Explanatory Projects

NAME	URL
Ariel Mason	http://occupyws.wordpress.com
Matthew McDonough	http://uconnbowlgames.wordpress.com/
Stephanie Ratty	http://celebritythroatsurgery.wordpress.com/
Nicholas Rondinone	http://occupyuconn.wordpress.com
Purbita Saha	http://greenhuskies.wordpress.com/
Artem Skobrev	http://immigrationproblems.wordpress.com/
Sean Soltys	http://ncaaconferencerealignment.wordpress.com/
Ryan Tepperman	http://division1scandals.wordpress.com/
Megan Toombs	http://mansfieldwatersourceproject.wordpress.com/
Jennifer Yoguez	http://usimmigrationlaws.wordpress.com/
Andrew Gargano	http://aclathleticinjuries.wordpress.com/
Soheb Porbandarwala	http://wheretoliveatuconn.wordpress.com/

What is News? (and review for your final)

The JOUR3098-001 final exam [multiple choice quiz and one essay question] is scheduled for Tuesday, December 13, 2011 from 1 to 3 p.m. in Arjona 433.

Here are some things you should know:

Presentation on citizen journalism and user generated content:

 

Presentation on online audio:

Sound in the Online Story: Click image to view Prezi by Prof. Marie K. Shanahan

 

Storyboarding example:

Multimedia Storyboarding Example: Click image to view Prezi by Prof. Marie K. Shanahan

Final Explanatory Project Grading Criteria

Here’s the breakdown of how you will be graded on your explanatory story. It counts as 15 percent of your final grade.

Storyboard (3%)

First Draft / Presentation during last class (2%)

• Provided material to instructor by assigned first draft deadline
• Attended last class and presented project

SEO Headline(s) (15%)

• Keyword-filled headlines
• Obvious, search-engine optimized

Design / Organization (20%)

• Intuitive layout
• Easy to navigate through major sections
• Non-linear.
• Visual center to each page.
• Formatted text for ease of reading

Reporting / Credibility / Attribution (20%)

• Accurate, fair, well-researched facts
• Authoritative, evaluate all your sources
• Local angle (UConn, Connecticut)
• Attribution for all facts, photos
• Includes an “About” page that explains who you are, why you put the project together and an email address to reach you.
• Date the project
• Links to additional resources
• No copyright infringement
• Site features at least four sections: Home, About, Third, Fourth. One page can be the Q&A assignment

Writing Style (20%)

• Engaging
• Proper use of grammar
• No typos
• AP style
• No copyright infringement

Multimedia / Interactive web elements (18%)

• Hyperlinks
• Photos / Photo gallery
• Interactive graphics / Maps
• Audio
• Video
• Poll
• Documents (PDFs)
• Storify

Social Media promotion (2%)

• Project promoted on class Facebook page and on Twitter with #J3098 and any other relevant #hashtags

Take this poll

Ask not what your country can do for you…

John F. Kennedy was the 35th president and the youngest president ever elected. Photo courtesy of the White House.

This is John F. Kennedy’s famous line in his inaugural speech on January 20th, 1961. “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Mansfield residents speak out on issues during election night

Republican Chris Paulhas stands to show support for his party along with Republican David Freudmann and Democrat Greg Haddad outside the polls Tuesday at Mansfield Community Center.

While the turnout was low during the 2011 municipal elections in Mansfield, just under 30 percent according to numbers from . There were two politically active residents who came to polls to show support for their parties.

State Representative Greg Haddad came to support the democrats in the local elections as part of a long tradition. Haddad said he used to serve on the town council for 11 years before being elected state representative for Mansfield.

“For me it’s habit. I have stood out on election day for about 20 years. I think it is important to take part in local elections… it’s part of our civic duty,” Haddad said. “In town the local referendum questions are important; one being a sidewalk, the other being important environmental issues with the four corners.”

But Haddad is familiar with the issues in Mansfield after being a long time resident.

“I first moved to Mansfield as a student at UConn in 1984,” Haddad said.

