#preschool teacher carlos

[221bsunsettowers]

Made by me for my Found Forever on a Field Trip series, where Carlos is a preschool teacher and TK is a firefighter, and they first meet when Carlos takes his students on a field trip.

Found Forever on a Field Trip series

#found forever on a field trip #tk #carlos #tarlos #9-1-1 lone star #9 1 1 lone star #fanfic #fanfiction #au #au series #preschool teacher carlos #firefighter tk #tk strand #carlos reyes #tk x carlos #tk/carlos

[landoom]

F1 FANFICS REC LIST - Kid Fic (no Mpreg)

(Am I Ready) To Be Loved? (25098 words) by Roger_That_Sarge Rating: General Audiences Relationships: Lando Norris/Daniel Ricciardo Summary: Daniel thinks his new teammate hates him, but what he doesn't realise is that Lando has a reason for never staying late at the facorty or going for drinks with him. He just never expected that reason to be a tiny, sassy, three year old daughter who could light up a room. Lando thinks it hilarious that Daniel believed he hated him, but when he starts to spend more time with him, he wonders if he's ready to let someone else into his and his daughters life after all this time.

oOoOoOo

Where you go, I go (5457 words) by landoscar Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationships: Lando Norris/Oscar Piastri Summary: “Talia, sweetheart, you’ve got to come with me to work, okay?” Lando’s voice held a gentle tone as he reached up, sweeping her hair away from her face. “Why I go to daddy’s work?” Talia mumbled, her words slightly hindered by the bright pink dummy in her mouth. “Because daddy has to work! Auntie Ria can’t play with you today, so we’re going to go play at work!” Lando gave her a radiant smile, to which she returned instantly. “Take your dummy out, sweetie.” Talia popped the dummy out of her mouth with enthusiasm. “Is papa racing?” Her eyes lit up with joy. “I wanna watch papa race!” OR In which, Lando and Oscar are the fathers to a little girl named Talia Piastri-Norris.

oOoOoOo

love you with the lights on (28507 words) by nyoomfruits Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationships: Lando Norris/Oscar Piastri Summary: “I texted him,” Lando says. “He can’t have forgotten about me, I texted him, and he never texted back.” Max shrugs. “Maybe he didn’t know what to say. After all, how do you tell your fuck buddy that you’ve accidentally gone out and acquired a baby?”

oOoOoOo

I feel everything tonight with you (6358 words) by sadcornyfuck Rating: Explicit Relationships: Lando Norris/Carlos Sainz Jr Summary: “So, she says something about a Spanish Stallion. You would like to ride one, yes?” ~ Carlos and Lando meet in a supermarket, Lando's kid is there to be the only wingman he'll ever need.

oOoOoOo

summer sun after the rain (11769 words) by gentleau Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationships: Daniel Ricciardo/Max Verstappen Summary: “Papà? Is Max your friend?” “He used to be.”

oOoOoOo

you and me till the end of time (28293 words) by alltimecharlo Rating: General Audiences Relationships: Alexander Albon/George Russell Summary: The one where George has a four-year-old daughter and Alex is her preschool teacher.

oOoOoOo

you'll be alright (19269 words) by nyoomfruits Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationships: Charles Leclerc/Max Verstappen Summary: Charles is not an idiot. He knows there’s a part of him that has been at least a little bit in love with Max for as long as they’ve known each other. But he’s always been able to shove it down. Burying it under rivalries and competitiveness until it was getting hard to differentiate between love and hate. And that had worked, for a really long time. And then Max had to go and barge into his life and be really fucking cute with his baby.

oOoOoOo

don’t want you to be a stranger ( i just wanna call you my own. ) (9007 words) by leclerclovebot Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationships: Lando Norris/Carlos Sainz Jr Summary: “I don’t know why I’m panicking,” Lando says, throwing his hands up into the air. Carlos just laughs, tossing his head back onto the couch. He’s tan—well, tanner than usual. The time spent in the Austin and Maranello sun has done him well…Not that Lando normally thinks about Carlos’ tan level.  “I do not know why either. We are going to be fine, why would they say anything bad about Finch?”  And Carlos has a point.  Finch is a golden child. He is clingy and he is attentive. He never strays five feet from Lando unless he has to, like at school or when he’s sleeping.  or, the five times that carlos and lando co-parented on accident, and the one time they finally realized.

#f1 #formula 1 #f1 rpf #f1 fanfic #f1 rpf fic #formula 1 rpf #formula 1 fanfic #fic rec #rec list #carlando #landoscar #dando #lestappen #maxiel #galex #george russell #alex albon #max verstappen #oscar piastri #lando norris #daniel ricciardo #charles leclerc #carlos sainz #kid fic

[descendantofthesparrow]

Brutally honest thoughts on each character?

...*Each* character???? bruh thats so many, okay ill keep this short cuz im waiting for a haircut rn

well start with the vks cuz thats easy

Mal-started off strong and then just became...THE WORST, love hate relationship for her. shes my art block fix but also i hate her

Jay-i dont have strong opinions on him, he actually never stuck out to me other than 'obligatory jock dude of the friend group.' i wish i liked him more but im more attached to his fandom self over canon Jay

Evie-got boring after D1, i wish they let her keep her chemistry stuff, love her vibe but shes kinda boring to me. SHOULD'VE BEEN THE MC OVER MAL!!

Carlos- lots of lost potential with his tech stuff from the first book and movie. easily could've been an engineer or inventor but they just made him an animal lover and i got bored of that real quick.

Uma-my queen, my idol, can do no wrong i love her so much i WILL kill for her.

Harry-i love his dumbass so much YALL DONY EVEN KNOW I WANNA BITE HIM SO BAD

Gil-one of the few characters i felt actually...grew up? idk but hes one of the few characters were it actually feels like time passed for.

Dizzy-oooooooh honey, honey honey, sunshine baby, please, put the glue gun down.

Celia- they should've gone with her trailer persona. Her outfits are so bad and i wish she got better writing and designs, so much lost potential, also she should've been Jays pick.

Smee twins- why the fuck are they even here they had one line and no significance. also they should've had a Harry scene.

Aks

Ben-puppy boy, deserved to have doberman energy. got turned into a doormat by the writers and is unfairly hated.

Audrey-bitch queen, shes not a nice person and thats okay~ girlboss.

Chad- should've been the D3 villan they had that all set up in D2 with his weird ass attitude over Ben getting kidnapped on the isle.

Doug -....honestly gives me the ick, especially in D3, i HATE the long hair his actor had/has. gold is NOT his color and neither is pastel purple or green. he looked good in D1 but ICK for 2 and 3.

Jane- bby gurl, blue bird sweetheart. yeah she did some fucked up shit in D1 but she was an insecure 14 year old girl who got manipulated by Mal and other aks!!!

Lonnie- deserved so much better, shes Chinese why is she getting Japanese style stuff?!?! her plot in D2 didnt even do anything it just happened and no one cared and Jay just shoved his problems of girls playing roar onto her.

Beast- *inhale* i wanna kick his ass, and i could, lemme at him. how dare he force an entire kingdom on Ben at 16 when he didnt become king when he was 28(when he married Belle)

Belle- they took away her backbone, shes not Disney princess book worm and independent Belle. she just, lost the spark

FG- they turned her into a preschool teacher, GIVE ME MY OL COOKY FAIRY LADY BACK

Leah- *seething rage*

vk parents

Maleficent- fuckin love her, shes such a manipulative bitch and feels like a gone crazy version of a Maleficent made for kids. def not the mistress of all Evil but i love her nonetheless

EQ- shouldve been the head villain, SHE WAS THE FIRST DISNEY VILLAIN CMON! def not the same character from the animated movie but shes dramatic and sassy and i adore her.

Jafar- haha funny characature~ i wish he was more menacing like he had been. Jafar is not one of my fav villains so descendants jafar didnt exactly translate for me well.

Cruella- yeah they nailed her, no complaints about her. good design, good dialogue, good acting.

