The Institute is a cooperative program between the New York Times Company and various organizations for the benefit of their student members. Candidates must be student members of either the National Association of Hispanic Journalists or the National Association of Black Journalists or may be enrolled at a historically black college or university.

The next Institute will be held Jan. 2 through 12, 2010, for student members of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. The January Institute alternates between Miami and Tucson and the 2010 Institute will take place at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The postmark deadline to apply is Oct. 24, 2009, and students will be notified whether they have been accepted no later than Nov. 21, 2009. This Institute accepts up to 24 students.

The second Institute in 2010 will be held May 16 to 31 at Dillard University in New Orleans for students who are members of the National Association of Black Journalists or who are enrolled at a historically black college or university that is represented by the Black College Communication Association. The postmark deadline to apply for the May Institute is Feb. 27, 2010, and students will be notified whether they have been selected no later than March 27, 2010.

(For either Institute, students who wish to attend but may have academic conflicts should contact the director of the Institute, Don R. Hecker, hecker@nytimes.com, to determine if special arrangements can be made.)

Applications should be sent to PO Box 2690, Times Square Station, New York, NY 10108.

Students are competitively selected by a panel of journalists at The New York Times. Applicants must submit an essay of up to 500 words on why they want to be journalists; six published writing or editing clips, or portfolios of their work if they are submitting visual material; and a completed Institute application form.

Graduates of the Institute have interned at or now work at some of the most prestigious news organizations in the United States, including The Washington Post, the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The Boston Globe and, of course, The New York Times itself, along with many other newspapers and news organizations.

Supervised by veteran journalists from The Times, The Boston Globe and the Times Company’s Regional newspapers in a newsroom environment, the students cover events in the cities where the Institutes are held. At previous Institutes, the students’ work has explored issues across the entire spectrum of American life. They have interviewed a Presidential candidate, covered Presidential speeches and explored a variety of national political issues. And they have spotlighted the plight of the homeless in wealthy communities, shown the challenges to immigrants both legal and illegal, and produced dozens of other stories that give voice to both ordinary and extraordinary people.

Application forms:

New York Times Student Journalism Institute in Tucson (January 2010)

New York Times Student Journalism Institute in New Orleans (May 2010)

“We’re going to attempt to, if the city will allow us to,” said Danny Rogers, president and chief executive of the company, Southern Star Amusement, based in Baton Rouge, La.

Six Flags New Orleans has been closed since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

One of the world’s largest theme parks companies, with 19 parks across the country, Six Flags does not plan to reopen the park, claiming in a recent report that the park did not make money even before Katrina.

“That’s incorrect. We saw the books ourselves,” said Rogers. “The park has always made money.”

Rogers plans to expand the park, opening it year-round and offering more rides and a sports complex while combining a water park and amusement park.

“Six Flags is seasonal and we’re more year round,” Rogers said.

“It will basically be the first of its type in the nation, because it combines the water park literally within the comprising amusement park itself, instead of separate. We’re adding the water elements all the way around the internal park where you can ride the rides and stay wet all day if that’s what you like to do.”

Southern Star has also conducted research to see what local residents and tourists want.

Though the city is talking to more than one company about operating the theme park, Southern Star still expects to buy and rebuild the park soon, not wanting to lease.

“They’re still arguing with Six Flags,” Rogers said.

Six Flags, a New York-based company, signed a contract with the city of New Orleans in 2002 to lease the park. According to park officials, Six Flags New Orleans sustained approximately $150 million in damage from flooding.

Rogers said he believed the damage was closer to $35 million to $40 million, “which is still substantial,” he said.

The theme park was originally opened in 2000 under the name Jazzland and was owned by Alfa Smartparks, a company based in Jacksonville, Fla. It filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002.

That same year, Six Flags bought the theme park out of bankruptcy, investing approximately $30 million and operating it until Katrina struck.

As for Southern Star Amusement, Rogers is confident that the park will do well under the new management.

“We’re willing to risk $50 to $60 million,” Rogers said.

“I sure need something to come through,” he said. “I used to get a lot of work done.”

Greenleaf, a day laborer , stood in the blazing sun in the parking lot of the Lowe’s store in Elysian Fields on Friday, hoping a passing car will stop and ask him to work.

On a busy day, more than 150 day laborers – or “subcontractors” – like Greenleaf gather in home-store parking lots and on street corners around New Orleans, waving at moving cars. The gatherings developed after Hurricane Katrina, when a steep increase in building created work for hundreds of day laborers.

