Street-Beat Confidential

A profile of New York Daily News reporter Juan González, who has been working in journalism for more than 30 years, and was an activist during the late ’60s and early ’70s:

“‘Some of the editors started quashing my columns,’ says González. ‘They killed two of them and relegated the others to the back pages. So I went to Ed Kosner, the editor in chief, and said, “Ed, why are you holding up my columns?” And he said, “Well, the EPA says the stuff that you’re writing isn’t accurate, and so does the Giuliani administration, and besides, the Times isn’t writing anything about it.” And I said, “Since when do we decide what we’re going to write based on what the Times decides to write? You have to trust my reporting.” So we went back and forth, and I finally said, “Ed, you don’t know me well. And I don’t know you well because you’ve only been here a couple of years. So here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to keep writing on this topic. I think it’s important, and when a lot of people start getting sick ten or fifteen years down the line, I don’t want it to be on my conscience that I didn’t do what I needed to do as a reporter.”‘

“Five years later, as people started getting sick, the paper, under different editors, ran editorials exposing the problem. For this, the Daily News won a Pulitzer Prize.”

Author: Paul Hond
Published: Aug 1, 2013
Length: 16 minutes (4,034 words)

Justice’s Son

A profile of Ben Jealous, the president and CEO of the NAACP:

“‘Governor,’ said Jealous. ‘You know the death penalty is used exclusively on poor people.’

“‘Yes.’

“‘You know it’s used disproportionately against blacks and Latinos.’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Well, Governor, this is what I want you to do: imagine the person you most worry about in trying to explain why you abolished the death penalty. I want you to imagine telling that person this: “Every time a prosecutor seeks the death penalty, it pulls hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions, out of our state treasury. Dollars that therefore cannot be used for anything else. And in our state, like any state, there are places where 30, 40, 50, sometimes 60 percent of the homicides go unsolved every year. I’ve thought long and hard about it, and decided that we as a state would be safer if we spent that money on homicide units rather than killing the killers we’ve already caught and put in cages. So I’ve abolished the death penalty, and I’ve asked the counties to send their savings to the homicide units and get the uncaught killers off the street.”‘”

Author: Paul Hond
Published: Apr 23, 2013
Length: 22 minutes (5,530 words)