Capstone/2005 Graduate UPDATE #2

COUNTRY FRIED MEGAN
'05 Wesminster grad Megan Marshall (B.A. Broadcast Comm) is now a young, hot radio star in Ashland, Ohio, where she has combined her passion for radio and her love of country music at WNCO. Visit her blog and make a comment.

http://meganmarshall05.blogspot.com/

I'm extremely happy to see she's keeping us up to date with her weblog. Megan blogs about her experiences after college and her love for broadcasting.

Capstone/ 2005 Graduate UPDATE #1

PAGING PAT SANDORA

'05 Westminster grad Pat Sandora (B.A. Broadcast Comm) is now settled in NYC ready to begin his new job at NBC. He's made a wonderful effort in keeping us up to date with his weblog.

http://patricksandora.blogspot.com/

I'm very pleased he's blogging about his experience. You can always post a comment. I hope everyone will visit his blog and check in on his progress. Just think, last year at this time he was getting ready for the new season of The County Line. Now he's at Rockefeller Center and could potentially be working with Last Call with Carson Daily or Conan or SNL or the Today show or NBC Nightly News.

I'll post more updates on the BC grads keeping their blogs up to date.

Print Coverage of TV News Pirates

Newsbreakers Get Ink from the NY Times

The New York Times acknowledged Newsbreakers and it’s unique brand of media criticism this week in an article by Broadcasting & Cable’s editor Mark Lasswell with a headline “Media Activists Who Smile and Throw Cheese.” (BTW, what's B&C's editor doing as a freelancer for the NY Times? Is he shopping for a job as the magazine is on it's last legs?)



Does this mean everyone else will run to do a story since it was in the Times? Because it’s not news unless it appears in the NY Times.

Clamor NOT Glamour
Freelance journalist Brandon Swanson went commando with Newsbreakers on a live shot raid and features his account in an article published this month in Clamor magazine. His article “Newsbreakers Brand of Media Criticism” includes some quotes from me.

From the article:

Newsbreakers created a flurry in the blogosphere, from college kids titillated by Invisible Suit Guy to media critics wondering what the group was about.

Brad Weaver, broadcast communications instructor at Westmisnter College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, was one of the latter. "They've tapped into the Daily Show kind of thing, " Weaver said. "I love the idea of mocking the news because it's so mockable. There's so much truth in that satire."

Weaver says the Newsbreakers have succeeded in grabbing the public's attention, but questiosn what they're going to do with it, if they're going to use the opportunity to stiumulate the debate and take it in a different direction. "If they're just going to hijack live shots that's cute and novel," Weaver said.

"But are they going to go any further?"

Swanson interviewed me earlier this year after he found my blog and my fondness for what the group was attempting to do as media critics. He was interested in why I thought Hunter Thompson would give his blessing to Newsbreakers.

I guess I was the only someone he could find in academia who would react supportively and hopefully to the Newsbreakers shenanigans.

For the record, while I appreciate the Newbreakers’ methods and madness, I fear the group's message is muddled and unclear. Ordinary citizens and even TV insiders are scratching their heads wondering why they do this.

I was hoping the story would get picked up by something a bit more mainstream (Rolling Stone, TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly, Playboy, Popular Mechanics- LOL).

Clamor is marketed as “the revolution of everyday life.” After visiting the magazine’s website I’m wondering if I’ll end up on some government “watch this freak” list (LOL).

The Clamor article came out well before the NY Times piece.

Attempted Prank Against Pittsburgh’s WPXI
While I was out of town, Newsbreakers attempted to punk WPXI-TV. The PG had a write up about the event characterizing it as unfunny and meaningless.

Instead of disrupting a live shot, a Newsbreaker armed with a camcorder confronted veteran reporter Stu Brown. They asked him why his station only covered crime and death and destruction. The Newsbreaker's web site release included the headline "RANDOM ACTS OF CHAOS DOMINATE LOCAL NEWS; ACCOUNTABILITY SCARCE."

When I defended Brown for only being a foot soldier carrying out the orders of his evil overlords, Newsbreakers “Buck Owens” responded with the following in an e-mail to me:

“I know what you're saying about Stu's role as an employee. Our point is this: Just doing your job is not good enough. Journalists have an ethical duty to advocate for responsible editorial decision making, even if you're the lowest person on the totem pole. In an albeit twisted way, we are trying to inspire people working in TV news to feel empowered to speak up and feel empowered. This the "inside-out" part of our mission."

