Studying profiles for Sunday’s blog post served as the most interesting thing I’ve analyzed for The Plain-Dealer so far. Profiles in class were defined as articles that needed something “universal.” You needed to look for points in a story that mattered to you. What would interest you would most likely interest future readers. If you grasped such curiosity from stories or quotes that your interviewee shared with you, you were all set toward the right path of creating a good profile. Profiles consisted of challenges and opportunities. And they supplied imagery that made you think the speaker had a particular profession. Cleveland achieved all the rules through a music CEO's story.
I scanned through my example profile while it glowed on the screen. It showed all the characteristics of points that I learned about profiles in class. Before I had no idea how I could find a profile other than typing it into the page's search engine. But I ended up finding one that covered Greg Harris, Cleveland Rock Hall's president. Best. Article. I’ve read. Ever. This week. Yes, I've read better. But I'll give The Plain-Dealer its props: they did a nice job. The question at the beginning might not be favored by some journalists. But because of my curiosity of finding answers to puzzles, it tempted me to read on. The checklist effect with the inclusions of hilarious and naïve quotes that made it seem like the person being profiled on was just a normal person made the page personal and therefore a little easier to read. I was also excited when I spotted another theme that the class discussed before class ended Wednesday: the format of present, past, and future in the article. The editors wrote about what the man’s professional title job included, and then how he got introduced in the industry through his personal funny story. His location, profession, how he looked at the time and his interactions with future influences included in the format gave the article a basic but unique feel. The story’s setup made it sound like a written documentary. I liked the occasional journalist’s voice jumping in every so often with questions he or she asked (e.g., what did he say she say, how did you react). The type of format from the Greg Harris profile was only one of the many profiles that The Plain-Dealer staff wrote. But I felt the article was a great example of that I needed more practice on in the future for the JOUR 2100 class.
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The Plain-Dealer did OK at covering Beyoncé and the commercials for the Super Bowl. I'd be bummed out if the only reporting the website prepared for the event consisted of scores for the game, articles about random football players and coaches, and a video of a choir of children who lived through a tragedy. But the page provided small links for Beyoncé’s halftime show and the commercials. I’m grateful the editors did this: I'm not that into sports.
The day before the game, nothing about the 30-second-to-a-minute clips or the pop-star's big night surfaced within the content. But four articles with words that only football fans knew of, such as "QBs" (quarterback?) and Art Modell (whoever he is), stood their ground at the top of the page. Though the short show and advertisements play a big part in the occasion, The Plain-Dealer skipped out on Beyoncé and Super Bowl commercials Saturday. But the page did better on Sunday: at least around the halftime period. The site included a mega blog and chat on its page of all things Super Bowl-related. A little bit below that area was a link: "The commercials: What to watch for tonight." It would’ve been better if they gave the audience a picture of some scenes from the ads. I reentered the permalink again later that night and found a collage of pictures plastered at the top. Beyoncé’s face finally took place on the screen in the left corner. I waited for news about the singer all night on this site. I expected more. The news source also must’ve gone crazy Monday morning. The editors took the article about Beyoncé’ presentation and moved it to the bottom of the entertainment page. How dare the editors kick the piece overnight? But Cleveland’s newspaper grabbed some final points for supplying a link toward the icon’s routine. And I'll admit it: the above link breaking down all of the commercials by the first and second half of the game really stood out to me. The writers took some time formatting the information and even included YouTube links that people could watch. The paper didn't pull through as well as I'd hoped this round. But I'm glad the staff tried. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the 2013 presidential inauguration on the same day called for an analysis of The Plain Dealer. The newspaper featured more media updates on the inauguration than on Martin Luther King Jr.
