"At night it gets darker out here than in other places," he begins. "It's a yawning, special kind of dark, deepened by acres of cane so still and quiet they can keep secrets." It's a story about Pahokee, the sugarcane town torn by gang violence—and the death of the captain of the football team. It was one of the best Palm Beach Post stories of 2008. And it was written by Michael LaForgia. He might not win those in-depth reporting or public service awards, but the young police reporter does something even more impressive: He manages to sprinkle a bit of the art and craft of storytelling into everything he writes. Whether it's a telling detail in a brief about a murder or a poetic lead like the Pahokee story, he does the things that help readers connect to stories. In a culture in which reporters are asked to do more with less and editors speak only in inches, LaForgia seems to actually care about the quality of his prose. If more writers did that, the newspaper industry wouldn't be as dark and bleak as those acres of cane.