For My Grand Finale…

*Tear* *Tear*

As the leaves fall off the tree and I make my last trek to the equipment check out window in Walter Williams Hall, I know that the time has come. My time in Multimedia Journalism has come to an end, and it’s sad.

But before we get to the tear-fest, let’s talk final project because IT’S DONE! You heard me! Our final project is D-O-N-E DONE! It’s been a hectic, stressful, but overall fantastic few weeks working on this project. I am so glad that my groupmates and I found ourselves doing a project on veterans. No matter your feelings on war and American foreign policy, you have to be impressed with the sacrifice of the men and women who choose to serve our country. The stories they have to tell are not only incredibly important for people to be made aware of, they’re also mind-boggling interesting. Whenever I work on stories involving veterans and military personnel, it is always a struggle to cut out anything that these people say in order to produce my final content (see last week’s post for more on that).

And the veterans I worked with on this project were fantastic. Major Bruce Schlager was incredibly kind and helpful to me as he discussed his 32 year military career and the impending military career of his daughter. 2nd Lt. April Miller trekked out to Mark Twain Hall in full uniform and provided great insight on what it’s like to be a woman in the military today and how far we still have to go. And I can’t say enough about Col. Bill Boston. He not only came out to Mark Twain twice for interviews, but he and his fantastic wife, Ro (who also came out to Mark Twain to be interviewed), scanned and sent me over a dozen family photos that I was able to use to help tell their story. I knew not one of these people a few weeks ago and I am so glad that I got to meet them and tell their stories.

Which moves us into the meat of our final project: the content. After debating numerous times on how we would organize the content we had produced for our website, we settled on what I feel was a great, simple solution. Our site (jillianideutsch.wix.com/seeingservice) has but five sections. The first is a home page with one of my favorite photos I took throughout this process along with an excellent introductory paragraph written by Jill Deutsch. Our next section is “Veterans.” This is where we get to tell the stories of the great veterans we met in this process. I produced a long video piece on Col. Boston and his wife Ro along with an audio piece on Maj. Schlager discussing his daughter. Jill used the interview I did with Lt. Miller to produce an audio piece where she discusses her experiences as a woman in the military. These pieces compliment a great story written by Jill that ties all of our veterans and their experiences together. Our third section is titled “Students.” This page is built around a photo gallery of an MU ROTC PT test that Jill got up before 5:00 AM to shoot. And she got some amazing photos to boot! This page also has a audio piece about Staff Sgt. Patrick Dent, a 27-year-old MU student who served in the Air Force before coming to campus. Carolin Lehman interviewed him and got him to talk about some of the difficulties young veterans face when they return home and go to get an education. Our final content-based section is titled “Recognition.” Here, we focused on how MU and the Columbia community recognize and commemorate the service of our veterans. For this page, I produced a video from footage taken at the Veterans Day Wreath Laying Ceremony at Memorial Tower. I spent an entire Saturday working on this video and I think it’s one of the best pieces I did for this class. The page also has a video produced by Carolin about Memorial Union and the poem, written by MU football star “Peaches” Graham in the early 1900s in support of building Memorial Tower. Our final page is “About Us” and has three lovely pictures and descriptions of the journalists who spent the past few weeks piecing this all together.

Now back to the tear-fest. As I’ve written before, I always saw myself as a writer. In high school, anything that smelled of multimedia I passed off to someone else. I was a journalist and journalists write so that’s what I was going to do. And then I got to this class and my whole journalistic perspective changed. I realized the freedom that multimedia offered in storytelling. I realized the doors it opened to tell better and more engaging stories that deserved to be told. I also realized that I didn’t completely suck at it, which was a welcome surprise. Throughout the semester, I found myself becoming more and more enamored with multimedia to the point that I’ve changed my interest area and am exploring the world of convergence. I’ve learned a lot in my classes here at MU but this may have been the class where I learned and gained the most. I came into this semester with next-to-nothing in terms of knowledge about any type of journalism outside of the written word. When I go home to Minnesota for winter break in a few weeks, it will be as a totally new journalist with a new set of skills and, more importantly, a new outlook on what journalism can and should be.

I’ve always thought that good stories are the hallmark of good journalism and that good storytellers are good journalists. Because of this class, I am confident that I have become and will continue to become a better storyteller with a whole new array of skills to use as I try to figure out what kind of journalist I’m going to end up as.

