Nick Mangiaracina

Today was spent in a scattered fashion.  First I started out by looking for a question for Hawk Walk.  Vicky shot and edited the Hawk Walk and I uploaded it to the Web.  Today's question asked people who they voted for in the presidential election.  I spent about half an hour helping Lara with Photoshop and InDesign.  After this I rewrote the piece about homelessness.  Three homeless people have died in the last week in Lawrence.  I added a picture to the story.  I was going to do a map about homeless shelters, but according to Google, there's only one in Lawrence so I didn't feel compelled to do a map.  This was the only story that was finished during my shift.  

Remember, it's not a recession; it's a "slowdown."  People are spending less, the housing market is collapsing, unemployment is rising and people are just "having tough times."  How many different euphemisms are going to be used before people start calling a spade a spade?  Trying to soften the blow with words doesn't help anyone out.  Describing something in a less harsh way doesn't make the pain any less.  People are just able to avoid reality for a little longer.  It reminds me of the Carlin skit about "dying" versus "passing away."  Carlin always said he wanted to die and not pass away because  you knew that someone was more important if they died.  He said something to the extent of
"Yeah, you know Joe?"
"Yeah" "He died."
"Shit I didn't know that Joe died."
"Yeah, did you know Joe?"
"Yeah." 
"Well, Joe passed away."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that."
 George was right again.  He will be missed.

            Without doing some serious investigative journalism, I don't know how much the economy is affecting students. I do know that with the current collapse of many of the nation's financial institutions, banks are wearier of lending money. The lack of confidence is driving interest rates up, which will make it harder for students to pay off loans as well as to obtain loans.

As for me, I'm working for minimum wage part time, so the economy has had an immense effect on me. Business is noticeably slow and so there's no prospect of receiving a raise any time soon. If I keep my job the next increase won't come until this summer, but it's unlikely I'll be able to hold out that long. I have not been doing the greatest job as I have 800 other things going on.

On Jan. 1st, my expenses are going to go up by $260 a month as I'll be paying rent. The prospect of additional hours is unlikely as business has been terrible, though making something is better than nothing. Likewise, I have started looking for another job and hope to find a $15/hour tutoring job and/or other work that pays at least a dollar an hour more than what I'm currently receiving.

Today was a busy day at the old multimedia news center. I started the day out by updating the link blog with an article from the NYT about Obama and McCain's support for plug-in hybrid technology. It was a good story that showed that neither candidate is serious about electric cars and instead is interested in appeasing the car companies.

Shortly after I found, edited and uploaded a picture for this, I started looking for current events for Hawk Walk for my fellow 415 helper. She wanted to ask people about costumes for Halloween, but Bryan encouraged her to scrap the idea for something more substantial. I suggested asking people about the new sales tax proposal increase for the T bus system. This is what we decided on doing.

About 2 P.M. Andrew from 694 came in and requested some camera work for his final project. We headed down to the union to interview Adam McGonigle--the student body president. He spoke for a half hour on questions ranging from what does Student Senate do, to how to get more people involved (more to follow on that in Andrew's project) While there I filled a tutoring application for English and Spanish out.

Upon returning, I had to edit the video the 415 student shot because she forgot to transfer the files off her flash drive. I spent the next half hour re-exporting everything as well as resizing photos for Hawk Walk.

The last hour was spent rewriting a story about advance voting and T-shirts. I uploaded a picture for the shirt story and a Google map for the advance voting one. I wasn't able to embed it, though Bryan was going to show me how, but he got sidetracked. I plan on learning how to do this next time.

Thursday night after my editorial meeting I went to see the Ralph Nader speech/rally.  Though I've read his book "Crashing the Party," and know a fair amount about him already, this was the first time I'd seen the man speak.

I arrived at Abe & Jake's Landing at 6:25, five minutes before the speech was about to begin.  Much to my chagrin, when I arrived I had to wait in line for about twenty minutes because the Abe & Jake's people did not let the public in. 