The scene is played out across the city, not just at Lowe’s, but at places like the Home Depot on Carrollton Avenue, where on Friday a couple of dozen men lined the fences outside the store parking lot.

At each corner and lot, construction bosses and private homeowners cross paths with the day laborers, who stand out with their tanned skin, paint-stained clothes and baseball caps. Loud hums from cars, buses and trucks combine with the faint smell of gasoline and alcohol. With every car comes the possibility of a meal, with every driver the possibility of a day’s work.

Greenleaf said he sleeps less than blocks away from where he waits for work. He makes his bed under the I-10 overpass near the Elysian Fields exit. He said he drove commercial trucks for 30 years, until 2006. Greenleaf, who is originally from Bayou Lafourche, in Lafourche, La., said he stopped driving trucks after his license expired.

Shortly after Katrina hit, he turned to the street corners for day work, averaging about $100 a day. The work is usually manual labor, digging, painting, and landscaping. Prices vary: Painting a medium sized room is usually $75, digging, $100 to $200, and plumbing, $200 to $300.

Sometimes, drivers have other requests. “I don’t turn nothing down,” said Greenleaf, who said he has, at times, been offered money for sex.

At Lowe’s, every hour or so cars pull up to the corner. A hand motion by the driver denotes how many workers are needed. At one point on Friday, despite the hand signal – three fingers for three workers – at least seven workers run up to each stopped car begging for work. Chaos quickly ensued, but eventually the driver made his choice and speed off.

Greenleaf said the majority of people who hire him and others are kind, often providing workers food and water. “The majority treat you well,” he said.

However, some employers take advantage of workers by refusing to pay them after the work. To address these concerns, outreach workers visit the day laborers’ sites. Six days a week at 8 a.m., Jacinta Gonzalez picks up fellow outreach worker Dennis Soriano. The two work for the New Orleans Worker’s Center for Racial Justice in a department known as the “Congress of Day Laborers.” Gonzalez and Soriano work on educating laborers about their rights and organizing them into grassroots movements. “The members decide what they want to work on,” Soriano said. Education can mean training in people’s homes as well as workshops on worker’s rights.

Getting legislation passed that will make it illegal to withhold payment from laborers is currently his organization’s primary goal, Soriano said.

Meanwhile at Lowe’s, some of the workers find rest in the cool shadows under trees, solemnly looking at the ground. Others laugh the wait away, smiling at passing cars. If they don’t find work, most will not eat. Sometimes they will find places giving away food, such as churches. Other times, they must nap the hunger away.

Work used to be steady, Greenleaf said. But these days, people seemed to have stopped building and renovating their homes as much.

“I used to be on this lot for less than5 minutes before I found work,” Greenleaf said.

And so, he waits.

At the time of his interview, he had been outside for almost three hours without work.

“The city has let people down,”  she said. “They told us to come back. But what have they done?”

On Thursday night, William attended a city-sponsored event aimed at improving New Orleans East’s image as a dilapidated and largely abandoned neighborhood. Dubbed the “State of New Orleans East,” the two-and-half-hour presentation at City Cathedral attracted more than 1,400 people and carried a message that New Orleans East residents want to rebuild.

Fourteen panelists representing several key industries in New Orleans East outlined detailed plans to help bring people, businesses and investors into the area. CNN reporter Tom Foreman moderated the event.

Audience members heard about strategies to reopen the area’s hospital, attract investors, fight crime, improve schools, reconnect  utilities and construct a new shopping center.

“This message is a national message: New Orleans East is thriving and doing well,” said Shermin Copelin, president of the New Orleans East Business Association (NOEBA) and a key organizer of the event.

Methodist Hospital, which was severely damaged during Hurricane Katrina, is set to  reopen by December 2011 at the earliest, and early 2012 at the latest, said Fred Young, president of Methodist Health System Foundation. He said the reopened hospital would employee 415 new staff members, who will make an average of $50,000 annually. While some whispers in the audience could be heard criticizing the project’s timeline, Young’s announcements were met with loud applause.

Melanie Hall, director of communication for Energy New Orleans, said power lines will be added to surrounding areas not currently fully serviced.

The city also plans to develop a recycling station in the area, said D’Juan Hernandez, a representative from Sun Energy Group. “We think we can bring recycling back to New Orleans.”

