It's a Good Thing You're Not Mean, I Was Late for Week 15

Jen, I am terribly sorry this blog post is late. I went home for my sister's college graduation this weekend and totally forgot about blogging. I couldn't even believe it myself, I have never missed blogging, and then finals week comes up, I head out of town for the weekend and all of the sudden I forget my assignments. I guess I should always stay in the school-work-and-KOMU-shift-then-sleep-if-there's-time mode.

Shift Work
This week like most of the past few weeks went very smoothly. The stories got posted with most of the reporters having some type of web extra. This was great as not only did it add to their stories, it gave Adrienne and I something else to do. The first few hours of the shift were very slow. Not too many Missouri headlines and all of the reporters came back very late.

As it seems to go, when it is very slow for the first few hours, it becomes crazy rigth around 6. We did fine as Kat and Cate were teaching some new students KOMU.com. The helped with some of the images and edited some text. Looks like you got a good group of people working this summer.

ePortfolio
I am currently in the process of updating mine. I know as of now it lacks some stories, but I want to wait until I have some great stories from next fall to put on my site. You mentioned that with me going into sports, I really need to have an extra project I completed showing my versitility as a video reporter and a web journalist. I was wondering if you have any ideas for this fall. Obviously there is Hometown Highlights.

Done With Week One-Four, Just One More

Shift Work
This week I had my second-to-last Smart Decision 08 shift. I did the normal stuff, you know updating the blogs, checking stories and adding videos to the Splashcast player. I also tried to add content to the candidates pages. I found photos for Andrew Finkenstadt and Christina Anderson. I was having trouble finding photos for the other candidates. I even called several of the local papers from where the candidate is from hoping they could send us a mug shot or something as most newspapers keep important local people on file. No luck there as no one could help. The paper in Jackson had just found out that Jennie Lee (Jen) Schwartze Sievers is running for governor. I guess maybe those local papers should focus more on actual news rather than the Heritage Club visiting the Ponderosa in Farmington! Because not too much content needed updated, I also gave an extra pair of eyes to KOMU.com.

I do have one concern for Smart Decision. I am not sure the candidates for the 9th Congressional District for example are easily assessible. Maybe this is where we need to focus as many sites may have governor information, not too many will have the 9th or 25th information. I guess I had a few problems at first finding some of these candidates to try to add content to and I know the site. I guess I could see why people may get on the page for a few minutes and find it a little tough navigating.

Group Project
I think we did the the best we could. We really tried to reach the various groups. We introduced them to the site and tried to get them to blog. The total stroy will be told tomorrow at the brown bag presentations. I originally was going to help present, but as something came up for me I won't be able to be there. I think our group did a good job as we identified groups we can/have talked to and mentioned some of the hurdles we ran into. I think if someone takes on the project after us, they will find success. I mentioned it in my News from the Net, but here is a very interesting read. MySpace has teamed up with NBC to create a SmartDecision-like site. Check out this site: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/news/sections/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsLang=en&newsId=20080421006566

I don't have too much more to say I guess. Thats' my blog for the week. See you in class.

Still Fresh, Still Clean after Week 13

Before I continue my blogging for the week, I have to give major props to Joe Murano. He filled in for Adrienne Peterson on her dot com shift and did a great job. He got the email sent out, the FirstView text message sent out and the few other dot com duties all on time. What a way to learn on the fly.

Shift Work
As I already have hinted at, Joe really made the dot com shift run super smoothly. I noticed I am still having problems getting the Broadcast III students getting in their freeze frames. The B2ers just need me to show them and then they do it with no complaining. I understand that capturing video takes a little longer than normal, but it takes just a few seconds to freeze frame an image. On the bright side, the B2ers have learned that they have to freeze frame an image for the web.

Other than that it was the same stuff I normally do on a KOMU.com shift – Missouri headlines, lead images, transferring stories, etc.

Smart Decision Blogging
Like I told you the other day, the blogging, or lack there of, has me pretty bummed. I feel we need to approach the situation a different way but don’t know how. We have visited group after group. We’ve talked to young and old, Democrats and Republicans and still no blogging. We sent out over 100 letters encouraging people to blog and still not one. I guess I just feel like we are spinning our wheels as nobody has blogged yet.

I have a theory behind this. No offense to mid-Missourians, I claim myself to be one. I just am not sure if they are that tech savvy yet to blog. Another hurdle I see is that most have opinions and issues they discuss daily, but don’t want to make them public and attach their name it them.

On the bright side, Mike Zwiefel of the Missouri Young Republicans has put our blogging information in his weekly newsletter to members. Hopefully this will help.

That’s my blog for the week. I hope you have a super week and those mid-Missourians start blogging.

After Twelve Weeks in a Row, Only Three to Go

Shift Work
I came in a few hours early for my shift and took care of what needed to be done during my shift. I don’t know if it was because people were at RTNDA and missed their shifts or whatever, but I had to update many of the videos for the Splashcast player. My shift is on Wednesday and some of the videos I had to update were from Friday. I also made sure all of the blog categories were correct with Linked Bloggers.

