The Venice Wave

Venetians in the know are waiting with bated breath for the next issue of The Venice Wave, due out on December 2.  It’ll end our year with a winter roundup of compelling stories.

For instance, have you been wondering what the biggest problems are in the World?  Yes, the Whole World?  Mark Twain Middle School reporter Mia is pitching in tell you about at least one of them: animal species extinction.  You may not know it, but there’s at least one threatened species of wildlife with the word “dumb” in its name.

Perhaps, on the other hand, you need to know about Los Angeles weather.  Even when it gets cold here, is it cold enough to bundle up?  Alexia looked into the issue, and she’s ready to report.

Alexia’s also putting another article together about holiday gifts.  Her views are balanced, to some extent, by Jocelyn’s report on the pleasures and pitfalls of American consumerism.  Malik’s reporting on Kobe Bryant from the sports desk, and Cesar has the health news in a special report on H1N1.

If you want to get your hands on a copy of our paper the week it comes out, you can shoot an email over to thevenicewave@826la.org. We’re taking orders for subscriptions! Stick around the blog here to get late-breaking news.

This week at The Venice Wave, students prepared for their last issue of 2009. Reporter Cesar Guajardo utilized two voice recorders-an ancient cassette tape one (reminiscent of the first “Home Alone” film), and a crazy new-age digital recorder. For his important interview with Dr. Michael Marquez, Cesar decided to stick with the more trustworthy digital recorder. We called Dr. Marquez at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, a half hour after journalism class started in the Venice writing lab. Before the interview, We thought of tough questions to ask the doctor about the H1N1 vaccine, like “Does it protect you from becoming a zombie?” (We really didn’t ask that, but we should have).  Instead, Cesar asked about the shortage of vaccines in Los Angeles, and who is the mostly likely to contract the virus (students are high on the list!).

“The government wants 250 million doses. So far, only 40 million have been produced and distributed. It’s in high demand. People really want it now. The vaccine should be coming, but it’s a slow process,” said Marquez in the phone interview.

Hopefully, more reporters on The Venice Wave will learn that a recording device is their best friend when interviewing a source.

Read more about Cesar’s H1N1 story on the 826LA Blog.