A group of 20 print journalism, photojournalism and broadcast students from San Jose State University’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications traveled to London and Paris between March 20 and 27. Within that one week, they reported and produced packages about various subjects related to economics.
The Web site is still under production and will soon to be completed.
In the meantime, please check out the blogs and photos at Global Media Initiative
Now, some personal words.
I still remember how worried I was about the trip, because it’s going to be a new environment and we had so many things to do before departure in so little time.
I still remember how I stayed up to 4 or 5 a.m. contacting sources in London and Paris and trying to figure out my story ideas.
It was a lot of work, but it was the best spring break I’ve ever had.
Thanks to the SJSU JMC gang, we hustled, we had fun and we did it.
Thanks to my friend Jennifer who showed me around Paris for two whole days.
I was working and having fun in foreign countries at the same time, and that is the best thing in the world.
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Fifty-five days later, Rocky Mountain News will be celebrating its 150th birthday…
But today is the final edition of RMN.
While the video is a great piece of multimedia, it’s just so depressing…
After watching the video above, I started to reading the comments people wrote on the newspaper’s Web site and one of them stood out to me:
My_RMN_1 wrote, “We as tax payers are prodded and poked into paying our hard earned money, which everyday we see evaporating, to bail out banks, or some other enormous corporation. We’ve learned our money has covered the enormous bonuses the execs from these institutions pay themselves, we’ve not received any assurance this will even work, and if we look at history, we can see that probably it won’t. But still, we pay. Now OUR newspaper can’t pay the bills, and there is nothing we can do about it. This was the natural consequence of all this media consolidation…”
Newspapers are supposed to be voices of ordinary people, and the voices are lost when only the powerful and rich can control the media.
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I’m not talking about police killing innocent people.
I’m talking about the innocent Oakland storekeepers who got their stores vandalized and trashed during riot on January 7th.
Read “Oakland storekeepers tell of night of terror”
Initially there is a legitimate reason for a peaceful protest, but some people take this as an excuse to make trouble. Especially when a protest turns into a riot and when blacks are involved, it just bring more negative impression to the black community from others. I understand that people are angry, but why making more innocent people suffer? From my perspective, not only did the people who participated in the violent riot not deliver the right message, they also portray themselves as a bunch of trouble makers going around and destroying city. Getting back at the murder by trashing your own community and hurting its hardworking citizens? It makes no sense.
It’s just like Los Angeles in 1992, where innocent people are paying the price.
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I was reading articles and blog posts about the death of Oscar Grant, who was killed by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle, when I came across a blog post by Michael Crook.
As a human being and a member of minority races, I’m strongly offended by his opinion about the murder.
As a journalism student, I’m supposed to be objective but I honestly can’t do that here.
I can’t even get mad at this guy… I pity him, though.
Maybe it’s because I live in California, but it’s sad (and scary) how people continue to be driven by racist theologies in 2009.
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OUR MISSION:
If you haven’t already heard the news or seen it through out the Bay Area, ten university students, including myself from San Jose State University, will be going on a ten day journalism project covering historic civil rights landmarks in the southern states of the U.S. starting from Memphis, Tenn. all the way to Washington D.C. to cover President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration (which ties into the coverage as a historic triumph for the African-American community and all Americans).
We have raised a large amount of money thanks to self-financing, multiple self-fundraising efforts by the students, SJSU professors, and by corporate sponsers which have donated not just cash but video and camera equipment for us to use on the trip. Multiple media outlets will be involved in ensuring that we will arrive there with all the needed essentials to collaborate coverage with them on this very important day, among them are The San Jose Mercury News, USA Today, CNN and more. We will be featured as “labtop correspondents” showcasing our coverage from the Deep South and D.C. with multimedia work, photographs and writing articles for The Spartan Daily (SJSU’s school newsaper) and the media outlets mentioned above.
Students each need to raise for the winter season at least $300-500 dollars in order for us to pay the costs for vans to caravan across the country. If you can donate something to this cause we would all greatly appreciate it – I know these are hard economic times, but we would like to let you know that this is for a good cause and thank you from the bottom of our hearts for empowering student voices, not only at SJSU, but through out all journalism programs in the country.
HOW YOU CAN HELP:
The group needs financial donations, but will also accept frequent flier miles, equipment, and vouchers for hotels. Contact: Amy Freitag at SJSU’s School of Journalism, 408-924-3241.
OR you can send your donation by mail at:
School of Journalism & Mass Communications
Amy Freitag – Office
San José State University
One Washington Square
San José, CA 95192-0055
Phone: 408-924-3240 / Fax: 408-924-3229
*All checks should be made out to the SJSU Research Foundation and given to Amy no later than Monday, January 5, 2009. If you could at least provide a minimum donation of $5-10 it would be greatly appreciated.
