country girl goes to the city...

...and gets her stuff stolen.

So it only took 3 weeks of being here to get robbed! :(

On Sunday we hiked to the Hollywood sign. We drove through a bunch of residential streets to get there, and then pulled off onto a little dirt road/side path to park, where the trail started. The neighborhood seemed like a pretty nice area, nothing sketchy about it. Soooo, for some reason I brought my purse, and realized that I didn't want to carry it during our 2-hour hike. So I set it on the floor of the front seat of my friend's rental car, and covered it with my sweatshirt. I took my phone with me, but left my wallet, iPod Touch, and camera in my purse. Uh oh.

When we got back to the car, we immediately saw that the window had been smashed, there was glass everywhere. We were stunned! Then my stomach dropped as I remembered that my purse was in there. I glanced in and saw it was gone :( As I stood there shocked, I saw a granola bar laying on the ground next to the car. I thought, hey, I had that in my purse. Then I saw my water bottle laying next to it, and my prescription glasses!! I was hoping they'd thrown out my ID or something else, but that was all they left. Hey, at least I don't have to get new glasses! I'm pretty much blind without them.

So that really sucked. I had to cancel my credit cards, we went to the police dept. to fill out a report, I have to get a new license and my parents had to wire me money. Thankfully I didn't have a lot of cash in my wallet. My friend had to get a new rental car, and he is still waiting to hear from them as to whether he has to pay for the window or not. I was really upset about the whole ordeal, and felt really stupid. But, I survived and at least everything is replaceable. Lesson learned- put everything in the trunk from now on!!! How was I supposed to know? Most of the time in T-burg I don't even think to lock my car doors. I'm likely to see more deer on my drive to town than cars...I've never had to worry about this stuff before. I will be much more careful.

In other news, I started my second internship. It is at dots! tv, a website dedicated to celebritiy: fashion, beauty, lifestyle, fitness and gossip. The site has photos, videos and a shopping section. It was created by the founder of E! Entertainment Television. The plan is for it to eventually become a television network. I got to write a little blurb about fashion during the awards season, which popped up on the main page for a few days. It says my name and everything! I pretty much got to pick any photo I wanted and write about the fashion trends that the star was wearing. Oh hey, another dream internship! The staff was really nice and fun :) They even took me out to lunch! I am enjoying both my internships. I have gotten to do lots of interviews with cool people at the magazine, but am not allowed to talk about it before the issue comes out. So you will all just have to subscribe :)

Also, we went to Universal Studios recently. We got to go on a tour of some tv/movie sets, and there were rides in the park.

I started work-study today. I'm doing 2 hours a week in the IC office, answering the phone and little stuff like that. I'm gettin paid $8/an hour, and hopefully upping my hours if possible. I need some ca$$$$$$$h.

That's all my news for now!

Love to the east coast,

Laura

The fun starts in LA!

Soo, I've been here for over a week already! I arrived Friday, Jan. 8. My flight to Newark from Ithaca was canceled, so my day was turned upside down. I ended up flying from Ithaca to Laguardia, Laguardia to Dallas, and Dallas to LA. It was a very long day! It didn't help that I hadn't slept that night because I was too excited, and was packing until 4am when we had to drive to the airport anyway. We had scheduled a van to take a bunch of Ithaca kids from LAX to our apartments, but I missed it by a few hours. I had to take a taxi. The ride was so long that I fell asleep! It was a long way, in rush hour traffic. The total was around $90!!!! It wasn't the best start to my time in LA.

Thus far, I've been shopping for groceries and home items, rode the bus to get my nails done, attended orientation, and lounged around with my roommates A LOT. It has been very relaxing, but I am ready to be busy again! The weather was great, sunny and 70's, but now it's raining, and it's supposed to keep raining for a week straight! I've heard flood and mudslide warnings on the news.