Hades- LEMME KICK HIS DEAD BEAT ASS, fucking 'daddy issues made you stronger' my butt. i hate his hair and honestly he doesnt fit the washed up punk design, he didnt deserve the speech at the end and didnt deserve to be forgiven by Mal.

Ursula- we only saw her tentacle and one line but she seemed spot on so yeah

Lady Tremaine- why the fuck was she nice in D3??? bitch is the EVIL stepmother.

Smee- spot on, i have words for his sons designs becuaee hes old not naturally white haired but hes chill, makes sense hed be a good parent, he never felt evil to me, just compliant

Facilier- such a vibe, his actor got him spot on, would've changed up his suit design but hes chill and i can see him being a family man(ignoring wicked world).

#disney descendants

[dumbf1sketches]

Can I show you something both very cute and deeply unsettling

I'm a preschool teacher, I was off sick all last week. On Monday, I was gifted a massive stack of drawings. Here's Lambo Norris 🥹 seemingly standing over the bodies of Carlos and McLaren. (We label the contents of children's drawings for a whole bunch of developmental reasons. My coworkers did the best they could)

#I don't know what to tag this lmao #other peoples art #? #tag yourself im carlos' third leg (?) #lando norris #carlos sainz

[baseball-haven]

A lil Cortuve something I cooked up for @thefantasticfivestros cause their blog is *chef’s kiss*. It’s part of an AU I started that involves the mlb teams as kids and they’re in preschool. Each team is its own classroom and they are all roughly the same age just to keep things simple and the Classrooms are separated by age groups(3,4, and 5 years old). The Astros are all 4 and the Yankees are 5. The rest of the teams, I’ll get to and the classes are a mix of old and new players

“‘tuve, ‘tuve!!! Over here!!” Carlos shouted and waved his hand from where he was sitting on the alphabet rug with Lance,Justin,Yurriel,George and Alex. Jose grinned a toothy smile and hung his backpack in his cubbyhole before making his way to his friends and plops down beside them.

“Mr. L said you were sick, but do you feel better now?” Lance asked and rested a small hand on Jose’s forehead. He nodded and eyed the block tower in front of them. “Breggy said he was gonna build the best block castle in school and beat Mr.C’s class.” Carlos explained as Alex preened at the compliments. “Tony said…uhmmm….he said that he and Aaron are the best block tower builders in school, which is not true cause we’re the best.”

Mr. Luhnow was sitting at his desk and smiled warmly before standing and headed over to his ‘core 7’ and knelt down. “Good morning Jose. How are you feeling?” The boy held a thumbs up before whispering to Carlos in rapid Spanish, who nodded and turned to their teacher. “He said he’s still sniffly but doing good and his sick note is in his backpack.”

Jose had moved from Venezuela only a few years ago, so English was still a struggle for him, thus having Carlos translate for him,which the taller boy was more than happy to do. The shorter boy stood and went to his backpack before pulling out a rumpled piece of paper and handed it over.

“Thank you,Jose. Now it’s time to put the blocks away so we can start learning cause we’re doing something fun today.” Alex and Lance mumbled as they tore down the tower and the seven took their seats with the other kids and Mr. L started the lesson.

——-

During recess, Jose and Carlos were hitting rocks with a stick in the field when they were approached by Aaron and the rest of his class. “What do you want,stinky?” Carlos mumbled and immediately bundled Jose close to him.

“Name calling? That’s not very nice, Correa.” Anthony snipped as Aaron crossed his arms. “We wanna play catch and you’re in the way.” he said primly as Carlos scowled. “No. We were here first. Go kick a ball or something.” he retorted as Jose glowered from where he was smothered in the taller’s arms.

“Mr. Cashman said the field is for everyone and it’s our turn now cause you’ve been playing on it for a long time.” Harrison piped up as Carlos sent one more heated glare in their direction before kicking a pile of dirt in their direction and starts to head off the field, murmuring soothing words in Spanish. “I don’t want you to get in trouble again. You couldn’t play on the playground for two days.” he said softly as Carlos stopped and turned to face his best friend. “They obviously started it, and you know it ‘tuve. I don’t get their issue with us.” he mumbled back as he managed to tackle Justin near the slide with a cackle and the two boys started to wrestle.

(Pt.2 coming soon)

#houston astros #baseball fandom #astros baseball #preschool au #carlos correa #josé altuve #alex bregman #justin verlander #lance mcullers jr #aaron judge #anthony rizzo #new york yankees #;my writing

[criminol]

The Murder of Elisa Izquierdo

Elisa Izquierdo was a 6-year-old Puerto Rican/ Cuban- American girl. she was born in Brooklyn, New York.

When Elisa was born her mother was addicted to crack cocaine and full custody was awarded to her father. Elisa's father was a doting dad who rose to the challenge, taking parenting classes and celebrating Elisa's birthdays happily with her. He would refer to Elisa as his 'princess.'

The year Elisa began preschool, Elisa's mother, Awilda, was described as successfully beating her addiction and marrying a maintenance worker. Carlos Lopez. In November 1991, Awilda got the rights to unsupervised visits with Elisa. Reportedly during these visits, Elisa would be beaten and neglected by her mother and stepfather. Both Elisa's father and her teachers noted Elisa had bruising and signs of mistreatment when she returned from these visits. She said her mother had hit her repeatedly and that she did not wish to see her mum again. In the lead up to Elisa's visits with her mother, Elisa would wet the bed and have frequent nightmares, she would also vomit upon her return from these trips. Elisa's father reported this abuse to the authorities and applied in 1992 for Awilda's visitation rights with Elisa to stop however the courts ruled the visitations could continue but warned Awilda not to hit her daughter.

In 1993, Elisa's father made plans to relocate with Elisa to Cuba, he bought airline tickets for both of them for May 1994. The story took a tragic turn when Elisa's father was admitted to the hospital with respiratory complications and was diagnosed with lung cancer. On the very day he booked the plane tickets for he died. Upon hearing about his death, Elisa's teachers contacted a court judge expressing concerns about Elisa's care if her mother was to gain full custody.

Awilda applied for full, permanent custody of Elisa. Elisa's paternal aunt attempted to challenge this custody and asked for custody of Elisa herself but was denied. Awilda's application for full custody of Elisa was granted in September 1994.

When Awilda was given full custody she changed Elisa's school to a public school. Elisa was observed as withdrawn, disturbed and uncommunicative. In March 1995, an anonymous letter was sent to Child Welfare Authorities informing them that Awilda had been cutting off Elisa's hair and locking her in a dark room. Six days later, Elisa was admitted to hospital with a fractured shoulder that had not been treated for 3 days. Elisa's school continued to report concerns but were told their worries were 'not reportable' due to lack of evidence. Awilda eventually fully withdrew Elisa from school.

Elisa was repeatedly locked in her bedroom and not allowed to talk to others. Neighbours reported hearing the young girl pleading with her mother not to be beaten and crying late into the night. She was sexually violated, forced to eat faeces and burned among other horrific abuses.

On 15th November, Elisa is thought to have died after being thrown against a wall days earlier. The police were called by a concerned neighbour and Awilda and Elisa's step-father were both taken into custody. An autopsy revealed a catalogue of traumatic and horrific injuries including broken fingers, damage to organs, deep welts and burns and evidence of sexual assault. The injuries had been sustained over a prolonged period.

Awilda Lopez pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was offered a deal in which she would become eligible for parole after serving 15 years in prison. Carlos Lopez, Elisa's stepfather, was sentenced to one-and-a-half to three years in prison. Elisa's siblings were removed from the family home and raised in separate foster homes, all five suffered from severe psychological trauma due to the extreme violence they had been forced to witness.

The case was described by New York City authorities as to the 'worst case of child abuse they had ever seen.

#murder #homicide #childkiller #child killer #awilda #awildalopez #lopez #carlos lopez #carloslopez #crime #true crime

[clovermotors]

messy drabble (carlando)

too short for ao3 too long to stay in drafts

Tranquility is a beautiful thing, holding together the very essence of his love. It's serenity, a calm of water sat still in a bowl, maybe. The apartment is unusually quiet, but he sees Lando asleep on the bed, and he understands.

