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JoB
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10:48 PMWednesday, December 9, 2015
Republican political consultant and policy strategist Karl Rove speaks at a book signing event at Books-A-Million in Beavercreek, Ohio on Sunday afternoon.
For an hour this past Sunday afternoon, many at an Ohio bookstore gathering were introduced to an American presidential election held in in the late 19th century to help them gain perspective on the very interesting political atmosphere in the present day. Karl Rove, a former deputy chief of staff in the George W. Bush administration and a man whose name is ubiquitous within Republican political circles, visited the Beavercreek, Ohio Books-A-Million store to sign copies of his latest book The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters.
In a practice that--thanks to our ever-increasing reliance on electronic devices--is becoming less frequent, humans switch out their calendars in the annual event of "ringing out the old and ringing in the new" around this time of year. It serves as an opportunity of reflection, introspection and resolve to guide us along our paths in the new year. While I have no wall hanging to change out, I do have this blog to browse through for that same purpose. According to my first post for the year that just ended, 2014 was supposed to be my "year of application" and to spread my journalistic "wings" and, except for the tailing off near the end, I think I can claim success.
In that submission, I talked optimistically about using the skills I acquired through my then-recent completion of my Certificate of Journalism from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in the lead-up to being laid off from a job that I held for a little over five years (that was alluded to as a "year of transition"). I initially established a schedule that I would follow for my posting of new content onto this site that was slowly cast aside based upon wavering levels of interest as well as opportunities taken (and ignored) throughout that 12-month period.
[NOTE: this is the second of a three-part series I started last October to document a vacation trip I made with my son back in August 2012 to the East Coast. I am hoping to have the final installment uploaded by the end of this month.]
Independence Hall is seen through the window of Liberty Bell Center at Philadelphia's Independence National Historic Park.
After our half-day extended stay in the New York City area, it was time to head down the Jersey Turnpike to our next destination, Philadelphia. Widely known as "The City of Brotherly Love", it is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the fifth largest in the entire country (trailing only New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston). Also recognized as America's "Cradle of Liberty" because of its vital role during the Revolutionary War, it subsequently served as our nation's capital from 1790 until the White House and Capitol Building were completed in 1800.
Posted by
JoB
at
2:28 AMSaturday, September 29, 2012
The full-page Dayton Daily News ad that greeted me on Tuesday morning
If you are a frequent visitor to this blog, you already know that I have made it a point to exercise my reporting 'legs' over the past 10 months with coverage of national politicians visiting my local (as the crow flies) area. I started last November with one of Herman Cain's last rallies before he suspended his campaign in the wake of a then-breaking sex scandal. I followed that one up with Dayton- and Cincinnati-area events for former US House speaker Newt Gingrich, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in the run-up to Ohio's Republican primary, part of the 10-state "Super Tuesday" slate on March 6th.
[NOTE: this article addresses what I experienced last weekend, not the current one. I really have to start focusing on my deadline "issues".]
From top clockwise, the closing ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics, the unveiling of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's vice-presidential nominee, and a promotional graphic for the movie The Campaign
After a week of getting reacquainted with my job and completing the final project for my Intro to Online Journalism course, I had the chance to relax a bit and take in some television and movie watching and get back into my regular routine of sampling the many media sources I have access to.
Posted by
JoB
at
12:17 AMSaturday, August 11, 2012
(NOTE: this is my final project for JOURNAL 397W, Intro to Online Journalism. I was tasked to create a comprehensive profile on a subject of my choosing and present it as a multimedia feature through pre-selected online tools--I relied upon Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, and the Google News data aggregator. Once compiled, I was to then use Storify to bring those images, videos, quotes, and tweets together and display them in a blog setting. Luckily, that site provided a code that allows me to embed the piece here just like it appears at the original location. Unfortunately, I cannot insert a "jump break" within the Storify item so you will have to scroll through the entire posting when navigating on my page.)
(UPDATE: while I was finishing the project and preparing it for posting, it appears that Mitt Romney announced that he will introduce Wisconsin representative Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential pick at a campaign event this morning in Norfolk, Virginia. The Storify piece was updated at 1:30AM on the 11th to reflect this information.)
(FOR MY INSTRUCTOR: when prompted for the embed code, I opted for the "HTML for SEO" option. I hope that will give me some extra credit points ;-) )
Posted by
JoB
at
12:44 PMWednesday, April 25, 2012
(NOTE: in the spirit of a personal credo I initiated for covering events on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, this, like my previous one on the Obama visit, is another overview of an article that wasn't published but one that I want to post concerning my participation as a private citizen and military retiree)
Four B-25 Mitchell bombers fly past the National Museum of the United States Air Force on April 18 in a 'missing man' formation to honor the Doolittle Raiders.
