Blog #7 - The Inverted Pyramid

So what exactly is the Inverted Pyramid? Basically, it's a structure that journalists use when their primary job is to convey important information quickly. Many readers tend to not read the entire article, so by placing the most important information at the beginning is a very effective way to get information out there. The most important details are stated at the beginning of the article and the least important are stated further down. Information in an article is listed in the following order, as stated in the book:
1. Convey important information
2. Add interesting, colorful details
3. End with remaining facts

The story I chose to use as an example for the Inverted Pyramid comes from The Baltimore Sun. The story itself is very upsetting but is a good example for this structure. The article is named "Suspect in girls' deaths had criminal record." There are only three paragraphs in the article, which does help for me to explain why I chose this article as an example. The first paragraph gives the most important details: who the suspect is, which is what the article is all about. The second paragraph is about the case and the final one is about her charges. However, due to the topic of this article, the first paragraph is the most important because it explains who this woman is. The photograph attached with this post is the woman, Renee Bowman.

This is the link for the article: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-deaths0930,0,5431304.story

My First Event!! *UPDATE*

So the first event I am going to cover will be "Good Mourning: How Losing a Parent Changes an Adult's Life for the Better." Jeanne Safer, a psychotherapist and author of the novel Death Benefits: How Losing a Parent Can Change an Adult's Life will be speaking on Thursday about her latest book. Dr. Safer has been in private practice for thirty-five years and has written four novels about neglected psychological topics mainly about adults coping with deaths of their parents, siblings, etc.

I am very interested in hearing what Dr. Safer has to say and hopefully I will get an opportunity to talk to her after her speech. I feel as though her speech could be beneficial for me when I get older and I am interested in hearing about her viewpoint with her new book.

For further information on this event please visit this website: http://www.towson.edu/applications/dailydigest/databases/news/20080916_042035PM_wiesand_1075.asp

My First Event!!

I'm still debating which event I want to attend but there are two that I am choosing from: Jeanne Safer: "Good Mourning: How Losing a Parent Changes and Adult's Life for the Better" and Global-Warming: Sources and Solutions. Both of these events take place on Thursday somewhere on campus. Right now I am looking more into the talk about Global Warming just because I feel like at this moment, that is what is affecting me the most. It also is through the Center for Science and Mathematics Education and even though I am a Mass Communications major, science and math are still an interest to me.

Blog #6 - Twitter!

The first Twitter I looked at was musicboy232. All of his headlines are written in active voice and are set up in the form of object-verb-subject. They all are concise, but fully explain the story and gave me knowledge as to what the story was about. Each of the summaries answer all of the 5 W’s and H. For example, the first story: who – Towson students, what – starting to recycle, when – now, where – Towson University, why – because recycling is good! How – there will be single stream recycling containers.
http://twitter.com/musicboy232

The second Twitter I checked out was lmarti10. Their headlines were also written correctly in active voice as the first one I read and each fully explained the story concisely. Their summaries also followed the 5 W’s and H guidelines. An example: who – Sean Schaefer, what – had many turnovers, when – last weekend, where – Towson University, why – because he had an off game, how – same thing as why basically.
http://twitter.com/lmarti10

The last Twitter I looked at was jceccorulli. All of her headlines were in active voice and gave me a concise explanation of the story, as the past two did. Her summaries answered the 5 W’s and H so I was able to further understand the story. An example for her : who – university system, what – many professors will be laid off, where – Towson University, when – in the near future, why – potential budget cut, how – answered in why as well.
http://twitter.com/jceccorulli

Blog #5 - Press Release/Original Reporting

Press Release:

Journalists and PR practitioners may not agree on many things but when it comes to news releases, they can be the best of friends. Which is a good thing considering I am double tracking in Journalism and PR. However, that's not the point. Luckily The Baltimore Sun is so easy for me to read online because The NY Times online confuses me, it's just too crowded. But right on the first page online of The Baltimore Sun I found the perfect news article that I believe and know was generated by a press release: "Target gives city $300,000." And there's even a picture from the event!

