Just A Humble Journalism Student

Is "illegal immigrant" a slur?

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 22:01:00 -0400

Since November I have been in Washington, D.C. volunteering as the communications coordinator at a Catholic non-profit that sends lay missioners abroad to serve and live among the poor and oppressed.

Early on, I had to learn the right way to describe the people with whom our missioners work. In Cochabamba, Bolivia, they are “children recovering from burns,” not “burn victims.” The idea is that people should not be defined by their situations and circumstances.

This Huffington Post piece reminds me of the careful language required in the non-profit sector. It is important for journalists to be just as conscientious and sensitive.

In 2004, the Associated Press Stylebook recommended to its members to use “illegal immigrant”and the phrase is still the preferred term at the New York Times and CNN. Charles Garcia argues that the phrase is not as “neutral and accurate” as some members of the press consider it to be.

So, what are your thoughts? Is it acceptable to use “illegal immigrant”?

Lego nameplate

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 10:00:05 -0400

Theme parks are important to Orlando. Parks bring tourists, and tourists bring money — in 2009, 46,583,000 visitors to the tri-county area brought in $27.6 billion, according to Visit Orlando.

So when a new theme park opens in the area, it’s a big deal. In honor of the opening of Legoland Florida, the Orlando Sentinel recreated its nameplate completely out of the tiny plastic bricks.

The newspaper’s website tells the story of how the graphics and multimedia staffs built it. There’s even a time-lapse video of the construction. Clearly the project took quite a bit of patience and time.

Kudos, guys. I think the final outcome was worth it.

Not many journalists can say that they’ve been chased by...

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 21:20:02 -0400

Not many journalists can say that they’ve been chased by giant poultry while on assignment. But poor Duffy Kelly, a producer for News10 in Sacramento, can. And as this video showed, the turkey attack was a terrifying experience.

Has anyone else been threatened by animals in the name of journalism?

I’ve had chickens peck at my shoelaces during a shoot, but have otherwise been unscathed.

Wired kids, cool cover

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:34:06 -0400

When I first glanced at the Oct. 9 issue of Parade Magazine on my kitchen table, I thought it was an OK cover. It wasn’t until I sat down and looked at it closely that I realized its genius.

The designer used computer keys, mouses and USB cables to make a head of a kid — actually creating a member of Generation Wired.

I also love the headline.

Very creative, very cool cover.

Nat Geo covers baby elephants

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:20:44 -0400

Looking for a story that tugs at your heartstrings? Nothing could make a bigger impression than a piece about baby elephants.

Charles Siebert writes about the Nairobi nursery of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust’s rehabilitation efforts in “Orphan Elephants” for National Geographic. Full of great details, it’s an interesting look at the psyche of an extremely intelligent species elephants and the challenge humans face in raising elephant orphans. (One interesting fact is that the orphans could be experiencing PTSD caused by being attacked or witnessing their mothers’ deaths.)

The nursery nourishes, protects and socializes the elephants so that they can eventually be returned to the wild to live out their long lives and carry on their dwindling species.

Here’s a great graf from the story:

Off in the distance a few upright figures in bright green coats and crumpled white safari hats appear, calling out names in trilling, high-pitched voices: “Kalama!” “Kitirua!” “Olare!” All at once baby elephants emerge from the brush, a straggled procession of 18 flap-eared brown heads, their long trunks steering their bulbous heft with a heavily hypnotic grace. They come to rest beneath the color-draped trees, where the keepers tie a blanket around each one for warmth before resuming the trek home.

The wonderful photos by Editor-At-Large Michael Nichols show the adorable elephants with their caretakers, in custom raincoats, feeding and playing. Clicking through the gallery you can’t help but say, “Aw.”

To read the story and see the photo gallery, visit National Geographic Magazine online or check out the September issue.

Clip: Writing about a researcher's work

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 09:00:05 -0400

Rarely am I intimated by my sources, but I was a little nervous before interviewing Dr. Robert Cook for the website of the University of Florida’s College of Public Health and Health Professions. His resume was quite impressive and I had to sit down and intelligently discuss his research about STDs and sexual behavior without getting confused or uncomfortable.

Our interview was at the Emerging Pathogen’s Institute, a cool building with huge white boards wrapped around the walls and a security guard in the lobby who gave me a visitor’s badge and made me wait an escort.

The interview went well. My thorough preparations helped things go smoothly. I even heard the magic words I long to hear from my sources: “Now that’s a good question.”

The story recently reran in the Health Science Center’s newsletter, The POST. You can read it online here.

Summer reading: Books about doctors, by doctors

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 08:00:05 -0400

Maybe it’s because I grew up watching medical-themed shows with my parents, maybe it’s because I really enjoyed biology in high school, or maybe it’s because I’m a bit of a hypochondriac, but I love reading about health and medicine.

