week 9.2

as these blog entries begin to wrap up, i have been thinking a lot about them. i like doing them a lot, don't get me wrong, but i love crossing things off my to - do list. but i think it's a good thing - as a result i have been thinking about newswriting and journalism and journalists and reporting and stories and ideas et cetera et cetera et cetera in all of my spare moments. i think it's great - it's kind of like my "news diet" (which, as a side note, i stuck religiously to over thanksgiving break when i had more than 25 minutes of free time a day). instead of reading whats going on around me locally or even worldwide, i am forced to see and pay attention to what is happening around me. i have to seek it out, strive for it. and not only that, i have to recognize if something would even be cut out for a news story. it's exciting, i feel like i'm constantly on the brink of discovering something. or perhaps, maybe not uncovering a breaking news story but something even better. inventing something - drawing two ideas together or learning about something. and that is what is so great about journalism - i get to learn and indulge on the habits of humankind and then turn around and educate others on it. 

week 9.1

as i believe i have mentioned before, my mother is a photographer. she teaches at UNH and Maine College of Art, but also works freelance. her specialty is architectural photography. interestingly enough, my father is a general contractor. my house is quaffed, to say the least, and i feel like my childhood took place in a museum. i have an architecture minor, but that aside, visuals fascinate me. i blame my parents entirely for this. i love fashion, commercials, beautiful people, photographs, youtube clips, sculptures, crown molding, bookcases, newspaper snippets... anything i find aesthetically pleasing gives me an insane rush. i think the amount that i obsess about how things look is way more than "normal" people, though. of course, i've been told my value on appearance is materialistic, et cetera but i really disagree. that said - i think the layout that a journalism piece is in is possibly more important than the actual writing. gasp - sorry. that is just my opinion; its possible that i'm wrong. but it means so much to me. a picture can change someones mind entirely. if the text that the article is written in isn't one i like (for example, comic sans, or trebuchet (sometimes helvetica is almost a turnoff)) i probably won't read it. am i being ignorant? probably. but it matters, and thats my only point. i think a journalist should be hyper aware of things like this. if your tweet isn't quippy or your article isn't appealing or the magazine doesn't publish interesting or compelling photographs, you are definitely loosing audience. 

week 8.3

i just endured my first black friday ever. though, i was not fortunate enough to be a shopper though (not sure if "fortunate" is the correct word here...). don't get me wrong, i love to shop. in fact, i think i even say in my blogger bio thing-y that i am a self proclaimed fashionista. anyways - i'm not one to buy just because i can; sales don't tempt me much unless it's something i want to buy anyways. typically i sleep through the black friday midnight madness and on the actual day (by day, i mean day light) my siblings and cousins and i usual spend the day together (we're all very close). i envision black friday i bit like mean girls when lindsay lohan turns into a lion or whatever and "attacks" her classmates... housewives  battling over toaster ovens and blenders and grannies snatching up the last of the ugly sweaters... any who. it wasn't really like that at all, actually. then again, i could have been in a haze because i was constantly reminding myself that i was being paid (you are being paid, you are being paid) but really, i kept that in the back of my mind all day. so i got to work (i will leave it unnamed in this) at 9:30 and stood around all day in skinny jeans (the day after thanksgiving - ludicrous, i agree) and heeled boots and a sweater. my feet hurt a ton after the first three hours and the door was constantly being opened and closed and it was arctic in the store anyways. basically we sell designer and high end jeans for men and women. we had a "sale" going on for black friday, but it wasn't really much of a sale ... it was still out of most people's price range. "sale" tricked a lot of people to come into the store so my fellow employees and i were hawking around the stacks and stacks of denim barking "can i help you with that?" desperately hoping they would say yes and stop ruining our neat stacks...

so, how do i write a new article about my experience(s) on black friday without it being too column-y... i have before run into small issues of "interest" one may call them. is there simply no way to write about something (other than an event) that i firsthand experienced? i've been thinking about this all day (when i wasn't thinking about getting paid, of course).

week 8.2

this is kind of related to the past two posts i've done, so that brings me to the next topic: is it really safe to write about things we hold near-and-dear to us? i desperately wanted to write an article about veganism and stuck to it. perhaps though, i should have abandoned ship when the red flags were going up about it not going so well. i think if it was something that i wasn't so obsessed with, i would have. instead, i was hell-bent on writing my stupid little piece and giving some attitude about my opinion. wrong? probably not terribly. but if it was about a topic i didn’t care much about, it probably would have been more objective. well, maybe not objective - i tried to walk that fine line carefully and i think i did a good job. however, would i have been quicker to dump the idea if it was something i was less concerned about. i think it's important that i pay more attention to when i need to remove my ego from my writing, it makes a huge difference in the quality. 

week 8.1

i'm a vegan and have been for almost three years. i don't do it directly for the animal rights, or the environmental aspect but for the selfish reason that i simply like the health benefits. last week, i attempted - BOLDLY - to construct an article out of two original, separate ideas and conjoin them. i failed miserably, but i kind of liked it. like i said, because i am a vegan, i have a lot of personal experience about that. it's generally widely known from books like the Omnivores Dilemma and movies like Food, Inc. that some of the environmental problems we are facing are human caused. specifically, from the food we eat - how it's grown and processed and shipped. so after reading and hearing from several, reputable sources that Sandy was caused by global warming, i figured it would be an exciting challenge to tie veganism and Sandy together.
alas, i failed miserably, like i said.
but, i liked it. i had to do a ton of research, which was surprisingly fun. I read a lot about Sandy and global warming, did calculations on CO2 emissions and read a lot about a vegan diet. i felt like a real journalist (bold statement, i know) - pulling things together and like, breaking a story, or something. granted, i sucked at it and it was for my college newswriting class but i guess i'll take what i can get

week 7.3

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/12/business/media/fox-newss-election-coverage-followed-journalistic-instincts.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes

one thing that i constantly perplexed by is how journalists add, or don't add their personal influence. it's definitely been a struggle for me at times this semester, and i am still working on strengthening that aspect of my writing. i suppose every journalist may at one point or another just want his or her own column but i guess thats wishful thinking huh? 
anyways, it blows me away when it's apparent. particularly like fox news and the presidential election. like, hello, now is not the time to fcuk around! i also find it interesting how an entire news network, particularly an enormous one like Fox, can be so biased. as the NYTimes article says; "Over many months, Fox lulled its conservative base with agitprop: that President Obama was a clear failure, that a majority of Americans saw Mr. Romney as a good alternative in hard times, and that polls showing otherwise were politically motivated and not to be believed."

the article continues: "But on Tuesday night, the people in charge of Fox News were confronted with a stark choice after it became clear that Mr. Romney had fallen short: was Fox, first and foremost, a place for advocacy or a place for news?

In this moment, at least, Fox chose news."

So obviously, when it comes down to it, Fox is still a news station. I worry about that though - it seems like the precedent is slowly being lowered and more and more outlets are filtering or amending their news so that when they report it, it inevitably sways the consumer.

week 7.2

consciously making decisions in my writing: i'm ecstatic about this. i just wrote my profile piece, as you know, and LOVED it. i enjoyed all the interviews and writing the piece. throughout my writing, i was making choices with words and information and quotes and structure and wow ! how cool. if feel like this piece really showed myself that i am growing as a writer and improving and its such an excellent feeling. i love taking knowledge and material that i have learned and being able to consciously apply it in my writing. i want to continue to improve, of course, but it is exciting to see some work pay off.