Kelly Cochran

I went to the newsroom yesterday bittersweet.

"Sam, I can't believe this our last news shift," says I while thoughts of all the fun and interesting things of this semester spun through my mind as happily as a candy-colored carousel.

"It's not." (cue the screeching stop of carousel music)

I could only respond with a deadpan, "what?" A failsafe way to turn my bittersweet into bitter is to change my schedule, especially now.

I have a great finals week. I only have one final on Tuesday and the presentation for this class then jet set, see ya: I'm home, surrounded by the apple cider and pumpkin bread characteristic of a Cochran Christmas.

But the week before finals (the week of my actual last news shift) is, well, there's no polite word to describe it.

So writing my final news shift into my meticulously crafted and outlined schedule shifts everything two hours to the left. It took me at least half an hour last night to commit the new schedule to memory.

But I see promise in next week's news shift because . . . Rick's making waffles.

I've given one other farewell speech in my life.

As my middle school's student council president, I gave my 8th grade graduation speech. After a string of solid A’s in creative writing, I was a highly anticipated speaker. My speech was peppered with standard graduation clichés like, "spread our wings" and "the horizon of our future."

Yikes.

Nonetheless, people expected big things out of me, after all my student-counciling and speech giving. Now, eight years later, I can show them . . .

. . . this blog.

So how'd I end up here? I chose journalism after insisting I work at something significant. Journalism is information which, to me, is empowerment. Journalism is my way to influence the world.

So I enrolled.

Five semesters and three advanced media courses leter, I finally found the medium that shocked my voice to life.

More importantly, no other medium transfers so much control to the viewer. There's no timeline on the web. Readers can come and go as they please, never having to worry that the information they want will be gone before they can access it again. Online makes endless news information possible.

Finally, a media outlet tailor-made for my pupose as a journalist.

I know this is "farewell" but only to tv.ku.edu. I have no doubt I'll cross paths in my future career with many of the insightful and clever minds I've worked with, and been inspired by, in this class.

So cheers to you tv.ku.edu, you've emboldened my path and inspired my sight. You can expect big things out of me if you'd like. Maybe in eight years I'll be able to show you . . .

. . . another blog.

The brain is a remarkable organ. I always told myself that if I were to ever be confined indefinitely to a space, say to a hospital with a terminal illness or in a jail cell with a life sentence, I would devote all my time reading about the brain.

During my shift a few weeks ago, I was looking for a “beyond Lawrence” topic and stumbled across a really cool article in Popular Science titled “Mind Tricks Explained.” For all of you who are dumbfounded by Déjà Vu or wonder where the sensation of being watched comes from, this is the article for you. Fascinating.

I told James that sometimes I wish I had majored in psychology just so I could learn about the mind for hours upon hours every day. His response?

“Too late. You’re a journalist. Plus, I’m not even sure that’s what psychologists do.”

Whatever James:
A) I think there are psychologists that do that.
B) What difference does it make that I’m a journalist. I can learn about the mind as much as I want to.

So now, let’s segway.

It’s my third to last online news shift and I don’t even have to reminisce about what I’ve learned this semester. I can talk about things I learned during this shift.

1) I did it. I posted videos to YouTube. I didn’t think I would ever have a chance to but since I had to take an afternoon shift this week, my first responsibility was posting the news from the day before.
2) Photoshop is never-ending in captivating editing tricks. Have you ever liquefied a photo? I liquefied my family Christmas card. Enter: The greatest practical joke I’ve pulled in a while.
3) I can repurpose an in-depth script, write its links and import its web elements in one hour. If I had done it at the beginning of the semester, I would have needed two shifts to do it.

Overall, I don't know that I've ever learned as much in one semester as I have in 694.

I don't know where else I could have learned so much brand new information, even though I'm sure my brain could tell me.

I'm not sure how I feel about this semester coming to an end. This was my fourth to last news shift and I'm sad about it.

Here I am, my soul finally sound in online production, my journalism jitters calmed in my final advanced media, and I only have three weeks left. Figures.

What am I doing next semester? I don't even remember what I enrolled in. Probably some puny elective that has the word "experience" in the title. Like, "realms of the media experience," or "journalistic experience and liberal political discourse." Boo. I want more online.

In the few weeks I have left, I'm going to devote my shift posts to the things I've learned. Today's recollections are as follows.

1. While I never got the greatest grades on newstories, I rock the blog post.
2. HTML code. I always wondered how websites were built and formatted. Now I know.
3. I'm a big fan of the slide show. It's a perfectly balanced method of artistic and objective storytelling.
4. Train travel is fun, albeit a little bizarre.

That's enough for now, but be warned. With only a handful of blogs left, you best read my posts now. I guarantee I won't be blogging about "the historical impression of the modern media experience" next semester.

All it takes is the thought of Gene Kelly singing in the rain to pull me out of a slump.
Photo: www.pictureshowman.com

The world would be very different without musicals. There would be a whole mess of unlikable people. An entire subset of the population (myself included) would be sour from pent up, frustrated, musical energy and no way to release it. No one would like them. They’d be too nervous a bunch.

My appreciation of musical theater extends beyond the technical qualities of showmanship. Musicals are also the perfect parody. I don’t care who you are, dance breaks are funny.

For instance, if you want a good laugh, choreograph a trip to the grocery store. Sometime in between pirouettes in the produce section and the kick line in aisle nine, you’ll have an audience doubling over with laughter.

So what do I think tv.ku.edu is missing? Isn’t it obvious? As an already creative environment, the newsroom is long overdue for a jazzy song and dance.

That thought gave birth to Dancing ‘til Deadline, a tv.ku.edu musical. What other medium can merge the creativity, talent, and energy we have in the newsroom? None other than the musical.