To my instructor, Shane Epping, I want to thank you for instilling in us the importance of storytelling and giving us the tools to tell our own stories.

It’s been a blast. Have a happy holidays, friends.

How Do You Tell A Colonel in the Air Force To Stop Talking?

You know when something that looks like it’s going to be a really unfortunate happening in your life turns into a really fortunate happening in your life? Happened to me.

Let me fill you in. In my Multimedia Journalism class, the last half of the semester is almost solely focused on our final projects. The final projects are completed in groups of three and are intended to put together everything we learned about multimedia in the first half of the class (i.e. photo, audio, video, etc.) in one, coherent website. Of course, the hardest part of any journalistic venture is finding your story. We came up with three solid story ideas to pitch to our class: a story about the state of reading (specifically in regards to its popularity and the growing popularity of e-books), a profile on a Jefferson City man who owns a PR firm in addition to staging houses for listings, and a deeper look at the historic buildings that dot the MU campus such as the Conley House and Memorial Union.

Initially, we zeroed in on the historic buildings story (I loved the reading story but we figured it would be difficult to find good multimedia components to tell it). We thought it would be really cool to use these unique buildings to tell the rich history of our campus. But, as often happens in journalism, we had some problems. We had trouble gaining access to the Conley House and we couldn’t figure out for sure which sorority house was the oldest on campus. So just a few weeks out from our due date sitting in class talking about our project with our instructor, we had nothing. Since we had done very little and there was little looking up on this project, we switched gears and switched our project idea. Naturally, we were a little worried. Over a week into the process, we had nothing and we were starting over on a whole new idea.

But, it was the situation we were in and we were going to go forward with our new topic: veterans in Columbia. And I am so happy that we did. If we hadn’t, I wouldn’t have met Colonel William Boston III.

Part of our decision to switch our topics to veterans was the fact that we were coming up on Veterans’ Day and there were lots of events happening around MU and greater Columbia that we could use as part of our coverage, one of them being a parade and ceremony along Eighth Street. We covered the event for two reasons: as part of our overall veterans coverage and to find some veterans that we could interview for our website. I followed the parade down along Eighth Street to the Boone County Courthouse where the ceremony was to be held. I popped around the amphitheater adjacent to the courthouse taking hundreds of photos. After the ceremony, I found one gentleman in the crowd in uniform. His name was Major Bruce Schlager and he agreed to be a part of our story. After taking a few pictures of Major Schlager, I looked around and found that most people had cleared out. One of the only places left that had a strong concentration of people was the stage where the ceremony’s keynote speaker, Col. Boston, was talking alternately with journalists and children. I figured, what the hell, I mine as well go big before I went home. So I made my way to the stage and asked Col. Boston if he would be willing to be interviewed for our story. He said he was willing and gave me his number to call him later and set up a time. So it was that on Tuesday morning, I sat in one of the 7th floor study rooms in Mark Twain Residence Hall conducting an interview with a colonel in the Air Force.

Wow.

Like I said earlier, this final project is supposed to bring together everything we’ve learned all semester. This interview was going to be an audio interview and we’ve been taught that you shouldn’t record much more than 10 minutes of audio because it will take FOREVER to go through and edit down to a reasonable length that people will be willing to listen to.

We begin the interview. I ask him about why he joined the military. His answer was several minutes long. And totally captivating. And so it went on. I would ask him a question and he would give a totally engaging and fascinating answer…that would last several minutes. Long story short, I am now in possession of nearly 40 minutes of freaking amazing audio from this interview. I have him talking about flying planes in Vietnam. I have him talking about welcoming back fellow servicemen after they were released from North Vietnamese prisoner of war camps. I have him talking about working in Germany as part of NATO during the Cold War. I have nearly 40 minutes of gold that I need to edit down to 3 minutes MAXIMUM. His audio was so good that I can’t let it merely be an audio piece. I asked Col. Boston for some photos from his time in the Air Force, and I am going to do a video interview of him and his wife (I’ve posted a video down below that is serving as partial inspiration for this piece).

To make a long story pretty long, finding a great story is hard. But when you do, don’t you dare tell an Air Force colonel to stop talking.

Until next time.