Below are three books I’ve enjoyed so far this summer and definitely recommend. They’re easy, interesting reading that don’t require a medical degree to appreciate.

Ask Me Why I Hurt by Randy Christensen, M.D.

A brand new copy of this book happened to be on display when I walked into my local library so I decided to check it out. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down. Christensen is a pediatrician at the Phoenix Children’s Hospital who started a mobile medical unit that serves homeless youth. The book follows Christensen’s personal and professional life during the first 10 years of the Crews’n Healthmobile service in the Phoenix area. What makes the book is the haunting stories of the teens that Christensen helps: children who were abandoned and abused and now trying to survive in the dessert. To learn more about the book, Christensen and his mission, check out askmewhyihurt.com.

Better by Atul Gawande, M.D., MPH

Why I told my friend Michelle about Ask Me Why I Hurt, she lent me Gawande’s first two books. Gawande is an associate professor at Harvard, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a writer for the New Yorker magazine. When I read his work, I get really jealous: This guy can perform surgery/save lives AND write well? It’s just not fair.

Each chapter looks at something different, from the importance of hand washing to how to eradicate a disease. The most interesting chapters covered topics people don’t always talk about, such as: Who are the medical professionals who participate in the death penalty (and how exactly does it work)? How much should doctors really be paid?

Complications by Atul Gawande, M.D., MPH

Honestly, I’m still reading Complications. I find myself preferring Better, I think because I’m not as interested in gory surgical details as I am in general public health issues. However, this book still soars with Gawande’s exquisite carefully written, carefully researched prose. What’s really great about Complications is Gawande’s honesty in sharing his own experiences as a surgeon, even when they aren’t the most flattering. During residency and internships, new doctors have to practice on live patients and sometimes things don’t go right, but I’ll let you read about it for yourself.

Gawande recently released a third book, The Checklist Manifesto. You can bet that I’ll be tracking down a copy of it soon.

If you have a book recommendation, please let me know! I’m always looking for something new to read.

Live tweeting a memory disorders presentation

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0400

The beat I am most interested in covering is health. Partly out of nerdy curiosity, partly out of concern that one of my family members might I have dementia, I attended a memory disorders panel this morning. The event included presentations by Alzheimer’s support organizations, a physician, researchers and a brief appearance by U.S. Rep. Dan Webster, R-Winter Garden, whose mother had Alzheimer’s.

I was tapping away on my phone when my mom leaned over and asked, “What are you doing?” “Tweeting,” I told her. We were sitting in the back so I thought I would take the opportunity to practice live tweeting. I was never trained on how to do it, so I just carefully listened for key facts or interesting tidbits that I could successfully condense to 140 characters.

By the end, I had sent out nine tweets from my Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Captivate. Thankfully, my touch-screen phone allowed me to type almost silently. If I had been using a keypad then I would have been really noisy.

My advice to others hoping to live-tweet a quiet event like a panel, academic presentation, or featured speaker is to make sure their phone/equipment is quiet and be prepared to multitask. Sometimes the speaker would move on to a new point while I was still trying to get my thought formulated for the character limit. Also, find an event where you can practice without the pressure of an editor, deadlines or journalistic obligation.

I was worried how my actions might be perceived, but because we ended up with seats in the back, the speakers couldn’t see me and neither could most of the audience members. Any advice on how to achieve live tweeting without looking like a distracted, disinterested, rude audience member?

A plugged-in launch experience

Mon, 16 May 2011 22:41:17 -0400

This morning, I witnessed space shuttle Endeavor blast-off from Cape Canaveral. It was my first time out on the coast for a launch so I was pretty excited.

When I wasn’t marveling at the sunrise, swatting at love bugs or trying to sleep (I got to Space View Park at 10 last night), I considered how far come technology has come since the space program started. While I don’t know much about rockets and space ships, I do know mass media.

My mom was 8 when man landed on the moon. She watched the historic event on her aunt’s television. Radio, newspapers and magazines were the only other ways her family could know about the progress of the space program.

Fast-forward 42 years to my mom, my sister and I sitting on the Indian River across from the launch pad. I borrowed my dad’s transistor radio, thinking we could listen to reports while we waited. But as it turns out, our smartphones made the radio obsolete. My sister received text updates and I checked Twitter for tweets from NASA and news agencies. As I ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich this morning, I read about what the astronauts had for breakfast (lobster?!).

All the cards I packed went untouched as we played games on our phones, checked our social media accounts and talked to our friends. I gave my DSLR a little break as I took pictures on my phone and uploaded them to Twitter and Facebook. When I prepared for the trip, I didn’t even bother to print out directions or bring a map for the trip because we have a Garmin.

