Space Tourism and Iran

Richard Branson. Lots of things come into my mind when I hear his name, but up until a couple weeks ago, "Space Tourism" wasn't one of them. When I pause to think about it though, he would be the guy to pioneer this venture. It just seems a bit odd to me this endeavor is moving forward - fast - right now, during this slightly whacked-out economic time. This whole space tourism thing, which will cost around $200,000 for a group who would like to take a 2 1/2 hour journey into outerspace for approximately 5 minutes of weightlessness, could have a negative impact: people are spending this much on a trip to outerspace while people down here on the planet can't event afford a $2 meal, highlighting the great disparity between the rich and poor. Or, this could be a symbolic endeavor of inspiration: "The U.S. and world may be in one of the worst recessions, but we can still put people - your average (but wealthy) citizen - into orbit."

While this point isn't included in the Newsy.com story, The Dawn of Space Tourism, that I helped produce last week, it could definitely be a discussion in and of itself. As of last week, however, there weren't enough perspectives to to effectively illustrate any discussion surrounding this hidden controversy.

Another story I helped produce for Newsy.com was All Eyes on Iran, which discusses whether or not the U.S. and major world powers should place further sanctions on Iran over the country's pursuit of its nuclear program, despite international opposition.

(Week of 12/7 Post) : Getting it all together...

...that's basically what Melissa and I are doing during our final days as undergraduate students at the Missouri School of Journalism. It seems there are a million little loose ends to tie up: making sure graduation information is complete and accurate; turning in minor and multicultural certificate forms; studying for the GRE; completing take-home tests; preparing for our At the End of Slavery capstone presentation; meeting with professors, mentors and friends before heading home for Christmas; and lots of other random little things.

It's all good though! As my dad continues to remind me: I don't have to do all these things; I get to do all these things. As stressful as they may be, I get to be stressed about the details that come along with the privilege of attending and graduating from university - and specifically, the best school of journalism in the world. As cheesy as that may sound, it's true, and this is something that I don't want to take for granted. I am very, very blessed.

Running the Graduation Gauntlet!

Well, Thanksgiving break is over and I have officially TWO WEEKS until graduation!! Right now, I've got lots and lots and lots of things to get done - from grad school applications, to final project presentations, papers, blogs and plenty of other miscellaneous activities in and outside of school. In the midst of the madness, I'm learning that having a positive mental attitude is key... So, I've decided that I'm grabbing Mizzou "by the horns" and am going to conquer this place until Friday, December 18th! Very exciting. : )

As far as At the End of Slavery goes, Melissa and I are taking a closer look at the Google Analytics results for ateos.com and ijm.org to find correlations and draw conclusions on the work we've done in the promotion of the documentary this semester. It's all pretty interesting and we're coming across some very positive results thus far. Our PowerPoint presentation is coming together as well, so it's a good feeling to be on top of the game!

I've also been having an increasingly positive experience with Eurokulture - the European pop culture blog I've been contributing to for Clyde Bentley and Monika Fischer's journalism class.

One of my posts, France's Workout Plan, has received a pretty significant amount of comments, including one from the woman whose fitness companies and books I featured. I'm learning that it really only takes one post to make a successful and/or popular blog, so I'm considering starting a different kind of blog sometime graduation for some experimentation.

Until then, I'm focusing on getting one thing done at a time, step by step, enjoying each moment. As my Dad always says, "Cinch by the inch, hard by the yard."

Post for Week of 10/12 and 10/19: ATEOS Update!

Here are a few updates:

1. We have our "What does your community know about modern-day slavery?" video posted on the site. Yay!

2. The SoundSlides presentation is waiting for approval from our supervisors in DC. It's the story of rescue and restoration of a young boy, Viswanathan, and his family in South Asia. The story is incredibly encouraging and the images (taken by IJM on the ground) are great!

