Santa Monica Moutains Conservancy - Blog #4

Today in class we were assigned our government organizations to research and eventually write an in-depth story on. Some of the agencies include the Calabasas City Council, a Rape Crisis Center, the California Coastal Commission and Meals on Wheels. I was assigned a very big organization, a.k.a. the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy.

The conservancy was established in 1980 to help preserve, buy back and protect the environment for the general public. A zone was created which allows the conservancy to operate/obtain land from south of Malibu to north of Point Magu. This zone includes 450,000 acres of land for the conservancy to obtain. In reality the conservancy controls 55,000 acres of land in Southern California and operates 114 recreational facilities in that acreage.

There is a story already developing within Malibu concerning the conservancy. The conservancy is proposing to allow overnight camping. The agency is in the process of petitioning the city of Malibu for four overnight camp grounds and many residents would prefer to keep the status quo.

One of the most interesting things I was able to uncover with a brief 20 minute online search of the agency is that because of state laws and requirements monetary donations cannot be appropriated unless appropriated by the Legislature and Governor and then are approved by the Department of Finance in Sacramento.

In essence the money donated directly to the agency is held up and could be diverted to other causes. To counteract this another almost shadow organization was established in 1985 to use donations to help the conservancy. The Mountain Recreation and Conservation Authority provides ranger services for almost 50,000 acres of public land and parks.

There will be many interesting develop as I dig through this agency.

In-depth reporting/working with editors - Blog #3

The theme for today's class was looking at traditional print publications and exploring how to work with the human resources available to us as writers as well as the teamwork that goes into producing a package.

The class reading in "Reporting that Matters" (there is a link in blog #2) covered chapters 11, 12 and 13. Chapter 11 dealt with covering in-depth stories, and series and team reporting. One of my favorite memories from Journalism 241, Introduction to Journalism, was having the opportunity to meet Bill Rempel.

I was assigned by Dr. J to write a story on a successful alumn from Pepperdine, or in this case George Pepperdine College. Mr. Rempel at the time was settling into his new position over-seeing the investigative reporting efforts of the Los Angeles Times. Mr. Rempel worked for the Graphic and gained national notoriety while investigating then Gov. Bill Clinton during Troopergate. Having lunch with Mr. Rempel and having the opportunity to discuss his career was a highlight of that course. This becomes relevant because during that meeting Mr. Rempel explained the difference between a breaking news reporter and an investigative reporter.

He said that breaking news reporter jump into a story gather facts, quotes and a general sense of the events and come back to the newsroom and make deadline. An investigative journalist is met with closed lips and closed doors. These journalists have to be especially creative to get their information and sources and the stories can take months to break, even with the help of a team of research assistants.

Chapter 12 covered working with editors, designers and photographers. This chapter has tips and coaching ideas for inexperienced writers, but the most important part of the chapter was the section on information graphic, or info graphics. These graphics are hard to create so they are generally only seen at newspapers that have a large and talented art staff. Graphics can be any type of creation that tells a part of the story.

During class today we broke up into group and critiqued the new issue of the Graphic. We looked at three inside pages and brainstormed how to make the stories better. My idea for a story on club convo was to package the story with a info graphic about the process of a student creating a club convo. The graphic would have steps showing a student filling out the paperwork in the convo office, meeting with their club, organizing the time and ending with the group holding their convo.

The final chapter of the reading was on data and numbers. Numbers are great for stories but scare reporters to no end. I read the Wall Street Journal to keep apprised with the business world and to gain a level of comfort in dealing with numbers and budgets.

The final component of the class was a discussion on how to package a story on the marines assigned to informing the families of other marines that lost their lives. The story, "Final Salute" by Jim Sheeler would be greatly served with a narrative lead that introduces a family and soldier and then expands to the larger picture of the marines assigned this duty and the families dealing with their loss. This is a gripping story that would be served well with some dynamic photos and referring to other resources for families to use while grieving.

I would like to invite you to take a look at the online Graphic and make some suggestions on how we could package some of our big news stories, such as the parking fines increase, the suspended coach or the student serving in Iraq.