During an earlier episode of journalistic 'stamina', I covered two events in different cities on the same day (the Santorum and Romney campaign rallies before Ohio's presidential primary back in early March). In my summary, I described the logistical and physical tolls that reporters sometimes face when given similar assignments. If I include travel time, those two events only spanned the period of just around nine hours. In comparison, they were done in the amount of time most people spend at their jobs, to include a lunch break. Although I ended up coming down with something, these conditions were not very arduous and are considered normal for journalists who follow major candidates as they crisscross the country every four years. With that experience in my recent past, the next milestone would be covering several events that take place over a multiple number of days and, in the case of the recent Doolittle Reunion activities, at different locations. Needless to say, I was up for the challenge.
(NOTE: This is only meant to be a short posting and is not a full-fledged follow-up to my previous entry about Current TV that will come at a later date.)
Keith Olbermann, center, joined (from left to right) George Will, Peggy Noonan, Donna Brazile, and Matt Dowd on the roundtable for today's "This Week" program (graphic courtesy of ABC News)
Earlier this week, I read that Keith Olbermann, recently of Current TV, was going to appear on ABC's "This Week" Sunday morning political news and analysis program as a panelist for their roundtable discussion today. Other than an appearance on CBS's Late Night with David Letterman the Tuesday after his firing (and a sighting in New York City's Central Park this past week), Keith has tried to stay out of the public spotlight and this would be his 'reemergence' in journalistic/opinion circles. I normally tune in for "Face the Nation" at that time but I did switch over to ABC to see how he would do in this setting.
Today marks a milestone in my slow but steady journey of becoming a journalist. Pictured above is the first media credential I have ever been issued to cover a newsworthy event. For previous assignments, I had to rely upon pre-planning or special access to events in order to attend and report back on the proceedings (and I had my disappointing experience with President Obama's recent trip to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base). While I did get access to the recognized media area during the local Romney town hall meeting last month, I think that approval was more due to a time and resource crunch and as a favor on the staff's part because there really wasn't a mechanism in place to verify my claim for a credential request (I did ask for one in my RSVP for that event that was never acknowledged). After I showed several forms of identification to the Secret Service, I was given the 'all clear' and allowed past the area's 'gate keeper' to mingle among the other journalists in attendance. Today's events ran much smoother and I will detail them below.
Dayton's Courthouse Square stage before the April 1 'hoodie' rally began.
This item is a little hard for me to write because of the subject matter and its polarity within the local community as well as the nation in recent weeks (it continues to be one of America's most divisive 'third rail' issues). Racism is an unfortunate part of life in this country and in others around the world and the 'hoodie' rally that I covered on April 1 used it as an overt theme to help bring out the area's African-American community to that event.
A new logo represents a new attitude at Current TV
As a news 'junkie', I am always seeking out new avenues to get my regular 'fixes'. Print media, radio and television, and computer websites/smartphone apps are all acceptable to me and employed as their availability allows. Having such a wide variety of choices stands in stark contrast to the days of the 'Big Three' television networks and having only the Associated Press and United Press International serving as the major 'news wires' for our daily newspapers (yes, I meant plural because, unlike today, there used to be more than one in every major town/city across the country for morning and evening consumption).
(NOTE: it's taken me a while to get this item ready to go online so it lacks the relevancy I originally wanted it to have. Problems securing an interviewee for a school assignment and other lingering issues prevented me from posting this until today. I hope it was worth the wait!)
Air Force One sits on the apron at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio on March 13th.
This is the second time that I've written a 'behind-the-scenes' feature and you might be wondering to yourself--where is the ORIGINAL post? For the Santorum and Romney events earlier this month, I posted the stories first before I wrote up a summary of my personal experiences about the coverage. I was hoping to do the same thing this time around but, if I can borrow a phrase from Broadway, "a funny thing happened on the way to the tarmac" and the 'BTS' postlude, in this instance, became the story.
(NOTE: This is another new feature that I am calling 'Behind the Scenes' where I will provide some of the 'background' that goes on with my reporting experiences. I wanted to do this for the Gingrich event last month but, as usual, other things superseded it. I can go through my notes and photos to post on another day but I want to get these more recent events out before I lose the initiative.)
Some of the scenery outside the recent Santorum event in Blue Ash (left) and the Romeny town hall in Beavercreek (right).
March 3rd was sort of a 'milestone' day for me as a journalist-in-training. Over the course of the past several months, I've been gradually getting out into my local community to cover real-world events to help hone my skills and to get myself acquainted with the local (and sometimes national) media. However, all the ones before this past weekend were 'solo' events--I only scheduled one at a time or one per day. With the 'Super Tuesday' presidential primary bearing down on Ohio voters, this was going to be a very good weekend to get closer to my goal of covering all of the major candidates in the 2012 election cycle. Unfortunately, Texas congressman Ron Paul decided to skip Ohio and focus his campaign on states where he thought he might have a chance of winning (Washington state, Alaska) so I doubt that I will have an opportunity to attend one of his rallies. To counter that bad news, I learned late last week that former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum had added a morning Cincinnati-area appearance to his other scheduled stops in the state that weekend. I had already RSVP'd for the announced town hall meeting by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney here in the Dayton area for the afternoon so it would be my first 'double' coverage day.
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