#CPOY

Photojournalism is so cool that I can’t even stand it. My love and appreciation of the still image continues to grow with no end or plateau in sight. My most recent catalyst in my love affair with photo-j was the judging of the 68th Annual College Photographer of the Year contest held right here at Fair Missouri.

For our lab period this past Tuesday, my multimedia went over to Tucker Forum in Gannett Hall and sat in on a portion of the CPOY judging. When we arrived, the judges were in the home stretch of judging the feature category, having winnowed down a pool of 1,100 images to less than 40. I can’t even imagine what it is like for the judges to sit in a dark room all day and look at thousands upon thousands of images and try to find the amazing among the incredible. On one hand, I think it would be out-of-this-world to be able to spend my days sitting and having the opportunity to just look at brilliant photojournalism. On the other hand, that’s an awful long time to sit in one, dark room and not feel the need to punch somebody.

But as soon as I sat down, I was hooked. The images were breathtaking and the intensity with which the judging took place was even more so. A photo would appear on the screen and within a few seconds, four judges would decide its fate by entering their vote on their clickers. Once their votes were in, the student presiding over the control panel would yell out one of two words: “IN” or “OUT.” More often than not, the three-letter word won out and we all watched as dozens of really incredible works of photojournalism were discarded from the competition. It was unavoidable to place yourself in the shoes of the judges and begin judging the images yourself and guessing what the judges would decree about each image. It became a a series of mental sprints: you had to look at the image, take in its content and composition, and make an informed decision on it, all in the span of a few seconds. I found that most of the time my thoughts on an image, or at least my final determination, mirrored that of the judges (as opposed to when I watch The Voice or American Idol and the judges hate all of the contestants that I love. Maybe it’s a good thing I want to go into journalism and not the music business).

Once the judges had brought cut the number of images down under 40, they began to take a closer look at each image individually. The first step was usually hearing the photo’s caption in order to get a better sense of what was going on in the image. For one picture, the length and rambling-ness of its caption immediately turned off the judges and the photo was dropped from the competition. After hearing the captions, another round of judging took place, cutting the field in half and leaving the judges with less than 20 images with which to work.

This was when the really good conversations got going.

The judges looked through each photo one by one and talked it over as a group. What did they like? What didn’t they like? What were they even looking for out of a photo in the feature category? It became obvious that the judges weren’t always in agreement and that judges had favorites in the race that they wanted to convince their compatriots of their worthiness. One of the interesting aspects of the feature category is that its broad nature allowed for an incredible diversity of subjects in the photos from parents caring for paralyzed children to sheep jumping in the air. How are you supposed to compare and judge those two photos against each other? How can you grade those on the same curve? What’s more important: the content of the image or its composition? And what qualifies as good content? How do you grade that out in a category that allows for such contrasting images?

In the end, the judges selected six photographs from this category to recognize with medals or awards of excellence. Interestingly, they for the most part chose photos that didn’t capture very intense or poignant moments, instead opting for cool-looking photos that captured an interesting moment as opposed to a decisive one. I certainly can’t argue with the quality of the photos they selected but some of the photos they decided not to use I felt were not only excellent photographs aesthetically, but powerful as well.

Whether I agreed with the judges rationales or not, the experience of watching the CPOY judging was an incredible one. I got to see the highest level of work that my peers around the world are doing and gain some insight into how some of the best in the business think about a “good” photo. I highly encourage you to follow the rest of the judging and check out all the winning images at cpoy.org.

Until next time.

Sundays at Grammy’s

Joan Bay or “Grammy,” left, catches up with Cassa Niedringhaus on Sunday, Nov. 3. Niedringhaus said she loves spending her Sundays at Grammy’s.

Columbia, Mo. — For most college students, Sundays in the fall are recovery days. On Sunday, you recover from long days of college football, long nights of partying or spending time with friends, and not doing any homework that’s due on Monday. While most students get this done in their dorm rooms, I get to spend my Sundays at somewhere much better.

Almost every Sunday, I go to the home of Don and Joan Bay, the grandparents of my freshman roommate Jacob Steimer. The Bays, known better as Grammy and Papa to Jacob and his friends, live 15 minutes away from campus and are always happy to open their home to college students looking to recharge.

