Pledge Drive

So this week as you all know is the FSTV Pledge drive. I look forward to seeing what its all about even though what I have seen from others makes it seem slightly stressful. Hopefully today I will be able to get a better understanding of the pledge drive and what it entails. Unfortunately I will be missing all of next week so I can take my finals, but I will be back the following week for two full days instead of one and a half because I will be finished with my classes. If anybody needs help with anything today or during the following weeks let me know and I will be more than willing to help out.


-Weston

Observations on Your Voice Here

Hello everyone,

So we have been doing the Your Voice Here segments almost every day for the last couple of weeks and I have made some observations that may help improve the process. I know we have talked about schedules before but I would like to see us create and stick to a schedule for each day. Right now I believe the interns are all scheduled for 11am. I think if we can all get here by 11am and leave by 11:15 for our location, which is usually the 16th st. mall, that should be plenty early enough to get enough footage for a 2 minute YVH segment. I think 1:30, or earlier if we have enough good footage, is a reasonable time to be back at the office in order to have the piece edited by 3pm. My next observation was about the camera setup. Today we used a smaller camera bag and the camera was equipped with a shoulder strap. The strap was extremely helpful because we did not need to use a tripod which meant faster setup and more mobility. You can also still get very steady shots and easily change up the angle for more interesting view points. I definitely think we should keep the camera setup this way for future YVH shoots. Any way that's what's on my mind today.

--Mark

Changes...

So this week I unfortunately missed work on Wednesday in order to make up a missed Business Law exam that was so exciting to take. I heard from Lauren today that the pledge drive is coming up the next three weeks. I can't wait to see what the pledge drive is all about for the first time and be an active part of it. Unfortunately I wont be able to help out the second week of the pledge drive because I have finals all week, but I will be here helping out the first and third weeks. Another change is that I'm also going to be coming in on Wednesdays and Mondays rather than fridays over summer because I will be out of class. I hope everyone is having a good week and I cant wait to get this pledge drive stared.

Also Sorry to copy your title Andrew

-Weston

Ch-Ch-Ch Changes

Hello again!

So we are really starting to get into the thick of news production here, and I have been enjoying it quite a bit. Sadly, I didn't get to post last week, so I will try to give the quick and dirty on my view of NCMR. It was awesome! It's always a little weird not being able to see the effect of something as instantaneous as posting online, but obviously we had some excellent results! I'm glad that our work helped expose the NCMR and hopefully bring to light some of the issues facing media today. Good job, everyone! I feel like the hardest part of pushing out the media was finding articles and blog posts relevant to the clips, but as the weekend moved on I became more familiar with the websites I was responsible for and was able to post a little more efficiently. A big thank you to everyone who helped out over the weekend! After NCMR, it's been an interesting situation getting used to pumping out more news-content. Using keynote for action calendar has really cleaned up the process, and it is taking much less time than it did in the past. Also, having only one event instead of five or six a day has made it easier to find events for the calendar. It's definitely a busy time here as we leave NCMR in the past and move on to the new production and look forward to the pledge drive.

Andrew

The beauty of hard work

I am so proud of us! Compared to the homelessness marathon (which was still successful, only more difficult due to the narrower target of bloggers and homelessness related online organizations, etc.), I'm really confident that our efforts reached out to a much broader audience of people during the National Conference for Media Reform. Not only was it awesome to see people like Laura Flanders and other familiar faces 100% engaged in this issue, there was an immense amount of people whom we may never know that care about this issue and will do what is within their power to keep our internet access equal and free.

At first I was nervous about being responsible for such a monumental event and it's potential locations where it could exist among the web. Once I got started distributing videos and reading related articles I became completely enthralled in getting it out to as many websites as possible. It wasn't hard at all to find other outspoken political activists or simply blog enthusiasts who were personally moved by some of the topics discussed during NCMR. Although sites with immediate news feeds such as facebook, twitter and tumblr are the fastest way to get our clips exposed, there may not be as large of an audience interested in watching. I felt that sites like currentTV, alternet, americablog, and bagnews were some of the most active sites with immediate feedback or articles that were already highly populated with feedback in comments or other videos. I want to apologize for getting started a little late this weekend, but once I got to work I feel like I made a lot of progress. Lauren's email after the event reassured me that we fulfilled our objective this weekend with over 15,000 unique viewers. Great work team! So glad we pulled through with such a powerful outcome. Let's hope our efforts keep media the way it is and the way it should be. See you next week!