But the Republican party had members out showing support Tuesday night as well.

David Freudmann, a local Republican who has lived in Mansfield on and off for most of his life and steadily for the past 15 years, came out to inform voters.

“I am urging people to change the composition of town council. I feel the democrats have be irresponsible with town funds,” said Freudmann. “Early this year they approved parking garage with the Storrs Center project… the town is going to own the parking garage for 50 years.”

Mansfield’s Municipal Elections Yields Disappointing Turnout

Polls remained empty for much of the last hour before polls closed at Mansfield's community center.

Mansfield held it’s municipal elections Tuesday, Nov. 8th. Voters had a chance to vote for members on different committees as well as to vote for two items on the referendum.

Mansfield residents could vote for who would make up the Town Council for the next two years. Voters also chose new members for the Board of Education, Regional Board of Education and the Board of Assessment Appeals.

These signs were displayed all around the Mansfield Community Center.

Additionally, Mansfield residents could choose who to be on the Planning and Zoning commission and Zoning Board of Appeals. The final item up for vote was the two items on the referendum: appropriating $400,000 in bonds and notes for redesign and construction of a walkway on South Eagleville Road and appropriating $350,000 in bonds and notes for the design of portions of the Four Corners area water and sewer system.

Yet despite all of the issues up for vote, there was a very light turnout in all three voting areas in Mansfield. This turnout was found disappointing by not only those helping to run the election, such as the moderator Virginia Smith, but also by the candidates running for office, such as Republican incumbent Denise Keane running for reelection to Town Council.

Virginia Smith worked as a moderator all day from when the polls opened to closing at the Mansfield municipal elections.

This election was not Virginia Smith’s first time working as a moderator. In fact, she has been performing this job since 2003.

“When I retired in May of 2003, I worked at an election as a regular worker that election and then they asked me to be a moderator and I’ve been one ever since,” Smith said.

Smith was not surprised by the light turnout, which is normal for this type of election. “I would say after work the count was 400 votes, and now at 7:40pm, the count is 677,” Smith said.

“When I worked the presidential election here, we processed 5,000 voters,” Smith said. “There was a lot of UConn students lined along the back of the building.”

Denise Kean, Republican incumbent, ran for reelection to the Town Council.

This year Republicans only nominated four candidates for their available six spots. Denise Keane, a Republican incumbent, running for reelection to the Town Council explained why this happened in this year’s elections.

“Historically, this town has always been very democratic,” Keane said. “Rather than competing with ourselves and knocking one of us out, we try to get more votes than the lowest voted for Democratic.”

Keane also commented on the disappointing turnout. “I think its been kindaof light,” Keane said. “It’s been lighter than before probably because its an off year.”

Keane thought more Mansfield residents should have come out and voted. “There’s more people they can influence at this level than any other level,” Keane said.

Prepared for everything but a freak October snowstorm

Senior biosciences major Jordan Reed has been a certified EMT since high school, but even though the job taught him how to think on his feet, Reed was thrown through a loop when the freak October snowstorm left him without power, stranded at a friend’s apartment for a full week.

Photo courtesy of Jordan Reed

Tell us about your time with the Newtown volunteer ambulance corps:

I took a class senior year of high school, and was a certified EMT by graduation. I’m still active in Newtown and part of the Willington fire dept.

So do you work directly with the firefighters?

No, we’re separate groups. EMTs and firefighters don’t really collaborate. I don’t like ‘that breed’ of fire fighters.

What is the schedule like for you with the Newtown organization?

I go home fairly often, every other weekend to staff in Newtown.

Tell me a little about what you did there:

When you get there you have to check the rigs, stock and the gas. Then you just kind of hang out. Newtown gets about 3500 calls each month—6 or 7 a day on average. I’ve had to deal with some weird stuff. I can’t count how many times I’ve done CPR.

Photo courtesy of Jordan Reed (Pictured bottom right)

We actually had a cardiac arrest come in the middle of no power, so we had to go into this person’s basement and responded to medical calls.

