Audio Editing Assignment

The Japanese government’s recent change to the severity level of the nuclear crisis in Japan puts the crisis in the same category as the Chernobyl disaster. In the story below, NPR's Richard Harris discusses cleanup in the barraged country with expert Lake Barrett, who participated in the cleanup of the Three-Mile Island disaster. Barrett says that after Japan purifies the air, water, and energy sources, cleanup crews must deal with solids, often the most radioactive after these spills. Revolutionary in its challenges, the Japanese nuclear cleanup may cost upwards of $10 billion. http://www.npr.org/2011/04/12/135324541/cleaning-up-fukushima-a-challenge-to-the-core

Niche Blog Video Intro

During this assignment I realized I am a lot more camera shy then I thought. I have never been embarrassed about being in front of the camera but doing this assignment took a few takes to get the final video. I enjoyed the video process however, because after a while I started to just have fun with it and enjoyed myself. Because of the nature of my blog I was not able to come up with a lot of explanation or discussion however I think I was able to address what I was hoping to accomplish with my blog. I also was not able to figure out how to layer still photos into the video which is something I hope I can figure out in the future. 

Video Assignment

These are some videos I have recorded for the Grand Blanc News and the Fenton Press. They're short and simple but I figured they might be of interest. I put the link to each story underneath its video.

Amy Fitzgibbon

Harley Pebbles

R & B Used Books

Carman-Ainsworth Senior Center plans New Year's Eve casino trip

Sponsoring their annual New Year's Eve Casino Trip to Odawa and Soaring Eagle Casinos, Carman-Ainsworth Senior Center is taking reservations. The cost is $145 per person and the trip last from New Year's Eve morning to New Year's Day night.

I aggregated this story because both maps allow for directions to where the citizens will be going. The first is if they choose to go to Odawa Casino and the second is if they choose Soaring Eagle Casino.

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This photo was taken on April 19, 2007 inResort, Michigan, US, using a Nikon D70s.
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This photo was taken on April 1, 2008 in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, US.

Barn fire coverage shows breaking news evolution

Credit: Christofer Machniak/Hartland Patch • Hartland Area Firefighter Jim Brake scrapes the charred ground as Fire Marshal Mike Bernardin takes pictures Saturday in the area where the animal barn once stood until a fire Friday night at Spicer Orchards Farm Market and Cider Mill, 10411 Clyde Road, in Hartland Township, Mich. The building that contains the farm market, winery and bakery stands in the background.

HARTLAND TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Because of how the semester evolved, we didn't do a breaking news assignment as planned, but I still want to provide some insight into how this is changing the nature of journalism.

The example I'm going to use is from Hartland Patch, where on Friday night I began to report about a fire at a well-known farm and cider mill — Spicer Orchards (A photo from my follow-up story is above). What's really important to note is the first news of the fire wasn't even published by me on my site — it came from a user named Mary who broke the story in our activity stream (See below). After I saw that, I immediately checked to see if other media had anything and I found that the countywide newspaper, the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus already had a brief story and pictures. So, I engaged the audience by responding with what I knew at that point, correcting her report that it was a "large" barn and to explain that we now we're working on the story (also below).

I also linked to the Press & Argus story on Hartland Patch's Facebook page. In this new world of journalism while I still see myself competing with the paper for stories, my philosophy is to also link to their coverage whenever it's useful to my audience, especially on stories that are breaking or that I know Hartland Patch won't be doing. This could be called the Kriss Kringle strategy — in the holiday classic “Miracle on 34th Street” where Santa earns the trust of shoppers by sending Macy customers to rival Gimbel's because it makes sense and is the right thing to do. This is basically the same except I'm trying to build credibility with users as well as make Hartland Patch the place to go for hyperlocal news.

Video widths

HARTLAND TOWNSHIP, Michigan — I was glad to see many of your welcome videos posted here. One item, I did notice and that I wanted to address in this post is width. In some, you'll notice the width of the video bleed over. That's because the default width setting is wider than the default on this blog. You can adjust, though, in the html coding. Look for width. It's in pixels and sometimes you have to adjust it through trial an error to get it where you'd like it to be.

For example, in YouTube embeds, it's repeated twice. Here's how the code looks with 480 pixels, which fits here nicely. The second embed, it's at 680, which you can clearly see is too wide.

So, for those of you who have videos that are too wide, I recommend you fix them before I grade the assignment.

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/PN2HAroA12w?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/PN2HAroA12w?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

Video Assignment

While making my welcome video, I will admit it can be difficult, if you're not familiar with it creating videos but if you make sure you're having fun with the project, I'm sure it'll be much easier. I rarely use iMovie on my mac, so this was very new to me. I used my camera on my computer and was trying to talk off the top of my cranium. Excuse Keeping Up With The Kardashians in the background - it's a guilty pleasure. All the images are from complex.com, from posts that I've written, Didn't want to add any more than what was necessary even though I had tons I wanted to throw in there once I figured out how to lay them over my voice to keep it going when the camera picked back to me. Thanks to this class, I will be being more creative with this iMovie, making tons of pointless and/or purpose-filled videos.

JRN 350 Blog Project from Christopher Nic. on Vimeo.