Oh no! The big 3-oh!
Could I finally be growing up? Doubtful. But at least I don’t worry about what others think I should be doing anymore!
All posts filed under: Personal
These are posts that do not fit into a travel category, but they are still part of my blog’s history and I don’t have the heart to delete them.
Another new look!
Maybe you noticed something different about the blog, maybe you didn’t. Either way, I wanted to take a minute to point out some changes, especially since I had to take a week off from posting to get this switched over. Which reminds me, I’ll never redesign again. This was entirely too much work.
Panama City or Bust!
Above are some pictures from 2008, the last time I visited Florida. We visited Daytona Beach, Huntington Beach and Orlando. If I learned anything from last year’s Gypsy Trip its that the keys to surviving long drives is good music, good directions and good company. Well, and wild berry Skittles. Yesterday I embarked on an 11-hour drive from my home in Walton, Ky., to Panama City, Fla. A piece of cake compared to last summer’s 7,000-mile adventure, but still a long time to be in a car. Thankfully, this time I have some new gadgets at my disposal. I traded in my Blackberry for a Droid last fall, and with it came the never-ending app store. Y’all can have your iPhones. Sh’niqua (only sometimes) lets me down. Here are my top five road trip-approved apps: Pandora Internet Radio Its an endless supply music, as long as your network lasts. My favorite thing about this channel is it plays more than just whats in my library. And the more you listen to it, the more it …
Welcome back to life
Between trying to get settled back in at work and my annual battle with NKU’s financial aid department, I’m getting some video uploaded. Slowly but surely, I’ll have more and more photos and video to post that I couldn’t share with you while on my trip. Enjoy! 🙂 http://www.youtube.com/v/ZMgoDxaKcn0?fs=1&hl=en_US http://www.youtube.com/v/d-38448xXns?fs=1&hl=en_US http://www.youtube.com/v/nri_ZWxGu5I?fs=1&hl=en_US http://www.youtube.com/v/t0i03Sr8gY0?fs=1&hl=en_US http://www.youtube.com/v/hhupy_Szw2A?fs=1&hl=en_US http://www.youtube.com/v/ZaRJlsEE-_c?fs=1&hl=en_US http://www.youtube.com/v/SSo0Kh2aPHg?fs=1&hl=en_US http://www.youtube.com/v/g2Z5s2RWlnk?fs=1&hl=en_US
Reporter receives award for video confession
Well, even though I’m the worst blogger in the short history of bloggers I thought I’d try to get in here and post something. After writing a story about the Naples Daily News staff’s coverage of the investigation into the violent murder of a mother and her five children, I’ve been following the case of Mesac Damas, husband and father of the victims and the man charged with their deaths. In 2009, Stephen Beardsley, with camera rolling, simply asked Damas if he killed his wife and children. Surprisingly, Damas answered, “Yes, I did.” The confession was recorded as Damas was being extradited from Haiti, where he had fled after allegedly committing the crimes. Beardsley had followed the story to the island with fellow Daily News staffer, photographer Lexey Swall. Beardsley won a first place award for breaking news video in the 2010 Florida Society of News Editors journalism competition. The Naples staff won first place for online breaking news for its coverage of the Damas tragedy. Swall also won first place for a non-deadline video …
Better late than never ….
If I was a reporter covering breaking news and the Northern Kentucky Forum was my assignment, my editor would have fired me last Thursday. Between work and midterms and class assignments, my blog got neglected. But I’m back now. I went to the Northern Kentucky Forum at NKU last Thursday evening, “News in the Information Age: What happens to democracy if the presses stop?” According to displaced journalist Dr. Sam Schulhofer-Wohl, now of Princeton University, several things happen: overall voter turnout decreases, incumbents are re-elected easier, fewer candidates run and candidates spend less on their campaigns. However, his research wasn’t well received by the audience. One problem was with the narrow scope of the study. Schulhofer-Wohl said he used information from the 2004 and 2006 elections as a baseline to compare with 2008 election data. Based on this information, Schulhofer-Wohl said there was less voter turnout in the suburbs, but added that they were not able to study every community. He also only used one election to study the effect of going to a one-newspaper …
Intimidation
You know the scrawny kid in “Little Giants” who uses an alka seltzer tablet to foam at the mouth? That’s what I think of when I think of the word “intimidation.” And intimidating is exactly what blogging does to me. I’m not sure why blogging is so difficult for me. Usually I can churn out words easily, whether it be a quick news story or an essay for an international politics class. I think it might have something to do with writing about me and what I think rather than something that’s happening and what other people think about it. So, without actually doing anything rememberable (yes, I know that’s not a word) in this my first blog entry, I’ll leave you with a little video from youtube. And maybe next time I’ll go off some more on how much plagiarism annoys me, I’ll rejoice that a student newspaper won an open records lawsuit against their college, or I’ll get into the extent of Twitter’s ridiculousity. (In answer to the question at the end of …
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