This class is DONE! Not that I didn't enjoy the company of the editors or my fellow reporters on this long arduous journey, but I must admit the great joy i feel in having finally completed convergence reporting. Although it was by far the most intense and life consuming class I have ever taken, I learned a lot along the way. First of all, my interviewing skills have improved ten-fold. I am now much more comfortable during interviews and I feel that I have the skills and knowledge to ask the right questions and roll with the information I get, even if it is not the information I was expecting. My technical knowledge has improved greatly as well. I am now confident in my video editing skills using both Avid and Final Cut, and I have a much better eye for jump cuts, over exposed shots, sequences, and framing. I am also comfortable with Cool Edit and Photoshop, two programs I had not used very often before taking 4804. I was able to learn how to use the equipment better too. I know most of the settings on the Sony camera, I know how to set up the wireless mics, and I know how to adjust the ISO settings on the Nikon digital cameras. Knowing the equipment helps me produce better work in the field, in turn making my job in the editing room much easier. Perhaps most importantly though, my news judgement has improved immensely. No matter how good you are at editing, shooting video, or writing, you can't make a bad story good. The best stories start with good story ideas, or the ability to shift gears and recognize if you stumble upon a better story than the one you set out to find. This is what happened to Jordan and I for our second team feature story. We were having trouble finding a good story, so we set out to do a story about unions in Columbia. When we started talking to some of the union representatives, we learned that the issue they were really worried about was how MU's new pension plan was going to affect low income workers. Once we discovered this story, we were very excited because we thought we were really fulfilling the watchdog role in a way. We felt like serious journalists. I think the story turned out well but unfortunately the editors did not think there was enough new information for it to be published. The most discouraging part was that the Columbia Tribune ran a very similar story to our only a few days alter, but ours was better. Although that was very difficult to deal with, it pushed me to try harder to get some of work published.
A few suggestions for improving the class:
1. Buy some cotts for the Futures Lab. There were several nights where I basically slept there, and it would have been nice to have a bed.
2. Have the editor who worked with a team all week be the one to grade that team's story. It is hard to understand when you get a C on a project and you worked with an editor every day improving the story. We always appreciate the input of the editors and we are here to learn from them, but lets face it, all of the editors are very different and have very different views on what a story should be about and what direction it should have gone. If one editor tells a team to do certain things and the rest of the editors don't agree, then the team should not be punished for that. If one editor graded the project she/he had helped edit all week, I think the team grades would not suffer so much and it would be more fair.
3. Provide more opportunities for our work to be published. After spending an entire semester reporting, I was not able to get any of my team stories published. I was close once, but because the subject of the story no longer wanted to cooperate, Erica and I were not able to get the nat sound we needed for our story to air. I think that the expectations of the convergence editors are higher than that of the newsroom editors. I often see work published that is not as high of quality as some of the work produced in this class, and I wonder why we were not bale to get our work published. I know that just because something is published doesn't mean that the convergence editors would have published it, but I think that it does us a disservice because we do not have as much work for our portfolio as students in other sequences.
These are just suggestions. I thoroughly enjoyed working with all the editors and my fellow classmates, ad I would like to thank everybody for their help, hard work, and dedication. Until next year, GOOD LUCK AND HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!!!!
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Friday, May 1, 2009
Investigative Story Week 1
So it turns out that none of our story pitches were excepted, at least not in their original form. Unfortunately, Craigslist was nixed, so we had to turn to our other options. Our third story pitch about handymen in Columbia was also given the red light. That left us with only one of our story ideas still standing, the story about the stimulus money being used to give two Columbia fire stations a face lift. The editors thought that this was a decent idea but wanted us to refocus our story to be more encompassing. At first Tony and I decided that we were going to take the same approach that we did to the fire stations and investigate if five other projects were using their stimulus money wisely. After some discussion with the editors and much deliberation, Tony and I decided that we would be even more encompassing and just investigate all stimulus spending in Columbia. We set out to give citizens an overview of what projects were slated to receive stimulus money, how those projects were chosen, how the stimulus funding mechanism works for Columbia, and what Columbia citizens stand to gain and loose with the completion of these projects. This was undoubtedly a daunting task, as the stimulus package is a highly complex issue, but we were able to get a great head start by interviewing the assistant city manager of Columbia, Paula Hertwig Hopkins. Hopkins is in charge of the city's stimulus spending and gave us an excellent overview of how it works. Currently, Tony and I are exploring important individual projects the city is seeking stimulus funding for. I am very excited about this story because I think we are fulfilling both the watchdog and the explanatory roles of investigative journalists. We have conducted several interviews already and have several more lined up for next week. i am confident that we have put ourselves in good position to produce an excellt story.
Preparing to Investigate
Next week we start working on our investigative stories, so the bulk of this week's work was spent preparing for that. Not only were story pitches due on wednesday, we actually had to pitch them on wednesday this week, which put some extra pressure on coming up with good story ideas. It was an imposing task coming up with a good investigative story because it requires a few extra components not present in normal team stories. I was forced to ask myself, what makes a good investigative story? I decided that it has to uncover something not previously known, often fulfilling the watchdog role of journalism. Or it must explain something that it complicated to understand, but necessary for citizens to know. I think that Tony, my partner for the investigative stories, came up with a good idea about exposing the seedy side of Craigslist, particularly in Columbia. It fits in well with current events, as a man was arrested for murdering a prostitute he met on Craigslist just a few days ago. I think this would be a very interesting story to pursue and anticipate that it would be extremely popular. I came up with an idea to investigate the plans Columbia has to spend stimulus money on giving two fire stations in town a face lift. When I discovered these plans my immediate question was, is this a good use of stimulus money? Is giving these two fire stations a makeover really going to help firefighters do their jobs better? Wouldn't this money be better spent on new equipment for the fire fighters to help them in the field? In order to answer these questions I would ask fire departments in other counties/cities how they would spend a large sum of stimulus money. We still do not know which story the editors will want us to pursue (if either) but Tony and I will get working on our story as soon as we find out what it is!