3. Blog Tour: This is GREAT! We've already heard back from at least 7 of the 22 bloggers we contacted about making a post on ATEOS, and they've signed up for specific dates. I was surprised by how much work actually goes into making contacts with other bloggers. I realized how intentional we have to be in making specific comments about their work as well, so they can be sure our requests are not "spam" and that we're sincere in asking for their help. ALENow.com already posted about ATEOS on their homepage and Facebook page, so we reciprocated the link last week as well. We have at least one blogger signed up for each week leading up to the "Weekend to End Slavery" on November 14.

4. Discussion Forum: Melissa and I are wondering what's been going on with that. At this point, we think it may be more effective to continue to make all of our posts to the News/Updates site and enable "comments", including those posts specifically addressing those hosting house parties and/or church screenings.

5. New Timeline: Melissa and I have created a new timeline so we can be most effective with our time and resources leading up to the Weekend to End Slavery. Basically, we will be posting "What's in the News?", original content, blog tour updates and house party info on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays as appropriate.

We're looking forward to connecting with our supervisor soon, as circumstances out of our control haven't allowed us to have a proper catch-up/re-orientation conversation.

DC Premier: ATEOS

Ambassador Luis CdeBaca was one of many key influencers who attended the DC premier of IJM's documentary, At the End of Slavery. Some of his comments were featured in one article from the Christian Post, which highlighted the importance of rule of law as the most effective tool to smash global slavery, country by country, community by community.

This week, Melissa and I will be finalizing and posting a video showing a series of interviews with college students on modern day slavery. We're also producing a SoundSlides presentation of a young Indian boy named Viswanathan, which will be posted sometime next week.

On the "getting the word out" side of things, we're creating a template to send out to key bloggers in the human rights world to publish a post on At the End of Slavery, and will also be tapping into influential social networking sites as well.

Lots has been happening, schedules are being tweaked and we have a few other projects in the making that we're trying to figure out how/when to present on the site over the next few weeks.

Capstone Course Progress

Here is a great example of a story from IJM that highlights the hope in the middle of the depressing statistics we so often hear in the news.

The trailer to At the End of Slavery is also in the early stages of being distributed online. Very exciting!

This week, Melissa Urscheler and I laid out a tentative schedule for the content we will create and produce to keep Attheendofslavery.com fresh when the site rolls out this upcoming week. Also, we are in our preliminary research stage where we're learning what the most effective multimedia tools are in order to get people interested in a story or piece of information. This is just one of the several things we're focusing our research efforts on at the moment.

We're looking forward to getting the wheels of this project turning!

Hope

If I had to choose just one word to describe what I took away from working with International Justice Mission this Summer, that would be it. Hope.

Each day, I heard heart-wrenching stories of girls as young as 5 stolen from their families and trafficked into brothels to be sexually abused; stories of entire families forced by evil men to work as slaves in brick kilns and rice mills; stories of corrupt leaders accusing people of murder and throwing them into prison cells to waste away in silence. But the beautiful thing is that none of these stories I heard at IJM ended there. Each of these stories ended with God using simple human beings to bring rescue and restoration to the hearts, spirits and lives of those who desperately need it.

So, why do we never hear these stories on the nightly news?

As far as I can tell, this is why I’m studying journalism at the University of Missouri. If you had asked me 5 years ago where I’d be going to school, I probably would’ve told you somewhere out on the East coast, West coast or Colorado. And if you had asked me what I would be studying, the answer definitely wouldn’t have been journalism. Honestly, the journalism industry (at least in the mainstream) frustrates me more than it inspires me. But, since I was a little girl, something I remember my dad continually saying was, “People gotta have hope. You gotta give people hope.” And this is what God has pressed into my heart throughout the different experiences He’s blessed me with over the last several years – and it’s as if God has used this experience at IJM to capitalize on my dad’s words.

So, that’s encouraging! But, I really have no clue how that’s all going to look…and I’m learning that that’s actually okay! To be honest, this can definitely be frustrating (especially for people like me who would like to figure it all out), but right now it’s making me laugh. We don't always need to know exactly where the next stepping stone is; sometimes all that is required is the step, and the rest figures itself out.

