Team MJ!

My assignment for today was to join what we called "Team Michael Jackson," or Team MJ for short. Basically, I worked with another reporter and two editors to get a variety of local angles on Michael Jackson's death and write. I decided that I would try to contact people who knew
Michael Jackson as a child, either professionally or personally. My first two contacts were great; Charlie Brum is a Talent Buyer for the Star Plaza in Merrillville, IN and was the Jackson 5's publicist when they performed for 10 days in Maryland; Elanor Johnson went to elementary school with Michael Jackson and knew him before the Jackson 5 even formed. My third contact ended up being so incredibly cool that she deserved her own story, which turned into a feature piece that is going in Sunday's edition.

Mrs. Evelyn LaHaie started off as a possible source of information. One of the reporters at the Times had talked to her in the past for a different story and thought she may have worked with the Jackson 5 when they were first getting started. As I was talking to her, she said that not many people realized that she was the person who gave the Jackson 5 their name. I won't lie, I talked to so many people that day who claimed to have some sort of connection like that to the Jackson family or Michael himself that I almost wrote her off as crazy. Now came my lesson in double-checking facts: Something was nagging at me to check this out. Evelyn said that Michael Jackson made mention of her in his book Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness on pages 16 and 17. I called the library at a local community college and asked them to look up the book for me and asked them if they saw her name on either of those pages. Well, Evelyn was right; Joe Jackson, Michael's father, gives Evelyn LaHaie complete credit for giving the group their name. I ran to my editor and explained my most recent find. She passed that on to the managing editor and executive editor in their daily afternoon meeting and they thought that this was such a great find that they thought I should talk to her some more and write up a feature piece on her. It turns out that Evelyn has all sorts of unique memorabilia from when she booked the band to play for her modeling school's fashion show, including posters, ads, pictures and even their audition form. The article is set to come out this Sunday.

I was kind of hoping that my editors would have kept me on the Jada case, but there wasn't enough breaking news today for me to help with today. I was still able to follow what the reporter on the case found today, and it all took a gruesome turn for the worse. After autopsy reports came in this morning, Jada's babysitter and her boyfriend werem charged with the murder of Jada Justice. The rest of the details are extremely unsettling, so if you would like more information about what happened, visit http://www.nwi.com/articles/2009/06/26/updates/breaking_news/doc4a452d88851ca193114268.txt.

I have the next two days off to take a break and recouperate from the crazy first week I had at my internship. I'm so glad that I decided to do this, and I'm extremely glad that I am with the Times. They have been wonderful about letting me tag along and cover some great stories. :-) I'll be back in the office on Monday to learn how to design some pages.