Sometimes, Carlos lets his mind wander. He explores all the different ways they've become what they are, he prides himself on it, loves and loves how in moments like these, so far away from the world, he sees this Lando, gentle, relaxed, comfortable. Static fills his brain, and he's up working away at his computer still, but Lando keeps him grounded.

Maybe love is this- how the appearance of a loved one can fill a person's heart to the brim, how ruthless it is in how deep it sinks, how fiery it is in the passion that scorches him when he gets too close. It's weird again, really, how close Lando is to perfection, how his flaws are the very things that annoy others and make him endearing.

Carlos thinks Lando has made him more gentle, in perfect alignment with his own field of work. When he cleans Lando up after a shoot, wiping away makeup from his face when he's too lazy to do it himself, Carlos' touch is feather-light, as if he's touching a mimosa. One touch too close and it folds into itself, closes.

Being a teacher to preschoolers is not easy at all- not one bit- and he has to remind himself to keep calm and to not lose his cool sometimes. Lando's massages at the end of the day are the things that keep him pumping, keep him moving.

Even as he closes the lesson plan for the week- a reminder of the activities he has to carry out- he thinks of the many lessons Lando has taught him. Some of them are as insignificant as learning how to bake scones, and yet, Carlos feels like he's matured so much more through the things Lando teaches him every day.

He slips quietly into the bed after shutting down his laptop. The sheets ruffle, and Lando rolls over to make a space for Carlos. A lone arm lands on his chest and Carlos holds it, rubbing his thumb in circles over delicate skin.

"Go to sleep," Lando mumbles, barely opening his eyes. He faces Carlos nevertheless, giving a sleepy, halfhearted smile.

It's things like this that keep his heart pumping, keep his mind fuzzy with white noise whirring in his head, resonating about everything and anything that is love.

In the quiet state of the night, where even the air is reverent in the presence of his love, and the whirring of the fan, peace comes naturally to Carlos. He doesn't choose it however, for this peace is the gift that comes with loving Lando.

#clover wrote something

[what-if-nct]

Hello love 💕

I wanted to hop on the ship train so here's some info about me:

Detroit-born, Atlanta-raised African American bisexual/omnisexual female who just turned 25 (Dec. 6, 1996):

Sun - Saggytitties

Moon - Scorpio

Rising - Virgo

Venus - Scorpio

Mars - Virgo

I'm built thicker than a snicker, heavy like a Chevy, but I am considered a bottom heavy hourglass - most of my weight shows in my hips and thighs (Sag things). I am building the confidence to dress more like Ayesha Curry and Fran Drescher so look out 2022!

Personality wise, I have ambivert tendencies but I'm a heavy introvert when I get too overwhelmed. I saw where someone said about being a hopeless romantics but lacking the ability to communicate my feelings through words so I too use a LOT of skinship. My other love languages are probably acts of service and words of affirmation. Heavy memer. I have WAY too many, but they are all organized in my gallery for specific usage.

I have always been called a caring person, and my dream profession is anything in the medical field, but mostly a pediatric nurse. I also used to work as a preschool teacher and loved every minute of it. I love listening to music and I have no boundaries when it comes to music, so expect to go from Kpop to Ella Fitzgerald to Bring the Horizon to Carlos Santana to Tyler the Creator. Reading, writing, painting, and singing have also been my true passions, and now cooking and candle making have been thrown into the mix during the whole pandemic.

I was also raised an only child, but I'm slowly developing relationships now with my older half siblings 🙏🏾 I also really, really look forward to the opportunity of being a mom, and, because of some health issues, I have seriously considered fostering and adopting! I would also like one smaller dog (like a Corgi), or maybe a Husky.

I ship you with Johnny

One I think you two would be soooo cute together. Also just from the way you type just sounds like you are so fun. And Johnny is Johnny, king of fun. Also a meme king. Plus Aqua and Sag are so similar and there is no better match then Fire & Air a recipe for nonsense when together. Also he would hype up your outfits when you dress up. And when in Fran Drescher like outfits he would constantly call you Miss Fine emphasis the fine cause Johnny. Even though he is a huge doofus. He is also sweet, caring loving and whenever you feel overwhelmed or anxious he would hold your hand and guide you through it. And he is touchy and I can see him absentmindedly just sliding his hands on you arms and back. But also just greeting you with a butt slap. And I just know he is heavy handed. He would find your caring side and want to being a pediatric nurse so heartwarming and inspiring. And no matter what the outcome is when it comes to having children he would hold your hand and love you during pregnancy and childbirth and get you every craving you want. As well as doing everything he can to adopt with you. And he would just love love you so much.

#i saw Chanyeol when looking for a johnny gif and you'd also be so good with Chanyeol

[doncarlos20-blog]

Contact Address 2038 S Don Carlos, Mesa AZ 85202 USA Phone [phone] Website https://www.bestfriendspreschool.com/

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About US As a parent, you want to know that your child is always in good hands. For times when you can’t be with your little one due to work or other obligations, Best Friends Preschool is "Your Child's Home Away from home". We provide a fun filled social environment for play and personal development with consistent interactions by our caring, attentive and degreed teachers. Visit our Mesa Preschool center or call 480-839-5953 for more information

Additional Detail Hours Monday - Friday 06:00am - 06:00pm

[221bsunsettowers]

Tarlos: Preschool Teacher Carlos/Firefighter TK AU: You Always Say to Me, Say to Me

This is the third part in the Found Forever on a Field Trip series, where Carlos is a preschool teacher and TK is a firefighter.

This can also be read on Ao3

When TK is shot, Carlos stays by his bedside, waiting to get the chance to tell him he loves him.

His students were happily engaged with blending primary colors in shaving cream when Carlos' phone rang.

Carlos startled, muscles tensing. His phone was always set on Do Not Disturb when he was teaching, but he had it so calls from certain numbers would get through-TK and the fire family of the 126. They all knew calls were only for emergencies during the school day. Everything else was texts, group chats, things he could read and respond to whenever he he had a spare second (which was far more infrequent than he would have preferred, with his lack of preps and eating lunch with his students).

But this was a phone call.

During the school day.

And that wasn't TK's ringtone.

It was Owen's name flashing across Carlos' screen.

Carlos gestured to his aide, then his phone, and she nodded in understanding. Heart pounding out of his chest, Carlos tried to keep his steps calm as he made it to the hallway, then through the door to the outside side yard of the school. Hitting Accept far harder than he had meant to, Carlos gasped out, "TK?"

"Carlos, I need you to try to stay calm-" Owen began, but Carlos immediately cut him off.

"What happened to TK?" Carlos could feel the tears already gathering in his eyes before Owen even responded.

"He was shot, Carlos. The doctors don't know if he'll wake up." Owen's words were choked and raw.

Barely registering his knees hitting the rug, Carlos' breath caught in his throat as Owen added, "You should get here as soon as you can."

A flurry of activity followed, Carlos explaining to the principal that he needed to take at least a week off, yes he knew all but two days would be unpaid, he was fine with that. He handed over the lesson plans and finished prep to his aide, and before he could even process how it had happened, he was in Grace's car being driven to the hospital.

"I have a prep while my kids are in Gym," Grace assured him, squeezing his hand. "I'll get you there, honey."

"I haven't told him I love him yet," Carlos choked out, tears making it hard to breathe. "I had a plan for next week, a homemade meal, our favorite song playing, but Grace, I don't, I don't-" He gasped out the last words, as if ripped from his throat. "I don't have a plan for this."

"Life doesn't always go as planned, but I truly believe this isn't the end of your story with TK," Grace assured him, blinking back tears of her own. "What you two have, it's already too special to just be done."

"It can't be done," Carlos whispered, looking down at his fidgeting hands, nails picked raw. "How could he even have been shot?" His voice rose as the tears flowed harder. "He's a firefighter! I've had to worry about oxygen depravation, about burning, about being buried under rubble, but this is not something I ever had to think about!"

"This is what we take on, when we love a firefighter," Grace said gently. "You have to decide if your love is worth it."

"He's worth it," Carlos answered instantly. "I just need him to wake up so I can tell him that."

