My blog has been out of action for many months and I figure it’s time to give things a bit of a jumpstart. I’ve been extremely busy these last few months, as I have transitioned into the world of professional journalism. To start things off let me begin with a brief summary of spring semester.
The bulk of this past spring was devoted to my Public Affairs reporting class. I must admit it scared the hell out of me to take the class after hearing the amount of work involved but I dove in headfirst anyway.
This class takes green student journalists and gives them the tools needed to succeed in the professional world. We met twice a week and were expected to file a weekly beat story in addition to whatever else we were covering. I choose to cover the city beat and it was a great way to learn about the inner workings of local government.
We also were required as a class to cover the regular Monday night meetings of the Missoula City Council for a month. It was a little crazy at first trying to file a story on a midnight deadline but it got better as time went on. City council meetings for the most part aren’t awful exciting but they do have their moments especially when public controversy is involved.
When our council duty was over, we were briefly exposed to the world of criminal justice. I learned how to access court documents and got the chance to cover the wrap up of a felony domestic violence case. The case was cut and dried because the defendant entered a plea agreement. I liked being in the courtroom but the case I chose to cover was over in three minutes. It was shocking to have things end so fast but it still was an invaluable experience.
During the semester I covered a variety of issues ranging from an epidemic of potholes in Missoula to medical facilities banning legally registered patients from using medical marijuana. There is a funny aside to the marijuana story.
This story was difficult because most facilities wanted to remain tight lipped on patient policies but that didn’t deter me from doing my job. Anyway, I visited a particular nursing home in town and the administrator was not very happy with my prying questions. I was quickly asked to leave the facility or the local authorities would be summoned.
I found my experience of being kicked out of a nursing home to be a hilarious case of irony. Reminds me of challenging authority back home but hey thats a story for another time!
The other highlight of Public Affairs class was getting a piece published in the school paper The Kaimin. I probed the failure of the University of Montana to follow updated regulations to the Americans with Disabilities Act concerning concert and event ticketing for folks with disabilities.
Click to view the article: GrizTix not in compliance with new ADA regulationsI greatly enjoyed this course and it prepared me to take my journalistic skills to the next level. Our professor was amazing and I’ll definitely take his kernels of wisdom with me throughout the rest of my career.
Probably my favorite class this spring was Print/Web Design. I didn’t know how much work this class would be but it was worth every bit of effort.
This class introduced me to the digital world of professional printing and it was quite an intense learning curve at first. There was so much to learn and we had to throw all our preconceived notions out the window.
We used Adobe InDesign for all our work and it was great to learn many new skills. I worked hard on learning the software and I completed a wide variety of assignments. Some of these included newspaper layouts, a journalism portfolio, advertisements, a tabloid newspaper cover and other assorted projects.
The final exam required us to design a multi-page magazine layout, which implemented many of things learned over the semester. I put together a fictional dog magazine called Woof and the end product turned out great. If I can figure out how to do it, there will be a copy of my magazine here on the blog.
My trio of journalism classes was rounded out by Media Law. You may think this would be a boring class to take but I found it to be quite interesting and informative.
The class was broken up into discussing the different facets of law affecting the media. Topics ranged from media access and libel to obscenity and free speech. Hopefully I’ll never need to put many of these legal principles into use but it’s important to know what my rights are as a journalist. It’s hard to inform the public without having these protections in place for the media to use.
I enjoyed the part of class where we got to participate in mock trials dealing with certain parts of the law. Each person in the class was assigned to a group and we took turns acting as judges and lawyers representing different cases. Cases were spread out through the semester so it wasn’t too overwhelming to prepare for our particular roles. We also had to write legal briefs, which weren’t tons of fun but it was educational to research legal cases and precedents.
The semester was pretty taxing on me but everything worked out beautifully in the end. I was able to nail down A’s in all my courses and this made every late night worth it. My goal each semester is to work as hard as possible and let the chips fall where they may.
It’s hard to believe I only have a year of school left but at least my hardest semester is over and done with.
Mark