It’s just so crazy to think about technology has evolved and taken our lives with it. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of technology and media I will be using 40 years from now.

All journalists are not television reporters

Fri, 13 May 2011 10:57:00 -0400

Twice this week when people heard I just graduated with my journalism degree, they said to me, “Oh, maybe I’ll see you on T.V. someday!”

This is a huge pet peeve of mine: People automatically equating “journalist” with “television reporter.”

Photo by flikr user stekelbes

I’ve always wanted to be a writer and in recent years developed an interest in multimedia (including shooting and editing video), but I have never had an interest in doing stand-ups in front of the camera. I’ve always wanted to be a writer or run an editor at a publication. While print and television reporters may employ the same research and interview techniques, there is still a difference in what we do.

I don’t consider it an insult or anything — I’m just not a television reporter; I chose the magazine and multimedia route. I, too, watch the news (in fact, I have CNN Newsroom on right now) and I have great respect for the reporters. Several of friends who took the telecommunications track at UF.

What upsets me the most about the “maybe I’ll see you on TV”-comment is the reasons WHY the public automatically makes this assumption. Is it a sign or symptom of the death of print journalism?

In an age of the 24-hour news cycle, smart phone applications and social media, does the public forget about the journalists whose faces they don’t see on TV? They don’t realize that it is because of a journalist that they are getting news updates sent to their phone. Or that because of a journalist that some of them still get that black and white thing called a newspaper, or that colorful, glossy thing called a magazine.

Hasidic Jewish newspaper photoshops situation room image

Mon, 09 May 2011 17:45:00 -0400

Hasidic Jewish newspaper photoshops situation room image:

First of all, if the Hasidic newspaper has a policy of not publishing photos of women, then it should have chosen another photo. The White House released several photos from the situation room that did not featured women. Part of what makes the situation room photograph so compelling is Clinton’s reaction so removing her removes one of the element that makes this image of a historic moment so iconic.

Second, if the paper really wanted to use this image (seeing as that it was already disregarding the photo’s terms of use), it could have simply cropped the photo more narrowly. This would have put Hillary Clinton and Audrey Tomason out of the frame instead of erasing them from the center of the photograph and thus altering reality.

I can’t read Hebrew, so I’d be interested to know if the caption said that the women were removed due to modesty laws.

I guess it’s time to change the name of my blog or...

Wed, 04 May 2011 14:28:00 -0400

New alumna of UF Journalism

Thanks, Dad and Mom

Thanks, Dr. Lewis

Walking at commencement

I guess it’s time to change the name of my blog or something because I’m not a student anymore. I graduated from the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications on April 30, 2011!

Magazine prototype champs

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 09:56:41 -0400

A semester’s worth of work and my magazine management group has a beautiful, glossy, 32-page magazine prototype to show for it. Of the three prototypes created in our class, my group’s was chosen as the winner and will be sent on to compete in the 2011 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Student Magazine Contest.

We knew almost immediately that we wanted to create a health and fitness magazine targeted at college students because of the empty space in the market, but it took forever to decide on the name “Health Junkie.” It’s become my dream to actually launch this magazine someday (if you know any potential investors, let me know!)

So much time went into this project including weekly two-hour meetings, research, writing, photo shoots, and days of laying out the pages in the lab. I was made art director because I had the most experience with InDesign (thank you, high school newspaper experience!). Thankfully our copy editor had taken one design class so she could get the pages started by placing text and stuff then I’d come in and clean it up. I also was in charge of the two photo shoots, one for the cover and one for the food spread.

This experience only confirmed my goal to work in magazine editorial. I really enjoyed planning out the departments, features and stories. So much thought went into what would be perfect for college students in our August back-to-school issue that focused not only on physical health by mental and financial health. We were also required to determine how we would market our publication and brand our company. Our accompanying business plan topped out at 17 pages which one of the judges said was more detailed and thought-out than plans he’d seen for real companies.

I am proud, excited and anxious to send our publication off to AEJMC. I only wish that our professor Linda Hallam could have lived to see our finished product. She passed away on March 29. Our publications were presented to her husband last week at a memorial service hosted by the journalism school.

Photographing a nude model

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 18:07:00 -0400

Imagine walking into a studio to do a photo and audio sideshow about a nude model only to discover that the model had no idea that your project involved photographs. And that the instructor for the class the model poses for says you can’t take any pictures of students until you have a release form.

That was how I started my first assignment for advanced multimedia production, my capstone course. We were supposed to the story about a person with a job that has a negative stereotype.

Originally I working on a piece about the groundskeeper for the university’s lacrosse facility. But when my friend Kathryn found a different source for her story, she offered that I could go to the shoot she had set up with a figure model who poses nude for university art students. When I first heard Kathryn’s story pitch I thought it was an amazing idea and would be an interesting challenge to shoot.

