Krista Roberts

When I'm out cruising for news, I want both a rudder & an anchor.

In the 1980s, Kansas City's KSHB experimented with an "anchorless" newscast, producing a nightly 15-minute newsbrief called "41 Express." Featuring a series of video stories strung together with a disembodied voice narrating, it was supposed to be edgy and ground-breaking -- just the kind of thing the station thought hip, young viewers wanted.

But the station missed the mark. It discovered that with enough rocks (stories) you could build a pretty good wall (newscast), but without the mortar (anchor), it just didn't hold together. So the now-defunct "41 Express" is left to Wikipedia lore.

I know we've come a long way since the '80s. I have no desire to return to "mall bangs","parachute pants" or anchorless news. Anchors play a substantial role in the news flow.

That said, I have a big problem with anchor intros. I can't stand the sloppy way most are written. If I got a dime for every anchor intro that ended with, so and so "has the story," I'd never have to work again.

That isn't the way it should be. The anchor intro is the start of the story. It should be the first thing a reporter writes. All too often, as Sir Dropham Pants points out, it isn't.

Anchors are there for a reason. They guide us through the news like a rudder guides a boat. Get rid of them and news consumers may still be able to steer, but it's going to be a lot more work.

I'm wondering if it might be more productive for me to move my shift back by an hour (1-5pm instead of noon-4). It seems like there is very little to do between noon and 1:00, but then when everything goes crazy at 4:00, Gretchen is left with a lot to do by herself. I think having someone there overlapping the two shifts slightly might make for better coverage and make the afternoon/evening easier on everyone.

Today went pretty well (especially since we didn't have lab last week). Brad and I had a chance to learn how to post to the Beyond Lawrence part of the site. I remembered most of how to do the 3pm news brief and then posted a J415 story before I left. Thanks to Justin who showed me how to resize the image that was eclipsing my Web story!

Circling parking lots is a likelihood as KU Parking and Transit oversells permits for commuting students who park in the yellow zones by 59%. Specifically, 10,141 permits are sold for these zones, which hold only 6,370 spots. As a result, potentially 3,771 students could spend class time in the lots looking for a spot.

KU parking gives students a case of yellow fever.
Photo: Chris Raine

This disparity between passes sold and spots available may be the source of rude behavior in parking lots. The combination of students desperate to slide into class before the teacher makes his opening remarks and selfish thinking have caused me some frustration on the pavement. On two occasions, when patiently waiting for a car to back out of a spot, another car pulled up on the other side of the spot and stole a spot that was rightfully mine.

KU isn't the only school dealing with this issue. The parking situation was getting so out of control at Kapiolani Community College in Honolulu, Hawaii, that the school's newspaper printed a list of rules students should follow when cruising the parking lots.

Rudeness in general isn't a new problem, though. Back in 2002, Public Agenda found that 79% of U.S. adults think a lack of politeness is a serious problem in our society. Furthermore, 62% of the respondents were bothered a lot by seeing rude and disrespectful behavior. This problem isn't behind us, if anything, it's getting worse. More recently, in 2006, an ABC News "20/20" survey discovered that 83% of people are bothered a lot by others displaying rude and disrespectful behavior.

What does this mean for KU students? Expect to put your patient hat on when venturing to the parking lots.

Here's the way newspaper journalists & video used to mix. Thankfully that's changing.

In school, I’ve learned that amount of information I get by reading a textbook can't hold a candle to what I absorb going to class. To catch my interest, going visual is your best bet.

That's why I'm excited to see some newspaper editorial writers creating sort of a multimedia mashup by venturing into the world of online video. It gives people like me something to grab onto besides the printed word. What I’ve seen so far is impressive, but coming from a TV background, I also see some easy fixes to improve the end product.

• Write to your pictures. Don't just give me random video related to your topic. Hook your words to your pictures and you'll hook me into your story.
• Keep it simple. Resist the temptation to use video camera special effects. Nothing is harder for a viewer to follow than a zoom or a pan (especially in those tiny Web windows).
• Use a tripod. Don’t create an earthquake. Steady shots by putting the camera on a tripod or other steady surface.
• Hold that shot. You know your video, but your viewers don't. The people watching need time to absorb the images, so no edit should be shorter than three seconds and most should be in the four to six second range.
• Actions speak. Look for the action that's happening and shoot it. It will be much more interesting than that static shot of a building.
• Keep me close. Video can take us there, but not if all the shots are from 50 feet away. Vary your shot distances and don't forget the power in close-ups.