The website remained faithful toward the inauguration by providing people a permalink on Facebook. The description in the post talked about how the site would give live coverage on the event all day. I ended up clicking on the link and found that the site covered all types of multimedia. Twitter updates popped up one by one from the narrow column placed in the center of the page. Detailed articles featured how the president’s day scheduled out. Posts included photos and YouTube videos that contained raw footage of Obama sworn into office. The page retweeted random people talking about how fabulous the day would be. Commenters inserted their input below. That’s the power of social media for you. I also enjoyed that the site presented all the incoming information in a vertical fashion. People who missed the first minutes could start at the top of the column and read from the start. Now the reporters, as mentioned in my earlier blog post, filled the articles with pure detail. The writers wrote down plenty of movements and conversation, documenting everything from what arm Obama moved to every word that he uttered. Oh, wait: never mind. The Associated Press wrote that article. The agency also occupied most, if not all, of the articles attributed under the live coverage link. The Plain Dealer appeared lazy from using AP as its primary source. The total number of articles that I saw my beat's staff write was one. One. And it was just a type up of the inaugural address that the president gave. It's great that the paper used good attributions from a trusted source. But I recommend that the staff send in their own reporters for such a special occasion as a second term. The only other thing I'd suggest to the editors would be that they keep the information about important events up longer. I came home later Monday and found that the few articles that The Plain Dealer had about the inauguration almost disappeared. And again, there wasn’t that much coverage on what Cleveland did in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. But the inauguration counts as something Martin Luther King Jr. would have approved of. A new semester meant a new beat assignment. Wednesday marked the day that I received one called The Plain Dealer. I only heard of the beat's name once or twice, but I hoped for a different experience with it in comparison to the old beat I studied last semester. The Arizona Republic’s website included repeated headlines and content. Uneven rows and columns also didn’t help me lower my feelings of disappointment for the page. I hoped for better.
My wish came true. With an immediate glance I couldn't help but be a little impressed by the design. The paper presented only two columns for its format. The blue bubbly tabs reminded me of the font that Black Entertainment Television (BET)'s website used. The effects created big and comprehensive letters. And the content even served as interesting. The reporters included words that made readers feel like they attended the events. One sentence in an article featured Obama whispering to his youngest daughter that he “did it” (got sworn into office) while embracing her with a hug. The author added an action. That action is what encouraged me toward reading more. Navigating around also wasn't too difficult. Click the white arrow to the right of the blue "Top Stories" tab and a drop box appears. It's an easy way for you to explore different categories that include sports, entertainment and politics. I did run into some trouble with the plus signs on the left side of each article, though. I have no idea what those are for. I thought they represented the number of comments people put on the page, but I’m still not sure. In the bottom-right corner of one of the articles I noticed a list called "Most Comments." It showed the number of remarks people made about particular articles on the site. The top five dealt with sports. But click on any of the comments and the page guides you to cleveland.com/interact. A thorough archive of the community's thoughts about reported content pops up. It includes blogs and videos. The Arizona Republic didn't have any of this. I expected good social media from this online news source since it established an interactive page. The Plain Dealer used its Facebook and Twitter pages a lot. It even had an RSS feature. So far, so good with my new beat. Christmas is almost here! Actually it's pretty far, but I'm running out of things to write about for The Arizona Republic's website. Through the semester I wrote about its coverage on such things as the NFL, digital media and its repetitiveness of articles later toward the bottom of its page. I believe this is the second to final blog post I have on this site, today’s focus is on how it covers the holiday that's coming up.