That's better! This is a clear, meaningful explanation of the Newsbreakers mission. But the problem with the "inside-out" part is the assumption that the people working in TV news are journalists. Are they ethical, hardcore journalism, committed to truth and fairness individuals? I bet they're stuck in a routine and culture of stealing stories out of the newspaper and chasing scanner chatter to fill news holes and what bleeds leads the news?

I seriously doubt if Newbreakers has inspired any TV reporters to stand up to their feeble-minded, paper pushing middle managers and demand a return to ethics and integrity in the newsroom. Despite their claims to be journalists engaged in a noble career, for most it's turned into a job. They're much more consumed with commitment to families, mortgages, medical insurance benefits, etc.

I very concerned that issue of media criticism never comes through the stunts, confrontations and theatrics. I love the novelty and public spectacle of Newsbreakers, but its members must also engage the public and clearly communicate the message. I’m convinced people watching these pranks or viewing the Newsbreakers video clips online don't get it. Are people even bothering with going to the Newsbreakers web site?

The TV news viewers should be the target audience for this media criticism campaign. Promote media literacy and get regular people to recognize the "lameness & sameness" of local news. Promote critical thinking and analysis with the people watching. Get them to recognize how "TV lies" and distorts and fails to serve the community.

That will hit local news operations hard.

One-Man Bands Replace News Crews @ Nashville Station

More VJs More Often
FTVLive & Lost Remote are both reporting that a WKRN in Nashville, TN, (DMA 30) will switch to a staff of all one-man bands next month. FTV calls them one-man bands while Lost Remote promotes the euphemism VJ (video journalist).
Right now WKRN has 13 news crews (reporter/photographer combos) but the GM tells FTV it will jump to 30 VJs next month after everyone is trained with the stations new 30 Sony Z1 cameras (they weigh about 3.5 pounds and the WKRN VJs will hook these cams into Dell laptops for editing).

It appears the reporters will learn to shoot and edit and the photographers will learn how to write and report. WKRN is owned by Young Broadcasting which also owns KRON in San Francisco (DMA 6) which announced it was moving to VJ’s this year.

NUD*IST CAMP

What I have done so far during my summer vacation...

I just finished four weeks of intense NUD*IST Camp. NUD*IST stands for Non-numerical Unstructured Data Indexing Searching & Theorizing and it's a software package for qualitative research. I was in Dr. Maureen Porter's QUADMAP (Qualitative Data Methods and Presentation) course at Pitt's School of Education.


In a nutshell, N6 is a tool for managing rich interview documents, field notes, etc., as you code information for searching and analysis in qualitative research.

I enjoyed working with it (and Dr. Porter was an excellent teacher and communicator). I think it's much more fascinating than merely managing statistics in SPSS. I'd much rather work with people and tell their stories over crunching numbers. The course helped confirm my interest and determination to work in qualitative studies.

Lost (one TV junkie's theory)

I'm LOST and I love it. I have embraced ABC's freshman drama and it's one of my favorite shows. It challenges my imagination through its complex characters and compelling and sometimes chaotic plot development. While Lost lost to American Idol (Lost had 21.8 million viewers in the last quarter hour compared to Idol's 35.2 million), the show clearly has an appeal to a larger audience. Not to mention all the people who TiVoed it. The show brings an audience back from reality TV to scripted programming.

It is unpredictable and never boring. I don't always see the twists coming (but I suspected Walt would be taken).

Some episodes even tackle retelling the same story but from the perspectives of other characters. Lost is inventive and showcases it's characters with rich back stories that are just as compelling as the conflicts on the island. It's these people who are the soul of the show. We want to know how they came to this mysteryous place and what will happen to them?

48 people have survived a horrific plane crash in the South Pacific -- but they were 1,000 miles off course when it happened, so no one knows where they are. What's more the remote island is home to some mysterious things lurking in its interior.

I'm reading plenty of complaints from fan posers posting on various online outlets. They claim they feel cheated or frustrated that they were given no clear answers in the season finale. In fact the finale raised new questions and failed to really resolve any old ones.

That's the nature of an enigma.

That's why we fell in love with The X-Files before it died at the hands of network execs trying to milk a story's mythology dry.

The drive for answers compels us to keep watching and the speculation and theory building draws us together as fans.

Now to my theory...it's not purgatory. They're trapped in the Land of the Lost. (Don't laugh too hard!)

