1) Going Loko!!!!!

It is a relatively new drink that combines an energy drink with a 12%  malt beverage. I did a story on it for KOMU this week and had a really good time learning more about the drink. Health experts said besides the fact the can is packed with alcohol, almost an entire six pack of beer, there were other issues I didn’t even think about.

MU Wellness Resource Center Official Kim Dude was disappointed for who she thought the target audience was for the drink: women

“Clearly it is targeted for women. What men is going to want a fruity drink. It is upsetting because it has so much alcohol. And with caffeine, they may be wide awake and not realize how much they have drank, but in reality they have drank too much. Then they are left vulnerable.”

If you like to see the angle approach I took, check out my story here.

MID-MISSOURI GOES FOUR LOKO

Also check another stations Four Loko story and see if you think they went a little over the top.

2) Dwight Howard pays a special visit.

I am a sucker for feel good make-a-wish stories. When you mix sports with them, it makes me respect certain athletes for what they do off court even more. Dwight Howard has always had a very likable personality and this story definitely shows his caring side.

Definitely give this a look because it is a tear jerker…but in a happy way .

3)  9/11

I remember going in late to school that day. I saw the second plane fly into the Tower #2 and I froze. I honestly thought I was watching replay footage of the first plane, and it took me a few minutes to realize what was going on. I went to school for an hour but then was checked out by mom because everyone was in panic. I was in Arkansas, hundreds of miles away, but chaos was happening around me.

9 years later, there are still a lot of issues involving Americans over Sept. 11th.  The mosque at Ground Zero has been in discussion over the past couple of weeks and protests have sparked a nation built in majority by Christian beliefs. Regardless on what you stand on, this day should be a day we come together as a nation and be remorseful by the thousands of people who lost their lives on this tragic day.

I wrote a reader’s theater in high school about 9/11 that won 1st place at a speech tournament. It recaps the day from a personal standpoint and I really put a lot of effort into it in high school…

Take a look!

4) Mizzou Tailgating has become irrelevant…again.

This is a picture of the new tailgating spot that is designated for students before the game. However, not a lot of people showed up and instead took their tailgating elsewhere because of strict police enforcement. (This has been a common theme over the years).

But even when I drove from my house toward the stadium an hour before the game, I was shocked.  I saw no traffic and parking lots near the stadium were relatively empty.  It was a very unintimidating game day atmosphere.

The MSA president Tim Noce says they are trying to model tailgating after Ole Miss, which is consistently considered one of the best pregame experiences in the world.  But I just don’t see that happening.

What do you think?

5) No more New York Times????

Well atleast no more printed paper.

We have been discussing the future of print paper in my Creativity and Journalism class. Some students were very advent on the extinction of printed papers in the future. Well on Thurs. Sept. 9th, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman and publisher of the New York Times said “we will stop printing the New York Times sometime in the future.”  I think it is a very relevant article because it shows how companies are on a quest to find a business model that will work with high quality journalism. I also liked how Sulzberger mentioned with the digital age the cost of changing is low. When the Kansas City Star paid 200 million for a huge state of the art printing press, who know how much less they could’ve spent for a facility with state of the art digital equipment.

Source: http://www.editorsweblog.org/newspaper/2010/09/arthur_sulzberger_on_charging_online_to.php

1) COLLEGE FOOTBALL IS BACK! It is easily the top choice for this past week, as it is without a doubt my favorite time of year. The first week did not disappoint whatsoever. Mizzou nabbed a victory in St. Louis…Two D-1 AA teams shocked Ole Miss and Kansas (my two least favorite teams), and last night’s Boise State and Va Tech game was an epic battle through and through. One could argue which team had the better jerseys….

I liked Boise St’s bold blue. However, what was Brent Musburger calling Boise the “cinderella” over and over again all about. (Thought: How many years does it take for a team to go undefeated before they lose the cinderella label.)

All in all it was a great first week to college football and it looks like next week will jnust get better!

2) The biggest loser of the week was cancer.

