Chapter Twelve.

There’s always two sides to every story. Getting one side of the story is hard enough, let alone getting both sides and making sure that the stories are true. Gathering the different sides of a story takes persistence. Some people think that if they don’t talk the story won’t run, when in reality the story will just get published with a “so-an-so denied to comment.” If that was me I know that I would rather have my side of the story be heard then kept a secret. It is also hard to take both sides of the story and make it so that it doesn’t seem as though you were digging through the stories to find a conflict. You must be precise and accurate when reiterating someones story.

When writing a story,  make sure to always go back and re-read your story out loud and correct it numerous times so as not to make any typos. I didn’t know before reading this chapter the amount of typos in every type of written work. Especially that people mess up dates all the time, which can cause the story to be wrong. For example if you write the story for March 10th and someone you interviewed was 18, turning 19 March 5th and you put that they are 18 then that is wrong. It was interesting to see how much detail must be added to some names to make sure there is no confusion.

It is important to use language that you use all the time. Do not use words that you may be even the slightest bit confused about because you will sound stupid. An example, using the word “brandished” instead of “showed” a gun, like we went over in class. Just because you want to make the story sound more interesting doesn’t mean using big words will help. Use what you know and stick to it.

Didya know?

Birth Control. It is a touchy subject for some, and especially now since one of the most popular forms for females Ortho Evra has been deamed potentially fatal. Since its release in 2001, around 800,000 women have used this form of contraception. In 2004 there were 12 deaths linked to blood-clots. This birth control patch has been shown by patient reports to be 12 times more likely to cause stroke and 18 times more likely to cause blood-clots than normal birth control pills.

This patch has been shown to be used most frequently by women in the late teens to early thirties. Being 20 years old, and knowing friends who have been on the patch, reading these two stories make me nervous about what companies are putting out there. These two reports show that there was a huge amount of evidence shown to Johnson & Johnson but was ignored. There are horror stories about girls in perfect health dropping to the floor dead. The insane amount of estrogen and progesterone that is released into the body constantly throughout the entire week is 60 percent more than birth control pills. Unlike the pill, the patch is constantly pumping estrogen into your body, while the pill just dissolves the dose for the day.

The thing that really gets to me is that not only is the patch known to be more dangerous, it is also just as safe as the pill. There is really nothing special about this except you don’t have to remember to take it every single day. Yes, that is great, we have all seen the “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…commercials,” but is having to take the extra 3 minutes a day to remember to take a pill more of a hassle than staying alive?

http://www.adrugrecall.com/orthoevra/orthoevra.html

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/39306467/ns/today-today_health/

The homework I have to start

While being asigned this work I have found that reading the material is not only interesting, but almost fun. I don’t mean that in a “homework is fun” sort of way, but I have found that it is actually tying into my life in other ways outside of just class. This last chapter that we had to read was about developing story ideas, different ways to send/show/keep information, how to gather information, and how to take information to help develop a story.

In todays society it is so hard to keep everything organized because there is just so much information out there, well the beginning of this chapter going into detail about how to become organized. Using things such as RSS feeds to help organize what sites you look at most and can help you recieve daily information with ease. Usually, when you go to look up something on say Boston.com, you have to go to the homepage then follow link after link until you find what you were looking for. Sometimes even after all that, you still don’t find exactly what you wanted. The solution, RSS feeds! I never knew about these until Copeland talked about them in class, and after that I started streaming my news and blogs there. I didn’t know that you could use those to get daily updates as well as save most viewed pages.

The hard part about developing ideas is that just because you believe something is a good idea, doesn’t mean there is actually a story behind it. Another problem is that sometimes you may be interested in something yet there isn’t the “fan base” to have that story become anything more than words on a page. This article showed different ideas to use, how to come up with your own ideas and what questions to ask when finding information. I thought that this was helpful because it showed different approaches to every story instead of just going with the easy way.

