Here’s a video I produced when I was at Journalism School. It’s a 2-minute feature I shot, reported and narrated as part of our newscast, which I also co-anchored. If you get bored of watching me and Larry Santana talk, you can scroll through to the middle of the newscast.

The piece is about Wendy-O-Matik, a writer and “radical love” activist in Berkeley. By profiling the polyamory workshops she gives in the San Francisco Bay area, it explores whether “being open” is a sexual orientation.

Before I embarked on months of Flash programming for my masters project on Colombian Landmine victims, I thought I would practice using the program with a topic a lighter topic. For a while, I was playing with the idea of doing my thesis on “polyamorous” people in the San Francisco Bay area, or people who take non-monagamy as a lifestyle and/or sexual orientation. For my research, I found profiled several different species, from the Dungfly to the Bonobo, about their non-monogamous tendencies. Apparently, being “sexually open” isn’t as unusual as you may think. Please, forgive the utter ridiculousness of this project. I promise, it was just for Flash practice.

One of the stories I worked on through my summer Knight-Carnegie News21 Fellowship aired October 13th.

The 8-minute Saturday Weekend Edition feature was called “American Muslim Family Chooses Polygamy,” a slightly shorter version of the piece I did this summer called “Matters of Love and Faith.”

I encourage folks to listen to the longer version - it gets more personal and has a lot more ambient sound.

There’s been some web discussion about the piece, which I’m happy about. But I didn’t always feel that way. Given the extreme sensitivity of the issue (Islam, polygamy and race, all in one!), I considered disabling online comments on the newsinitiative.org site to prevent a flame war. But so far it’s received positive feedback overall, especially from Muslims.

Special thanks to Sandy Tolan for editing, and for encouraging me to tell the story I felt most passionate about.

i shoot film, and still use minidiscs. stay tuned to find out why.