My friend Dorothy

It's strange to see a friend turn up in the news. I've done this for a living long enough to know that no story completely captures a person -- it's a snapshot, and all you can hope is that you framed it right and the colors are true.

So let me share a few snapshots of my friend Dorothy Parvaz, a great journalist who was taken into custody by the Syrian government last Friday.

My wife and I met Dorothy while we were at Harvard University in 2008-09 on a Nieman journalism fellowship. Dorothy came from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where she wrote editorials.

Dorothy hates having her picture taken. We put together a little yearbook for our group, and all our photos are in it -- except for hers. So she's going to be really ticked that there's a whole slideshow of her out there on the web.

Dorothy's a citizen of the world -- her mom is American, her dad is Iranian-Canadian, and she holds citizenship in all three countries.

She likes a good cocktail. She's always stylish, usually in various shades of black. Her eyes can throw daggers. But when you make her laugh you feel like you own the world.

During the year we were in Cambridge, Dorothy's paper up and died on her. The Post-Intelligencer went from a print edition to online-only. Because the printed paper still brings in most of the money, the P-I laid off almost all its staff, including her. So in the middle of what was supposed to be a glorious break, she was set adrift. We sought her out and hugged her neck. She was strong and tough that day. Still is.

After our year was over she went to Europe to be with the man who is now her fiancé. She got a job with Al Jazeera English and had recently covered the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. It's not clear why Syria detained Dorothy. But as another friend of hers put it:

"Protestors are standing up to a violent authoritarian leadership. Troops are rounding up hundreds of people and taking them away. Innocent people are being killed. These are the things conscientious journalists care about. These are the things Dorothy cares about."

In my field, the best of the best head into trouble as everyone else is heading out. Two combat photographers -- including one who grew up in Fayetteville -- were killed in Libya just two weeks ago. The worst I get on an average day is a nasty email, but many in our tribe are truly brave.

You can keep track of the situation on a Facebook page set up for Dorothy, or on the Twitter hashtag #FreeDorothy. The Committee to Protect Journalists is also on the case.

I don't talk too much about other journalists or the job of journalism on here. Thanks for indulging me this one. We love Dorothy, and miss her, and hope she comes home soon.

Byline of the century

The great Chris Jones of Esquire magazine wrote the other day about some of his favorite bylines -- not so much for the writing (although they're all fine writers), but just for the sound of the names.

Being a Tommy (it's Tommy on my birth certificate) has caused the occasional problem in print. At my first paper in Augusta, Ga., I wrote a story a reader didn't like, so she wrote a letter to the editor saying it was obvious you couldn't trust a story from a reporter with a "childish euphemism" for a name.

My nickname was Childish Euphemism around the newsroom for a while.

When I applied to the Observer back in 1989, they sent me some papers to critique, and the first thing I noticed was all the tremendous bylines. I fell in love with three right away: John Wildman, Lolo Pendergrast, and the best of them all, Tex O'Neill.

After I got hired I found out that John Wildman was a mellow guy -- he left the paper to become a mailman (I imagined a series of adventure novels: "John Wildman, Mailman.") Lolo Pendergrast turned out to be even wilder than her name. And Tex O'Neill in the flesh didn't look like a Tex or an O'Neill, but he was a brave reporter who kept a huge aquarium and collected arrowheads.

All of which leads me to this.

Last night a bunch of us from the paper went to the North Carolina Press Association awards, where we brought home some bling. As part of the ceremony, they read off the names of everyone who won an award. The contest is split into six divisions, from the smallest papers to the largest, so it adds up to hundreds of names.

Well, there's a little paper up in the mountains called the Cherokee One Feather -- I believe it covers the members of the Cherokee tribe up there. One of its staffers won an award. His name:

Scott M. Brings Plenty.

I submit that as the Greatest Byline of All Time. And I don't even want to know what the M. stands for.