Bob Marley and the lost art of Storytelling Comedy

First, my beauties, I want you to take a look at this little gem.

Bob Marley Comedian

Blog Final Project

I’ve started a new site devoted particularly to Independent filmmakers in North Texas. Follow this link to NT Filmsite.

Thanks!

U.S. v. Matthews: Too Harsh?

Larry Matthews was a freelance reporter developing a follow-up story to a piece he did a year earlier about child pornography trafficking on the Internet. In the process of his investigation, he received and sent several images of kiddie porn. One image made its way to an undercover FBI officer.

Matthews was convicted on two counts of child pornography trafficking. The judge sentenced him to 18 months in prison and a $4,000 fine.

The truth is there were many things that Matthews could have done to keep himself out of jail. With a topic as controversial as kiddie porn, Matthews should have covered all of his bases. It was a fair ruling because there was no proof he was working on a story, and there was an enormous amount of evidence to suggest that he was trafficking in child pornography.

Also, one needs to ask if this was the only way for Matthews to get his story. A reporter should not break the law to get his story, even if it means he can’t complete the story as a result. Matthews should have definitely told somebody what he was doing and made further preparations so if he did get caught he wouldn’t be legally vulnerable.

Reporters should be more careful as a result of this case’s ruling. It is proof that reporters that go undercover can be held accountable for their actions if they are caught in an illegal act. Reporters should make sure to document in writing the fact that they are doing a story. The documents should be backed up with a written verification from the editors of the publication the reporter is working for.

If the subject of Matthew’s story was about regular pornography instead of kiddie porn, his case would have definitely had a different outcome. Trafficking in regular pornography is not illegal, but the reporter should still inform his editors about the story early on in case the images are sent through their server.

Election Coverage ‘08

For Election Day 2008, I had the opportunity to work on a university-sponsored website that only came into existence during this Fall semester. The site is NTNewsNet.com and during the election the site focused mainly on politics.

On Election Day the site offered many stories with a small beat slant to them (the new site can’t really compete with the bigger local affiliates, nor does it even try). One video story talked about the minority vote and their feelings and hopes for the polling outcome, particularly in the presidential race. The same reporters also covered a story about the non-voters in Denton county, many of whom offered up opinions on the election but who chose, for one reason or another, not to register to vote.

Another story covered by the site was about a local poll at a soda shop and ice cream parlor. Each of the customers to the Mom-and-Pop business would be asked to choose a straw from one of two buckets assigned to each of the major presidential candidates. The straw is taken from the bucket and placed in a drawer to be counted. The poll correctly predicted the result of the 2004 election and also correctly predicted a large margin win for Barack Obama in this race.

The site covered the low voter turnout in Denton on Election Day compared to the Early Voting period. The site also looked at small town voters and their numbers in a lower population area. Krum, Texas (pop.: under 2,000) was the main subject of the story.

All tolled, the site aquitted itself quite well on Election Day. The site was frequently updated with video, print, and slideshow stories. The images and stories were engaging on a local level and provided a good alternative to the coverage maintained by the big networks. The site will continue to evolve next semester past politics to involve other stories with an emphasis on multimedia.

Developments and High Interest Cause Election Troubles

Next week, the polls will close for this enormously popular election. Millions of Americans have already turned out to vote in one of the highest voter-interest elections in recent memory. 

The season has not been without its problems, however.

The increased voter turnout has resulted in longer lines at the polls. New voting technology has caused its own share of problems with voters and volunteers inexperienced with the programs. Voter registration and identification have experienced changes as well which may cause difficulties for participants as well.

A study released last week by the Pew Center finds that while significant changes have been implemented since the notorious foul-ups in the 2000 election-voting administration still remains a challenge.

“Sky high interest, coupled with changes in voting machines, record numbers of new registrants  in many places and new procedures including voter identification rules in some states will mean voters and election administrators could have a long day on November 4,” said Doug Chapin, director of electionline.org.  

Record numbers have turned out for early voting in many sections of the United States. This leads some to believe that Election Day could be a nightmare for both line-waiting voters and weary administrators.

