Time to celebrate!

http://www.law.washington.edu/Clinics/Immigration/clients.aspx

Churches to offer illegal immigrants sanctuary (2007)

Sheriff’s association urges reform of broken immigration system

AAJC

Reuniting Families Act aims to clean up legal immigration system

Fraudulent Marriages: The crime, the victims, the outcomes

Immigration & Customs Enforcement

Obama aims to curb illegal immigration

28 illegal immigrants arrested in Bellingham (Feb. 2009)

Immigration legislation criticized

Jill: This summer, families with limited income and food stamps are finding a way to get lunches for kids without having to go all the way to the food bank or a school.

School is out for the summer, but this poses a problem for many low-income families that depend on schools for free meals for their children. That is why the Thurston County Food Bank is bringing food to them, one truckload at a time.

Christina: Arts programs in the King County have changed lives and been awarded grants from the government to keep doing so.

A King County-based photography camp recently received $25,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts to continue funding ‘Kids in Focus,’ a program designed to get at-risk kids back on track.

Washington state gets additional ferry money

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray says she has secured $7.6 million more in federal money for Washington state’s ferry system a day after the state was snubbed in an initial announcement of stimulus grants.

By Jack Broom

Seattle Times staff reporter

Sen. Patty Murray, who describes herself as “furious” to learn Washington was virtually ignored on a list of federal stimulus grants to ferry projects this week, said Wednesday she’s been assured the state will receive an additional $7.6 million.

Murray said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told her it had been a mistake to allot Washington projects only $750,000 from a $60 million Recovery Act pool that Murray helped authorize in Congress.

When she learned of the original allocation, Murray said, “I was shocked, and I called Secretary LaHood immediately and told him I couldn’t understand this,” the Washington Democrat said. “He did not have an answer.”

Murray said LaHood called her back Wednesday, saying Washington would receive:

• $2.6 million toward the purchase of a prototype vessel for passenger-only service between Seattle and Bremerton.

• $3 million for the design of a replacement ferry terminal at Anacortes.

• $2 million toward purchase of a passenger ferry to be operated by King County between downtown and West Seattle.

The only project in this state on the original list of allocations was $750,000 for construction of a terminal for the Guemes Island ferry, operated by Skagit County.

The allocations announced Wednesday still fall far short of the $56 million Washington had sought. “We didn’t expect to get all the money we asked for, but we certainly expected to get more than we did” on the original list, said state Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond.

The U.S. Department of Transportation says funding announced Wednesday is not stimulus money, but separate federal money. Washington state’s grants were denied because the projects were not in areas that were considered economically distressed, which was required under the stimulus formula, officials said.

A statement from LaHood’s office Wednesday stopped short of characterizing the original grant list as a mistake, but noted that ferries in Washington carry more passengers each day than all of the nation’s other ferry operations combined.

Of the 19 states and one U.S. territory that received ferry money, Washington ranked third from last, topping only Arkansas and Kentucky. With Wednesday’s announcement, Washington will receive more ferry funds than any other state.

Michigan ranks next, with $8.3 million, followed by Maine, with $6.8 million.

Gov. Chris Gregoire, angered by the earlier list of allocations, on Wednesday praised the new grant allocations and Murray’s work in securing them.

The state ferry system is receiving $8.4 million in federal stimulus money through public-transit funding. And Murray said she’d work to get even more money in an upcoming transportation bill.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this story.

Jack Broom: 206-464-2222 orjbroom@seattletimes.com

Some resources for Audrey’s transportation beat story.

Aurora Traffic Safety Project? http://www.auroraseattle.com/2009/06/04/aurora-traffic-safety-project

Trucks hitting things:

http://www.king5.com/localnews/stories/NW_052209WAB-semi-truck-aurora-accident-LJ.706a792.html?rss=

http://www.mygreenlake.com/2009/06/traffic-alert-aurora-avenue/

People getting injured:

http://www.injurytriallawyer.com/blog/multiple-car-accidents-on-aurora-avenue-in-seattle-l-do-you-need-a-lawyer.cfm

http://www.seattleinjuryblog.com/2009/03/seattle_car_crash_on_aurora_av_1.html

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/archives/172801.asp

http://auroraseattle.com/2009/07/02/cyclist-killed-in-collision-with-car

Almost a golden standard in the journalism industry, the New York Times has integrated a number of multimedia elements into its news presentation over the years.