***

Walking into the hospital room felt like moving through fog, slow and difficult and unable to see what came next. TK lay still, so unlike his usual self, all moving hands and bouncing energy, instead hooked up to machines that Carlos knew were enabling TK's fight for survival. Owen was there, holding TK's hand, surrounded by the 126, who all looked up when Carlos entered.

Carlos found himself instantly engulfed in embraces before a chair appeared before him, right next to TK's bedside. Lowering himself into it, he felt tears fill his eyes again as he reached for TK's limp hand and held it tight. "Hey baby," he whispered, raising TK's hand to his lips and kissing each knuckle. "I'm here and I'm not going anywhere, so you better open those eyes of yours." He was so busy taking in TK's closed eyelids that he didn't even register when everyone else left the room.

"Joey decided he could whistle today," Carlos began, "so he just walked around the room saying "Hoo, hoo" at everybody to show off his new skill. It was so cute I didn't have the heart to try to teach him to really whistle." Carlos paused, imagining TK's familar laughter ringing through the room. "And Lucy finally counted to twenty without skipping fifteen. I know you've been rooting for her."

Holding TK's hand in his, Carlos rubbed his other fingers up and down the inside of TK's arm. "Sam dressed up as a firefighter again in Dramatic Play, I swear he's been doing that ever since he met you on the field trip. Then somehow he was running a firefighter restaurant, and while I didn't quite understand all the details, he made a mean pretend pizza."

Carlos lay his head carefully on the mattress, still keeping his grip on TK. "Baby, this isn't how this is supposed to go," he gasped out through his tears. "We're supposed to be at my place, with our cups of whatever healthy tea your dad insisted on sending over, curled up on the couch telling stories of our day, and this...Ty, I just really need you to wake up, okay?"

***

"Do you think the kids would rather make cows or pigs out of paper plates for Farm Week?" Carlos asked TK, who still lay motionless in the bed. Sighing, Carlos ran his hands over his face. "I know I sound crazy, but they say people in comas can hear you, right? And what I need to say to you the most, I need to say when you're awake. So instead we're going to lesson plan, okay? I figure maybe if you can hear my voice, you'll hang on, no, you'll fight to come back."

Burying his face in the pillow, Carlos murmured, "Please just wake up, TK, please." The sound of footsteps rang out from the doorway, and Carlos shot upright, rubbing at his eyes.

"It's just me, Carlos," Paul said reassuringly, resting a hand on Carlos' shoulder. Carlos nodded, and gratefully took the styrofoam cup from Paul's other hand. "Sorry, they wouldn't let me spike the coffee in the cafeteria." Choking out a laugh, Carlos nodded again, then found he couldn't stop, his head jerking up and down of it's own volition, his whole body shaking.

"Ssh, it's okay," Paul said softly, sitting in the chair next to Carlos and pulling him in, letting Carlos cry into his shirt until the shakes subsided. When Carlos fell asleep moments later, exhaustion pulling him under, head next to TK's side, Paul gently took the coffee cup from him and stared at TK's prone form.

"Brother, you need to wake up soon," Paul whispered, patting TK's hand before drawing an extra blanket over Carlos' slumped shoulders. "We miss you, and I don't know how much more of this your man can take."

***

"So my students heard you weren't feeling well, and they all made you cards," Carlos said, voice full of forced cheerfulness as he placed them up amongst all the flowers and other cards decorating TK's hospital room. "Grace just dropped them off. She wanted to stay, but her prep was almost over, so she said she'll stop back over after school."

A choked sound suddenly rang out from behind Carlos, and he spun around, to find TK's eyes wide open and full of fear, as he pulled at the tube coming out of his throat. "TK!" Carlos called out, rushing to the side of the bed, and tugging at TK's hands, gripping them between his own. "We need someone in here!"

Carlos found himself immediately separated from TK as the medical personnel rushed in, swarming TK so Carlos couldn't even see him. When they pulled back, it was to reveal TK breathing on his own, weak and pale, but with eyes open and aware, staring right at Carlos.

"Baby," Carlos choked out, hurrying back to his side, hands hovering over TK's chest before moving to cup TK's face in his hands.

"Hey baby," TK rasped out, leaning into Carlos' touch.

"I love you," Carlos blurted out, then gasped at his own words, shaking his head with a teary laugh. "That's definitely not how I meant to say it, I wanted to give you time to get better, but it's felt like years, TK, years in this hospital room. I know it's only been days, but I've missed you so much and I love you so much."

Covering Carlos' hand with his own, TK smiled. "I love you too," he promised, and Carlos would swear later he didn't giggle, and TK would lovingly insist he did, but either way, the smile on Carlos' face was blinding as he leaned in for a kiss.

@laelipoo​ @ravens-words​ @ladytimekiller​ @buddie-buddie​ @morganaspendragonss​ @marceee24​ @a-l-ias​ @bikingthroughhawkins​ @i-had-bucky​ @pragmaticoptimist34​ @highqualitykhakis​ @meloingly​ @borntobewondering @justapoet  

#tarlos #tarlos fanfiction #tk strand #carlos reyes #9-1-1 lone star au #9-1-1 lone star #tk x carlos #tk/carlos #tk #carlos #fanfic #fanfiction #preschool teacher!carlos #hurt/comfort #angst with a happy ending #hurt tk #worried carlos #h/c #221bsunsetwrites #221bsunsettowerswrites

[huffpost]

I Spent Half My Life Feeling Shame For Being Asian In America. Here’s What Changed.

By Guest Writer Allison Lau

“Your daughter might have to be held back a year. I think she might be retarded.”

My horrified Chinese immigrant parents gasped as my preschool teacher unprofessionally vocalized her concern that I wasn’t singing my nursery rhymes as well as the rest of my peers.

“If I advance her to kindergarten, things will have to change at home.”

The following year, I began elementary school and started to learn English intensively as Mandarin took a backseat. I began memorizing lyrics of pop songs, boy bands, whatever was going on with Britney Spears, as well as the lineups of MTV, Nickelodeon and the Disney channel just to take part in conversation. But over the years, it became much more than that.

There is a private hell that comes with being a first-generation kid. Growing up smack dab in the heart of Silicon Valley, California, my small suburban town — San Carlos — was predominantly Caucasian, nearly 80% to be exact. From first through fifth grade, each day was a marathon as I sat through classes with my peers and attended supplemental speech therapy — primarily to learn the “th” phonetic — which was nonexistent in Mandarin.

“Th-uh, not suh. Though, not zough. Then, not zen.” I’d repeat these hundreds of times a day like my life depended on it.

In grade school, I would stockpile brown paper bags from crafting classes to hide the bright pink “Thank You” bags in when my mom would pack my delicious, but “fragrant” homemade lunches. In addition to learning coursework, speech and English, I’d quietly observe the mannerisms of my peers. And whether it was slang, comedic timing or how to be a good friend, I became obsessed with the unabashed personalities of my gregarious classmates as I remained in my private quarters and bonded with the more compassionate wallflowers.

Some days when the pressure felt too immense, I’d keep my head down without uttering a word and count the hours until I was able to free myself of all speculation, bullying and conformity. And as soon as my mom or dad picked me up, I stepped into a portal — greeted by melodic, sentimental Chinese pop songs blaring out of the car like an ice cream truck — that transported me far away and returned me back to the little rituals that managed to remain intact at home. 

Read the rest of Lau’s story here.

#asian american #apahm #asian pacific american heritage month #first gen #first generation

[longitud-de-onda]

I was tagged by @bonkybaaarnes (thank you bab <3!)

1. Do you make your bed?

sometimes

2. What’s your favorite number?

22

3. What’s your job?

i’m unemployed and it sucks. i’ve been sending out apps for forever and never get any calls back, but i just met with a woman yesterday and will likely be a parttime nanny for a bit

4. Can you parallel park?

between two cars? i’ve only done it successfully once

5. A job you had which would surprise people?

i worked at hot topic? and i was a summer camp counselor/preschool teacher...

6. Do you think aliens are real?

hell. yes.