STORIES RELATED TO THE TRIP:
San Jose Mercury News – http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11179136?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com
CBS 5 Bay Area – http://cbs5.com/local/civil.rights.tour.2.885585.html
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
If you have any more questions about this trip or where your money will go for this trip contact Dr. Michael Cheers, SJSU photojournalism professor and head coordinator of the trip at 408-391-5343 and at mcheers@casa.sjsu.edu.
Thanks for your contributions.
Sincerely,
– Carlos A. Moreno
FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER, NEW YORK TIMES
PHOTO EDITOR, SPARTAN DAILY
619-606-6447
pjcamera@gmail.com
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Merry Christmas everyone! This is the last Christmas in my college career… time flies.
For the last issue of Fall 2008’s Spartan Daily we did a Christmas movies reviews. Each staff member picked a movie and wrote a review, and I chose one of my all-time favorite movies — The Nightmare Before Christmas.
The Halloween presence in “The Nightmare Before Christmas” doesn’t make it any less of a must-watch Christmas movie. Tired of the scary Halloween celebration year to year, Jack Skellington becomes fascinated by the style and feeling of Christmas. The Halloween Town residents, however, failed to grasp Jack’s meaning and compared everything he shared with them to ideas of Halloween.
Fueled by the ghoulishly delightful and unforgettable soundtrack and amazing character design, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is an original, daring artistic creation that combines fun and fright.
It’s not a kid film, and it’s hard to imagine little kids grabbing onto this one as a favorite. Maybe it was horrifying to see a boogieman chasing Santa, but who says animation is kid stuff?
“The Nightmare Before Christmas” is a long way from the traditional Disney fare, but even with its dark undertones, one will discover messages deep in the heart of the movie and characters.
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Dear fellow Californians,
Here’s an early Christmas present from your State government. When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was being all happy about how negotiations with Democratic leaders might lead to a budget deal as early as this week to help close the $42 billion deficit that is projected through June 2010, California’s chief financial officer warned that California may run out of money in about two months.
Merry Christmas.
Looking back to a story I wrote in October about the long-waited CSU budget that was delayed for three months, I can be certain of one thing: When it comes to financial issue, which may be the most crucial issue to the people, Republicans and Democrats never get along.
Oh, and I put down money saying the politicians in Sacramento still get their checks no matter what kind of stuffs they were pulling.
In an Associated Press article, even Schwarzenegger spokesman Matt David said “neither side had been willing to transcend party politics and special interests to make concessions.”
“The Democrats want to block cuts to state government spending, and the Republicans want to block revenue increases because they have signed pledges to protect special interests,” David said in a statement. “Legislators were sent to Sacramento to fix problems, but now what they’re doing is making the situation worse.”
Democrats, who are the majority but do not have two-third majority, agreed on tax increases.
Republicans pledged not to support any tax increase whatsoever.
So I wasn’t surprised that Schwarzenegger rejected the Democrats’ $18 billion package, which contained both cuts and tax increases. Many Republicans considered the package to be “illegal,” because the Democrats used audacious legal maneuvers to rush their tax bills through on simple majority votes instead of the two-thirds majority of the Legislature.
It just keeps going back and forth.. on and on..
Let’s say the State did go broke..
Will that brings a new beginning or fresh start, like what happens with a program when you hit ctrl-alt-delete?
We don’t know yet, but maybe that will finally stop the State from spending the money it just doesn’t have.
And allow these politicians to reformat their brains.
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It’s been a couple days since President-elect Barack Obama first announced his decision to have Rev. Rick Warren, pastor of the powerful Saddleback Church, delivering invocation on January 20th.
On Sunday, the longest-serving openly gay member of Congress said the decision “was a mistake.”
“Mr. Warren compared same-sex couples to incest. I found that deeply offensive and unfair,” Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said in a broadcast interview according to an Associated Press article.
The same article also stated that in a recent interview with BeliefNet, Warren said: “I have many gay friends. I’ve eaten dinner in gay homes. No church has probably done more for people with AIDS than Saddleback Church.”
Yet, a statement on the Saddleback Church Web site also declares, “someone unwilling to repent of their homosexual lifestyle would not be accepted at a member at Saddleback Church.”
I’m sure the people of homosexuality is mad, especially those who voted for Obama and for change. The first two “changes” they got: a Constitutional amendment to void their marriages, and someone, who compares allowing same-sex marriage to legitimizing incest, child abuse and polygamy, to be THE person praying the nation and leading their new President into office.
Some say this is Obama’s first major mistake, but I see Obama’s decision more about healing the deep divides in this country between liberals and conservatives.