You should really check out the background that the online newspaper put up for itself. It's really nice. Bright red mini ornaments toppled over each other is complete with a burgundy colored background. And the dollar bills attached to the decorations in the same corner are hilarious; the holidays can be expensive. So the ad was nothing too crazy. It looks like the page is improving, using its photo qualities as an advantage. Even the ads the site has up have some Christmas-related factor in it. One ad has snowflake sparkle effects falling from one side to another. Verizon's small ad promoted that if people buy its products then they'll have a "great" holiday. And at the bottom of the page, a category featured candy-cane cookies sprinkled with peppermint candies rank as the top food and home story of the week. The only thing I would recommend is that the Republic uses its own original background for the holidays. As I moved my cursor toward the outer columns, a link popped up on the bottom left and stated "http://ashleyfurniturestore.com." This newspaper isn't meant to represent a furniture store. It's meant to promote news. I wish Arizona would take that into account rather than using big ads and repeated information to fill up the page. I understand that top newspaper websites such as the New York Times may use the same tactic of using narrow columns and more white space on the outside. But at least they have more content to provide to the audience. And their ads are smaller. I’m just saying. A Chinese student with a thick accent came up to me on Monday while I studied for a quiz and asked me to talk to him. I found this rather odd. I hoped he wasn't going to flirt with me, like other guys do when they ask that kind of question. But it turned out that he just needed people to engage in a conversation with him so he could get better at the English language. Eventually we got on the topic of food and he commented on how well done my minute rice that I had in my portable tuber ware looked. I still don't think I got through to him about how cooking rice from Wal-Mart was no big deal, but that got me thinking about the topic of my next blog post: food. I enjoyed this topic. Arizona must possess some good cooks, because their pictures of the resulting food amazed me. It's one thing for someone to take a picture of some pasta. But the picture I looked at was exquisite (any type of prepared noodle dish deserves fancy words). It looked delicious. The texture of the pasta looked super thin, so you know the dish was slurp able. Another article featured a thanksgiving-themed photo of what looked like one tasty cube of meatloaf. You could see the green and orange bits of spices in the ground meat (or was it dressing? I don't know. It just looked good). And gravy poured over a fluffy blob of mashed potatoes definitely added some major points to The Arizona Republic's weekly grade. Sure: the site got back some negative views from me over the period I’ve studied its articles and format. But I’m glad I chose this topic. When it comes to this online newspaper’s strengths, the photos rank pretty high in quality. It’s as though Arizona gets right up there and in your (or any object) face for the best pictures. Arizona doesn’t play when it comes to watering your taste buds with a single image. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel journalist Meg Kissinger came to our class Wednesday to talk more about our last multimedia assignment. Teams would interview patients and professionals on problems found within the health care system. Reporters would also ask the same people what they would fix about health care. The occupation of the person my group has is a nurse, but Kissinger didn't give us his or her name or contact information yet. Today students need blog posts based on the background information of the occupation our interviewee has.
The task was a little bit difficult. I had no idea what I was doing because I wasn't given a website to start from or anything. But I noticed a lot of people blogged about Aurora Health Care. And from the site, it sounds as though nurses possess more of a personal connection with the patient than any other employee in hospitals. Aurora provides a service where nurses go over other people’s houses and take care of them from there. It’s usually that way if the patient has a serious issue, so I completely respect this service. I know a few of my relatives who hospitals provided nurses for them. It wasn't metal health issues, but all of the specific individuals had diabetes, which would be considered a major health issue. I also remember in a class where we talked about how the stronger a relationship is between a patient and a caretaker (e.g., nurse, doctor), the more likely it is that the patient will feel more relaxed and at home. Nurses succeed in making a closer connection through communication and informing or helping patients every step of the way. I might not know that much about the medical field just yet, but it sounds like nurses aren’t that different from doctors when it comes to caring for the individual. Both of the occupations and their efforts create qualitative relationships and make the patient feel they matter. So I look forward to this opportunity. I’ve never really went deep into learning about nurses until now. And because they’ve cared so much for my own family members in the past, this only makes me more excited. That's right, people. Today we are getting serious. I wasn't sure if I needed a Monday blog post on my website, but due to the complaint we received from our professor Wednesday, I decided, eh; what the heck. So here I was; thinking all weekend about what I could write about. And on Monday, posts from other students poured into the Facebook page and made me irritated; shoot, I didn’t even have a topic yet.
What caught my eye was that most of these posts were on mental health problems. Mental health is the next topic our class will be focusing on when we come back from Thanksgiving Break. Our upcoming project requires us to ask a professional about his or her occupation and health care problems. The class actually has a post due tomorrow on the assigned field we picked (my partner and I have ‘nurse’), but that isn’t due until Wednesday. We're talking about today. So a post on mental health in Milwaukee is due tomorrow; why not do it on another state, ideally Arizona? I searched The Arizona Republic's page. It wasn’t that difficult to find the “Health” section. Just go to azcentral.com and look at the first row of categories at the top. The only problem was I had to explore through the subcategories. I knew mental health isn't under “Diet and Nutrition.” That didn’t make any sense. And I had no idea what “Boomers” was (translation; Baby Boomer). “Exercises have nothing to do with what goes on in your mind or anything. And “Recreation”sounds like sports stuff. It’s disappointing that the site continues with giving me all these links, but when I look for something in particular, it’s nowhere to be found. I also typed in mental health, and the first thing that came up was some movie. It’s sad that a film review came up first before any real articles about mental health. I don’t like being negative. But The Arizona Republic needs more of a focus on mental health problems. People already get irritated from a lack of information provided from the page. Maybe I missed the specific area. And maybe people just don’t look for mental health information on an online newspaper. A lot of thought was put into this week’s blog post. I wanted something that would complement The Arizona Republic, but I ran into some difficulty thinking of a topic. I then remembered a while back that my dad visited Milwaukee for a couple of weeks last month, and we ended up seeing “Alex Cross” together. Movies and entertainment it was.