At the end of the chapter was different tips on souces, going above and beyond the norm and handling certain assignments. The examples for each of these sections really showed just how indepth you need to go, and how to do it. Going further with assigned stories was a big help. I was nervous to start writing for the comment because I didn’t want to have to write about things I wasn’t interested in. Then today on my first interview, I realized that even though I didn’t pick the story, it sort of chose me.

Quote & Picture of the week.

…”im gonna stop looking back and start moving on.
learn how to face my fears. love with all my heart,
make my mark. i wanna leave something here”…

I need to start NOW!

I had an epiphany today in my journalism class. I figured out exactly what I want to do and what I need to do to get there. I need to raise my GPA up to at least a 3.2. I need to apply to the schools that I actually want to attend and pick the major that I want to study. School was always “my thing” growing up. I got honor roll almost every semester of every year in high school and then I got to college and it never felt right. Some classes I loved, while others made me want to gouge my eyeballs out. Classes just seemed pointless and so I didn’t put a hundred percent into all my work causing, not terrible grades, but definitely not what I could have gotten.

I never knew why I could have loved high school and yet hate college, so I took a semester off to figure it out. Boy, was that a huge mistake! I took the semester off and did absolutely nothing with my life except sit at my house and be lazy. I figured out that I had to go back to school in order to be someone in life and re-applied to Bridgewater. After getting my acceptance I was ecstatic and started out the semester in the best way. I was doing all of my homework on time and even doing extra credit. I was working hard to get back on track and it seemed as though I was heading in the right direction. I was wrong, again.

Second semester, spring of 2010 started out alright. I had four classes that I didn’t really want to take but had to take to fill credits. It started out as just skipping a class or two to sleep in or because I didn’t finish the homework, to not going for a whole week. I didn’t realize until the semester was coming to a close that I was going to fail… everything. I had to withdraw two weeks before finals to try and keep my GPA at the 2.8 it is right now. In doing so, I lost all the credits for that semester and still had to pay for it.

I have been at Bridgewater state since I graduated in 2008 and only have 24 credits under my belt. My GPA is alright but not that great and I still haven’t declared a major. I never really knew what I wanted to do, so I never really did anything to make sure that I could accomplish that goal. I never had a push from anyone to do what I really wanted to do, but instead I was told I had to do something that I would make money in. My parents would always tell me that I couldn’t just be a teacher or a writer because that wasn’t what the world needed right now. I always listened and did what they said because I didn’t really have another idea as of what I wanted to do.

I figured out today that I have always known what I wanted to do with my life, and I now have to make up for lost time to be able to make it a reality. I want to write! I have been writing the beginnings of books since I was a freshman in high school. I would come up with the plot, characters, hidden meanings and even get it all going but then I would get stuck and frustrated and give up. The only book that I actually kept up for almost three full years got destroyed when my basement flooded killing my computer and my external hard-drive. I just got my new laptop and external hard-drive and I plan to re-write it as best as I can, but knowing myself and how I write it will probably get deleted.

I want to write for the comment, even though that doesn’t seem very hard it is for me. I am scared that I will start to write and it won’t be good, and then I will end up feeling like I failed yet again and I just don’t think I can handle that one more time. I want to do this so badly it hurts and I want to push myself to be the best I can be so that I can accomplish every goal that I make for myself. I am determined to do well, even if it is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, I know that I can do it, WILL DO IT!

Starting tonight I am going to go above and beyond my usual a hundred percent and do two hundred. I am going to make sure assignments are great, not just good and that not only do I finish the assigned readings for classes but I read more than I have to. I am willing to do whatever it takes, and it takes a whole lot.

response to chapter 7

Discovery, Examination, Interpretation, Style and Presentation. Five ways to define good journalism. These five categories are the most general way to define what exactly is good journalism or what is a good piece of journalism. There are many other ways to define good journalism, but each way is different depending on who you talk to. In 2007 news editors from Canada and the United States used this criteria to define good journalism by credibility, utility, content relevancy, separation of fact and opinion and good writing as stated in The New Journalist (Benedetti, Currie, Kierans).