7. Can you drive a manual car?

no but i would like to learn

8. What’s your guilty pleasure?

writing fanfiction? and loving one direction

9. Tattoos?

i have one on my ankle and plan to get another somehwere in the next month and many more in the next year

10. Favorite color?

tropical rainforest green

11. Things people do that drive you crazy?

apologizing for things that aren’t their fault. it drives me irrationally and uncontrollably mad. 

12. Any phobias?

spiders.

13. Favorite childhood sport?

i, uh, didn’t really do sports that i enjoyed, mostly i was forced to do stuff. my parents did make me do irish dancing for a year for the sake of ‘cultural heritage’ and that was pretty cool. i was shit though.

14. Do you talk to yourself?

yep all the damn time.

15. What movies do you adore?

not to be cliche or anything, but prospect was actually one of the best movies i’ve seen. i also enjoyed underwater. however i’ve got a big passion for spanish film, particularly pan’s labyrinth, cría cuervos, and anything by almodóvar.

16. Do you like doing puzzles?

not jigsaw puzzles, but i’m a logic puzzle whore. i also compete in linguistics puzzles so yes.

17. Favorite kind of music?

a lot of different stuff. brazilian pop (anitta and pabllo vittar are faves) and spanish indie music (carlos sadness!!) are big on my lists. i also recently discovered most the spanish language msuic i listen to are colombian artists so that’s cool. i also love acoustic indie from the pacific northwest usa, so like the shins, blitzen trapper, the decemberists... 

18. Tea or coffee?

i’m a pretentious hot drink drinker. i do loose leaf tea every other day but also i drink a shot of espresso straight every morning. but if i had to choose i’d go coffee. cortados are the best invention and a mocha is the best winter drink.

19. What’s the first thing you remember you wanted to be when you grew up?

i think i wanted to be an interior designer.

tagging @mando-vibes, @pascal-is-punk, @enchantedrhoses, and @kawaiitimecharm (sorry if you’ve already done it)

[curlsandinbetween]

I stalked, viewed and read some posts made 10 years ago relating to my life back then with Carlo. Life was soooo different back then. I was so young and crazy but so fearless and anxious at the same time. Sometimes I wish I stayed in Cebu more but I guess, as I review the past 10 yrs, I always seem to always come home and be safer here at some point. Being away from home was interesting and liberating and also opened my eyes to so many things the world can offer. Moving to another city already seemed like a totally different country.

I think I see clearly now how and why I could never stay longer with Carlo. I was ambitious about everything that time and just really rejected anything that gave negative vibes. Our relationship didn't give me any kind of security anymore eventhough I'm pretty sure Carlo was doing his best to keep the relationship alive. I know it broke his heart a lot when I talked to him and then ended it. I, however, was distracted with adjusting to my teaching life back home. There was a romantic note clinging to that distraction as I was just as easily caught in another relationship with a new guy who was very different from Carlo. I don't think he was the reason we broke up though.

I was too weak to still hold on to that relationship already and there was already this heavy unsettling feeling weeks or more than a month before we broke up. We were both struggling with our own battles like for him being handed down the family business and trying to keep it together since I was far away. I was struggling being a preschool teacher and being pressured to exceed expectations because they say I was overqualified.

He was good though and I know he loved me, especially when I was alone in Cebu City and struggling myself. He was a good boyfriend while it lasted. We rarely fought. My famiy adored him. His family probably didn't adore me as much but it was a calm one. His parents were probably maintaining that. I knew back then that it will take a lot in me to adjust to being his girlfriend with his kind of family. They were with a mansion and were living in the Beverly Hills kind of village in Cebu City. Other people will think I lucked out but it only gave me a lot of anxiety. So that was part of the reason I had to push through with the breakup. It was 1. The distance 2. The gap between his family background and mine 3. The uneasy kind of clinginess 4. Being young and thirsty for newer experiences. But thank you Lord and universe... that he was the one who was with me in that period in time to keep me sane.

You'd think Myron was the next best thing but he wasn't. He was a lesson. He wasn't a better boyfriend but he was a good colleague. He made me see the opposite of the kind of family Carlo has... at least in terms of economic status. His house was warmer and more welcoming towards me but when I think about it, I'd feel stuck being there so I guess being with him for only about a year was better. I was probably also insecure of the Tan's way of living eventhough they had down-to-earth kids. Myron tried to win me back but he was still just as confused about life when we tried to get back together. My family didn't like him too anyway so there was no point in that at all.

I stopped having new relationships for about 2 years after things ended with Myron.

After that, there was another new world of intimate stories being written with different guys.

So I needed to say this:

Each guy I had been involved with was a different world altogether. I was probably even a very different version of myself with each of them. 15 or 18 guys later, I can truly say though, I didn't regret most of them and that I was true to my emotions with all of them, whether it had been a longterm or playful one.

But if I were to be asked which ex I would most likely get back together with and end up marrying, it would be none of them. Regardless whether they were good or bad back then, they are totally different people now and if I would do it again with them, it will be like another new guy except, you know, there are memories attached to them that you need to study. You can ask me which were the best in certain aspects though.

For now, I remember everything with gratitude for all those experiences.

[bigyack-com]

Women’s Gains in the Work Force Conceal a Problem

American women have just achieved a significant milestone: They hold more payroll jobs than men. But this isn’t entirely good news for workers, whether they’re men or women.The difference is small, but it reflects the fact that women have been doing better in the labor market compared with men. One big reason is that the occupations that are shrinking tend to be male-dominated, like manufacturing, while those that are growing remain female-dominated, like health care and education. That puts men at a disadvantage in today’s economy — but it also ensures that the female-dominated jobs remain devalued and underpaid.“Female-dominated jobs in the working class are just not comparable to men’s jobs,” said Janette Dill, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. “So yes, it’s great to see women participating at such a high level in the labor market, but it also really means continuing challenges for working-class families, because these jobs just don’t replace manufacturing jobs in terms of job quality and wages.”Women now hold 50.04 percent of payroll jobs (which excludes people who work on farms or in households or are self-employed), according to the Labor Department’s jobs report this month. (Men are still a larger share of the labor force than women, a number that is calculated differently — it includes people who don’t have jobs but are looking for work; farm and household workers; and self-employed people.)The only other time women have held more jobs was in mid-2010, when men were hit particularly hard by the recession and the decline in construction and manufacturing jobs. This time, the economy is thriving — but women seem better able to take advantage of it.Reasons for the decline in work for less educated men are many. They include the rise of automation; the waning power of unions; rising incarceration rates; the factories that move overseas; and hurdles to switching jobs like having to move away or return to school. But gender norms are a major and often overlooked factor. However much politicians talk about manufacturing jobs, the United States economy has become service-dominated — and jobs helping people have typically been done by women, while jobs making things have been associated with men.Women’s success in the labor market has been driven by their educational gains, and by black and Hispanic women. While women in large numbers have moved into male-dominated jobs, especially professional ones, the reverse isn’t true. Women are 84 percent of social services workers and 78 percent of health care workers. Differences in the jobs that men and women choose are now the single largest cause of the gender pay gap, accounting for more than half of it, research by the economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn has found.Sex segregation is much more prevalent in working-class jobs than in white-collar ones. But even the more prestigious female-dominated jobs, like nurse practitioner or high school teacher, have failed to attract many men. Yet when men do so-called pink-collar jobs, they tend to have more job security and wage growth over time than they would have in blue-collar jobs, research has found.One reason men are reluctant to take pink-collar jobs is that over all, they pay less than male-dominated ones. When women enter fields in greater numbers, pay declines, the sociologist Paula England and colleagues have found. Jobs that involve caregiving, like health aide or preschool teacher, are particularly low-paying, even after controlling for the high share of female workers, other work by Ms. England has found.Most workers have in mind the lowest wage they’re willing to accept in a new job, economists say, and men who have left higher-paying manufacturing and construction jobs might be unwilling to take a large pay cut.“The wages that nursing assistants and home health aides get, and child care workers and teachers get, communicate to society that these jobs are not valued compared to male-dominated jobs, so of course men don’t want to do that,” Ms. Dill said.Another thing holding men back from service jobs is norms about masculinity. The markers of masculinity include earning a good income and distancing oneself from feminine things, research has shown. Taking a job traditionally done by women threatens both, said Jill Yavorsky, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.A new experiment found that when unemployed men looked at job postings, they were willing to take a job that employed mostly women. But if it called for stereotypically female traits like interpersonal skills or care work, they were not, found Ms. Dill, Ms. Yavorsky and Enrica Ruggs at the University of Memphis. Moreover, a study published in December by Ms. Yavorsky found that men, across education levels and job types, were less likely to be called back by employers for interviews when they applied for traditionally female roles.Also, social scientists have observed that women seem to show more flexibility than men in training for and moving to new industries. Women who worked in manufacturing were hit harder than men during the recession, but they were also more likely than men to move into high-skill jobs and health care jobs.The men who have gone into pink-collar work have viewed these jobs as a last resort after facing disadvantages in the labor market, researchers have found. They are more likely to be black or Hispanic and to have had the least education and the lowest earnings. Even though pink-collar jobs pay less over all, the men who take them often earn more than they had in jobs like manual labor, found a paper published this month by Ms. Dill and Ms. Yavorsky, using census data from 2004 to 2013.When men take female-dominated jobs, they’re more likely than not to use them as a stopgap, and return to a male-dominated job as soon as they can, found Margarita Torre Fernández, a sociologist at the University Carlos III of Madrid. Using data from the census and the National Longitudinal Study of Youth from 1979 to 2006, she found this happened in nearly every female-dominated occupation, particularly elementary school teaching, health technology and social work.“Some men would rather endure unemployment than accept a relatively high-paying women’s job and suffer the potential social stigma,” she wrote.Policymakers and recruiters have discussed various ways to address this issue, like bringing back manufacturing jobs, or emphasizing the masculine qualities of service jobs. But there’s another solution, researchers say: improving the quality of pink-collar jobs, in terms of wages, stability, benefits and hours. That could both attract men to these jobs and also benefit women.“There are immense economic benefits to these jobs,” Ms. Yavorsky said. “Inevitably, if they were more highly valued in our society, I think men would be more likely to enter them, and women would very much benefit from the higher wages.”Improving the quality of pink-collar, working-class jobs has the potential to close gender gaps — and also to shrink the widening gaps between the highest and lowest earners, both women and men. Read the full article

