While I planned a proper launch of the site, if ever there were a need to tell the stories of real people, the crisis in Haiti and the global response it has generated has predicated a hastened launch. (My new business cards aren’t even made.)

Behind every news story are the people who are affected.  We’ve become accustomed to their voices reduced to short sound bytes. I make no criticism of this, because as a news reporter I know it’s a result of the limitations of the 90-seconds or less given to tell a local news story.

It’s the struggle many reporters who feature people contend with.

REEL NEWS REAL PEOPLE  (RNRP) is not impeded by a daily deadline. There’s no TV schedule time slot to dictate the length of a story. So, it is my mission to spotlight the people whose stories are the news, the events in their lives that are the content that make us take notice. Where the 90-second story leaves off, RNRP keeps going, providing content with context.

As the focus of mainstream media coverage on Haiti has been pervasive, and no doubt compelling, there are however, as many stories on Haiti and the disaster as there are Haitians and Americans who survived it, perished in it and are helping to rescue those from it. And, who have more to share than mainstream media coverage can provide.

I spent a day in the Repatriation Center at Miami International Airport where all American passport holders coming in from Haiti first had to go for processing before they were released, to resume their lives in America. I expected cold, tungsten florescent bulbs lighting a room filled with callous government workers “just doing their job” of taking names, numbers and finger prints, the details that make tracking people possible. I was pleasantly surprised, relieved even, that the processing center was set up in the Consular Lounge, usually reserved for business-class travelers.  The government employees were made up of social workers with the Department of Children and Families –most volunteering their time after their normal working hours– along with military officers acting as liaisons between the activities on the ground in Haiti and those in the room.

What I found was a room filled with amiable  Red Cross workers and patient DCF staff sitting and serving beside volunteer translators and the Haitian-Americans who had finally made their way stateside. (Here, I carefully make the distinction, because the U.S. State Dept. policy thus far is to admit only those who are citizens of the United States, and the far fewer number of Haitians given visas to enter with family members who are citizens.  This, however, hasn’t been a consistent procedure, as I can say, some Haitians close to my family members were not permitted back into the United States within the first week of the crisis, splitting up groups and families between those with U.S. passports and those with residency visas. Those left behind have been left to fend for themselves, finding their own means to make it to the Dominican Republic and there purchasing airline tickets to the United States.)

This is a story close to my heart because my family is from Haiti. Born in the United States, the first in the family on both my parent’s sides, I am both Haitian and Trinidadian (from where my father hails).  My earliest memories in life are, however of Haiti, as I spent nearly a year of my early childhood living with my great aunts, uncles and cousins in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Delmas. I started kindergarten in the late-’70’s on Long Island speaking only French, and having to learn english. The commitment to keep pursuing the stories on Haiti is both personal and professional. My reporting style has always been such to, “go back and follow up.”

So, as the coverage of a devastated Haiti peters out, it’s my goal to keep the stories coming.

Please share your thoughts on what you hear and see from the people featured on REEL NEWS REAL PEOPLE.

Gratefully,

Stacey

photo: courtesy of Associated Press