September 2007 Archives

Attention! Attention! Today we announce the death of Spoken News!! Chapters 2 and 3 really focused on the importance of Spoken news in cultures and less developed peoples. They went on to describe the impact of coffeehouses in England and cafes in France as a veritable fountain of Spoken news. Introduce the newspaper and you see the decline of Spoken news and while less men travel to coffeehouses to hear news. 

England must be having a whole mess 'o trouble if most of the current top stories on Google News took place in either England or the UK. I chose a short article that could only tell me that a boy had died and that a 14 year old girl was in a hospital with serious injuries. No true details, just that police had arrested two men and were treating the boy's death as a murder and that neighbors were shocked. When I found this story it had only been published 6 hours ago. That's a good reason for giving so little detail and only having a few sources.

These readings laid out in detail exactly why reporters sometimes act the way that they do in the movies. Constantly running after victims, shoving cameras in faces, or shouting questions in faces that often only upset the victim even further. The Ch. 5 readings gave examples of how to present oneself to a victim or family member without essentially alienating the potential source which would be a vital need for the reporter. I think Lori Dickerson was right when she said, "We can go out and get our stories and the exclusives and still be human." This is a key fact to remember, especially for a reporter who may only wish to gather anything that might resemble a story instead of taking a bit of their time to consider their rash actions. This text definately has some great pointers on crime reporting.

I found the text on Leads to be of significance. A great example of revising a lead to make it more interesting is the story from Frankfort, Ky. "Thou shalt post the Ten Commandments on the classroom wall, says a 1978 Kentucky Law. Thou shalt not, says the U.S. Supreme Court. Help! say confused local schoolboards." This revised edition catches the eye and draws the reader in to keep on going in the article. The article still gets all of the particlulars across to the reader but it does so in a fun fashion. If a reporter can find a new spin or take on a story then it can bring out the newsworthy details in a memorable fashion.

I chose an article on a woman who ran a red light and subsequently died. There wasn't any fluff in this article. This let it be short, sour, and to the point. Even the quote, "Deborah Anne Greer, 36, died after a large utility truck smasehed into her passenger car at 9:23 a.m., Pena said." explains key elements of the article. This article was also short because car accidents are a fact of life, they happen every day. This article may be smalltown news but wouldn't appear on the frontpage of a large newspaper by any means. Only car accidents that have high casulty rates or long pile ups are going to make the frontpage most likely.

I just wrote this to see if I really remembered how to do it. I can't be too careful with my faulty memory!

testing the waters...

Welcome to your Seton Hill University weblog.

The web address "http://blogs.setonhill.edu/FirstnameLastname" is where your most recent entries will appear. New entries will appear at the top of this page, and older entries will slide down the page and eventually move to an archive.

To create and edit entries on your site, go to blogs.setonhill.edu, and log in with the username FirstnameLastname (with your name spelled the way it appears in J-Web, without any spaces, and with capitalization as shown).

I have posted a welcome message on the New Media Journalism weblog, which has links to tutorials and troubleshooting guides.