Nick and Sam's Article

Published: Nov, 2

Obama gives a "Flaming" Speech

President Obama was speaking to high school students about his fiery passion for politics, when he literally caught fire. Yesterday, October 31, Obama was a guest speaker at Freepport High School during their falcon period. In the middle of his speech he caught on fire because so many of the FPAC lights had been trained on him that his suit overheated. Luckily, thanks to impeccable town planning, the fire station is quite close to the school. This meant that the fire department could respond quickly, and kept the fire from spreading to the crowd of confused students. 

The Freeport Fire Cheif, Darrel Fournier, said, "I see why people might think this is a big deal, but honestly it is our job and I am just glad that we could help," when asked if saving President Obama meant a lot to him. 

Obama was surprised that this "unusual and terrifiying incident" would happen in a small Maine town, but said that the helpfulness of freeport students and citizens has inspired him to return here in the future despite this awful fire. 

Mr. Strong is rumored to have said he never knew the damage that so few lights could create and would look into using fewer lights.

Since this incident the president has fully recovered, has a new suit from Jos. A. Banks, and has resumed his tour of the state. There was a brief investigation into arson, but it looks as though it was not caused by any funny business. 

Check out The New York Times article at nytimes.org for more information. For a students thoughts on this incident, check out the journalism blog at FHS.

ICB Questions

1) Why the precise bonds/knots?

2) Reason for putting bodies where they are and shooting them where they did?

3) How will Bobby Rupp respond to being a suspect?

I feel Bobby will react in one of two ways. The first being that he will be offended and surprised that the police feel he could kill his girlfriend and her near perfect family. The other is that he will have expected it and just take it in stride, worrying more about why she died and such then why he in suspect. In either case I feel that he will be cooperative, and try to help with the investigation in any way possible. probably playing his last evening at the house over and over in his head, looking for something that if he had just noticed, he could have saved Nancy's family. 

4) What clues are left that eventually point to Dick and Perry?

5) Do we get the murder from Rick and Perry's perspective too? 

         If so, why not first? If not, why?

In Cold Blood 3,2,1

3 Things learned about Capote

      -Homosexual

      -Set out to intentionally create a new genre of non-fiction

      -Died for drug and alcohol intensive lifestyle

2 Things learned about Clutter murder

      -Last person to see the family was the daughters boyfriend

      -Nancy was "tucked" in

1 Question

      -Is there any apparent motive for the murder of an entire family?

      

NYT Reflection

From this documentary it would seem that there are only a couple simple rules for deciding when and how to report political stories, without compromising import secrecy. The most important of these ideas is one that could be applied to any news story published: make sure that all facts are present, and true. If one is unsure that the entire story is present, or that parts (or all) of the story might be untrue, don’t publish it yet. One must wait until the whole story, or the truth, is exposed, and then publish that story instead. An example from the video that shows the problems which can come about because of not heeding this advice is the story about WMD’s that Judith Miller covered. The story claimed that the government knew about WMD’s in Iraq, and that we should go to war to protect ourselves and any others involved with Iraq. The story came out as being false information within the year, but the “damage” had been done, as people had showed their support for the war and the Bush administration had launched an attack. Judith Miller tried to defend herself, and though the whole thing may not have been her fault, she should have made sure that all her facts were checked a couple times so that she wouldn’t be influencing people with lies. A second very important rule is to asses what type of impact the story will have on everyone involved. If the story seems to put many people at risk, then it is probably not a great article to publish. If the impact on people is purely that their feelings might be hurt or that a negative view of a leader is going to be exposed, then it is probably a fine article to publish, as everyone will be better informed and no one is going to die from the coverage. One way to make sure that one or two specific people aren’t put in danger is to take out names and publish the article as a basic story that doesn’t call anyone out. That said, it is important not to withhold too much of the story or it will just leave the public more confused, because they know that something big is happening but not what the whole story is. One example of too much editing is the video that was posted by wikiLeaks, they edited out much of the thirty minute film so that it only showed the military killing civilians. In the actual video, that was very hard to find, there was evidence that the people killed were not simply civilians as they had rocket launchers and such. Thus the NYT decided that they didn’t want to publish too much about the video, and instead ran a story about how wikiLeaks was affecting the media world. It seems that most decisions about what to publish, and how to publish, in terms of highly political matters can be boiled down to these two rules. If the story definitely reliable and won’t cause too many people to be at physical risk (though maybe only after removing their names), then the story can and should be published, otherwise either move on or continue following the story until a clear answer develops. 

