How do you tell somebody no?

My latest news gathering blog deals with something I ran into while finishing up my latest class story. It dealt with the Americans with Disabilities Act, or the ADA and how some believe the city of Centralia, Mo. hasn't represented people well enough that have disabilities.  My blog for this week has nothing to do with the way I covered the story. I think I covered it fairly well. I certainly got both sides of this story. For those of you who don't know, according to the Great Plains ADA in Columbia, Mo., the city of Centralia, Mo. does not meet 39 ADA requirements for people with disabilities. I feel like I didn't make Mayor Tim Grenke look like an idiot and a discriminator of the disabled, which by the way, he does not intentionally discriminate against them. I did have a problem with something I did afterwards, though.

My central compelling character for this story involved a 50 year old Centralia man who has been in a wheelchair since 2004. He says he has fought the city for a long time about getting more accessible sidewalks, streets, and doorways at public buildings for the disabled. He says the city really didn't listen to him until the ADA report came out, and now that it has, some of those city employees think they've gotten a "bad rep."

I told the man I planned on talking to the mayor about the subject, and he asked me if I could get a copy of the interview afterwards. Without thinking about it too much, I said sure. This piece never aired on real television, so who did I really need to protect right? Wrong. I feel like I kind of "hung the mayor out to dry" a little bit because I decided to give my source the interview I did with his "nemesis." I'm not sure if because he had been very helpful to me and that he had a disability made me want to give him the copy of the interview even more or not. I guess I didn't want to disappoint him.

In retrospect though, I totally regret doing this. As I said before, I don't feel like I portrayed my mayor very well after letting my other source see this. Not that the mayor said anything bad about the disabled man, but I didn't give the mayor the copy of the interviews I did with the man in the wheelchair. Why should I give the disabled man copies of the mayor's interviews? In fact, as I wrote this, I got a text from the man in the wheelchair asking me about a question I had asked him that he never saw the mayor talk about. I just don't want to get into a sticky situation because of this and have the mayor find out about it. Then, it could really come back to haunt me.

Besides, do journalists really have time to go back and get copies of any stories people may do about them? No. We've got deadlines we have to meet. If every source we talked to wanted a copy of the story we did about them, journalists would never get anything else done. Even though I have not started reporting for KOMU yet, I should have told the man, "The Missouri Journalism School's policy states we can't give copies of stories to sources...sorry," even though I don't think they do have a policy. If I had given a source an interview I did for them and the story had aired for KOMU, I could get in big big trouble. I probably never would have done that for him though if the story had aired for KOMU. I'm a little bit smarter than that. From now on, I'll just tell my sources, "KOMU's policy states you can only retrieve video that the station puts on their website...sorry." Why can I say "KOMU" now? Because I got cleared to go to the station!!

See the story KOMU did: http://www.komu.com/KOMU/d7e2017e-80ce-18b5-00fa-0004d8d229cb/a1b3819c-80ce-18b5-0152-e88fbb4ba297.html

See what the city of Centralia said about their city a year ago: http://www.centraliamo.org/files/administration/forms/ADA_Notice.pdf


Mayor Tim Grenke

Really Morley Safer? Really???

So, I sat down in my business management class a couple days ago, and our teacher told us about a story 60 Minutes did on the Generation Y's about to hit the workforce. I'd first like to say this "piece of journalism" represents my generation as an absolutely lazy and worthless group of people that does nothing at work but sit around on "bean bags." This piece of journalism trashes Generation Y's. It absolutely trashes "us." To me, this piece of garbage should never have made it on air. This story aired to sell spots, to make money, and to please the people that watch 60 Minutes, not people 20-30 years old.

You can tell right off the bat how horribly this story represents "us" by listening to the anchor intro. "Stand back all bosses. A new breed of American worker is about to attack everything you hold sacred, from giving orders to your starched white shirt and tie."

I'm sorry Morley, but the last time I checked, I haven't heard of many millennials going into the workplace with machine guns and tanks to gun down their bosses. To be honest, this piece absolutely pissed me off when I watched it. I heard absolutely no factual information in the anchor intro, just a man who poorly explained the new generation up and coming. Morley wrote that anchor intro just to please the older generation that mainly watches the show. The piece shows the generation I'm a part of as cocky, brash, lazy, ignorant, and stupid. It sounds to me like somebody has some bitter feelings to the new journalists about to follow you. Times change man. A new generation will overtake mine someday as well. Hopefully, I won't feel as bitter about it as you apparently do.

But Morley, let me leave you with this thought. If the younger generation has ignorant and cocky characteristics and we know nothing about how the real world works, then you have many more ignorant and narcissistic traits yourself than any of "the new generation" kids will ever have. I think any person who writes a story like this needs to take a good hard look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves, "Did I really just portray both sides of the story equally?" Come interview me on a topic like this. I'll give you a piece of my mind.