Tomorrow the chaos begins. From 10am-3pm I will have my first day working/training at University Link Magazine. My editor wrote me an e-mail explaining that I will be writing a piece on fashion. Can you say DREAM JOB? I am excited and nervous! I will be doing my intern duties, as well as writing freelance pieces that I will get paid for! Fans of my work will only be able to read it if they subscribe to the magazine, because they don't put that much content on their web site. Right after I get out of work, I have to jet over to an interview at another company, dots! tv. They called me after I had already accepted the position at ULM, so I told them I'd only be able to come in one day a week. They said it was fine, so we scheduled an interview. I don't know much about the company, but I requested to work in the beauty/fashion section. If I end up taking both internships and the workload is too much, I will just have to quit one. But I think both jobs sound pretty interesting!! P.S.- I have to do all this traveling by bus! It's going to be pretty hectic.

At the end of my busy day tomorrow, I will be going to my first class! I have Government and Media from 7pm-10pm. I should probably just inject coffee into my veins tomorrow. Good thing I've gotten a lot of rest this past week! I live at the Oakwood Apartments, and class is about a 15 minute walk down the street. It's in a big building, but only one floor is for Ithaca College. It has a few classrooms, a computer lab, a lounge, a big library of movies on DVD, and our professors' offices. Our floor is called The Pendleton Center. Here's a photo of the building.

In other news, I was grocery shopping today and saw a celebrity! My first sighting in LA! "Will" from the tv show Will and Grace walked by me with his son. The actor's real name is Eric McCormack, and he was with his young son, Finnegan. I couldn't even believe it was him! I heard him call his son's name, so I'm positive it was him. From doing a little internet research, I found out he lives in Toluca Hills, which is right where I am. Very cool!

That's all for now, I will definitely have more to write about after tomorrow. I have taken a few pictures, but haven't been able to upload them yet. They are coming soon, though!

Love to the east coast,

Laura

Rocky Mountains will have journalism!

When the Rocky Mountain News closed earlier this year, I have to admit, I'd never heard of it. Someone from Colorado brought it up in my politics class, and I soon realized that the closure was a pretty big deal.

This Denver news site has an article published yesterday about Colorado Public News, a new news website for the area. The site is in the process of raising money, so the link sends you to a "beta version" for now.

The site contains a note to visitors:

We are just getting started. Like public television, we are raising funds from the community to support our project. Once we have hit our goal, we will publish every week.

...So what's the big deal?

The big deal is -- their approach.

"The concept: Instead of going it alone, CPN has formed a nonprofit partnership with Channel 12, an adventurous public-television station."

This is an attempt to secure enough revenue to be able to produce investigative journalism. The model was inspired a lot by Voice of San Diego. So what are the perks?

• Channel 12 would commit to providing approximately a quarter of CPN's annual budget, currently set at $2.2 million.
• The station would also broadcast a regular, thirty-minute CPN show that would both promote the website and presumably legitimize it in the minds of possible donor organizations and individuals.

Sounds pretty sweet to me!

This model seems exactly like what the area needs. People want a credible news source that is hip to technology, and CPN is going to fill that want. Recruiting well-known professionals for the staff can't hurt either. The people, business model and attitude of this organization are what new media is all about.

"We're asking people to get involved in the creation of this product -- to call us, e-mail us, comment on the stories," she says. "It's the first step in trying to use social media to develop the journalism that's on the site as well."

@ariannahuff comes to IC!

So, Arianna Huffington was pretty late... but it was cool to see her :)

Highlights:

Her ideas on why Dan Froomkin is so popular; he engages readers and wants citizens to be involved. I think we need to keep hearing this over and over again, until we realize that that is how you keep readers in this "new technology era". I also liked how she explained "comment moderators" on Huffington Post; she really knows her stuff with new media!

Her thoughts that "not every story has two sides." She said we should be pursuing truth, and that sometimes there aren't two equal sides. Since coming to IC I've heard a lot about this argument, but I'm still undecided. I guess I still have hopes for objectivity and showing every side, and this argument just doesn't sit well with me.