Sticking with the college football theme, my favorite story of the week was Boston College’s Mark Herzlich. The linebacker spent all of last season battling cancer and returned to the gridiron on Saturday. Although Boston College will not win a national championship this year…Herzlich has got to be one of the feel good stories of the year. When I Youtubed his name, I came across a really good story about the continuing fight back to football that everyone should check out…

)

3) Twitter is addictive.

I know I am a little late to the Twitter World, but it is fun and very useful.  A week ago I was asking Chris Spurlock, a friend of mine and twitter fanatic, how to use the application. Now I am getting family members joining in on the fun. I think it is really cool because I get information from all of the things I find useful to me right away. I get local news, college sports, information about my favorite teams, huge world news, as well as getting updates from friends and celebrities. This week, when Columbia Police booked and released Derrick Washington, I tweeted his mugshot out and gained several followers just because of it.  I definitely will  continue to look for more ways to use it at a social tool but as well as a journalistic tool.

Oh and follow me: thlindsey

4) Next on my mind and the talk of the town in Columbia is the girl Kelshi Poe who fell down at Quinton’s Bar and Deli.

Here is the story.

It is an incident that will definitely spark issues among a lot of people in town. An underage 19 year old whose BAC level was .32 and fell down 15ft and landed on her head is going to create debate. Should the bar be responsible? Is it her fault? Her friends? Whose to blame?

Besides the issue at hand, I truly hope the girl will make it through this terrible accident. The last update I got from a friend, who was at the hospital with her, is that she’s had multiple surgeries on her head, skull and brain and at the time she’s in serious critical condition.

5) Houston, we almost had a problem.

Another oil vessel owned by Mariner Energy from Houston caught fire in the gulf but luckily there was no sheen.

The reason there was no sheen is because this wasn’t a drilling platform, it was a production platform.  I think a lot of people overreacted after the incident based upon what happened back in April with the Deepwater Horizon explosion and the oil spill in the gulf that ensued.

People have every right to think the worse of a situation (and when I looked at Twitter, a lot of people assumed the worse as I saw “Here we go again” all over the place).  But I was very uncomfortable with the way some media outlets handled it.  If you google Mariner Energy and look up the results in the news, several journalists link the company to Enron and BP presenting them in a negative light. Yes, this is a big issue  in the gulf, but this doesn’t make Mariner Energy and the people that work for them, bad people.

I know the media isn’t labeling anyone from Mariner as a “bad person” or making them an “enemy.” But at the same time,  linking them to companies with scandals on top of an oil platform fire doesn’t seem very fair to me.

Well this is the end… I hope everyone enjoyed and will come back next week for more.

But for anyone who is wondering about what I did this summer, here is what I put together.

DISCLAIMER: It is really really REALLY LONG. But if you scroll down to the end there will be photos and videos.

One Step Closer to the Real World:

The best experience of my life.

This summer I had a great opportunity interning with JM Associates Inc. They are a privately-owned production company that is responsible for producing multiple outdoor shows seen on the ESPN networks as well as Versus and Outdoor Channel. They have won multiple Emmy’s in the short turn-around category. This means that there shows aren’t live but are filmed and then shown within a week or so on television. Also, since the company was purchased by Group CSE based out of Atlanta in 2007, JM has also been doing numerous advertising campaigns for multiple companies such as Coca Cola, Arkansas Scholarship Lottery, Real Tree Outfitters, Geico.  My supervisor, Billy Chapman, told me early on that I would have the opportunity to learn every facet of how a show is made. I learned studio production, field production, post production and even a little bit of web production. Although it was not a reporting gig, it was great experience to get out of news and still learn very important facets of the television business. However, this does not mean I didn’t use my skills that I have developed in broadcasting because from day one and throughout the summer I carried over a lot of what I learned at Mizzou and put that toward JM.