#1augustnews #247news #5g570newspaper #660closings #702news #8paradesouth #911fox #abc90seconds #adamuzialkodaily #atoactivitystatement #atobenchmarks #atocodes #atocontact #atoportal #atoportaltaxreturn #attnews #bbnews #bbcnews #bbcpresenters #bigcrossword #bigmoney #bigwxiaomi #bloomberg8001zürich #bmbargainsnews #business #business0balancetransfer #business0062 #business0062conestoga #business02 #business0450pastpapers

[jccamus]

How A.G. Sulzberger Is Leading the New York Times Into the Future

How A.G. Sulzberger Is Leading the New York Times Into the Future https://ift.tt/2OBemIg

On a Sunday morning in the summer of 2018, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, a member of the fifth generation of the family that controls the New York Times, was changing the diaper of a member of the sixth, when the phone rang. Another mess: A few days earlier President Trump had invited Sulzberger, in his capacity as Times publisher, to a private meeting at the White House. Now a Trump tweet had not only made the meeting public but also asserted it had produced an unlikely meeting of minds: “Spent much time talking about the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media & how that Fake News has morphed into phrase, ‘Enemy of the People.’ Sad!”

What happened next amounts to the news as we’ve known it for decades. The Times put out a version of events contradicting the President’s. The White House doubled down. And the public took sides. But six months later, after accepting another White House invitation (this time on the record), Sulzberger sat down at a microphone and talked to someone else: the people who download The Daily, which is among the most popular podcasts in America and is produced by the New York Times. Listening is as different from reading as the Times of 10 years ago is from the news organization today, and it’s all there in “The President and the Publisher,” the Feb. 1 episode devoted to the meeting. From Sulzberger, you hear not only about the diaper, but also about waiting in the cold on Pennsylvania Avenue because the Secret Service didn’t know the publisher was coming. From Trump, there’s an evident boredom with questions of policy, then a plea delivered in honeyed tones: “But I came from Jamaica, Queens, Jamaica Estates, and I became President of the United States. I’m sort of entitled to a great story from my–just one–from my newspaper. I mean, you know.”

‘Trump Triumphs’ is a pretty great story. It covered two-thirds of the Times front page the morning after an election result that three years later still draws attention from other vital matters, including the signal accomplishment of the slender, bald young man seated on the other side of the Resolute desk. The American landscape is littered with the husks of news outlets desiccated by the migration of life-giving attention from a page that folds to a page that glows. Worse, people tell pollsters they don’t even believe most of what they read on their news feeds. Yet in this forbidding new world the country’s stuffiest, most remote and self-important newspaper somehow became a relatable, nimble and savvy digital vehicle for what on many days is the best journalism in the world.

Trump calls it “the failing New York Times,” but its stock sells for three times what it did a decade ago. Its 4.7 million paying subscribers is more than three times its print peak and growing so steadily that the company’s stated goal of 10 million by 2025 does not seem out of reach. The Times today produces not only a profit but also a certain hope. Some “legacy” news outlets–the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, indeed, the very magazine you’re reading–were buoyed by public-spirited billionaires. The Times not only found its own way, it slashed a shaft of light through the murk of social media–those immersive platforms that have gummed up the machinery of democracy by reducing citizens to followers and news to content.

“I actually hate the word content,” Sulzberger says. “It’s a word for junk … the junk you shovel into Facebook.

“What we do is journalism.”

Sulzberger, right, in the second White House meeting, on Jan. 31

Tom Brenner—The New York Times/Redux

Informal and intense, Sulzberger embodies every sort of generational change at the Times. He turned 39 on Aug. 5, and was not yet 35 when in 2013 he found himself tasked with addressing the organization’s digital future, as leader of the call to arms formally known as the Innovation Report. The situation was dire. Revenues were skidding, as was print circulation. The home page was hemorrhaging viewers. Digital ads were down, and no one was sure what to do next.

“The newsroom was not always brimming with optimism,” says Bill Keller, who presided over three rounds of staff cuts as top editor before retiring in 2011. “It was a gloomy time.”

Yet in other ways the Times was going great guns. Even as it trimmed its staff, it was snapping up top talent that competing newspapers were shedding. Rival reporters long put off by the Times‘ smugness and internecine culture found there was no other place as prominent that supported their work. During the Great Recession, which hastened the collapse of the newspaper industry, the Times did something extraordinary: it spent, investing in its core mission of newsgathering–its newsroom never fell below 1,100 people–with money no longer ready at hand.

To come up with cash, the company sold off great chunks of itself. It sold TV stations and radio stations. It sold the Boston Globe, its slice of the Boston Red Sox and a chain of smaller newspapers. It sold part of its new headquarters, a 52-story showpiece designed by Renzo Piano, a famous Italian architect. In 2009, the darkest hour, the company went hat in hand to a Mexican billionaire. Carlos Slim lent the Times $250 million in exchange for deeply discounted stock options that eventually gave him a 17% stake in the company. But it would never be his.

All voting shares are held by the Ochs-Sulzberger Family Trust, established in 1997, controlled by a handful of descendants of Adolph Ochs’ only daughter and devoted to the proposition that some things are more important than money. SEC filings state the trust’s “primary objective” is that the Times continues “as an independent newspaper, entirely fearless, free of ulterior influence and unselfishly devoted to the public welfare.” It must have been in that spirit that the company in 2009 suspended its dividend, the quarterly payout to stockholders that could bring $1 million a year to a member of the trust.

“I grew up in a family that had a lot of pride in this place and a lot of love for this place,” says Sulzberger, in his sixth-floor office in the Times building, which it is buying back this year. “And some of the bravest and most important moves made to protect this place were actually made by folks who never worked a day here, for whom the strength of this institution, particularly the strength of the newsroom, was the priority that we should always put first.”

