4802 - Moving into the final project

Moving into the final project, I am confident I am going to be able deliver better quality stories if I take on and use the feedback given to me this semester.

The major issue with my images were cropping, Karen and Reuben said during the lecture that they wanted me to get much tighter in my detail and profile shots so I need to concentrate on that.

Another issue I had during my video pieces were remembering Lynda's "visual cha-cha-cha" - much like still photography, I didn't have enough tight shots relating to the narrative for b-roll so during our shooting for the final project I'm going to try and get as many details shots as possible to allow for the visual cha-cha-cha.

With regards to audio the most glaring critique was my use of quotes and narration - my soundbytes were far to long. While I was making it I was under the impression that I had to let the subject tell the story, when in reality with concise narration the reporter can sum up a subjects feelings and let them have their say through strong soundbytes. By doing it this way I can create a far more powerful piece.

I think for me, while I am confident with the technical aspects of video, audio and photo what I need to work on are the actual construction of the stories into succinct and powerful pieces which is done through the linking of narration, powerful soundbytes and relevant images.

Boston bound!

Boston couldn’t have come at a better time, just a week after my second lot of exams and assignments and right before we started final projects I had got to that stage where I was sick of Columbia, sick of Mizzou and ready to get away for a while.

Boston is great, it really is. I remember first hearing about the city from Dan, a restaurant manager who worked in the same hotel as me a couple of years ago – he’d spent a few years working in restaurants over there and was in love with the city, when he found out I was going to New York for Christmas he pleaded that I spend a couple of days in Boston, but the bright lights of New York City captivated me and Boston became a lonely memory. A year later when I first started looking into study abroad I actually thought about applying for Boston University, who had an exchange partnership with AUT at the time, sadly though by the time I was applying for the Fall 2010 semester AUT and Boston University had parted ways.

This brings me to about 2 months ago when I decided I needed to do something with my life other than study (believe me, Mizzou is great, and I’m loving being in the convergence sequence, but I’m an exchange student for crying out loud. I need to travel.). I had originally thought of going south, to Nashville or Memphis or maybe across to Washington D.C so I could reenact my Forrest Gump fantasies – but then that little light bulb flickered and a thought came to me – Boston. I had nearly been there twice already, I might as well just do it.

To make this great idea even better, my good friend Keaney who studied in New Zealand for the 09-10 school year was FROM Boston. So not only was I going to a great city, I was also getting to spend my time with an awesome friend who actually knows her way around. Epic bonus. To top it all off, I found out another one of my friends Nam was flying over from Seattle that same weekend. That was it. My life was complete.

Initially, Boston kind of seemed like some crazy love child of Jersey Shore and The Sopranos – interesting combination I know, but I encountered people from both ends of that spectrum. Sometimes I felt like I was right in the middle of a real-life stereotype. It’s a cool little city though, it’s one of those places that feels really small, but is actually pretty big. The first thing I did with Keaney and Nam when I got off the plane was to go get food at this place called Grumpys, it’s famous for their steak and cheese melts among other things. Grumpys was the epitome of American food, and it reminded me why I’ve gained weight over here, but it was completely worth it. After we got back to Keaneys place we set Nam to work in the kitchen (just like the old days) and she made us her awesome m&m cookies!

Saturday was what I like to call my “tourist-sesh”. I’ve traveled a lot in the past, but I don’t really like being a tourist (I know, this is somewhat of an irony) so I usually devote a day or two of my trip (depending on the stay) to being outwardly geeky and touristy. Saturday was my day. A bunch of us took the train into Boston where we perused Quincy market (good looking food that is super pricey), the shops (money was spent, I don’t like to talk about it) and finally… THE FREEDOM TRAIL.

The Freedom Trail was around three hours long and mainly revolved around Paul Revere and the revolution. Naturally, I didn’t grow up learning about American history so I wasn’t always aware of who they were actually talking about, but they had a section on the Salem witch trials which I loved and the tour guide was a character so I really enjoyed myself.

Geek-fest over, it was time to get down – going out in Boston was heaps of fun, socializing in NZ is a lot different to the US (especially Columbia) and I think Boston was my happy medium between the two extremes – you can dance a bit and do the whole sitting down and socializing thing (extreme plus: bars in Boston close at 2am instead of 1. Hurrah!). I haven’t really gone out a lot while I’ve been studying purely because of my schedule, so it was nice to go out, let loose, have some fun, and come home to awesome after-town food and The Kardashians on demand.

Sunday, my final day in Boston was lazy, which was just what I wanted. Keaney took me to get the best Black and White frappes in the world (they were in fact very good) and we all just kind of mooched about. I think so far, Boston is probably one of my favorite cities – it’s generally pretty friendly, the food is good and architecturally I love it… hopefully the stars will align and I’ll find myself back there again.

But for now I’m looking forward to thanksgiving in Dallas with Drew’s family and Florida in less than a month with my friend Rania… can’t wait!

4802 - Flash journalism

Since McAdam's book on Flash Journalism, technology, particularly web-based technology has continued to develop at a rapid rate. While everything McAdams talks about, for example infographics and web packages are still relevant and useful for an audience. There are other aspects of technology that have emerged and would be useful for the presentation of journalism. I would like to focus on web packages because while they are a great resource for audiences, I think a lot could be done to make improve them and make them more diverse.

Twitter is a website which is allows short, timely news to be delivered straight to your phone or computer - this was first globally seen during the Hudson river plane crash, when that story actually broke over twitter and I think it is a vital component that will be really heavily used in news journalism in the future - so far organizations like CNN have breaking news twitter pages which allow users to stay up-to-date with breaking news wherever they are. I think this could be an interesting new component to web packages and would be especially affective for ongoing stories, organizations could create twitter pages especially for particular stories so users can access particular stories wherever they are.

I also think the use of blogs should be used more. Blogging is a great way to gauge opinions and social feeling over current events, while blogging can provide extremist points of view that may not necessarily represent a majority of people - I think it is important for as many points of view to be communicated, so another aspect of the web package could be external links so readers can either read a little deeper into the story or can gather multiple perspectives of what is happening.

And, lastly the emergence of mobile journalism. With devices like the iPhone becoming more common, it's becoming easier to capture video, photos and audio all in a much higher quality than what we have seen. Mobile journalism is not necessarily new, a lot of the footage from 9/11 was taken by "citizen journalists" of sorts, but I don't think it is being used to the extent it could be. While citizen journalism can in no way replace professional journalists, they can contribute to stories, by doing this we get a "real world" perspective of sorts and it also allows the audience to perhaps become more emotionally involved with a story or event.