Chris Fuller's Blog for COMM 361

Class Presentations

2007-04-27T22:49:00.000-07:00

Well, we are closing in on the end of the semester and it's time for class presentations. A few people went on Thursday and I thought they were great. I think everyone really put a lot of effort into their multimedia projects. I think the main thing to keep in mind as an audience member is that for the majority of the students in our class, we are all beginners.

I know for myself, I had never touched Dreamweaver or Flash before this class. It is amazing to see how far our class has come. I think the combination of guest speakers who are all at the top of this industry, and hard work and guidance, we have probably exceeded expectations. I think web-developing and online journalism is a work in progress even for the professionals.

Whether we learn something minor such as why we need to use a certain size and color of text with certain backgrounds, or something major like how to write for the web using our blink sheet, we are slowly taking the necessary steps to be the future of the journalism field.

Check out each member of Comm 361's website at: http://mason.gmu.edu/%7Esklein1/comm361/spring07websites.htm

Crisis Management At The Internship!

2007-04-25T22:38:00.000-07:00

Before I talk about my night at my internship, let me first say that I really enjoyed our classes final video conference session on Thursday. We had the privilege of speaking with Sen. Tom Dachelle. He spoke about everything from multimedia to the upcoming elections, as well as his views on hot topics such as gun control, abortion and the war in Iraq. He certainly is a great speaker.

Tonight at WUSA9 sports (my internship), all hell broke loose. It was a chaotic, tense and best of all great experience. 20 minutes before we were supposed to go on the air, a major component to our sports segment was almost cut.

We had booked a satellite window with a company to receive a signal of our second sports anchor live from the Wizards vs. Cavaliers playoff game. Just 20 minutes before show time, the company called and told us they cancelled our reservation. Everyone worked as hard and as fast as possible to resolve the issue. There was a lot of pressure on me to assist in piecing together the rest of the show while everyone else remained on the phone lines trying to fix the problem. Everyone pulled together and the show aired on-time and went great.

Of course the main anchor being the person that he is, carried on with his negative attitude and left for the night without giving anyone their due credit. As an intern, you get called "hey you" a lot because most people do not bother to learn your name. If you realize that it is just part of the experience though, you'll get through just fine. As I said tonight was chaotic, frustrating and tense. It was, well, news.

Tomorrow is the first day of our classes website presentations. I'm sure they will be great. If you want to check them out, you can find them here: http://mason.gmu.edu/%7Esklein1/comm361/spring07websites.htm

See ya next post!

Andrew Nachison!

2007-04-19T21:44:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed listening to Mr. Nachison on Thursday. He is clearly a bright man and understands this new age of journalism as well as anyone. However, because a tragic, yet historic event like the Virginia Tech shootings occurred this week, I found our discussion about how the media has handled this event most interesting.

Most of our discussion revolved around the question, should NBC have released the pictures and video clips that the shooter sent to them. My personal opinion is that they did not really have a choice but to release it. In fact I felt the way they handled the situation was very professional. It was a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. If they release the pictures and video clips, everyone will be telling them it was insensitive. If they do not release the pictures and video clips, everyone will complain that one of the leading news organizations in the world did not release information that they had to the public.

Brian Williams was the first to release the clips on the NBC Nightly News and I felt he gave viewers a fair warning and clearly they did not show everything, instead it seemed as if they chose some of the less violent material to show. It was all disturbing, but from what I understand they could have shown worse. I was working in the CBS sports department when the news broke and myself as well as many professional news anchors were huddled around the television. At the end of the Nightly News, the comments from many of the CBS news anchors were "wow Brian Williams is good," or "wow they handled that smoothly."

Today with youtube.com and google's video search, everything will be leaked to the public in a matter of hours, not days. I think we now live in a world where the public can publish information just as well and just as fast as the professionals can, only professionals are deemed credible while information the public disseminates is viewed with a certain level of caution.

Tragedy At Virginia Tech

2007-04-18T07:47:00.000-07:00

I thought our open lab class on Tuesday was very interesting. Professor Klein took a very tragic and sad event and managed to turn it into at least some sort of learning experience. Tragedies happen and no matter how much society tries to prevent them, they will happen again and again. Whether the tragic event is a tsunami, 9/11, a hurricane or a school shooting, people who care and need to understand what's going on will be in the dark unless the media is there.

