2/23/09

I was watching Fox News and on The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly attacked Sean Penn for his comments during the Academy Awards last night.  O'Reilly said that Penn contradicted himself for telling everyone that those against gay marriage should be ashamed at themselves while also saying good thing Obama is finally in office, when Obama is against gay marriage.  On the show O'Reilly called Penn a "clown" and said that everything Penn says is wrong.  This is happening at the same time that many media sources are calling the win for Penn as best actor a win for gay marriage.  I think this issue is obviously a conservative vs liberal issue and opinion is going to vary depending on the network being watched, but I find it odd that every journalist is giving their opinion on what happened in the first place.  Isn't media supposed to be unbiased?  

The most troubling part of my story this week was finding a good story.  I didn't find a story that I really like this entire week and I finally settled after finding a decent one on Thursday. What worries me most about my story is the lack of good shots with action happening in them, though I do believe I have solid shots.  I was set back a little when I was told that I couldn't use shots were you can make out a students face.  I believe that my story was a story that could be best told through graphics instead of good video and my story is more about a topic than a person.  I do think that I maximized my story though;  I used all of my shots, I have good web extras, I had a lot of good information that I used and I wrote to the full potential of the story. The one part of my story that went wrong was my interview with Dr. Ritter.  I set up the interview perfectly and had no head room, but as I moved to the other side of the camera he moved back in his chair and I didn't notice until I returned to capture the tape.  I already know that I'm going to get points of for it, but I did the best that I could by covering it up with b-roll.

2/16/09

On cnn.com I watched a report on the stimulus bill.  I liked the first scene when they said, "this is the 787 billion dollar stimulus bill" and they showed a shot of it spread out on a table.  Besides that most of the shots were file footage of Obama boarding Airforce One and getting off of his helicopter, heading into the White House.  Oddly enough most of the interview set-ups were not properly done.  In one interview of Lauren Fix the background is really dark and blends in with her hair, it is very distracting.  In the stand-up, Dan Lothian is standing too close to the White House and the viewer can't tell what he is standing in front of.  I thought it was a generic story for the times, since every newscast seems to run this same story every night, but I would think they could use some new more unique shots instead of the generic file footage.  I wasn't impressed.  

Now, as for my second package, it has come along nicely.  I started off haggling with the PR person for the Mizzou swim team to get media credentials and when I finally got them on Thursday night, I woke up Friday with an email from the U.S. swim team PR person saying that I couldn't get media credentials.  I called her and I convinced her it would be harmless to give me credentials.  This took way more time than it should have and probably gave me some grey hairs.

I went to the Missouri Grand Prix at 4:30 and started getting shots.  I was told that after Katie Hoff's races I would be able to interview her and once Sullivan was done I could also interview her.  It turned out that the Hoff interview was a press conference and I was the only one there with a camera among many newspaper journalists, so I shoved my way to the front.  This interview became difficult to set up, because she kept turning to the different reporters when they asked questions so I had to make sure the interview was set up correctly, that I could listen to everyone else's questions so that I would not repeat one and I had to think of good questions on the spot (talk about a run-on sentence).  I think I ended up with a decent interview, but it would have been nice to have a camera man.

That was the most trouble that I came across when shooting my package, but once I started doing my web extras I came across more trouble.  I tried to add a link to my web story, but it wouldn't allow me to since they are training exercises and to add a link the stories must be approved for KOMU.com.  I also wanted to add a video of Hoff answering a question on the Michael Phelps incident, but since I was listening and thinking of a follow up question I failed to frame it properly and it just didn't look good.

In the end after conquering most of the problems that I came across, I feel that this is by far the best story that I have ever made and I am very proud of myself at the moment.  Hopefully everyone else feels the same when they see it.

Position Ranking for the '09 MLB season

I will be listing the top 10 of who I believe will play the best at each position this upcoming season, not only offensively, but defensively.  For OF, I will just give the 30 best OFs.  For pitchers I will give the top 10 RP and top 30 SP.