Has J.J. Abrams dropped the Sid & Marty Croft shtick for an invisible "Grumpy" (to serve as a security device for the island's secrets) and the French lady is a bipolar Cha-ka?

If you climb down through the mysterious hatch into the world below you'll find Sleestaks.



So what I'm suggesting is the island is an alternate dimension or closed universe. The island is pothole in the crossroads of alternate realities in time and space that sucks in its victims.

Now our heroes need to find a Pylon and play with the crystals...but they must get the color combinations correct to open a vortex home.

But if I remember premise that evolved in the Land of the Lost, for any person to escape, someone from our world must enter the Land of the Lost or in this case the Island of the Lost.

Could Lost be what you get when you're inspired by a Saturday morning show from the 70's? Was Abrams a fan? From campy Saturday morning adventure could we have the inspiration and premise for something this ambitious? Something to consider.

MEANWHILE...

Hi! I apologize that my "geekness" is showing in this entry, but if you're still reading this and you like puzzles and mysteries read on. The producers are doing a great job in creating puzzles to feed the enigma of the show and building interest in the coming season.

The show's teaser web site was hidden until fans started decrypting the puzzle put out there on the 'net.

Visit the web site for Oceanic-Air

Try putting Hurley's winning lottery numbers in the seating chart and see the fall season preview...4, 8, 15, 16, 23 & 42

Watch the promo for the fall season and it reveals they are NOT the survivors they thought they were as they discover the other side of the island.

Reframing ONE-MAN BANDS as VJs

Today more and more "one-man bands" are popping up in local TV news.


Recently KRON-TV in San Francisco announced it would begin using video journalists, a term some would call a euphemism for one-man bands in broadcast news.

During my time as a broadcast journalist I always functioned as one of these one-man bands. OMBs were typical in small television markets because of the lack of money to hire shooters. Most of the OMBs I know today (as was the case when I was field reporting) long to move on to bigger markets. They want to ditch the gear and hand over the technical work to a photographer while they polish their on camera performance.

But digital ENG technology has replaced the days of lugging around heavy equipment with easy to use, lightweight DV cams. Now management in top 10 markets have good reason to adopt one-man bands.

Some college faculty members are suggesting OMBs are a key part of the future of broadcast news. They say someone who can shoot, edit and report well will have a clear advantage in the job market.

In 1996, during my graduate studies at the University of Kansas I tackled the subject for a research report in a television seminar. I interviewed a number of TV news execs (from Kansas City to Pittsburgh, from local newsrooms to corporate headquarters). Each acknowledged the financial payoff of OMBs and how technology would make it an effective option. Most agreed with the prediction that OMBs would find their way into larger and larger markets.

Some people blame/thank the move on technology. Others blame the renewed popularity of OMBs on Michael Rosenblum. He's credited with reframing the one-man band concept and coining the term video journalist (from my day a VJ was the on camera talent introducing videos on MTV). Rosenblum has been described as being on the cutting edge of the digital 'video-journalist' revolution for more than a decade. He is on of today’s most influential teachers in the digital video journalism field.

Is the VJ the trend aspiring journalists should follow? Should we encourage them to shoot for the reframed OMB positions in this age of media convergence? Should college programs refocus emphasis on video journalism?

Here are some online links to reference as I encourage people to consider the possibilities:

One-man-bands coming to KRON-TV
http://www.lostremote.com/archives/004695.html

Birth of the Personal Journalists

http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/birth-of-personal-journalist.html

What's a One-man Band?

http://www.tvcameramen.com/lounge/one_man_band.htm

One-Man Reporting Band

http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=8131

The Man Behind the VJ Movement
http://www.lostremote.com/archives/004795.html

One-Man "Video Journalists" Coming to Local TV News http://futurewire.blogspot.com/2005/05/one-man-video-journalists-coming-to.html

Strike Up the One-man Band

http://governmentvideo.com/articles/publish/article_404.shtml

Rise of the One-man Band

http://lenslinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/rise-of-one-man-band.html#comments

NewsLab
http://www.newslab.org/articles/onemanbands.htm

Exploding TV: one-man bands
http://www.unmediated.org/archives/2005/05/exploding_tv_on.php
Trend in TV journalism swinging back to one-man bands
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=10966492&BRD=2185&PAG=461&dept_id=422128&rfi=6
DV Dojo
http://www.dvdojo.com/who.php