And yet, the scion of the Times grew up determined to avoid the family business. His father Arthur Ochs Sulzberger had been publisher of the Times since A.G. was in middle school. His mother Gail Gregg had also worked as a journalist. But the son had an independent streak. He grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and was in a bowling league. He worked on the paper at the private Fieldston School, but prepared for a career in something else, maybe the environment. Matt Baldwin, who has known Sulzberger since West End Collegiate preschool, associates him with a love of outdoors, including the city: ” Let’s go check out Staten Island today.” He was a picky eater.

“My form of contrarianism is I’m going to do something different, you know?” Sulzberger says. Becoming a journalist “just felt so predictable.” Unfortunately he showed talent in a feature-writing class at Brown and admired the penetrating critiques of the teacher, Tracy Breton, a Pulitzer Prize winner who coaxed him into an internship at a Providence, R.I., paper. “And so I gave it a shot. And ended up loving it.” He moved on to the Oregonian in Portland, and in 2009 agreed to come home to the Times.

Even–maybe especially–for a Sulzberger, the newsroom was hugely intimidating. The Times has won 127 Pulitzer Prizes, nearly twice as many as any other outlet, and projected the staid confidence of the Establishment it embodies. While his last name certainly got him a job at the Times and may have helped him onto the front page, it was the quality of his reporting and writing that landed him there some 40 times (though he may be best remembered for a Food section cover about being a vegetarian: meatless in the midwest: a tale of survival).

“Probably one of the quickest studies I’ve ever worked with,” says Adam Bryant, who was his editor when Sulzberger was the Kansas City bureau chief, where he landed after a year and a half in the newsroom. “He’s always learning and synthesizing and asking ‘What makes sense here?’ whether it’s a story, a leadership challenge or the strategy for the future of the New York Times.”

In 2013, Sulzberger was back in New York, learning editing on the metro desk and looking forward to the possibility of the ultimate adventure as a foreign correspondent, when Keller’s successor as top editor, Jill Abramson, asked him to steer the committee on what the Times should be doing online. “I wasn’t exactly the most digital person in the newsroom,” he says. He didn’t have a Facebook account, and had posted on Twitter maybe twice. But he was told he had no choice.

“The miscasting ended up being a really good thing,” he says, articulating what would become his management method, “because I went in absolutely certain that I did not know enough and that I had to learn. As a reporter you know this, right? You think you have the story, and the more you talk to people, even when you’re hearing consistent things, not everyone else is connecting the dots. And at some you point you say, ‘Oh, here is the story.’ And to me the story was that the New York Times was holding the future at arm’s length.”

Not anymore. Five years later, the Times still publishes in print (and makes a nice profit on it) but seems to exist first and naturally in the digital realm. Stories appear in combinations of words, images, video, and graphics with a fluidity that feels both immediate and thoughtful. It can reconstruct a fatal avalanche, offer a tour of Guantánamo, get to the bottom of a chemical-weapons attack and take the reader with its architecture critic to a new office park he finds appalling.

And if it fails to grasp the idea of news alerts–the Times is much less likely to ping a phone with actual breaking news than with a tease for a story it wants to show off–there’s a lot to show off. The newsroom produces a major investigation or ambitious enterprise story almost daily–and in formats that serve both the reader and the Times. Consider the case of a rash of taxi-driver suicides in New York: It is one thing to read a long story explaining that the drivers were unable to pay their debts not because Uber was taking their fares, but because a mendacious city taxicab commission pumped the price of a medallion to levels that mathematically could not be paid back. But it’s something else to hear the reporter walk you through it all on The Daily and mention, in passing, “We talked to 450 people for this story.”

The newsroom gathers in April for Pulitzer announcements

Hiroko Masuike—The New York Times/Redux

Looming behind all this newness is the baggage that comes with “legacy” media. In the early 21st century the Times accumulated a string of controversies including employment of a fabulist reporter (Jayson Blair), the subsequent resignation of its top two editors and the interrogation of its pliant coverage of the George W. Bush Administration’s rationale for invading Iraq. Then on May 14, 2014, Sulzberger’s father fired Abramson, the first woman to serve as executive editor. One day later, a leaked copy of the Innovation Report appeared on BuzzFeed, baldly laying out the paper’s shortfalls in the digital realm, and the reasons.

But what could have been another scandal was read, both inside and outside the company, as a welcome dose of candor. The reaction became the first expression of a transformation nudging the Times toward the fail-forward culture of a startup. Lots of things were tried: The first smartphone app, NYT Now, turned out to be a flop, but was cannibalized wholesale to produce the one now on millions of phones–a long, rich scroll, constantly updated, that drives the newsroom metabolism as the front page used to. The cooking app launched in 2014, on the other hand, was an instant hit, and puzzles a no-brainer (“I take the paper for the crossword”). After years of seeing digital innovators leave in frustration, the Times became a magnet for web developers, multimedia producers, and product specialists who might do their work and move on. Most of the journalists who worked on the Innovation Report are no longer there.

“People come through. You’re not going to spend your whole life here,” says Dean Baquet, who succeeded Abramson, and persuaded Sulzberger to leave reporting to become head of newsroom strategy. “It’s constant experiment. Constantly trying things. Print did not allow for experimentation. It could not. It was like a manufacturing plant.”

The newcomers are shaping this newly flexible Times, sometimes into contortions that, once public, can resemble spectacles. In August, after a black female opinion contributor called out a white male editor for racial insensitivity on Twitter, the editor was demoted. It was all written up in the Times, along with the newsroom town hall where Baquet, who is African American, fielded questions from employees alive to issues around gender, race and patriarchy that are challenging workplaces everywhere. At the newspaper of record, the question was why it did not label the President “racist.” “This is hard stuff,” Baquet said.

The Daily was created by an arrival from public radio and took off like a shot with host Michael Barbaro, rising from 5.8 million downloads in February 2017 to 48 million in June 2019. It was, on one hand, an example of restlessness rewarded: the Times was present with a new form when appetite for that form soared. But it also revealed a unique resource the Times had not realized it could exploit: its newsroom of 1,600 brimmed with experts. And on The Daily, they sound careful, relatable, professional–a lot like a news story written to go online. The Internet, which has no time for throat clearing, required the Times to find a voice. “We can be our best version of ourselves, in a new medium, in a new way,” says Sam Dolnick, a Sulzberger cousin who oversees the podcast.

In June, the Times unveiled The Weekly, a half-hour documentary series backed by FX and Hulu, that seeks to join the ranks of Frontline and 60 Minutes. The taxi story was the second episode. Experiments with augmented and virtual reality also continue, says Sulzberger, who as an executive tends to hold to his conclusions fiercely. (“He can sometimes be convinced his point of view is not the right point of view,” says CEO Mark Thompson.) The long-term goal, Sulzberger says, is to cultivate relationships and build trust “with a whole different section of readers, by meeting them where they are, in the form that they want to be met at.”

To pay for all this, however, the company looked not to the future but to the past: it asked people to subscribe. And from that, more than money flowed.

This is where the story of the Times pierces the fog enveloping news and information the world over.

“We have to produce journalism worth paying for,” Sulzberger says, a lot. It’s something the print Times actually never stopped doing. To this day the largest share of the company’s revenue flows from its print edition–a splendid platform, valuable for ease of navigation, serendipity, graphics that can spread across two pages and the tactile pleasure of newsprint. A half-million readers have remained loyal as the annual price of a daily subscription can easily reach $1,000. At newsstands, the Sunday paper now goes for $6.

But on the Internet, people were conditioned to expect information to be free. When, in 2011, the Times began allowing only the first 20 (now 10) stories to land on your screen at no charge, then required payment, “it was a big bet,” says David Perpich, a Sulzberger cousin with an M.B.A. from Harvard who joined the Times as it instituted the paywall. “I don’t think we realized how big the bet would be and how important it would be.”

But there was no choice. For a hundred years, newspapers had relied chiefly on the sale of ads to cover most of the bills. The Internet made that impossible, scattering eyeballs across zillions of sites. You simply cannot support a newsroom on the money brought in by digital ads attached to news stories–no matter how viral your content.

