Today marks the one-year anniversary of Journalism or Bust!, the online documentation of the actions taken in my quest of achieving a lifelong dream of becoming a journalist. Over that span, I've upload 78 items here about a wide variety of subjects and personal experiences with the intent of showing an evolutionary improvement in my skills and overall journalistic perspective. I've completed three classes in my UMass program and will be taking a journalism ethics course in the fall term.
I'd like to thank the folks from all around the globe who have come by here either by accident or perhaps on purpose. A few of my posts have been very popular (the Obama rally in Columbus last May, the Santorium event outside Cincinnati back in March) and Blogger is showing that over 5,000 pageviews have occurred over the past 12 months. Granted, this is just a drop in the bucket when compared to the volume of visits The Huffington Post, The New York Times and other media "giants" see on a daily (or even hourly) basis but I'm not doing this for the exposure (or any revenue). Right now, this blog is a labor of love that I will look back at in a few years' time to help me gauge just how far I really advanced towards my goal.
[NOTE: I listened to Frank Rich this morning during the last half hour of The Bill Press Show on Current TV and that reminded me that I just wrote about him during my recently completed Intro to Online Journalism course. I was to find and analyze the online channels used by my favorite writer and detail how they use them to capture audience attention and create conversations. Just thought that I should share the assignment, which was written in the middle of July, with my readership.]
If given the choice of any writer I would aspire to be (or one that would require a natural disaster for me to miss their latest work), the hands-down choice would be Frank Rich. A one-time theater critic turned op/ed columnist, Rich has been one of the leading progressive voices in America’s ‘mediascape’ for the past decade who came into his own during the country’s lead-up to the Iraq War and the later years of the George W. Bush administration. On a weekly basis, he penned hard-hitting 1,500-word columns on politics, current events and culture which anchored The New York Times’ expanded ‘Week in Review’ section in their Sunday editions from 2005 until early 2011 when he left to join New York Magazine. Rich has slowed down just a tad at his new employer (he now does a monthly column and weekly ‘interview’ sessions with editor-in-chief Adam Moss) but this new tempo has not diminished his veracity nor his desire to seek out the truth from among the multitude of media outlets and political operatives. While already a devoted weekly reader, his 2006 book The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth and its blistering expose of how Bush and his team ‘rolled out’ a campaign to coerce the American public to sanction a war with Iraq cemented his place as my favorite writer.
[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 ;-) )
As you've probably noticed, I haven't posted here in a little while. Part of the reason is due to the compressed nature of my current college course and another is a lingering bout of bronchitis that I can't seem to shake. One last cause for this absence has been the preparation for a summer vacation I've been planning since the spring. My high school class is having a get-together this weekend and I have traveled by car back to Pennsylvania to attend. It's been many years since I've seen many of these folks and I'm looking forward to meeting them and talking about the 'good old days'.
[NOTE: this is the second of a five-part series critiquing morning news offerings from US broadcast and cable news providers. It has taken me quite a while to get this piece up but I'm hoping that the other three will follow on a much quicker pace.]
FLOW: the show started promptly at 7AM with urgent music to highlight the pending tease of the days news events. Roberts and Stephanopoulos traded 'teasers' for highlighted stories (wildfires in western US, a yacht hoax off the New Jersey coast, a mysterious hit-and-run incident in Los Angeles, dangers in spray tanning products) as well as updates on Commerce secretary Bryson's erratic driving over the weekend and Roberts' announcement on Monday's program that she is suffering from myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS.
After a two-month hiatus from formal studies, I am back on the scholastic calendar with the start of my Intro to Online Journalism course (JOURNAL 397W). While it officially begins today, I have been on the school's website since last Friday to be fully prepared for the first day of the term and to introduce myself to my fellow classmates. It looks to be a fast-paced block of instruction and student interaction (it ends August 14th) and I'm hoping that I will be able to apply some of the things I learn to this website and to others in the future. I'll be sure to let you all know when those changes will start to happen.
