ReporterLeslieAlbrecht's blog

Recently I wrote a story on how the city is drafting a new policy to deal with homeless encampments.

Merced has a few of these encampments along Bear Creek.

I get a lot of phone calls from readers complaining about them.

My goal was to let readers know that the city is drafting this new policy. I also wanted to check in with the homeless for their take on it. In my reporting, I spoke to city officials, then visited one of the encampments that will be affected by the new policy. I met Chrystal and Heath, two homeless people who told me they thought the city should build a tent city for the homeless.

First of all, can someone explain to me the origin of the phrase "race card"? I checked in with my favorite unreliable reference, Wikipedia, and couldn't find a good answer.

According to some readers, the Sun-Star "played the race card" recently when we ran a story about a controversy at Applegate Park.

The story (by me) was about a group of residents on W. 26th Street who are fed up with the noise and cars that accompany daily games of volleyball, top spin and kator (kick volleyball) at the park.

Here's an interesting question reporters sometimes face: do the stories we write give criminals ideas about easy targets?

A recent example: a couple of weeks ago I wrote about a section of the Bellevue Ranch community that's been abandoned by builders. They've left behind a block of unoccupied houses. Some are only half-built, with only wood framing in place; others are complete, but empty.

Last week we wrote the follow-up story on Richard Abston, the guy who drove the wrong way down Highway 99, then died after he was Tasered by cops.

I wrote one of the initial stories on Abston.

It was a good reminder of a truth reporters sometimes forget about: there's never just one version of a story, even if it seems like a cut-and-dried news story.

Every person involved in a story has his own perspective on what happened. The reporter's job is to weave these accounts into something coherent.

Random strangers call reporters all the time with story ideas. We love these calls. It's an important way for us to find out what's going on in the community.

Sometimes these callers are crazy people who think they've found gold in their backyard (True story. We sent a reporter out on that tip. The guy turned out to be on drugs).

Sometimes they just say, "There's corruption going on at X Agency. You need to look into it!" But then they don't provide any details or direction on where to look. A frustrating waste of time. Corruption is not an absolute condition that reporters uncover with their handy Corrupto-Kit. It takes paper trails and documentation and proof of illegal activity.

Here's a fun fact most people probably don't know about what it's like to work at a newspaper.

Sometimes people just call us on the phone to find out the news. It cracks me up. I guess the thinking is, why wait for the paper to come out when you can just call a reporter and get the news?

For example, there's an elderly blind lady who calls the Sun-Star on a regular basis with all manner of news-related questions.