“Grammy’s house always makes me sleepy and full,” said sophomore Cassa Niedringhaus. On this day, Niedringhaus joined sophomore Mark Collins, Jacob and myself at Grammy’s house watching football and enjoying Grammy’s famous cooking (homemade dip and cookies today).

Going to Grammy’s is always one of the highlights of my weeks in the fall and I can’t imagine my college weekends without it anymore.

Mark Collins (right), Jacob Steimer (left) and Niedringhaus (floor) relax and watch football in the Bay’s basement on Sunday, Nov. 3. The basement plays host to football watching, eating, doing homework and sleeping most fall Sundays.

What Do You Guys Think?

After several weeks and several pleasant car drives out to lovely Harrisburg, Missouri, I have completed the five pieces that make up my first multimedia project as a journalist. It was a profile of the Muno family and their farm and business, Goatsbeard Farm. The Muno’s own an 80-acre farm in Harrisburg, Missouri, where they raise animals, produce and sell goats’ cheese, and raise a lovely family. I truly enjoyed getting to know the Munos and telling their story.

This project also helped me learn that I’m not the writing-only journalistic snob I previously thought I was. It was a great experience getting to tell these stories through media I had never used before to any great extent. It was certainly a challenge learning to use the new equipment and having to change my perspective and practices as a journalist to tell a story in a different and more visual way. It was exciting to learn that I really, really, really enjoyed taking photographs and putting together photojournalism pieces. It was even more exciting to learn that I wasn’t awful at it.

Ken Muno, owner and operator of Goatsbeard Farm, interacts with his herd of nearly 50 goats on Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2013, on his 80-acre farm in Harrisburg, Mo. Each goat has its own name and is part of a line of goats with similarly themed names.

Muno cracks a smile on Friday, Sept. 13, 2013, while brushing off a wheel of goat cheese inside his farm’s Dairy. Muno and his staff spend two full days each week processing their goats’ milk into artisanal goat cheese.

Keaton, one of two bucks who make their home at Goatsbeard Farm, peers through the fence of his enclosure on Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2013. Keaton and his fellow buck, Squire, are responsible for fathering many of the goats in farm’s herd.

It was fun to piece together an audio interview that had to stand alone as its own story. Doing an interview that you will later quote and paraphrase as part of a larger story is a completely different animal than knowing that your subject’s answers on their own have to be able to tell the story. I can’t go in and lead the story and provide context which can be frightening. But I really enjoyed it and I think it came out well.

My co-favorite piece was my audio slideshow which combined a couple dozen still images I had taken over a few weeks and interviews with Ken and Jenn Muno, the owners of Goatsbeard. The piece walked the viewer through the Muno’s cheese making process all the way from raising the goats to selling the cheese at market. I loved seeing so many of my images turn out well and see the pairing of the images and the Munos’ interviews tell their story.

http://web.missouri.edu/rblrk6/2150/Levi_Audio_Slideshow/

I dipped my toe into the ocean of video with my short video piece. I focused this piece on the Muno’s 12-year-old son Peter and his role on the farm. Working with video was a whole new ballgame and it certainly had a learning curve in terms of setting up and getting the shots I needed. It’s clear that this was my first foray into video, but I’m still proud of the piece and I think it turned out well.

The final piece I did was my broadcast-style video where I got to/had to interject my own voice and narrate the story, in addition to interviews and b-roll. This is my other co-favorite and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

This really was a great experience and I’m excited to move on to my group final project and continue and improve upon the skills I gained covering the Munos.

Until next time.

How Close Would You Get To A Stranger On The Street?

You’re walking down the street and a guy stops you and asks you for a moment of your time. Oh brother. You know where this is going. And you know exactly what you’re going to say. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any money on me only my debit card.” “I don’t sign petitions.” “I really don’t have any time.” But it turns out that he isn’t asking for money or signatures. He’s wondering if you would be willing to be in a photo or two. But it’s not just going to be you. You’re going to be in the picture with one or more complete strangers. And he wants to pose you close and intimately. Sound like a plan?

