Lijam Blog

Kevin Anderson spoke to our class Today March 24. He had a very interesting and different perspective compared to other speakers.  He gave the class good advice, and shared his own personal experiences which were fascinating.

First word of advice: Be knowledgeable of your sources

How he got where he is:

                1996: newspaper journalist. Online journalist.

                2 years later BBC journalist outside the UK. Washington correspondent.

Tools/ skill sets needed to have as a journalist:

• Build a clip file
• Early initiative
  • Set up blogs
  • Take pictures
    • Much easier to do these things this day and age.

Video Interviews:

• Natural sounds
  • I want to hear the games. (With regard to my groups project on the special needs hockey team
  • It puts you in the middle of the story

His take on storify: Can be dangerous without context. Make sure you bridge the social media with the story.

Role of social media in journalism today:  Network Journalism

1. Content on website must be taken to where people are congregating online (ex Facebook)
   1. Don’t expect them to come to your site
   2. Use networks to find sources (Ex. Twitter)

Student Question: What’s experience preparing for overseas

A. “I can demine a field with a Bic pen”————————-AWESOME

Steve Buttry

Reporting has changed with innovation.

                –Can’t just interview people. You need to gather sounds and video.

Many websites work on innovative ways to present stories.

Example

Example 2

-“You can sometimes tell a story with words in audio than written words”

Innovations give control to the users

“Thinking of all the possibilities on how to present a story changes the reporting of a story.”

Q: What makes a story important enough to take the time to create these kinds of stories?

A: For example the story in MN about the bridge was the towns story of the year. Now it is also important to understand creating these stories now makes it easier to recreate similar stories or formatting for the next stories. Next time around it will not take as long to create the story.

A lot of good information from Steve Buttry’s presentation. What is to be taken away is possibilities are endless. There are always interesting ways to present various types of stories. The goal is to interest the consumers, and tell the story with the most accuracy and detail as possible.

“Feeling uncomfortable should be a red flag which urges you to jump in it might be good for you”

Jim Ioveno

Most stories break on website. Developed story is given later that day in the newscast

                -purpose: immediacy.

                -information travels extremely fast- you want to break the story first.

Pat Collins– “Snow reporter”

                “Incredible reporter because he can get whoever he talks to say something interesting”

                                -Find an angle to a story you think no one else will have and own it.

“Chat with Pat”- new way to present news. Great form of social media. – Pat Collins makes himself available via video to answer questions from the viewership.

                -Connect with the audience.

• Good to standout
• Great to be interesting to the readers

Q: What’s more important breaking the story or finding the best angle:

1. A.      Both

“If you break the story people realize that and come back to you”

“If you find a new angle people appreciate the new perspective and come back”

Local news-  It is important to emphasize why the story is important to the readership/community

Raw footage- people love this stuff, just find impressive video and make it available. Doesn’t always have to be “storied” up.

Prediction for online journalism in the coming years:  It’s going to be a lot more mobile. “Mobile mobile mobile.”

This just popped into my head during class.. Does anyone else see the resemblance between gmu online journalism professor Steve Klien and Sean Connery?

Bloggers and journalists more and more are progressing to siliar ideaologies

technology and news– This slide demonstrates the benefits of technology in news.

• Newsgathering is much easier now.
• Consumers can be used as assets much easier. Meaning it is made easier to find out what the consumers want in their news.

Jon Denunzio held a lecture where he spoke of the benefits of social media and effective ways to use soical media.

• Social media is a valuable source for consumer feedback.
• It allows websites to build rapport with consumers and open dialouge.
• It’s always good to search for new ideas, social media allows for makes it easier to get abundant feedback.

Onlinejournalismblog.com made predicitions about the nature of journalism in the next 25 years.

–Oddly enough the blog predicts people will “still be prediciting the death of newspapers.

               Because print media is becoming less and less profitable a popular belief is it will eventually disapear. The blog writer ” Influence and status are hard to buy. As long as newspapers offer either, there will be proprietors willing to make a loss on the balance sheet, for benefits elsewhere.”

Another interesting prediction is the comparison between journalists and musicians The blog predicits that because journalists, nowadays, do not need college degrees to write, the importance of growing a fanbase is increased. In 25 years journalists will get jobs based on the following they can build, not the education they receive.

Mandy Jenkins spoke to our class about fair usage. A few things I learned

• Fair use allows us to use work without permission but must follow a certain criteria

1. Purpose and character
2. Nature of work
3. Portion used
4. Effect of the use on the potential market

• Copyrights are more protected than trade mark.
• Trademarks renew more frequent than copyrights and can also be lost easier.
• You must always give credit to whomever you borrow from.

Former Virginia senator George Allen joined students participating from the George Mason University Video Studio along with Steve Scully, the political editor for the C-SPAN networks, and students from the University of Denver.

In an open forum Allen answered student questions ranging from sports to foreign policy.

Allen took a hard stance that federal government should limit its attempts to control the states, and went further to state the “federal government exceeds authority.”

With regards to foreign policy his stance was “defense wins and protects our liberty. He also spoke about the crisis in Egypt.

Although he did not provide a plan for Egypt he concluded the four pillars ofa just society include:

• Freedom of religion
• Freedom of expression
• Private ownership of property
• Rule of law

He ended by answering questions about his book entitled “What Washington can Learn from the World of Sports.” In which he explains the similarities bewtwwen politics and athletics.