This week I changed my shift time to 1:00-5:00 p.m. I think the move worked pretty well. When I got in, Brad had everything under control. He posted the 3:00 p.m. news brief since he had not had a chance to do it before. Working a later shift also gave me time to write an extra story for Gretchen. We'll see how things go on the 24th.

Stayed with the later shift time and it seems to be working very well.

Shortly after I came in there was a J692 story ready to go. It was only a VO, but there were a couple of links to extra info. I worked in the extra info and put links with them. We also went with a pic from the USDA because it showed the tree problem much better. I put in for a courtesy on the pic and it came up in red letters. James said it's probably the first time we've put a courtesy on a pic on tv.ku.edu, so we guessed that red was the default color. It's not long for the site though because when Gretchen is able to post the newscast, the courtesy will be eclipsed by the video.

Same thing happened when I put a courtesy on the Danforth Chapel story, but again, it should go away once Gretchen puts in the video.

We got a lot of the reporter pieces in earlier than we had been which made the afternoon much easier. Plus, we're getting a little faster at posting too :)

President who?The days of relying on print for our
political news are as outdated as this
headline.
Photo: Library of Congress

These days, instantaneous information on election night is just a few clicks away. The Internet has transformed not only the way we get the news, but also our expectations about how fast we get it.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently studied the online political landscape. Among its findings:

• 2004: 75 million used the Internet in connection with a political campaign
• 2006: 26 million used the Internet for news about politics (up 140% from 2002)
• 2006: 25 million used the Internet to fact check candidates

One presidential candidate who's already exploring new ways to reach voters online is Barack Obama. His campaign is working to capitalize on the social network aspects of the Internet with the help of one of Facebook's founders.

In fact, all of the presidential campaigns found success by taking their candidates online. From Hillary's Sopranos' spoof to the video where John Edwards' folks beg for donations after burning a pecan pie (the video brought in about $300,000).

The good news for the candidates is that these videos, like their Web sites, are within their control. The bad news is that the Internet is an anything-goes operation where candidates can't control what people upload or watch. For example, the mashup of Edwards primping his hair or Hillary in an Orwellian video can't make those camps happy. But with millions online looking for political information every day, politicians who don't take advantage of this resource to reach voters really have their heads in the sand.

So, politicians take heart and remember the old saying: "Any publicity is good publicity."

Simply including this bikini image
should get my blog more hits,
according to the "experts". Now,
if only it were a shot of Britney in
this bikini, then I'd really have
something.

Technorati founder David Sifry offers up five tips for making the Top 100. It includes advice like making your blog easy to read and adding lots of links. Done and done. Sifry also suggests optimizing your blog for search engines, but since I'm blogging through a university site, I don't have much control over this one. His last ideas involve posting frequently and reacting to hot topics quickly. Both are great in theory, but pretty much require blogging be a full-time job (or what you're doing in-lieu of one). Since I'm only able to hit two of his five, I guess his formula probably isn’t my ticket to the A-list.

Sifry’s not the only one offering tips. Check out Andy's five ways to increase blog hits. For me, his seem a bit more realistic for those of us who have lives outside of the blogosphere. Among his suggestions: post regularly, pick controversial topics, pick topics that others are likely to link to and comment on other blogs as a way of directing traffic to yours. His final idea is one I'm testing with this post: pick things that people are likely to be searching for and use those terms multiple times.

Did I mention that some of Technorati's "most searched for" were Ron Paul, YouTube, Britney Spears and bikini?

With these keys to the kingdom, becoming an A-list blogger is within everyone's reach, right? That's kind of like saying that knowing how to play tennis means you're ready to win at Wimbledon. It doesn't quite work that way. In fact, to use a sports cliche, I'd say becoming an A-list blogger is like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. A few achieve it, but most end up standing in the rain, holding an empty jar.