BuzzFeed, founded on virality, laid off 200 journalists in 2019, and its leader is urging consolidation among other online newsrooms, a trend that has accelerated across the industry in recent weeks.

Still, among legacy outlets, only the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times (whose readers might expense their subscriptions) had dared erect a paywall by the time the Times did. Executives had no real idea how many people would pay money of their own. When subscriptions hit half a million, some wondered if a plateau had been reached. But as the digital product improved, so did the numbers. And the news certainly helped. Like ratings for cable news, subscriptions surged during the 2016 presidential contest, and soared after the result. For the Times, the “Trump bump”–more than 300,000 new subscriptions in the final quarter–would drop off in 2017. Subscriptions since have been roughly steady and mostly robust, nearing the halfway point on the road to 10 million.

“There is no greater media success story of the last eight years than the Times paywall,” says Jack Shafer, the media columnist for Politico.

But the breakthrough brought more than money. It also brought a direct connection with the reader, a channel bypassing everything the Internet (and especially social media) has put in the way. As a subscriber, you’re going somewhere specific for news, rather than finding it placed in front of you by an overpolitical uncle, or an algorithm engineered to encourage outrage because outrage means more time on the site. You have a direct line to a professional news organization, one with biases and flaws but also something else: responsibility for what it publishes.

Facebook and Instagram do not have the same responsibility. Neither does YouTube or any other part of the Internet. Congress absolved online platforms for most of what gets posted on them in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. At the time it passed, tech still looked like a force for unmitigated good.

What followed, of course, was a hard lesson in human nature, one with deep consequences for democracies, relying as they do on agreed-upon facts. The ambient confusion has been exploited by authoritarians, who label critical news coverage “fake” and push their preferred version of reality through state media, social media or private outlets that have sold out.

News organizations are businesses too, but–crucially–businesses based on providing what a citizen needs to know. The core transaction of a traditional news organization is a wholesome one, grounded in what might be called the civic impulse. That impulse is what drives editors to argue among themselves about what is worthy of the front page and what stirs a reader to examine it. It’s also what impelled the Sulzberger family to shovel money into a newsroom after it ceased to be lucrative.

Why didn’t this happen elsewhere? A generation ago, family ownership of a newspaper was regarded as what protected quality journalism from the predations of the markets the way the First Amendment protected it from the government. But most of the great newspaper families–the Chandlers of the Los Angeles Times, the Bancrofts of the Wall Street Journal, the Binghams of Louisville–did not survive even the flush times. “It’s usually a case of family members being really unhappy or the wrong person being put in the job with the result that the company blows up,” says Donald Graham, whose family sold the Washington Post to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2013. “And that has never been the case at the New York Times. I’m happy to talk about A.G., I think this guy is aces.”

The fourth generation of the Ochs-Sulzbergers, led by A.G.’s father, took pains to ensure that other branches of the family were involved in choosing the new publisher, even hiring a psychologist specializing in dynastic succession in family-owned firms. When the competition formally opened sometime in 2015, all three cousins–Dolnick, Perpich and A.G.–raised their hands. And all remain with the company, where they are viewed with respect and some wonder.

“The three of them, it’s like they were grown in a lab,” says James Bennet, who edits the Times editorial page. “They’re young, but they kind of came of age as all this disruption was happening, and they must have been conscious that on their watch, whether the New York Times is going to survive is going to be a real question.”

Sulzberger found a partner in Times editor Baquet, left

Mark Peterson—Redux for TIME

The existential challenges keep on coming. With murder surpassing combat as the leading cause of on-the-job fatality for journalists, Sulzberger no longer waits for a White House invitation to confront a U.S. President who demonizes independent reporters and cossets despots who jail and even kill them. The publisher noted in a Sept. 23 op-ed that the State Department has ceased warning U.S. journalists who face arrest abroad. When the Times‘ Cairo bureau chief was threatened, he had to be spirited to the airport by the Irish embassy.

Yet the primary destroyer of journalists remains the Internet, especially at the community level, where 1,800 local papers have been shuttered since 2004 and hedge funds joust to wring those that remain. To turn that around, hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent by charities, think tanks, and even Google and Facebook, which have a business interest in quality content: when Facebook set up a news feed highlighting local stories, it discovered a third of Americans lived where it could not find the five stories per day needed for “Today In.”

The responsible rich are also helping, investing in papers in Boston, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and more. Should a proven template for subscriptions emerge, it’s not impossible to imagine someone of extravagant means seeding it in communities across the country the way public libraries were by Andrew Carnegie a century ago.

Is the Times that model? “If we can do 5 million, I do sort of wonder whether other American newspapers shouldn’t be aiming a bit higher,” says Thompson, the Times CEO. “I don’t think our advantages are so unique that others couldn’t do it. Journalism which can’t be paid for isn’t going to exist.”

It may be a question of scale. “The Internet, traditionally, is winner take most,” notes Rich Greenfield, a media-technology analyst. And Jodi Rudoren left her job as a senior Times strategist to edit the Forward to try to discover a way for smaller media like the Jewish news outlet to survive. “The Times model may work for a couple of places,” she says, “but it absolutely will not work for the many journalistic enterprises we need for a vibrant democracy.”

One challenge of a “subscriber-led” approach is all too evident in the age of Trump: people take sides. The Times‘ marketing slogan–“The truth is worth it”–itself walks the line between fearless reporting and confrontation. On Twitter there were calls to cancel subscriptions in early August over a stenographic headline (Trump Urges Unity vs. Racism) that was changed for the next edition. “They are completely reader-focused now,” says Shafer. “And I think that’s why Dean Baquet went on his groveling tour to explain what was just a sh-tty headline.”

In many ways, the fevered attention signals the stakes–for the leader of a free press, in a fraught world. So for the Times, perhaps the trickiest part may be signing subscribers who do not fret about the Republic but are keen on movies, science, books–the world the Times has always offered. A parenting app is being weighed. Among the opportunities of the digital world is leaving behind baggage, including the long-held reputation as an “elite” read. “There’s a percentage of people who will listen to The Daily every day who don’t know it’s from the New York Times,” Sulzberger says. And each can become a subscriber for $15 a month–less, with promotions. That’s why Facebook, Instagram and the rest still feature in the Times‘ strategy. Those first 10 free stories have to appear somewhere, and the Times gathers page views on the scale of Fox News and CNN. The idea is to cast the net as widely as possible for subscribers and then, with each scroll, tap and alert, become as much a part of daily life through the phone as the newspaper once was.

That means treating the reader with a certain deference. If your data is mined, it’s done relatively lightly. The Times invites advertisers to buy ads in stories based not on who’s reading them but on the emotional response a story evokes, like “happy” or “inspiration.” In May, a Times rep informed an auditorium of advertising buyers, “We now have more than 18 emotions available.” What advertisers are really buying is something rare on the Internet: a committed relationship.

Only subscribers, for instance, get access to “Times Insider,” featuring interviews with reporters and behind-the-scenes accounts of major stories. It’s a daily, online version of something older, the annual Family Assembly, when members of the Sulzberger family gather at the Times headquarters for a day.

“We invite a foreign correspondent every year to talk about what they do,” says Sulzberger, explaining how it works. “And the reporters are always asking me, like, ‘What should I expect? What’s the crowd going to be like?’ And I would say, ‘Like, they’re just the biggest fans of the New York Times.'”

Contact us at [email protected].

This appears in the October 21, 2019 issue of TIME.

https://ift.tt/2M2YBIc via Time October 10, 2019 at 08:49PM

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[fulashay]

And so begins preschool this week for #luciannaskye and she was fantastic ❤️ Daddy, Carlos and I dropped her off Wednesday morning on her first day. She told the teacher her name is “Lucianna Skye with diamonds”, got her 1st lunch box love note from mom and had a blast at their glow in the dark dance party (bec the kitty on her shirt was really glowing she said). ❤️😊 So proud of our gal ❤️ https://www.instagram.com/p/B2aGca9Azq1/?igshid=180d2ita29u5i

#luciannaskye