LJ Digital

chrishutchinson:

This morning, the Guardian released Guardian Witness. Described by The Guardian: ‘Share your view of the world - Your chance to have videos, photos and stories featured on the Guardian’, the website and corresponding app allows anyone to submit photos, videos, and text to the Guardian.

The editorial team at The Guardian will be suggesting ‘assignments’ (current ones include Views of tall buildings, The cuts get personal, and Syria refugees: your stories) that users of the app are able to contribute their own content to.

The Guardian have made it as easy to submit content to their assignments, as it is to tweet a photo from an event, or share a video onto YouTube.

Student media, often plagued by the inability to gather together good content and stories, should definitely take note. University campuses are now filled with thousands of students, most of whom have smartphones. When looking for the next big story, or photos and video from an event, it’s easy to see how an app like this, that connects the newsroom to the students, could be really useful. Not only would the newsroom have an abundance of content and material, but students would be able to get their photos and videos featured as the story develops, their own 30 seconds of fame.

Embracing students in this way is great for student media. It helps their image, encourages students to engage with stories, share stories with their friends (getting more clicks, reads, likes, and so on), and maybe students will start getting more involved in student media.

You can watch a video of the app in action here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/video/2013/apr/16/guardian-witness-promo-video

What do you think? Should people be giving their content away to The Guardian for free? Or are we doing it anyway on Twitter and other social networks, and is it a clever move by The Guardian to bring that content together?

LJ Digital: This is fascinating. Student journalists, check this out!

michaelisawriter:

Chris’ life has always ran down the neck of a guitar. He’s one of those souls who feel the heat, the passion, the aficion, from the time they set foot on the earth—the kids who carried around stethoscopes or notebooks, those instilled with a purpose from day one. There is, though, one difference between Chris and those kids with the stethoscopes: His passion put him on the streets.

His is a story of classic star-crossed ambition, of an upbringing concentrating on classical music but a fervor blinded by the taste of rock and roll.

“My dad is a classical music aficionado of the umpteenth degree. He’s the reason why I’m into music so much. Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, around the clock,” Chris says. “We could never understand each other past a certain point because I insisted on rock and roll.”

Though the division between classical and rock and roll wasn’t so much of a problem when Chris became serious about guitar, which he says happened at 14 years old, their deep thematic chasm came into focus when he wanted to major in music in college.

“Dad, I want to major in music.”

“No. I’m not paying for it.”

Because his father figured Chris had no future in it.

“And hey, he was probably right,” Chris says, laughing. His good nature is an astounding feat of human persistence, considering the spot he finds himself in now. Frustration with almost constant delays to the completion of his marketing degree led him to dropping out, and from there appeared a rapid succession of images detailing his downfall: a taste of musical success, and then the parties, the rock and roll, a descent into chaos. An apartment turned into a disaster, a landlord offering a sum of money for Chris to leave. A sum of money he didn’t think he’d ever see.

“I took the money and I left. Which I should not have,” Chris says, “because I’d probably still have a roof over my head. Just a big mistake.”

Since then, Chris’ passion for guitar continues, though since he was taken out of a shelter and into an apartment (which he lost because he couldn’t afford rent), he’s been on the streets. He says his technique lacks polish because for eight years he went without a guitar.

“I would get guitars but I would lose them constantly. I’d put it up against the wall, go to sleep, and it’d be gone. Constantly. I’d get a guitar for two or three weeks at most, usually only a week or so, and then it would be gone and it’d take me two or three months to get another one.”

Chris’ current guitar, a Washburn acoustic, sits next to him, his tool of trade, missing a tuning head. He says that the missing part inhibits his playing most, past the homelessness—without the tuning head for his G, his only choice is to tune every other string to whatever his third string is tuned to.

Tonight, Chris is a bundle on a milk crate in Grand Central—he prefers it during the winter because it’s warm enough and there are bathrooms—he prefers not to smile in pictures because his teeth are in bad shape, and his tattered jacket covers him like a cloak. His mind goes blank and his eyes slack from their usual smiling tension, and though the noise of passing crowds drowns his notes, he pushes on, riffing out a strong blues solo before he has to tune again, doing so almost in time with whatever he was playing.

Shoes worn down to nothing, a milk crate bent into the shape of his seat, a guitar with a missing tuning head. Sheet music for Down by the Riverside, because he says he needs to slow down with the soloing and learn how to play the simple chords again. He survives on Muscle Milk and the kindness of strangers, is humble, appreciates every penny, every ounce of attention from passersby—because he knows what the sound of nothing feels like.

“But I’m just barley cutting the mustard,” he says. “Just barely.”

LJ Digital: One of UCI’s former Literary Journalism alums! Micael Chin went off to New York after graduating in spring of 2012 in pursuit of the story….and a job. His blog is current dedicated to finding musicians whose main stage is a subway platform and writing about them. He also takes a damn good photo. Read his work if you like music, are fascinated by the homeless, want to support a budding writer, or simply enjoy good writing. 

reporting-is-hell:

By Paula Verkuylen

Coming into a Literary Journalism class as a Business Administration major I was incredibly nervous about getting a good grade and making a fool out of myself. In life I’ve always been a perfectionist who worries about not meeting expectations and feels the need to go above and beyond what is required. However, when I decided to take this class I wanted it to be fun and a learning experience rather than an added stress to my already hectic schedule so I took the class P/NP. Despite having a life long love for fiction writing and prior journalism experience in junior high and high school, I thought that my skills would be too dusty and out of date that I wasn’t confident enough to take this class for a grade. Sadly, I’ve found that I am somewhat of an unexpectedly decent reporter and wish that I could have changed this class for a grade!