To reiterate what professor Klein said Tuesday, this is a prime example of a new age in journalism. We are now in a stage where anyone can be published and anyone can provide information to anyone else. Clearly there is only one time for a story to be released, that time is immediately, right now as it happens, 24 hours a day. ASAP.

Weather it is 24 hour Fox News, 24 hour CNN, students taking video of gun shots with cell phones, or the Virginia Tech school newspaper's blog, we have entered a new age in this business. Not just journalists, but all people now need to understand how to publish information in a variety of mediums immediately, as well as access constantly updated information from a variety of mediums as news happens.

Crunch Time!

2007-04-13T18:11:00.000-07:00

Well the semester is coming to a close in the next few weeks and I would sit here and complain about how much work I have to do but I'm sure everyone is in the same boat as I am. In the next two weeks will be dedicated to my other classes, my internship and of course my website!

So here is what you can expect to be uploaded on the site in the next two weeks. My multimedia home page will be uploaded. It will contain an opening flash document that was finished this week. The flash document will have three buttons on it that directs the user to three different pages.

The first page will be a full text story and will not be uploaded for another week or so. The other two pages will be a video page that contains an interview I conducted. It will stream from Youtube.com and it will hopefully not take up too much space. Finally, the third page will either be a slide show made with bubbleshare.com or a series of telephone interviews with players made by using Skype.com and Audacity. I will also be uploading three more video conference stories soon.

Again, if you have you go to Mason or another school and have an opportunity to take a class that involves online journalism or website designing. Do It! Two months ago, Flash, Dreamweaver, Audacity, Skype and Bubbleshare were words I had never heard before. When you are forced to work on a project over the course of three months you learn a great deal and will be grateful for it! The website is mason.gmu.edu/~cfuller1. Stay Tuned!

Rev. Pat Robertson

2007-04-12T10:49:00.000-07:00

I would not pass up our class's video conference session with Rev. Pat Robertson for anything even though I do not think it was our best video conference session we've had thus far. I wouldn't pass it up because I think there was a valuable lesson to be learned.

There is no doubt that as he explained some of his extreme view points on topics such as war and religion, tension in the studio began to rise. As a Christian, I would guess that I would agree with Rev. Robertson on topics such as morals and a belief in God, however, it was shocking to me to here his somewhat radical views on other issues. I got the vibe, that maybe Rev. Robertson has a certain level of ignorance and has trouble being tolerant of other cultures and understanding them. I do not think he is a bad person, I just think he is a little mislead in certain areas.

What I took away from that experience was a prime example of how important it is to at least hear every person out, even though you may not agree with them. He may be extreme and have some rather rare ideas, but he has the right to an opinion and the right to have a voice. It reminds me of what my communication synthesis professor once said: "I think our country and our world would be in an enormous amount of trouble if every citizen was a republican, and I think our country and our world would be in an enormous amount of trouble if everyone were a democrat, that's the beauty of a democracy, we have both."

I can relate this to our class's video conference session with Rev. Robertson because if it were not for people like him who speak out on their extreme ideas, how would the rest of us realize that these thoughts exist and how would we be able to form counter arguments for people with similar thoughts to create a balance, much less form our own ideas that will likely be very different?

This experience taught me that the worst things you can do are to shout or throw your hands down on a table and walk out of a room. The lesson I think is, that you can disagree all you want, but you have to fight fair, which means listening first.

Adrian Holovaty!

2007-04-05T21:53:00.000-07:00

Yet another great speaker on Thursday! Adrian Holovaty has one of the most unique positions I've ever heard of at The Washington Post in DC. Adrian is a very young and ambitious programmer for The Post's online site. His official title is Editor of Editorial Innovation. What he does, what he is able to do, scares most in his field.

Adrian believes that journalist's throw away way too much information! He says journalists gather information, create a piece of art with that information which he calls a blob (a story), publish the information, and then let it disappear. Adrian advocates a new wave of journalism in which journalists save the data after they compose a story and enter it into automated programs. The databases will be dedicated to all areas of life, crime, sports, video games, politics, births, weddings, obituaries, and so on.