I started out on the basics. My first day I was nervous, but very quickly I got settled in. The staff at JM was unbelievable. They were fun, easy-going, laid back, but very professional at what they do. Anthony Clayton is an editor that I was paired up with for most of the summer. He has worked at JM for five years and knows anything and everything I needed to know to get acquainted with the company. The first day, I learned about the cold room which is where are the servers and Beta stations are located.  JM, as I mentioned, does a lot of short turn-around programming. When I arrived they were in the mid-season of their biggest cash cow, the Bassmaster Elite Series.  I started on what they call digitizing. After the crew gets back from a tournament, the camera men have what can be almost a 100 tapes to be logged in and digitized onto computers. This has to be done very quickly and very efficiently within a couple of days so the editors can start to put together a show.  I picked up quick on how to log in the footage, but I had some minor setbacks day to day on what kind of settings it should be in and where the footage should go. JM has multiple shows done in HD (High-Definition) and SD (standard digital) as well as a massive EditShare network where everyone at JM can log on and access all of the footage and editing projects. I am not going to lie that at times I messed up and put the footage in the wrong place and had logged it in on the wrong setting but after awhile it became a routine and I felt very confident by the end of the Summer on what I needed to do.

Digitizing was one of the main things I spent a lot of time doing. Every week, new shows arrived and tapes needed to logged. And every week, I began to incorporate more of my journalism skills. I essentially was the only one, unless I had help from Anthony, that gets to see all of the footage from the tournaments. So all the good stuff, like the fish being caught and the SOTs (Sound On Tape) as well as footage to build the packages and segments had to be properly labeled by me. At first, I just put the footage into the computers without a whole lot of consideration. But then, I realized how vital my step in the process was and became more detailed in my labeling. Therefore, when the footage gets to the other editors in the next step, I have helped them out a lot by labeling what is good and what works to tell a story. As a journalist, a story should flow from the beginning to the end, and even though I wasn’t writing a story, I had to use the SOTs the fishermen said and match it up with footage that follows along the lines of continuity. Also, one of the things I learned from my broadcasting professors is that visually you want to take a viewer’s eyes to where they normally wouldn’t go. This trick makes it more appealing to viewer’s and also provides very creative camera angles. I became very good at pointing out these types of shots to editors so they could use them in the show.

The big project that I worked on and spent most of my time with in the summer was the College Bass Championship. I started with the show from the very get go and worked on it all the way until we shipped the master tapes off to ESPN. I started working on in June by labeling all of the footage from the regional tournament qualifiers that are being put together for one hour long show on ESPNU. After the labeling was done, I sat down with the editors and watched them work on the show and how they edit multiple things together at once.  It was cool to sit down with these guys for a couple of days and learn some cools tools that I can use at KOMU this year when I edit together my packages for the newscast. I also sat down with one of the editors, Jake Kelso, when he sat down with Billy Chapman for the final critique before the show was laid to tape and sent to ESPN. This step is very similar to when a story at KOMU is sent to the tiger chair to be edited before it goes on air. I even related this scenario to the main bossman Billy, and I remember that he told me how important of a step this can be for the editors. It is always good to have another eye that can provide some constructive criticism.

But back to the College Bass Championship. The site of the tournament was held in North Little Rock, Arkansas, which lucky for me is where I live. It was also where I got my first taste of field production for JM. When the tournament time arrived, I helped out with the stage set-up at Academy Sports and Outdoors. This was the site for the live internet broadcast of the weigh-ins for every day of the tournament. It was cool to see how a live broadcast works over the internet as well as to see what it is like to be apart of the road crew. The road crew drives a huge production truck to every tournament. Since this tournament was only ten minutes away, it was a lot easier for them but it is not rare for the road crew to drive across the nation to fishing tournaments. This year alone, three tournaments were located in California and later this year another outdoor show will be broadcasted from Salem, Oregon. These guys love being on the road but they also responsible for the footage of the shows. Most of these men are very experienced cameramen and have been in the business for years. Although I wasn’t allowed to go on angler’s boat with them and film the shows, I spent a lot of hours listening to their stories of the road as well as tricks from the trade over many years of experience.  For the College Bass Championship, I did get to go to all of the fishing sites at 5 A.M. and see what it takes for the cameramen to get ready.  Also, from going through a lot of footage from various shows, I can see a lot of what the cameramen look for in good shots that can go well together in a package for a show. These men also can be like a reporter when they are with the anglers. Competitive Fishermen may not have the most out-going personalities, so a cameraman is responsible for making sure they have plenty of SOT. Without it, there is no insight into what they are doing or what they are thinking and therefore the show will suffer.  After the tournament ended, and we struck down the set and headed back to JM, I spent an entire weekend mass digitizing atleast 125 tapes. Due to a jam packed schedule, the editors only had one week to put together all three of the College Bass Championship shows. Anthony and Jake, who were the closest to my age were also there to help me out. They were really cool guys and I had a blast. They also told me multiple times how crucial my time spent that weekend was to all of the editors. Without that help, who knows if they could have gotten the show done in time.  Ultimately, the shows were great and were finished without a hitch. I laid the shows from the computer to the tapes and sent them off to ESPN. It is crazy to see your work on such a popular network. But to be honest, by the time it aired of ESPNU that Saturday, I had watched every show atleast four times. !

