Online Journalism
So that month flew past. I just finished teaching a five-days-a-week class August 6.
I start the second iteration next Monday.
Some lessons learned:
1 Beats are absolutely necessary. Otherwise the stories are all over the map.
2 iMovie is a good place to start but any sophisticated news package needs Final Cut or Premiere. Allow students to choose Premiere if they already know it. Otherwise it’s FC.
3 Capstone projects must be done by a larger group (4) to spread the workload.
4 Absolutely require regular blog updates. No exceptions.
5 Require daily tweets tied to the individual student blog.
6 Shoot the Monday news meeting and post it online immediately.
See you next week on Cards Eye View!
BP Oil, Mel Gibson and Financial Reform
That’s what the MSM (mainstream media) reported as big stories this past week.
Here at the University of Louisville it was pizza, the tan tax, books vs. movies, an 85-year-old student and the IT store.
What better example of “The News” being merely what any organization with a voice says it is.
Keep checking 
for our take on what is new.
Post-mortem on first stories
Today we talk about our reporting for Card’s Eye View. You can see it here.
http://cardseyeview.wordpress.com/
Let me know what you think!
Twitter me this
It’s been seven days of five-time-a-week meetings in my new Online Journalism class. Everyone went out to shoot stories on Tuesday and all but one pair had to punt. The stories will appear here and at www.cardsyeview.wordpress.com by Friday at the latest.
Next 5, 30 in 30
I’ve found religion in the redbox. This takes me 1/3 of the way through my month of movies.
6 Inglorious Basterds. 8 of 10
Walz deserved the Oscar.
7 Amelia. 6 of 10
Hillary swings for the fences, and misses.
8 Sherlock Holmes. 8 of 10
Sherlock Begins. And they’re gay for each other.
9 District Nine. 9 of 10
I’ll never enjoy bang bang shrimp as much again.
10 Zombieland. 7 of 10
Woody from Cheers finds a second career as B-movie icon.
First 5, 30 in 30
So I rented:
Up in the Air 9 of 10
Clooney proves why he’s the Cary Grant of our time.
Julie and Julia 9 of 10
As close to a perfect movie as you can get. Lose the blogger, though.
The Lovely Bones 7 of 10
Peter Jackson goes all lyrical after Middle Earth.
The Proposal 7 of 10
As RomComs go, not a bad one. Props to Betty White!
Crazy Heart 9 of 10
Liked this in the 1980s when it was called Tender Mercies
So I unwittingly have examined the recent oeuvre of Stanley Tucci, without realizing it. He’s in both Julie and Julia and The Lovely Bones.
So to recap: I just discovered Redbox. I and am filling in my movie watching scarcity with 30 movies in 30 days.
25 to go
30 in 30
Wow. It’s been three months since I posted. Here’s what Imma do now– invest $30 to watch 30 movies from Redbox in 30 days. I’ll post mini reviews here.
Redbox is awesome. Just wish they had the Blue Ray.
Suggestions welcome. I have seen very few movies in theaters so nearly everything in a Redbox is unwatched by me.
Twitter as top-10 tool
I’m requiring all my News writing students to open a twitter account and follow a special account I created for the class. You’re welcome to peek–it’s twitter.com/Comm320. Although we did this as a brief exercise in class only half of them are following.
So this means one of two things:
1) Twitter is difficult to join
2) Half of them are going to drop the class.
I’m fairly certain it’s choice 1. What surprises me is that I think of this process as simple and transparent. And I thought students were more internet-savvy than everyone else. But apparently there is something difficult for half of them to these simple directions I’ll lift right off Blackboard:
1) Create an account at Twitter.com
2) follow Twitter.com/Comm320
What do you think?
Snow and Cold
It’s been interesting to watch the technology unfold during this latest weather blip.
To those not in Louisville we have three inches of snow, it’s been below freezing for two weeks, and the public schools are closed today. Yesterday, the day the storm began around 5 am, all the local stations were out in force with their new “live drive” or whatever-cams mounted on the dashboards of their news cars.
At 5 it was dark. So we saw stand-ups lit by headlights. Then the slow crawl as the vehicles traveresed the city and region. I must say the quality of WAVE 3′s video was far superior to the others. The one on WHAS 11 looked like my first webcast from 1996. WLKY32 had a better quality image but it was not full-screen. Sorry SnowFox dudes, don’t watch you guys.
The dashboard cameras were then utilized later in the day when reporters arrived at the faux “kids fell in the lake” story. So we saw point-of-view, live footage as the news car arrived in Jeff to a story that wasn’t really there. Oh, the perils of live reporting!
I think as a service to viewers these live-cams are a good idea. I just pity the poor dude who has the drive the car around the metro.
