Click Here to visit the website I built in Adobe Dreamweaver.

Click Here to see the image editing project done in Adobe Photoshop.

Click here to listen to my audio podcast produced in Audacity. 

And finally, my video podcast appears below.

I’d like to think of this as what Update News would look like in the future. We are supposedly going to have a dramatically increased Internet presence next year (something that is desperately needed), so doing something like this on a daily basis would be a great thing.

Anyway, I served as producer for the last show of the semester that taped last Friday. That means I determined the running order of the newscast (referred to as “stacking the show” in newsroom lingo) and then followed the timing of the show as we were taping. Going into the show on Friday, I thought we might be running a bit heavy… but in the end, we were about a minute light. Oh well, at least we had plenty of time to run the closing montage that I had spent so long editing that week. I put it up on YouTube and I’ll be embedding it at the end of this post.

And so, now with 12 newscasts under our belts, the staff of Update News takes what’s left of December and the entire month of January off, only to reconvene back for our first show sometime in the first few weeks of February. There will be a strong cadre of returning staffers (numbering about six) and a number of fresh faces for next semester. I’m not exactly sure how involved I will be in Update next semester, as I recently accepted a paid internship position with a major San Jose-based software company (hint: we used many of their products this semester in APSC 96E) and together with a full 15-unit courseload, that will take up most of my time. I do have fun working with Final Cut Studio, so I’m hoping I will be able to stay on staff even if I’m just in a consulting role.

And so, without further ado… here is how Update News closed out the Fall 2007 semester. I put together a montage of our reporters’ best stand-ups and anchor desk appearances, plus some behind the scenes shots of our control room and studio. Finally, you can see that we really do have a lot of fun doing what we do. The song you’ll hear in the background is called “Carousels,” and it’s by the Columbus, Ohio-based band Alamoth Lane.

Well, that’s all she wrote for this semester. I wish each and every one of you the very best holiday season. Take a few minutes out of your busy lives this time of year to reflect on the past year and think about how you’ll make 2008 even better than 2007. To those of you fortunate enough to be graduating in the next few days, I wish you the best of luck! Finally, have a happy and safe holiday season. Take care!

I had originally intended to work exclusively on producing our Radio and Television Journalism 50th Anniversary special to air the Friday after Thanksgiving (Black Friday for all of you familiar with the retail world), but a few stories dropped on Thursday and I ended up doing a short package on the revised policy on riding bikes, skateboards, and scooters on campus.  Before the change, it was against campus regulations to ride any of those items on campus except for along Paseo de San Carlos (San Carlos Street), Paseo de Cesar Chavez (7th Street), or the 9th Street Plaza.  University police officials were very sporadic in actually enforcing the rules, as I and the other people in our newsroom had only seen a skateboarder pulled over once or twice by a UPD officer and issued a citation.  But now, our wheeled peers are free to scoot, skate, and bike anywhere they please around San Jose State, but they’re supposed to adhere to a 5 m.p.h. speed limit.  Whether UPD will be stationing officers at random places around campus with radar guns clocking skateboarders remains to be seen.

I’m sure the entire Update News staff will enjoy this new three-day break we get this weekend (thanks, Gov. Schwarzenegger), but we’re definitely going to have a fast week for Show #9.   I put my story from this week up on YouTube (the first time I’ve posted on there!), so feel free to share your comments.

Mondays are always pretty interesting in the Update Newsroom, DBH 221.  It’s the day when all of the staff members get together and pitch their respective story ideas to each other and one of our two professors, Lloyd LaCuesta.  These meetings can get a little crazy at times, but we usually come out of them at about 2:30 p.m. with a decent amount of stories for that week’s show.

This week, I’ll be following up on my experience covering the San Diego wildfires with a look at fire safety on campus.  This weekend there was a small fire in Building B of Campus Village here at SJSU, and over on the other side of the country, seven students from the University of South Carolina were killed when the beach house they were all vacationing in caught fire.  It’s obvious that there are some extra precautions college students need to take when it comes to fire safety, and we’re going to talk to the San Jose Fire Department to find out more about the topic. 

I had planned a trip home for this weekend back in the beginning of October, and it just so happens that my trip home this time coincided with the wildfires that tore through parts of Southern California. Being the aspiring journalist that I am, I decided to take all of my gear with me in the hopes of filing a report from the front lines of the firefight, or what was left of them.

By the time I made it out to Rancho Bernardo on Friday, I learned that this event was pretty much over. And not a moment too soon–those poor souls in the East County who lost everything at the hand of the wildfires were grateful that they could return home on Thursday to start sifting through what was left of their slice of the American Dream. I met up with a colleague from San Diego City College, and we turned down Aguamiel Road in R.B. where eight homes burned to the ground all in a row. We weren’t alone–there must have been about eight satellite trucks parked up and down the block, and there was a reporter in nearly every driveway getting ready to do a live shot for their station back home.