DV Democratizes TV
http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/inside/2002/dvdojo.html

Have Camera, Will Travel

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.03/newyork.1_pr.html

CyberCollege.org
http://www.cybercollege.org/tvp063.htm

RTNDA Education Program
http://www.rtnda.org/training/eje_barton.shtml

Broken News
http://www.tloffman.com/auschron.htm

The Good Old Days
http://dirckhalstead.org/issue9810/bowers.htm

The Rise of the Independent Video Journalist
http://photogslounge.net/issues9.html

Is The Platypus Just Cheap Labor ?http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0000uC

Weathering the Storm

http://www.tvtechnology.com/features/news/n_hurricane.shtml

Backpack Journalists

http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=101168

Commencement 2005 & FLASHBACK to BC Fest 2005

Rainy weather forced this year's commencement inside the Fieldhouse.

Congratulations to Amy Dalbon, Ian Durham, Sebastian Driver, Laura Krutschnitt, Tandi Lane, Megan Marshall, Ashley Roberts, Pat Sandora, Julie Stolze and Sarah Ubry. They were among the 375 graduates taking home degrees from Westminster's 151st Commencement.

I finally had a chance to meet Tandi's family. Some traveled from Texas and others from Florida.

Meanwhile, Sarah's family is just a few miles away, but I finally met her father as well. BTW, Sarah and her mom, Diane, both received degrees during today's commencment.

I hope all the BC graduates will keep in touch with the gang at WCN and Titan Radio! The network of friends and contacts you make here will serve you well.

I've posted pictures I took with my digital camera.

I tried to find everyone after commencement for a picture or two, but I missed some folks. I apologize for missing Amy, Pat and Megan.

I've included the elusive, blurry shots often associated with "Bigfoot" or the "Loch Ness Monster." Sorry , guys. Which button is for "flash" and which is for "action shot?"

If anyone wants to share their photos with me, I'll add them to my blog! I'm all about blogging and sharing images!


AND FINALLY...A QUICK FLASH BACK TO THE BC FEST IN APRIL... You can click on the picture below to see more from the festival.

And if you missed the mystery video someone made here is a link to it. Just click it or save it to your PC.
You can right click and save it to your PC (hit save target). A broadband connection will probably load/save the file in a few minutes. A dial up could take a while.

CONGRATULATIONS & GOOD LUCK!

We say farewell to the class of 2005 this Saturday, May 14.

Amid the fanfare of commencement ceremonies, hearty handshakes and tearful hugs I’ll be in the crowd with Dr. B and other faculty and staff to witness this milestone.

Thank you for the wonderful BC Festival photo and frame. Thank you for the gathering at Tandi's house last week. I only wish we would have done it more often.

So now it's time to say farewell. I'll miss chasing after you for one thing or another. But now it's time to celebrate.
GOOD LUCK AND CONGRATULASTIONS!

An Invitation to begin blogging NOW &...

DON'T PANIC

If you're registered for BC 601 in the fall, I invite you to create a weblog now for capstone.

Go to Blogger and sign up (it's free).

So what's this blog thing all about?
It's a place for you to reflect and communicate with me and each other (AND THE WORLD) on what you're doing in broadcasting every week. Your BC weblog is where you will explore what you want to do with a career, your job search, your senior project, etc.

What should you blog about?
You will constantly review your professional activities, evaluate your experience and body of work as a broadcaster. You will challenge yourself to improve, etc.
I suggest framing your entry under, "What I did in broadcasting this week..."

You can also discuss current events in the industry to demosntrate you're plugged in to the business and issues of electronic media.

I also encourage you to post links to job resources that may assist you in your future efforts.

Finally, keep your capstone blog PROFESSIONAL and on task. It is about your capstone and broadcasting. I encourage you to review the blogs of your classmates as well and engage in commenting with constructive feedback. However, keep personal matters to a private or separate blog.

BTW- On September 1, 2005, we meet for our first BC 601 meeting. I require that you bring your resume and resume tape or resume CD to that first class. No exceptions.

Are you done with your resume tape?

Are you done with your BC 602/Capstone assignments yet? The capstone presentations are now behind us-- now I'm just waiting on your resume tapes/e-portfolios. And don't forget to put a resume in the time capsule.

If you've actively contributed and commented on the weblogs, completed the required number of weblog entries, completed any outstanding assignment, then you can hope for a fairly positive grade.