Regional pasty to be Arnold's humble pie


Michigan.gov photo

I wrote a fun, little story the other day about a pasty being shipped to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to fulfill a little bet between him and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. The above photo shows Schwarzenegger fulfilling the bet, but you can read my original story here.

Latest photography


Ryan Olson/Daily Mining Gazette
Smoke from the burning Gundlach Champion building casts a shadow over the Houghton waterfront on April 24. The smoke, visible from miles away, drew many on-lookers to the Portage Lake Shipping Canal to see firefighters battle the fire.

Ryan Olson/Daily Mining Gazette

Firefighters atop the City of Houghton Volunteer Fire Department's ladder truck spray a jet of water into the flames that engulfed the Gundlach Champion building on the Houghton waterfront April 24. Four departments worked for nine hours to extinguish the blaze, which gutted the 100-year-old building.

My long-planned update for this Web site is moving forward. I have a tentative design in place, and I'm starting to work on graphics. In the meantime, I wanted to put these photos up because I'm happy with my effort and the photos received some praise when they published.

On the morning of April 24, I was heading in to WMTU to do my morning radio show. As I moved across the bridge, I realized that I wasn't going to get to my show on time.

What looked like an early dawn cloud from a distance was actually the Herman Gundlach building ablaze. I called the radio station to let them know I was going to be late because of work. I hit the Gazette (which was a block from the fire).

As I'm about to leave work for the fire, my co-worker Garrett Nesse pops up. We decided to divide the labor -- Garrett would write the story and I would shoot photos until a photographer could be contacte.

Given that I only had to shoot photos, I had time to work on shooting and getting the best photos. For the first time, I used up an entire card of memory for a story (about 64 photos). I really worked to capture the scene up close.

I moved across the bridge to the Quincy smelter site because I wanted to capture the fire from a different angle. I wasn't certain that these photos would be used because typically the newspaper is focused on the action.

Ultimately the long shot of the fire casting a smoky cloud over the area was the shot that was used out of the hundreds of photos that were submitted.

Gazette staffers perform well in Michigan AP awards

Reporters and a photographer from The Daily Mining Gazette performed well in several categories in the Michigan AP Editorial Association awards announced Thursday. Competing in Division I with other newspapers having circulations up to 15,000, the Gazette won five shield-shaped plaques including four 1st place finishes, according to The Associated Press.

Former sports writer Kevin Colbert and I won first place in sports enterprise reporting. Our series of stories covered the death and resurrection of the Michigan Tech University football team in March 2003.

I'm very excited to win a first-place award to recognize all the effort Kevin and I put into the series. There was a lot of research combined with breaking news pressures in those 15 days last March.

This marks my first "number one" win in the AP awards. During the past three years, I've won a third-place and a second-place shield. By the way, all the award-winning stories will shortly be posted on rtomedia.com.

Other Gazette staffers received the following kudos:
-- Former staff writer Zac Anderson won first place in enterprise reporting for The Final Bell looking at the final days of a small, rural high school.
-- The paper's sports staff earned first place mention in sustained coverage of a single sports event for covering the Professional Walleye Trail championship. Writers included Kevin Colbert, Jim Junttila, Garrett Neese and Erik Johns.
-- Former Chief Photographer Michele Jokinen's photo of a fire in Ripley won first place for news picture.
-- Anderson and Neese received a third-place award in sustained coverage of a single news event for their series on the "school funding crisis."

While the Gazette didn't win the most awards in our division -- that honor goes to the Petoskey News-Review and their eight plaques -- we did win the most first-place mentions. The Luddington Daily News and the Morning Sun in Mount Pleasant won three apiece.

The Gazette's sister papers in Iron Mountain and Alpena each picked up two awards. The sweepstakes winners in newswriting will be announced next week.

The awards will be presented at the annual banquet May 8 at the Lansing Sheraton. Of course, due to the distance between Houghton and Lansing, Gazette staffers don't frequently attend. Instead, Gazette faithful flock to the paper's annual Christmas party where the awards are handed out like tasty holiday treats.

Startling news today at Michigan Technological University as President Curt Tompkins announces plans to step aside. The news certainly caught me and a lot of other people by surprise.

It certainly reminded me of a year ago when the bombshell was dropped about the football team being cut. I think Shakespeare wrote something about being aware of the ides of March ...

The new professional home of my Web site is coming. My personal 'blog has moved to www.rtomedia.com/ryan

The top image is just a concept -- none of the links work yet. I'm working on the overall design concept. It means the site remains very much under construction.

Any ideas? Send me an e-mail to ryan (at) rtomedia.com.