Alicia Plummer, vice president of NOEBA, summed up city officials’ messages. “East New Orleans is ready and open for business.”

The night’s agenda also included plans to decrease crime. “I’m not going to rest until we get our murder rates down to near zero,” said Leon Cannizzaro, Orleans Parish district attorney. Cannizzaro said he and his staff plan to work closely with the community to investigate crimes in the area as well as work on rehabilitating nonviolent offenders and juvenile offenders.

Officials also hope to work on maintaining local schools, said Woody Koppel, president from the Orleans Parish School Board.

A deal to build a shopping center on  the site of Lake Forest Plaza is also in the works. Cesar Burgos, a  lawyer  who serves on the mayor’s “Bring New Orleans Back” commission, said he hopes to replace the plaza with an outlet mall. The audience responded to his plan with shouts of “Yes!”

Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis summarized public sentiment at Thursday’s meeting saying, “We don’t want what we had in the past. We want better!”

Despite the optimism of city officials, residents admitted some skepticism after the meeting, Evelyn Bickham said, “We’re hoping – that’s all we can do is hope” that officials will fulfill their promises.

Nearly four years after Hurricane Katrina, a drive along these streets shows  that home abandonment continues to be a major problem for the city.

“We drove through here, and it looked like a bomb hit. It really looked bad,” said Sandy Kelly, who, with her son Jason and husband, Phillip, is working to renovate and sell homes in the partially abandoned area north of the Gentilly neighborhood.

The family plans to stop redeveloping soon. Thieves often search abandoned neighborhoods for signs of redevelopment – new appliances and tools – costing them thousands in stolen supplies. Other houses in the area remain  abandoned, and lots still sit overgrown and empty. The neighborhood still looks like a shell of what it once was because other landowners just haven’t returned.

“I never made any profit off of any of these,” said Kelly’s son, Jason Johnson, as he took a break from renovating a home he plans to live in. Until widespread redevelopment happens here, his next-door neighbors will be two empty,  unkempt lots.

According to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, the percentage of homes receiving no mail for 90 days or more – a U.S. Postal Service benchmark for abandonment – was 34 percent in 2008; as of May 2009 it has dropped to 31 percent, or 65,888 units.

There are nearly 47,000 vacant homes and buildings in the city, according to the center. Out of a total 65,888 abandoned buildings, the city has acquired 12,000 permits for demolition, and 7,000 of the homes are in livable conditions.

The outlook for blight in New Orleans is expected to improve as more public-amenities projects and other repopulation initiatives lure prospective residents. Pontchartrain Park redevelopment, complete with a golf course and renovated homes, is one of the city’s latest projects. Also, the city is buying property in abandoned areas and turning it over to redevelopment agencies.

Part of the problem hampering repopulation, city officials and redevelopers say, are “fence riders” who still technically own their abandoned properties but won’t maintain, renovate or sell them because they have little financial incentive to do so. This is what creates a domino effect leading to a high concentration of abandoned buildings in certain areas, according to New Orleans Recovery Authority (NORA), a city redevelopment agency.

Some have said code inspections are still failing to catch these absentee landlords.

Ommeed Sathe, real estate director at NORA,  likened code inspections in abandoned neighborhoods to parking tickets on broken-down cars. “It doesn’t work,” he said. “They’re just going to hold that piece of land forever.”

 Tina Marquardt, operations director at the nonprofit Beacon of Hope Resource Center, said that as the city starts to improve efforts in housing-code enforcement, fence riders will face court dates and fines if they don’t address the eroding conditions of their properties.

Court appearances are especially likely for people who accepted state money – Road Home funding – and haven’t repaired their properties.

“There was a covenant that they had to renovate their homes within three years if they accepted that money,” Marquardt said. If the agreement is broken, homeowners could face reimbursement penalties of up to $150,000. “Those fence riders may be getting off that fence real soon,” she said, grinning.

Property rights laws were strengthened in 2006 through an amendment to the state’s constitution, giving landowners the ability to retain ownership of abandoned lots. This ultimately hurts city dwellers, said New Orleans City Councilwoman Stacy Head.

“It prohibits the government from taking and transferring properties to third parties except in very, very limited circumstances, and we need to do that in New Orleans,” she said. adding that property laws applying to rural Louisiana towns should not impact redevelopment efforts in the urban and partially abandoned city.

“That’s limited the city’s ability to get properties back into commerce,” Head said.