The worst one was two Januarys ago. This guy had been outside his car on the highway and was hit. It was like those videos they show you in Driver’s Ed. His body was in the middle of the road but his leg was ripped off and he died in the hospital a few days later. I had to be the one to go back and get the leg, to bring it to the hospital.

Wow, that would have to stick with you. What was the training like to prepare you for calls like that?

I was in a training period for 9 months. Normally it’s a 6-month training, but mine was longer. We all have jump bags, oxygen, a radio and pager on us at all times. I have the jump bag in my car right now.

Do you plan to pursue a career in the field?

The original plan was to go to med school, but now I decided that I don’t want to spend the money to do that and another 4 years when I’ve talked to so many people who have pushed me towards PA school.

Photo courtesy of Jordan Reed (pictured left)

I have an internship set up right after grad with Sunproducts CORPS. They make household stuff like Wisk and Snuggle. It’s a formulations and productions internship. I can live at home and can still staff.

So you’ve had experience dealing with quick changes and thinking on your feet, how did you initially react to the recent week of power outages due to the October storm?

I was sitting in bookworms until 1:30 Saturday night. My car was stuck outside on a hill, so I decided to do a “need for speed” thing to spin the front of the car back around to get out.

I knew I wasn’t going to make it to my apartment so I went to my friend’s apartment in Charter Oak for the night. I ended up spending the next 6 nights there.

“It was fine having Jordan around because he’s a sweetheart and he cooked for us,” said Jenny Jaekle, a 7th-semester UConn student.

“Jordan’s fun to have around, and we’ve known him for so long, so it didn’t matter that he was basically living with us,” said another apartment mate and 7th-semester UConn student Stephanie Shaw.

What did your week look like?

I had to live out of the backseat of my car. I looked like a hobo. I had to keep bringing my stuff back and forth to the apartment s and working my nights around someone else’s schedule.

The power actually went out at Big Y and they had to toss all of this frozen food, so my friend and I went and picked a lot of it up. I easily got a few hundred dollars of free food from them. We got eggs, cheese, lobster tails, tilapia, 22-dollar frozen duck, Butterball turkeys Chiobani yogurt, dinner rolls, Grands cinnamon rolls, eight bags of shrimp, Tollhouse cookie dough, a giant bag of meatballs, two cartons of orange juice and orange pineapple banana juice and tons of butter. It’s such a shame that there were about a hundred carts of perfectly good food going to waste. I wish they could have donated it or more people knew so they could come get some.

Outage Map of the October snowstorm, courtesy of Connecticut Light & Power

How do you think the university could have acted differently?

They definitely shouldn’t have opened.

Not even so much that the power was out, but because there were tons of intersections where the lights aren’t working. There are tons of people who don’t have access to water to clean up for school, etc.
This was even worse. They made it an option for teachers to cancel class, but what if they couldn’t?
They could have at least provided on campus cots, I heard something about cots being set up in Putnam, but that might have been a rumor. My high school in Newtown had a night where they made hot dogs and hamburgers for anybody until they ran out.

Uconn acted as if nothing happened. They sent out the one notification online about using discretion when coming to school and that was it.

If this were to happen again, how would you react and how do you think the university should prepare for next time?

I know how to handle it now—what clothes to bring and how to handle food and everything—but I still spent at least a hundred dollars buying food and gas that I shouldn’t have had to.

UConn needs to take into consideration how hard it is for commuters and teachers to actually get to campus. It’s dangerous and they should have taken a cue from all of the other schools in the state and canceled classes. They could also offer us at least coffee or try to put people up on cots in some of the bigger spaces.

Distinguished nature author and UConn professor speaks his mind about the value of science journalism

The National Geographic website provides the public with multimedia-laden features about the world of science.

Science journalism has been a small niche in the wide world of news for a long time, despite the fact that the the New York Times has a science section every Tuesday, and that National Geographic puts out sensational spreads every month.