Key states, including Florida and California, have replaced voting machines purchased as recently as six years ago because officials are concerned with security and reliability issues. Optical scanners in some south Florida counties mark the third new voting system in as many presidential elections.

All of these factors add up to headaches for the elections administrators, which means that some state results may take longer to post than normally expected.

“Many polling places will hit capacity and poll workers will hit capacity and poll workers will be tested. Results from some counties could take longer than usual,” said Chapin.

Whether or not the results are completely presented to Americans on November 4, this election will likely stand as a watermark for voter participation and excitement for many to come.

“Latina Lista” Blog Offers Readers Pride and Opinion

A site that offers its audience a chance to show their pride and voice their opinions in a healthy supportive environment is a rare commodity. Latina Lista claims to offer “Anything and Everything From the Latina Perspective” and although most of this blog’s recent entries had to do with generalized topics like the economy and the upcoming election, the site does indeed offer the feminine hispanic view on these stories.

The site has a main blog page written by site publisher Marisa Trevino which users can connect to through its home page. However, the site also includes links to a “Linking Latinas” page (a blog connecting entries from Latinas from other countries), “Mediacasts” (an entertainment section featuring stories relating to hispanic performers and interests), “Discovering Worlds” (a section that contains book reviews), and “Building Dreams” (a section devoted to latina women who have acheived their goals and share their stories).

The site’s intentions are noble and the site itself seems like a good, supportive environment which informs its readership with intelligence and humor. (I loved the latest blog entry where Trevino says the stock “the stock market rises and plummets faster than a Six Flags roller coaster”.)

The design is, for the most part, very simple and effective. I like the look of the home page- a Latina take on the classic newspaper page. I wish that the site had kept a similar theme throughout. Instead, each subsequent page is plain text (of course, this is probably to keep the focus on the stories). Also, I’m not sure exactly how I feel about the home page having a link the size of any other on the page for the site’s online store. (It’s cool to express your pride, but this feels mildly exploitative-like your pushing the merchandise as much as the stories.)

All in all, the site seems perfect for it’s core audience. I wish that they had a similar site dedicated to my social  group- 6′9″ tall,  goofy white guys with delusions of granduer.

Story Ideas

On the Barack Obama website, after each debate, he offers a “Debate Reality Check” under the tab “Know the Facts” to bring up any inconsistencies in his opponents argument. This offers his supporters and curious individuals the ability to shed some light on the debates.

Also on the website, my.barackobama.com brings together supporters of the candidate in a facebook-like networking site associated directly with the candidates official site.  This brings into focus the importance of such networking site on American culture and news.

A Local Angle Offered at Pegasus News

Most websites and newspapers try to localize their stories, but, in the case of Pegasus News, a community has almost been built from the ground up. The site consists of all the standard news website sections including Metro, Business, Sports, and Arts, making it easy to navigate for all the novice site users out there.  The writing for the site is kept brief and emphasizes main points of the story without excess detail, also a helpful feature for new visitors to the site. The prose style is laid back in approach and allows for a more comfortable reading experience for the everyday person.

The site serves the Dallas/Fort Worth area and supplies a local angle to all the major news stories. The news on the site goes further in depth to local news than most area newspapers and websites. Any news having to do with schools, business, or the community at large seems to be covered. In reality, the site could almost serve as a community bulletin board for the area and all suburbs to the major cities. The metro section includes schedules of town meetings and local group meetings and the school page has schedules for major events occurring in local schools.

The site offers a service not unlike iGoogle called “The Daily You”, which, according to the site, keeps tally of the kind of stories that you frequent and builds a personal page for you. The page includes articles that match the stories that you have read previously in theme and content and ads that the site believes will appeal to you. This feature should be seen as an obvious advantage to those that wish to remain informed about the news and their community but do not wish to wade through gobs of information to reach this goal.

The design problems for this site are minimal. The site is not flashy or overdone. As a matter of fact, Pegasus could use more graphics and pictures and less space devoted specifically to text. The stories at the bottom of each page may contain important information, but they all just run together because the text is so plain. Other than that, the site effectively accomplishes its goal of being an informative local news site.

