Tag Archives: longform

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Tampa Bay Times longform: Adventures in plane spotting in the post-9/11, social media age

By Justine Griffin, Tampa Bay Times. For Floridian Magazine, June 29, 2016.

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Travelers stream from the covered asphalt lots to the main terminal, fussing with their luggage and monitoring check-in times on their iPhones, hardly noticing the two men.

The pair of millennials don’t seem to have a destination.

The taller one wears a crisp Chicago Bulls ball cap and a grey hoodie over his cargo shorts. The shorter one has on his usual worn blue Tampa Bay Lightning T-shirt with Steve Stamkos’ name and number on the back, a cheap pair of plastic sunglasses jutting out from the pocket of his dark shorts, and everyday Chuck Taylors on his feet.

They’re racing around Tampa International Airport, bouncing from the long-term to the short-term to the economy parking garages in between the two major runways, conscious of the security personnel who occasionally pass through the rows of cars.

The shorter one, Adam Juriga, squints at the Flight Radar app on his phone, looking at the flights headed inbound in the next hour. He and Wes Bencon Rodriguez dart back and forth from the east to the west ends of the rooftop deck, watching the planes taxi at the main terminal and keeping an eye on the time.

Eventually the men reach into their cars and take out bulky Nikon 3200 DSLR cameras with long lenses.

Adam checks the weather again. He’s checked it every day for the past week. It will be sunny and clear for the next eight hours. Perfect for photographing airplanes.

“Don’t waste your battery on Southwest,” Adam says over the dull drone of faraway jet engines.

Southwest Airlines is Tampa’s largest domestic carrier, so dozens of Southwest planes stream in and out all day. They all look the same. Adam leans over the concrete wall, seven stories up, waiting for a more interesting flight to appear on his iPhone screen.

Wes keeps snapping photos anyway. He’s found something near the hangars in the distance, not on the runway.

Silently, they each hope they’ll have the better shot and the rare-enough plane that will impress judges and bring international recognition.

The only obstacle in their way is each other.

✈ Read more in the Tampa Bay Times here.

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Knight Science Journalism Review

Knight Science Journalism at MIT operates the KSJ Tracker, which featured a blurb about  The Cost of Life on June 24, 2014.

The review was written by Paul Raeborn, a media critic.

The Cost of Life is well worth your time. If it had run in the New York Times, it would be news across the country now, and we would be seeing Griffin interviewed by Charlie Rose. In the media capital here in New York City, where we’re accustomed to thinking that we know everything, it’s important to be reminded that good journalism can be done anywhere.”

Read the full review here.

 

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The Cost of Life

Inspired to act by childhood loss, a young reporter became an egg donor. In this way, she helped a couple have a baby. She also learned tough lessons about a donor’s worth once her contract is fulfilled.

COST OF LIFE_01I have always been the wimp in my family, the first to cry or complain at any sign of pain or discomfort.


My parents and younger brother have taken great pleasure in reenacting all my greatest “near-death” experiences and illnesses at the dinner table over the years. Like the time I fell off the back of a golf cart and was convinced I’d broken my collar bone. (I didn’t.) 
Or the time I thought I had meningitis. (It was just a cold.)

So the idea of donating eggs – injecting myself with hormones and undergoing an invasive surgery, all for someone else to have a baby — seemed a little far-fetched to my family.

A couple who lived half a world away plucked me out of an online library of hundreds of women who were willing to donate their sex cells to strangers. Each of us had been broken down by our general attributes. My specifications, a fertility agency would later tell me, were desirable: 25 years old, green eyes, 5-feet, 10-inches tall, blond hair, a 3.6 university grade point average and a burgeoning new career.

Those same specifications are what make my parents beam with pride.

One night last summer at my parent’s dinner table, I told my mom and dad that I wanted to help somebody have a baby. The usual lively suppertime conversation and laughter died down, and my parents lost their appetites. They didn’t want to joke about that time I drove my brother’s four-wheeler into a tree anymore.

 

I told them I am like the thousands of other women — the daughters, sisters, girlfriends or wives at someone else’s dinner table — who donate their eggs to couples who cannot conceive a child on their own.

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With an estimated 7.3 million people experiencing infertility in the United States, or one out of eight couples, the demand for young women like me who voluntarily undergo hormone drug treatment and egg retrieval surgery is high. And with the average compensation for this kind of donation at about $5,000 in Florida, the allure of this relatively new medical procedure is attracting more and more young women, despite the many unknowns.

The eggs in my ovaries made me valuable. Without them, there is no in vitro fertilization, no surrogate mothers, no baby making business. As it unfolded, I began to feel like a commodity rather than a human being, a means to an end on the infant assembly line.

Read The Cost of Life here.