Category: Multimedia J2150

On Monday there was a presentation about “Sarah’s Stories” on U_News on KOMU. Sarah Hill is a newscaster on KOMU and uses Google +, Facebook, and Twitter to communicate with the audience simultaneously with the newscast at 4pm. She talked to viewers on Google + during the broadcast, and she was able to get context to what the viewers think about today’s topics. Related to my last post about the St. Louis Beacon, both of these news sources are incorporating direct audience feedback in their news. Since the news is directed to a certain audience, getting opinions from that audience will enhance the story and let the newscasters/writers know what their viewers/readers want. This is a revolutionary idea and should, hopefully, give other news stations the incentive to use this idea to get a better glimpse on their audience’s desires. Here is a video about “Sarah’s Stories” and how she weaves audience interaction with the normal afternoon newscast seamlessly.

On Monday October 3rd, Margie Freivogel, the founding editor of the St. Louis Beacon presented the online newspaper to our class. Freivogel used to work at the St. Louis Post Dispatch before she started the St. Louis Beacon, which really shows her credibility as a journalist. She received many rewards for her work on News Watch in Washington D.C. for the Post Dispatch. The St. Louis Beacon is a non profit organization whose main goals are high quality journalism, engagement, and connecting with the community in St. Louis. She talked about being drastically independent, presenting context and important issues, and the passion for journalism. She also said they needed people who were experts in business and technology because the journalists should focus on the stories. The Beacon did a series called “Race Frankly” that discussed racial issues and opinions of people in the St. Louis Community. They had barroom conversations with citizens of the community that was loosely led by a member of the Beacon. There are 20 staff members, 15 are journalists, which makes it a more intimate atmosphere for a paper. 65% of their revenue comes from generous donations, 20% from foundations, and the rest is from events. Freivogel said the key difference in the Beacon and the Post Dispatch was the journalistic reforming, which was easier to do with the Beacon because it is a smaller organization with no limits or expectations. She said that they can seize opportunities as a new organization so they can experiment. Seeing the presentation was inspiring to see that an online newspaper can start from the ground up with the framework of the opinions and ideas of the community that reads and donates to the paper itself.

I stumbled upon a story on CNN about French companies putting mosaics of Post-it notes on their office windows, called the “Post-it Wars.” It seemed like a good story in theory, but the coverage was terrible. The camera was shaky, constantly zooming in and out, and was not always in focus. There were good interviews used but the quality was very poor. Some of the interviews didn’t have good lighting, sound, or good angles. One of them was shot outside, in which you could hear the sounds of cars, wind, and the city. The final closing shot, was once again, a good idea in theory, but terrible execution. The last shot was of the reporter putting Post-it notes on the wall himself while panning out to the rest of the window. All of the zooming at panning made me feel dizzy and disoriented, which isn’t how I should be feeling about a news cast. The story was reported in a foreign country, and I feel that showing us their culture and creativity is very good, but when the whole story is about images on the wall, you would think the cameraman would make the video high quality. I was interested in clicking the link to the story, but I was very disappointed in how the story was reported.

We discussed in class about how sometimes using Photoshop extensively alters pictures that make them too different from the true image.  There is nothing wrong with doing this if it is purely recreational and is not used commercially. If the image is used commercially, you can be selling a fake product, but more importantly, if used in magazines or news stories, it can make the image a fabrication of what actually happened. I found a website that shows many well known exaggerated Photoshop edits from popular magazines that many people have been offended by. Another problem with exaggerated editing is if it is a person, the person can be so altered that they are unrecognizable. The models in these photos can be really offended if they see themselves on the cover 20 lbs lighter or with a thinner face. The last problem with over extensive use of Photoshop is that the public thinks that good looks are represented by the people in the magazines, fake and totally Photoshopped. This can give people lower self confidence and have many insecurity problems later in life. Once again, I am not banning the use of Photoshop, I think it is a great program, I just believe that it should be used to edit an image that is already there, not fabricate a new one out of an old image.

For my semester project for J2150, my topic is the new Training for Life Campus in Columbia, Mo. for the Special Olympics. I picked this topic idea because this will be the first official place in Columbia for children and adult participators in this amazing program to have an area to practice and feel at home. I picked an article from the Columbia Missourian that discusses it briefly. It says in this article that Gary Pinkel, one of the co-chairmen of Special Olympics Missouri and the head coach for Mizzou football, proudly advocates the new center. He also has a personal connection with the organization because both his brother and sister have a hereditary disorder that makes them confined to a wheelchair. This new center will benefit disabled and special needs children and adults in the central Missouri area. Having this $7.5 million center will give them a sense of permanence and will indeed make them feel even more special then they already are.

In our J 2150 Class we had to take pictures for a project called Seeing Red. Our professor told us our central focal point has to be a red object. I went around downtown Columbia and found some great red finds! The first time I used the Nikon-D7000 I had a really hard time figuring out how to use it. Once I asked numerous friends who were camera gurus and tried to figure out what all the camera terminology “mumbo jumbo”  was, I kind of got the hang of it. Now I have a better appreciation for photographers because there are so many elements involved, such as, lighting, shutter speed, focus, angle, depth of field, etc. I never thought that using a camera would be this difficult, and now I understand that becoming a professional photographer is no easy thing. Here are the final photos I chose for the project, they aren’t exactly perfect, but still fun anyway!

When I was watching the tutorials for using WordPress, the Lynda.com instructor was showing how to insert a Youtube video. He used a video he said that he himself was in. So I looked into it, and he ended up being the creator of the Vancouver 12 X 12 Photo Marathon Contest. The contest entailed taking pictures on a Nikon film camera for 12 hours, fitting photos to 12 themes. It seemed relative to class because it involved taking pictures with a Nikon camera about a certain theme within a certain time period, like our Seeing Red project. It seemed ironic because he talked about how in order to take a good picture its about the timing, the lighting, the creativity, etc. These were all things that we talked about in class using our Nikon D-7000’s which I think overlapped by accident, but turned out to be very helpful.

We discussed what makes good storytelling in class in J2150 and I stumbled upon another blog-A Good Week– that has four great examples of visual storytelling. They show compassion, authenticity, and they give you an ambiance of actually being there with those people. Having those life experiences with them step by step just through a video. It really is a spectacular thing to see someone’s significant life memory just through a video. Since you get to see it through their eyes you get to feel the emotional impact that they felt when they were doing these actions, instead of just seeing a bunch of pictures on the screen. Being able to live vicariously through someone else in a video is flabbergasting. Enjoy!

This is my new blog! I will be posting things for my J2150 class, and probably a lot of random facts and things I stumble upon on twitter.