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.

Feeling Great After Week Eight

Shift Work
This week was another week for smartdecision08.com. This was the first week that I thought Smart Decision took up the time I spent out there. I was glad to be busy as usually I try to help out at KOMU.com, but think I add one too many chefs to the kitchen. I spent some of the time updating the most recent stories, and then changing the blog posts to full html. One thing I noticed is posts from the Columbia Missourian use sentence case, while the rest of the stories appear in title case. I changed them, but think we should keep them standard one way or another.

While updating the blogs, I noticed that there were quite a few and that they dated back to March 7. I don’t want to be the person who complains about peers, but worry that others didn’t update the blogs as I worked on March 12.

I also updated the Spashcast, and then began my project for the night. I began adding more categories to file stories under. During my time I complete the cities, counties, city races, county races and district categories.

ePortfolio
I felt I got off to a great start this week with my ePortfolio. Working with Dreamweaver is a little tougher than I thought and I still need to do quite a bit of work, but I am very optimistic. I plan on mixing some of my cut-ins tomorrow night for my anchoring page and then completing my resume and cover letter. I should be just about completed after that.

Project
Like I told you on Thursday, we are ready to go and recruit bloggers. I have found plenty of groups to talk to, many of which are both politically savvy and technology savvy.

Additional Information
Like I told you Wednesday, I attended a lecture called Persistence, Importance and Effect of Narrowcasting. It was very interesting as through two studies, the best indicator of who will win and election is the money they spend on radio ads, not television ads. This is because radio is cheap enough to make many ads voiced by and aimed to many demographics. There are only about four television stations, but dozens of radio stations geared to specific demographics. Also while television is a passive media, radio is very aggressive as people listen to it in their car and rarely change the station.

I think this can apply to the Net as sites like YouTube can narrowcast and it costs little to advertise. Again, you can target audiences such as with ESPN.com, the New York Times online and Fox’s website. Obviously we will have to wait for more elections to pass, but I think the Net could take over the radio’s power. As more people switch to satellite radio or iPods, commercials might prove to be less effective. We have already started to see this trend as political candidates make YouTube ads and I heard that political entries on Wikipedia change every thirty seconds. I truly believe in the coming years with more and more becoming educated on the Internet and those who “fail to update to the technology revolution” die off, the Internet could serve as a major player in the election.

Shift Work
This week my shift was with the dot com work. I felt we as a whole on Wednesday’s shift did a pretty good job. I thought all in all, the night went real smooth. I began my shift approving the Missouri headlines, and then creating the large leads for the stories. I think the reporters are beginning to submit freeze frames that tell the story very well.

There are a few things we need to continue to check and double check. First is AP Style formatting that we normally don’t see. This includes things such as when to use money sing, or when to spell out dollar. I think we also need to read and re-read parts to make the stories clearer. I found that in a few stories, one or two words meant all the difference.

I did learn something new this week as Tyne Morgan had a web extra in a Word document. Instead of saving it as a PDF file, I created a new story and copied and formatted what the Word document contained into a new story. I then linked the story together and thought it looked great.

ePortfolio
I spent a little time this week converting all of my video files to flv files and am ready to start working on my ePortfolio. I also emailed Jonathan Coffman and plan on purchasing some of this server space this week. I look forward to working and finalizing my ePortfolio these coming weeks. I wanted to start, but have a few questions as I have never used Dreamweaver before and you mentioned something during Flash training about creating the background, etc.

Smart Decision Project
We are ready to start meeting with and recruiting mid-Missourians to blog, we just need the green flag.

Done With the Mix of Week Number Six

Shift Work
This week marked another in the Smart Decision category. I spent some time doing the basics, updating the spashcaster, changing the blogs to full html and promoting the stories to the front page. All of the other news sites and blogs appeared to update as a new story, but not KOMU.com’s stories.

I also spent some time researching who was going to be in what race. I then handed it off to Mark. As you probably know, politics is really his thing. I think the categories will really add to the site, as navigation will become much easier.

I also spent more time applying another set of eyes to KOMU.com. I kind of disagreed with one of the lead images, so I went to fix it. In order to do that, Jim Matheny helped me out a ton. He showed me many new things that can be done with Photoshop that I did not know how to do. Jim also made me think of something else I usually overlook. That is making sure the lead image and the abstract fit the story. Many times we just take the freeze frame the reporters submit, and use the first line as an abstract. We need to make sure neither misleads.

Project
As I said my post last weekend, our group is ready to roll we just need the OK.

ePortfolio
In the past week, I have become almost excited about the talk of ePortfolios. The flash training only added to it. By looking at others over the past week, I am starting to see the great possibilities an ePortfolio can offer. Like I have said, I really like what Jason Lamb’s looked like and would love to have my ePortfolio provide the same information that his did.

I would also like to add that I think the flash training was great. I know the basics, but now can think in terms of what flash can do. I might even try to take advantage of some of the classes you can take for free on campus.