Friday, April 17, 2009
A Columbia Culinary Story...SWEET!
Okay, I know the title of this post is an awful pun, but I have been thinking about it all week and I had to get it out. Well now that that's out of the way we can get down to business. This story was a lot of fun to work on. First of all, Charlie and I got free caramel machiato something or others, courtesy of the Columbia culinary students, as well as a slice of delicious chocolate cake. I really cant think of a better way to start the day. Its a good thing we got those coffees because we sure needed the caffeine. Charlie and I went to the career center twice for about 5 hours each time, once at eight in the morning, and ended up working on the story until 9 that night. Thats a long time to work on a story in one day, but I think all the hard work paid off in the end.
Getting to the end wasn't easy though. We had quite a few technical difficulties with the camera, as well as some human error. The audio levels weren't set to the proper settings on the video camera, which made some of our audio over modulated. Because we were shooting a lot of footage of things that are white (cake frosting, chefs uniform) some of our video was overexposed as well. We realized it halfway through shooting and were able to correct it though, so we salvaged most of the video. It was also very loud in the kitchen so we had to deal with the humming sound from all of the equipment throughout our audio.
Despite these difficulties, I am proud of our final product. I thought our text piece was clear, concise, and well written. With some help from Victoria and our student editor, I think the video turned out well also. We had victoria look at our video at about 12 on thursday, which I know is a little late, but we had a lot of footage to sift through to make the video. Anyways, Victoria told us that the video didn't really cover any material that the text piece hadn't already gone over. She told us that we could improve it by tightening up the editing, redoing the voicing, and getting rid of the jump cuts. After some consideration, Charlie and I decided to scrap our old video and take a new direction. The focus of the new video was to highlight the winning students, their passions, and how they got to where they are. We rewrote the script, I voiced it instead of Charlie, and we went back to the drawing board in terms of b roll and interview bites. After many hours of editing and several more critiques by Victoria, I think our video turned out well. We also took pictures and ended up choosing one for the story. Overall we had three strong components and I think we deserve a high grade *hint hint*!
Getting to the end wasn't easy though. We had quite a few technical difficulties with the camera, as well as some human error. The audio levels weren't set to the proper settings on the video camera, which made some of our audio over modulated. Because we were shooting a lot of footage of things that are white (cake frosting, chefs uniform) some of our video was overexposed as well. We realized it halfway through shooting and were able to correct it though, so we salvaged most of the video. It was also very loud in the kitchen so we had to deal with the humming sound from all of the equipment throughout our audio.
Despite these difficulties, I am proud of our final product. I thought our text piece was clear, concise, and well written. With some help from Victoria and our student editor, I think the video turned out well also. We had victoria look at our video at about 12 on thursday, which I know is a little late, but we had a lot of footage to sift through to make the video. Anyways, Victoria told us that the video didn't really cover any material that the text piece hadn't already gone over. She told us that we could improve it by tightening up the editing, redoing the voicing, and getting rid of the jump cuts. After some consideration, Charlie and I decided to scrap our old video and take a new direction. The focus of the new video was to highlight the winning students, their passions, and how they got to where they are. We rewrote the script, I voiced it instead of Charlie, and we went back to the drawing board in terms of b roll and interview bites. After many hours of editing and several more critiques by Victoria, I think our video turned out well. We also took pictures and ended up choosing one for the story. Overall we had three strong components and I think we deserve a high grade *hint hint*!
Monday, April 13, 2009
Latest
Well the 5th team is in the middle of the pushing through all of the final steps of our projects. Some of the things I am directly working on is I got our backstage passes designed and created. They turned out pretty well, except for on the one print out I got a little W-happy on the web address. As for my other aspects, I am starting to do twitter updates through the 5th team page doing today in Rock and Roll history and linking back to Backstagegallery.com to help generate traffic from interested users. For example: Today in 1946, Al Green is born in Forrest City, Arkansas http://tinyurl.com/dy2u8f
I think this is a pretty cool idea and hopefully it helps bring in some people. As for my other projects, I've been a little overwhelmed with other classes to really tackle these at the current juncture but in the next week hopefully I will be able to get these done. That's all for now.
I think this is a pretty cool idea and hopefully it helps bring in some people. As for my other projects, I've been a little overwhelmed with other classes to really tackle these at the current juncture but in the next week hopefully I will be able to get these done. That's all for now.
Friday, April 10, 2009
NEWSY!
I'm really excited about my Newsy newsroom experience this week! The first thing that struck me as I walked into the Newsyroom was the rock band guitar controller and drum set laying next to a big screen TV sitting in front of a very comfortable looking couch. As soon as I saw the sweet set up they had, I knew I was going to like working there. But it wasn't just the video games, it was the snacks! They had free chips and candy, I was literally like a kid in a candy store (although I had to act like I wasn't interested at first, you know it's not professional to go straight for the food your first time working somewhere).
All joking aside though, I really loved working at Newsy. I was told that most 4804 students usually only pitch stories when they are there and are in and out pretty fast because they already have enough people working to produce content. But that wasn't my experience at all. As soon as I got there I was put to work. I helped some other students gather quotes and clips and write a script for a story about a new law in Afghanistan that critics claim essentially allows husbands to legally rape their wives, but that Afghani officials said follows Muslim religious law. I learned how to search the recordings of news programs and cut video clips to be used in the stories. I also learned how to pull sections of video straight of the internet. During my second shift I was able to shadow a senior convergence student working at Newsy during the editing and producing process. I learned specifically how newsy packages were put together and picked up some cool Final Cut tricks that will definitely help me in the future.