This is exactly what photographer Richard Renaldi has been doing for the past 6 years. Take a look at this CBS report on his work:

First of all…this is so cool! The idea alone is enough to knock me back a few feet. We have become a very jaded and protective society. One of the first things kids learn is not to talk to strangers and that follows us throughout our lives. Even after it ceases to be a safety issue, we continue to live in our own worlds, actively avoiding random encounters with strangers. We put our headphones in while we walk down the street. We put our heads down and make a bee line for our destination. If we’re ever placed in a situation where we may have to interact with a stranger, we take out our smartphones until the situation and the awkwardness dissipates. I know a girl, one of the nicest people I have ever met, who felt the need the develop a “bitch face” for walking down Manhattan streets because she didn’t want to appear eager to start conversations with strangers.

Which makes what Renaldi is doing even more impressive. He is going into a society that is fearful of strangers to an obsessive level. That’s not even to mention the climate of separation that exists between different social, economic, and racial classes in today’s America. He puts together people from different genders, ages, socio-economic status, races and those are just the differences we can observe or infer. Who knows how different these people are politically or religiously? And yet Renaldi has them holding hands and placing their heads on each other’s shoulders.

Which brings us to the third level of craziness. Renaldi isn’t just asking these people to pose together. He’s asking them to touch. And get close. Hand to face close. Hand to chest close. Close close. Complete strangers touching each other in public in ways that some couples feel uncomfortable doing. Check out Renaldi’s website to see just how close.

While the idea itself is brilliant, it’s Renaldi’s skill in conveying these moments through his photos that really brings everything together. When you see one of his photos you only see three things: the subjects’ first names, the name of the collection (“Touching Strangers”) and the photo. The title of the collection makes it clear that the subjects don’t know each other and the lack of last names reinforces this surface level relationship. But that information comes up against the incredible emotional depth that his pictures almost always convey. You are looking at a photo of people who you know just met, but they look so comfortable and intimate that you would think they’ve known each other for decades.

Which forces you to think. If they can make those kind of connections in such a short period of time, why are we constantly avoiding each other? If there is that level of connection waiting for us out there, why are we actively running past it? Why do we forget that every friend we have in the world began as a total stranger?

And all of this from a collection of photographs. So, yeah, I’d say the still image still has some power.

In other news, I am finished with my first half project in my Multimedia Journalism class and I will be uploading the complete project in one of my posts in the near future. I really enjoyed documenting Goatsbeard Farm and I think it produced some pretty cool work.

Until next time.

I Want To Be A Journalist…But What Kind?

I had it all figured it out.

I was going to write for my high school newspaper for 3 years, be editor-in-chief as a senior, go to the best journalism school in the country (Fight Tiger), buff up my skills in the magazine sequence, and get a job at Rolling Stone or Sports Illustrated as a stud writer. The first two phases went off without a hitch. I started writing for the nationally recognized The Royal Page (hopkinsrp.org) at Hopkins High School in Minnesota and became the co-editor-in-chief as a senior. I spent my three brilliant years there writing about everything under the sun – sports, news, entertainment, op-ed, the works. But all I did was write (and design pages). But I didn’t take photos, edit photos, make videos, nothing. I was a master delegater of any and every task that involved creativity and didn’t fit into my vision of the pure journalism I wanted to pursue.

I repeat. I had it all figured it out.

Then I got to Mizzou. It started out fine. Freshman year was great and I was cruising on my way to becoming the world-class magazine writer that I was destined to be (jokes). Sophomore year started and I filled out my interest area application, proudly and confidently circling magazine journalism.

And then it all went down hill.

First, enter Shane Epping. Shane is an adjunct professor at Mizzou and he as the distinct honor of being my instructor for Multimedia Journalism this semester. Shane is also a professional photographer and photojournalist who took all of two weeks to take a kid who spent three years delegating every photo opportunity that came his way and make him strongly consider becoming a photojournalist. So just mere weeks after I had signed away the next two and a half years of my college career to the magazine world, Shane had the gall to go and make photojournalism appealing.

Now, enter Tori Partridge. Tori is a senior here at Mizzou and she was my CA (read as RA) my freshman year. Tori is the type of person who is so freaking nice and outgoing and bubbly that it’s damn near impossible not to become friends with her within minutes of meeting her. Tori is also a journalism student. She has woven her way through several of journalism’s choices before finally settling on convergence editing. And being the bubbly and outgoing person she is, when I asked her about convergence, she was only too happy to tell me just how freaking awesome convergence journalism was. She talked about how convergence allowed the story to take the lead and for journalists to be able to choose the best way to report a story (written, audio, visual, combination, etc.) as opposed to finding a story that fits your medium. For a journalism nerd, that’s like manna from heaven. Being able to report on any story I want and then choose which method is best? Sign me up! Add in the experiences I’m having in Multimedia Journalism telling stories in new and creative ways and you’ve got a convergence convert waiting in the wings. And so now my year which had started with a clear vision that remained mostly unchanged since sophomore year had, in less than two months, become a free-for-all. Keep in mind that through all of this, I’m still signed up to do the magazine sequence, my wavering dedication to that field notwithstanding.