After the British Petroleum well burst in the Gulf of Mexico, American citizens needed educated reporting to bridge the gap created by ignorance and secrecy.  While journalists were poring over the oil-soaked pelicans and beaches, people wanted to know what had happened when the oil well burst, how it had happened, what was going to happen, and what was going to make it stop happening.  That is when science-journalism experts from various outlets, such as Reuters, World Conservation Society and Conservation Magazine, had to step in.

Science writers of the past, current and future give their recommendations on how the field is shaping out to be, and how the demand for reporting is increasing as the public’s desire for information escalates.

A Job Description for Science Journalists 

Robert Wyss has been a UConn professor for 10 years. In the past he has conducted courses to teach students about reporting on the environment. He will be conducting a new class on the Everglades in the spring. (Photo credit: University of Connecticut)

One of a science reporter’s main objectives is to translate complex science into colloquial language.  Robert Wyss, a UConn professor who recently started an environmental journalism course, said, ” a journalist’s job is to accurately and clearly convey information.  It  is a chore to get the right words, but it is more of a service to get the information out than to worry too much about losing the subtle shades of the science.”

A Bilateral Education

UConn student Elizabeth Crowley sees herself having a partial career in science journalism in the future. (Photo credit: Elizabeth Crowley)

The service of journalism is not lost on Elizabeth Crowley, a junior at UConn, who is studying both biology and journalism.

“They’re both things that I’m passionate about and interested in combining.  I think there’s a lot of value in reporting on science, especially medicine because it impacts a lot of people,” Crowley said said.

Still, Crowley plans to be a physician and only do journalism as a side job.

“I feel confident in reporting on a niche because I don’t have to make a living off of it,” she said.

                                                                           

An Expert’s Advice

Samuel Pickering has written a multitude of books on nature and his own travel experiences. He currently teaches American Nature Writing at UConn, and warns his students not to overwrite and be falsely inspirational. (Photo credit: University of Connecticut)

But is it possible to be successful as a full-time science writer?  Samuel Pickering, a renowned nature novelist and UConn professor, dispenses his opinion on the question.

Before we began our interview, Pickering read me the poem “Some Questions You Might Ask” by Mary Oliver.  He said that he reads poetry first thing every morning.

Q: A lot of people enjoy nature and the environment, but why is science writing such a niche in literature?

A: “It’s a huge niche in literature…”

Q: But how do you achieve success without conforming to the popular way of thinking?

A:  “You don’t achieve success.  You forget success and you live your own life, if you can, according to what’s natural to you.  Words are forgotten before they are written almost.””

Q: Who do you think is more important, the science journalist or the creative thinker?

A: “Well the two are not exclusive…Look the really good ones write a great deal.  I realize that sometimes in academic life, people make a human cry over one article.  One article is not writing.  They act like a rooster getting on a dung hill and finding a worm and going cockadoodledoo.  There’s a lot more to scratch around about in this life than one worm.”

Q: What are some common missteps to avoid when writing about the environment and wildlife?

A: “The common missteps are usually grammatical and verbal…Some people try to write books that awaken the sentences but instead they write icing of a sort found in bakeries in poor neighborhoods and put on birthday cakes.  So overwriting.  And the other probably great failing is not to see the thing as it is but to use metaphor and similies and compare it to something else so that you lose sight of the original thing observed.”

Q: Do you think it’s allowed for science journalists to use literary devices.

A: “Sure, anything goes.  Is it allowed for a literary person to use scientific research?  If a person is good enough he can do whatever he wants to do.  In fact, if you don’t spend a lot of time in the library doing research you probably won’t write something that’s very good.  I live in the library.”

Q: Do you believe that science writing has improved in the past few years?

A: “I don’t have the slightest idea.  I know that my writing has improved and that’s all I care about…I’ve given up the newspaper because it nauseates me with the hopeless congeniality of little minds.”

Q: Then how do you keep up with news from the science world?

A: “I just keep up with it.  God helps me.”

