaders, his overblown sense of self-importance and his blatant self-promotion at taxpayer expense.
The editors conveniently ignore Romley’s many faults, which at the time were the subject of many news stories, during his previous tenure as county attorney in their continuing campaign to vilify Andrew Thomas.
Focusing on his adversarial relationship with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, how soon they forget Romley’s public feuds with then-Attorney General Grant Woods, then-Gov. Fife Symington, legislative leaders, judges and then-Phoenix Police Chief Harold Hurtt, among others.
Rick Romley, a peacemaker?
Hardly. – Barnett Lotstein,Phoenix
The writer served as special assistant county attorney to former County Attorney Andrew Thomas and, before that, to then-County Attorney Rick Romley. He was let go by Romley last Friday when Romley was appointed county attorney.
Love the editor’s note. And from what I understand about Romley, Lotstein is not entirely off-base in his description of him. But still, does someone need a waaaah-mbulance?
8:08 PM