Spotlight Film Review

Brad Woods

14 December 2015

The film’s plot focuses the Boston Globe’s 2001 investigation of a scandal that occurred amongst the clergy of the Catholic church.

The film at times bears a strong resemblance to the 1976 political-thriller All The President’s Men as it brilliantly re-enacts the struggles and moral dilemmas that inevitably arise when dealing with a situation of such importance and sensitivity. Set in 2001 the film does an excellent job at depicting the difficulty of exposing and organization of power. The Journalists in the film have to chase down every possible lead they can find. Because of this they have to give very emotionally charged and difficult interviews that force them to push their own ethical boundaries. When interviewing subjects the journalist’s had to do whatever was necessary to draw out compelling and descriptive information. Given the subject of the interviews, one can imagine the difficulty of pressuring another individual to recall such traumatic events. In addition to juggling their own personal morals, the Boston Globe journalists have to face a dilemma that is common in their line of work.  They must prioritize getting the story first versus getting it right. In the midst of their own struggle in search of information and proof. They become more and more aware of the role of economics and politics play in deciding what information become available to the public. For, instance After facing many boundaries, the journalists are astounded upon realizing how much power the church has. The church had the authority to have legal documents of child sexual abuse occurring within the clergy. In many ways, pure luck can be essential to getting a story. This is represented in the film when  demented priest confesses to having molested children during his time with the clergy. Without events like this, the Boston Globe would have had much more difficulty proving their claims. While working on the story, the Globe journalists were aware that other news organizations would be paying close attention to see if anything news worthy would come from their search. Despite this pressure, the journalists manage to get what they need by skillfully using every resource available to their advantage. The team proves that credibility it ultimately the most important quality news.

Making Your Presence Known

• Lam Thuy Vo, an interactive editor for Al Jazeera, uses her digital portfolio at http://www.lamivo.com/to illustrate who she is as a professional. The website uses the caption, “Makes web things to tell stories” gives the viewer a brief summary of Vo’s occupation as well as the site’s purpose. Vo’s website uses a simple black on white color contrast to make all of its categories and links visible and easy to access. As she possesses digital literacy across multiple platforms, Vo’s homepage is characterized by images of Vo using a camera, notepad, compute, camcorder, ect. This is significant as a future employer can access the site and immediately be able to see to skills that Vo has to offer. Finally, all of Vo’s tabs are easy to find and easy to access. Last but not least are the links included at the bottom of the webpage. These links redirect a visitor to Vo’s Twitter, Instagram, LinkenIn, and Email.
• http://www.alternet.org/ Is an alternative news source. Alternet does a great job at making its purpose known through its name. Simply by reading this name, one can assume that it is an alternative or  “indy” source of information. On the site’s homepage there is a header containing links to various sections of it. These sections include ­­things like environment, entertainment, politics, etc. After browsing the site for a brief moment, it is fairly clear that it that a more liberal stance on most issues. While favoring a more leftist political perspective the site features a section of political cartoons that take equal shots at both parties.  The website uses a simple color scheme of predominantly white with red highlights to grab the attention of the viewer.
• http://www.dopestories.com/ Dope stories is dedicated to providing informed information regarding the effects of drug use. Dope stories provides factual information as opposed to typical propaganda. The name “Dope stories” is useful for attracting attention. The site contains many interviews in the form of pocasts; therefore, the viewer can be entertained by many “Dope” (cool) stories about “Dope” (drugs). Like many successful websites, Dope stories uses a simple black on white color scheme to make everything visible and easy to read. All of the websites sections are listed in its header. The only things I would say that this site lacks are visuals. The site would be more visually appealing if it contained some casual photos of persons involved with its production. I believe this would add a bit of personality to the site.

 

Occupy SLU 1 Year Later

For this week, we produced projects that focused on a particular topic or issue related to St. Louis or SLU. For my project, I decided to do a follow up on of Saint Louis Universities most iconic events. Just over one year ago, hundreds of social justice activists and SLU students surrounded the clock tower in protest regarding the Ferguson Police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. The protest was strategically located as it was right in the center of SLU’s campus.

Regarding the difficulties I faced when completing this project, getting usable angles on the Ipad mini’s uni-pod was by far my toughest task. Apart from this, It often difficult getting the Ipad’s microphone to reach the individual being interviewed. Because the mic chord is quite short, I often had to interview subjects without a mic. To compensate, I enhanced all audio that was recorded without a microphone.

In the editing stage of my project, I had some trouble balancing the audio of different clips. In addition, there were many audio clips that I had to record by speaking directly into a microphone. After recording these clips, I had to convert them to mp3 format in order to include them in my video’s b roll footage.

http://bit.ly/1SxseeT

Top 5 Tips For Avoiding Lawsuits Concerning Online Material

When posting material online, it is essential that an individual understands the potential dangers of posting any and everything that may come to mind. Because the internet serves as  major communicative platform any material linked to any particular person will be subject to scrutiny.

