Sports section cover, inside sports page, newspaper weekend tab cover, magazine cover, and magazine index
Layout and Editing, CMUN 263, Loyola University Chicago
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Layout and Editing Portfolio
Sports section cover, inside sports page, newspaper weekend tab cover, magazine cover, and magazine index
Layout and Editing, CMUN 263, Loyola University Chicago
The Waterfront Volume 2 Issue 2
My article:
Convergence Studio Set to Open in Spring
The School of Communication’s new convergence studio is expected to be up-and-running for the spring semester by January 14.
Dean Heider said the studio is on an “incredibly tight” construction schedule but will be open by then. The opening event, however, will not be until March or April since winter events aren’t the best idea, Heider said.
Access to the studio will be more limited than the rest of the School of Communication since it will serve so many different functions within the school. Both students and student organizations can ask to schedule use of the studio. The school’s radio station, WLUW, will have an area within the studio. Also, The City News Bureau course taught by Professors Jack Smith and Paul Zimbrakos and, TV News Casting, a new course taught by Professor Leona Hood, will both utilize the studio for classes.
Part of the studio will include a bullpen similar to an actual newsroom, which will be the classroom for the City News Bureau course. Students will have individual desks within the bullpen and TV screens will line one of the walls, broadcasting news stations such as CNN.
The TV News Casting course will use the studio to produce a newscast online. The web cast won’t be a normal half hour news segment featuring weather and sports, Heider said. The students will decide what content to include in the web cast. The course is designed to address the question of what the future of TV news will be, Heider said.
“We’re trying to push the envelope a bit,” he said.
Heider said the school wants to grow and expand both courses over the semester.
Students will be able to hear and see WLUW radio shows in production from the street. The radio station will also feature band performances during the week.
The news desk and backdrop will be on rollers for “maximum flexibility.” The backdrop will be made up of colorful panels, not a typical city view of Chicago or a giant Loyola logo. The backdrop can be changed four or five different ways, Heider said, or can be moved to show a view of the street. “We didn’t want what everyone else is doing,” Heider said.
Some other features of the studio include a news ticker on the outside of the building, green screen, control room with a large flat screen with multiple inputs, lobby separate from the rest of the studio so people walking in and out do not disturb the classes and two offices. One of the offices will be for the school’s new director of technology, Jamason Chen, but the other hasn’t been filled yet.
The new studio isn’t the only new and exciting addition to the School of Communication, however.
The school launched the Center for Ethics and Digital Policy this fall. The center will aim to be a national voice for ethics in digital policy, Heider said. The dean said the center wants to convene a lot of discussion about ethics, both nationally and internationally, as well as to develop codes for bloggers and other facets of digital journalism.
“Loyola is the perfect place for that,” Heider said.
Adrienne Massanari is the director for the center and Professor Bastiaan Vanacker is teaching a course on digital ethics in the spring. Heider said that about half of the school’s faculty is interested in working with the center.
The School of Communication also has a new blog that is being updated with new content every day. Twelve faculty/staff contributors write for the blog so far. The dean said that the blog was created to help make the SOC website more interactive. The website is also updated with new stories every week written by a student web reporter each semester; it will soon feature profiles of all of the school’s faculty members as well. The school will also incorporate the use of flash on the website since the University Marketing and Communication department recently obtained new infrastructure software for all university web pages.
“We’re trying to make the website interesting, fun, and dynamic without violating the university’s brand image,” Heider said.
Faculty spent the past year completely reexamining the school’s curriculum. The school just passed a new program for the AD/PR major and new core requirements for the entire school. The school is currently working to update courses, keep classes that are great, and add new ones, the dean said. The school is working on a new masters program that they hope to have up and running in two years. The school is also discussing with the Fine Arts department about cross-listing visual communication classes.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Fenger High School Violence Reaction Article
A video of a Fenger High School student beaten to death by four other teens brought national attention to the violence surrounding Chicago public schools on the city’s Southside.
Derrion Albert, a 16-year-old Fenger High School honor student, was fatally beaten after school let out on September 24, 2009. A feud between students from two rival neighborhoods led up to the melee that resulted in Albert’s death. The entire scene was caught on video by an onlooker’s cell phone.
Fox News bought the rights to the footage and it wasn’t long before the video was posted all over the internet, including social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The shocking video garnered the attention of President Obama, who sent U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan to Chicago to speak with public school officials as well as some of the students of Fenger High School and their parents.
The video and the overall subject of violence in Chicago public schools remain very controversial even a month later. Many Chicagoans are unhappy that it took this much publicity over the death of a student for the city and Chicago Police Department to finally step in.
“While I acknowledge that it was a brutal way to take someone's life, it has become constant on the Southside, and just now Obama is paying attention?” said Alberto Velazquez, a graduate of Loyola University Chicago that grew up in the Southside neighborhood of Pilsen.
Although many believe that the situation was blown out of proportion due to the viral spread of the video, some are glad that the violence on Chicago’s Southside has finally received national media attention.
“This has been escalating the last ten years and little is being done to stop it. I hope more and more national media coverage will bring the city to do something,” said Lisa Scharnak, a senior at Loyola.
Clara Cinta, a former Loyola student and resident of the Southside, credits social media sites like Facebook as a tool that has helped to shed light on the problem through members posting the video and sharing their reactions to Albert’s death.
