CAITLIN FITZSIMMONS

Electric car story for The Australian

Caitlin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:14:50 +0000

I have a story in the news pages of The Australian today about electric car network Better Place and how it plans to use Australia as a test case for the US.

14 July 2010 | Australia the test bed for electric car push into US.

Reporting on stem cell research

Caitlin — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 18:10:26 +0000

I attended the International Society for Stem Cell Research annual meeting in San Francisco and wrote a feature on new ethical issues for weekly health section of The Australian.

26 June 2010 | Deeper into uncharted waters: embryo research.

Travel story in The Australian

Caitlin — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 22:58:45 +0000

I had a story published in The Australian’s travel section on the weekend. This was a revised and shortened version of the San Francisco streetcar story I did for the LA Times last month. The hook for Australians is that the fleet contains two Melbourne trams.

12 June 2012 | Last stop San Francisco

Travel articles in the LA Times and Galavanting

Caitlin — Sat, 15 May 2010 04:47:06 +0000

Two of my travel pieces were published on the same day. The first was my debut in the Los Angeles Times – an article about San Francisco’s historic F-line trams, which come from all over the world, including Melbourne.

LA Times | 2 May 2010: San Francisco: The rolling transit museum known as the F line

The second was more of a personal essay, on living with an Iraqi family in Syria and my experience as a woman in this part of the world. It was based on the same trip as this piece I did for The Guardian in 2008.

Galavanting | 2 May 2010: Behind the Veil

3D television feature for The Australian

Caitlin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:00:25 +0000

This week I have another feature for The Australian‘s Media section, this time on 3D television. If you have a spare few thousand dollars and you’re prepared to sit around the living room wearing silly glasses, you can have the 3D cinema experience at home. Sports and video games are likely to be the big drivers to convince people to take up the technology, though the HDTV revolution is too recent for 3D to become mainstream just yet.

15 March 2010 | Home invasion of 3D’s visual power

Facebook feature in The Australian

Caitlin — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:21:38 +0000

I have a feature in The Australian‘s Media section today about Facebook and the issues with the defacement of tribute pages for dead children in Australia. I met with the face of Facebook Debbie Frost in San Francisco on Friday for a lengthy one-on-one interview and the feature is running in tomorrow’s paper. Of course, it’s already the future in Australia, so here’s the link:
The Australian, Media, 1 March 2010: Faceless no more – Facebook admits errors

Article on alternative energy in Orkney for New Statesman

Caitlin — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:23:15 +0000

My article on renewable energy in Orkney is in this week’s New Statesman, both in print and online.

I travelled to Orkney last summer to research this, though of course it’s up to date with all the latest news developments. The article looks two main types of alternative energy – the research and development of marine energy (wave and tidal power) and the community-owned wind turbines on the smaller islands.

Immigration story in BusinessWeek

Caitlin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:39:43 +0000

I have an article on BusinessWeek.com today about US immigration and how alcohol is a factor. As well as comment from the State Department, it involves a fantastic case study about a British man and an American woman who married last year but are still separated because the US Embassy turned down his Green Card application because of a nine-year-old drink driving conviction. Over the past five years there has been a huge jump in the number of people turned down for visas on the basis of a “physical or mental disorder”, which includes alcohol problems. For more, please read the story.

BusinessWeek is my first US client in journalism. (In the blogging space, I also write for EcoSalon). Talk about starting at the top! I hope to write more for BusinessWeek soon.

Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference

Caitlin — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:16:53 +0000

I’ve just spent an extraordinary few days at Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference in Corte Madera, north of San Francisco.

The faculty included brilliant writers such as Tim Cahill and photographers and also editors and agents. The access was superb. The conference was quite intimate – we had 75 students and over 30 faculty members – and since we were there for four days, there were plenty of formal and informal opportunities to meet people.

For me it was a nice blend between networking and working on craft. I took Larry Habegger and Henry Shukman’s personal essay and memoir workshop in the mornings, which I very much enjoyed. I also took inspiration from the readings and talks from published writers and photographers – and from the many book-filled shelves in the enormous and wonderful Book Passage store.

I want to get more serious about travel writing as I enjoy both the travel and the creative style of writing. I’m also very much looking for new markets now that I’m based in the US. This is particularly true since Anyway magazine, which commissioned a lot of my foreign reportage, is on hiatus.