Difficulty came along in finding a tab that stated or implied entertainment. Out of all the labels they had, entertainment was just not found. It was located under “Things to do.” No one thinks of going to that category for the latest news on how a celebrity is doing or what rating a movie received. At least create a tab for entertainment and distinguish it. But I liked that the movies section didn't duplicate articles like the last time I studied the website. There is still a showing of three columns; the outline still looked crazy. But I wasn't as overwhelmed. One reason would be from the lack of excess and repetitive information. Another would be the formatting within the columns. Daniel Craig (“Skyfall”)'s picture matched up perfectly in width with the Reviews, Features and Hot Lists categories. And no uneven rows appeared throughout it, including the other two rows. The editors didn’t highlight the top news story’s title in a darker and bolder blue and move it to the bottom of the center box. Instead it topped over the summary of the article and other movie-related articles because it presented itself as bigger in size and a darker blue than other subtitles. But the photos in the vertical column below the movies category looked weird and could’ve been formatted a little bit better. I then clicked on the sets of photos provided. The front page photos included pictures from June 2012. The 2012 MTV Movie Awards event; really? C'mon, now. The online newspaper should update their photos for each month. You can't tell me you haven't gotten enough shots to substitute old ones that happened five months ago. The “Alex Cross” movie earned two stars from The Arizona Republic movie review. The feeling is mutual with the page for not updating itself with new visuals. But I'm glad that they don't repeat their content as they do as on their main page, and that they appear more organized because they fit just enough description into titles where you understand what's going on and the heading doesn't run into the next column. Journalist Meg Kissinger from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel came to visit our classroom Wednesday for a discussion on mental illness reporting and how she approached writing about the subject. This week the students had the decision between writing a blog post about this journalist- who writes great articles filled with emotion and imagery of others going through pain- or something about our beat website. And we all know how that websource is doing. Seriously; this woman can write. Review her work. Reading about some individual using his tongue for cleaning up a floor splattered with vomit will disgust you. Short sentences such as "he went home to die" will push you into thinking, 'dang, that's messed up.' Kissinger has that ‘it’ factor when it comes to writing, especially when she types about mental illness. Kissinger said that she produced high quality stories because she didn’t shy away from uncomfortable situations. She said that she traveled down to Virginia Tech after their unfortunate shooting and talked with a person who a suspect shot in the leg in a classroom. Kissinger suggested that our class perform in the same way; get as much information as possible from people involved in the chosen subject. Ask that psychiatrist. Don’t be afraid of figuring out the story behind that particular family member with that illness. Letting different but personal voices be heard only makes an article stronger. Kissinger also developed strong stories due to experiencing her own hardships. She said that she got cancer six years ago. Two of her siblings- one brother and one sister- committed suicide. I learned that we shouldn’t just include other’s stories, but include our own for a little bit as a way of showing others that we empathize with them. I’m glad that Kissinger found her interest in scripting such stories. I’m also interested that she admitted that there are some times when she thought about stories with lighter moods (I have no idea how she thought of writing about clowns making beer ice-cream). But it really is an inspiration that someone is not just writing, but writing about important issues that the society needs more knowledge about. I have a family friend who has a mental illness; his sister passed away from the same situation, but he survived. And I notice that people treat him differently. So it’s great that there are some people willing to teach others about mental illness and how we should work toward accepting each other; regardless of differences. |
Meet Casby.Majoring in journalism with an entrepreneurship minor at Archives
May 2013
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