A day in the life: RA

Stories

1. Opera Set Going Up - I like the layers here, where you have voice, music and visual action. It was a lot to take in, but in a good way. I liked that the fast pace of the music matched the fast pace of the people moving around. All of it represented the passion and difficulty that goes into an opera performance. The spoken words explained the actions, which was important. The pauses in the speech were too long though, I got a little bored just watching. There was also no clear conclusion.

2. Wells Eviction - this piece seemed more like a news package than a story to me. The interviews did explain the visual action, but I guess the whole package just didn't seem as poetic as some of the other videos. The camera work was also shaky, and the nat sounds were too loud sometimes. I think this video was selected for its controversial but important story/content, rather than for its skill. The story was compelling, or at least the characters were, but I wasn't impressed visually.

3. myDesert, myLife: the Married Couple - This video was different because it used written text to give the background to the story. I like the idea - it was better that the audio could focus on more interesting things than "we have been married 53 years, and we have six children etc" because that was typed out for you. The video and audio not only told the story in words, but also in the gestures between the two, or the way they looked at each other and spoke to each other.

4. Dance class - Here the focus is on video to tell the story. Yes, the audio explained that it was a dance class and let us understand the personalities of the characters more, but the video really showed the action and set the tone. It also started and ended suddenly, as if to represent the class as an ongoing story, which I liked. I wish the piece was longer though, because you can't tell much of a story in just a few seconds.

5. Love at the Zoo - I really liked this piece. The music kept the pace going, the introduction set the scene - like a "once upon a time" - the written words helped to label what was coming, and just the general storytelling feeling from the host was great. I was really impressed.

The Experiment

Dear Dr. Bradford,

This font is huge

This one, not so much

This is blue Arial font

This is red Helvetica font

This lovely text is centered

And this one is centered AND italicized

THE END.

Florida Citrus Crop Predictions Fall

The U.S. Department of Agriculture today released its February orange crop forecast for the 2008-2009 season, reducing its earlier estimate by two-and-a-half percent, or four million boxes.

The USDA did not attribute the decline to the freezes that hit the Florida citrus belt in late January and early February. Rather, the organization attributed the decline to smaller sizes and increased fruit drop, and said it would continue to assess the impact of the freezes.

The crop is now expected to total 158 million boxes.

“The USDA has taken off several million boxes since their original orange estimate in October, and with the field reports we’re getting regarding fruit damage and juice yield loss from the late January and early February freezes we would expect less juice production than we were just a month ago,” said Michael W. Sparks, executive VP/CEO of Florida Citrus Mutual.

“As a result, we would anticipate better grower returns for the late crop than what we experienced for the early crop,” Sparks said. “This is most definitely a challenging season, however, Florida citrus growers will continue to produce the quality citrus known across the globe for its taste and health benefits.”

Florida citrus was hit with a cold spell on Jan. 22 and Feb. 5, which dropped temperatures below 28 degrees for several hours on both nights.

In a release Tuesday, the USDA said, “A freeze survey…conducted on [Jan. 27-28] showed little or no damage at that time. Additional assessments will be made in mid and late February.”

The USDA makes its initial forecast in October and then revises it monthly until the end of the season in July.

In 2007-2008, Florida harvested 170.2 million boxes of oranges.

The USDA maintained its prediction that 23 million boxes of grapefruit will be produced in 2008-2009. 
The early and midseason crop is now projected at 83 million boxes, down from 84 million boxes.

The Valencias projection is now at 75 million boxes this season, down from January’s forecast of 78 million boxes.

 Florida specialty fruit is down; the USDA predicts 1.3 million boxes of tangelos, down from 1.5 million in January, and 4.6 million boxes of tangerines, down from 4.9 million.

The yield for from-concentrate orange juice is expected to be 1.61 gallons per 90-pound box, down from 1.62.

The Florida citrus industry creates a $9.3 billion annual economic impact, employing nearly 76,000 people, and covering more than 576,000 acres.

 

 

Check out the USDA website for a monthly list of citrus forecasts.

