Yesterday Mike and I got up at six to go watch the World Cup at a bar/restaurant called Barney’s Beanery.  We were the first people there which was great because we had amazing seats and it got absolutely packed by the time the US-England match started.  It was a great (yet expensive) experience.

The Oakwood Apartment complex is great.  There is a really relaxing grilling area right by the pool and there is almost always a pretty good pick-up game of basketball going.  Everything about the rooms is really nice except for the beds…don’t get me started on the beds.

This week I will start my internship at Clear Talent Group.  I’m very excited about getting started.  If you want to know a little bit about Clear Talent then check out their web-site: www.cleartalentgroup.com.

In addition to the interning and taking classes, I am also planning on doing some stand-up while I’m out here.  So far I am working on coming up with five good minutes (right now I’ve got about 3) and researching venues.

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog and I’ll be sure to keep you updated on my experiences in California.

EDIT: For the rest of my experiences in Los Angeles, please check out wordpress.com/eloninla

An informal, convenience survey of nearly a hundred Elon University students revealed that a majority of them watched the Oscars.  Fifty-six students reported watching most or all of the awards and sixty-0ne were aware that Slumdog Millionaire had won Best Picture.  Of those who have not seen Slumdog Millionaire, most expressed a desire to see the film.

“I would really like to see it once it comes out on DVD, ” Freshman Chase Hodgdon said.

Most of the students who saw it were in no way surprised by the recognition, as Slumdog Millionaire took home a total of eight oscars.

One of the main reasons students thought that it won so many awards was for its cinematography and originality.

“It is great to see a movie that really goes against the grain and relies on impeccable storytelling rather than big name actors,” reported Sophomore Shane Strom.

The film is about an impoverished Indian boy who wins a million dollars on the Indina version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire!”  All of the actors in the movie are new to the Hollywood spotlight and many of  thee children were as poor as the characters they portrayed before the films success.

Most students expressed their delight in Heath Ledger winning an Oscar for his role as The Joker in Dark Knight.  A few also said that they wished Gran Torino had at least been nominated for an award.

The survey was taken at Elon University the morning after the Oscars by Janna Anderson’s Com 310 class.

Elon University’s all-male acapella group Rip Chord performed for about thirty minutes at Midnight Meals to a room packed with students in the Moseley Student Center.  They performed several pieces, culminating with their grand finale medley of songs from classic Disney movies.  The group frequently performs at Midnight  Meals and always draws a large crowd.

“One reason that I love to see Rip Chord is that my roomate Greg Flis is in it, but they’re also really good and Midnight Meals is a great way to hang out with

your friends and get some free food,”   said sophomore Billy O’Riordan.

Usually students are offered free pizza while attending, but they were ecstatic  to learn that chicken wings were being served instead of pizza.  This change most likely accounted for the line for food being uncharacteristically out the door with many students calling their friends to let them in on the free wings.

Rip Chord has been performing at Midnight Meals since its inception and recently released an album entitled “Resisting Arrest.”

The first three chapters of “The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook” offer many insights into the world of investigative journalism.  The first chapter focuses on conveying the importance of working from the outside in.  That means not always trying to get information directly from the source right away, but to work towards it.  You always have to interview a wide range of people to get different perspectives on the story you are covering.  This chapter basically relays the need to get secondary sources to gain new perspectives and reinforce the sources you already have.

The second chapter focuses on gathering the most reliable evidence possible in order to make your story as credible as possible.  One instance of sloppy reporting can ruin a journalist’s reputation for life.  For instance, a few years ago a journalist came out with a report about “rainbow parties.”  At these parties high school girls reportedly wore different colored lipstick and then performed oral sex on their male peers, with the males seeing who could get the most colors of lipstick.  Because the idea of this being truthful was far more likely than this being the fantasy of a 14 year old boy with raging hormones, the story was wide circulated and even Oprah did a show on it.  When sociologists researched the so-called “huge fad” not a single high school student out of thousands questioned had ever been to a rainbow party or even known someone who went.  Had the journalist in question waited to print their story until getting hard evidence that the parties were in fact occurring than they would have realized their story was flawed and not have made a fool out of himself.

The third chapter discusses the importance of utilizing computer technology in journalism.  One important strategy when writing online is to make sure that all of your stories are search engine optimized.  This means using key words in your title so that when people search for a subject on a search engine your story will pop up.  Another way to use computers to your advantage when reporting is to use online databases to help back up your stories.  Whereas years ago you would have had to go to a library to find facts and figures, this same information can now be accessed in seconds.

C-SPAN Bus

By Alex Leedy:

C—SPAN’s state of the art bus studio visited Elon University today. Students were given a brief presentation on what makes C-SPAN different from other news organizations and how the bus operates.

Jeremy Art, Marketing Representative for C-SPAN acted at bus tour guide for the students.  He focused on what separates C-SPAN from other media outlets. Unlike most other news media, C-SPAN is a nonprofit organization that stresses coverage over commentary.

“Five cents of your cable bill goes towards funding for C-SPAN and covers everything from this bus to my salary, so please pay your cable bill on time so I can eat.”

Art showed students several video clips of C-SPAN coverage and compared it to other news outlets coverage of the same event. He pointed out that when C-SPAN covers an event there is are no side videos or scrolling bar at the bottom of the screen.

“How many of you have ever started reading the bar at the bottom of the screen and completely forgotten what was going on above it? That’s the kind of thing we are trying to avoid.”

The C-SPAN bus has been in operation since the 1993 and has been to all fifty states (they once ferried it to Hawaii just to say that they went). The bus mainly acts as a mobile studio and has been the stage for interviews with many congressman and several presidents.

Innovation was one of the pillars of his lecture. He said that whereas the best reporters used to be the best writers, the best reporter now is an innovative one.