Arianna mentioning IC on her twitter!!! :)

She was really pushing having a specialization, something that you care about- and she referenced the movie Julie & Julia. The moment that movie came onto the screen when I was watching it in theaters, I knew I was going to LOVE it. Every journalism student should see it. It really reminds you that writing can be fun, and it can affect people more than you think. And it shows that blogging can be frustrating, but sometimes it can lead to amazing results. We're not all into politics, but we do all have hobbies and interests we can write about.

I'm pretty sure this is the real blog: The Julie/Julia Project

Will bloggers always be banned?

From a story on OregonLive.com:

"Who defines news?" he asked. "If somebody writes a column, is that news? Is there information in there that is newsworthy you wouldn't consider news? There's all kinds of shades in there. If I were a city council, I wouldn't want to be in a position to decide that."

The policy also raises the issue of whether the government should be in a position to legitimize a media organization or reporter, Randall said.

"The government shouldn't be controlling the media," he said. "What it gives, it can take away."

Yikes!! I would not want to be in that position either! This reminds me of "the war on Fox News". Who defines news? And should the government be in a position to define it or legitimize it?? No, thank you! What a sticky situation.

Obviously, with the growth of the Internet, rules and regulations regarding media must be changed. But maybe the whole view on media needs to change first. Why is the White House speaking out against a news channel simply because the channel is holding government officials accountable? Why is a blogger excluded from an executive session, when he or she is trying to get important information to his or her readers? Isn't it better to allow many voices into a debate? I believe the attitude toward media as a whole is going to shift in the upcoming years. More and more people become bloggers every day, and the elite and exclusionary group of media producers just won't be able to stay the same.

Disclaimer: Hope I am not offending anyone by including my political analysis in my blog posts. I find it easier and more fun to post if I am worked up about something. Obviously, you have the right to disagree. These are just my thoughts! :)

More on Fox

A quote from an LA Times article from today:

"Fox News executives said the administration is failing to distinguish between their commentators and news programs.

"They talk about the opinion shows and they say, 'See, you're not doing journalism,' " said Michael Clemente, the channel's senior vice president of news, calling the contention that Fox News is not a news organization a "smear."

"I think it reinforces the fact that on the news side, we're the people that will ask the right questions, whatever those questions are," he added."

A quote from a column on "Politics Daily" from 10/14/09:

"Last night Glenn Beck kept the back-and-forth going by showing off a special red phone he said he had installed for Dunn to call him directly. "If we got it wrong, we want to correct it," Beck said. "But if we didn't get it wrong, it looks like you're engaging in one of those -- what do you call it? A smear campaign. Anita, call me. You can call me at any time. We want to have a dialog.""

---I love that Glenn Beck did this. If the White House finds errors in Beck's show, they should let him know when it happens!! He might be outrageous, but it was clever.

Networks stand behind Fox!!

I heard today that the White House tried to block Fox News from an event where news outlets were interviewing "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg. This in itself is pretty outrageous and newsworthy. How can the government do that? Sounds like something that would happen in a communist country, not the US. We don't like it when blogs are regarded as "not real media", and aren't issued press passes... so for the White House to block an actual TV news station is pretty ridiculous. What are they trying to hide???

The other newsworthy note is that the other networks that were there to conduct interviews refused to do it unless Fox was allowed in!!! I think this is a step in the right direction. If the White House can decide to block one outlet, who's to say that tomorrow they won't be blocking CNN, MSNBC or ABC? Media outlets everywhere should be outraged. The White House shouldn't get to decide who gets to know the news.

A quote from the article:

"What it's really about to me is the Executive Branch of the government trying to tell the press how it should behave. I mean, this democracy -- we know this -- only works with a free and unfettered press to provide information," he said.

Read the story @ Huffington here

Another good article on Huffington talks about how Fox's numbers keep going up.

A quote from it: "Having the president attack you is the best advertising in the world without having to spend a nickel on it."

Read it here, this one is pretty interesting.