Studio production was another cool and fun aspect of JM. Not only did it mean a free lunch (they usually catered on Studio days) It was also another great learning experience for me.  JM has it’s own multipurpose studio just like KOMU. In the studio, I learned many different things such as audio production as well as my first experience using a Cammate camera, which is a camera on top of a revolving crane. On most of their shows, JM brings in hired professionals to host and narrate their fishing and other various outdoor shows. Tommy Sanders is the veteran around JM. He was a Theater major in college, but now he considers himself to be a journalist. Tommy would constantly be asking anglers questions off camera and taking notes on his notepad at events. He was always well prepared and because he paid so much attention during the events, when he got in the studio he could do most of the segments in just one take! That is amazing considering the studio is not scripted.  It truly was incredible to watch Tommy and the other guys talk about fisheries so fluidly. They definitely were passionate about what they were doing and it showed on camera.

Aside from watching and learning from the anchors, I also kept track of time of each take for the segments for the editors. Although it may seem like not a big deal, most producers no that a newscast or a show can not go a single second over the allotted time slot. By keeping track of time,  I allowed the producers to not stress out about not having enough or too much for a show. Documenting the time is also a very organized way for editors or even myself to know exactly what take the producer wants as well as where to find it on the tape. Being organized definitely saves a lot of time.

I  spent a few days in the studio also helping out Howard. Howard is the studio production manager and he spends most of his time striking down sets and putting together new ones. This is an area often overlooked in television production. Lighting and staging are two huge aspects that go into making a television program look good to viewers at home. I helped Howard put together sets for the weekly online show Saltwater TV. A lot of the set pieces were very heavy and took a great deal of time. But what I liked most about working with Howard was setting up the lights for the shows. I always helped out with lights at my high school for the school plays. It is single handedly the most important aspect in the studio since there is no such thing as natural light. I also brought over some aspects that I learned in broadcast 2.  Terms like “too much backlight” and “the talent looks hot, can you iris down” are the same terms I use when reporting.  One of the biggest sets I helped Howard put together ended up being the funnest thing I did all summer at JM. It also leads to a completely new aspect JM has begun to do over the last few years.

Commercials can take on multiple meanings.  They can be used to sell a product or inform the public. They can be sarcastic, funny, scary, stupid, informative, entertaining and much more. They also can have celebrities, normal people, cavemen, talking geckos etc… That is the beauty of them because they can be really useful especially in the advertising for a company. I worked on three commercials for JM this summer. The first one was for an outdoor clothing company called Real Tree Outfitters. Although I was not at the set for the commercial, I logged all of the tapes and pretty much edited it together. The commercial featured Nascar driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. It was also pretty cool that I was one of the first set of eyes to see all of the footage and when I see it on TV, I can say “Hey, I did that!” The next commercial was a very big deal for the company. Coca Cola wanted to do a Coke Zero online advertisement series for the upcoming college football season. The CEO of Group CSE (the company that owns JM) as well as Coca Cola media representatives were all in town for the commercial shoot. I helped set up the green screen with Howard since the commercials was going to edited using JM’s graphic’s computer. There were several takes for each commercial and once again I had to keep an accurate account of which one the Coke Zero people liked so I would not give the editors the wrong takes later on. It was really exciting to be in a room with very important people but at the same time they were very intrigued with who I was as well. I talked to the actor for awhile and later on my boss told me how I did a great job entertaining the guest during down time (TRUST ME THERE WAS A LOT OF DOWN TIME).  I guess my social and communicative skills came in handy that day and throughout the summer.

