Tara Chozet

I took a trip on Saturday to the designated Local Assistance Center at the East Anaheim Gymnasium for the Orange County fires in Anaheim. A charred scent still permeated the air, and patches of grass around the Community Center near the Gymnasium were blackened from the flames.

Admittedly, most of the people who needed help after the fires had already sought assistance, therefore when I arrived on Saturday, the center was mostly empty but for the several dozen volunteers present.  A volunteer firefighter named Neil gave me a tour of the relief center.

The crooning sounds of country music blare out of the black Dodge Charger's speakers as Ruben Zabala turns the engine.  The car's rumbling mixes with the strains of a guitar.  This is where Zabala, a Montebello Police Department Corporal, spends most of his days.  He calls it his office, and it is easy to see why - a small computer sits in the center console area of the car, paperwork and traffic ticket booklets line the dashboard, and the morning's cup of coffee sits in the cup holder.  Zabala's office is not like most, however.  Not many offices also have a 12-gauge shotgun, M-16 rifle, and metal cage framing them.

The first two presidential debates have now been dissected every which way in the American media.  As I mentioned in a previous blog, the British media have had a unique perspective on the presidential campaigns, and that made me wonder about other perspectives in the United States that are both international and American.  Latinos comprise the largest minority population in the United States and could very well be a determining factor in swing states with large Latino populations such as Florida.  Some believe that Latinos have yet to reach their potential in terms of dictating the direction of an election.

When I was in the midst of looking for apartments in the Los Angeles area prior to moving from San Francisco, a friend of mine suggested I look in Echo Park. I hadn't really considered the possibility at first, because when I thought of the neighborhood, two things came to mind - gang members throwing signs and saying "echo parque", and an elderly man pushing a shopping cart through the streets, selling champurrado (Mexican hot drink).  These impressions are from the films Mi Vida Loca and Quinceanera, respectively.  As much as these images may be a part of the area past or present, I have realized that the neighborhood is so much more than this. At the center of it all is Echo Park Lake.

This year's presidential race has a feeling of momentousness to it.  It has been quite an exciting election year, with each side using every strategy, ploy, and asset at their disposal.  The many difficulties the country is facing are making American's pay attention to the race, and the debate was no exception.  As much media coverage as there was, every major news site that I went to had basically the same post-debate analysis.  I was even surprised that Fox News' coverage was relatively similar to that of MSNBC, CNN, and NYTimes.com, with a few usual exceptions noted (I'm looking at you, Bill O'Reilly).

With the advent of the internet, more and more information is being put out for the world to see.  As such, much of this information is also being called news, whether is it written by a professional journalist or not.  It would appear that this influx of new journalism has created a need for quality control.  In come reader tools such as SpinSpotter and NewsTrust