Zach: How do you get your news?

One of the options we had for class was revising up to two of our previous stories for up to 10 points of extra credit. I chose to update one of my stories about news media (which can be found here) and create a how-to guide for bringing news to you in a quick, convenient way. The guide revolves around two services offered: Twitter and Read It Later.

For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter, it's a social networking site where people can share information (news, what they're up to, etc.) in 140 characters or less. A lot of news companies such as the New York Times have Twitter accounts and "tweet" (post) headlines to their stories with links to the online content, allowing users to access the article without having to find it on the website.

Read It Later is a service that saves links, much like del.icio.us, except that the main purpose is storing articles in a list to read them later. The convenient part comes from having their apps on your smartphone or iPod touch, which allows you to take your stories on the go (a wireless connection required to get the articles, but not to read them).

If you would like to know more, click here. Thanks for reading!

-Z

Zach: ASF Update

My alternative story form draft (ASF) is just about wrapped up. I've organized everything into a nice table with information about each meal plan and some quotes from students who are on that specific meal plan. I've also included information about what kinds of foods are offered in the cafe every day and which meal plan gets which foods (they actually can get every kind of food that is offered). The final revisions will be done on Monday and I will post a link to the final product when it's done.

-Z

Alternative Story Form

Whats new this week?
Well, with the school days quickly winding down I've been focusing all of my attention (with regards to this class) on my alternative story form assignment.

To tell you the truth I'm finding this assignment to be a lot more difficult than I originally anticipated. I wouldn't necessarily call it hard it's just way more time consuming than I ever imagined it to be.

As a class we were told our alternative story form would be apart of a website called 'Coe for Dummies.' So... being me, I chose a topic that I thought would be the easiest and let me be the first to tell you, boy was I wrong.

My topic is places on Coe's campus and I plan on doing an interactive map with descriptions of each building. Sounds easy enough right? Yeah, that's what I thought too until I realized just how many buildings this so called 'small liberal arts school' actually had. I may have my work cut out for me so wish me luck!

Zach: Alternative Form Story

The next story that we will be working on is the alternative form story. An alternative form story (ASF) is a story written in a nontraditional form, whether it be a charticle, Q&A, list, etc. The story can be a standalone story, but is usually used to supplement a story by adding interesting information that didn't quite make it into the main story.

For my ASF, I will be talking about the different meal plans Coe has to offer for students. Because Coe is a residential campus (students have to live on campus unless they meet certain requirements), students must also be on a meal plan, unless they live in the apartments. Coe offers four different meal plans, each with a certain amount of Coe Cash (credit used to buy food/other items in our convenience store). The meal plans are as follows:

• 20 meals/week with $25 Coe Cash for the semester
• 16 meals/week with $75 Coe Cash for the semester
• 11 meals/week with $100 Coe Cash for the semester
• "Flex" Plan: 160 meals to be used at any time with no Coe Cash. Meals may be converted into Coe Cash at a rate of $5 Coe Cash for 1 meal converted.

The story is geared towards incoming students and will be written in chart/charticle form. I'll be interviewing Tom Wieseler from Sodexo about the various plans and also some students with each plan to get their take on them.

I'll post my story/a link to the story when it's finished so you can read it. Have a great day!

-Z

International Student's experience in America

This guy from Israel vividly explain about culture shock and what is like to be in America. I thought it is funny and educational to watch.

Slideshow Story is Done!

Finished my slideshow story today. A slideshow story is a news story told with pictures and cutlines (captions) rather than the traditional paragraph format. The same elements (5 W summary lede or hooking lede/nut graf) are present, but pictures have also been added. This can create a more interesting story by using visual images to convey information.

If you would like to view my slideshow (and also my journalism workshop website), click here.

Let me know what you think!

-Z

A sunny tuesday at Coe

Learning & Practicing: Picture Day!

Below are a few pictures from our Picture Day in Journalism Workshop. With the rapid expansion of technology (specifically smartphones), journalists are forced to be able to "do it all": get the story or interview, do the sound bite and shoot the photo for the print article. Picture Day was a lesson on taking web-quality pictures in a variety of angles and distances.

-Z

Professor Jane Nesmith shows an example of a tight-angle photo.

Krishen Narcelles practices her photo-taking with her Blackberry.


Aaron Schrock watches Professor Nesmith's lecture intently.


Lwin Nyein Chan Kyaw enjoys the photography lecture.

Burmese Refugees Story

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nygus/2959817932/

As I was looking for a story told by the pictures, I found them. These are really appealing pictures, which depict the condition of ordinary people of Burma in the border region. They were forced to leave their homeland in search of jobs, security and opportunities for their future.

Feature Story Slide Show: A Story Without Words

You're probably wondering to yourself, why is a journalism class being assigned a project that doesn't involve words? Like i said previously, ideally what we want to do is move towards becoming a multimedia journalist and to do so we need to take the next step, which in our case is photography. My classmate, Kathryn Meade (who I am very excited to be working with for this assignment!) and I will be doing our slide show presentation on softball. You see, everyone in our class were told their pictures had to fall somewhere under the guidelines of 'practicing and learning at Coe College' and we thought documenting one of our lovely softball teams practices would be a fun angle to base our story on. I can't say my partner or myself has ever had any experiences taking photos before (besides the everyday Facebook ones) so this should be fun!! Wish us luck!!!

