Celebrate 125 years of
On Monday, May 18, you are invited to celebrate the 125th anniversary of The Arizona Republic with a night of “Stories About Stories,” as our journalists share tales from lives lived in the newsroom and on the beat.
On this night at Phoenix Theatre, we’ll come together to celebrate 125 years of telling some of Arizona’s most important stories.
It’s a chance for our readers to hear the stories behind the stories, and to learn more about how the news gets made in their community. As a preview of the evening, we asked some of the night’s storytellers why they do what they do, and why it matters to them, and to the Valley.
Reporter covers the Arizona Coyotes and will tell a story about one of the most disastrous days she had as an intern.
One of my favorite memories from my childhood is watching hockey with my dad. Actually, our bond over the sport is what motivated me to pursue sports journalism. So by being a hockey reporter, I feel like, in a way, the conversation with my dad that started when I was a kid has never ended. And if my work has the ability to ignite more talks between fathers and daughters, even better.
I’m always reading. I read other newspapers, blogs and fiction to stay inspired. Sometimes this leads to new story ideas; other times I find a new word to try to incorporate into my writing.
Stories About Stories: Arizona Storytellers Project celebrates
125th anniversary
When: Monday, May 18. 6 p.m. check-in, stories from 7 to 9 p.m. Where: Phoenix Theatre, 100 E. McDowell Road. Admission: $10. Proceeds will support journalism training and education programs. Cash bar available. Details: 602-444-8770, tickets.azcentral.com. Either way, I feel by studying the work of others I can find ways to improve my ability as a storyteller. Photojournalist
will share a story about almost stepping on a land mine in Kosovo, and how that impacted the way he does his job today.
During the L.A. riots, I photographed a man getting beaten at an intersection and being left for dead. We ended up being chased ourselves and couldn’t help that man. We eventually escaped our pursuers, and he ended up recovering, but that event has left me with emotional scars.
If you work in journalism for a long time, chances are you’ll cover the same things over and over again. I try to challenge myself and approach things differently, try a new angle and not be satisfied with the same picture I shot last year. I try to not follow the pack and to find my own picture. If I didn’t, I would bore myself.
Columnist
will share a story about the emotional relationships that sometimes form between journalists and their readers.
A long time ago, I read — and stole as my professional philosophy — something that the great New Yorker writer A.J. Liebling said about his most employable traits. He said, “I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.” I also hold to the fantasy that it is possible even for someone with my limited abilities to make a perfect newspaper column. It’s been done by others. I’ve read them by W. C. Heinz, Paul Coates, Jimmy Breslin and many others. None by me yet, of course, but I’ve only been at this for 25-plus years. There’s still time.
Reporter writes about stories in Arizona and the rest of the world that make us believe in humanity, faith, hope and love. She used to cover government. She will tell a story about a turning point she had on the job recently.
Diane Rehm. She has perfected the art of the follow-up question. She uses it as a tool to gain a deeper understanding of an issue and to hold officials accountable beyond their rehearsed soundbites. Sometimes, reporters can be considered overly cynical or pompous. It’s clear Rehm does her homework before an interview, but she is willing to convey her curiosity, confusion and/or enthusiasm about an issue. I also admire works by Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer for The Atlantic. He is fierce in his pursuit of questioning political, cultural and social norms. His honest writing can be as lovely as it is brutal.
Reporter
writes about border and immigration issues. He will tell a story about investigating the Border Patrol after a 14-year-old Mexican boy was shot in the back of the head.
Three years ago, I wrote a series, “Death in the System.” It looked at the cruel, needless, preventable deaths of scores of inmates in Arizona’s prison system from violence, neglect and mistreatment. The deaths were often shocking. They included inmates beaten to death by gangs after being refused protective custody; inmates dying painfully over weeks and months because they were denied the most basic kinds of medical treatment; inmates overdosing on hard drugs smuggled into prisons; and mentally ill people who hanged themselves in their windowless cells after being locked away in long-term solitary confinement.
Many in our society tend to dismiss anyone who’s in prison as a bad guy, a thug, a loser who deserves whatever happens to him or her. But when I wrote those stories, I was flooded with letters from other people behind bars, and from their mothers, their wives, their children and friends who were thankful that anyone was will-