September 2007 Archives
AP Guide to News Writing (Chapters 3-5)
"The more action your lead conveys, the better. Strong verbs are important."
Leads are the hook of the story. What this chapter was getting at was to make it spunky, and as catchy as possible. Readers don't want to read the same thing over and over every time they open up a newspaper. There cannot be clumsy structure, or boing words. Verbs like, "went and stayed" and the sort need to be spiced up. For instance, I was reading a news story about an upcoming video game called Mass Effect, and the controversy that it may bring. The lead was short, sweet, and layed out what I will see if I continued reading the article. It used words that added color to the story, and held my attention.
This news article would be a whole lot different if the GMC Suburban would have hit and run the child. But since they apprehended the driver, this news really doesn't need to be known to the public. Alright, it sucks that a 3-year-old kid got hit by a car, but we don't really care. We know that "the boy is lucky that the injury wasn't much worse", so that quote can just be thrown away. The only good thing out of this story is when they mentioned the driver, and how she didn't have a license. That makes the crime seem a little more extreme, but not important enough to be a news story.
I found the article i read to be very sad. Three young wheelchaired basketball players died when the bus they were traveling on collided with a truck. I was confused however on why the report was done here in America. It did not say if the players were American or not, but they were deffinately of importance. The article was detailed and followed the "list" very well. I did notice however that the funeral arrangements were not in the article, but it did mention the names of those who died, outside the bus. Tragic things like this happen all over the world everyday. I think its very important that although this happened in Africa that it is posted for everyone to see.
The Fall 2007 issue of Eye Contact: The Literary/Art Magazine of Seton Hill University will focus on the theme "Genesis." Submissions of art, poetry, fiction and personal essays are welcome. The deadline is October 19th. Please review the guidelines for directions on how to submit your work for consideration.
If you know of a student interested in studying abroad next semester, please let them know about the Gilman International Scholarship. The scholarship is for study abroad over four weeks. 850 scholarships will be awarded this academic year.
Information at http://www.iie.org//programs/gilman/index.html
Deadline for spring 2008 is October 9.
Additional questions: please contact Dr. Chossat at chossat@setonhill.edu
EYE CONTACT, the campus literary magazine, is hosting an "all staff meeting" Monday (9/17/07) at 4pm in the Publications Office (Lower Level of Sullivan Hall).
Anyone interested in helping with judging manuscripts later in the term or joining the staff of the magazine in the future is welcome to attend. Spread the word. Creative Writing majors are especially welcome to join us. We do have most positions staffed, but we can always use more help. We are also seeking a new Business Manager this year and an assistant Art editor.
If you just want to SUBMIT to the magazine, we have a special theme this semester: GENESIS. Guidelines will be coming soon. Keep your eyes on http://blogs.setonhill.edu/EyeContact/ for details.
Dr. Michael Arnzen, advisor
While I'm still working out the kinks, the MT upgrade seems to be working.
Seton Hill University students have been blogging at this location since Fall, 2003. In 2004, the work of SHU bloggers has appeared in a North Carolina State University MA thesis, "Web Logs in the Post-Secondary Writing Classroom: A Study of Purposes," and an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Freedom of Speech Redefined by Blogs."
The old login instructions are now out of date, but they will still explain things such as your default password and tips for how to write good blog entries. I will begin updating some of the older SHU blogging tutorials. Those links will appear here as I create them.
MT4 seems to be a big drag on our server's memory... if your site ever seems to hang, please don't reload the page multiple times -- your command is probably just waiting in a long line, and if you submit your request half a dozen times, it will just gum up the system even worse, and then you'll have six duplicate entries (which you will have to delete, which will take even more computing resources).
Working with new media is always a roller-coaster ride, so please bear with me during the transition.
--DGJ
Update: I should point out that I asked my internet to increase the RAM on my virtual server, so that it is in line with MT4's stated minimal requirements, and I could see a performance boost. While it's true that MT4 sucks up a lot more resources than MT3, well, they s