I voted for Obama and I voted for change. But he’s not God, he’s a politician and he can’t please everyone. If Obama said he was for gay marriage and abortion, the right-wing population (and some in the middle) would eat him alive in the next election. If he said or acted otherwise, the left-wing people would be mad like hornets.
Democrats or Republicans. Liberals or concervatives.
They are brand names and labels.
The divides are largely meaningless and arbitrary. It’s been way too long, entrenched and protracted that we’re no longer functioning with true national purpose.
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Some things in life we take for granted. Having lived in the United States and away from my beloved home country Taiwan for eight years, I have become one of those people.
Language, history, culture, customs … just to name a things that make popular appearance on the list. I mean, we even take life itself for granted.
For all my life, I have been assuming democracy is a tangible right, bulletproof and secure.
Before November 3, anyways.
Representatives of Chinas Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) visited Taiwan to sign various agreements. At the same time in Taipei, in the name of preserving the peace, all kinds of peaceful expression of ideas were subject to rough interrogation, abuse, confiscation, prohibition and even detention or arrest. The vast majority of the people who met with police violence were never close to the person of ARATS Chairman Chen Yunlin. Many people were just passing by, stopping to have a look or photographing or videoing and suffered the above mentioned treatment by police.
Within less than a week, a country’s hard-fought democracy can be on the verge of being demolished.
I, for one, can’t imagine.
On December 7, approximately 4,000 students of my generation in Taiwan filled Liberty Square near Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall all in support of, well, the right to gather, to demonstrate, to protest.
Please read the below article written by Rachelle Cohen of Boston Herald, and please protect Taiwan’s democracy and freedom of speech and protest.
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TAIPEI, Taiwan – Freedom can be such a fragile thing.
And here where the freedom to gather and to protest, is a mere two decades old, well, it is valued above all else – especially by its students, its best and brightest.
This is a generation that has not known the deprivation of their parents and grandparents, not known the civil war of 1949 – that largely ended its relationship with the mainland – or the two decades of martial law that ended in 1989.
But they do know McDonalds and Starbucks. At Taipei 101, currently the world’s tallest building (until a skyscraper in Dubai beats it by a story or two this spring), teenagers do what they do in shopping malls the world over – they giggle over Haagen Dazs and they window shop in some of the world’s gliziest stores.
And yes, even during the current economic downtown – which has indeed caused a retail slump here as elsewhere – there is no shortage of food in the shops or on the streets, no absence of people filling restaurants for Sunday lunch (even at the pricier places) or shopping for Christmas presents, a largely secular gesture here given that only about 5 percent of the population is Christian.
So yes, hearing “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” on a warm Taipei evening under a canope of dazzling Christmas lights is a kind of out-of-body experience – a combination of the strange and the familiar.
And the enormous campus of the 80-year-old National Taiwan University, home to nearly 30,000 students, also feels like home – that is if you don’t count the experimental rice paddy run by the agricultural school or the fact that thousands of students are perpetually riding around (sometimes two at a time) on bicycles.
But what this young generation can’t forget – and won’t allow visitors too either – is that it could all be at risk in a heartbeat.
This island nation, which China still considers a “breakaway province,” remains within missile range of the mainland. And an accord signed last month with Beijing to increase direct flights, shipping and mail is contributing to the unease, especially among those who favor independence.
Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou ran on a platform of improving relations with Beijing – and not being “the other guy” – the other guy being then President Chen Shui-bian, who has since has been imprisoned on corruption charges. But the popularity of the Harvard-educated Ma has faded with the tanking economy and with the rough handling of demonstrators from the rival Democratic Progressive Party last month. DPP members and others with independence on their mind were protesting the visit of an emissary from the mainland.
So on a balmy night in Kaohsiung in the south, which remains a hotbed of the independence movement, DPP stalwarts rallied in a gentle, flag-waving, music-enfused demonstration – as much a social event as a political one.
Students chatted after and posed for photos with their “Taiwan is ours” flags and T-shirts, and insisting “Taiwan’s Number 1” as if it were a championship team.
The next day back north in Taipei, students – some supporters of independence, some not – filled Liberty Square near Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall all in support of, well, the right to gather, to demonstrate, to protest.
They are called “the Wild Strawberries” – not after a Bergman film, but because “strawberries are delicate, easily crushed,” explains, Yuan Hui Hu, a former head of the nation’s public broadcasting system, now affiliated with NTU. The movement, little more than a month old, objects to a parade and assembly law that requires a police permit for such marches.
On this day, this protest by some 4,000 students (and a scattering of their elders), all goes well.
They are indeed young and idealistic and filled with hope – not unlike their counterparts in the U.S. But here they do not take their freedom for granted. They know it is a special thing, a delicate thing, as delicate as well, a wild strawberry.
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A Table for One 