Working at Newsy was a really great experience and I enjoyed myself immensely. In fact I enjoyed myself so much that I signed up for the Newsy class next semester, Advanced Global Converged News, and switched my concentration to online journalism. I liked the environment of Newsy, the people working there, and the work being done. I cant wait to be more involved in the writing and production of stories at Newsy next semester, and to see what great experience I will gain!
All joking aside though, I really loved working at Newsy. I was told that most 4804 students usually only pitch stories when they are there and are in and out pretty fast because they already have enough people working to produce content. But that wasn't my experience at all. As soon as I got there I was put to work. I helped some other students gather quotes and clips and write a script for a story about a new law in Afghanistan that critics claim essentially allows husbands to legally rape their wives, but that Afghani officials said follows Muslim religious law. I learned how to search the recordings of news programs and cut video clips to be used in the stories. I also learned how to pull sections of video straight of the internet. During my second shift I was able to shadow a senior convergence student working at Newsy during the editing and producing process. I learned specifically how newsy packages were put together and picked up some cool Final Cut tricks that will definitely help me in the future.
Working at Newsy was a really great experience and I enjoyed myself immensely. In fact I enjoyed myself so much that I signed up for the Newsy class next semester, Advanced Global Converged News, and switched my concentration to online journalism. I liked the environment of Newsy, the people working there, and the work being done. I cant wait to be more involved in the writing and production of stories at Newsy next semester, and to see what great experience I will gain!
Monday, April 6, 2009
Creative
Now that all of the research is finalized we've moved into the creative stage of the campaigns for Backstagegallery.com and LikeMe.net. Our attack is a multi-level campaign to encourage 18-24 year olds to learn about the site, increase traffic and then use the sites regularly. Our ideas right now for Backstage include a viral video, advertisement spot on Pandora.com, a hybrid art gallery/poster sale, VIP passes to encourage increase in traffic volume, and we are going to establish a plan of attack for Backstage to establish a presence at current concerts in order to appeal to a current younger audience. Our Single Minded Propositions are "Having this art establishes your status as a VIP" and tagline, "Live Backstage." As for LikeMe.net our ideas right now include a big undertaking in the form of an internship program that will establish presences on college campus', it is our thought that this will really increase traffic from our demographic. We will also be doing a viral video, making both Facebook and iPhone applications and we will be creating stickers in conjunction with the internship program for branding purposes. Our single-minded propositions for likeme.net are that, "LikeMe helps you explore new things without having to leave your comfort zone," and our tagline, "LikeMinds, LikeTastes, LikeMe."
Friday, April 3, 2009
The Horse Whisperer
It is week nine and we are nearing the end of the semester now. This week Kelsey and I worked on a story about abandoned horses (which for some reason I always want to spell as "abondoned", but I guess that is a little off topic). This story was SO much fun to work on! Being from the Washington D.C. area I have never had the opportunity to spend a lot of time around horses, until now. We had some good weather and were able to spend a few days with some very hospitable and knowledgeable horse owners. The best part was by far the horse from Erika Harvey's stables that followed us around everywhere we went. This horse acted like a dog. A 1,000 pound dog that was taller than I was. You could be taking a photo and all of the sudden he would put his face right in front of the camera. I was asking Harvey some questions one time and when I turned around the horse was right behind me, which was a little creepy but still very entertaining.
More importantly than being fun and entertaining, this story gave me some new journalistic experiences. We spent so much time at some of the horse stables and farms that for the first time I felt that I had actually just become a fly on the wall. I felt that the subjects of the story became very relaxed around me and were able to just be themselves, which is usually what makes for the most honest and true to life story. Perhaps this was made easier because I was working around so many children. Children seem to be very relaxed and open around new people and do not change their behavior very drastically because of the presence of reporters. Although it took a little bit of time for the children to get used to me and Kelsey's presence, once they did they almost forgot we were there completely.
Kelsey and I put a lot of work into this story. We went to four different stables and private farms to talk to equine experts and take pictures. We knocked on doors and did some dirty work, literally (If you've ever been to a horse farm you understand). We talked to local, state, and national figures who had authority when it comes to the issue of horse abandonment. We collected so much information that the hardest part about the story was sifting through all of it to craft a well written story that really captures the heart of the issue. I think we succeeded.
More importantly than being fun and entertaining, this story gave me some new journalistic experiences. We spent so much time at some of the horse stables and farms that for the first time I felt that I had actually just become a fly on the wall. I felt that the subjects of the story became very relaxed around me and were able to just be themselves, which is usually what makes for the most honest and true to life story. Perhaps this was made easier because I was working around so many children. Children seem to be very relaxed and open around new people and do not change their behavior very drastically because of the presence of reporters. Although it took a little bit of time for the children to get used to me and Kelsey's presence, once they did they almost forgot we were there completely.
Kelsey and I put a lot of work into this story. We went to four different stables and private farms to talk to equine experts and take pictures. We knocked on doors and did some dirty work, literally (If you've ever been to a horse farm you understand). We talked to local, state, and national figures who had authority when it comes to the issue of horse abandonment. We collected so much information that the hardest part about the story was sifting through all of it to craft a well written story that really captures the heart of the issue. I think we succeeded.
Friday, March 20, 2009
This week i completed my second and final set of shifts at KBIA this semester. My story was about the discontinuation of the Columbia festival of the Arts after 17 years. While this was not my first shift at KBIA, it was the first reporting shift I had, as last time I edited a story for a capstone student. Although this was supposed to be a day turn story, it felt a lot like a team story because of the amount of work I put into it. My first shift was on Monday and I worked on it for about 3 hours. Then I did interviews on tuesday and wednesday afternoon. Once I finished the interviews I wrote my script. I finally finished editing the story on thursday. I worked on the story every day of the week, and although I spent more time on it than I would have liked to, I think it turned out well. I really enjoyed working at KBIA, mostly because of the editors and other reporters. The atmosphere was much more laid back than the Missourian, and I was able to get more feedback from the faculty editors and news director. I also learned some cool tricks in cool edit this week, and got a lot more practice editing audio. I learned how to blend audio clips and the correct format for writing scripts for KBIA. This story had some more angles that could have been explored and easily would have made a good team story if i hadn't used it for my KBIA shifts this week.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Wallowing in the Muck is Fun!