Adrian's job is to literally create these programs and advocate the use of the databases. What is so amazing about what this new style of journalism can create? Check out these web pages that Adrian has created! www.washingtonpost.com/fallen and http://www.chicagocrime.org/. They truly provide information and present stories in a new way. Most of the pages on these sights are never touched by Adrian or any other human. Scary? Maybe just darn right amazing!

Another great class!

Ann Compton!

2007-04-04T21:53:00.000-07:00

Our class was so lucky on Tuesday. We got to hear from Ann Compton in a video conference session. Ann is a famous ABC News reporter who is currently covering her sixth president. She is a very insightful women and a great speaker.

I really enjoyed Ann's comments on multimedia and how it is changing journalism. She said it is amazing and truly adds to the story and creates new opportunities for receiving information. She stressed however, that one cannot over-look the power of writing well. Ann said, technology is advancing so fast that you must have well written words to explain the full story first and then let everything else (multimedia) add to it.

She also commented briefly on the new age of blogging. Ann feels that it is a fantastic idea and really connects people and their ideas, but that it is always important to remember that bloggers are getting their information from the media. Mainstream media will always come first.

Finally, she had a message for the students about technology and multimedia. She quoted a line that President Clinton once used when speaking with college students. He said: "Get your education broad enough now so that you can fill jobs in the future that have not even been created yet."

Great Class!

Multimedia!

2007-03-29T19:25:00.000-07:00

In Online Journalism today we had another open lab. In addition to our lab time however, we also talked more about multimedia. As a class we discussed how important it is for us to be aware of the many different ways to tell a story.

One of the ways professor Klein stressed this issue to us again was by showing the class a youtube.com video from Post-Crescent Gannett info center.

Post-Cresent is a newspaper company, and the fact that they are capable of delivering the story to the consumer so fast is truly amazing. It shows how fast journalism is changing right along with technology.

I think professor Klein really made the class see today that from here on out, we must always remember the two i's as journalists. Information and Immediately.

Alan Rosenblatt

2007-03-28T07:13:00.000-07:00

I never thought about the fact that there are people out there who dedicate their lives to advising others on how to use the Internet to their advantage until I me Alan Rosenblatt.

Alan has a PhD. and is an Internet strategy consultant and the Internet Advocacy Center. He advises politicians and other well known people on how to effectively use the Internet. He says there are two things to keep in mind when creating a website.

1) It's not what you think should be done as a web designer. A web designer needs to have the mind set of, what do my users want to do once they get to my site?

2) If you are just disseminating information with the Internet you are doing something that is very powerful but you are barely scratching the surface. It can be used for so much more, for example, connecting people.

Rosenblatt says he believes that the world is moving away from email and headed towards social networks such as myspace.com and facebook.com when communicating. In other words the online world is becoming more personal.

Alan Rosenblatt was a great speaker and very intelligent. Great class!

March Maddness!

2007-03-22T22:07:00.000-07:00

Well, March has truly been madness this semester and not just in basketball, but academics and online journalism as well. If you have never touched Dreamweaver or related programs before, creating a website and multimedia site can be a tall order in just three months.

That is why the open labs we had this week in class were great. Thursday's open lab was especially helpful because we had a Dreamweaver expert come in and help the class with Dreamwever problems.

I took away a skill that will be very valuable to me in my multimedia project. I learned how to use youtube.com to post a video on my website. NOT a hyperlink, the actual video window with a play button. Here is how to do it:

Go to YouTube.com
Click on "Upload Video" in the upper right hand corner
Follow the directions to post your video on youtube.com
Open Dreamweaver and find the page and the spot where you want your video to be
Minimize Dreamweaver and return to YouTube.com and use the search box to find your video
To the right of your video highlight the window specifications next to the word "Embeded"
Copy and Paste the embeded code between the body tags of your split view on Dreamweaver

Easy as that! It's a very quick and useful tool to jazz up a multimedia page. Hope everyone finds it useful. I know I'll be using it to post a video interview I conducted with the varsity head football coach and the athletic director here at Mason.

Let's Go Georgetown! You can never have enough success for the D.C. George's in March! See ya next post!