Next weeks blog will unveil what agency I will be exploring for public affairs reporting.

Here are some photos of Graphic editors working together.

Narrative Leads - Blog #2

For homework the class read about narrative leads as a storytelling technique. The topics were covered in chapters 9 and 10 of "Reporting That Matters."

The most important thing about the narrative lead in public affairs reporting is the "turn," which is the nut graf of the transition into the larger issue or context of the story.

In class today we examined various articles that used narrative leads. The first example was a story written on the employees who clean up litter from LAX. "Their Job: Clear the Airfield" written by Jennifer Oldham does a good job of telling a story that she was able to piece together from her reporting. The turning point in the article occurs when she shifts from telling a story about a wheel on the runway to introducing the employees who are responsible for the making sure the runways are safe and clear of debris.

The second example was an article written by William Lobdell. "Priest and His Son Are Bound by Poverty," starts with a description of a courthouse and doesn't turn until the jump. The larger story here is that the children fathered by Catholic priests can only get very limited help from the legal system.

The third and forth examples follow the same guidelines of starting with a story that has context relevant to the larger issue and then the turning point.

For an in-class exercises we were asked to write a narrative lead about a difficult thing that has happened in our own lives. Here is the lead I worked on in-class:

The bus was leaving promptly at 3 p.m., five students frantically wandered the back alleys of Moscow desperately searching for any familiar sight. The second hand on their watches quickly travel to the top of the face and time they have to reunite with their peers quickly dwindles.
For the first time in their lives, five southern California kids were truly lost outside of suburbia. The manicured lawns, expensive cars and malls were a far comfort replaced by street signs written in an alien language.
The fear of being left behind in an unfamiliar city never entered the minds of the students sent to Europe by their parents for an educational senior trip.
[Turn]
Thousands of high school students under the guidance of educational tour companies, teachers and friends set off every year for a European experience. Parents worry about their students getting mugged or taken advantage of but [hundreds(needs to be research)] of new graduates never return for their senior trips.


That was my attempt at taking a personal experience and making a narrative lead and also trying to connect it to a larger issue.

While interning and working as a general assignment reporter I often used narrative leads to tell news stories. One of my favorite stories to work on was with NOAA group that was doing research on dolphin moralities. The lead sets up the visual and then the turn comes almost instantly with the background of the red tide. Another fun story I wrote was basically a day in the life of a mosquito sprayer.














I would like to invite all readers to review an issue of our campus newspaper, the Graphic, and select one story you believe could have been improved by using narrative storytelling, and explain why? I would love to hear any and all feedback.

Public Affairs Blogging - Blog #1

I am blogging for Journalism 561, Public Affairs Reporting, this semester and the intent of this blog is to serve as an educational tool for me as well as others. This first blog will be quite a bit longer than most posts because it will contain a copious amount of background information.
The class is being taught by veteran journalist and seasoned professor Dr. Michael Jordan.
The blog will be updated hopefully every Tuesday and Thursday during class time, 4 to 5:30 p.m., or shortly after class. This blog will serve as an open forum of experiences and ideas for peers, friends, family, professors and anyone else with an opinion. I invite everyone to leave comments and feedback about the content that is uploaded.

I am a junior journalism major at Pepperdine University with an outside concentration in business administration. I am currently the associate editor of the school newspaper, the Graphic, and I have served in various leadership roles for the student newspaper. Last semester I was editor in chief, but my journalistic background is mainly in news and opinion writing.

My career aspirations are to move to a small town after graduating and work for a community newspaper, and eventually become an editor. I would also like to move from editorial to the business side and become a publisher of a community newspaper. A community newspaper is traditionally defined as having a paid circulation of less than 100,000.

Community newspapers are smaller than newspapers printed in metropolitan areas but in my opinion can have a greater impact on a community. There are very few barriers between reporters and citizens of the community in smaller towns.

I spend my past summer working for the News Herald, in Panama City, Fla., as an Institute for Humane Studies Intern. I had a great experience working as a general assignment reporter and a cops reporter. I learned more about journalism in one summer than I thought would have been possible.