-Kimberly

An end of an internship... but the start of a new job!

Hey All!

So sad news... today will be my last day interning. But good news! I will be starting as a part of the News Production Team this monday so you'll all still get to see my lovely face. :) I think I will eventually need to train someone else to do promos but those are not difficult at all. As far as everything else I helped with... with all the new transitions all of you seem to be doing great! So glad I got to intern with you all and enjoy(value) your jobs!!

Post-NCMR

This past weekend I had the great experience of being able to help out with the NCMR. I like the majority of the rest of you guys got to push out media clips onto independent media sites and internet blogs. I worked pushing out clips both last friday and sunday morning. I unfortunately didn't realize that we were supposed to be doing it the whole time we were assigned, but lauren let me know about an hour into my sunday assignment time. On Wednesday I was able to help out with the teleprompter on the shoot of a few news clips. I Also helped out going through and relabeling tapes of NCMR footage that Andrew and Kim had been doing. I learned a good amount about how difficult it can be to push out media clips on the internet and get a significant response.



-Weston

Today I installed Keynote to my computer and used the new templates for Action Calendar. Everything went incredibly smoothly, and we were able to finish the whole thing in less than an hour. The "new" Action Calendar system seems to run much more efficiently and effectively, requiring half the number of people to get the job done and a fraction of the time it used to take. There is a google doc (which I'm pretty sure is shared with all the interns) with all the events for each day. Before posting (or emailing me) it would be helpful to refer to the doc and see which days show up as empty for events, to save time and effort. Since we're only doing one event per day now, as opposed to 3-4, I'm having a much easier time finding something for each day, but of course, everyone's contributions are always appreciated!

Eliza

Week 2 of Increased Production

Hello friends,

This is the second week of our incresed production schedule and I think it is gonna go pretty well. Today Ginny and I put together four, 30 second, segments to be used with the skype interview that was produced this evening. They didn't have intro/outros or music so it was quick work. I think tomorrow's YVH will also go pretty smoothly. Last week we had a lot of other things going on so we didn't get to finish editing everything we shot, but now that NCMR is over I think we will be able to aadhere to the schedule. Well I guess this is gonna be a quick blog, can't keep eyes open. See you all around.

Mark

NCMR Week

This week seem to be a pretty busy one for many with the National Conference for Media reform in Boston just beginning today. However, it hasn't been to stressful of a week for me.  I was able to help out Andrew a little with capturing the newly formated text only Progressive action calendar on Wednesday, and thought it came out really well. This coming sunday I will be helping out by spreading the word on online forums about certain clips from the conference and posting them to a variety of blogs. This will hopefully help get the word out about NCMR, at least on some related blogs. I hope this will help out , and that  those who are spending the weekend in boston have a good time.

-Weston

Transitions and Mishaps

So with all the new transitions and schedules I had my first major mishap as an intern here... I completely spaced coming in Monday to kick off all the new stuff we will be transitioning to. I am really sorry about that and especially sorry to Marcy and Eliza who were expecting me and needed my help. Thank goodness Mark was here to fill in for me and I promise this will never happen again!! Anyways, it sounded like Monday's shoot went off well with only a few bumps, really glad to hear that and I'm excited to jump in and help. I am also excited about the NMCR in Boston this weekend. I was in Kansas City for the Homelessness Marathon so it will be cool to see how things are done on the other side of the coverage! Ummm promos are going well and yea, nothing else to really report about. See everyone Friday!

Transitions

Monday marked an exciting change in my work here as an intern.  Not only was it my first day (ever!) spent away from working on the action calendar, but it was also the first day of operating under the new schedule and with the revisions made to various aspects of production.  I got the chance take part in Your Voice Here, which I've always been interested in but never had the opportunity to be directly involved with.  Marcy, Mark, and I headed to the 16th Street Mall to do a story on the SEIU Solidarity march and walk-out.  After a few mishaps and getting off to a later start than intended, we ended up getting some quality material and interviewed several people with good insight on union workers' rights and the meaning of that day (the anniversary of the assassination of MLK Jr.).  I felt slightly inept as "talent" simply because I have no experience doing anything even remotely related to journalism, but I really enjoyed it.  When we got back, I recorded several voiceovers, and paid close attention to the editing process on Final Cut.  We ended up totally blowing the 3:00 deadline and decided it'd probably be best to leave Free Speech earlier than 11:30 next time.  I look forward to doing this more often, and hope I learn as much as possible about the production for Your Voice Here during the next few weeks!

-Eliza