An attempt at a live tweet
Posted by Aaron - 24/10/08 at 04:10:00 amI try to do it. It’s true. During a forum for City Council and mayor candidates, I shot video, took notes, took still photographs and tried to live tweet the event from my iPhone. For those of you who don’t know what twitter is, check it out. Also, I hate to say it, but…
You can follow me http://twitter.com/tinynotebook
Here’s a snap shot. I didn’t keep it up. My fingers got tired.
come follow me!
To aspiring journalists
Posted by Aaron - 24/10/08 at 04:10:00 amThis blog was first posted on “Off the I-15” a blog I write for at www.desertdispatch.com
While filming in Mr. Bonvillain’s 6th period class this week, a student pulled me aside.
“Are you with the local paper?” he asked.
I had a notebook in my back pocket, a camera around my neck, a pen behind my ear and video camera in my hand. As young as I look, I hope I can’t still pass for a high schooler. My cover was blown.
“Yeah.”
The student wrote for the Aztec Warrior, the high school paper, and wanted to know if journalism was still worth going into. Without even thinking, I responded.
“Definitely.”
He asked why, and here was my response. I pointed to the newspaper he was reading (he was looking at stock prices) and said even if we aren’t writing for these things, tapping my pen against the paper, we will still be writing. Journalism is changing, evident by the video camera I now carry in my bag. I told him some of the things going on in the Desert Dispatch newsroom with video, online and multimedia are changing the way we tell stories.
“It’s exiting,” I said. “And fun.”
Then I said that even all that information he gets “for free” on the Internet probably comes from journalists in some way. CNN.com, the New York Times Web site and even your favorite celebrity or music blog does not write itself. Somewhere, maybe hidden in their parents’ basement or at an uneven table at the local Starbucks, there is a person typing away.
But the real reason to still go into journalism, and this reason escaped me at the time, is that without journalists, without the local newspaper (regardless of how you regard us) there would be no one else to tell the community what was going on in that classroom, or what was said at the candidate forum at the high school tonight, or how the volleyball team does on Friday.
I invited the student to drop by the Desert Dispatch office to see what goes on in our newsroom. I open the invitation to any prospective journalist. Give me a call and I can show where journalism is heading at the Desert Dispatch.
Does the economic crisis confuse you?
Posted by Aaron - 10/10/08 at 12:10:00 amThis blog originally appeared on “Off the I-15,” a blog I contribute to for The Desert Dispatch.
It confuses me, but I’ve learned a lot about from two podcasts produced by National Public Radio.
Ira Glass, the host of This American Life, teamed up with some smart money guys from NPR to break down the financial crisis. You can listen to the podcasts by clicking on the links below or download them to your mp3 players if you are tech savvy like that.
A special program about the housing crisis produced in a special collaboration with NPR News. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s? It all comes back to the Giant Pool of Money.
Another Frightening Show About the Economy
Alex Blumberg and NPR’s Adam Davidson—the two guys who reported our Giant Pool of Money episode—are back, in collaboration with the Planet Money podcast. They’ll explain what happened this week, including what regulators could’ve done to prevent this financial crisis from happening in the first place.
I also subscribe to the Planet Money podcast, linked above, and listen to it on my drive home from work.
Facebooking your sources
Posted by Aaron - 06/10/08 at 09:10:00 pmIn my case, it was Myspace. While trolling the Web for a blog entry about how local candidates are using the Internet this election cycle, I stumbled across a mayor candidate’s Myspace.com page. I paused and almost added him.
Enter: To friend or not to friend, a piece that appeared on www.ajr.org over the weekend. Several journalists sound off about whether or not to friend sources on Facebook or other social networking sites.
I basically agree with the guts of the piece:
Craig Whitney, standards editor at the New York Times, explains: “Basically what it comes down to is we believe that being a friend on Facebook, and I speak as one who has a Facebook page, is essentially meaningless, and everybody knows that. So it’s hard to imagine any real conflict of interest that could arise from your being a friend of somebody on Facebook and writing about that person.”
But then why did I not add the mayor candidate to my Myspace list of friends? Seriously, I need all the friends I can get on there. Here was my thought process:
1) The candidate is using his Myspace as a campaign site. If he would put me in his top friends, it might look like I am supporting him.
2) I can’t find any other candidates on Myspace to at least make myself feel like I am being fair.
3) If I am a good journalist, I can probably get whatever valuable information available on his Myspace some place else or just bookmark the site and check it all the time.
4) I’ll just add him after the election and get all the juicy stuff then.
I know my sources read my Myspace, my Facebook, even this blog (back in the day when it was a bit more personal and meaningful), so why not friend them. Election politics. GROSS. So like I said, I’ll just add him later.
It wasn’t exactly a lob, but he hit a home run
Posted by Aaron - 01/10/08 at 04:10:00 amExcuse the baseball analogy, but with the MLB playoffs about to start (tomorrow!), I am super pumped.
So here’s Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield, state Senator representing Barstow going yard in an interview today.
Ashburn was talking about the area code debate waging in SoCal. The 760 area code, home to yours truly, is probably the largest, geographically, in the continental U.S., and it is running out of numbers. The California Public Utilities Commission proposed breaking off a small portion — an area of northern San Diego County — of the 760 and making it 442. And hence, people become passionate about their first three numbers.
My first question to Ashburn today wasn’t even a question:
It just surprises me that people can be so passionate about three little numbers.
I wasn’t expecting anything but Ashburn ran with it. Good thing I had my pencil ready to write. But they weren’t wasted words. The statement was meant to establish a relaxed atmosphere between the Senator and I. I’ve met him twice, but I know he likes to talk like a human and not like a politician and try to treat him like one.
The statement also established roles in the interview. Ashburn the expect, the man with the answer. Aaron, the reporter, the man seeking information. By admitting I didn’t quite comprehend the passion behind the debate, it opened Ashburn up to explain really what was going on.
This is risky. My journalism professor warned me of the falling into the “student crouch” while interviewing administrators and faculty on campus and playing dumb too much might cost the report some respect points. I’ve always told reporters in the newsroom that its important to be experts on every topic they tackle (obviously impossible, but aren’t managers supposed to have unreal expectations of their staff), but to not always act like Mr./Ms.-know-it-all.
Letting your source tell his or her story is always better than thinking that you know it. I coach reporters to not ask questions that end in the word right:
- You coached pee-wee football for many years, right?
- And your teams did well, even winning the Mega Bowl championship one year, right?
- And now you’re going to coach some of those kids on varsity, right?
Obviously blown out of proportion and not a jab at the paper’s sports editor, but I am sure everyone can think of a better line of questioning to connect those dots.
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