Wondering what’s coming up in Lakeland weather? See your 10-day forecast here.

 

Related articles:  Florida Orange Crop Declines for Third Month

                           Officials Seek to Stimulate Juice Sales and Florida Farm Income

                           Growers Brace for Below-Freezing Weather

 

 

Linking trends

We’ve talked quite a bit about convergence in class, and this issue fits in nicely with that idea. Media outlets are sharing writers, content and now stories. It also follows along with the trend of giving the reader as much information and choice as possible. Is it a good idea? It’s hard to say whether it’s a good idea for the media, but it’s certainly good for the readers. And I’d say that as sites all begin linking to each other, then the best ones will still stick out the most anyway, and keep readers the longest.

There is one point made in the article that struck me as interesting. Karp argues that Google sends people to other sites and “does such a good job of it that people keep coming back for more.” Google’s function is meant to send people to other sites, so is not really in the same category as news sites, but this comparison made me think that news sites are meant to share news, and hey, if they do a good job by sending people to find their news elsewhere, then maybe people will keep coming back. I mean, the yahoo.com homepage is popular for news, and most of the articles they run come from elsewhere. People keep coming back to Yahoo in part because they know they can get a plethora of news on the site.

As for whether AP and other wire services will become obsolete, I would say that may very well happen slowly over time. After all, the idea behind wire services is that they can cover events all over the place, so that Lakeland-based The Ledger can run articles about wildfires in California without sending a reporter there. But if The Ledger can just link to stories from California-based media, then they won’t need wire stories. That said though, AP and others have such a high reputation that I don’t see them being dismissed very quickly.

Ultimately though, this debate is moot. Now that some sites have started linking to others, those that haven’t will be forced to jump on this bandwagon. As readers become accustomed to Web sites that offer lots of links, options and additional information, they won’t want to return to sites that only have their own material. All it took was one medium to start moving in this direction and all of the other media had to follow – much like when one medium gets a scoop and within hours or minutes every other medium has a similar story to keep up.

Anchor tags

Living in The Bahamas is awesome!

Here is a picture:

Steroids

For this story, I would suggest the fairly common but often successful angle of focusing on one person’s story and then eventually bring it out broader.

First, I would go to groups.google.com and find a group on steroid use. I would post a message saying I was a reporter with ___ and looking for someone who has been dependent on steroids in college. I would ask them to email me if they were interested. I’ve seen similar things work with The Ledger, so that would be my first step.

Assuming you got a response, you would have to call and talk to the person to verify that they are of interest. Then a phone or face-to-face interview would be next.

While that interview would make up a bulk of your article, it would also be important to put steroid use into college context. So, I would suggest contacting a college health counselor, athletic trainer, and physical education professor. The professor could be found through powerreporting.com and then ProfNet (it requires you to sign up to get specifics, which I’m not doing right now). If the article is going to run in Lakeland, you could find the contact information for a health counselor and athletic trainer at FSC, Southeastern and/or PCC through their school web sites. If it’s going to be run in a larger paper, I would recommend finding those sources from a larger school, also through their web sites.

Also, the article would need to say not only why steroid use is a bad thing, but why it happens. The athletic trainer and health counselor can share some of problems (trouble if caught, bad for body, etc.), but to get more reliable ideas of why this use even happens I would recommend going to google.com/scholar and searching for “steroids” or “steroid use.” For instance, I found a study titled “Effects of body image on dieting, exercise, and anabolic steroid use in adolescent males.” Similarly, the journal databases available from the Roux Library offer lots of options. Under Ebsco Host and then PsycARTICLES I found an article from last year called “Anabolic Steroid Use” that has some statistics and info on college students’ use of steroids.

Finally, from the very beginning I would recommend signing up to get alerts when anything new about “steroids” and “college” pops up from google.com/alerts. Who knows, new studies, articles or other information may appear that tie in nicely with the article.

To recap my online sources:

1. groups.google.com
2. powerreporting.com – ProfNet
3. college web sites
4. google.com/scholar
5. FSC library journal databases
6. google.com/alerts