Earlier this year, Ross Walker Jr. received a letter from Germany with incredible news.

He called a reporter. “This poor old guy is probably the victim of another scam,” she thought.

It turns out that Mr. Walker had a story better than she could have imagined - a story with history, love and family…

Listen to the audio story on our website: http://wfae.org/post/german-daughter-finds-meets-her-world-war-ii-american-gi-father
 
 
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Ben Popken/Flickr
First piece for WESUN: Planes, Patience and Slightly Kid-Friendlier Security

It's 7 a.m. at the Kimball's Washington, D.C., home. Peter and Leslie Kimball are running up and down the stairs, changing diapers and trying to feed their kids breakfast.

They're packing for a work conference in Orlando, Fla., but they've also planned a surprise for their daughter Lane's birthday: a visit to Disney World.

This summer, more than 200 million people are expected to fly out of U.S. airports. The Kimballs are one of many families flying with their kids.  


 
 
Here's a final web-only piece from my three-month Digital News rotation about an Iranian-American (and Princeton alum) who was released from prison earlier this month after challenging the convictions against him related to complicated U.S. sanctions laws against Iran. During my rotation, I was able to write accompanying sidebars to many of the pieces that I converted from radio script to webtext (called web buildouts), made some timelines, a slideshow, blogged and did my own reporting, writing and research. And of course, I learned a lot about about how and why NPR.org is "the best radio affiliated website". 

I'm guessing I'll still be actively involved with the web team as I move throughout the building. Moving to WATC now -- looking forward to helping produce the show every weekend! 
 
 
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Creative Commons Photo via Flickr user Pro-Zak
I learned a lot this week about writing/producing for radio, I'm so glad we get two weeks of training as Kroc fellows before we get sent to our rotations. (I start in Digital News and will be there for three months before moving to Weekend All Things Considered). 

Criticism of the above practice piece by editors-to-be at NPR: 

1) Montage wasn’t effective/didn’t add to it
2) Saying Hilda’s ethnicity was unnecessary since it’s not relevant to the piece
3) Didn’t set up the scene well on the avenue
4) Story wasn’t specific enough — should have focused just on one thing

… the critique went on (feedback was very helpful), but this was a last-minute story after I accidentally deleted all of my audio on another story I had just finished reporting (learned my lesson!) and it was the weekend of the hurricane and the trains were shut down, so I was pretty limited …

If you want to listen to something I had time to produce/think through from WPRB, check out an older piece about recidivism in NJ:http://www.wprb.com/news/2010/05/23/1003
 
 
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Week one at NPR = lots of training, an earthquake, hurricane evacuation planning, audio editing/production and meeting lots of famous radio personalities in the building.