3/30/09

I'm finally back after a having a great week at Panama City Beach, FL. Obviously I didn't do too well on my later tournament picks with my national champion Wake Forest losing in the first round to Cleveland State, but my bracket is still in the 96th percentile on yahoo. I would first like to take time to congratulate the Missouri Tiger basketball team on a great season and headcoach Mike Anderson for turning the program completely around in a mere 3 years. Next...

Final Four Predictions:

UConn over Mich St.
---I still don't like Big 10 play, the talented UConn team will take down the Spartans...finally

North Carolina over Villanova
---Nova is on fire right now, but nobody seems good enough to stop the Tarheels.

National Championship:

North Carolina over UConn (82-78)
---I really want the Huskies to win this game, but I just can't see anyone stopping the Heels right now.

Now it's time for business...In my daily scour for news I searched CNN.com. One video story really caught my attention, In Milton Massachusetts, a 23 year-old went on a rampage and killed his 17 year-old sister and beheaded his 5 year-old sister in front of a police officer. This story is very depressing and the interview of police Chief Richard Wells does a good job of communicating the somber feelings of the story, but the reporter seems to care less and has no feeling of remorse in her voice and soinds way to distant for my taste. I noticed that the camera was very shakey throughout the story and ever person that was interviewed was on the right side of the camera, she needed to head bump. I was not at all impressed with the story and I hope the reporter tried to interview a family member, family friend or neighbor, because she didn't. The story even ended on a quote, what could have been a story that would make the audience feel the pain of this tragic incident was just another murder in a poor looking town. I would think that CNN would do a better job of hiring reporters, but I suppose not everyone can hit a homerun every time.

NCAA Tournament Part 2

So far I am 19/20 on my bracket predictions and since I'm about to leave for Panama City, FL I will give my upsets for the 2nd weekend of the tournament.

Midwest:

In the sweet 16...

(4) Wake Forest over (1) Louisville

This will be the best game in the tournament at this point, but I believe Wake Forest has more skill than Louisville and Wake will show that they were deserving of at least a 3 seed.

(3) Kansas over (2) Michigan St.

I will take the best team in the Big 12 over the best team in the Big 10 any day in any sport.

In the elite 8...

(4) Wake Forest over (3) Kansas

This game will be amazing, but Wake Forest has more experience and has the skill to beat any team in the country.

West

In the sweet sixteen...

(3) Missouri over (2) Memphis

I think that Memphis is the most overrated team in the tournament and the relentless Missouri squad will wear them down before the end of the first half.

East

In the elite eight...

(3) Villanova over (2) Duke

This is hard to call after Nova's shaky performance against American last night, but Duke is a hit or miss team and they are going to miss against Nova.

South

In the elite eight...

(2) Oklahoma over (1) North Carolina

Blake Griffin is too dominate inside for North Carolina and Willie Warren will light up the 3's.  

1st round NCAA Tournament

Instead of listing every game and why I think the #1 seeds will beat the #16 seeds, I will just list my upsets of the first and second rounds.  The big question, is 9 over 8 an upset?  

No, but for technicalities sake, I'll still list it.  Here we go!!!

In the Midwest bracket I have no upsets in the first two rounds...real generic huh?  Just wait until the regional semis...

As for the West bracket, in the first round:

(9)Texas A&M over (8)BYU, whoopdie doo!!!

A&M has finished their regular season strong and has had at least moderate success against top 25 teams, unlike BYU, who thrives by destroying awful teams in the Mountain West.

(10) Maryland over (7) California, now the fun begins...

Maryland played 9 games against top 10 teams this season, they only won 3, but that is more wins than Cal had games against top 10 teams (0).  I don't trust a team that had 7 losses in the Pac 10 and a nonchalant out of conference schedule.

In the second round:

(5) Purdue over (4) Washington

While I don't think either team is exceptionally strong, Purdue at least tried to schedule tough non-conference opponents while Washington glided through the entire season with a weak non-conference and conference schedule.

Time for the East bracket, or not...no upsets in the first 2 rounds.

And the South bracket, only one upset in the first round:

(12) Western Kentucky over (5) Illinois

The simple reason is this; Illinois' best player, Chester Frazier, is out.  Everyone needs a 12 over 5, this is the most obvious choice.  Not to mention Western Kentucky has proved they can play with anyone by beating Louisville by 14 earlier this season.

