Following the story
When a large truck rumbled past her Cambridge hotel this week, Melissa Block’s heart jumped. The sound reminded the journalist of her trip to China for a series of feature stories prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. “It still comes back,” Block told a group of students gathered at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study on Monday. The host of National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” was preparing for an interview when a massive earthquake struck Sichuan Province. The disaster left 70,000 people dead and millions homeless. Her reporting from China was perhaps the hardest assignment of her career, Block told the Harvard undergrads during lunch, and later a crowd that jammed the Radcliffe Gymnasium to hear her speak. She described following a couple as they searched frantically for their young son in the rubble of their collapsed apartment building. An excerpt from her final report — with her voice wavering and...