Politics and the Web

I recent years the influence of the internet upon politics has become obvious. Candidates make major announcements on YouTube, voters can now register online, and the constant barage of political content from the major news sites (and from other, less reliable sources) has made it nearly impossible for the candidates not to feel the growing need to have an active and effective website. Candidates see the importance of producing content and information that they and their supporters can control and of getting others involved in the campaign by way of networking and reaching a younger audience. These should be (and are) the obvious main goals of any presidential candidate’s website. In order to further demonstrate this argument, let’s analyze the current candidates’ websites- JohnMcCain.com and BarackObama.com.

In a world where political analysts use the nominees’ MySpace page hits to index their popularity, both candidates found it necessary to include social networks as part of their sites. John McCain has his own McCainSpace which allows participants to contact other supporters, write out their own profile about why they support the Republicans and even post confessional videos about their support for McCain. This site even includes a link to the campaign’s Facebook page so you can “take action” to recruit others. Obama has his own networking website called my.barackobama.com which includes the abilities to add friends in the network and join communities. The user also has the option to help the campaign by writing to their local new affiliates and local leaders touting the candidate. The site allows the participant to tally all the money they have earned for the campaign through these processes. Users also have their own blog, which they can feel free to use to post about the candidate, These features the hopefuls added to their websites indicate an understanding of the power of social networking sites.

Each site also feels the need to see to it that the users are informed. Both sites include tabs on their websites which are easily accessible that give the reader access to many current news stories from (mostly) legitimate news sources about what their candidate is doing. This shows a great amount of accountabily on the part of each campaign. It would have been better, however, to include a comments section to each news story, which in some cases allows for more accountability to the user as it allows the each reader to assess and reflect on the validity of each news story. It’s not a must, but it would have been better. The sites also include blogs which are constantly being updated and which do have sections for user comments, which is a must for all blogs, since they are not under the same restrictions as news copy and should therefore allow others to determine their validity.

In order to reach younger voters both sites include a great deal of embedded video in their content. It seems like all of John McCain’s issues section of the site could be either viewed or read depending on how lazy you are feeling at the time you are visiting it. The social networking sites go a long way toward involving younger voters, since they are generally the targets of such activity. Obama includes a section under the ‘People’ tab of his site for ‘Students’ which directly targets the just-over-18 crowd. The page includes blog entries, embedded videos and slideshows, and testimonials from students in the U.S. McCain does not include any such page.

In brief closing, both candidates seem to have embraced the power of the Internet over modern politics. One can only wonder what the future of political campaigning might bring as the nation continues to innovate and develop new modes of receiving information.

Print, TV, and the Web: The Differences

To understand the differences in coverage between a print publication and its associated website, I chose to monitor The New York Times on Monday. The biggest story of the day in the newspaper was the buyout bill and the debates in Congress over its passage. The coverage included a massive article detailing the main arguments brought against the bill and a discussion about the bill’s chances in the vote that was to take place that morning. The article included a fact box that answered key questions about the bill.

On the Web, the coverage was much more in-depth and, ironically, included fewer words. The articles on the website were updated constantly throughout the day and were shorter than the print articles. The site also included an interactive timeline which allowed users to trace the past three weeks events on Wall Street that led to the bill’s creation. The timeline even had video elements of speech segment embedded in several entries to further illustrate the story for the user. There’s also a Back Story audio feature, which is a daily conversation with New York Times writers about the stories they cover. Today’s was with David Herszenhorn about the bailout bill.

On television, I watched the 9pm KDFW broadcast (our local Fox affiliate). The biggest story was a package on the economy and what we can expect to happen next. It included an interview with a stocks analyst who provided advice to the viewers as to what to do with their investments. Online, the biggest story actually involved the fatal shooting of a young man by a police officer during a traffic stop. The story included the television package that had aired earlier during the day, a raw video from the officer’s dashboard camera, and written copy from the Associated Press. The website also offered blogs from the station’s reporters about the stories and beat they cover.

In both cases of print and television, their associated websites found more inventive ways to tell the story. The thought here is to make the user remember more about the content by supplying it in different formats that fit more varied tastes. In this way they can make the story more personalized for the user. This allows for more effective news storytelling and allows users to become more involved (in the case of the interactive elements, directly so) in the storytelling process.