Seeing how different the definition of good journalism is to each different person it made me think of what exactly I would consider good journalism. I came up with one thing necessary to be considered a good journalist and that is to be able to get in the action and go behind enemy lines to get the in depth TRUE story. That includes interviews, facts, the whole she-bang. For something to be considered good journalism I would say that it has to be a story that sparks interest in any reader, not just the one group it is specified for. The piece must be written well and must follow a story that has enough evidence behind it to be considered true at first read, not after further investigation. The written work must be thorough and include facts, statistics and interviews.

Should there be one set standard of rules used in all newspapers about how to figure out what is good journalism and what isn’t? Would anyone ever even be able to agree on just a certain number of rules? Who is to say what is good journalism or not though? There are so many questions that all surround journalism and whether it is good or not. In reality, almost all journalism could be considered good if you spoke to the right person.

Anyone can be a journalist now-a-days. It doesn’t matter what university you have attended or even if you are old enough to be in college, but does that mean you can write? The answer to that question is a hundred percent no. Although, if there was one solid definition of good journalism then the answer may change. I guess that there is really no way to define good journalism and this chapter shows the only way to really come close without giving just anyone the ability to write.

WORK CITED

The New Journalist. The New Journalist. Toronto: Emond Montgomery Publications, 2010. 102. Print.

11:19pm

so its 11:19pm and its 4 cigarettes later i get to write about what i want. my life is constantly changing.. whose isn’t but i feel like maybe it will be easier to understand all the changes, the ups and downs if i write it down. so lets start with this was not my first choice blog name but the other one would have gotten me into trouble (marymollylucydubstep) but i saw it on a shirt and found it hilarious. today i moved out of my moms house into my dads house which isnt one of those ohmygod feel bad for me im moving in with my evil father and stepmother things but more like my mom decided she had to follow her dreams and move on. i think that is very big of her to just drop everything and move away. she wanted me to come but im not in that place yet. i want to be and thought i was during the summer. i had planned to move to florida with my now ex boyfriend (good thing i didnt move i guess) but either way i had the whole thing planned and then i realized that im just a kid still whats the rush to pack up and get the fuck out of here. did i realize want to move away from everything ive known my whole life the good and the bad? well yeah the answer was no… now im single and 20 and back in school starting sophomore year over again because i fucked up and almost flunked out and im ready to be the best i can be and do my best… in most ways.. im still a lazy fuck but im trying, and thats all i can really do is try. sorry that this is all over the place but im just scatterbrained right now plus logic homework awaits me once i finish this. there will probably be many many more of these meaningless blogs and i cannot wait to write them. some will be about the past, the future and i guess my life so the present. some will be just quotes or song lyrics that i feel you should all know and love. this will be my outlet.. and i feel like i should set a goal for myself to keep this going. so i am going to say that i will write at least one post a day for a year starting today. if i fail then i will do it for another year until i follow through. so to end this i will put a song on here you should DEFINITELY listen to… all of you out there who have ever been in love will appreciate it.

so over and out. goodnight 🙂

it’s late and i forgot to start this

Writing has been a passion of mine for years. This blog is setup because Dave Copeland told us to but it was actually one of my favorite assignments I have ever had. I want to write this not only as a way to answer questions and do homework for class but use it to write down thoughts, ideas, about my day.. basically the whole shabang.  People who read this can prepare to be amazed by the ridiculous things I will write about, all the crazy stories and adventures. This blog will not be for the faint of heart, or weak stomach. This blog will not include.. well it will probably include just about everything except things that could potentially get me in trouble… I plan to ATTEMPT to write in this blog everyday and don’t get mad if I forgot, I am a busy person.

I really hope you enjoy my blog, even if you don’t respond to it at least take something out of it.

-Helen 😀

by the way, here’s the song behind my blogs name