Ok, I didn't really wallow in the muck for this story...but one of the CARP program volunteers said that is why he joined the program and I thought it was a great quote. Anyways, this week I completed team story number 4. Right of the bat, let me just say that this week's team story went much smoother than the others. The story pitch went well, as we were not told that we needed more information or that we had to re-pitch completely. Shannon and I were able to get in contact with quite a few sources on friday afternoon and set up all of our interviews for monday. Although we had some equipment troubles on Monday morning (two marantz's we took out did not work), we were able to reschedule our interview for later that day. On monday evening we went to the Columbia Aquatic Restoration Project instructional class and talked to program directors, the horticulturist, the volunteer coordinator, and volunteers, both experienced and unexperienced. Everybody was very helpful and happy to answer any questions we had. With all of our interviews done by monday night, we had the rest of the week free to work on the script. This turned out to be a good thing, because the script needed a lot of work. With Karen's guidance, Shannon and I must have re-written the script about 6 or 7 times, each time improving on it and expanding it. When shannon and I voiced and edited the approved script the audio piece ended up being almost 6 and a half minutes. At the last hour we asked Karen to listen to the piece and she made suggestions for shortening it, which I think greatly improved our piece.
Shannon and I did a great job getting nat sound for this piece, a component that many other of my audio pieces have lacked in the past. I think it really added a lot to the story because it made the piece much more engaging. I also learned a lot about writing for the radio and using more descriptive terms. When talking about the CARP class, Karen made the great suggestion that we should describe what type of attire the people in the class were wearing. This added more visual writing to our story and again made it more interesting to listen to. Armed with the knowledge I gained during this week's story project, I think I will be able to turn out much better stories in the future
Shannon and I did a great job getting nat sound for this piece, a component that many other of my audio pieces have lacked in the past. I think it really added a lot to the story because it made the piece much more engaging. I also learned a lot about writing for the radio and using more descriptive terms. When talking about the CARP class, Karen made the great suggestion that we should describe what type of attire the people in the class were wearing. This added more visual writing to our story and again made it more interesting to listen to. Armed with the knowledge I gained during this week's story project, I think I will be able to turn out much better stories in the future
Friday, March 6, 2009
First Shift at KBIA
KBIA is great! The staff and news directors give you a lot of freedom to do what you want. The atmosphere is very relaxed, and there are a lot of people willing to help and answer any questions one might have. My first 4 hour shift at KBIA was not a traditional reporting shift, but I do feel as if I learned a good deal about producing stories for the radio. The story I worked on was a audio slideshow about the True/False Film Festival. One of the convergence reporters working at KBIA for their capstone, Jacqueline (not sure if that is the correct spelling) asked me if I would edit and produce a audio slideshow about the festival. The interviews had been done and photos had already been taken, but it was my job to put it all together. There was a substantial amount of audio to go through from the interviews, but unfortunately some portions of it were unusable due to technical problems with the recording. The first time I went through the audio I pulled out bites that I thought would be good to use in the slideshow. When I had the reporter who assigned me the story listen to it, she said that they were good bites but they needed to be shorter. I shortened the bites and arranged them the way I thought they should be arranged. Again, Jacqueline told me that I needed to shorten the bites even more, and arrange them in a way that was "fun and artsy." I must have rearranged the bites about 4 or 5 times before the sequence was approved, and although it was frustrating, it gave me a much better sense of the structure of a radio story and what makes it interesting. Radio stories should have a variety of voices, and those voices should be animated. The natural sound needs to be intertwined throughout the story, not just in the beginning or at the end. The next step was choosing the pictures to go into the slideshow, and then arranging them to go along with the audio sequence I had created. Although the other reporter picked out some photos she wanted to see in the slideshow, I had the final say about which pictures made it into the story. I looked for a variety of photos, including close ups, wide angle shots, and action shots. The whole process took me over 4 hours, so I had to work on it at home and brought it into KBIA early the next morning. The slideshow turned out well and they put it onto the KBIA website. My next shift I pitched a story about the new fire station, as the groundbreaking for the new station was that day. Jan thought it was a good idea and suggested I go out to the site to get nat sound and talk to people. After about 20 minutes of getting lost I finally made it to the site, but alas, there was nobody there! I called the PR contact for the new station about 6 times, and his phone was busy every single time. i also attempted to contact several other officials but with no luck. It was about 4p.m by the time I made it back to the newsroom, and by that point it was too late to pick up another story so Janet told me it was alright if I just went home. It was discouraging to not be able to get the story, but I worked very hard in trying to do so. I am glad that I at least put together an audio slideshow for the KBIA website, and I thought it turned out pretty well.
