RSSUnleashed is ... the best training ground for tackling the hard stories
for the Yakima Herald-Republic
E-mail
Print
Comments
More 'Valley Life'
- 01/04/09 Volunteer opportunities
- 12/28/08 Volunteer opportunities
- 12/21/08 Volunteer opportunities
- A ringing endorsement for this volunteer
- 12/07/08 Volunteer opportunities
- Pulling up now-deep roots to learn about new community
- Verbing nouns? Is nouning verbs next?
Most Read
- This feature is under development and will be available soon.
I've always feared vultures.
Perhaps it's because of an old family superstition that the carnivorous bird brings death. Albert Hitchcock's movie "The Birds" may also have been responsible for this bizarre phobia.
Last spring, though, I found myself standing under hundreds of vultures that were ravaging a small town in central Florida. My fears swelled when I discovered a tornado sweeping nearby.
Are the vultures warning me about something? I wondered. I was ready to flee, but it was the residents' frustrations and my sense of duty to report their problem that kept me grounded.
The vultures were roosting in their neighborhood. They were ripping rooftop shingles, gnawing on rubber linings on car windows and regurgitating their "meals," and defecating on vehicles, rooftops, sidewalks and trees.
They had been there for years, but the problem amplified when hundreds more joined the roost and residents found little to no options in getting rid of them. People weren't even allowed to shoo away the federally protected birds, which were also protected by a city ordinance.
Courage and a strong stomach, keys to tackling good stories, kept me there -- just like they kept me at an assignment at a national rowing event in Delaware. I didn't know how to swim and was terrified of large bodies of water, yet I had to write about first-time rowers. After partially plunging into the river and ripping my pants after falling out of a boat while on assignment, I learned that water and humiliation aren't all that bad.
Unleashed taught me to swallow my fears and, at times, my pride. I was a timid 16-year-old when I started writing for the section in 2000. I hated asking questions in class. Even though I wanted to empower people by telling their stories, the idea of interviewing strangers horrified me.
Unleashed put my pains at ease, helping me set aside my feelings, particularly my fears. I learned to be more confident and interview classmates, teachers and other professionals in the community without hyperventilating.
I've carried these lessons with me to each newspaper I've worked at, including the Yakima Herald-Republic, where I became the first Unleashed alumna to return as a full-time reporter. I stayed in Yakima for a year and a half before taking a job with the Orlando Sentinel last December.
Not only has Unleashed empowered people by giving them an outlet to share their creativity, experiences and opinions, but it also strengthened me by helping me find the courage to tackle even the most difficult stories.
The toughest part of a reporter's job is staying calm while interviewing a person whose life has been ripped apart after a tragedy.
Earlier this year at the Orlando Sentinel, I covered a 70-car pileup on a major interstate where nearly 40 people were injured and at least five were killed. Tractor-trailers had overturned and cars were crushed like tin cans.
I ended up sitting on a front porch with a Honduran man who survived the early morning accident after he was ripped out of his van as he was heading to work with friends and relatives. His older brother, though, didn't survive.
Although the 25-year-old man and his relatives feared they would lose their jobs after suffering fractured bones and sore backs and were unable to work, they were more concerned about finding a way to pay to fly their relative's body back to Honduras so his four children, ages 10, 8, 7 and 1 1/2, could say goodbye.
It was a difficult story, but an important one to tell. The man wanted to publicly hold state wildlife officials accountable for his brother's death after they lost control of a fire they ignited several hours before to burn dangerously dry brush near the interstate. And residents wanted to understand what happened that foggy, smoky morning.
It's the small accomplishments, such as facing water and vulture phobias, that can prepare you for the more important stories, like a 70-car pileup. And programs like Unleashed are the ones that get you there.
-- Eloísa Ruano González, a 2002 Davis High School graduate, was the first (and so far, only) former Unleashed student hired as a full-time reporter at the Yakima Herald-Republic. She is now working as a reporter at the Orlando Sentinel in Florida.
- Advertisement