Opening Moment

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/11/malala-yousafzai-nobel-peace-prize/2964649/

This is an article about Malala Yousafzai being in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was shot in the head and neck last October by the Taliban because she ws a girl going to school. She fully recovered and has returned to being an advocate for the education of woman and girls in the Middle East.  

Interview in a picture

The rock in the background represents the background information that the interviewer must find out.

The lighthouse is the one thing that you are trying to find out about your interviewee, the focal point of your interview

The waves represent waves of questions that the interviewer asks

Ad the chair is where the interviewee will sit as wave after wave of questions approach.

Post #1 - Journalism

I would say that, as far as high school students go, I follow world news pretty closely. It is through this that I have gotten most of my exposure to journalism. I listen to NPR almost anytime that I am driving and try to check my personalized google news daily. There are a few reasons that I do this, the first and foremost is that I like to be informed and know what is going on in the world around me as it often has influence over my life. I have to say that I much prefer listing to news and journalists than reading it. One reason for this is that I find, at least on NPR and the BBC they live stream, there is less of a bias in radio than newspaper. And if there is a bit of a biased it is usually left leaning which agrees with my point of view in most cases. I think this gets to the one thing that bothers me most about journalism, when people are very badly, and often obviously, bias. I believe this to be true no matter which side it comes from as it distorts the truth and doesn't leave people to make their own decisions about things, that said I know it is really hard to write from an unbiased point of view and so I applaud anyone who is able to make this work. 

Post #2 - Good interview

There are a few things that go into creating a successful interview. The first two parts are to decide who one wants to interview and to choose what the interview is going to try and find about about a certain person or topic. This first step requires some research, most likely into both a topic and a subject, making sure you now enough about each that if the conversation steers away from your questions you will still feel comfortable and be able to work with what is presented. Once these pieces have been established one can move onto the next step, creating questions to ask ones interviewee about their lives or the chosen subject. In terms of what makes a good interview questions, there are many answers that can vary based on the situation. At other most basic level one wants to create a positive environment where the subject feels comfortable sharing information. There are a few pieces to this, don't start into your specific questions right away, start with easy everyday questions to get the conversation stated. After that make sure that ones questions are not too pointed and that they are open ended allowing large amounts of information to be gleaned for the interviewee, and to let other have some control over the conversation. After questions and an over all strategy have been conceived the interview can then seek out the subject for an interview. At the actual interview be sure to make small talk at the beginning, then move to the per-writen questions and finally let the interviewee add anything that they would like to say. It is probably a good idea to record the session in some way other than furiously scribbling notes while talking to the person and to either ask clarifying questions or look up works and phrases you may not know. 

Post #3 - Personality Profile

I read an personality profile of Michael Bérubé by Angela Haupt. The profile starts with a quick history of Bérubé's life, to get information about this without too much detail the question: "what aspect of you childhood most affected your life?" could be asked. Another section of the profile probably came from the question, "How do you respond to questions about controversial subjects in your classroom?" This question yielded answers in which Bérubé told of his ability to answer questions indirectly so they don't cause too much discussion. A third question that Haupt probably asked is, "How do you feel about being in Horowitz' book?" This question would give answers about Bérubé's thoughts on Horowitz and his writing.

One big difference between a front page article and a personality profile is the subject. The first is usually about a topic of interest rather than a person of interest, it is usually very specific, and it is less personal. Personality profiles on the other hand are about a specific person, and often includes  that persons thoughts/feelings and not just their role in an event. They also seem to show a lot about who the subject in on a personal level than a newspaper article would.