P.S. NOTE TO THE EDITORS: When looking at the file in my finished stories folder look under KBIA/TrueFalse2009/truefalseslideshow.ssproj
Here is a link to the slideshow as well: http://real.jour.missouri.edu/content/kbia/slideshows/TRUEFALSE/index.html
-David Goldstein
P.S. NOTE TO THE EDITORS: When looking at the file in my finished stories folder look under KBIA/TrueFalse2009/truefalseslideshow.ssproj
Here is a link to the slideshow as well: http://real.jour.missouri.edu/content/kbia/slideshows/TRUEFALSE/index.html
-David Goldstein
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Week 6 Team Story- Kids without computers
I am happy to report that team story number three went very smoothly. Our story was about how students without access to computers at home are affected by teachers assigning work that requires the use of a computer. We identified our sources early, gathered our information soon afterwards, and had a decent amount of time to edit the story. There was no shortage of people who were willing to talk to us about this issue, as it i something that effects many people. In fact, we faced the problem of over reporting. We talked to so many people and got so much good information that we didn't know what to include and what not to include. As a result, our piece ended up being much longer than we wanted it to be. Although we got a lot of good information and sound bites, we were not able to find a student affected by this situation who was very articulate. All of the students we talked to were very brief in their responses and although they conveyed to us that they were negatively impacted by not having home computers, they did not provide us with any really strong bites to use for our radio story. Looking back on the situation now, I feel that i could have asked more open ended questions to perhaps draw the students out of their shells and make them feel more comfortable talking to us. I also think that we could have focused more strongly on certain aspects of the story. I think the focus of our story was too broad. I also think there was too much narration. By the end of the story I was tired of listening to myself talk, and I am sure those listening to it felt the same. Elizabeth and I had some issues putting the story together, but I still believe it was a strong story and an important issue to tackle. Perhaps with a little work the story could be ready to air on KBIA.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Week 5: David defeats frustration
This week was a great learning experience. I competed my second shift at the Missourian as a convergence reporter. Originally, I was planning to produce multimedia for the child soldier story the Missourian was going to run, but because I did not go through the proper procedure the story was given to someone else. Although I was mad when I lost the story, it taught me to always contact at east one of the editors and make sure they know I am doing a story so they do not assign it to someone else. I quickly picked up a story about the exercise phenomenon Zumba. The class has been offered at the Mizzou student recreation center for a few semesters now and it is steadily growing in popularity. The reporter doing the story wanted some video for it so readers and viewers could get a better idea of what the class is like. I enjoyed shooting the video for this assignment although it was difficult because the studio where it as held is lined with mirrors. It was difficult to get a good shot without getting footage of myself in the mirror. I had to play around with the angles a lot. Once I finished shooting I went back to the Missourian newsroom to start editing, but as I was halfway done editing the footage the program crashed and I lost everything. It was a huge setback so I decided to take a break and then start over in the futures lab. Because I had to do so much extra editing though, I learned a lot more about how to use Avid and even Final Cut. I believe this story really helped me improve my video editing skills.
Once I had finally finished editing it was time to export the movie and get it onto the Missourian’s production server. This task should have been easy but it proved to be the most difficult part. The convergence editor Jacqueline Brixie and I did trouble shooting for about 3 hours before we finally got it to work. IF IT DOESN’T WORK THE FIRST 30 TIMES, TRY AT LEAST 30 MORE!!! My patience was definitely stretched to the limit during this assignment, but I gained a great deal of experience through it. I must have ran back and forth between the Missourian and the futures lab about 5 times over the course of the night. Although this part was very frustrating, I think it helped me learn more about using the computers in general. I am glad the story is done and I think it turned out well. I am still waiting for it to go up onto the Missourian website but it should be soon.
Once I had finally finished editing it was time to export the movie and get it onto the Missourian’s production server. This task should have been easy but it proved to be the most difficult part. The convergence editor Jacqueline Brixie and I did trouble shooting for about 3 hours before we finally got it to work. IF IT DOESN’T WORK THE FIRST 30 TIMES, TRY AT LEAST 30 MORE!!! My patience was definitely stretched to the limit during this assignment, but I gained a great deal of experience through it. I must have ran back and forth between the Missourian and the futures lab about 5 times over the course of the night. Although this part was very frustrating, I think it helped me learn more about using the computers in general. I am glad the story is done and I think it turned out well. I am still waiting for it to go up onto the Missourian website but it should be soon.
Week 5: David defeats frustration
This week was a great learning experience. I competed my second shift at the Missourian as a convergence reporter. Originally, I was planning to produce multimedia for the child soldier story the Missourian was going to run, but because I did not go through the proper procedure the story was given to someone else. Although I was mad when I lost the story, it taught me to always contact at east one of the editors and make sure they know I am doing a story so they do not assign it to someone else. I quickly picked up a story about the exercise phenomenon Zumba. The class has been offered at the Mizzou student recreation center for a few semesters now and it is steadily growing in popularity. The reporter doing the story wanted some video for it so readers and viewers could get a better idea of what the class is like. I enjoyed shooting the video for this assignment although it was difficult because the studio where it as held is lined with mirrors. It was difficult to get a good shot without getting footage of myself in the mirror. I had to play around with the angles a lot. Once I finished shooting I went back to the Missourian newsroom to start editing, but as I was halfway done editing the footage the program crashed and I lost everything. It was a huge setback so I decided to take a break and then start over in the futures lab. Because I had to do so much extra editing though, I learned a lot more about how to use Avid and even Final Cut. I believe this story really helped me improve my video editing skills.
Once I had finally finished editing it was time to export the movie and get it onto the Missourian’s production server. This task should have been easy but it proved to be the most difficult part. The convergence editor Jacqueline Brixie and I did trouble shooting for about 3 hours before we finally got it to work. IF IT DOESN’T WORK THE FIRST 30 TIMES, TRY AT LEAST 30 MORE!!! My patience was definitely stretched to the limit during this assignment, but I gained a great deal of experience through it. I must have ran back and forth between the Missourian and the futures lab about 5 times over the course of the night. Although this part was very frustrating, I think it helped me learn more about using the computers in general. I am glad the story is done and I think it turned out well. I am still waiting for it to go up onto the Missourian website but it should be soon.
Once I had finally finished editing it was time to export the movie and get it onto the Missourian’s production server. This task should have been easy but it proved to be the most difficult part. The convergence editor Jacqueline Brixie and I did trouble shooting for about 3 hours before we finally got it to work. IF IT DOESN’T WORK THE FIRST 30 TIMES, TRY AT LEAST 30 MORE!!! My patience was definitely stretched to the limit during this assignment, but I gained a great deal of experience through it. I must have ran back and forth between the Missourian and the futures lab about 5 times over the course of the night. Although this part was very frustrating, I think it helped me learn more about using the computers in general. I am glad the story is done and I think it turned out well. I am still waiting for it to go up onto the Missourian website but it should be soon.