The most important lesson I’ve learned throughout this process has got to be that in journalism, and life as a whole, connections are what get you ahead of the game. Connections really helped me out in every single assignment I turned in, be it being invited to an event that would perfect to report on, finding a professor you went to office hours once for that’s willing to do a lengthy interview, or seeing an announcement in a church bulletin regarding a group meet up that would be great to profile. Of course it is possible to make it in any industry solely on great work ethic, but connections make the world go ‘round and there’s no harm in making sure you gain some along the path to success.

Our first assignment, to write a crime story, was the hardest of the class. I was happy that it was our very first assignment though because it brings into perspective how rough the life of a journalist is. Getting police officers, detectives, or anyone associated with the law is incredibly difficult. Nobody really wants to talk to you and give you details; they always refer you to the press release. I had almost resigned to accepting a mediocre article I wrote with only facts from the press release and a few tidbits I was able to get from an email interview (half of which the answers were “see press release”), when a kind police officer called my cell phone the day before the assignment was due and asked me if I wanted to report an ongoing case of triple homicide. Lucky for me this officer had a daughter who just went to college and was more than willing to aid me in my academic endeavors through not only giving me a play-by-play, detailed report, but also telling me that if I ever wanted help finding a job he knew people in journalism that he could contact to get me an internship. In this article I felt that my biggest strength was purely being able to talk and not be intimidated by the fact that I was talking to a police officer. I’ve always prided myself on having good people skills and I feel that they are the reason this article ended up being as good as I felt it was. Here was my first encounter with connections.

The next assignment made me very excited because it was event coverage. I’ve always thought that I would do well with event coverage, primarily with concerts and Hollywood events. When we were told that we shouldn’t cover a concert, I was a little disheartened and wasn’t sure what to look for because I had pinned my hopes on doing a concert I was attending that week. Once again my connections helped me find something that had aspects of a concert that I loved, but also fit the assignment at hand. My friend from high school attends Chapman University and her sorority was taking part in an event the week of the assignment that was a song and dance competition. I found myself at an event I would enjoy, with people I didn’t know, and outside research necessary. It was perfect! My biggest strength here was interviewing people for the quotes I used. I find it very easy to just walk up to people, introduce myself and ask questions. My biggest weakness in this article was that I didn’t add enough detail to the story to really give the reader all the visuals of the event.

Our next assignment was seemingly the easiest, but also the article I did the worst in. We were to interview someone you knew about an experience they had. This was the hardest article because of its simplicity. It’s incredibly hard to question a family member or friend because often times you already know the answer to your questions. I missed key facts and clarifications because when you know parts of the story already, you don’t think to ask further questions or you sometimes assume the reader knows what is being talked about simply because to you it seems obvious. I think this article was the biggest flop for me because despite having the great connection of interviewing a friend, I was too comfortable and familiar with the subject.

Doing the expert interview was more challenging than the experience article, but in many ways an easier interview. This assignment required that I seek outside information before going into the interview and become familiar with the jargon of the expert. I chose to interview a professor I had once taken a Biology general education class for along with 300+ other students in my giant lecture. I can honestly say I didn’t remember a whole lot of the material from that class, so it was easy for me to ask a lot of questions and clarify terms. The one struggle I found here was trying to make sure it was all about the facts of her research and to not go off topic into her opinions. This was challenging because I really wanted to highlight how her work with mollusks, a seemingly insignificant chuck of research, builds on something seen as more of a big picture. From the questions that I asked, she ended up talking about how it relates to global warming and I was slightly disappointed with the result of ending on a rather generic note.

The final assignment was a group profile, which proved to be extremely hard to find. I searched meet up for something that interested me, but due to the Thanksgiving holiday it was not an easy task. When I was at church with my family, I read in the weekly bulletin an update from the parish school and it mentioned the Academic Decathlon team. I remembered this being around at my high school and thought it would be something really interesting to find out more about. I’ve always loved working with children and my hope was that through writing I could capture the child-like quality of these incredibly smart and mature students. Unfortunately, I broke a few AP rules (I blame it on my rusty writing skills) and started to become too narrative rather than a reporter.

Throughout my whole experience of writing reporting articles I found that one of my biggest weaknesses was balancing story telling with reporting. They could be viewed as one in the same, but I feel that story telling often is more whimsical and stylistic whereas reporting gets to the nitty-gritty and tends to be more to the point. Finding a happy medium was something that came easily to me in articles such as the crime story, but didn’t come as easily others like the personal interview or the group profile.

In the future I’m not entirely sure that a full on career in journalism is something I will pursue, but this class definitely helped reignite my fire for it and motivated me to rediscover my passion for writing. Next week I have an interview with BOP and Tiger Beat magazine where I am applying to be an intern. Maybe this is my chance to see if I am truly cut out for this world.