Upcoming Post Teaser: updates & traces

I have to admit there’s been some unanticipated delays (somehow summer flu is always more surprising than the winter version) but as well as working on the news page project, I’ve been prepping background content and starting new reporting projects. So bear with me – there’s a lot in the works. Look for more short updates about interviews, records requests and other process work as stories get off the ground in the next weeks. Of course, this wouldn’t be a teaser post without a taste of what’s coming:

Not as planned

Well. Last Thursday, things did not go as planned

Well, unless the plan was to spend 3 hours in the desert trying to reach my source and hoping he was just running late (he wasn’t), things did not go as planned. The appointment had been to find out about an active search for a 21-year-old man who disappeared approximately 7 weeks ago. I’d spoken to the man leading that day’s trip and tracked down the phone number of the missing man’s father, who’d come to Tucson from Tennessee in hopes of finding answers, the original tip coming from a mass email:

“Could you please run on the [humanitarian organization] site a notice that there is a father here from [a southern state] who has been looking for his 21 yo son left by his group 5 weeks ago and please call and take him out if people have time?…He has been here in Tucson for five weeks, living on the street and searching daily…He’s been sent a map of where to look but it’s a very bad map from the person who was with his son and was apprehended and deported. The map maker would like to be paid for a better map……..BTW, he’s already checked the morgue (negative) and I will check hospitals today.”

MFM Blog Update: Time for Changes

If things go as currently planned, when this scheduled update posts I will be in the desert for more information on a story I have been following since last week. And then writing it up for to post, and then doing the originally planned update on Eddie’s search for his brother-in-law, Andy. It’s the latest in a series of big changes that are happening in my schedule and therefore will affect the blog a bit. My day to day schedule has changed a great deal as of June 1st, including switching from a nightshift back to daylight (or at least, trying to – I’ve been very confused about time since Friday and apparently getting back to daylight will take a little time!). What that means for the blog: a little upheaval in the short term as the blog switches to this new schedule too, but ultimately more regularity and reliability as I can better report and report back here.

News page added

I’ve just added a news page that’s a partial listing of articles, photos and videos about border issues and forensics. A database version that will allow submissions through a form and coding for media type and topics is tentatively being planned and built. Until then, submissions through comments or directly contacting me are more than welcome.