While waiting in line I chatted it up with a couple of people I knew, including editorial columnist Josh Anderson--a shady-looking individual some think is a member of Hamas, but actually is just a family man who works at Liberty Hall.  Josh and his family got in early because he was working an anti-corporate corruption table.  I tried to convince him to let me and my friends in, but he said it wouldn't work because the group didn't have enough chairs.

As part of my final project I decided to film the rally.  Parts one and two consisted of two speeches from local Nader supporters, the first former Students of Liberty president Adam Wood, and the second some other dude--also a Nader supporter.

Nader spoke for nearly an hour and a half and then answered any questions the audience had.  I plan on posting the entirety of his speech online eventually as part of my final project.

I was miraculously able to finish everything by about 3:00 P.M. on Thursday.  I've noticed as the quality of my questions increase, so the time it takes to do the Hawk Walk decreases.  I finished interviewing people for this week's question, "What do you think about letting 3rd party candidates debate?" in a half hour.  I did have help from a 415 student, though she had to leave at 12:50 for class.

I updated the Web site with another story from the Economist.  This one was about how poorly John McCain is doing in his home state of Arizona.  According to the article, McCain is only up by seven points there, and the article went on to say it's possible Obama could take the state--though unlikely.

Later I checked out a camera for overnight to cover the Ralph Nader speech at Abe & Jakes. 

Thursday's shift consisted of me staggering back into the fray of html and Final Cut.  Having only remembered about half of my html stuff, Bryan was able to assist me with the rest. 

During the shift Bryan, random dude Greg, and I took to the mean streets of the Boulevard in search of witty interviews.  Surprisingly we were able to invoke quite a few good responses about lowering the college drinking age to 18 from 21.  My favorite was from Nate Sito, who said he didn't think it was a good idea, but he knew that he would have really liked to drink at 18.  Absolute genius on Sito's part.  I would give him e-props were this a Xanga entry, so instead I just give him kudos for making the shift just that much more interesting.

As for the Final Cut, apparently I screwed up a few frames of the video.  Sorry, it's been a while.  I enjoyed editing the interview clips, though the process of saving them as four different files and with four different pictures provided frustrating and annoying.  The final product looked good though.

The rest of the shift I did random Web work like rehashing a script for a story about buses and reformatting files.  I also helped Lara with an enterprise story.  More ownership on that to follow. 

Today's shift found Bryan, and later me, leaving due to sickness.  Before leaving I got a lot accomplished though, including more video interviews and this piece.

Today's interview question was about what students thought about the universal bus pass.  I received mostly bland responses, but one good one from Luke Underwood.  After finishing editing and exporting the video I focused on updating content on the web.  I posted a story from The Nation about Palin's daughter and the failure of the Abstinence Only movement.  Later, I wrote up a story about Chalmers and Arthur getting busted for pot, the anti-abortion people on campus, and the College Republicans backing of Palin as McCain's choice for VP.  The theme today was what happens to people when they act stupid.  Unfortunately, I think this will a recurring theme throughout the semester.

After reading this article about the police arresting journalism students, I'm appalled.  This further increases my disgust for authority figures, particularly police.  The Kentucky students weren't alone though.  Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman as well as her producer was also arrested for "protesting," at the RNC.  Last year was the worst year for journalists, as more died than in any previous year.  The trend of cracking down on the media continues.  The message is clear, "We don't want you causing any trouble," no matter how broadly defined that trouble is.  What's almost more shocking is that this story is still news.     

Today's shift was blighted with failures.  Everything was fine until getting back to the editing lab.  Upon starting editing, I realized the video we had just spent about a half hour shooting had no sound.  Bryan & I decided to scrap the video interviews for the day due to the rain.  With no producer in the room, everyone stumbled around finding things to do.  I spent most the rest of the hour recreating my fireworks page, which apparently got corrupted.  Later I got my picture taken for the KUJH Website.  Perhaps the launching of the particle accelerator has something to do with the chaos that ensued.