Newsroom notes
Monday, June 18th, 2007 by Scott ShackfordI returned from our Freedom Communications conference slightly heavier (and not just from the excellent hotel food).
The Desert Dispatch received a “Best of Freedom” award for 2007. Specifically, reporter Aaron Aupperlee and former reporter Adrienne Ziegler were commended for their coverage of the arrest and subsequent sentencing of Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, who was one of five soldiers charged with a role in the rape and murder of a teen Iraqi girl and killing of her family in Iraq. Cortez was from Barstow.
Aaron and Adrienne both worked extremely hard to help paint a picture of who Sgt. Cortez was and how he ended up in this situation, with the help of community members who knew him and cared for him. They were able to gather information that not even the Associated Press could track down, and I’m very proud of their hard work.
In other newsroom news, we have a new reporter starting today. Jason Smith comes to Barstow from Burlington, Vermont (and yes, he’s already commented on the heat), with a degree in economics with a minor in Latin American studies. He’ll be taking over many of the responsibilities in governmental and environmental reporting. His fluency with Spanish (he spent four months writing for a newspaper in Mexico) will also assist us in covering our growing Hispanic community.