This Week
This week we presented our preliminary research and our goals for how we are going to proceed at this point. I think the presentation went well as a whole. As there were five of us and were really covering two capstone projects we want to make sure to be a thorough as possible and I think we succeeded at that. Mike was actually giving us the wrap it up as we were winding down. Some of the thing we covered in our presentation were our SWOT analysis, our primary and secondary research, and our analysis of our main competition for both sites. In doing our research for our presentation I came upon an interesting article about our target market and am going to reflect on it for a minute. Amazingly, even though we are in a recession, college students (18-30) will be spending $230 billion dollars this next year which is a 13% jump from last year according to bizreport.com. I don't know where they are going to get the money, but apparently students spend money. This is a great encouragement for us trying to hit this market and their wallets. Likeme.net should be encouraged because this can be a way to get our demographic out into the neighborhoods and spending money. And for Backstagegallery.com because as a site selling a product there always needs to be someone to buy it. The article also talks about students being brand loyal and how it has become "Cool" to be good. It is seen as a positive for companies to be economically, environmentally, and morally responsible in there business dealings. I found that interesting.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Reflection Catch Up!!!
I completely forgot we were supposed to be blogging and I actually wrote these blogs before seeing how long most other people's blogs were...so they're kind of long and much more formal than they should be. But on the up side they're also very in depth! I see I’m not the only one who has forgotten to do this so excuse my tardiness as well. I promise to keep up from now on. Well, on to the reflections!
Week 2:
This week Erica Zucco and I completed our first team assignment. I learned quickly that convergence reporting is a whole lot of work. There wasn’t a single day since we were assigned the project that I was not working on the story in some capacity. I must say that I really enjoyed the story we chose to do, so I did not mind spending so much time on it. Erica and I did our story on the Modern Whig Party, focusing on the membership base here in Missouri. Everyone we talked to was very cooperative and eager to talk to us about the party, which made things really easy. We were even able to get all of our interviews done early in the week, which gave us a lot of cushion for completing the rest of the assignment. We were very prepared for this story and had really great interview subjects, which made it a wonderful experience.
I ended up doing the voice overs for our NPR style story for KBIA, but apparently I have a “lazy voice” (says Karen and Lynda) and I am a P-popper. So much for my broadcast career. But I shall overcome. It was really cool that KBIA wants to air our story, although we still have not gotten around to getting the extra material we need in order for it to air, although we plan on doing that very soon.
Week 3:
This week I began working at the Missourian. For my first shift I covered a story that dealt with the construction at Brady and the way it has affected pedestrian traffic at the new bookstore. Since Brady commons is being remodeled, students without a meal plan have nowhere to eat on campus except for the small cafeteria at the new bookstore. The problem with the cafeteria is there are inadequate seating accommodations. The small seating area cannot handle the high volume of students that choose to eat there, meaning that students must eat on the floor, in the book stacks, or simply take their lunch elsewhere.
This assignment was a greater challenge than I thought it was going to be. I expected to be able to shoot video for this story in about half an hour to an hour, and edit it in about 3 hours. But things didn’t work out that way. First of all, I was at a disadvantage because I took 4802 over the summer, and that was before we started using the new video cameras. So in order to cover this story I had to quickly learn how to use the new video cameras, including how to calibrate al the settings. When I finally got to the new bookstore to begin shooting, it was halfway between classes, so there weren’t that many people eating there. I had to wait another half an hour for classes to get out so that the cafeteria would fill up with people again. Then the issue was getting people to talk to me on camera. Some people were willing to talk, but not on camera. Others just wanted to be left in peace while they ate their lunch. Many of the people I talked to said that it was their first time eating there so they could not speak to the issue I was asking them about. I finally collected about five solid interviews and then went back to edit my piece.
It took me a little while to get my Avid feet back under me, but when I did it was just like riding a bike. I picked out clips, b-roll, and wrote a script. Then I discovered that I had made a crucial error. I lost the names of the people I interviewed! I was so angry at that point I thought that all was lost. Fortunately I remembered the name of one of my interview subjects and was able to use her for my story. This setback (and may I add bonehead move) significantly shortened the length and strength of my piece, but overall I think it turned out decent. Valerie Chew, the convergence editor who helped me put my package together, provided an invaluable service. She really helped me salvage my story after I discovered my mistake. I learned to be absolutely certain that I have all of the info I need before I leave an interview or site. It was a difficult feat to complete this assignment, as it was my first day turn. I believe that I learned a great deal though, and it definitely gave me a taste of what it was like to work under a tight deadline. I am looking forward to my next shift at the Missourian.
Week 4:
This week I completed my second team assignment. Right off the bat I had more difficulty with this team assignment than I did my first, simply because of the story ideas we came up with. Our story ideas were not as well researched as they should have been, and because of this Jordan and I left the story pitch meeting without a clear idea of which story we were going to pursue. It was not until Monday that we actually had a clear idea of what our story was and even then we ended up changing it Monday night. Essentially, this gave us about two and a half days to complete a weeklong story.
The reason we changed our story is because when we interviewed a union representative (as our original story was about unions) she told us that MU’s new pension plan was severely impacting the lowest paid workers in a very negative way. Jordan and I were not very familiar with the pension issue at this point and thought that we had come across a great angle to the story. Upon further examination we realized that perhaps we had gotten swept up in one side of the story and we were not approaching it in a very objective way. Nonetheless, we were running out of time and had to turn something in, so we went with a reaction story to the change in MU’s pension plan.
