Does it really matter….

When we give labels to people.

Now that we are in the heat of March Madness, people want to talk about how bad their brackets were brutally torn apart through one of the wildest first weekends in March Madness history.

We saw KU who was picked to win it all…fail. (I’m ok with that)

Two pictures that summarize the game incase you missed it..

ALI!!!!!

Crying Jayhawks

Also, if Cornell wins it all then their final record would be 32-4. 32 wins would tie the average ACT score it takes to get in the University. Regardless, the tournament has proven that nobody is perfect. Except for one 17-year-old teenage boy in Chicago.

Alex Hermann has a perfect bracket thus far.

The story here is not the ridiculous odds the kid has overcome in picking a perfect bracket thus far out of millions of entries online. It is the fact that the media can’t get over the fact that the kid has Autism.

Google Perfect Bracket….

The first page is filled with headlines that read something like: Autistic Kid has Perfect Bracket.

Some even ponder how it is possible…

How did that autistic kid pick a perfect bracket?

And I truly wonder if this is all necessary. These articles fail to focus on how through the millions of brackets that are assembled each year, the odds it takes, especially on this year, is crazy unreal.

Instead the media focuses on the autism. I don’t understand why. It isn’t the focus of the story. I feel journalists sometimes look for stories that have recipes for success.

Take for instance Jason McElwain…

A kid that scores 20 points in a basketball game could get the kid a mention in a newspaper or a stat line. If he does it less than four minutes, then it could be worth highlighting. But when you dig deep to find out that Jason McElwain has autism and in his first game ever for varsity he goes off for 20 points, that is truly a great story.

But, for some reason with Alex Helmann, I don’t see that greatness in highlighting his disorder. Picking a bracket is ultimately a series of choices until you pick one winner.  It is incredible he picked a perfect bracket until now, like I said the odds of him doing that were unreal.

Some articles, like the one on ESPN, compared the Alex’s accomplishment to his 24 year old brother without autism.  Ultimately, it comes down to the journalist’s call in what information to report. If it were me, I would’ve left the information out about Alex’s autism because it takes away from his accomplishment and some people can take the story as  poking fun at him by saying only the boy with autism could do this.

Let me know what you think with some  comments….

Finally as promised….

Here are my package videos…

And I lied haha. I don’t have the upgrade available to load movies for this so I will upload them to Youtube I guess and then you can see them there.

Oh well. It is good to find out though that this last package was my last one as a practicing student and now I have been promoted to KOMU. It comes as a huge relief before spring break. That was my realistic goal the whole semester and now its time to focus on what I can do in the future.

As a journalist, I feel like this was a huge step in the direction of what I want to do the rest of my career. I am highly interested in news production, but the experience was great to become confident in my reporting skills.

I found weaknesses I never thought I had: My facial expressions and posture on camera, my lack of being my true self in my reporting, inability to locate the hard facts. All of these happened during this semester and I am glad it did. Because now I know what I need to work on and I realize these mistakes before they go out to a real live audience besides the 6 members of my lab class and Greeley.

That’s the important thing I have learned from this process.

On my first tour of the KOMU station, the tour guide told me “You’re going to make mistakes. It is expected for all of us here  too.”

Greeley mentioned the beginning of the semester that “the more you bleed in practice the less you bleed in combat. ” It is so true. I realize that if I thought I was a reporter or maybe I pursued a job after college without this experience, it would’ve been a disaster. If it happened to Greeley in Memphis, then it definitely would happen to me.

Now it is off to KOMU. The station that I was eager to work at for years to get cool experience and then maybe shunned away from when I never made the commitment to try. Regardless, I am excited and ready to be out there.

For package 5, I covered the Mayoral Debate for college students.   It was great to see how the candidates are interested in issues prominent among students. Some of those issues were police walkthrough downtowns and landlords. For more about the debate here is an article in the Columbia Daily Tribune…

Thanks for reading and I will blog to you later

Editorials are a lot like a double edged sword for newspapers…

The reasoning behind this is yesterday I read an ANONYMOUS editorial in The Maneater that involved a subject I was affected in and quickly could tell that whoever wrote the article did not take the time to fact check or atleast look into what they were talking about.

HERE IS THE ARTICLE!

This editorial was tough to read because I was a Summer Welcome Leader in 2009. It just wasn’t true and didn’t take the time to figure out how diversity is relevant during SW.

The double edged sword label is that editorials gives news a chance to be portrayed by citizens on a more personal level. In a sense it allows everyone the opportunity to voice their freedom of speech as a journalist. However, it definitely has it’s problems.

In a website about “The 7 things you should know about citizen journalism…” it discusses some of the issues with editorials and citizen journalism.

“Citizen journalism reflects the contributions of those who choose to participate, and such projects can be havens for triviality or unreliable content. At the same time, many users are inclined to trust material they find online, particularly if it is called “news.” In this way, citizen journalism projects have the potential to implicitly validate content that might be inaccurate,offensive, or otherwise lack credibility.”

The newspaper also runs the chance of losing its credibility. Although this is the Maneater and just a student newspaper, they did a really good job in going out and finding the facts from New Student Programs Director David Reilly, as well as past SW leaders that had supporting statements that went against the editorial.

HERE IS THAT ARTICLE!

The article does exactly what any newspaper should do. It goes and gets the viewpoint of opposite side of the editorial to see the credibility in the citizen journalism.  In this case, it shows the lack there of. Now, that may not be the point of every article but this was just too good of an example for any citizen journalist to realize what they are talking about first before they try and point out someone or something and publish it. I understand some people can have different viewpoints, but that doesn’t represent the general public necessarily.

I would have liked to see the anonymous editorial writer at least own up to their opinion and try and talk to someone on the other side about Summer Welcome and the experience he or she didn’t get out of it or maybe missed out on and express the importance of what his/her editorial is about and get feedback from the people who are involved. Then write the article.

Thanks for reading….I have my package videos and will upload them today or tomorrow.

News..News…News..And

Who knew that finding it could be so hard.

Here is a recap of the stories I have done and hopefully soon I can post them on here.

1) Forrest production is down in Missouri.

2)Columbia community comes together to break record donation amount at Polar Plunge.

3) Missouri professor creates online suicide prevention course.

4) Associated Press dubs economic downturn the “Great Recession.”

and tonight I will be covering the Columbia Mayor debates for Missouri Students.

However, I feel like I have taken a step back in the past couple of weeks as a journalist. I try to envision what would be great and sound great and try and match everything to what I envision.  My last story on the Great Recession took a simple press release and then I tried taking that and stretching it out into a big deal locally in Columbia.  I envisioned sound bites of businessmen that discussed how the Great Recession is a reality in Columbia and that wasn’t the case.  Yes, some businesses closed, but the fact is that what is going on nationally may not relate to Columbia and that could’ve been the bigger picture.

What I’ve Learned from this….

1) Be flexible with the story… Don’t expect it to be exactly what you would like to hear because there may not be anything there.

2) With interviews, call ahead of time. Interesting thing is that I just tried showing up these past two weeks because I was getting a lot of “No, thanks!” over the phone.  However, when I showed up it killed my time frame waiting for people to talk for well over an hour.

3) Plan ahead….I forced this into a news piece that could’ve been a fifteen second reader. If nothing huge is there, then move to something else. Planning ahead could’ve given me ample time to switch to another story.

I know this may not be the most entertaining post but I hope I can look back later to see some progress…