As Gary Haugen writes in his book, Just Courage, “Deep within all of us there is a yearning to be brave. And like all of our deepest, truest and best yearnings, it comes from how we were made. Courage – the power to do the right thing even when it is scary and hard – resonates deeply within the original shape of our soul. Why is it so beautiful to see someone do the right thing when it is hard? Why, on the other hand, should there be such shame about our cowardice? Why should it matter so much to my inner being that I do the right thing rather than the safe thing? It’s a mystery. But there it is, pointing relentlessly to the nature and delight of the One who made me. In fact, the beauty and goodness for which we were fashioned by our Maker is more glorious than we dare to imagine.” (p.103)

So, this semester and for the rest of my life, I want to take hold of the beauty and goodness for which I was made. And maybe more importantly, I want to shine light on the beauty and goodness that exists on our planet in order to give hope to a world bogged down by the weight of depressing, immobilizing facts and figures. There is SO much hope -- it just needs to be highlighted.

"Wise shall be the bearers of Light"

President, Pigs and Money

...just some of the things Journalism and I have been enjoying this week.

Newsy.com continues to challenge my research skills and ways of thinking. It's awesome. This week I researched, analyzed and wrote a story comparing/contrasting what news organizations were saying about President Obama's "First 100 Days". Multi-perspective storytelling in 2-minute video segments is not only a great way to place bias, opinion and truth next to each other...it's a great way to learn how to think critically about issues that matter and helps innovate the curious mind to find and understand truth.

A second story I wrote for Newsy this week: Swine Flu: Precaution or Paranoia? (I think this is definitely a valid question to ask as news outlets and social media networks continue to hype the issue).

A few stories I worked on while at KOMU were:

"Second Possible Case of Swine Flu"
"Missourians deal with flooding"

"Woman Charged with Domestic Assault and Burglary"

I had a fun time finding an appropriate image for the Swine Flu posting. I had to be careful not to take an image with ambulances, flashing lights, people in hospital beds, etc., as this would have conveyed the opposite message. I felt the word "possible" (in the headline) had to be conveyed through the image as well...which is why I went with the scientist conducting research.

Also, I learned a valuable lesson while Twittering from KOMU.com: "It's not what you say, it's how you say it!" This is a phrase my dad has drilled into my head since birth and I've always valued it, but in a moment of busyness it seemed to pop out of my head while tweeting a question to KOMU's Twitter community. Lesson learned!

So, where does "Money" come into all of this? MoneyCommons of course! After our meeting today, I'm just reminded again of how important vision-casting is. We could have a great idea, but if the vision isn't cast properly, it doesn't matter. No one will believe in it. We have to see where we're headed in order to convey that path and destination to others. Not gonna lie, that sounds slightly cheesy, but it's so true.

And Yay! In a quick note, I won two awards from Flickr for photography I did for the Missourian!

First Place (News - Cover) and First Place (Multi-story package - News or Sports)

Sad day though...I never got a byline. The grad student who worked on the print portion of the story is listed instead. This happened last year and frustrating though it is, it's still encouraging to get the awards! : ) And it was an awesome story to interview, shoot and edit into a Soundslides package. I learned lots and lots.

Pirate Booty

Here's a link to a story I wrote for Newsy.com last week, when pirates took an American Captain Captive... (Note: He is no longer held hostage...see the follow-up story on Newsy.com).

I've also begun working on a Flash photo slideshow and have run into a couple technical difficulties. Apparently there are no guides at KOMU to explain how to go about doing this and my made-up way isn't working too well at the moment. So, needless to say, I think I may need a one-on-one with Jen for this one! Also working on interviewing average Joes and Janes in Columbia, MO about what they'd like to see on a community-centered, economy-focused website/forum, such as MoneyCommons.com.

Quote of the week: "Bingo!! Give it to Daddy." - Jim Riek (In context...Jim won a game on Sporkle.com)

Basketball Dough

Fun little thing Amy and I posted to KOMU.com...

Earnings: Big 12 Basketball Coaches

The two graphics are the coolest part. : )

MoneyCommons Team: Where do we go from here?