Back From Break and It's Time for Multimedia

2007-03-20T12:44:00.000-07:00

Well I am back from sunny San Diego! I went to San Diego for my cousin's wedding and it was a great trip and it is a beautiful place.

In this next five weeks in Online Journalism, I will be posting all 10 of my article analysis stories, as well as three aditional video conferencing session stories. However, the majority of my work in Online Journalism will come from the creation of my multi-media project.

My multimedia project will focus on why the largest school in the state of Virginia does not have a Division I football program? I have no opinion on this story but I believe it is an interesting question that may have some answers that the student body would be interested in.

I am going to try to incorporate a video clip of an interview with the head coach of the club football team Joe Pascale as well as the athletic director Mickey Mcdade. I am also going to try to incorporate some audio clips from players on the club team as well as a print story.

Stay tuned to see how the production process goes. I'll keep everyone updated!

Spring Break!

2007-03-14T22:36:00.000-07:00

Well, it is spring break for George Mason University, but guess who still has to work all week at his internship. That's right me! My internship at WUSA9 Sports really is not that much like work however, it's more fun than anything else.

March Madness starts this week so I am in for many long nights ahead. I am learning a lot about television and what needs to be done to successfully produce a newscast.

Coming up in the next few weeks on my website will be several stories including 3 additional video conferencing stories and 9 more article analysis stories. Also I will be putting together a multimedia page that will explore the question "why does George Mason not have a D-1 football program?"

If all goes according to plan, the page should include a print story, a video, telephone audio interviews, and possibly a message board or slide show. We'll see how it goes. Stay tuned.

Also I've noticed my site looks better in Internet Explore rather than Firefox. Just a suggestion. My next post will be after I get back from sunny California...WHOOO HOOO!

Joel Sucherman

2007-03-09T08:26:00.000-08:00

Once again, we had another great guest speaker on Thursday. Joel Sucherman is the Executive Producer of USA Today. He spoke to our class about USA Today's massive upgrade to their online website. It's not that USA today has invented anything new, but instead they are just catching up. However, their new site is remarkably different than their old site and it is now what of the cleanest and consistent interfaces in the business.

Of course, the website has taken giant steps towards interacting with their audience through blogs and message boards. This again brought up the issue of journalism that is less credible. However, was is special about USA Today in my opinion is that they still focus on stories written by their own writers. Therefore what the audience has to say is just in addition to the articles that the professionals write. It is a mix of credible journalism and user journalism.

USA Today has been punished for their remodeling so far with some very discouraging emails sent by users. I found it interesting how much people really do dislike change. Change is inevitable however, and I'm sure the users will adjust to the new format and then appreciate it.

Another very interesting class!

Kevin Anderson

2007-03-08T18:35:00.000-08:00

Kevin Anderson really gave a very impressive presentation during Tuesday's class. I learn more and more from each speaker. Kevin is currently a blogs editor and worked for BBC for 10 years.

I found it interesting to see how much mainstream media really is taking notice of online blogging. I also found it interesting to see the graphs Kevin presented which showed how blogs are doubling every six months and they have been for the last three years!

Kevin was a huge help with my multimedia project that will be coming in the next five weeks or so. He did exactly what Professor Klein said he would do. He provided the class with many multimedia tools that will help us greatly with our presentations:

Bubble Share - lets you upload stills
Video Downloader - lets you download videos
You Tube - Code embedded lets you copy and paste video into Dreamweaver
Skype - Call anyone in the world from your Internet

The best part - they are all FREE DOWNLOADS!

Great Class!

Today's Discussion

2007-03-01T19:45:00.000-08:00

I thought today's class was very interesting. This has been such an interesting semester in Online Journalism. This class could easily just be writing stories and posting them online for 35 weeks straight. However, it has been so much more than that. Professor Klein has brought in incredible speakers who have scratched the surface of the amazing forms of new media available to this generation.

It is interesting that the younger generation is a little overwhelmed with these new forms of media such as Flash, Dreamweaver and Photoshop. I think we grew up with home PCs, the Internet, Instant Messenger and Napster and therefore the older generation thinks we are the children of Bill Gates. In reality, a new software program will always be a new software program. I think our class is a little overwhelmed with the sudden learning curve.