As an online editor Kreitman put a high value on the web aspect of a newspaper and had many ideas about how to draw viewers to a news site. One strategy he talked about was the idea of having contests such as picking the winner of sporting events or an ugliest recliner competition.

He said that the key is not just to attract new viewers, but to ensure that the same viewers come back over an over again. With contests such as picking the winners of sporting events he explained that people would keep coming back to see how they stack up against the other competitors.

Another strategy for keeping the viewers coming back is allowing them to comment on stories. According to Kreitman when a controversial story is printed (or put online) readers will spend hours debating the issue in question. He did also say that commenting is a double-edged sword as many people tend to go overboard and get too heated in their comments.

To combat the often profanity laced over-board comments “The Burlington Times-News” introduced a self-policing program that allows viewers to “flag” comments that they deem to be inappropriate. This saves Kreitman and his colleagues from having to go through each individual post to see if it contains offensive material.

He did mention that posters frequently attempt to get around the flagging system by writing profanity in Spanish.

Another website fact that Kreitman shared was the poor success of feature stories online. He said that for some reason they do really well in print but not online and that smaller crime stories combined with local human-interest stories make for better online news .

After talking about website strategies Kreitman then went on to explain how important diversity is in today’s media. He used “The Burlington Times-News” as an example citing their use of facebook, wordpress, and other networking sites.

But when pressed on whether or not he thought that putting a news agency on facebook hurt the newspapers credibility he winced before replying “If it was up to me we (“The Burlington Times-News”) would not be on facebook. But that’s just the way it is now.”

Kreitman also discussed the growing importance newspapers becoming hyper-local. He believes that “Hyper-local is the only way newspapers will survive,” reasoning that it is ridiculous to try to compete with national newspapers in regards to national news.

By staying hyper-local smaller newspapers can provide what larger papers cannot, intimate knowledge of the local community. For example, Kreitman said that covering local high school sports is more important to being successful as a Burlington newspaper than covering professional ones.

While he acknowledges that national papers such as “The New York Times” are in danger, he believes that local newspapers will live on.

He concluded by saying that Elon students are coming into the world of journalism at the perfect time, “You guys have the biggest advantage, growing up with this technology.

SIDE NOTE:

The author would like to apologize for the lack of media in this article.   He had a camera malfunction while interviewing Mr. Kreitman after his lecture and only got fifteen seconds of footage.

A journalist is someone who can do more than just tell the facts, they must also write well. All journalists are reporters, but the opposite is not true. Journalism requires getting the facts while also delving deeper into the story and evoking emotion from the reader through clear and effective writing.

In a society that continues to value brevity and style over substance, it is easy to see how technological advances and flashy graphics can cover up poor journalism. Evidence of this can be seen when looking at the 2008 newspaper circulation statistics (courtesy of www.burrellesluce.com).

The “USA Today,” known for its huge front page pictures and graphics sells more than twice as many newspapers as “The New York Times.” Since 1994 writers from the Times have won or been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative reporting six times while writers from the “USA Today” have gone empty-handed. In fact, while the “New York Times” and its writers have won countless Pulitzer Prizes in many categories the “USA Today” has not even been nominated this century.

Why, then, is there such a huge circulation discrepancy between the two newspapers opposite of reason?

Simple.

The American people value their time and knowledge of events existence over understanding of events. Reading the “USA Today” for ten minutes over coffee in the morning would give someone a much broader look at world happenings than ten minutes with The Times. But reading through The Times, although taking longer” would provide the reader with a better understanding of world happenings.

People nowadays are busier than our ancestors could ever have dreamed of being. Because of this, most people do not have the time, or necessary attention span, to sit down and read a lengthy news article. It is also for this reason that the media currently focuses on the “who, what when, where” and less on the “why” and “how.”

For instance, it is common to see the poor state of the economy on the front page of a newspaper using scare tactics to entice readers without delving much into what is causing the problem or how it should be addressed.

The future of journalism will center around covering key facts and then allowing the reader to decide whether or not they want to find out more. This is already evident on most major news web-sites. CNN.com has short blurbs surrounding the main story, allowing the reader to click on whichever few words most interest them. It is scary to think that journalists will have to convince readers to view their article using only a couple of words.
The future of journalism will also rely heavily on “citizen-reporters.”

There are only so many journalists that a company can hire and they have to try to spread those as evenly as they possibly can. CNN found a solution to this quickly when they developed their “I-reporter” program. Now, in addition to the hundreds of journalists working for them, they have anyone with a phone, camera, or computer.

The idea caught on very quickly and will undoubtedly expand the role of the common man in media. When looking back at past media everyday people were not deemed worthwhile sources, After JFK was assassinated news agencies rushed their reporters to the hospital to follow the president, and it was not until the next day that parade-goers were interviewed.

Now the very first thing that news agencies try to do is find an eye-witness.
Instead of hearing the reporter’s take on what is occurring, the American public has come to expect finding out from those who were there. Now the public does not even have to turn to eye-witness interviews, they can go right to the eye-witnesses themselves.

It would have been possible, using an internet capable cellular phone, for passengers on US Airways Flight 1549 to post online their feelings and observations about their plunge into the Hudson River while being ferried ashore. This would mean that direct eye-witness reports could have been available almost twenty minutes before the passengers were interviewed on land. When a story that big breaks every second is valuable.

If any news agency had gotten their hands on eye-witness accounts before the passengers were even off the boats than it would have been a landmark in the advancement of the “citizen-reporter.”

In conclusion, the future of the journalist is uncertain, while the future for journalism seems wide open. As hard as journalists try to keep a collar on the neck of information, the public is gaining ground. Now that anyone with a computer can blog about anything they want, the American people must act as their own gate-keepers.