Jeremy Stone in front of the I.F. Stone medal for journalistic independence

It’s the last day of boot camp, and we’re already looking ahead. After today, we begin a one week break- the perfect time to focus on some of our long term assignments. One that I’ll be working on is the essay for the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. Today, Stone’s son, Jeremy Stone, came to talk to us about his father. After his talk, I was surprised at my ignorance at not having heard about him before. I was also incredibly impressed with I.F. Stone’s life accomplishments.

What made him so amazing, you ask? Well luckily, Jeremy Stone recited a handy list for us of what exactly made I.F. Stone such a fantastic journalist. I’ve recorded it here:

1. He knew a lot about history and used it. A lot of journalists, Stone said, only refer to history they remember. However, I.F. Stone cited historical moments dating back to antiquity.
2. He had a tremendous sense of independence. He never let people push him around or sway him. He stuck with what he believed.
3. He didn’t wheel and deal. He didn’t suck up to people or use flattery to make friends. He simply called things as he saw them.
4. He had a “tremendous sense of perfection.” He never sent a paper to press if it was any less than flawless. According to his son, Stone once said that “typos are worse than fascism.”
5. He had a great sense of humor. Jeremy said that his father once said, “I’m so happy, I should be arrested.”
6. He overcame personal obstacles. Stone was short of sight and hard of hearing, so he was unable to attend press conferences. He made up for it by reading the transcripts carefully afterward, and working from that.

Wherever I go as a journalist, I will try to remember what I heard today about the merits of I.F. Stone.

Photo of Jim Brady taken on my cell phone

“If you still don’t get that the web is it,  I don’t have time to try to convince you.”

This is what guest speaker Jim Brady has believed since 1994, when he tried to convince his employer, the Washington Post, that the newspaper needed a website to stay current. Back then, he said, people dismissed the web as a fad. But, as he pointed out, the internet is still where news is going.

“What has to happen before [journalists] realize that the web is the next phase?” he said.

Brady suggested that student journalists should focus on entreprenurship and blogging. He said that news is becoming more niche and readers are turning to highly specialized blogs to get their news. Brady said that right now, we student journalists can benefit from becoming specialized in a subject. If we know it well enough and develop sources in the field, our blogs could even compete with newspapers.

“It’s a meritocracy,” he said. “If you do something and do it well, you’ll succeed.”

What did you think? I’d be happy to hear your feedback!

A lot, apparently.

Today when Rob Roberts showed us how to work the basics of Final Cut Pro, we realized that we had 28 minutes, 25 clips, and over 80 individual scenes of footage. It took quite a while to export it all from the camera to the computer, even using firewire.

I really enjoyed learning to use Final Cut. It reminds me a lot of Adobe Photoshop, complete with the ability to create various visual effects. Of course, unlike Photoshop, Final Cut is useful for adjusting more than just a still image, but audio and video too.

Alex is already experienced with Final Cut, so he’s been teaching me how to get the most out of the program by using shortcuts and keyboard commands to work more quickly. After a good hour and a half, we’ve mocked up a rough cut of about 40 seconds (as Rob Roberts said, video editing is time consuming work!)

Here are a few screenshots from our video so far:

Eric studying the chess board for his next move.

Eric and Wallace studying chess in Dupont Circle.

Rob Roberts showed us a film, "Dwayne Dail's Story," here pictured behind him.

Today marked the beginning of the third and final week of AU’s School of Communication Boot Camp. It also signaled the first day that we would begin shooting video. In the morning, Rob Roberts, the senior video editor at USA Today came to show us how it’s done.

Roberts told us about the five rules of video, which I will repeat here:

1. “Video isn’t that hard.” Roberts said people think video is very technical, but “some of the best filmmakers I know can’t send email.”
2. Video is time consuming. Roberts said that even for a one minute piece, a filmmaker will need to shoot at least 25 minutes of video… and then edit it.
3. The same skills that go into good journalism go into good video. Roberts said that what makes a good video good is good reporting skills, not technical know-how.
4. People will forgive faulty video… but not audio. Video can be shaky and people will continue to watch, but that audio better be perfect, he said, or people will think the video is poorly done overall.
5. “It’s all about the story.” The quality of the story matters. If it’s a badly researched story, it’ll make for a bad video, too.

After the lecture, we went to the lab to split into teams and check out video cameras. We’re using Canon video cameras which have intuitive features that make them surprisingly easy to use. My partner today was Alex and our assignment was to interview chess players in Dupont Circle and ask how they’re beating the heat.

Today couldn’t have been a more relevant day for the topic; it was over 100 degrees by the time we arrived at Dupont Circle! We interviewed several chess players, got lots of B-roll, and over all more than a half hour of film. Looks like we’ll have more than enough to edit into a two minute clip tomorrow. I’m looking forward to going through it and becoming familiar with Final Cut Pro.

Link is here.

Jim Asendio

The first speaker was Jim Asendio, the WAMU news director. Asendio wasted no time in telling us that as journalists, “you carry skillsets with you. The more things you know how to do, the more salable, portable you are.”

Asendio said that we ought to use our time at the School of Communication in two ways. First, we should develop as many skillsets as we could, through audio, video, web, and text.

“You can’t just be a great writer or a great shooter, you’ve got to do it all,” he said.

Second, he said we should be making as many contacts in the journalism world as possible.

“The more contacts you make now, the better it is for you,” he said.

Professor Olmsted talking to Rawand Darwesh on speaker phone.

Next, we called an SOC alum in Iraq, Rawand Darwesh, for a phone interview.

Darwesh doesn’t currently hold a job in journalism right now (he works for the Iraqi government) but he said, “Sometimes I am so far from journalism that it hurts.”

Darwesh talked to us about how Iraq is portrayed in the media, both in Iraq and America. He said Americans see Iraq through the media as a totally war torn country, but the area of Iraq Darwesh lives in is “peaceful and totally untouched by war.”

The lesson here?

“Journalism is a responsibility,” he said. “You must report all sides of a story.”

Keosha Johnson

Third, we heard from SOC alum Keosha Johnson. Johnson, who has worked for NBC, AARP, and The Today Show, echoed Asendio’s message about these changing times.

“It’s changing. Now if I say I want to do journalism, I want to do everything that involves,” she said.

Though Johnson was chosen for an extremely competitive internship at NBC last year, she had some sobering words for us.

“Know you’re going to fail,” she said. “I applied for 20 positions, and got called for one.”

However, Johnson said we can up out chances of getting a job out of school by getting lots of experience. Johnson said she herself did several internships while at SOC, and also freelanced for a fashion blog. She said graduate school is not about your GPA, it’s about your experience in the field.

“You have to know how to do everything and want to do everything if you want a job,” she said.

I can’t reveal any details about my project just yet, but here are some unrelated photos I took after Andy and I finished reporting:

A not so baby panda! He's two years old now.

A burrowing owl giving me the stink-eye.

Finally, I have all of my ducks in a row.

Stay tuned for the finished piece and with it, my best photos from the zoo!