Nonogirl Radio

Visiting a Swing State

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Originally uploaded by nonogirl.

In my ongoing effort to create my own jouranlism school, I'm in Virginia this week on an environmental journalism fellowship.

After checking in to the hotel on Sunday I explored the downtown to find people preparing for an Obama rally with President Clinton. Thankfully, the EJ Boot Camp organizers were albe to push back our schedule to accomodate our viewig of the Clinton's visit.

The Roanoke Times reported that 3,500 people attended the rally. He spoke briefly about green jobs that Obama will create, but spent most of the time addressing the economy and Obama's "presidential moments": the first was in selecting Joe Biden for his running mate and the second was in his response to the economic crisis.

I'm excited to tune in to the television and radio to see how the campaigns are run in Virginia.

Knight Center for Environmental Journalism Boot Camp Fellow

When I didn't get in to journalism school this year, I decided to try and create my own professional development program. So far my program has included the following:

• continuing to write and copy edit for El Tecolote,
• attending the summer audio institute at the Center for Documentary Studies,
  
• taking the basic audio skills classes at Women's Audio Mission,
  
• learning about web video and sound for video at BAVC,
  
• and continuing to pitch and produce stories for public radio.

Most of these classes required an investment by me, but while I was at the CDS institute, I found out that I won a fellowship and scholarship to the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism Boot Camp!

My environmental journalism reporting has been limited to the two stories I did on Maui water issues and a feature on the Asian Pacific Environmental Network. Both took a lot of studying in order to get my reporting right, so I'm really looking forward to the workshops I'll learn at the Boot Camp and the Society of Environmental Journalist conference.

And I'll get to see fall colors on the east coast! I'm taking my camera :)

Weekly Writing

My friend Pauline just filed a story for the SF Bay Guardian about the affordable housing crisis in San Francisco and while reading it, I tried to pay attention to structure.

While the four-minute long radio pieces I work on are generally made up of three characters at most and maybe three scenes, this story has many characters (though the most prominent is the Luz Moran, the person the story opens with. She quotes someone fighting eviction, someone from the Tenants Union, the US Census, the San Francisco Association of Realtors, a broker at the TIC Group, and a TIC owner.

She takes us to a tenants apartment, the Tenants Union office, a "spacious" TIC group's office, and a wonderful scene at a neighborhood protest.

As I try to read more, I'll be paying attention to style and structure, so stay tuned.

City's slow enforcement of billboard ban

Last week, my first story for El Tecolote posted. It's a continuation of an investigation I did while reporting on wheatpasted posters for Artery.

Basically, while the Department of Public Works views political posters as a cause of urban blight, they turn a blind eye to the same activity when it's done by corporations.

The article's format on El Tecolote's website is a little confusing, but I had a great experience working with the managing editor and look forward to developing my writing skills by producing more work for them!

Zirin on Writing

Somehow I almost missed that my favorite sports writer (to be truthful, I don't follow sports, so he's really one of my favorite WRITERS, period) David Zirin was coming to town!

He's awesome. He hung out in the crowd before the event started and I learned that his analysis just comes from having good politics!

During the talk, I noted that he repeated some of the same funny ways of conveying his biting analysis. This doesn't take away from his brilliance, but it also pointed out that some smart people have an arsenal of anecdotes to pull from.

He talked about the skill of Barry Bonds, the potential endless use of the asterisk in sports records, and the birth of host country nationalism at the Olympics.

But the most frightening thing he said was this: don't go to journalism school. "Write for a newspaper for a year. You'll learn to write on deadline and that's what you need."

Those words made me, in the midst of practice GREs, vocab flashcards, and solicitations for letters of recommendation throw my hands up! I've been vacilating between "to apply" or  "not to apply" with my latest stance on the APPLY side. His  statement added a decisive vote to the "don't go" side, echoing the exact sentiment of one of my editors.

But I want to do more than learn to write on deadline. I want to build on my multimedia skills, build contacts, and allow myself time to absorb all that makes journalists knowledgeable with a nice, low-interest student loan!

Perhaps you should check in with me in the spring, though. If I don't get in to school, perhaps I'll have sour grapes and say, "David was right. Who needs j-school!"

On Vox: online storytelling

I think I've fine tuned what I want to be when I grow up--
  an online storyteller... 
    a multi-media journalist

These are the tools:

• Improving my photography skills
• J-school Nocal or J-school Socal
• Studying

Here's an interesting article about the growing potential of online journalism.

Originally posted on nonogirl.vox.com