1. Be cautious and careful when referring to other individuals and organizations in any way that can affect their reputation. eg. If an individual posts information about someone that turns out not to be true. The poster can be sued for defamation , slander, ect.
2. Always get permission before posting personal or private information about someone. Anytime you post information about someone; you are legally liable for anything you say. In most cases an individual can be sued for posting any kind of private information about another person.
3. Review the “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” anytime you post work online that reviews or endorses a product. In such case, there are guidelines that require the writer to disclose certain information to the audience. Guidelines such as these generally require that the writer reveal any connection he or she has to a company or organization whose product is being endorsed.
4. Be mindful of copyright and  intellectual property laws when using any form of creative material in online writing.  This is applicable to Copyright, Trademarks, ect.
5. Always be on the lookout for new information that is relevant to your past posts. By continually working to improve the accuracy of your work, you send a message to your audience that you truly care about providing truthful information. By doing this a writer can decrease his or her chances of defamation lawsuits as errors will by identified and corrected in a more timely manner.

Intro

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc4TlevVAsA

Scavenger Hunt #SLUvLU

Check out SLU and LU’s scavenger hunt.

http://bit.ly/1R0iDx6

Social Media: CNN

For this week’s blog post, I chose to follow CNN’s coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis. Before this assignment, I had never followed a news organization via app or any form of social media. Furthermore, I rarely paid attention to news stories posted by friends on social media unless I perceived it to be personally relevant. When I began to follow the network’s coverage, the first headline I saw was “Europe migrant crisis: Germany adds border control”. This story revolved around Germany’s attempts to better control the flow of human traffic as migrants travel from Iraq and Syria. According to CNN, these precautionary measures were set into motion after more than 40 migrants were discovered alive inside a refrigerated truck. CNN did a good job at using eye catching headlines to draw the reader in. CNN’s coverage also appealed to readers emotions by focusing on the hard ships faced by refugees. Later posts by CNN took a more sentimental tone with the headline “Refugee crisis: We can all afford to be human “. This post particularly sought to balance out the focus on refugee hardships with the goodness of humanity. Highlights included British Prime Minister  David Cameron’s pledge to accept 20 thousand Syrian refugees. For a more specific feed of news on the situation, I followed CNN editor Salma Abdelaziz. Abdelaziz’s twitter post focused on various areas of conflict across the middle east. In regards to the Syrian conflict , Abdelaziz provided deeper insight by drawing information directly from people affected by it. For example , Abdelaziz’s latest post regarding Syria read, “Our Terrifying swim : Two Syrians’ journey through dark waters to Greece.”

Hacking the Homemade Cookie

For this weeks ipad mini project, I decided to do something that would help expand my abilities on the tablet platform and stimulate m taste buds as well. Using the ipad mini,  documented a simple recipe for vegan peanut butter cookies. These cookies are slightly different most baked goods as they contained few ingredients and no dairy or animal products whatsoever. The ipad’s built in camera and filters where very useful  in sprucing up the appearance of plain old baking ingredients and helped to created a sense of uniformity about the whole project.

While I did not find this project to be very difficult as a whole, there were several things that gave me some trouble as i completed it. On challenge I faced involved getting the right lighting when photographing my ingredients. I knew that i wanted to employ the use of filters as well as slightly over saturate my photos, without sufficient lighting, my photos would have been too dark to use such edits.

The second issue was simply posting my project to wordpress as my experience with tablets is fairly limited. I mainly struggled with uploading my photos into wordpress while maintaining the overall appearance of my project.This was not a simple cut and paste job as the tablet format and wordpress were not exactly compatible In the end I was able to properly re-size my photos and edit my text to properly fit the wordpress setup.

Personal Branding in Multimedia Journalism

Journalism and writing have always played significant roles in my life even at times when I did not realize it. In retrospect, my passion for writing began as a high school student. It was during this time that I received my first real challenge of being able to effectively communicate ideas to an audience whilst maintaining creativity and zeal in my work. Upon entering college, I realized that my writing skills along with my oration talents  where ideal for a career field focused on the relation of information to the public. Furthermore I was introduced to the many different media channels that journalism can be conducted through.

• Multimedia journalism is my area of focus. By combining effective communication skills with the use of the various media platforms available today. Important information can be better relayed to audiences by establishing a more personal relationship with them through branding.
• Personally, I am building a brand for myself through online media. Though my brand is being developed primarily online, it takes advantage of multiple platforms such as photography, video, blogging, etc. I believe that the multiplatform approach to branding is ,not only most effective, but necessary in today’s world.
• My current goals are:
• 1. To produce at least one YouTube video every two weeks
• 2. Increase Twitter followers
• 3. Post more blog entries other than those assigned in MPJ.
• 4. I can be more active on instagram
• 5. I will follow more professional in my field on linkedin

• Through branding, people are able to better form their opinions and viewpoints about an individual. Personal branding in extremely significant in the world as it sends messages to audience on virtually all levels. The quality of one’s personal branding sends a message to the his or her audience about the seriousness and integrity of their work. This is reflective of the need for integrity in journalism in an information saturated society.
• An example a strong personal branding can be seen in the career of CNN anchor, Anderson Cooper. Cooper is best known for his CNN segment, Anderson Cooper 360. Cooper’s news segment, more specifically, its name an logo serve as a personal brand through which he is most recognized. http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/