Step aside Bing. Out of my way Astaire. The curtain’s rising on tv.ku.edu.

A blend of professional news product
and audience interactivity lets tv.ku.edu have their cake and eat it too
Photo: Cakes by Darcy

1. Awkward shuffling as people rack their brains trying to tell me about some news they heard recently.
2. “Huh. So . . . what are you going to do with that?”

As a reporter for KUJH-TV last year, I know firsthand how frustrating it is to broadcast a creditable product for a disappointingly small audience.

So why am I still here and not studying medicine or business? Because we have a website. And my, what a website. We’ve taken KUJH-TV, folded it into YouTube and once we’ve mixed in a dash of interactivity, we’ll have our cake and eat it too.

Interactivity is crucial to tv.ku.edu’s progress. Supplementing professional reporting with video entries, photo submissions, and comment boards leads to stronger overall content.

Now, I’m not naïve. I realize that opening the floodgates to any and all content will leave us drowning in (sorry general public) a lot of meaningless mediocrity.

So we edit. Sure it may take a little more sifting and a little more editing but if you want good content, it has to be effective. Tv.ku.edu will sacrifice some control in order to allow audience interactivity but it’s worth it when you are able to produce diversified content that engages your audience.

A product that’s two parts professional, one part user generated is a compelling product. Our website allows us to talk to our audience. It also lets our audience talk back.

So say something. Then maybe you’ll understand why I’m in journalism.

I know I’ve said before but I love how much I learn on Thursdays. This week, on top of the standard progressive fluency in HTML speak and an increasingly critical eye for multimedia communication, I learned the meaning of everyone's name in our online class.

I've been pointlessly fascinated by the origin of names for years. I've known that Kelly Mikala means "Female warrior of God" since I was about eight years old. Even though I love names, it was when I got Gretchen “Pearl bringing Victory” involved that the name game really started rolling.

She and I ravaged Babynames.com while I waited for Sam "His name is God of the Sun" to wrap up Joseph's "God Will Increase" package.

We really liked looking up different names so it was kind of disappointing when Chris "Christ-bearer" and Krista "Christian" shared similar meanings. However, some similarities turned into pleasant surprises.

As it turns out, Uncle Rick "Brave Ruler" and Dick don't share the same name. Dick is actually William "Strong-willed Warrior."

But it doesn't end there. Imagine our delight when we put two and two together and realized that Dick could call himself Willie Nelson. Why he chooses not to is beyond me.

We opted to stop once we found the best name in the group. Brad "Dark Skinned Warrior of the Broad Meadow," you're our winner.

This past week I've been invited to support Stephen Colbert for president on facebook 17 times. How many invitations have I gotten to support, oh I don't know, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, or even Mitt Romney? (i.e. actual candidates). None.

There's another group on facebook titled "I get all my news from the Daily Show and the Colbert Report." The group might as well be called the "I don't listen to the radio, watch, newscasts or read the paper. I don't even read news online . . . unless it's funny." And there's the rub.

There's an audience of adolescents and young adults out there that responds to the informal, conversational style of news reports like the Colbert Report or the Daily Show.

No one can really say why but I'm going to wax poetic that it has something to do with the fact that those media mimic the communication friends have among friends. It puts real information in the comfortable context of humor.

So what's it going to take for real newscasts to win back the twenty-something audience? No more than a little intuition and a few subtle tactics. It's no secret that news media is audience driven, so isn't it naive to stick to a format that a young audience admits they don't care about? KUJH-TV thinks so. Airing our news through a popular medium like YouTube is an ideal chance to supplement traditional newscasts with other forms of communication like blogs and video projects.

It's our obligation to ebb and flow with the flux of viewership and branching out by posting our station to YouTube is KUJH-TV's way of doing that.

This Thursday was a standard experience. Thank goodness because, being a creature of habit, I was getting a out of sorts with all these shift changes. Thursday still had it's differences though. Two to be exact.
1. James wasn't around so the witty banter was left up to me and Sam.
2. Since KUJH is going to YouTube, I couldn't help but think what the stories I was producing would look like on the site. I find the whole endeavor pretty exciting, but I'll save the details for my big post Tuesday.

While I was thinking of YouTube and all the posibilities that form of communication opens for us, my mind started multi-tasking. Sure I sat and produced the web page like the good little online student I am, but I also was running through the choreography and lyrics for tv.ku.edu the musical. I'll end this post with a tease:

Lyrics adapted from the song "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice.
Alright STOP. Colaborate and LISTEN.
TV's back with a brand new intention
KU, comin' through to you nightly
Reportin' the news and we don't mean lightly
Will it ever stop? Yo, I say NO!
KUJH, dig it's our show
It's a live stream so check the mic, don't ya move slow
We're here to tell the people 'bout the news that they don't know
694, it's not an elective
KUJH, a fresh perspective
echo: your news daily

*note: lyrics co-written by Gretchen Wieland

Filling in for Gretchen went so well I did it again Thursday for Sam. The context was a little different. Sam was out of the country too but, unlike Gretchen who asked if I could fill in for her, Sam's and my discussion went a little something like this:

Me: Hey Sam, I am not going to be able to work the night shift this Thursday so can we swap and I'll do your afternoon shift instead?
Sam: Oh, I'm going to be in Toronto so I wasn't going to come at all this Thursday.
Me: You weren't going to let me know, were you.
Sam: No.
<silence>
Sam: James knew.
<silence>
Me: Um, so I guess I can come in the afternoon then? . . .

That was the most disorganized part of the day though. Afternoon shifts give you an edge. If you're someone who doesn't mind doing bits and pieces of work as each story comes in, you can have the webpage practically up and running by the time the evening newscast airs.

The shift came full circle as Gretchen did my night shift in place of the Monday shift I did for her. The newswoman in me always loves a good conclusion.