Monday, December 1, 2008

Final Project blog assignment

My experience doing the final project was slow, steady and enlightening. Content-wise, I learned that there is no way to reasonably predict what kind of craziness our nation will see as time passes us by. Dr. Lunch helped me to realize that elections are truly only the beginning of a cycle, when it comes to a new President. It always seemed like the election process leads up to this big night when we crown our next president. However, election night is just the beginning for that newly-elected person.
The assumption that I had that we could forward to when an African-American woman would be running for a spot in the White House was immediately squashed by Dr. Lunch with a resounding, “You can forget that.” He made me realize that the future may be more shaped by Obama’s legacy in office rather than the fact that he actually is in office.
I have learned some things about technology as a whole since the beginning of this class that I otherwise would not have known or noticed. Prior to this class I had no idea what the RSS feed icons were that I would see on every page of the internet. Also, being a part of the bloggers world is something that may be huge for me in the future as I move into the field.An honest assessment of my time and work put into our final project would reveal that I put about eight to ten hours into it. That includes planning time, interviews, writing and meeting with my group to plan for the way the final project will look in the end.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Profile Update and project update

Well, it is starting to actually look like a project.

The profile of Dr. Lunch is posted on our project blog. It is the rough drat, but it is not far from the finished product.

I am waiting to interview a couple of his current students on Monday and hope to hear back from the Jeff Merkley camp for an interview with former student Jon Isaacs.

As far as the group project goes, I know that Terry was supposed to get an interview with Prof. Sahr earlier today and Tim is also conducting an interview today, with Prof. Thompson. The rough draft of that story is also posted on our project blog.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Election Story Update

Following up on class from last evening......

Our story is moving right along. Tim is attempting to get an interview for the story and Terry has an interview set up with Prof. Sahr. Once those interviews are complete, we will integrate those into what has already been written and turned in to Pam.

What has already been done will be cut and pasted into a new blog sometime before the end of this week.

My profile of Dr. Lunch is moving along as well. I have an interview with Prof. Solberg to get peer reaction to working with him. Also, I have plans to sit in on one of his classes and interview one or two of his students afterwards. Finally, I have been attempting (unsuccessfully) to reach one of his former students, Jon Isaacs, who is Jeff Merkley's Campaign Manager.

More updates to come as more stuff gets completed.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Is Text the Foundation?

I agree whole-heartedly with the blog regarding text as the backbone of all journalism.

It doesn't really matter that the new media world is full of RSS, codes, podcasts, MP3 files and flash drives......what really matters in the end, especially online (amid all of the colorful blogs and what not) is what is in the text. That really is what search engines look for and, when it gets down to it, what really matters after all.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Reaction to Kaci's comments

If you haven't already, you should check out Kaci's blog from Nov.5. It takes 'cahones' to call out Pam like that and, as a McCain supporter, I didn't really catch on to that in class so much.

As upsetting as it was to see Obama win last week, it's hard to ignore the significance of our nation electing an African American into the White House. However, I fear that the significance was the reason he was voted in, not because he was best for the job. Are people in this nation so thirsty for "change" that they will take it in any form?

Obama Video

So, that Obama video link Pam sent to us was interesting, to say the least.

It was like 80s rap meets Hillary Rodham meets Run DMC! Pretty damn funny stuff, but irrelavent.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Updating our election story

Just a quick update to the story that Tim, Terry and I are working on for our final project. We are continuing to meet on Mondays, as well as after class on Wednesday nights.

I have an interview with Dr. Bill Lunch scheduled for 3:15 Monday afternoon. I will be conducting both interviews for the story and for my profile of him at that time. The questions I plan to ask are the same, but there are a couple of added items to mention.

I plan to ask Dr. Lunch if there are any students he knows of that would be good to interview for the profile. Also, I will be trying to track down another professor within his department that can comment on the kind of guy, teacher and political scientist Dr. Lunch is.

That's it for now. We should have a very rough draft ready for Pam on Wednesday night. It will absolutely be rough, but it will be a starting point for sure.