Alrighty then...so Jen and I met today and had a little chat about
where we are, and where we go from here. Thought I'd post some of the thoughts and notes from our meeting, so here it goes...

Basically, the most essential thing to do at this point is to build a
community. How do we practically do that? Talk with people of all
ages, colors, shapes, socioeconomic status, professions, etc. and
learn what they're looking for in an economy-focused site. What do
they want to know? How can we tangibly serve them? Right now, it's all
about talking with people, understanding their needs and then
compiling our info to work towards meeting those needs through
creating a sustainable site...one of the biggest challenges Jen is
dealing with at the moment.


As of now, we have some content from traditional newsrooms whose
primary focus is themselves. There's nothing too wrong with that as
that's how they're making (or trying to make) money, but it just means
that content for our project is put on the back burner. For example,
very little is actually happening with the videos the Missourian
promised to deliver. So, what do we do without solidified titles of
reporter, producer, salesperson, etc.? Research.


Basically, Money Commons itself is still a theory, which isn't
necessarily a bad thing at this point. We just have to figure out what
all kinds of people in Columbia want/need and then build the idea of
MoneyCommons.com from there. So, in interviews with community leaders/
professionals regarding the economy, or while just having
conversations with locals, let's be intentional about asking and
taking notes on their thoughts. Then we'll compile our info and begin
to build our site with a clearer picture of our community.

This whole web thing is a bit of a mystery and no one has solved it!! So it seems experimentation is KEY!!!

Giraffes, KOMU, the Missourian and Cramer

Economy videos from the Missourian are coming along...slowly, but surely. Two of the reporters (Kyle and a sweet girl whose name I can't remember) are still working on two videos each. "How to retire in this economy" and "How to say 'No' to your kid" are two the one girl is working on, with the second being one of a few videos geared towards parents on how to teach their teens various common-sense money tips/tricks in this economy. Other examples of videos to be done are "How to teach teens to budget" and "How you can help your kid graduate in this economy." Not necessarily the exact titles, but so far, those are the key ideas. Kyle is working on a "How to save on your utilities" story and another investment tips piece. All four of these will be shot by Spring Break (one week away, woohoo!) and edited sometime afterwards. Also, the "How to market yourself" video is still a work in progress.

As far as KOMU goes, yesterday was an interesting shift day. The TiVo and capturing tool on Avid were both not working, so no video could be posted to the web after the 6. Kind of frustrating. Scott Schaeffer tried super hard to trouble-shoot the problem with us, but no luck. Unless, something changed over the past 12 hours, there's no video up from yesterday evening's newscasts. Only text.

One thing I'm pleased with is that I've completed all of my media giraffe interviews! They're both quite interesting sources and I'm hoping to complete them over Spring Break or during that following week.

And finally, one great night of television: Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer...

Check out Newsy.com to see my story/analysis of the face-off. : )

Missourian Meeting

So, here's a brief update from the meeting at the Missourian today...

The three economy videos we talked about last week are still a work in progress. They are:

1. How to market yourself
2. What to do if you lose your job
3. How to retire in this economy

This week, three more video-based stories the Missourian reporters are pursuing are:

1. How to save on your monthly utility bills
2. How should you invest differently in this economy
3. Tips for how parents should teach their kids/teens to manage money. (We talked about this being two videos...maybe one focuses more on how parents can "say no to their kids and make it stick.")

There are also quite a few print stories the reporters have been working on. One on food and fuel prices will be on the Sunday cover of the Missourian, and there are several others that are in the early stages of reporting.

Also, Jen, if we can't seem to get KBIA in on this collaboration yet, the Missourian has a link on the bottom of their homepage that says "Audio." If we click here, there are a bunch of random KBIA pieces, including economy stories, and we can pull them to our site from there.

The Missourian is also in the process of designing a separate webpage called "Economy 101" for all of their economy stories, which we could attach a link to from our site. As far as I know from chatting with the reporters briefly, there is already an RSS feed in place for those stories to go to moneycommons.

Now I'm over here at KOMU, editing and publishing stories to the web...and of course, making sure we've tagged the previously completed economy stories with the "8 On Your Money" label. All is good so far!!!