However, the coolest commercial we did was an Antique Road Show themed commercial for the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery. The greatest thing about it is that I was actually in it! I played an extra in the background. In fact, everyone at JM was an extra.  It was a really fun experience all day and it is funny to be watching the news and getting to see my commercial during the break. Also, I got to play a vital role in the pitch to the lottery people for the commercial. I was in the conference room with all of the editors at JM as we tried and storyboard through ideas. I missed the first meeting where all editors threw out their own ideas but I got to sit in during the final decision and even had a say in some of the aspects of the commercial.  During the commercial shoot, I sat down with Billy Chapman after my part as he went through multiple takes. For the commercial we had several different variations we wanted to try and when I sat near Billy he would ask me repetitively which version I liked best. I felt pretty special even though I just agreed with a lot of what he thought was best. In the end,  the three different versions Billy and I liked best were the three that the lottery representatives ended up choosing.

Other activities I got involved with at the station included dubbing tapes or dvds, getting old footage from JM’s old television shows, and making music sheets for the shows.  Dubbing tapes is when they take the shows from one source and record them or dub them to either a tape or DVD. This is necessary for many reasons. For instance, JM may send out multiple copies of DVDs to ESPN or any other Network the show is on. They also want to keep clean versions of the tapes. This means that the version does not have any graphics on them. JM will use these tapes for old highlights on new shows, or perhaps a re-run on another network. (Like when the Outdoor Channel uses re-runs of a show that is on ESPN. Therefore, the Outdoor Channel has a different template of lower thirds and fonts, so a clean version is necessary). A lot of the time editors like to use old footage from past shows JM has produced. They have a huge library of tapes and I would go and find which one the editors needed and digitize the exact part they want. It is important to get the right version of the tape and sometimes I would grab the wrong one and have to re-do it.  Lastly, music sheets are another vital part of putting together a show. All the songs used in a show has to be properly documented on what they call a music sheet so whatever network the show is aired on can pay the copyright to the owners. This was not very hard but very time consuming and not my favorite part. However, it is another important step in putting together a television show.

The hardest part of this internship was definitely having to jump around and evolve to all the different tasks I had to do. It was like right when I got the routine for one thing I had to switch over to studio for a couple of days or had to dub all these shows to tape with different settings. It took time to learn everything and I made my share of mistakes, but the people I worked with understood that it was going to happen. By the end of the summer, I became a vital asset to Anthony and the other editors and very rarely was I asking questions about what to do. In fact, one of the gratifying moments of the summer is when somebody was having an issue getting a tape from the cold room and logging it onto his computer. The problem was one that had happen to me early in the summer and quickly I recognized the issue and told him what to do.

The overall experience was incredible. I learned so much.  At my going away party, Billy asked me what the number one thing I learned was from this summer. I told him that I learned how important every step was in the television business. From the field production, to the studio, to the editing station, it takes everyone working together and doing their part to make a show work. Being able to experience every one of those steps was definitely beneficial as I believe more and more I want to work for a company like JM in the future. Although there were areas of JM where I didn’t get to learn in, like graphics and  dotcom, what I did learn I will never forget.

There is a video of the place I worked at a couple of blogs ago.

Also I will post my ASL What it’s Worth Commercial as soon as I get it uploaded to YouTube.

One has no legs. The other is legally blind. The story shows how together the forge a bond of friendship that is unbreakable regardless of any disability. I love this video because this work of journalism doesn’t take pity on the wrestlers. OH NO. Leroy, the wrestler without legs, even says, “Don’t pity me. I will punch you in the face.”

It captures the awe and respect the nation has for these two guys. The music, the pictures, the interviews, the editing…etc., it is all perfect. It is serious and light-hearted. It makes you laugh and for some, it has moments where it makes you cry. But the most important part of this story that I like is that it is real. It doesn’t paint a pity picture like I said, but it just shows these two in their triumphs during their everyday lives.

