Category Archives: Profiles
Protected: Lead to Profile
Protected: Lead for Faces Query
Protected: New York’s Shadow
Neighborhood Faces Query: Father Joseph F. Lorenzo
Father Joe is a pastor at the Shrine Church of Saint Anthony of Pauda, located just south of Houston Street in Soho. I am interested in Soho’s role to help out the poor and homeless. Father Joe’s initiatives such as the JoyJ initiative to hand out coats and pillows to the homeless is the type of activity I am interested in because it shows how one person, through the leadership he has by being a pastor of the church, drives members of a community towards a common goal.
I am choosing Father Joe for this profile article because even though today many people do not view “the church” as a significant force for positive outcomes in the world, it is interesting to see the positive actions a church takes to improve or help relieve, issues and conflicts in its community on a local level.
Neighborhood Faces Proposal
Someone I would like to interview is someone on the queens community board district 5 because that person would be more knowledgable about the issues in Glendale. Residents can enter the community board because they hold general meetings on Thursday. Since illegal conversion is an issue that occurs often I have thought about contacting an agent or employee of the Department of Buildings but I figured that would be really difficult and almost impossible. Someone on the community board who frequently attends the meetings would have the best interest of Glendale and are better equipped suggest a solution to the problem. Since anyone can be a board member I can assume that person is in the working middle class and has a family. They might live in a two family house and have at two children and be married. They live a nice and simple life so they give their time to bettering the community by getting involved on the board. The best candidate to choose for an interview that will an understanding of illegal conversion would be someone who owns the building they live in because they would be able to have knowledge and understanding of the consequences and violation given to them had they been caught illegally converting their family house. This person would be able to talk about the issue in further detail because the people who are doing illegal conversion on their house can diminish the real estate value and cause further damage to the community.
Neighborhood Pitch
Reporting on Corona Queens, I will look further into the Italian community that reside around Spaghetti Park. Statistics from city-data exemplify the notion that with Corona growing as a pre-dominantly hispanic neighborhood, the Italian community is becoming smaller. More small markets and shops that are now opening in the neighborhood are run by hispanic owners while places like Corona Pizzeria, and more famously, the Lemon Iced King, remain with Italian owners. I want to interview someone from the Benfaremo family, owners of the famous Italian ice spot about the community and the regular customers that they draw. I would also like to talk about the change they have experienced in the community since the business has been around for over 60 years. In that span, Corona has experienced an evolution as an Italian neighborhood to Latin American community. To gain perspective, I would like to interview some of the employees about working the corner stand with the family and the people that they serve and speak to the regular customers that go there and spaghetti park. While over-development seems to be the bigger issue at hand looking at Corona and the Queens-county, the change in Italian residences is an interesting smaller-scale issue I would like to report on. From what I currently know, it may have an affect on other aspects of the neighborhood other than what smaller businesses are in the community.
Backgrounder
Demographics
Queens Community District 4
- Corona, Corona Heights, Elmhurst, Lefrak City
2010 U.S. Census, the total population of Queens
- 2,230,539 people
- 28% identify as Latino/Hispanic
- 26.2% identify as white alone
Corona, Queens
- 172,598 people in Corona (approximately 8% of Queens population)
- 78,644 people with assisted income support in Corona(45%)
- 65% of jobs are white collar (8,564), the rest blue collar (4,789)
Income
- Highest median income in Corona was 54,162 for for those 45-64.
- Lowest is $39,741 for those under 25
- The median income is $46,493, a 33% increase from 2000 but below the median of the state.
Education
A total of 15,420 have no high school education, 30.2% of the population in Corona.
14,117 have completed some sort of degree.
Crime
The total crime risk is above the national average.
Most likely (well above average) to be a murder, personal crime, or robbery risk. Least likely (well below average) to experience larceny or burglary risk.
Transportation
7 Train along 103rd St.
Q58, Q23, Q38, Q29
Community Leaders
Louis Walker is the Board Chairperson
Christian Cassagol is the District Manager
Jullissa Ferreras is city council member of District 21
2 Jobs at Sugar Factory, and a Lump in the Throat
The writer does give us very much of Robert Shelton’s personal history, but it’s extremely important here as it gives us, the readers, an idea of where he’s coming from and ultimately, his intimate connection with the Domino sugar factory. His personal history is a nice touch to this article, it makes it very personal and real.
The narrative is essentially Shelton’s relationship with the factory and its neighborhood, and how much everything has changed since he started working there, culminating in the now abandoned factory housing a huge sculpture, indicative of the artsy population that has taken over the neighborhood.
The lead, “Robert Shelton had never seen the floor of what he always called the sugar house until the day this spring when he returned to the Domino refinery.”, is a great sentence that leaves the reader begging for more. “Who is Robert Shelton, why has he never seen the floor of the Domino refinery, and what is his place there?” is what I’m wondering when I read this lead. It’s not a hard news lead that reveals all the important information at once, but works well in this piece.
The nut graph doesn’t appear until much later, “He was talking about “A Subtlety,” the massive sculpture by the artist Kara Walker, a sugar-coated homage to African-American slave women and to the slave laborers who built the 19th-century sugar trade.”. The author explains essentially why we need to read about Robert Shelton and the refinery, with his point of view being slightly Shelton’s side, as a reader, I found myself rooting for Shelton.
Neighborhood Faces Query
As a security guard at Lenox Hill’s Ramaz School, Dwight Johnson is constantly surveying the neighborhood. The Ramaz Upper School, located on 78th street between Park and Lexington Avenues, sits directly on the northernmost border of what is considered Lenox Hill.
For the past nine and a half years, Johnson has served dutifully as one of the school’s main security guards. He provides not only security for the children attending school, but also a friendly face to say goodbye to as the students go home for the day.
At his post, Johnson is extremely vigilant on 78th street, and is well aware of many of the happenings around Lenox Hill, especially at nearby Lenox Hill Hospital, a hotbed of activity.
Johnson is also extremely in tune with the more mundane aspects of Lenox Hill, which can be the most telling of any possible conflicts. He knows the routines of the residents he sees everyday, like when they leave and return from work, at what time they walk their dog, and whether or not they accompany their children to and from school.
He also knows the general atmosphere of the neighborhood at any given time, and can easily tell if something interesting is happening or about to happen. If anyone is going to reveal a current conflict in Lenox Hill, it’ll be Dwight Johnson.