Friend responds to my questions about newspapers on his blog

Alex Dalenberg, a reporter friend in Arizona, wrote about his confidence in newspapers on his blog after I had asked him and others, “As 18- to 29-year-old journalists and as consumers of news, why are we and why should we be confident in newspapers? Or why are we not confident? And beyond newspapers, why are we confident in journalism, including online media?” Read more responses to these questions in a blog post I write tomorrow. I had asked these questions after reading these Gallup survey results. Read Alex’s post, “Are we confident in newspapers?”

Reuniting with New York Times SJI friends

I had brunch Sunday with four friends I hadn’t seen since July 2008 at a journalism conference in Chicago or since January 2008 when we first met in Tucson, Ariz., during The New York Times Student Journalism Institute, a two-week program that brought together 20 students and professional journalists from Times Company papers.

Rick Rojas, Yolanne Almanzar, Marlene Peralta Cortes and Mariana Minaya hang out in Little Italy.

I had kept tabs on their adventures after the Institute, which functioned as a working newsroom, but I recently lost touch with some of them.

During brunch at Essex Restaurant in NYC’s lower east side, I learned about the latest exploits of these four: Rick Rojas reports for The Washington Post and moves soon to The Los Angeles Times; Yolanne Almanzar attends Columbia University as a graduate student; Marlene Peralta Cortes works for CUNY TV in New York; and Mariana Minaya attends law school in Baltimore.

I’m fascinated with the different directions the five of us have chosen, and I wonder what the other NYTSJI folks are doing now. Help me fill in the blanks. If you know what the people listed here are doing, please post a message and I’ll update this blog post.