Having said all of that, I don't think there is any reason to feel we will not succeed in this line of work. There maybe a new learning curve, but we cannot forget we are in college to learn. I think we should just enjoy the fact that our University is one of the few that will let us touch this new technology before our first potential employer ever asks us if we've touched a program like Dreamweaver in a job interview.

Rob Curly

2007-02-28T08:15:00.000-08:00

Well last blog I said that Mark Potts of BackFence.com was the best speaker we have had in class to this point. It seams as though it just keeps getting better and better because Rob Curley on Tuesday was truly impressive.

I found myself not taking notes or asking questions, but instead just listening with amazement. He owned the floor, kept the classes attention and he is obviously very talented at what he does.

He spoke about the following topics as they relate to news web-sites:

Owning local breaking news
Hyper - local content
Database - driven coverage
Multimedia overkill
Evergreen content
Embrace platform independent delivery
Dialogue

These are just some of the topics he spoke about on Tuesday as he impressed the class with his knowledge of how involved one web-site can be. The amount of work he puts into a web-site that serves only 50,000 people is unbelievable. He is an example of someone who loves his job.

Rob Curley is a firm believer that people should be able to get information any-way they want it. By the end of his presentation I not only agreed with him but was astonished at the variety of ways people can get their information. New media is amazing!

To check out some of Mr. Curley's work, check out the Kansas University athletic site or Naples online. They are some of the most well respected sites in the world!

Great class!

AUDACITY!

2007-02-22T18:09:00.000-08:00

I thought today's tutorial on pod-casting and Audacity was pretty awesome. I have taken a lot of video classes here at Mason and I have seen wave form monitors and other audio programs before, but non as simple to use as Audacity.

I'm sure I will get a lot of experience with it in the future and I hope I find some use for it in my multimedia story linked off of my web-site.

It's amazing that programs that can do so much are available for FREE these days.

Tomorrow I will be working on my homepage a lot. I have discovered that many of the pictures and links need to be shrunk down to a smaller size. If the viewers monitor is large enough it appears fine, but if the viewer has a smaller monitor it is messing up the page. I'm stopping by the star-lab tomorrow to fix that and also upload my stories and create an e-mail link. Should be fun!

As for the internship. It is keeping me busy, but things are going well. I like it and I'm learning more and more everyday. This weekend I have to bring in some sort of bake good for the entire news time. It's an intern hazing ritual. GOOD TIMES!

See Ya!

Talking Over The Back Fence

2007-02-21T06:42:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! Yesterday was a great class. We had Mark Potts from BackFence.com as a guest speaker. Mark is the co-founder of The Washington Post online website and he is the CEO of BackFence.

Of all our guest speakers we have had this semester so far, I enjoyed Mr. Potts the most, and that's saying something because we have had some very good and well known speakers in this class.

I think the idea of a company starting a website in different cities around the country in which the users are the people who have control of that site is genius. I think it gives people the opportunity to publish what they think is important in their town and see it online right away, instead of having to call a newspaper company and beg for them to cover their child's soccer game. The person can now do it themselves. It's amazing where have come and where we are headed in just a few years.

Obviously, the major problem people have with this idea, is that it is not real journalism and you cannot trust it, just like you have to be wary of wikipedia. However, I love the response Mr. Potts used to tackle that complaint. He pointed out, that actually this new form of media the world is experiencing right now is more self corrected than mainstream media, such as printed newspapers.

Mark Potts is a former professional Washington Post journalists and he even admitted that it is nearly impossible to correct an error in the Post. Not only is it difficult to get through to the company that made the error, but if you do get through, the journalist is more likely to be offended and defend his article to the death before admitting a mistake and correcting it.

In this new form of online journalism created by the users, you can respond immediately in any length that you want and challenge the validity of articles. As Mr. Potts said, "Sure you can publish a bunch of BS if you want, but as soon as you do, someone is going to call you on that BS right away."

It's NOT that this new form of journalism is better than mainstream by any means. It is just different and it deserves a shot.

Journalism is changing and the world is having trouble adjusting to it in my opinion. I think new forms of media are inevitable with technology changing as rapidly as it is. As Mark Potts said, "The best story journalists have right now is the story happening to them."