The picture is of Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon announcing the donation. The picture was the first detail to give away the fact that this was a press release but also reading the article helped me to conclude this thought. Sun staff writer Justin Fenton even quoted, "At an event outside City Hall Tuesday, Mayor Sheila Dixon and police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said the money would enable the department to purchase portable command posts and enhance a cell-phone tracking system designed to solve violent crimes, particularly robberies."

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-target0916,0,7555378.story

Original Reporting:

I'm not exactly sure if I fully understand original reporting correctly or not but I believe that it's a news story shown through someones view point that actually experienced it. For example, people that were at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007 took amateur videos of events that occurred throughout the day and sent it into news teams. This would be an example of original reporting. I chose to attach a video from You Tube to further describe original reporting.

This video is an amateur video that someone recorded and sent in to news teams of Hurricane Ike passing through the Caribbean.

"Raw Video: Hurricane Ike Slams Into Caribbean" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXpcIpilEPA

Blog #4 - Summary Lede/Short Report

Summary Lede
A summary lede is a sentence that typically contains the follow things: a subject followed by a verb and an OBJECT. It basically sums up what the following article is going to be about in one well thought out sentence. I decided to find my information from baltimoresun.com because I'm from around here. An example of a summary lead that is currently posted on the website is:

"2 city sheriff's deputies shot in West Baltimore"

Just by reading that statement I already know what I'm reading about. The "2 city sheriff's" are the subjects. "Shot" is the verb and "West Baltimore" is the object.




A man was taken away in handcuffs after the reports of the shooting.









Short Reports
Short reports can be presented in a few different ways but no matter how they are presented, they all are basically the same. Short reports may be a result of limited time, space or information. These are the different types of short reports:

• Bulletin-runs only one or two sentences in a broadcast or online news to get the information to the public quickly


• E-mail Alerts- some news operations send news-bulletins by e-mail for those more likely to have access to their e-mail than a television.


• Crawlers- shortest reports that pass for a story that you can find sliding across the bottom of the screen during a news report (like Fox 45)


• Newspaper Briefs- summaries of interesting stories but don't cover the full report
  

An example of a short report in "The Baltimore Sun" online would be "Harford man, 21, killed in two-car accident." The article only contains 97 words but still gives a lot of information even though it may not be full coverage. This article would fall under the category of a newspaper brief.

Blog #3 - Baltimore Sun

"Fire Destroys City Playground"
Three years ago a children's playground was built at the site of the old Memorial Stadium on 33rd Street. Now that playground is gone. It burned down Tuesday afternoon as students were walking home from school. However, people are already vowing to re-build it. This story is newsworthy for many different reasons. The paramount measure of newsworthiness is impact. This story will clearly impact many peoples lives because now the children cannot play on the playground. The playground was a key part of the area's redevelopment and this can also affect people's feelings on the area. This story is also newsworthy because it falls under the news value of timeliness. This accurance happened Tuesday afternoon and was already online Tuesday evening clearly showing that this story is very important. Not only that but it would fall under the category of human interest. This is something that everyone - no matter their age, will read about. It's unfortunate to hear about sad things like this.


"1 Dead, 5 hurt in shooting in East Baltimore"
Why is every news story seem to be so upsetting?! Why can't there every be good news?? Tuesday night police reported that six men were wounded with one fatal after what seemed to be a drive-by shooting. This story is also very newsworthy for a few reasons. One: impact. This impacts many peoples lives, not only the lives of the families of the victims but people who live in this neighborhood. If someone got shot in your neighborhood would you feel safe? NO. This would also fall under currency or something that has ties to other stories in the news. Hearing about something like this occurring, especially in Baltimore, is definetely not out of the ordinary. Quite frankly I think it happens too often. Why can't people just realize that violence is not the answer? This story also deals with conflict with people battling people. Drive-by shootings are not the answer... it's called therapy.