Take a look at part of the story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owwM6FpWWoQ
Apparently, we've never failed before either because our parents coddled us so much growing up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7iK__Z_Lw0


Morley Safer

Post Number Four: My latest attempt at bothering people while out with friends

My latest story for my broadcast class involves Jefferson City, Missouri trying to pass an ordinance that would ban smoking inside public places within the city limits, and what better video could I have than people inside a bar and trying to make my central compelling character a person that would be affected if this ordinance went into effect. After talking to bar owners in the city, I decided to try a place called TG's Lounge. I went to the lounge at the busiest time of the night.

I foresaw a problem of having dark video. I knew that if I wanted to see anything at all at TG's, I'd have to have a light on my camera there. That didn't go over too well with many of the customers inside, not to mention the fact that many of them were intoxicated at the time. I got many, 'what the hell are you doing?' stares in my vicinity and 'get that damn light out of my face' looks as well. I'll be honest, the light shined very brightly, but I needed some video, so I decided to forge on anyways.  

People thought I looked so weird shooting video of people at a bar that one group actually decided to start taking pictures of me shooting video. The restaurant had a couple of specials that night which really made it crowded, so besides the fact I looked like a stalker, it had very lots of people there. After a good five or ten minutes of shooting as many cigarettes I could find and getting evil stares from across the bar, I decided to leave. I didn't know whether I should risk making anybody else more mad at me. Before leaving the entire city though, I decided to stop by another place in town, Spectators, and talk to an owner I spoke to on the phone earlier.

He had a much more mellow crowd this night. He didn't have any specials going on or anything, so he had a smaller number of people heavily drinking. This restaurant had good lights too!!!! Ahh yes, what I had been looking for the entire night! This way, I didn't have to shine a really really bright light into a person's face and have them give me dirty looks the rest of the night. Perfect. While at this second bar, I got great shots of cigarettes on the table, smoke coming from them, and shots at different levels. It turned out very good. I have plans on going back to the city today to talk to another bar, C Dub's Pub and Grub. Their business might get hurt even more than Spectators.

With a story like this, I feel like I didn't give up. I could have 'thrown in the towell' so to speak after leaving TG's, but I saw this other bar as I drove to my first destination and thought to myself, the people inside here might be willing to 'play ball.' I left feeling much better about myself, which always helps me mentally after trying to shoot a piece. Now I need more sound bites.  

                                                              
                                                      Check out TG's Lounge at: http://www.alexandrosandtgs.com/index.html

Post #3: Writing to video that happened many years ago

My third post not just of the year...but ever. I decided to watch a piece ESPN reporter John Barr did on Denver Bronco's receiver Brandon Marshall's troubled past with the law. What a story that was and how interesting as well. That piece was 13 minutes long. I know that a minute and thirty seconds for us to tell a story is not long, but I'm not sure if I could do 11 1/2 more minutes.

It's hard to think about some of the technical things behind a piece like this because you're so in tune to what she's saying as she gives her experiences. Some of the most riveting pieces of information though are the phone calls that ESPN recovered from the days Marshall allegedly went looking for someone to hurt.
  
Really being able to listen to Rasheedah screaming in the first 911 call and then her friend in the second one as well help tell this person's story. Translating what each person said made a whole lot of sense as well because sometimes you couldn't understand what they were saying. John did a great job at visually showing a piece that happened as early as the mid 2000's. A lot of this footage is also video from documents (graphics) ESPN made and pictures Rasheedah showed them.  Because ESPN is ESPN, and they can make those kinds of graphics, I feel like every bit of video was written to itself. John really had proof of everything he was showing. That was pretty amazing. The zoom ins on the words in each of the police reports showing what the accusations were along with a very interesting email Rasheedah apparently received from Brandon is basically all the evidence she needed. The photos of her bruises don't go against her either.

The facts from this article all make sense and all go together. Does the fact that the Broncos and Marshall each wouldn't talk about this situation on camera shed them in even more of a false light? I think so. And again, if Barr couldn't even show a document saying the team and Marshall decided to decline an interview, he included that in his standup, which is what we've been told you're supposed to do. Say in your standup what you can't visually show.

I can learn a lot from a reporter like this. I had a situation last week where I felt like I was somewhat video poor doing a story on a trash referendum bill. If only now, I knew how to make amazing graphics that exceed my budget range as a journalism student at MU and can only be funded by big companies like ESPN and CNN, I'd be in great shape!

Watch John Barr's story now at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4A756xTC0s

A picture of Brandon Marshall and former girlfriend Rasheedah Watley during an off and on part of their relationship.