Getting Organized

"Money money money mah-nay... MAH-nay!"

Have no clue who sings this song, but it's been running through my brain as I'm sitting here, staring at my old-school iBook G4 laptop, trying to think of what to post. I'll start with this past Thursday's Missourian meeting...

Basically, it seems like the economy beat reporters there are being proactive in creating meaningful content to add to their site and ours. This is awesome. The three stories they're working on this week are:

1. What to do if you lose your job
2. How to market yourself to get a job
3. How to recover in this economy

Also, I learned they're going to create a section in the paper and/or online called "Progress," which will be devoted to showing how Columbia will keep moving forward in this economic downturn. It will also help better illustrate the community's initiatives to bring money and people into Columbia. As far as I know, this will be coming out towards the end of March. So, as for the Missourian meeting, that's about it.

During my Thursday shift at KOMU, Liz and I focused on searching previous weeks' content in ACM to categorize stories under the "8 On Your Money" label. This was definitely a step forward as we now have more content to work from on moneycommons.com. Along with this, two examples of stories I helped edit and publish to the website were Paula Smith's on Columbia Regional Airport and Takeo's piece on Columbia Public Schools, which both aired on the 10.

I'll post another update on moneycommons.com progress sometime in the next few days...looking forward to begin working on the promotional side of things soon though!

Flash, Photos and Video

These three things dominated my time while working at KOMU this past Thursday.

With our new Flash skills, Liz and I took a map outlining the counties of Missouri and attempted to transform it into a rollover graphic highlighting the car sales per county. After a couple hours of failed attempts, we decided to create our own version of a would-be flash map on the white board using red and blue markers....Randy duly noted that one county Liz drew happened to look more like the state of Illinois than anything. So, after a few laughs, we popped back onto the computer and voila!...a magical thing happened: we remembered how to create a working button. : )

While Liz made more progress on the map, I continued to cut packages, create images and save them for Stephanie Stouffer to put on KOMU.com as my computer didn't have ACM. (By the way, I'm thinking I'll suggest that we re-organize the computers behind the new desk...the one that is most useless happens to be smack in the middle, where the more helpful one is jammed in the corner, giving little room for a chair and/or person to efficiently upload work through ACM.) Anywho, that's all to say I realized I did not remind Stephanie to add my name to the stories I worked on...and now, go figure, I can't remember the stories that aired during my shift. Even after scrolling through KOMU.com searching for February 19, I wasn't able to find anything. I did however, work specifically with Kirsten Mims and Paula Smith to help bring their stories to the finish line. In general, it seems the broadcast reporters are beginning to get the hang of their new reporting duties and how to work on ACM. That's encouraging!

Also, as far as this week goes, I'm hoping to set up an interview or two to create some original content for moneycommons.com. Last week I spoke with a married woman who has 5 kids, lives on a tight budget and shops mostly organic while looking around Columbia for the best deals and steals...and she said she'd most-likely be willing to share her tips with us for a short video. I'm going to finalize that sometime this week and hopefully get some reporting done as well!

This will be another busy-busy week, but I'm just reminding myself that Spring break is less than one month away!! Praaaiiise the Lord for some sun, a cool Grandpa (who we call "Bumpa"), my best friend from London and a beach. Oh yes. : )

The Craziest Week of My Life

...well, maybe not of my life, but of my semester thus far.

I have to say though... I learned LOTS during my shift at KOMU this past week. Since I was flying solo on the web for the first few hours on Thursday, I was able to do much more in terms of video. It was interesting to actually see how video from Avid News Cutter transfers (or fails to transfer at times) into ACM, which gave me a dose of insight into how to troubleshoot the problems that occur.

Something I've also enjoyed over the past couple weeks has been working with the broadcast students. It's fun to be in a leadership role where I'm able to guide others and help bring their stories to the finish line effectively. Working with 10 o'clock reporters is where this happens most, as it's a much more calm shift where one-on-one time is with the reporters is easier to come across.

