Sad day for Journalism..hopefully not a sign of the future

What a sad day for journalists EVERYWHERE....Hopefully this isn't a sign of what's to come in every city with two papers. Its definitely disheartening to see where the industry is going as a fresh college grad, we just have to keep in mind the only thing that's going to help journalism survive is innovation! Look how fast Twitter took off (this month). I feel like everyone "tweets" now. We need to figure out more ways like that to get the news out.

It just sucks to see what seemed like such a great paper and hear the stories of those reporters just be deleted overnight.

Hoping for the best as we continue through the recession. Keep journalism alive.

WEB x 2!

To the left is an image of the Corey Griffin, I worked on the Sarah's Story about him today. Most of the time I just cut images for stories...and posted video for the 5/6 stuff. A link to the Sarahs Story is here.

During my shift I also posted two other stories to the web...Top Industrial Plant and Economy Closes Dealership. I added the video and changed up the captions on a couple photos.

There was a missing reporter, so the work load wasnt that much. I also gathered some stuff for my resume DVD and got Stacey to look over a cover letter. I am sending off my first batch (2) "applications" today.

That's all for now...Im working on an '8 On Your Money' story for Saturday, details on that tomorrow or Thursday.

What a day at the Fire House

Yea, as crazy as that sounds...I had the opportunity to ride along with Columbia Firefighters today for a future HFR I'm working on. So it started out with the guys fixing one of the trucks, because a belt snapped. Those trucks are freakin' huge! But, they got the truck in service really fast..and I think it was one of the fire fighters that fixed it. It was cool.

Then we got our first call. It was really weird because they didn't like hop, skip, jump really fast...we just kinda briskly walked to the truck and got in. It was NOISY, BUMPY and a TIGHT SQUEEZE. It was just a call for a lady with chest pains though, so no fires. Columbia FD responds to all medical calls, they arrive along with a local ambulance. We were first this time. The response was fairly fast here, but more on that later.


After the call, we went back to the house and waited for the next...but, let me tell you there wasn't another one while I was there. I got a tour of the quarters...which are quite nice. They each have their own beds (they share the bed with 2 other people on other shifts). After that we just sat around and waited more...their conversations cracked me up. They were really a close group of guys...they chat a lot, poke fun at the new guys and they are really nice. It seemed like a boy scouts or something.

So, Im working on an HFR about fire response times in Columbia...it will air later this month probably. I'll keep you all posted on that. I am also going to create some sort of flash element for the story, as I learned how to do basic flash today. I'm going to post a lot of pictures from the event too. So look out for all of that interactivity stuff soon. I'll post a link to the story when its done.

Have a good week-end!

THIS WEEK ON THE WEB

Howdy,

This week was fairly easy getting stuff on the web. The main story I worked on this week was the story about Precious Brown. I added pictures to the main story and even made my first Flickr slideshow. I think those are really cool, it took me time to figure out how to categorize it though in order to get it to show up I had to use the SWF Extra Category (DUH!) That's flash...DUH...DUH...DUH. Anyway, I got it after a while and bugging the engineer guy, but I taught him how to do it too.

Another story I worked on was just adding a video interview to the story about the homicide. Julia had extra information in an interview that I added to her story--here.

I am also working this week to get content for my capstone...I'll update about this mid-week or end of the week.

Also working on the giraffe thing this week...as well as an HFR that I hope to do BIG things for on the web....may need your help with some stuff there, but I'll talk to you about that whenever I get it together.

WEB, WEB, WEB

NEW ON THE WEB:
This week's shift was swell, the newsroom was a buzz as always. I started my shift going in and fixing some P's that I saw in a few stories and I went in and deleted them. They are annoying, I make the mistake sometimes and hate what they do. Anyway..on to the shift:

I worked on the Sarah Story "update" sort of on the Poetic lady. I made 3 captures for the story and posted them to the story. It was fairly painless.

I also assisted Zak again this week with a few editing things. He's still learning, but progressing. I wrote up his web story but Cate posted the pics.

PROJECT:
We met this week to go over what the work would be for our iTouch app. I love our project idea...it has so much freakin potential to be huge over the years here at Mizzou. My goal is to get 2 content items done this week and submitted.

GIRAFFE:
I need to do this interview this week with my person. (Reminder to self)

That's about all for this week...it was a fairly FAST week. These weeks are flying by. I am also needing to update my site tremendously..haven't had time.

Shift 2 DOWN!

This was a much busier shift than last time. I not only posted stuff to the web, but helped a reporter out too. He needed help with editing his story.

On the web side of things, everything technically worked well til the end. We had a bit of a problem transferring video...but, then it finally went through. I guess the engineer guys were working on the server to get new technology in place or something. I worked on posting more images under my stories that I posted this week and hopefully they came out okay, Kat helped me figure it out again in PhotoShop.

Here's a summary of my stories that I worked on and the stuff I did to make them more "visually appealing":

1) Max "Reiss'" story was fairly simple to work with, he had a lot of links and extras which I added to the story and I added the image Kat made for the story to make it more visual online. I am still wanting to make stories better than I do now though. I want to make a slide show next week. Cate beat me to it this week, but that's cool.

2) I also worked on the Lincoln story, there really isn't much else there but a picture. :( Unfortunately there was really nothing else I could have done with it, I don't think...any ideas?


3) And then Zak Sos' piece was another article I posted. I also helped him with editing his piece since he is new to KOMU.

I also used the @KOMUNEWS Twitter to update viewers on upcoming news at 10 and had a blast doing that. I hope we can make Twitter more useful in the future at KOMU.com and be able to link to it on our website.

Next week goals: Do a slide show!! ALSO, do you think we could have a tutorial lesson on how to use flash or something in the future in class? And how to use that mapping flash tool? I think that'd be useful to add to some stories, but I don't know/remember how to use either.

Good solid week so far. I am also narrowing down my "Giraffe" picks so I can e-mail those off by the end of the week and we need to get going on our project this/next week. So hopefully my group can get together after class on Monday to discuss ideas...