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.