And of course, I love images, so searching through video for the lead photo (when the reporters don't have time to - which is usually most of the time) is always enjoyable. One of my favorites this past week was the image I chose for the short piece on the swimming Grand Prix. Not sure if the image is still available directly on that page, but it was of two swimmers near the pool wall as another splashes to tag the wall as well.

Two other stories I worked on were on the NAACP and Autism.

It was also great to help Liz write titles and captions for some of the images in her post-ice storm piece...she was super-exhausted after two long days of reporting and little sleep, so we had a fun time trying to make her captions more coherent than what she was actually saying/thinking.

This week, our moneycommons team is also going to be working on getting in contact with actual sources. I think it was helpful that Liz and I met to create an outline for stories and that we posted that to googledocs for other reporters to see as well. It's exciting that Newsy wants to partner with us in this endeavor as well!

Time to run, but am looking forward to seeing what the rest of this week will bring!!

To furlough or not to furlough...

Definition: Furlough: (from Dutch: Verlof) - A temporary leave of absence; sometimes involuntary because of work conditions

This was one thing University of Missouri System president Gary Forsee was set to discuss Friday, February 6 in his first State of the University Address. So basically, while working at KOMU News during our Thursday shift (and after discovering one of the reporters spoke with Forsee about furloughs earlier that evening for another story) we decided to preview the following day's address: "One on One with Forsee."

Also, "twittering" turned out to be quite interesting... We gave a countdown on the social networking site, Twitter, until our story was officially published on KOMU.com, to hopefully grab peoples' attention. Then we decided to ask questions about furloughs to our "followers." And we had one response... Victory! The comment came from a woman who said she'd rather have a furlough than a pay cut. No doubt why.

So, as someone who put effort into publishing and twittering Forsee's furlough preview, it was interesting to see a conversation - short and sweet though it was - actually take place via Twitter. It was quite funny when we saw the "tweet" from this lady... Liz and I got pretty excited someone actually responded to us!

Aside from this little experience, one thing I've especially enjoyed during my KOMU.com shifts has been editing images in Adobe Photoshop. I'm definitely thankful for the photo editing experience I've had through previous convergence stories, as I think it's given me a leg up in this process. It's obvious to me that a little TLC to the images makes a big difference. I definitely enjoy making the KOMU.com News page pretty through photography.

Oh yeah, real quick update... As of Friday, Forsee was given authority to furlough campus workers if needed.

Gorilla Warfare - not "Guerilla"

The link at the bottom is to a piece I wrote for Newsy.com - an international news organization that takes perspectives from news outlets around the world to discuss one story...thus, attempting to tell the whole story, rather than just a biased viewpoint of it.

While working for a start-up news company such as Newsy.com, I've learned an incredible amount about what it takes to get people to actually notice the work we're doing. We could be writing phenomenal pieces with compelling angles and perspectives, yet if the site itself and our work are not marketed properly, it's all in vain. Now, I'm working on the reporting/writing side of things at Newsy so am not exactly focusing on marketing, but it's really all intertwined.

Basically, the stories we write have to have the MOST compelling bits of information (content uniqueness, visual appeal, contrasting viewpoints, etc.) within the first 5-10 seconds of our piece, or else we've lost the fickle online viewer. This obviously makes sense, but is quite challenging as we're pulling from a variety of sources with unique and interesting points of view. So, choosing the top 4-5 sources (all with different perspectives) AND balancing that with accurately/effectively telling the story itself is a pretty challenging task. Also, for online journalism and marketing that journalism, it's essential the headline be creative, yet not too abstract. In some cases, creativity is encouraged...in others, it's important to stick to the "meat and potatoes."

Working in an environment where we're constantly innovating, creating, re-vamping, eliminating, correcting, experimenting and learning is an amazing opportunity for a journalism student right now... specifically as the Internet seems to be throwing the communications world a massive curveball.

Anywho, here's the link to a story I wrote on Gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a shocking story of their survival during rebel violence and warfare. Any comments/feedback from this piece and/or others on the site are always appreciated! : )

http://www.newsy.com/videos/gorillas_and_warfare/