Chris Amico: Journalist

Last night the NewsHour went all-in covering State of the Union. We had on-air analysis, video from the Capitol and coverage on our new blog, and a new app to annotate the speech as it happened.

The Analyzer (I can never think of clever names for my apps; this is what everyone here calls it) is built in Django, with a lot of help from jQuery. From pitch to launch took exactly a week, including a working weekend.

Read more about the project on my blog.

Patchwork Nation is a project covering complicated national issues from a local perspective with a lot of data to back it up. It’s a way to talk about tough subjects–politics, the economy, race, religion, culture–in a human way. It’s also a set of tools to find stories in data that might otherwise be missed.

Production notes:

This was my first major project for the NewsHour. I built the Django application that feeds data into the map and controls the county and community type pages.

The Flash map was built by an outside vendor, and I created hooks to manage it via Django’s admin interface. The database stores close to a half-million individual statistics covering population, ethnicity, religion and culture.

Blogs are imported from a handful of sources and platforms, including the Christian Science Monitor (WordPress MU), community bloggers (Blogger) and the NewsHour.

16-year couple marry less than a month before Proposition 8 hits the ballot, as many same-sex couples are now doing (slide show)

HAYWARD — With quiet vows and an eye toward November’s Proposition 8 referendum, Stephanie Sue Spencer and the Rev. Arlene Nehring made their 16-year union a legal California marriage in Hayward’s Eden United Church of Christ, where Nehring presides as pastor.

This “much-awaited day” wasn’t quite the wedding they’d hoped for, but with voters going to the polls in a month in an election that could make their union unconstitutional, the couple felt it was better now than never.

“People are hedging their bets,” said Todd Bove, a member of the church who married his partner of 10 years just a month ago. Read the rest of this entry »

LITTLEROCK — Lancaster Mayor Henry Hearns apologized to the Antelope Valley and the Lancaster City Council on Wednesday for allowing a convicted child molester to help plan a youth sports camp at Jackie Robinson Park.

The camp is a church event sponsored by the Living Stone Cathedral of Worship, where Hearns serves as bishop.

Maurice Wyre will no longer work with the camp, which ends Friday, Hearns said at a press conference at the park. He was responding to an article published in Sunday’s Valley Press disclosing Wyre’s role in the camp. While Hearns spoke, about 50 children inside the park’s gym listened to a former Olympic athlete instruct them to work hard, persevere and live a balanced life. Read the rest of this entry »

LITTLEROCK — A convicted child molester listed on the Megan’s Law sex-offender registry is helping plan a youth sports camp at Jackie Robinson Park for the Living Stone Cathedral of Worship, with the support of the church’s leader, Bishop Henry Hearns, the mayor of Lancaster.

Maurice Wyre is listed on the registry for continuous sexual abuse of a child.

He underwent 90 days of psychiatric evaluation after pleading no contest to molestation — a lesser charge — in 1995 and served five years’ probation, which would have ended in 2000.

The 42-year-old former athlete and scion of a locally renowned sports family will not coach or be a counselor at the camp, which starts Monday and runs for a week, according to Hearns. The mayor and clergyman said he is aware of Wyre’s criminal record but that he is unwilling to cast the man out. Read the rest of this entry »

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The day after losing her seat on the Palmdale School Board, Shawny Barcelona was back at work, running her salon, trying not to let the loss get to her.

She was frustrated but hoped to get back on the board when another seat opens up. She says she’ll at least stay active.

“I ran a good, positive campaign, and I’m very happy with that,” she said. “I think everyone else is more sad than me.”

Barcelona lost her seat to newcomer Jeff Ferrin, a vice principal at William J. “Pete” Knight High School. Both had the backing of Valley Republicans, and Ferrin had state Senator George Runner, R-Lancaster, behind him. Republicans also endorsed incumbent Sheldon Epstein.

Ferrin, Epstein and Sandy Corrales, the current board president, all of whom won seats in Tuesday’s election, were on the slate of candidates endorsed by the California Teachers Association. Barcelona drew the union’s wrath for supporting Governor Arnold Schwarzennegger, whose propositions the union adamantly opposed. She came in fourth, finishing 466 votes behind Ferrin.

The big winner in this election, locally and at the state level, was the California Teachers Association. Read the rest of this entry »

PALMDALE — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Monday night fund-raising dinner put at least two Palmdale School District trustees in the awkward position of supporting the governor but opposing a pillar of his “Year of Reform.”

At the same time, two other trustees from that district were marching in protest outside the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds. Read the rest of this entry »