Field Trip

Today was an RWI marathon – an all-day bus trip through Harlem, the South Bronx, and Washington Heights, followed by a two-hour class in which we chose our semester-long beats, mainly from among the neighborhoods we'd seen.

Our section was paired up with Professor Isaacs’ section for the tour, and we were accompanied by Val Ginter, an urban historian, who identified points of interest and provided a running commentary that incorporated historical, topographical, architectural, and sociological tidbits. We set off from 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue at 9:00AM and returned, a travel-weary troupe, at 5:30PM. Highlights of the day included:

• a talk by Cynthia Ceilan, Director of Special Projects at Harlem United, who told us about the challenges of treating HIV/AIDS patients in the Harlem community;


• a talk by the Environmental Justice Coordinator for Mothers on the Move, a community-based organization in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx, along with a brief visit to the city’s largest fertilizer plant to smell for ourselves what residents endure (although last night’s heavy rain mercifully muted the effects);


• lunch on our own on Arthur Avenue in the Belmont section of the Bronx, home to some of the best Italian food in the city; and


• the “insider’s tour” of Yankee Stadium, during which we sat in both the press box and the dugout and visited the clubhouse (no player sightings, though).

When it came to choosing a beat, I had a just a few parameters in mind:

• avoid Harlem -- it's the area with which I am most familiar, and, because of its proximity to Columbia, it tends to have lots of students chasing the same sources, many of whom are reluctant to talk to yet another generation of J-schoolers;


• find a neighborhood where the issues are complex and topical -- one in which the stories will be relevant to a broad audience;


• keep my commute as manageable as possible -- it already takes me nearly an hour just to get to school each day; and


• if at all possible, honor my family history -- I found out over the weekend that I actually have roots in the Bronx on both sides of the family, connecting me to at least three different neighborhoods.

In the end, we chose our beats in the order determined by numbers we picked out of a hat. I drew 12 out of 17 but still got my first choice: Hunts Point, in the South Bronx. My mom lived there as a girl in the 1930s, and my great-grandfather had a fruit stand nearby. In seventy years, it’s changed quite a bit.

Today, the neighborhood is New York City’s gastronomic gateway, housing its main produce, meat, and fish markets (the last of these is the very recently relocated Fulton Fish Market). It is also home to the aforementioned fertilizer plant (just what you want near the food supply!), two prisons, innumerable auto-supply shops (at least some of which are chop shops) and, apparently, a vigorous prostitution industry (big wholesale markets = lots and lots of truck drivers). As for demographics, it’s one of the nation’s poorest Congressional districts with one of the highest rates of asthma. And did I mention that it’s a peninsula?

I’ll be sharing my beat with a classmate named Jeff, who has a science background and is interested in the many environmental issues the neighborhood is facing. Although we'll be covering the same turf, we'll be doing separate stories. Our first assignment is to write a portrait of a block.

I can’t wait.

Quote of the day:

Reporting is thinking. -- Sandy Padwe