Now, Update News can’t afford satellite trucks or the latest full-sized Sony XDCAM camcorder, so I rolled out with my smaller Sony VX2100 and started shooting. That’s when I discovered that these residents didn’t want anything to do with me. “Can you please stop shooting what’s left of my house,” one woman cried to me. “It was all over CNN last night, and I just can’t take it anymore.” I wanted to explain to her that I’m just a student journalist from San Jose State University, but I decided to just say “OK” and move on. I tried to interview some local students who came to drop off bottled water and snack food to the homeowners; every one declined to talk to me. I went up to the neighbors–their house was spared while the house directly next to theirs is gone–they too wouldn’t talk to me.

It was then that I realized I was the plague everyone on this street was trying to avoid. Sometimes having a camera and the allure of television makes it easier for people to talk to you; other times, it makes it nearly impossible to get the story. So I left Rancho Bernardo, and decided to start on my vacation.

Homecoming was our lead story, and I reported on the first-ever Fire on the Fountain celebration Thursday night.  The story happened on a Thursday night, and the show tapes on Friday morning, so that mean it was another long night for me this week.  I didn’t finish editing my story all together until about 2:15 a.m. on Friday morning, and then came back a few hours later to introduce it live on-set. 

This week’s show was plagued by some technical problems.  The control room crew installed a brand-new playout server (an Image Server MAXX for those of you interested in that sort of technology…) so we’re all getting used to the new procedures surrounding that.  Basically all of our stories are now simply dragged-and-dropped into the server.  Previously, we had to load our packages on to an external hard drive and carry it down to the control room, where they were dropped onto a Macintosh that was jerry-rigged into a playout server.  This new system definitely streamlines the process, but naturally with any new piece of technology, we hit some snags along the way. 

In other news, I’ve been working with my friend Angus from NewsBranding (www.newsbranding.com) who’s creating a new show open for Update.  As you can see from some of the work on the NewsBranding site, the new look will have a very professional feel to it.  Our new music package from Dallas-based Stephen Arnold Music is also supposedly arriving next Saturday, so it’s quite likely that these changes will happen in time for the October 19 edition of Update News. 

Next week is the 50th anniversary of the Radio and Television Journalism program here at SJSU, and we’re going to be very busy covering all of the events that week.  I’ll have some more details about it on Monday.  Until then, enjoy the weekend!

Despite my cold and stuffed up nose, I was the third anchor this week.  You can see me at around 11 minutes into the webcast, which you can now view by clicking on the Watch Update News link over in the blogroll. 

All in all, I think this was a pretty darn good show.  I’ll check in tomorrow night with a look at what we’ll be working on this coming week. 

This week, I’ll be doing a story on the Gordon Parks “Moments Without Proper Names” photography exhibition going on now through October 31 in the King Library.  I will also be covering a special guest in Dr. Harvey Gotliffe’s class on Thursday morning, and shooting another reporter’s story on a new immigration institute on San Jose State’s campus.  All in all, it’s not a very busy news week on campus this week, but usually something or another will crop up as we get closer to Friday. 

 We’ll check in as the week goes on with how things are progressing.

I ended up going out on Thursday afternoon to shoot the Jena 6 protest put on by the Black Student Union, thinking it would be just a quick VO/SOT (voice over/sound on tape for you non-television news lingo speakers out there), but it actually turned into a much bigger story and I ended up packaging it.  Our deadline is Thursdays at 3:00 p.m., and seeing as I had to work this Thursday at 3:00 p.m., I didn’t make deadline.  Most stories we do have a much longer turnaround time so I don’t think it was a big deal.  Anyway, I ended up coming back to edit that story at 11:30 p.m., and stayed in our editing room until 2:45 a.m.  (If anyone is wondering, Dwight Bentel Hall is a very lonely place at 2:45 a.m.)  I ended up throwing in that newsroom flash cam close at the last minute, so please excuse me if I’m not exactly in appropriate news reporter attire.

A big thanks goes out to Dr. Steven Millner, African-American studies professor, for agreeing to come on our show at the last minute.  Those live interviews on-set are a new feature we’ve added to the broadcast this semester, and I really like how the first one turned out.  Kudos to Jessica and Josh for making it look easy. 

All in all, I think this was a good first show of the semester.  We have some interesting stories coming up next week, and I’ll keep you posted on those come Monday.  Have a great weekend! 

Former ABC News anchor and reporter Sam Donaldson will be the keynote speaker at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Radio and Television Journalism Sequence at San Jose State on October 12.  We’ll introduce you to Donaldson and tell you more about what this anniversary celebration means for SJSU.  Plus, we’ll have a full wrap-up of the activities surrounding Academic Integrity Week, and you’ll hear from Spartan Football head coach Dick Tomey who had some interesting comments following last Saturday’s shellacking at Stanford Stadium.  All that and much more this Friday on Update News.

I’m sure many of you will have comments after watching the first show, and I encourage you to post them here.  I’ll make sure I go over them before the editorial meeting next Monday so I can share your thoughts with the rest of the class.