Catcher

1.  Brian McCann

2.  Geovany Soto

3.  Joe Mauer

4.  Russell Martin

5.  Victor Martinez

6.  Chris Iannetta

7.  Ryan Doumit

8.  Yadier Molina

9.  Pablo Sandoval

10. Jorge Posada

First Base

1.  Albert Pujols

2.  Miguel Cabrera

3.  Mark Teixeira

4.  Ryan Howard

5.  Kevin Youkillis

6.  Lance Berkman

7.  Prince Fielder

8.  Justin Morneau

9.  Adrian Gonzalez

10. Chris Davis

Second Base

1.  Chase Utley

2.  Ian Kinsler

3.  Dustin Pedroia

4.  Brandon Phillips

5.  Dan Uggla

6.  Brian Roberts

7.  Howie Kendrick

8.  Jose Lopez

9.  Robinson Cano

10. Ian Stewart

Third Base

1.  Alex Rodriguez

2.  David Wright

3.  Evan Longoria

4.  Aramis Ramirez

5.  Chipper Jones

6.  Alex Gordon

7.  Ryan Zimmerman

8.  Troy Glaus

9.  Adrian Beltre

10. Chone Figgins

Short Stop

1.  Hanley Ramirez

2.  Jose Reyes

3.  Troy Tulowitzki

4.  Derek Jeter

5.  Stephen Drew

6.  Jimmy Rollins

7.  Rafael Furcal

8.  Michael Young

9.  Mike Aviles

10.  Khalil Greene

Outfield

1.  Grady Sizemore

2.  Ryan Braun

3.  Josh Hamilton

4.  B. J. Upton

5.  Manny Ramirez

6.  Carlos Lee

7.  Carlos Beltran

8.  Carlos Quentin

9.  Nick Markakis

10.  Vladimir Guerrero

11.  Curtis Granderson

12.  Alfonso Soriano

13.  Ichiro

14.  Matt Kemp

15.  Ryan Ludwick

16.  Matt Holliday

17.  Nate McLouth

18.  Jay Bruce

19.  Magglio Ordonez

20.  Hunter Pence

21.  Alex Rios

22.  Milton Bradley

23.  Torii Hunter

24.  Jermain Dye

25.  Rick Ankiel

26.  Bobby Abreu

27.  Denard Span

28.  Shane Victorino

29.  Colby Rasmus

30.  Adam Jones

Starting Pitcher

1.  Tim Lincecum

2.  Johan Santana

3.  C.C. Sabathia

4.  Brandon Webb

5.  Jake Peavy

6.  Cole Hamels

7.  Dan Haren

8.  Roy Halladay

9.  Edison Volquez

10.  Scott Kazmir

11.  Rich Harden

12.  Chad Billingsley

13.  Josh Beckett

14.  Felix Hernandez

15.  Jon Lester

16.  Ervin Santana

17.  Adam Wainwright

18.  Joba Chamberlain

19.  James Shields

20.  Cliff Lee

21.  Carlos Zambrono

22.  Matt Cain

23.  John Lackey

24.  Roy Oswalt

25.  Chris Carpenter

26.  Scott Baker

27.  David Price

28.  A. J. Burnett

29.  Zack Greinke

30.  Yovani Gallardo

Relief Pitchers

1.  Jonathan Papelbon

2.  Joe Nathan

3.  Francisco Rodriguez

4.  Brad Lidge

5.  Joakim Soria

6.  Mariano Rivera

7.  Jonathan Broxton

8.  Brandon Morrow

9.  Carlos Marmol

10. Bobby Jenks

02/09/09

On espn.com I watched an interview conducted by Peter Gammons of Yankees third baseman, Alex Rodriguez.  Gammons asked, "Alex, this weekend Sports Illustrated reported that in 2003 you tested positive for testosterone an anabolic steroid known as premobolan, what's the truth?" Gammons got Rodriguez to answer truthfully and expand on the question by giving a narrow statement, followed by a broad question that would let "A-Rod" give his side of the story, which is that he did use steroids from 2001-2003 and he admitted that he "was young, stupid and nieve" and that he felt pressure to prove that he was one of the best players of all time.  I found it interesting that Gammons asked this one question and it allowed Rodriguez to explain what happened and how he feels about what he did now.  It was a very good method of questioning, but I don't think that all journalists could get away with getting such a good answer on such a simple question, Gammons has a reputation for being a great journalist among baseball players and has even been inducted in the hall of fame.

As far as my first package is concerned it didn't take a lot of time for me to figure out who I was going to interview and what I planned on doing.  The first person I talked to was Tim Williams a manager at Century 21, I asked him if there was a client that has had their house on the market for longer than the average time it takes to sell and who would be willing to talk to me.  After a few hours he found Chris McGee and his realtor Kim Schwartz.  I talked to Kim and she agreed to give me a tour of the house.  She had even talked to Chris for me and gave me the time of his break, so that I could go there after she showed me the house.  

To be honest, I had expected a normal house, since I had never been to Rocheport before, so it threw me off guard when I arrived and the house was more of a weekend cabin than an actual house.  There was even an old log cabin built in the front yard that has been there for no one knows how long.  After shooting the tour and interviewing Kim, I went to Lange Middle School to meet Chris on his break.  When I finished interviewing Chris I thought it would be a good idea to get some action shots of him teaching his class, I ended up doing this and interviewing Tim Williams.  On Saturday, with help from James Coston, I shot my stand-up.

Unfortunately the camera had been set on "manual" instead of "automatic" when I was shooting on Friday and I couldn't tell by looking in the side panel that the shots were way too dark.  After getting my raw footage graded by Greeley and seeing how dark they were, I attempted to re-do as much footage as possible, but with the busy schedules of Kim and Chris, I couldn't re-shoot the tour or re-interview Chris, so I made the best out of what I had and as far as I'm concerned I told a pretty darn good story.