One local family was not ashamed to openly display their patriotism at the Fairborn 4th of July parade
Despite sweltering temperatures, the town of Fairborn, Ohio held its 65th annual 4th of July parade through the city's downtown area this past Wednesday morning. Starting promptly at 10AM from Fairborn Plaza in near 90 degree heat, a large contingent of floats, marching bands, vehicles and dignitaries made their way along the designated route, shortened this year due to on-going street construction in the Main Street/downtown area. Jack Wilson , a local businessman and 50-plus year city resident served as the 2012 Grand Marshall.
You can scroll below to look at more photographs from the parade.
[NOTE: This post was supposed to be completed earlier in the week but I contracted a 'summer cold' that has put me off to pretty much anything doing with writing since Monday. I've made the appropriate changes to reflect the delay.]
Starting with Ann Curry's goodbye early in the morning and going late into the late afternoon hours with the House contempt vote, June 28th was a remarkable media day
If you are a financial (or advanced political) wonk, you might know what the investing term 'quadruple witching day' means and how it relates to specific occurrences every fiscal quarter when contracts for stock options, stock index options, stock index futures, and single stock futures expire on exchanges all around the world. If I can borrow this enchanting phrase and loosely apply it to the media, four remarkable and/or historic events occupied a good segment of American television news outlets' available air time on June 28th and I was able to directly witness three of them (one happened when I was at work but I could not break away to our organization's cafeteria to view on its bank of television monitors). Two were directly related to the news media while the other two relied on those elements to transmit images and information from the nation's capital to all corners of the country (as well as to the wider world).
[NOTE: I was originally going to call this a 'Breaking News' item but since I didn't file it until over 24 hours after the event, I decided to go with the 'A/V' slug instead. My photos were taken with my cellphone and it is times like this that I need to remind myself that I should always have my better camera close by at all times.]
An view of the damage and clean-up activities at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base's Freedom Tattoo site early Friday evening
Friday evening nearly produced a moment that I would never forget in my fledgling career as a journalist. If not for the fortunate timing of severe weather conditions, Dayton, Ohio--and Wright Patterson Air Force Base--might have been the scene of a very serious human tragedy that would have made headlines around the nation for probable mass injuries (and possible casualties) and I was supposed to have a front row seat for all of it!
Cast of the new HBO series, The Newsroom: (from left to right) Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer, Sam Waterston, Olivia Munn, Dev Patel, Thomas Sadoski, Alison Pill and John Gallagher, Jr.
If I can carry on the Christmas anticipation theme of my last post about this show, I am slowly coming down from the post-unwrapping 'high' that I got late Sunday evening after watching the debut episode of HBO's newest drama series, The Newsroom. Estimates put the number of people who caught the premiere on the television outlet (and through various other online places like HBO.com and YouTube) at a respectable 3 million total. Reviews have been mixed to negative by media critics, many posted before the show actually aired, with most of the criticism focused on series creator Aaron Sorkin, his 'brand' of drama, and his general unfamiliarity with the news industry. Sorkin readily pleads guilty to the last one while the others are subjectively related to how familiar the reviewer is with his work. I will admit to the world that I am not a professional television critic but I do want to mention here what I liked, what I didn't, and my overall impressions of the show so far from the perspective of a regular (although perhaps biased) viewer.
[NOTE: this is the first of a five-part series critiquing morning news offerings from US broadcast and cable news providers. In these pieces, I will provide my take on the composition, the hosts, the 'aesthetics', and any overt/covert 'messaging' that might be present and meant to attract your attention at the breakfast table.]
FLOW: the show started promptly at 7AM with a different three-note 'NBC' theme than I am used to hearing. Curry and Geist traded story 'teasers' for upcoming stories (Colorado wildfires, US Commerce secretary John Bryson's hit-and-run accidents in California, Lady Gaga getting hit in the head with a pole during a concert appearance in New Zealand, an update on Mary Kennedy's recent suicide, and the 'reboot' of the Dallas series on TNT) with B-roll footage accompaniment. The show's familiar theme music (composed by John Williams) along with the announcer voice-over and outside footage of Rockefeller Center brought this introductory segment to a close.
"This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and analyze traffic. Your IP address and user-agent are shared with Google along with performance and security metrics to ensure quality of service, generate usage statistics, and to detect and address abuse."