This story proved to be very difficult for the sole reason that we could not get any of the workers this change was affecting (i.e. custodial and maintenance) to talk to us about it. It seemed that they were scared to say anything about the issue to reporters for fear that they would lose their job. It seemed like there was definitely something deeper going on in the story. Several employees said that they were told not to comment about the issue, which seemed very suspicious. I felt that we did not really have enough time to fully explore the issue, however, since we got such a late start on the story.
I learned quite a bit from this assignment. First of all, a strong story idea is key to turning a good story. Our story ideas were not strong to begin with, and it hurt us in the long run. Second, persistence pays off. We thought our story was dead in the water when we couldn’t find any custodial or maintenance workers to talk to but we didn’t give up. Thursday morning we were able to find a few people to talk to us and we ended up with a decent final product. Unfortunately the piece failed to give very much additional insight and context to the reader that had not been covered by other news sources already. I do think it raised an important issue though, and if reworked could make for a good story.
Week 2:
This week Erica Zucco and I completed our first team assignment. I learned quickly that convergence reporting is a whole lot of work. There wasn’t a single day since we were assigned the project that I was not working on the story in some capacity. I must say that I really enjoyed the story we chose to do, so I did not mind spending so much time on it. Erica and I did our story on the Modern Whig Party, focusing on the membership base here in Missouri. Everyone we talked to was very cooperative and eager to talk to us about the party, which made things really easy. We were even able to get all of our interviews done early in the week, which gave us a lot of cushion for completing the rest of the assignment. We were very prepared for this story and had really great interview subjects, which made it a wonderful experience.
I ended up doing the voice overs for our NPR style story for KBIA, but apparently I have a “lazy voice” (says Karen and Lynda) and I am a P-popper. So much for my broadcast career. But I shall overcome. It was really cool that KBIA wants to air our story, although we still have not gotten around to getting the extra material we need in order for it to air, although we plan on doing that very soon.
Week 3:
This week I began working at the Missourian. For my first shift I covered a story that dealt with the construction at Brady and the way it has affected pedestrian traffic at the new bookstore. Since Brady commons is being remodeled, students without a meal plan have nowhere to eat on campus except for the small cafeteria at the new bookstore. The problem with the cafeteria is there are inadequate seating accommodations. The small seating area cannot handle the high volume of students that choose to eat there, meaning that students must eat on the floor, in the book stacks, or simply take their lunch elsewhere.
This assignment was a greater challenge than I thought it was going to be. I expected to be able to shoot video for this story in about half an hour to an hour, and edit it in about 3 hours. But things didn’t work out that way. First of all, I was at a disadvantage because I took 4802 over the summer, and that was before we started using the new video cameras. So in order to cover this story I had to quickly learn how to use the new video cameras, including how to calibrate al the settings. When I finally got to the new bookstore to begin shooting, it was halfway between classes, so there weren’t that many people eating there. I had to wait another half an hour for classes to get out so that the cafeteria would fill up with people again. Then the issue was getting people to talk to me on camera. Some people were willing to talk, but not on camera. Others just wanted to be left in peace while they ate their lunch. Many of the people I talked to said that it was their first time eating there so they could not speak to the issue I was asking them about. I finally collected about five solid interviews and then went back to edit my piece.
It took me a little while to get my Avid feet back under me, but when I did it was just like riding a bike. I picked out clips, b-roll, and wrote a script. Then I discovered that I had made a crucial error. I lost the names of the people I interviewed! I was so angry at that point I thought that all was lost. Fortunately I remembered the name of one of my interview subjects and was able to use her for my story. This setback (and may I add bonehead move) significantly shortened the length and strength of my piece, but overall I think it turned out decent. Valerie Chew, the convergence editor who helped me put my package together, provided an invaluable service. She really helped me salvage my story after I discovered my mistake. I learned to be absolutely certain that I have all of the info I need before I leave an interview or site. It was a difficult feat to complete this assignment, as it was my first day turn. I believe that I learned a great deal though, and it definitely gave me a taste of what it was like to work under a tight deadline. I am looking forward to my next shift at the Missourian.
Week 4:
This week I completed my second team assignment. Right off the bat I had more difficulty with this team assignment than I did my first, simply because of the story ideas we came up with. Our story ideas were not as well researched as they should have been, and because of this Jordan and I left the story pitch meeting without a clear idea of which story we were going to pursue. It was not until Monday that we actually had a clear idea of what our story was and even then we ended up changing it Monday night. Essentially, this gave us about two and a half days to complete a weeklong story.
The reason we changed our story is because when we interviewed a union representative (as our original story was about unions) she told us that MU’s new pension plan was severely impacting the lowest paid workers in a very negative way. Jordan and I were not very familiar with the pension issue at this point and thought that we had come across a great angle to the story. Upon further examination we realized that perhaps we had gotten swept up in one side of the story and we were not approaching it in a very objective way. Nonetheless, we were running out of time and had to turn something in, so we went with a reaction story to the change in MU’s pension plan.
This story proved to be very difficult for the sole reason that we could not get any of the workers this change was affecting (i.e. custodial and maintenance) to talk to us about it. It seemed that they were scared to say anything about the issue to reporters for fear that they would lose their job. It seemed like there was definitely something deeper going on in the story. Several employees said that they were told not to comment about the issue, which seemed very suspicious. I felt that we did not really have enough time to fully explore the issue, however, since we got such a late start on the story.
I learned quite a bit from this assignment. First of all, a strong story idea is key to turning a good story. Our story ideas were not strong to begin with, and it hurt us in the long run. Second, persistence pays off. We thought our story was dead in the water when we couldn’t find any custodial or maintenance workers to talk to but we didn’t give up. Thursday morning we were able to find a few people to talk to us and we ended up with a decent final product. Unfortunately the piece failed to give very much additional insight and context to the reader that had not been covered by other news sources already. I do think it raised an important issue though, and if reworked could make for a good story.