I’ve always been a good writer. I love writing. I want to write for a living. So let’s do magazine. But journalism is moving beyond just the written word. And magazines aren’t exactly a growth industry. And taking photos is so much fun. And the emotion and power that a single photograph can emit can blow the best written stories out of the water. So let’s do photo-j. But if magazine journalism is a tough sell in today’s industry, photo journalism is even tougher. And I just started taking real photographs last month. What makes me think I can suddenly become good enough of a photographer in three years that I’ll be able to make a living off of it? And photo is just one part of the growing multimedia world. Video, audio and infographics are doing big things. Being able to tell stories and tell them well through any and all of those mediums would allow to search for the best stories and make me a hot commodity on the journalism trading floor. So let’s do convergence. But I’m not really a huge fan of video. And it would be silly for me to leave writing. Plus I don’t really want to leave writing.

Do you see my problem?

Which brings us to tomorrow. That is when I will meet with my journalism advisor, Mr. Shawn Wallace, who hopefully will be able to help me wade through the waves that have arisen in my journalism future and make my way to clear seas.

Coming soon to a blog post near you: I will be posting my completed series on Goatsbeard Farm that I have been working on for the first half of this semester in Multimedia. Here is a taste of what’s to come:

Until next time.

Why Can’t There Be More People Like Malala Yousafzai?

I want you to take a minute and close your eyes. I want you to think back to when you were 16. Are you there? Good. What are you remembering? I’m remembering getting my driver’s license and eventually my own car. I’m remembering lifting weights and going to football practice. I’m remembering stressing about AP U.S. History exams. I’m remembering going to Twins and Timberwolves games. I’m remembering staying up until 3 AM with my friends talking and playing video games. I’m remembering thinking that getting dumped by my girlfriend of 4 months was a big blow.

What if I told you that there was a 16-year old out there who will remember traveling the world, giving speeches (including to the United Nations), writing a book, being a world-renowned education activist and a Nobel Peace Prize finalist? What if I told you that in addition to all that, that 16-year old will also remember having their life constantly threatened by their government? What if I told you that 16-year old will also remember being shot on a school bus and almost dying? This person is real and her name is Malala Yousafzai. She is a 16-year old girl from the Swat Valley in northwestern Pakistan, and, simply put, she is incredible.

I can’t do her story justice but I’m going to do my best to give you a brief idea of how inspiring her story is (if you’re interested in her full story, her book I Am Malala went on sale this week).

Malala’s story starts with her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai. Ziauddin is a poet, school owner and an outspoken education advoacte. Her father ensured that his daughter had access to an education and encouraged her activism early on. When Malala told her dad that she wanted to be a doctor, he told her that she should become a politician. It was also Ziauddin that presented Malala with the opportunity in January 2009 to start writing a blog for BBC Urdu about the daily life of a Pakistani schoolgirl. She was 11 years old. (You can read Malala’s first several blog entires translated to English here.) Later that month, the Taliban issued an edict restricting girls access to schooling. Girls were allowed back into schools a few months later amdist continued violence in the area. Malala blogged about the difficult situation until March and was soon after approached by The New York Times reporter, Adam B. Ellick, about doing a documentary. The documentary brought worldwide attention to Malala and her cause and led to her being recognized by numerous organizations and dignitaries across the world.

It also led to her being a target. Malala received numerous death threats and in the summer of 2012, Taliban leaders unanimously decided to kill her. On October 9, 2012, a Taliban hit man boarded a bus Malala was riding and shot her in the head and neck. She was 15 years old. After multiple surgeries, she remained in a coma for a week before starting her eventual recovery. After being shot at by the Taliban, many people would take a hint and stop doing whatever got them shot. But not Malala. She has continued to stand up for everyone’s right to get an education, culminating in the creation of the Malala Fund, which supports girls education, and Malala’s speech to the United Nations on July 12, 2013. It was her also her 16th birthday.