“It takes three years and a lot of blood sweat and tears – and money to get properties into commerce,” she said, adding that in tax sales in most other states, the landowner acquires foreclosed or abandoned properties after 18 months.

A method NORA began using last spring to acquire property is eminent domain, when the government can sue housing-code violators out of their property. The process works on a neighborhood level with the agency, Sathe said, but at the scale of the abandonment issue in New Orleans, the costly legal process is impractical in his view.

“We’ve got something like 1,500 imminent domain lawsuits in progress at the moment; that’s probably the world’s record,” Sathe said, “And it’s a drop in the bucket.”

Eminent domain, Sathe said, acquires enough land to create an upward trend in repopulation and development and does enough to scare other landowners into maintaining their properties – or risk losing them to the city if they will not maintain them.

Marquardt said, “I don’t think anyone, or any one state, could service the size of this disaster.” Because of that, Beacon of Hope volunteers use GIS – Geographic Information Systems – software to help the city pinpoint which lots are abandoned, are being renovated or are now livable in area neighborhoods.

The information is then funneled through the “Lot Next Door” program, enabling homeowners to see which nearby homes are available for purchase and renovation.

Marquardt, from  Beacon of Hope, said civic engagement by residents in abandoned areas could assist city and state agencies trying to assess abandonment and rebuild.

“It’s not that they’re not doing the same for all areas, it’s a matter of what’s coming from the bottom up,” Marquardt said.

Johnson continues to work on his soon-to-be home, located near a school that is still under construction. He hopes its completion brings residents to the area before land values in the area bottom out.

“What’s ever going to happen to them?” Johnson asked of the deserted properties. “Am I going to live across from an empty lot for 20 years?”

It all started with a story.

I told her that when I was 14, my father, Joseph Lucas Jr., originally from New Orleans, and my grandfather Joseph Lucas Sr., who still lives here, took me east through the town of Vacherie in St. James Parish to an even tinier, underdeveloped “town” (for lack of a better and smaller-sounding word). The place was called Moonshine – yes, it is that country. For my grandparents and step-grandmother, once upon a time this was home and life was hilariously simple.

I grinned at my recollection of the sleepy community in the middle of all the farmland I could ever stand to see, then was shocked when Jinx burst out laughing, saying she was from the same area.

Jinx knew exactly which St. Luke’s Baptist Church I was talking about when I told her about my visit to the tiny town’s white clapboard cultural landmark. She knew the church was situated near a levee, blocking the Mississippi River from wiping the unincorporated area off the map.

I had to investigate: “Call Dad, call Grandma up in Seattle, try to catch Grandpa while he’s home,” I told myself as we arrived at the interview site, and I closed the car door.  

After another adventure that weekend – this time through the partly abandoned streets off Paris Avenue in New Orleans looking for yet another interview – we stopped by my grandparents’ home on Poland Avenue in the city’s Ninth Ward.

I’ll never forget it.  

After introductions and catching up with my grandparents, I explained the link both Jinx and I felt she had to my grandparents. Once they started naming older family members – nodding at their recollections of them from the past, I couldn’t help but grin.

Our families had known each other at some point in the past – her last living aunt and cousin knew my grandparents, and they both knew Jinx’s father, among other family members.

Looking at the living room photos, Jinx smiled wide saying, “I feel like I’ve gone home. This is just too much!” It turns out some of our relatives actually lived in the same area – converted from a former plantation in the area.

As they pieced together portions of each other’s family trees, I sat with Grandpa thinking of how random the whole thing was. Here I am from Seattle, studying in Washington, D.C., in New Orleans for two weeks and by complete chance, I meet a mentor at the Institute who knows most of my father’s side of the family I’ve never even met because of the distance between us all.

Realizing how small the world can be, I couldn’t help but appreciate the simple gift of oral history and the value of old African-American communities – regardless of the anonymity and fractured spirit some of ours see today.

“You see, the world is round,” Grandma May said, with her typical all-knowing facial expression. “It’s all a cycle.”

Grandma May blew us a kiss as we drove away and I realized there’s so much more for me to learn about my family, and soon. Thinking about Grandma May’s theory of the round universe, I still wonder how long I have left to come full circle.

I also was curious about how should I help develop a creative eye and he recommend that I just look at as many photos as I can and use them as a reference and think about how I can make every shot different. Even when in tight places with low light don’t be scared to move; you can even ask to see if they will turn the house lights up a little. Overall, Batka was big help and I definitely got some great advice from a great photographer.