All the things I have learned from digital news gathering

Lissette taking the Journalism 226 final

This is a picture of myself struggling to finish the journalism final. Photo Credit: Lissette Alvarez/Flickr: Lissette Alvarez

Lessons from Digital News Gathering

One of the skills I’ve mastered in Journalism 226 was using Google for charts and maps. Before attending this class I thought Google was just another search engine, I had no idea Google was that versatile. After learning how to use Google docs I’m now able to use Excel to make charts and infographs. I had also applied Google to my reporting class by making a crime map to go along with one of my articles.

Another method I learned from the class was applying social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to journalism. I was never a huge fan of social network, in fact most of the time I would find myself checking or sending messages. After promoting dozens of stories through Twitter and Facebook and getting responses from other people, I realized there so much more to social networking sites then we realized. I think a couple years from now I would probably end up promoting my own articles through Twitter and Facebook.

Audio editing was another skills I mastered using Garage Band. Out of all the topics we had learned in this class, audio was one of my favorites. At first I thought audio editing was going to be difficult because I didn’t have enough experience using some of the Mac applications. As it turns out Garage Band is probably one of the easiest applications on a Mac.

However, one of the pieces I’m most proud was the final video, Steven’s love for video games, project because it was the most difficult project I had to work on. I enjoyed working on the video since I was able to apply both audio and visual into one story. The video project also gave me a chance to experiment with different angles and sequences using my digital camera.

A large number of adults using search engines to find information on health information

I thought the data I gathered from “The Social life of Health information” was interesting because it seems that a lot of adults prefer to search for information about health rather then going through blogs or commentary and online video. Another thing I found interesting about the data was the fact that not too many adults use social networking sites to find more information on health.

If my editor were to assign me a story based on the report it would probably be something simple as “The Top 5 ways of Finding Health Information”. I would definitely incorporate a chart in the story by collecting data from professionals such as doctors.

SFSU Students commenting on the Royal Wedding

The following audio clip includes several commentaries from San Francisco State students about the royal wedding and how the felt the media coverage. A couple of the students felt the media coverage on the royal wedding completely over blown, while others thought it was exciting. The audio interviews was conducted by Staci and Baird, which I edited using Garage Band.

The students included in the audio recording:
Kelly Goff, senior
Chris Haire, graduating senior
Caitlin Olson, senior
Thomas Garcia, non-graduating senior
Meghan Dubitsky, graduating senior
Kelsey Avers, graduating senior
Eric Green, graduating senior
Ryan Smith, graduating senior

Photo of Kate and Price William’s royal wedding. Photo Credit: Jens Rost/Flickr: Jens Rost

Steven Weiler’s love affair with Video Games

The following video is about Diablo Valley College student Steven Weiler and his love for video games. Steven Weiler is currently employed at Best Buy, while working on completing his general education classes. During his spare time he enjoys playing video games with a couple friends and listening to music. I decided to film Steven playing Guitar Hero because the game was comprised of his favorite hobbies, game playing and music.

The video clips were all shot at Weiler’s house in Hercules because I thought it would make the video appear more intimate, as opposed to filming it at an arcade. I shot more then a dozen clips, half of them were shot in the afternoon, while others were shot at night. The challenge I faced with the evening shots was the fact there wasn’t enough lighting in his living room. In an effort to adjust the lighting I moved some of the lamps around until the setting didn’t appear completely dark, but in the end I choose not to use the evening shots because the lighting just didn’t work with the tone of the video.

I used several different angles for the video such as over-the-shoulder, mouse-view, high-view, and side view. Another challenge I faced shooting the video was the fact that there wasn’t enough room in my subject’s living room to shoot wide angles, which is why most of my sequences consists of normal and close-up views.

With the help of my journalism professor I was able to edit my video down to 52 seconds without ending it too abruptly.

SFSU students choosing public transportation over driving to school

Public transportation is probably one of the more popular methods of getting to school. Although public transportation hasn’t always been reliable, I would choose it over driving any day of the week. Driving has become less appealing to some students because of the outrageous increase of gas prices, bridge toll, cost of daily parking on campus and traffic would.

I normally drive to the El Cerrito Del Norte BART Station, take the SF/Millbrae train, stop at the Daly City station, and then use the school’s shuttle service to get to San Francisco State. My routine may sound confusing and complicated to some students, but for me it’s actually less stressful than driving to San Francisco.

The video I filmed, using my Kodak digital camera, shows SF State students using the school’s shuttle service, MUNI bus, and BART to get to school. Most of the video was shot in front of the campus in the morning, while the BART scene was shot at the El Cerrito Del Norte Station.