One problem I noticed is that many people in the dot com area need to actually read some of the stories and realize whether they need to be applied to the Smart Decision site. Some stories I read on KOMU.com had election/political messages that should also be shared on Smart Decision. On the flip side, there were also some stories that had not election/political reason to be on Smart Decision. It looked as if whoever added the $election category to all the stories from the night.

I also gave a look at KOMU.com and helped them out as much as possible.

Group Project
I don’t know how the rest of my group feels, but I am beginning to feel a bit worried about our project. First, nobody has started posting after we have made only a few visits, but visits. That to me is very discouraging. I really think once we get people to start, they will, but it seems so tough getting the discussion going.

I am also worried about some of the members in our group. They have not really added to the group at all and our work has suffered. I know we are all busy with the end of the semester quickly approaching, but we all need to really get going.

Hopefully with a few more presentations this week, we can finally get people to start blogging. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

ePortfolio
I plan on updating my site right before the end of school and getting it ready to possibly show people during summer. I plan to add a few more stories. I still have not received critiques about my site and welcome them, as I want a great portfolio.

The Workload Weighs a Ton in Week One-One

Shift Work
This week’s KOMU.com shift seemed awfully busy this week. I think the note cards that explain the web extras and the freeze-frames have already started working. I also think once the new B2 reporters get the hang of it, the process will run smoothly. I spent part of my shift updating the Missouri wires. I’m not sure anybody had updated them since the night before. I did and I must tell you their were some pretty strange stories including a man accidentally killing his wife while installing a television and a respond to a self-inflicted gunshot wound and a six-foot alligator in the basement. Pretty crazy huh?

I must give major props to Rebekah Heil for being such a trooper this week during her dot com shift. I had to leave for a time to visit with the Mizzou College Republicans to introduce them to smardecision08.com. I will tell of the visit a little later in my post, but Rebekah did a fantastic job. I had to leave right as all of the stories were ready to go online and she took care of most of it. I later returned to make up for the time I lost.

Group Project
We have really hit the ground running on our group project. I met with the Mizzou College Republicans on Wednesday and it went pretty well. There were probably 30 people at the meeting and most seemed pretty interested. The group president Marcus Bowen said Democrats often speak out louder than Republicans, and he too wished the College Republicans would participate.

On Thursday, I was supposed to meet with the Mizzou Model United nations, but for some reason they must have canceled their meeting as nobody showed up. I guess I’ll have better luck next week. Brittany Stalker also visited with a group on Thursday and she said they seemed pretty excited about possibly blogging.

I guess that is all I have to say for this week. I’m just kind of worried we can make all of these visits, but people may still not blog. We’ll still try anyway.

ePortfolio
I have not yet recieved your critique of my web page. I know there are certain things that need correcting as the banner is not consistent throughout the site.

Week 10 Done, Still Havin' Fun

Shift Work
This week I was back at Smart Decision. We didn’t seem to have too many stories to update. In fact, I think there was just one. The blogs are nice now that they automatically format to full html and it saves tons of time. I checked the political stories to see if any videos needed to be updated to the Splashcast video player.

Because I did not have too many updates this week, I gave another pair of eyes to KOMU.com. Adrienne needed some extra help right as I got there so I helped her out as much as I could. I think the day all-in-all went smoothly as reporters got their freeze frames in, got their scripts in early and everything was great.

ePortfolio
I know I need to make a few minor adjustments to my website. The banner is not consistent throughout the entire site. I also plan on continually updating my site. As I have just started sports, I plan on making a new tab to put my sports stories on when I get it. Also I must add that my friends all think my website is pretty cool. Thanks for requiring us to make them.

Group Project
I have sent out a few basic Facebook messages to several university/college groups asking if we could talk to them at an upcoming meeting. I also plan this week to talk with some of the county Republican and Democrat offices. I found this guy named Mike Zweifel who is a major player in Republican support. I really want to talk with him and see if he is interested. I know he is involved with the Central Missouri Young Republicans and think he could put us in contact with other major players.

Still Feelin' Fine After Week Nine

Shift Work
I wasn't sure whether we were to blog or not this week, so I decided to anyway. It was another KOMU.com shift this week and I thought for the most part it went pretty smoothly. I do however have one major concern. I don't want to be the guy who gripes, but I think there is a misunderstanding or lack of communication between the paid dot commers on what they should post. Here's the story.

The girl I worked with from 2 until 5 started to post VO/SOTs from the 5 and didn't bother posting the packages. When I mentioned this to her, she said she just wanted to get something online for now. The problems is, the person who came in at 5 saw that a version of the story was posted, and didn't put up the package. When I said something, she acted as almost she didn't care and that at least something was posted, even if it weren't the package. I don't mean to be critical or tell people what they have to do, but in my mind that sets a lazy and dangerous precedent. This might be something that needs addressing,

ACM also went down for a time and reporters still need reminding three or four times on getting freze frames in, but other than that all went smooth.

ePortfolio
My ePortfolio is finally up and you can use either the link I sent you or mattlothrop.com. There are a few glitches I need to fix. If you look, the banner is not the same on all of the pages.

Group Project
Like I said in our meeting, we are ready and will begin when we return from Spring Break.

Have a great break yourself.