The gang at Arizona Illustrated is airing a one-hour special examining the economy tonight. My Friday Roundtable colleagues, Linda Valdez of the Arizona Republic and Mark Evans of TucsonCitizen.com, will be joining Arizona illustrated anchor Bill Buckmaster to interview UA economists Marshall Vest and Jerry Swanson. (I would have joined them, but I was on assignment in the Bay Area when the show was taped yesterday.)

Check it out at 9 p.m. tonight on Channel 6.

Why in the hell is the top story on azstarnet.com, as of this writing, "Who serves the best cheesecake in town?"

I am out of town at this second at—of all things—a Web/media conference. Is it THAT slow of a news day back in Tucson?

At the beginning of the year, The New York Times hosted their Student Journalism Insitute at the University of Arizona School of Journalism. Of 23 students selected to participate from all over the country, seven were students — current, recent grads and graduate level — at the School of Journalism.

One of those is Stephen Ceasar. A 2009 alumnus of the School of Journalism, Ceasar has had his work published by several publications in Tucson including Borderbeat.net, Arizona News Service, Tucson Lifestyle Magazine, the now-defunct Tucson Citizen, and the Arizona Daily Star. For the majority of his young journalism career, Ceasar, originally from El Centro, Calif., covered border news and the cops beat.

The New York Times picked up and ran one of his stories from the Institute about Chinese nationals immigrating illegally to the United States through the U.S.-Mexico Border, paying smugglers as much as $40,000 to travel from Beijing, China, all the way to Tucson.

Read the story here — Chinese immigrants or pick up a copy of today's The New York Times.

Tucson Citizen alumnus Dylan Smith has launched the Tucson Sentinel, which aims to be a non-profit, online journalism venture.

Do you think Bob Grimm had anything to do with this: China censors Avatar.?

Monday, Jan. 18, is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. KXCI FM 91.3 will mark the day by offering special programming. From 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., excerpts from Dr. King's speeches and interviews with Tucson African American community members will be interspersed with historic and contemporary music.

To read Dr. King's 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, click here.

• JOSE R. LOPEZ/NYTI
• The New York Times Company editors and 23 journalism students from around the country have invaded the UA School of Journalism for The New York Times Student Journalism Institute. For 10 days, the students cover stories from around the city.

This week comes a blog entry from Amanda Portillo. Portillo is a former intern for the Tucson Weekly. She has spent the majority of her days since Jan. 2 at the UA School of Journalism's modified Pulliam reporting lab as a Web producer for The New York Times Student Journalism Institute.

Along with Jeannine Relly, an associate professor at the School of Journalism, I am also on the faculty of The New York Times Institute. The following is a short blog from Amanda. Check out the Web site—The New York Times—Student Journalism Institute

——————————————

The week I finished my internship at the Tucson Weekly, I started a new program with The New York Times Student Journalism Institute.

The institute is a 10-day program, led by staff from The New York Times Company newspapers, including The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Lakeland Ledger. In total, 23 journalism students—undergraduate and graduate—from across the country were selected to participate.

Since Monday, we have been working on various print and multimedia stories to post on our Web site, www.nytimes-institute.com, and by early next week, we’ll have a “dead-tree” version to show off.

Some stories include the smuggling of Chinese across the U.S.-Mexico border, updates on the City Council, and the death of a midtown boy, as well as photo slideshows and video biographies of the students. The site is updated numerous times throughout the day. Right now, there are more great stories in the works. Check out the blog on the site, First Draft, it provides a behind the scenes on some of the stories and offers previews for stories to come!

So far, I’ve kind of steered away from my City Week days. I’ve been working on daily news and Web producing. I even got some help from my friends at the Weekly a couple of times; thanks, Mari and Jim!

Check us out!

Amanda

I still can't figure out what was more odd—Arpaio putting on a Wilbur Wildcat hat as soon as students in the audience began to heckle the Maricopa County sheriff, or the fact that students sang a revised version of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody"? Take a look at video from the ASU student paper here, or the AP video below.

Is this legitimate? Is this atrocity? Caught up in politics. No sense of reality. Open your eyes. Look down to the south and see...The border stops brown folks, they cannot cross the line. But its easy come, easy go, for the rich, n' their cargo. Anyway the migrants flow, doesn't really matter to me ...

Could the owner of the Explorer really be the East Valley Tribune's savior?

Ray Stern of the Phoenix New Times has some thoughts.

My thought? Randy Miller, the Explorer's main owner dude, may indeed save the Trib in some form, but it's worth noting that when he arrived in metro Tucson, the Explorer had somewhere in the area of 9 to 11 people in the newsroom. (The exact number escapes me at this moment.) There are now three or four in the newsroom.

Explorer editor Dave Perry's done a great job with what he has ... but he doesn't have much.

Media Watch dude John Schuster has this report:

In the Monday, Nov. 23, edition of the Arizona Daily Wildcat student newspaper, an editorial rips into the Zona Zoo and other fans for their unruly behavior during Oregon’s 44-41 double-overtime football victory at Arizona Stadium.

One of the names listed as being a member of the Wildcat opinions board, which writes the editorials, is Shain Bergan.

That’s presumably the same Shain Bergan who was cited for disorderly conduct at the ESPN College GameDay event on the UA mall Saturday morning (Nov. 21) just before 6 a.m.

“Another person was holding a sign, and Mr. Bergan took the sign and damaged it. As a result of that, he was charged with disorderly conduct, issued a criminal citation, cited and released,” said UA Police Department Sgt. Juan Alvarez.

Bergan recently wrote a column chastising a fraternity for failing to come clean about allegations that it stole copies of the Wildcat in an attempt to cover up an unflattering story.