I was determined to not let the communication error end the project. So for the first half of the drawing class I took nat sound and scribbled some notes for the text piece I also had to write. During the class break, I ran to the dean’s office and confirmed that I did not actually need a release so I was ready to photograph the second half of the class.

The next week I came back with a different camera to take photos to add a variety of depth of fields and focuses. I was careful when shooting and especially when editing to make sure the photos were decent and tasteful.

The model, Rose Godfrey, was super helpful and understanding. And with so much character, she was a great interview. She was even willing to allow me to publish the photos online.

I’m excited to announce that The Independent Florida Alligator posted the Soundslides portion of my cross-platform project.

First Amendment Free Food Festival

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 10:00:07 -0400

If you’re willing to trade your free speech for a free sandwich, head to the University of Florida’s Plaza of the Americas on Friday from noon to 2 p.m.

“Eat free or live free! you can’t do both!” is the motto of the annual First Amendment Free Food Festival hosted by the UF chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Symbolically sign your First Amendment rights away and you get a free lunch.

The festival started at Florida Atlantic University and spread to five other campuses, according to The Independent Florida Alligator.

Clip: A Lasting Impression

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 10:00:08 -0400

The last story I wrote for my fall internship with the UF Health Science Office of News and Communications has been published. “A Lasting Impression” is about the dean of the University of Florida Dental School who will be stepping down to return to pediatric practice.

It was a great interview; Dr. Primosch was very jovial and helpful. But in the middle of one of his answers, the room started spinning. I needed water, I needed to lie down, I needed to finish the interview. So I sat there and smiled and nodded and asked a more questions, relying more on my recorder than my increasingly sloppy handwriting. Eventually the feeling faded.

It was not the first time I pushed and controlled myself during an interview.Over the summer I was talking to a paleontologist about his really interesting research when I felt a yawn coming. I was mortified. What could be ruder than yawning while someone tells you their story? That day, I learned that — when I really had to — I could yawn with my mouth closed.

Happy Sunshine Week!

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 11:10:00 -0400

It’s time to celebrate public records and open government. And by celebrate, I mean test to see if your requests are honored.

Florida seems to be living up to it’s Sunshine State nickname: An Associated Press article in Saturday’s Miami Herald stated that 86.5 percent of the 148 agencies that responded complied with the law and released information to a “Florida taxpayer” who contacted them. In the past, less than half of the agencies complied.

For more on Sunshine Week and your right to know, visit http://www.sunshineweek.org. There’s even a Ray of Sunshine Game you can play to test your knowledge.

You can almost see it

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 10:26:15 -0500

I saw the most beautiful sight in the sky yesterday evening as I was driving home. On top of the purple, pink and orange of the sunset sky, an orb of light spiraled upward, leaving a curled smoke cloud in it’s wake.

I called my parents and told them to go in the backyard. From our central Florida home we can often see the shuttles after they have launched from Kennedy Space Center on the coast. But last night I was confused because Discovery had landed earlier this week and I had not heard of any scheduled launches.

This morning an article in the Orlando Sentinel (written by Florida Today) said it was the launch of a spy satellite. I thought the article did a good job of describing the launch to someone who hadn’t seen it.

“The rocket climbed into the day’s last light, which turned its curling trail of smoke and steam shades of pink, yellow and white as the rocket rumbled slightly to the southeast over the Atlantic Ocean. Two glowing strap-on solid rocket motors tumbled away nearly two minutes into flight.”

My reporting professors tried to impart onto us young journalism the importance of good descriptive writing, showing us dozens of professional and student examples.

Description is important to this story in particular because there is not a lot of information that can be shared with the public about the purpose of the spy satellite.

Happy Birthday, TIME Magazine!

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 11:58:00 -0500

TIME published its first issue 88 years ago today. If you’ve misplaced your 1923-copy, don’t worry, you can read it online.

In addition to having the cover art online, TIME has archived the text of the articles from every one of it’s issues. It’s a little weird to see an online post dated March 3, 1923, but it’s cool to be able to read the news that we now call history.

(According to a tweet, TIME says it’s 347-years-old in magazine years, anyone know how that math works?)

Time zones

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 14:38:34 -0500

I just got off the phone with my first trans-state interview. My magazine management group is creating a national health magazine for college students and a friend of a friend in Wisconsin agreed to speak with me about diabetes. As we set up the interview through e-mail, I realized that I’m on eastern time and she is in central time.

If I hadn’t caught this, I would have phoned her an hour earlier than we had scheduled. I told my group about this and apparently one of the members had a problem with calling a source from California too early.

Moral of the story: Consider the fact that your source may be in a different time zone and schedule accordingly. TimeTemperature.com has a really great map and local time resource.