Go here to check out some highlights. Very interesting stories are featured.

For your amusement, Twilight lovers: An interview with Peter Facinelli (Dr. Carlisle Cullen).

• Do you prefer the movie, or the book?
• If you like the Twilight novel series, which book was your favorite? Why?
• What’s going on with Rob Pattinson? Why do you think he’s so popular?
• What questions would you ask if you got the chance to interview Pattinson?

In 1953, the Associated Press published a 62-page stylebook that listed guidelines for ideal grammar usage and attribution in journalistic writing. Since then, the stylebook has evolved into “The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law.” Considered by many reporters and editors as the Bible of the journalistic industry, the AP Stylebook is one of the most important reference materials you need to know about.

AP Style refers to how people are to be named, places are to be identified and facts to be cited when reporting news. Copy editors do their work based on AP Style, so it’s important that you are familiar with the guidelines. Here are five.

Addresses

When covering a hard news story, you might include the address of where an event occurred.

• Capitalize and spell out avenue, boulevard and street unless you write it with a numbered address. In that case, you would abbreviate to Ave., Blvd. and St. Lowercase and spell out when used alone or with more than one street name.
• For an address number, use numerals. (e.g., 1702 Applegate Avenue)
• Compass points need to be used to indicate quadrants of a city in a numbered address (e.g., 1702 N. 145th St.). Don’t abbreviate if the location number is abbreviated (e.g., West 42nd St.)
• Use periods for P.O. Box addresses.

Numerals

• Spell out one through nine. Use figures starting with 10.
• Do not start a sentence with a number. If you can, recast the sentence and present your figure later in the sentence. Years are exceptions. (e.g., WRONG: 9 people are in Colin’s class. RIGHT: There are nine students in Colin’s class.)
• Ages: separate with hyphens (e.g., The 14-year-old girl interviewed me.)

OK

Do not use ‘okay.’

Titles

• Capitalize titles when they are used immediately before an individual’s name (e.g., New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg). Use either the title (if it makes sense) or the last name of the individual afterward.
• Lowercase if a person’s title is separated from their name with a comma (e.g., The mayor, Michael Bloomberg…).

Composition titles

(Applies to book titles, computer game titles, movie titles, opera titles, play titles, poem titles, album and song titles, radio and television program titles and titles of lectures, speeches and works of art.)

• Capitalize principal words. This includes prepositions and conjunctions of four or more letters.
• Capitalize articles (the, a, an) and words fewer than four letters if they are the first or last words in a title.
• Quotation marks around names of all works except the Bible and books that are primary catalogs of reference material. No quotation marks around software titles such as Microsoft Word or Windows.
• If titles are in a different language, translate into English unless the work is known to the public by its foreign name (e.g., da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” Les Vacances de M. Hulot = “The Adventures of Monsieur Hulot”).

Not AP, but a side note: He said, she said, they said.

Your middle school English teacher might have taught you to use words that evoke emotion and show action. “Aahhh!” she screamed. “You killed my father — prepare to die,” he roared. “Rah rah rah,” they chanted.

Things are different in journalism. “Said” is the only word to use when you attribute a quote to someone.

“The University of Washington is facing a horrendous budget crisis,” she said. “There just isn’t enough money to go around to all the programs, so we’re going to have to cut about 200 teaching positions this summer.”

“I really like acting as a vampire,” Robert Pattinson said. “I really wish I were pale and romantic like Edward Cullen in real life.”

Now for “they said.” No. When you use “they said,” you are showing that two or more people are saying the same thing in unison. If this is the case, all right. Go with it. If not… avoid using “they said.”

This short guide should by no means serve as your replacement to the AP Stylebook. Details are based on entries from the 2007 edition. Also, feel free to comment about more AP Style entries. Happy writing!