Zach: "I follow blogs?"

As you probably guessed from the title, I don't really "follow" any blogs. Sure, I follow a few people on Twitter (follow me if you like) but I don't really follow any traditional, above-140-characters blogs. The main ones I read are Bits and Gadgetwise, both of which are New York Times blogs and deal in realm of technology. As I've said before, I'm a sucker for technology but I also read some of the occasional other blog posts that the Times tweets as well.

I suppose I also follow Shawn Kupfer's 47 Echo blog, but mainly because I loved his first book and am eagerly awaiting the second one. If you own a Kindle (or even if you don't), here is a link to the book on Amazon.

My question for you: what blogs do you follow? Any suggestions for ones I should as well?

-Z

Practicing and Learning at Coe

The ideal journalist in today's society are what we like to call multi media journalists, meaning not only should they know how to write but they should be able to be a TV reporter, TV photographer, newspaper photographer and a newspaper writer at any point in time.

That being said professor Jane Nesmith has started teaching our journalism class how to take news worthy photos like the following:

Practicing and Learning at Coe

Yay! let's take a picture!

Professor Nesmith showing the students what are the best picture looks like

Students are practically shooting pictures for their blogs

News Peg Article

Like my fellow classmates I too am working on a news peg article at this very moment and like Zach already told you, a news peg article is a story about a current issue in the news that takes the approach of a local or human-interest angle.

Everyone in class was given the freedom to choose the topic they wanted to write about and the topic I chose was the Budget Repair Bill in Wisconsin. If you know me personally the fact that I chose this topic should be no surprise. I'm very proud of the fact that I'm a Wisconsinite and just like any other true Wisconsinite I am loyal to my state. That being said this issue is something I'm extremely passionate about.

Just to give you an idea of what's going on in America's dairy land (Wisconsin) here is a little summary from my article...

The state of Wisconsin, like many other states is facing a rather large budget deficit that has reached $136.7 million. You would think a governor who was trying to fix this would be greatly appreciated by the public, but it is the way in which Governor Scott Walker is choosing to go about this issue that has the public so upset.

The Budget Repair Bill Walker has put into act includes the dismissal of collective bargaining rights for public employees. The bill was called "an assault on unions" by President Obama. The reason this is such a big deal to the public is because collective bargaining is initially what gives public employees a voice in negotiations; negotiations that deal with everything from sick leave and safety conditions to appropriate wages.

Thanks for reading :) I can't wait to share more about my news peg article with you!!!

News Peg Update: Tech at Coe

So my interview is set for Thursday at 3 PM and I will be interviewing Tony from Computer Services. The majority of the interview will be about what tech (gadgets/software) they decide to upgrade and when they decide to upgrade them. A smaller-ish part of it will also be about the process Computer Services goes through when it's time to upgrade. I also need to interview a few students around campus to get their take on the issue as well.

If the interview and the article go well enough, I will probably submit it to the Cosmos (our college paper), since I'm sure other students will want to know more about this as well. Wish me luck!

-Z

About Kiana

Most importantly my name is Kiana Balbirona and I'm a freshman at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, IA. I'm 18 years old at the moment and I'm originally from Janesville, WI where I just recently graduated from Parker HS.

Right now my plans are to major in communications with a minor in journalism while attending Coe College so later in life I'll be prepared to snag a career in the media field.

This blog was created for my journalism class and throughout the weeks my classmates and I will be sharing in depth details about our class with you. Thanks so much for reading!!!

Next Story: News Peg

Our next story in class is a news peg, a story "pegged" to a current story in the news by some sort of local or human-interest connection (ex: how the tsunami in Japan affects students at Coe). My news peg is about how Computer Services and the A/V Department at Coe choose which technology to update and when they choose to update it.

A summary (more or less) of my story: Recently, the SXSW Conference has been in the news, as has Apple with the introduction of its iPad 2. As technology keeps rapidly expanding, people will inevitably fall behind the latest gadgets and trends. (Best Buy even offers a new service that allows customers to trade-in their "out of date" gadgets when the upgrade comes out). So how do people choose what and when to upgrade? Being a student at Coe, I will be interviewing: Tony Bata, head of the Computer Services Department; several "students on the street"; and possibly Laura Riskedahl in the A/V Department.

I am a huge tech fan, so this story is going to be especially fun for me to write. I may or may not post it on here once it is finished, but if I do, any comments are appreciated!

-Z

Hi, I'm Zach

So as you probably guessed from the title, my name is Zach. While this may have told you many things about me already, here are some things you might not know:

• I am a student at Coe College (junior status, 2nd year)
• My majors are Business Administration and Public Relations (possibly a minor in Economics too)
  
• I am taking Journalism Workshop with Jane Nesmith (hence the blog)
• I swim on the swim team at Coe
• I'm a Resident Assistant this year and will be an Assistant Residence Director for next year (2011-12)

I'm not entirely sure what we will be writing about on this blog just yet (journalism-y things most likely), so this is going to be an adventure for you and me! By the way, this blog is shared with two other students in my class, Lwin and Kiana, so not every post is mine.

Last but not least, here's a picture of me so you have a face to associate these posts to:

Enjoy!

-Z

About Lwin

My name is Lwin. I am a student from Burma. I am taking the journalism course because I want to learn what it is like to be a journalist and learn how to write. I will post my writing about gay-marriage issue in Iowa.