Earlier this week, Malala appeared on the The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (below) and wowed everyone in the room. Her answer specifically on what she would say to the Taliban if they came to kill her as won her applause and astonishment from all over the world.

We need more people like Malala in the world. We need more people of every age to be willing to stand up against oppression. We need more people of every age to understand the importance that education plays in our societies. What Malala said about the Taliban was inspiring. Bu what she said about education, I think, may be even more important. Malala understands the importance of education, the necessity of education. She understands that there are lots of problems in this world and that there is no single solution that can solve them all. But she understands that universal education is as a good place as any to start. She understands that going to school is vital to children of the world growing up and being productive members of society. She understands that school doesn’t only teach science and mathematics but it also teaches students how to communicate, work and live with each other. All of these skills are vital for the global civilization that we are building with more cultures than we can count.

This is also a great time to look at the power of good, grassroots journalism. This all started with a special girl who used her journalistic platform, a blog just like this, to write about what she was seeing and what she thought about it. She did something that anyone as the ability to do. She did something that more people need to be doing.

Thank you, Malala. Keep on doing you.

Until next time.

Is Journalism Dead? I’m Not Sure. But Quitting Journalism via Dancing is Alive and Well.

This is my seventh blog post and this will be the second time already that I’ve discussed the ever approaching death of journalism. It’s coming. It’s coming to take your children and leave them to find all of their news on Twitter, Facebook and blogs while monkeys dance and throw their feces at each other on the burned ruins of The New York Times building. Okay. That may be a bit of an exaggeration. I’m not sure how capable monkeys are of choreographing dance numbers. But I stand by the rest.

While the fate of journalism is consistently on my mind as a second-year journalism student, this post is not coming out of the blue. It came from the same place most things do these days: I saw a viral video about it. The video is courtesy of Mizzou grad Marina Shifrin (you can check out her blog here) who decided that she’s had enough with what passes for journalism these days and quit her job. As with any major life career decision, she decided to make her exit via a dope dance video. Please watch and we’ll reconvene further down the page.

If she was as good at making news videos as she is at making “I quit journalism” videos, then the journalism world is losing a goodun. But let’s take a serious look at the point she’s making, because it’s a doozy.

Marina’s story (you can read her blog post where she expands upon her decision here) is incredibly disheartening to those of us hoping to live fulfilling lives as journalists. Especially those of us at the aforementioned “big name journalism school” (Fight Tiger). We are here because we want to prepare ourselves to become excellent journalists. We know journalism is hard. We know that the hours oftentimes suck. We know that we’ll have to work on weekends and holidays. We know that even our best work will be looked at by some people as biased hogwash. We get all that. But we’re willing to put ourselves through all of that because we know that providing good, thoughtful journalism is one of the best services we can provide to our society. We know that not everyone is going to appreciate our hard work. We don’t like it, but we get it. Ideally though, we’d like our boss not to be one of those people. We’d like to think that our industry hasn’t taken someone with “unmatched journalistic talent and writing skills” and reduced them to writing stories about Justin Bieber’s mustache and turned him into someone who would look at one of his writers and tell them to “make deadlines, not art.” I don’t know about my fellow aspiring journalists, but I personally don’t want to think that the end goal of being a journalist is to become a successful businessman. If I wanted to be a businessman, I would go in to accounting like my dad (I love you daddy!). But I don’t want to be a businessman. I want to be a newsman. I want to be a journalist for goodness sakes! When did that become such a crazy notion? When did the idea that people would be interested in good, thoughtful journalism become a fantasy? I guess what I’m trying to say is, when did it all become about money?

I know that’s a stupid question (yes, stupid questions exist). It’s always been about money. Without money, the world doesn’t go round. I get that. But there’s got to be a middle ground. There’s got to be somewhere between writing for the Das Kapital Tribune and producing content for the lowest possible common denominator that will give us their precious click. There’s got to be another way. Do I know what it is? No I do not. Do I think that the journalism world is in a tough place right now? Yes I do. Do I think it’s a crying shame that talented, hard working people like Marina are leaving journalism because of it’s sensationalist, money-centric focus? It pains me beyond words. She says that she’s leaving journalism to make room for the better people, but I’m thinking that’s going to be hard to find. The idea of a “writer trapped in a journalist’s body” should be ludicrous. Journalism should be the top of the mountain for anyone who describes themselves as a writer. Skilled writers shouldn’t have to lower themselves to work as a journalist; they should have to step their game up. Brilliant journalists shouldn’t have to choose between making deadlines and making art. Journalism at its best is art. And therein lies the problem; we rarely see journalism at its best.