UConn journalism student moonlights as professional poker blogger

Alex Villegas at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in 2010. Photo courtesy Alex Villegas

Alex Villegas is a journalism student at the University of Connecticut, but already has 3 years of professional experience under his belt. Since the summer after his freshman year at UConn – where he came to study mechanical engineering initially –  Villegas has been a poker blogger.

With the worldwide popularization of poker in mainstream media, the poker reporting industry has also boomed. Journalists travel with niche news sites to report on the goings-on of major poker tournaments all around the world.

Villegas, currently in his final semester at UConn, has reported for poker tournaments in North America, South America, the Bahamas, and Europe.

1. When and how did you start reporting for poker websites? How has poker reporting changed from when you started to now?

I got pretty lucky in regards to that. I was spending summer with my family in Costa Rica, and [Poker]Stars was running an event down there. I met the guy who ran the PokerStars Blog and they offered me a job counting chips during the series and taking notes on how their site pros were doing. They ended up liking me and offered me something more permanent.

Poker blogging and reporting was just getting big a few years ago when I started. Now it’s like every event has bloggers and other forms of media live reporting during big tourneys.

View from a room in Atlantis (Nassau, Bahamas)

2. Obviously, Black Friday changed the lives of not only many professional poker players, but people working in the poker industry, in general. How have you been affected by the closing of popular online poker sites to American players?

A lot of the money that was coming to these sites like PokerNews and PokerListings, and of course PokerStarsBlog, was coming from the online poker sites; Stars, [Full]Tilt, some UB and other smaller sites. Now with Tilt out of the picture, and Stars not looking to expand in the U.S. anymore. They have plenty of Euro bloggers.

It really sucks, because I probably can’t go to the PCA (Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure) this year in the Bahamas.

3. What is your favorite destination for covering a poker tournament? Why?

It’s pretty close. I really love Vegas, for obvious reasons, but the Bahamas is something different. Waking up every morning on an island paradise for two weeks is hard to beat. The drinks are awesome and plentiful, and everything is paid for – rooms, food, access to the Atlantis resort. All-inclusive. But Vegas is Vegas.

I spoke to Alex a little more about the recent banning of online poker in the United States by the Department of Justice. Friday, April 15, 2011 has become known in the poker world as “Black Friday.” Many American professional poker players have moved out of the country so they can continue making money playing a game they love.

4. As a poker reporter and blogger, what do you think the future of online poker is?

I can’t really say. Obviously I’ve spoken to my friends who play, and who report, and they all say – and I agree – it’s just a matter of time before Americans are able to play online poker again. It won’t be like before though. The government will have their hand in everything. They see how much money online poker can generate, and they want in.

5. Do you plan on continuing to pursue a career in poker reporting, or are you looking to branch out into other fields, given the current state of affairs of the poker world?

I’m looking to do other things related to journalism. I love poker, and the freedom I have when I’m working with poker reporting sites. It’s work, but it’s fun. I want to write about other things too, and I do. Oh, and I want to write a book. A novel.

6. What have you learned from your experience as a blogger and reporter? Both about reporting and about poker, and poker players.

Poker players are weird. Most of them are so bad, too. I see them play and at this point I can tell who sucks and who doesn’t suck. Reporting has taught me a lot about poker, because I see what the good players do and what the bad players do. The real-life experience of being a journalist is great too. Good for the resume.

7. FOR THE FANS! What is your nickname and how did you get it?

When I was working for the Stars Blog, they’d call me the chip bitch, because it was my job to go around asking all the notable players for their stacks. When I started in Costa Rica, there were mostly just Spanish pros there, so they wanted me to get their stacks – guys like Humberto Brenes, Andre Akkari, um, yeah. Those are the only two I can think of off the top of my head. Humberto is Costa Rican, so he was really popular amongst the locals.

His nickname is “the shark” because he carries around a small toy shark. Mine is “chip bitch” because I count people’s chips.

8. Can I please use the Circuit pic for my blog post?

Only the tame one. Not the braces/penis one.

Alexander Villegas, poker blogger, zombie. Photo courtesy Alex "Chipbitch" Villegas