Pepperdine has a great journalism program that produces quality graduates. Social networking alone sets Pepperdine’s journalism program and the Graphic after from other weekly broadsheet student publications. There are Graphic and Pepperdine alumni working at the Los Angeles Times, SqueezeOC, the Orange County Register, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Long Beach Press-Telegram and many other notable publications.

The faculty and staff that students work with on a daily basis distinguishes the journalism program from others programs; Dr. Michael Murrie, the director of student journalism, Elizabeth Smith, the assistant director of student journalism and Dr. Ken Waters, professor of journalism, and Jordan, professor of journalism.

My favorite part of the journalism program at Pepperdine is the Graphic, which allows the students to run an award winning weekly publication. The Graphic is an interesting publication because it is in the Associated Collegiate Press’ Pacemaker Hall of Fame. The analogy of the Pacemaker is that it is the Pulitzer for college journalism.

What makes the newspaper so appealing and interesting is that despite all the awards won of the history of the paper it is still the easiest co-curricular activity on campus. Any student that wants to be published only needs to fill out an application and be prepared to work hard.
The journalism program at Pepperdine uses the Graphic as an educational tool. Most of the journalism students are editors for the student newspaper and also take classes. To earn a bachelors degree in journalism students must complete the core journalism requirements of; introduction to journalism, news writing and editing, feature writing, critical and editorial writing, publication design, an internship and public affairs reporting.

The first major topic of blogging for the class is the Malibu fires that caused more than $60 million worth of damage. The fire destroyed five homes and damaged six others, all located within a mile of Pepperdine’s Malibu campus. I got a call about the fire from a friend who was watching the fire from the cafeteria. My mind started working on the Graphic’s coverage of the story. Shannon Kelly, the news editor, was able to get down to Alumni Park, which is the giant grass lawn located directly off of Pacific Coast Highway and the closest safe vantage point of the fire.

Students stood and watched as well as passersby and even Kelsey Grammer, who was jogging by stopped to watch the blazes. The Graphic with a collaborative effort from Airan Scruby, news editor, Kelly, staff photographers and Jaimie Franklin, news assistant, was able to post a breaking news story for the Pepperdine community during a time of crisis.

I drove down to the scene of the fire the day after and saw the destruction first hand on Old Malibu Road. While I was working for the News Herald I covered multiple fire stories most of them structure fires, but it was completely different seeing the destruction in your proverbial own backyard. One thing that caught my attention was the number of cars that were destroyed. Off all the structure fires I have witnessed I never saw a charred car.

Being a car lover it was shocking to see expensive luxury vehicles left at the scene but it really hit home that this fire was fast moving and people grabbed what they really need and irreplaceable things and left their cars.

The fire served an education purpose because our public affairs reporting class was able to discuss what the public affairs follow-up stories should be written. There was the typical rebuilding of Malibu homes stories, a story on arsonists, but the one I thought was the most off the wall was to do a follow-up safety story on smoke inhalation. It seems like it would be extremely easy not to inhale smoke when fleeing a fire but there is apparently more to it because during every fire multiple people suffer from smoke inhalation including experienced firefighters.

The other topics we have discussed in class are the difference between hard breaking news and public affairs reporting. The main difference is the time element and the heart. Hard news is getting the facts quickly and accurately so readers will understand the work they live in. Public affairs’ reporting allows reporters to focus on issues and investigate deeper into what causes a problem or how to solve a dilemma.

To be successful in public reporting interviews and sources become extremely important. To get more than the typical who, what, when, where and why breaking news elements; reporters need to go into their interviews packing their own knowledge and ask deeper questions.

Any city reporter or cops reporter can relate to the importance of sources. When dealing with government agencies and potentially sensitive topics or information building trust about sources and knowing who to call makes all the difference. A good example for the importance of sources is when I was working back in Panama City I could pick up my phone and within 10 minutes interviewed the sheriff and the public relations director for the sheriff’s department. When snow hit Malibu on Wednesday I had to direct others on what sources to call and the only information we were able to obtain within 10 minutes of the news was a “we know the road is closed but we do not know why,” from Public Safety.

First Post

I am apprehensive about blogging but this should be a good overall experience.