Week 7

The Los Angeles Times has been running parts of a series called "Vanishing Russians" about the declining population in Russia. I read all of Monday's article, which focused on the inadequate health care and multiple risks Russians face, especially in certain areas and if they are poor. Another story in the series focuses on disease, suicide and substance abuse, while the third part looks at loss of identity as the Muslim and minority population grows.
Kim Murphy, the Times writer, must have completely immersed herself in this subject. The amount of information she must have gotten had to have been overwhelming. She wrote three in-depth articles examining different problems, as well as one shorter story that focused on a specific town that she featured in the health care article. I am impressed with how she was able to organize everything and tell these stories compellingly. The lead on the health care article, "For the Sick, No Place to Turn":

"He was 40 when he had his first heart surgery, a quadruple bypass to correct damage caused by the swirling poisons of the ancient copper smelter where he worked. But that was a decade ago, when the decrepit Russian healthcare system still provided low-cost care to those who could wait.
Now, Mikhail Lychmanyuk has been told he will die unless he has a second heart operation. This time, it will cost him $5,000.
It might as well be $1 million."

The story is as heartbreaking as it is informative. The series opens our eyes to a problem we wouldn't otherwise think or know anything about, and I think it is amazing that someone went in and took the time to understand the breadth and depth of the situation and then wrote stories about the people in it. This was a massive undertaking—far beyond where I am now—but it is in line with the type of journalism I want to do. When I do a story, it consumes me. I want to take time to learn about all the angles of a topic. I want to talk to as many sources as possible. I want to learn about the history of something so I can better understand its present state. I want to be an expert. That is why I don't take on many stories for The Maneater, and why I don't think being a reporter for a daily paper is the life for me. If I can't do a great story, I'd almost rather not do it at all. Not that those papers can't do great stories. They certainly do. But for me, I'm very picky with the projects I take and I don't like being rushed to throw them together.
When I was a senior in high school, I wanted to do a story about teacher-student relationships and the gray area of sexual harassment. I had this idea early in the schoolyear, but I waited because I needed time to do it right. Luckily it was evergreen and I was able to get started in the spring when classes weren't as demanding. I spent weeks doing interviews, analyzing the situation with my cowriter and redrafting with our advisers. When it came out in the last issue of the year, I was completely satisfied. So since my senior year, when I did that story and other in-depth features like one about perscription drug abuse, I have been leaning toward magazine writing, which allows more time and space to delve into an issue.