The best part for me was in the final moments of the story when leroy walked across the stage while Dartanyon helped him cross it. The writing was incredible. I could’ve closed my eyes and listened to that moment and felt the same emotions and pictured that imagery in my head.  Tom Rinaldi, reporter on the story,  does an amazing job telling two separate stories and making them into one. He discusses the friendship the athletes have with one another to really bring the audience in. But the best part of the story is the history of how the two got to where they are.

I loved this story and although it is not recently new, it is one of my favorite pieces ever done by a journalist before.

My first shift was pretty cool.

I went to cover Delta Chi’s Philanthropy  benefitting the V-Foundation for Cancer Research outside of Ellis Library on MU’s Campus. I was ready to rock and roll and really the whole process went smoothly. I had some minor setbacks with the camera when I got there as I forgot a few settings, but when I got things figured out, I started rolling. By the way, THANKS TO JENNY MECKLES FOR HER HELP on the camera….

I did have a few problems though. My interview had to be redone after I realized the audio I was picking up was from the internal mic on the camera instead of the lovelier. Also, he tended to shift back and forth several times during the interview and it was hard to keep the framing correctly. I did nudge the camera a little bit during the sot I used on air but I don’t think it was that huge of an ordeal. Also, I had some problems focusing the camera on every shot. I need to remember to focus every shot because it truly makes a difference.

The editing process was a breeze. It truly is my favorite part of the shift because I love editing and putting stories together. I didn’t have any setbacks and I felt like my scripting matched my video pretty well. The only thing that made me mad was the anchor had a pause in my story that caused the VO portion to have a flash frame. All in all I do feel pretty good about it.

VO Patrol Part DOS

My second shift did not go as smoothly as the first day. When I arrived, I was assigned to a story that I personally felt had no news value. I suggested something else, but I ended up going to cover the Cole County Farmers’ Market in Jefferson City. I arrived  and to my dismay the farmers’ market was on its second week instead of it being the grand opening. Also, only 5 venders were set up as more venders sell produce later on in the harvest. I called my producer and she wanted the story so I went with it.

The main issue is the the VO was going to air on the 6 p.m. and the market didn’t start until 4 p.m. I felt rushed. Especially since I arrived at 3:50 and had to be out of there by 4:15. I got one shot at my interview and I totally messed it up.  I did a lot better at focusing my b-roll but my interview was really out of focus. I just didn’t think through and really rushed setting it up.

I got back in plenty of time which was a relief. However, I had a heard time writing the VO to make it not so commercialized for the one farmer’s market. I used the information to hopefully get the point across that farmers’ markets were beginning to sprout back up across Mid-Missouri. Also, the nice lady I interviewed was a real sweetheart and her story was pretty cool that she had been vending at the market for almost two decades now.

All in all the main thing I learned is to take time to set up my interview and my shots. Hopefully, it will come in time.

HERE IS THE VIDEO OF MY FIRST SHIFT (you can see it if you are friends with me on facebook)

However, it is really cool to see everyone in class doing really well out there and I hope everyone can keep up the good work.

FURTHERMORE, summer is getting closer and if you don’t know already, I have a really great opportunity to work with JM Associates in Little Rock, AR.

JM Associates forged a partnership with a not so well known sports network in Bristol, Connecticut called ESPN. JM produced the first outdoors show ever on ESPN called the Fishin’ Hole which was the networks longest running series at 27 years.  Since then, JM has done numerous outdoor coverage for STIHL TimberSports, ESPN Great Outdoor Games, Bassmaster Elite Series, and numerous hunting shows.

I found the internship actually through my family. My mom recommended I give them a call because a guy who graduated high school with my older sister has been working there for a couple of years and I figured I would give it a shot.  I pitched him the idea and he talked to his boss and they loved it.

NOW, JM has aspects of journalism and television production which is exactly what I want to do in my career, something that meets in the middle or has aspects of both.  When I went to tour the place and get an idea of what I was going to be doing, I was blown away.  I’m going to be able to edit and even help produce some shows in studio. The boss literally told me, whatever I am capable of doing, he will give me a shot to help out with. I like the challenge and I am definitely looking forward to this opportunity.

Here is a video of the studio.

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….

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

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!

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…