"Details announced for Oct. 4 Phelps homecoming"
This article probably wasn't on the front page but I just watched a story on it on the 11 o'clock news so then it must be newsworthy! Michael Phelps is finally returning home from Beijing where he won his 8 gold metals. On October 4th starting at 3pm there will be a parade for Phelps on York Road in Towson!! This story is very newsworthy and probably the most newsworthy for me! It would fall under impact, prominence, unusualness, proximity, and human interest. The reasons for impact is quite clear: it could impact anyones life whether it's just being excited to see Michael Phelps or being annoyed that traffic will be super slow that day. It deals with prominence because all of this attention is being devoted to Phelps. But come on, he deserves it. I think it would fall under unusualness because it's not everyday that Phelps will be parading around Towson, even though I wish he would!! I do I even need to explain human interest? Obviously everyone is interested in the Olympic legend. He's the best representation for the United States that I could think of when it comes to athletics.

Blog #2

Outstanding Portfolio:

The outstanding portfolio that I chose was Kelly West, a staff photographer. When I first heard about blogs I had only pictured them to be websites where people just write about their feelings on all kinds of topics, but after looking at hers I soon discovered that I was wrong. Kelly's blog doesn't write out how she feels or who she is, but shows through pictures the type of person that she truly is. Just by looking at her photos, I can tell that Kelly West is very proud of where she is from (Texas). Many of her photos take place in Texas. What makes them so special though is that you can tell that the photos all have different meanings to them. Her photos range from football game pictures to pictures of children at a deaf school. What I really appreciate about her photos is that in the gallery she has an explanation and background information about the photos which helps me to relate to them more and understand her emotion behind the camera.

The most obvious equipment that Kelly would have in her backpack would be a camera. She shares her emotions through her photos and you never know when you may come across something that may inspire you. She may possible even carry around with her a digital video camera to capture movement and emotion in a tape. In case her camera were to die, she would always have a set of extra batteries on her and a disposable camera. You never know what may happen and it's always best to be prepared and she seems like she would be the type to be very prepared in any situation like a true photographer.

Kelly West Photography: http://www.kellywestphoto.com/index.php

Elements Of Style:

I have never heard of the book "Elements of Style" but after reading through it online I think it it'll be a very smart investment of mine to get it. Everyone going into journalism should read this or get a copy of it. "Elements of Style" basically breaks down the basics of journalism and how you should be writing properly. Even the smallest things like when to use a comma or not are so critical when it comes to journalism. Things like that are very annoying, especially grammar, but it's something you must look out for. Especially if you want to be a respected journalist.

I honestly think that "Elements of Style" is claiming Jared Silfie to be an unprofessional journalist. I've only read a few of his posts but for the most part, I don't believe that he would fit under what "Elements of Style" is promoting. His topics are so random and he completely ignores the elementary principles of composition which is what I honestly think is the basics to journalism. If you're going to be a journalist you should at least know how to construct your paragraphs! I could just go on and on about how he breaks so many rules when it comes to composition. Does "hack it up" sound like something a professional would say? No. They are needless words, something the elementary principles of composition says to omit. He also has many loose sentences.

When it comes to composition, Silfie definitely misses out; however, his posts are very interesting and I respect the fact that he can speak his mind and be fine with it. That is one thing that I do respect for him. He is given as an example of a blogger in our class out of million of people, so I guess he must be a decent journalist.

Who I Am :)

Hi! My name is Katelyn! I'm a sophomore at Towson University where I am majoring in Mass Communications. I'm double tracking in Journalism/New Media and Public Relations. One day I hope to be a TV news reporter or a journalist for a major newspaper. Maybe even a talk show host because I like to talk. I chose to double track because I also think that PR is very interesting plus any fields in Mass Communications is competitive and the most experience I have the better, right?

I hope to get out of this class a better knowledge for the field of Journalism and New Media. I am excited to learn different styles of writing/techniques and to learn what it's like to interview people. This class seems very interesting and I'm excited for the semester!!