At times like these, it’s important to remember something that Marina put very beautifully: “Journalism is the ‘Madonna’ of professions; it will get facelifts until it outlives us all.” Journalism isn’t dying; it’s changing. But changing into what? This is one of the most important times to be a journalist because we have the power to decide where journalism goes from here. Will we be the generation of journalists that lets journalism slip into decay until tabloid journalism completes the move from the checkout aisle to our front stoops or will we the generation that put elevated journalism back to its former glory and returned it to an art form?

Until next time.

Shhhhh…Can You Hear It?

What’s more important in journalism: good audio or good photo/video? This was the question that our Multimedia Journalism professor posed to us at the beginning of our lecture this week. I answered photo/video. You all know about how enamored I have become with photography and photojournalism. I’ve become convinced that photojournalism has incredible power and of incredible import to our society. But I was wrong. Not about photojournalism. I still love it and I’m still convinced of its paramount importance. But when you have to make a choice between the visual and the audio, audio is going to win every time.  As my professor said, “People will watch bad video if you have good audio. They won’t watch good video if you have bad audio.”

And that makes sense. I thought about it terms of watching a sporting event on television. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been watching a baseball game, a basketball game, a football game, a whatever game and I’ve wanted to watch the game but the announcers have made it nearly impossible. This is not a knock on sports broadcasters. It’s a tough job and when it’s done right, it’s a thing of beauty (looking at you Vin Scully). But because it’s so tough, there are a lot of instances when it doesn’t go so well. And these times are particularly painful. There have been countless times when I’ve had to mute the television broadcast and either turn on the radio broadcast or watch in silence. The moral of the story: the audio is the dominant medium. No matter how entertaining and appealing the visuals are, bad audio will kill it in no time.

But let’s dismiss the idea that audio needs to be a companion to something visual to be effective in journalism. Because that’s just flat out wrong. Audio, in fact, is the foundation of journalism. Huh? What? Blasphemy! Journalism is all about writing! It’s about making the news look visually appealing! This is what we’ve been taught. Journalism began with the written word and has seamlessly moved into a visual medium. But we’re forgetting two important things. First, all of our major network stations began as radio stations. Isn’t that sneaky? While Edward R. Murrow may be best known for his interviews or his signature sign off on CBS newscasts, it was his radio reports from Europe during World War II that made his name in journalism and provided Americans with a genuine account of what was happening across the ocean.

Second, journalism didn’t start as writing. It didn’t start with the quill, the printing press, the typewriter or the computer. It started with the spoken word. The first journalists were the millions of people who lived thousands of years ago without the knowledge of the written word. They still had to communicate the news of the day and they did the way 99% of us continue to do to this day: they talked. At its core, journalism is a form of storytelling and storytelling has always been an audio pursuit. Like there are moments that can best be captured by a camera, there are some stories that are best told orally. The art of storytelling is illusive, difficult and beautiful. A good storyteller can put an audience right where he or she wants them as long as their talking. They can lull them into a false sense of security. They can assault their imaginations, creating images of both striking beauty and terrible tragedy. They can play with their emotions like a fourth grader plays with a yo-yo.

I got to work with audio for the first time this last week, and I really enjoyed myself. As part of my project that I’m working on for the first part of this semester, I had to put together 1:00-1:30 of audio to tell part of my subjects’ story. I’ve always thought that written journalism is at its best when it leans on quotes from those involved and this assignment was all that. She got to tell her story and it was so much more powerful and impactful to hear tell it with no distractions and no interpreter (I had hoped to link it here but I couldn’t embed the audio file). Next, we will be working on an audio slideshow where we will be wedding our audio with our still shots. I’m excited to use my photos to enhance even further the powerful audio I’ve gotten.

Oral storytelling is a beautiful thing and it sits right at the heart of journalism. I hope I get to do some more of it in the future.

Until next time.