The Job Search
(AP)
As college seniors get their diplomas this month, there’s the usual excitement and the obvious relief. But this year more than any, the seniors we spoke with are worried, because so many of them are leaving college without a job.
All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.
Read all posts by Amy Birnbaum in Couric & Co.
May 8, 2009 4:11 PM This post was written by CBS News producer Amy Birnbaum, to accompany a Kelly Wallace piece on Friday's Evening News with Katie Couric.
As college seniors get their diplomas this month, there’s the usual excitement and the obvious relief. But this year more than any, the seniors we spoke with are worried, because so many of them are leaving college without a job.
As college seniors get their diplomas this month, there’s the usual excitement and the obvious relief. But this year more than any, the seniors we spoke with are worried, because so many of them are leaving college without a job.
April 15, 2008 7:16 PM 
This post was written by CBS News producer Amy Birnbaum, who worked on this story about Parkinson's Disease and dance with Correspondent Kelly Wallace.
I’ve known Pam Quinn for more than years. Our sons have been friends since elementary school. We traveled in the same “mom pack,” where it’s hardly ever about who we are, it’s all about the school, the sports, and now that they’re in high school, the nights out. So I was surprised to learn a couple of years after we met, that she had Parkinson’s disease, a debilitating movement disorder. At the time she was a professional dancer and was moving into a more lucrative career as a personal trainer. So she seemed to be managing the symptoms well. Turns out she was working hard at doing just that.
Pam had spent most of her life as a dancer, and describes the change in her life when diagnosed as “profoundly shattering.” She told us, “Dance is how I earned my living, but even more essential it was how I knew myself, and how I viewed myself.”
Finding The Beat Once Again
(CBS)
I’ve known Pam Quinn for more than years. Our sons have been friends since elementary school. We traveled in the same “mom pack,” where it’s hardly ever about who we are, it’s all about the school, the sports, and now that they’re in high school, the nights out. So I was surprised to learn a couple of years after we met, that she had Parkinson’s disease, a debilitating movement disorder. At the time she was a professional dancer and was moving into a more lucrative career as a personal trainer. So she seemed to be managing the symptoms well. Turns out she was working hard at doing just that.
Pam had spent most of her life as a dancer, and describes the change in her life when diagnosed as “profoundly shattering.” She told us, “Dance is how I earned my living, but even more essential it was how I knew myself, and how I viewed myself.”
August 27, 2007 2:00 PM
The Maine Event: A Foster Child Success Story
Amy Birnbaum is a CBS News producer based in New York.
First off a confession. My family goes to Maine in the summers, to the North Woods, so I’m always looking for Maine stories.
About a year ago I read a profile in an online newsletter, called Connect for Kids about a high school girl from downeast Maine who had lobbied to create a special foster care law for sibiling rights. There was a picture of this lovely girl, Kala Clark, and the governor at the bill signing. I thought it seemed like a nice story, so I proposed it as a possible feature. We didn’t do it at the time, but earlier this summer I spoke with Kala and Penthea Burns, who works for the University of Maine’s Muskie School of Public Policy. Penthea talked about the importance of empowering children in foster care, and mentioned that Maine has a camp for foster care siblings called “Camp to Belong." It’s one of seven camps around the US that bring together separated siblings for a week or two in the summer. We thought this would be a perfect way to tell Kala’s story and those of other siblings in foster care...
First off a confession. My family goes to Maine in the summers, to the North Woods, so I’m always looking for Maine stories.
About a year ago I read a profile in an online newsletter, called Connect for Kids about a high school girl from downeast Maine who had lobbied to create a special foster care law for sibiling rights. There was a picture of this lovely girl, Kala Clark, and the governor at the bill signing. I thought it seemed like a nice story, so I proposed it as a possible feature. We didn’t do it at the time, but earlier this summer I spoke with Kala and Penthea Burns, who works for the University of Maine’s Muskie School of Public Policy. Penthea talked about the importance of empowering children in foster care, and mentioned that Maine has a camp for foster care siblings called “Camp to Belong." It’s one of seven camps around the US that bring together separated siblings for a week or two in the summer. We thought this would be a perfect way to tell Kala’s story and those of other siblings in foster care...
April 3, 2007 10:05 AM 
Amy Birnbaum is a producer for CBS News based in New York.
The story that correspondent Kelly Wallace and I reported for tonight's Evening News got rolling as a result of an e-mail. An associate producer, Jenny Gold, read a viewer email on Brittany and Robbie Bergquist. She proposed doing a story on them as part of our series on The American Spirit. When I read Jenny’s note about the kids and their program, I thought, they can’t be all that smart and generous AND nice, can they? I mean, not both of them in one family. I have a 13-year-old, and though he’s still the greatest kid in the world and all that, I have to admit that generosity is definitely an acquired skill.
But Robbie and Brittany are for real, as are their parents. They started this charity as a single project, to help a soldier’s father pay off a massive phone bill from cellphone calls from Iraq. The kids heard the story on the radio, and then actually ran up to their rooms and took money out of their piggy banks. That was about $21. Many of us would end it there, but they made it a kind of civics project; they organized a bake sale, got a donation from a local bank and eventually helped pay off the bill.
By now their parents, Bob and Gail Bergquist, were in it to help. At first the family wanted to send cellphones overseas, but the Pentagon wasn’t too happy with that plan. So they came up with the idea of turning in the old phones to a recycler, and using the money earned on the phones to buy phone cards for troops. It’s such an appealing story, and back three years ago, Brittany and Robbie made the rounds of talk shows and news programs. They got a little media savvy and loved the idea that limos were pulling up outside their front door to take them to a nearby television studio. You’d think it would have gone to their heads, but these kids are pretty grounded. Somehow they manage to work on this charity along with keeping up grades in honor classes, playing sports, seeing friends, and of course, doing their share of talking on the phone.
In doing this story, we were really struck by how many people have been impacted by the work of these two kids and their parents...
The American Spirit: G.I., Phone Home
(AP / CBS)
The story that correspondent Kelly Wallace and I reported for tonight's Evening News got rolling as a result of an e-mail. An associate producer, Jenny Gold, read a viewer email on Brittany and Robbie Bergquist. She proposed doing a story on them as part of our series on The American Spirit. When I read Jenny’s note about the kids and their program, I thought, they can’t be all that smart and generous AND nice, can they? I mean, not both of them in one family. I have a 13-year-old, and though he’s still the greatest kid in the world and all that, I have to admit that generosity is definitely an acquired skill.
But Robbie and Brittany are for real, as are their parents. They started this charity as a single project, to help a soldier’s father pay off a massive phone bill from cellphone calls from Iraq. The kids heard the story on the radio, and then actually ran up to their rooms and took money out of their piggy banks. That was about $21. Many of us would end it there, but they made it a kind of civics project; they organized a bake sale, got a donation from a local bank and eventually helped pay off the bill.
By now their parents, Bob and Gail Bergquist, were in it to help. At first the family wanted to send cellphones overseas, but the Pentagon wasn’t too happy with that plan. So they came up with the idea of turning in the old phones to a recycler, and using the money earned on the phones to buy phone cards for troops. It’s such an appealing story, and back three years ago, Brittany and Robbie made the rounds of talk shows and news programs. They got a little media savvy and loved the idea that limos were pulling up outside their front door to take them to a nearby television studio. You’d think it would have gone to their heads, but these kids are pretty grounded. Somehow they manage to work on this charity along with keeping up grades in honor classes, playing sports, seeing friends, and of course, doing their share of talking on the phone.
In doing this story, we were really struck by how many people have been impacted by the work of these two kids and their parents...
