Rubina's Openers At The New York Times

Interesting things have happened since my last post, many of them to do with daughter Rubina. First, she had knee surgery in mid-August and can now largely manage without crutches. More happily she started work as a graphics editor on contract basis at The New York Times on September 4th.

A couple of days earlier she moved into a shared Manhattan apartment in the hip (as I now know) East Village side. It's a 5th floor walk-up so it was pretty brave of her opting for it after the knee surgery, but she managed fine and it's no longer an issue. Helping her move into that (unfurnished) apartment turned out to be easier than I thought. The biggest challenge in Manhattan seems to be to secure a suitable apartment - it's almost like applying for a job, with loads of paperwork. She has two nice room-mates, each having a decent bedroom and good common spaces, so that's worked out well.

But back to the NY Times: as a graphics editor Rubina is a reporter who plans and very often herself makes the pictures (other than photographs) that accompany news stories. It is interesting work and rounds out her journalism experience. And a picture is better than a thousand words..... They didn't waste time utilizing her. In the two weeks since she started Rubina has already had four pieces of her work appear in both the print as well as the online editions.

Here are links to three of her works (the fourth appeared in the September 18 print edition on page A24 but we can't find the URL. It compares and contrasts Hillary Clinton's healthcare plan with that of John Edwards and Barack Obama - so it's useful and interesting, even more so to me.):

- Her first graphic in the paper on September 5 which describes the dichotomy (and commonalities) on Iraq assessment between the two wings of the Bush Administration. It appeared in gray in the newspaper and orange online. It's more text-heavy than her other ones will be... You can see it by clicking "multimedia" after first clicking here.

- Her first credited graphic published on September 9th in Sunday Business. It's on Second Life. Pretty simple, but it involved some reporting because she had to find all the items, take pictures (screen shots), edit them and do some other research. Click on "multimedia" to see "A Luxurious Second Life" but after first clicking and getting to the article here.

- A census snapshot capturing some interesting features of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut states that appeared on September 18th.

In sum Rubina is having a good time, being productive, gaining experience and making us happy in the process. By the way, I'm writing this from Paris, two days before Anita and I return to the US. Enjoyable city with nice people who are more polite to English-only speakers than I'd been led to expect.