Friday, February 13, 2009
This Week
This week for our capstone we were focusing on the research aspect of our project. Compiling data on the websites traffic and figure out just how we are going to focus in on our overall goals:
1. Find a way to utilize our convergence skills in the world of social media.
2. Define the market for our products.
3. Figure out the best tactics to reach that market.
4. Increase awareness and usage of the product.
5. Use our research and skills to make suggestions to improve the product
We also tried to connect with the strat comm groups and see what they are doing and reflect on how we can work with them to learn what we can from them as they might have a little more experience in this particular topic. One of the big things we need to start doing is "secondary research". Basically trying to find research that is already there. One thing that was talked about though was that backstage is really the only website like it. So perhaps something to try and find are the top websites that sell posters/art/whatever and trying to get an idea of what they are doing for marketing, how new products are getting their name out to the public, other things like that. This may or may not be what we need to be looking for, but you get the idea. We will be meeting again soon to continue our process.
1. Find a way to utilize our convergence skills in the world of social media.
2. Define the market for our products.
3. Figure out the best tactics to reach that market.
4. Increase awareness and usage of the product.
5. Use our research and skills to make suggestions to improve the product
We also tried to connect with the strat comm groups and see what they are doing and reflect on how we can work with them to learn what we can from them as they might have a little more experience in this particular topic. One of the big things we need to start doing is "secondary research". Basically trying to find research that is already there. One thing that was talked about though was that backstage is really the only website like it. So perhaps something to try and find are the top websites that sell posters/art/whatever and trying to get an idea of what they are doing for marketing, how new products are getting their name out to the public, other things like that. This may or may not be what we need to be looking for, but you get the idea. We will be meeting again soon to continue our process.
Monday, February 9, 2009
iPhone Applications
Hey Everyone,
For the group of us that are working in the Strat Comm oriented Likeme.net and Backstagegallery.com Capstone projects we are looking for a way to set our group apart from the Strat Comm students that are doing similar projects. We had a project meeting yesterday and tossed out the idea of designing an iPhone application for Likeme. Now we aren't positive that this is a direction that we would like to go, as it could be a huge undertaking, but I was just wondering if anyone had any previous experience with designing applications and would like to give me a small rundown of the process and all that is required. If you have any tips and want to help out, e-mail me your comments @ Apple2k@gmail.com. Thanks guys.
-Andrew
For the group of us that are working in the Strat Comm oriented Likeme.net and Backstagegallery.com Capstone projects we are looking for a way to set our group apart from the Strat Comm students that are doing similar projects. We had a project meeting yesterday and tossed out the idea of designing an iPhone application for Likeme. Now we aren't positive that this is a direction that we would like to go, as it could be a huge undertaking, but I was just wondering if anyone had any previous experience with designing applications and would like to give me a small rundown of the process and all that is required. If you have any tips and want to help out, e-mail me your comments @ Apple2k@gmail.com. Thanks guys.
-Andrew
Friday, February 6, 2009
Week 1
It feels like the capstone project that Ryan and I are working on (redesigning the convergence Web site) couldn't be more open ended. So, it was nice to finally talk to Karen and Lynda about some of the things that they are hoping to change about the site. Before the meeting, Ryan and I talked and had a ton of ideas for the new site, so it was nice to be able to narrow it down after talking to the staff. I think for next week, it is important for us to talk to Mike, and begin more deeply researching the type of content management system that would most effectively let us achieve all of the things we want to do, along with making it easy to update the site on a regular basis at the end of this project.
Friday, January 30, 2009
First week
Jordan Stockdale
I probably should use my time better. This week I neglected all my other class work in order to compile this story on time. but who likes to read or even write a winy post. We got some good sources, we have a good story, and our editor is confident the Missourian will publish our work. Can't complain. Im a little disappointed in my photography, but what can you do. Practice practice. I think we have to do this for points right? I hope so...
Next week ill be starting earlier and hopefully by then I find some new sources in my niche. Do other people read these?
peace,
I probably should use my time better. This week I neglected all my other class work in order to compile this story on time. but who likes to read or even write a winy post. We got some good sources, we have a good story, and our editor is confident the Missourian will publish our work. Can't complain. Im a little disappointed in my photography, but what can you do. Practice practice. I think we have to do this for points right? I hope so...
Next week ill be starting earlier and hopefully by then I find some new sources in my niche. Do other people read these?
peace,
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Learning the hard way...
Tracy Pfeiffer, 4804
This week has been something of a whirlwind of hard-learned lessons about story focus and contacting sources. We knew that our initial pitch for this story was rather vague, but received good advice on ways to focus it and make it into something people would be interested in reading. However, we found it difficult to locate the character that we needed, and I'm still unsure of how the character we did find will play into the greater story. I see it, and I can sense it right over the horizon, but I just can't link them together in my mind in such a way that won't leave the question, "Why should people care?"
I've also learned a lot really quickly about the persistence necessary to contact sources. My attempts to contact sources on Monday were admittedly too subdued, and my teammate and I have found ourselves scrambling to find replacement sources for the ones who wouldn't contact us back and I did not give up on soon enough. Lesson learned, for sure.
This week has been something of a whirlwind of hard-learned lessons about story focus and contacting sources. We knew that our initial pitch for this story was rather vague, but received good advice on ways to focus it and make it into something people would be interested in reading. However, we found it difficult to locate the character that we needed, and I'm still unsure of how the character we did find will play into the greater story. I see it, and I can sense it right over the horizon, but I just can't link them together in my mind in such a way that won't leave the question, "Why should people care?"
I've also learned a lot really quickly about the persistence necessary to contact sources. My attempts to contact sources on Monday were admittedly too subdued, and my teammate and I have found ourselves scrambling to find replacement sources for the ones who wouldn't contact us back and I did not give up on soon enough. Lesson learned, for sure.
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