“I rarely have time for the news on TV because I’m always on the run, but I heard of this incident through Facebook,” said Cinta. “I actually took time to look up and read the details... So in a way Facebook became more of a resource tool of communication not just between friends but between communities.”
Whether most people agree that the spread of the video has helped the situation or not, mostly all acknowledge that at least something is finally being done to better protect students of Chicago public schools.
“If it weren't for the video we might not have even heard about it,” said Don Ducheny, a resident of Spalding, MI, that saw the video of Albert’s death online.
-30-
This article was written as an assignment that required us to write a reaction piece about the murder of Derrion Albert.
Interviewing, CMUN 332, Loyola University Chicago
Derrion Albert, a 16-year-old Fenger High School honor student, was fatally beaten after school let out on September 24, 2009. A feud between students from two rival neighborhoods led up to the melee that resulted in Albert’s death. The entire scene was caught on video by an onlooker’s cell phone.
Fox News bought the rights to the footage and it wasn’t long before the video was posted all over the internet, including social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The shocking video garnered the attention of President Obama, who sent U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan to Chicago to speak with public school officials as well as some of the students of Fenger High School and their parents.
The video and the overall subject of violence in Chicago public schools remain very controversial even a month later. Many Chicagoans are unhappy that it took this much publicity over the death of a student for the city and Chicago Police Department to finally step in.
“While I acknowledge that it was a brutal way to take someone's life, it has become constant on the Southside, and just now Obama is paying attention?” said Alberto Velazquez, a graduate of Loyola University Chicago that grew up in the Southside neighborhood of Pilsen.
Although many believe that the situation was blown out of proportion due to the viral spread of the video, some are glad that the violence on Chicago’s Southside has finally received national media attention.
“This has been escalating the last ten years and little is being done to stop it. I hope more and more national media coverage will bring the city to do something,” said Lisa Scharnak, a senior at Loyola.
Clara Cinta, a former Loyola student and resident of the Southside, credits social media sites like Facebook as a tool that has helped to shed light on the problem through members posting the video and sharing their reactions to Albert’s death.
“I rarely have time for the news on TV because I’m always on the run, but I heard of this incident through Facebook,” said Cinta. “I actually took time to look up and read the details... So in a way Facebook became more of a resource tool of communication not just between friends but between communities.”
Whether most people agree that the spread of the video has helped the situation or not, mostly all acknowledge that at least something is finally being done to better protect students of Chicago public schools.
“If it weren't for the video we might not have even heard about it,” said Don Ducheny, a resident of Spalding, MI, that saw the video of Albert’s death online.
-30-
This article was written as an assignment that required us to write a reaction piece about the murder of Derrion Albert.
Interviewing, CMUN 332, Loyola University Chicago
The Waterfront, Volume 2 Issue 1
The Waterfront is the online magazine for the Society of Professional Journalists Loyola Chapter. I am the Co-layout Editor for the magazine.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Olympic Reaction article
Many Chicagoans were shocked Friday morning when the city was eliminated during the first round of the International Olympic Committee’s vote to choose the host city of 2016 games.
Hopes had been high before the vote and many could not believe that Chicago had lost, much less that they had only received 18 votes, which kept them from moving on to the second round of the vote.
“It would have been so good for this city,” said Ellen Stewart, a 37-year-old mother of two, shaking her head in disappointment. “I just can’t believe it’s over that quick after all the buildup.”
Not everyone shared Stewart’s reaction, however, and were even glad that Chicago was not chosen. Some felt that Chicago faces more pressing problems, including the current swell of violence threatening its public schools.
Tamekia Johnson, 27, of Garfield Park, shares this sentiment. “We just had a boy get beat to death on the south side outside a school, kids are getting beat up and robbed every day, gangbangers are shooting up the streets and the city don’t care,” Johnson said.
Johnson, like many others who opposed the bid, sees it as a lack of priority management on the part of the city’s leadership.
“They spent $40 million just on the bid but they say they ain’t got no money to hire no more police. If you ask me, those people were right not to pick us; we can’t even take pay to keep people safe. How can we afford to host the Olympics?” she said.
*This was an in-class assignment based on quotes from man-on-the street interviews done on the day of vote
Interviewing, CMUN 332, Loyola University Chicago
Hopes had been high before the vote and many could not believe that Chicago had lost, much less that they had only received 18 votes, which kept them from moving on to the second round of the vote.
“It would have been so good for this city,” said Ellen Stewart, a 37-year-old mother of two, shaking her head in disappointment. “I just can’t believe it’s over that quick after all the buildup.”
Not everyone shared Stewart’s reaction, however, and were even glad that Chicago was not chosen. Some felt that Chicago faces more pressing problems, including the current swell of violence threatening its public schools.
Tamekia Johnson, 27, of Garfield Park, shares this sentiment. “We just had a boy get beat to death on the south side outside a school, kids are getting beat up and robbed every day, gangbangers are shooting up the streets and the city don’t care,” Johnson said.
Johnson, like many others who opposed the bid, sees it as a lack of priority management on the part of the city’s leadership.
“They spent $40 million just on the bid but they say they ain’t got no money to hire no more police. If you ask me, those people were right not to pick us; we can’t even take pay to keep people safe. How can we afford to host the Olympics?” she said.
*This was an in-class assignment based on quotes from man-on-the street interviews done on the day of vote
Interviewing, CMUN 332, Loyola University Chicago
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
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