New media; old debate

The Transportation Safety administration Administration recently put into effect more aggressive airport security measures. It has been catching a lot of press. The coverage might help us to apply the ideas in Eric Alterman's article.

One of The Atlantic Monthly's bloggers have this treatment of the airport security issue.

Mediaite has this treatment of the topic:


And finally, the New York Times has this account of the change in airport security measures rolling out this month.

Read/view all three and be prepared to:

• discuss the inherent differences in the way new media (first two treatments of the story) and old media (last treatment) cover the same story.
• reflect on your analysis of the Alterman article in your paper, and comment on how these stories reflect that article's main ideas.

News leads (ledes) in practice

I would like you to visit and read a major daily online newspaper in class today. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, etc. Quickly find the one newspaper that you want to and are able to browse (some papers ask you to sign up for free accounts, if you want access to this paper take a brief period of time to do this, otherwise move on) and read through their news section. Read four or five articles in their entirety. Then select one and evaluate the elements of news that apply and its lead. To evaluate something is to identify it and examine its effectiveness. Do that for both the elements of news and the lead in the story you've selected. You will need to post your response as a comment on this blog and link to the story. 

First Amendment Considerations in the news

• read the following two stories: one about a man who thinks Muslims might not deserve first amendment rights, and one by a man in charge of putting together the Cordoba Center, a Muslim community center near ground zero in New York City.
• respond to the two articles in a comment to this post discussing the pertinent first amendment issues raised in the article. Where do you stand on the issue of the Cordoba Center being built? Why?

Browse with a purpose

Come to the website for Wired magazine Issue 17.5
View the video that introduces the issue to consumers. Spend the hour browsing the site. Settle on an article to read or a feature to experience. Describe, in a comment to this post:
1) What article/feature you chose and why
2) How it related to the theme of the magazine
3) Your reactions to the article/feature

Get this done by the end of class on Friday May 22.

Skater videos?

Check out this video that attempts to cover an event that can be of interest to a fairly wide audience. It looks at punk culture from a slightly unconventional perspective. This video treats a similar topic also as it relates to an unconventional audience.

View both videos and think about what makes them successful in covering their topics. Comment on this post (reply to this post) by the end of the hour today, Tuesday May 19th, 2009. In your comments, consider some of the following elements (you do not have to do a paragraph on each, nor do you have to include them all, they are just ideas.):

• Shots and camera angles
• video and audio editing
• sources interviewed
• extra footage (b-roll)
• subject matter
  
• focus as it pertains to the story. This last item is something new I want us to consider as we move toward our final project, a full-length feature piece on a specific person or event.

Your response does not need to be more than 250 words or so.

Please use headphones!

"Assignment"

The title is in quotes because its not really an assignment, per say.

While I had some grand plans about following up on our brief conversation about the intro to the New Kings of Nonfiction. Something better and more interesting came up. Thank you to Mike Dupar for his link to a beautiful site that continues to stretch our ideas about the nature of journalism. And doesn't it just exemplify the truth of Ira Glass's point about letting the journalist into the story? If we sought cold, critically distant, factual story telling we'd look the other way at something like this.

Take the time to get through this site and make a comment on the blog reacting to it on your own terms. Don't worry about length.

Thanks again, Mike!

video sandwich assignment

Video Sandwich Assignment

For this assignment, you’ll have the task of finding a person or event to profile in a brief video “sandwich” type assignment.

The sandwich will consist of a few seconds of stand-up/voice-over that introduces the event/character and the particular angle that will be treated. A period of sound bites from the interview(s) you do with/about your subject. Remember these are more conversations you have with folks and less ‘interviews” with “subjects”. The sound bites will then be followed by a voice-over/stand-up to close the piece.

Length should be 1:30, 1:45, or 2:00 with the traditional 5 second grace period.

Project will be due: Thursday, May 14th by the end of class.