I promise that my tournament down the road is more exciting for upset watches, until then, cheers!

 

3/17/09

I decided to see what was happening in sports today by watching an online segment of Sports Center Right Now on espn.com.  The segment was a cut-in of Robert Flores reading off of a reader script about Carl Landry getting shot in the leg last night.  He then changed stories to a VO about Cole Hamels' injury and he did a very good job of pausing and changing his voice between stories.  I noticed that he spoke a lot slower during the cut-in than anyone did during our lab.  Oddly during the third story about Steelers owner Dan Rooney becoming the U.S. ambassador to Ireland, the studio played background music while Flores was speaking.  It was very distracting and took away from what he was saying.  The last story was a VO of him talking about how the NCAA tournament starts tonight.  Flores had a very good, crisp delivery throughout the entire one minute cut-in, which ended at exactly one minute.  He has obviously had tons of practice doing cut-ins and anchoring so he has a very professional approach with no noticeable errors.  This might have been the best example of journalism (albeit sports) I have watched online in quite a while.

3/9/09

I was glancing at CNN today while working out and the big story was about how Oprah gave advice to Rihanna and Chris Brown.  She said, "If a man has hit you once, he will hit you again." I decided to watch a video of it on CNN.com once I got home and the video they have on the website was from their radio talk show, "Drive Time Buzz" in Atlanta.  The host was Don Lemon and he had a weird set-up where the two guests where sitting very awkwardly on the other side of a large room from him.  Martha Zoller, a conservative, says Rihanna should not give Chris Brown another chance.  A liberal, Warren Ballentine, says he applauds Oprah Winfrey, because there is an "epidemic" of violence between young couples right now.  He also says that Rihanna should step away from him.  I don't agree with the wide camera angle they used in the story, it just looked too awkward for television or internet.  The lighting is also way off; the studio is too dark behind the guests.  I believe they really need a new studio if they are going to be putting clips on the internet.  One thing that stuck out to me is when Don Lemon was asking a question while cleaning off his glasses with his shirt at the same time, there is no reason to do that and it looks like he just isn't into the topic.  The guests gave good answers though and I'm sure the show was very good over the radio.

3/1/09

Hello there March, hopefully you will bring warm weather.

Anyway...

I watched a story on CNN.com about President Obama and his speech on getting the soldiers out of Iraq.  The story is well done and I have no complaints.  It was done in a conversational approach, not a scripted approach.  The interesting thing about this story is that Republican Alex Castellanos said, "Listening to Obama give a speech is like sex, the worst there ever is, is excellent." I personally liked the comparison, but I had to wonder to myself if it is okay to say this in the story.  It is a little irrelevant and not completely appropriate since little kids could be watching, but most kids don't watch the news, so I don't think it was the worst thing in the world.  I imagine Joe Buck was appalled though, since he didn't approve of the Randy Moss fake moon celebration.

 My fourth package has been a bit of a challenge so far.  Thursday afternoon I scheduled an interview with Joe Bailey, he owns a garage where he buys peoples junk cars and renovates them.  Apparently he makes a killing off of this and it is a second job that he started once the economy went down hill.  I was scheduled to meet him Friday at noon in front of his garage, I skipped all my classes to go to the interview and he wasn't there.  I called him and he told me that he completely forgot about it and he asked if we could meet Saturday.  I told him that we could meet at 1:15 after I get a camera and he told me he would be there.  Predictably once I got there on Saturday he was a no show (but hind-sight is 20/20), I called him an uncountable number of times and he never answered.  There I was sitting in my car, with no story on Saturday and I had to work in two hours.  I actually thought I was going to fail B2 at this point until I remembered that the True/False Film Festival was still going on and I decided that I would go there to dig up a story on Sunday.  

I had no idea what I was going to find and crammed in some research, but of course all of the executives of the event were to busy to meet with me on short notice.  I decided to make do and interview people standing in line.  I noticed a trend that many people were not from Mid-Missouri and I thought, "Hey! This is a bigger event than I thought!"  I decided to focus the story on how the festival has expanded since it first started through the eyes of the attendees.  I have yet to edit my story and I will probably live out of the Broadcast Lab tomorrow on pop-tarts and cough drops, but hopefully my story will be as good as I hope!