What an awesome time to be in the media industry!

Fun Day at the Internship

2007-02-16T17:28:00.000-08:00

Let me start this blog by saying that I thought our third video conferencing session of the semester with Mack McLarty was great. It is too bad are class was not able to get in more questions with him, but that is not always a bad thing.

He is very thorough in his answers and provides a lot of detailed information that was very interesting. My story on the video conference with him should be up soon.

On another note, I had a great day at my internship at CBS Sports earlier this week. The Washington Wizards had a home game at the Verizon Center and for the first time they sent yours truly to conduct the post game interviews.

I got to interview Eddie Jordan and All-Star Gilbert Arenas. I was very exciting and I know WUSA9 is going to provide me with a lot more opportunities like this before the semester is over.

Again, if you have not taken the Communication 450 internship class with Mike Dickerson, I would defiantly recommend it! Mason provides a lot of great experiences, but you have to take advantage of them.

See ya next post!

Last Class

2007-02-14T08:46:00.000-08:00

The Presentation by Rosemary Chase from the copyright office here at Mason was great on Tuesday. She really got up there and showed that she was knowledgeable on the topic, offered help, and gave a very informative presentation.

There are so many copyright rules and violations that a person can accidentally commit that it can be a little overwhelming at times, especially when creating a multimedia project. I think the best thing to do is to use common sense and the moment you find yourself wondering if what you are about to do will be a copyright violation, consult an expert like Rosemary Chase.

I am looking forward to next class. We will be attending another great video conferencing session with Mack McLarty, former White House Chief of Staff. That story will be up in a week or so and Helen Thomas's story is completed and will be posted this week.

I'll keep everyone updated!

Yesterday's class

2007-02-07T08:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a great class. If you have not taken Online Journalism and you are reading this blog for whatever reason, take it! You learn a lot and have great guest speakers. Yesterday's tutorial on writing for the online medium was very interesting. I walked away with a clear understanding of the differences between writing for print and writing for the online medium.

It is important to write like a 9th grader is reading your story. This means shorter sentences, an easy vocabulary to understand, pictures, hyperlinks, be brief and concise, and so on. The next few years of website creation, gaming, podcasts and the online medium all together is going to be incredible. Technology is advancing so fast it is hard to keep up. That's why I have two more workshops scheduled for this week for UNIX and DREAMWEAVER II. I'll let everyone know how they went.

I'll be back!

The Weekend Workshops

2007-02-06T07:52:00.000-08:00

Well, this weekend was a busy one, but a good one as well. I took my first two workshops on Friday. One was in Flash I and the other was in Dreamweaver I. They both lasted about 2 hours and they were very informative. I had know clue what Flash was when I walked into the lab. It was awesome! For those of you who do not know, Flash is a program that allows you to animate your website. Just about every professionally made or corporate site you go to, such as abc.com or espn.com has Flash. People who know that program are making big bucks out there and it was awesome to be introduced to it for the first time.

Dreamweaver was great to. It was basically a repeat of what our class did last week during the tutorial session, but I needed a repeat. The mentors were great by the way. They were very helpful. Even if we did not get extra credit, I would still take additional workshops, because they are that helpful.

As for everything else, the internship is taking up all of my time but it is still going very well. I'm learning a lot and having fun. The Rick Barton story should be up in a couple of days. Time for class.
See ya!

First Time Blogger

2007-02-02T08:56:00.000-08:00

Well, here it is! This is my first post ever on a blog. It will be one of many. In this post I'd just like to say, hi! My name is Chris and my profile on the right side of this page tells you a little bit about me.

Today I am going to try and weave my way through a crowd of Mason students at a Sen. Obama rally on campus and eventually get to the computer lab where I will be taking my first computer software workshop of the semester. The workshop will be in Flash. Flash is a program I am not at all familiar with. I'm told it is a program used to create computer games. I will be sure to let everyone know how the workshop went in my next post.

Today I will also be writing a story on a video conferencing session my class had with Rick Barton, a member of the Iraq study group. This story and all of my stories on video conferencing sessions held through my Online Journalism class, will be posted on my website eventually.

Talk to ya next time!