Magzalez’s eyes on media

UF Army ROTC Video

I helped an Alligator Writer, Kristin Huff, edit her first video yesterday. Kristin was the first brave reporter to offer up a video after managing editor of online media Ken Schwenke offered up his Flip video camera for the less-experienced videographers looking for something new to try.

She did a good job of keeping the camera steady and getting a story out of the interview. She asked the right questions and got some good shots.

Overall I give her an A+ for her first effort.

I told her for next time she needed to consider a few things:

• A wider variety of shots — especially some good, wide, establishing shots
• More b-roll
• Work on having the camera steady before she starts shooting because she ended up having a little less video than she thought because the beginning of every video was too shaky.

Check out the video on the Alligator’s multimedia page.

Bleak outlook for student journalists

It’s something that we all have to come to grips with. We are graduating at a terrible time. The economy is in a slump, and our industry is suffering. I recently wrote about South Florida’s newspaper industry and how it’s in the crapper.

South Florida isn’t the only place feeling the pinch. Thousands of journalism-related jobs are being eliminated around the country. People are getting laid off, and positions are being eliminated.

Erica Smith at graphic designr made a map showing some of the journalism-related layoffs across the country. It’s pretty well done, all be it incomplete. I’m sure there are much more jobs than this that have been lost, but it’s testament to our fears of a tougher and tougher job market.

Here’s to hoping things can take a turn for the better, sooner rather than later.

Link came via my buddy at The Miami Herald, M.T.

The peeps I follow on Twitter and why

I am magzalez!

So I’ve recently climbed aboard the Twitter wave. Twitter is what I and others call microblogging. I had my reservations about it before, but I accept it as a fun social medium.

So without futher ado, here is a list of some of the people I follow on Twitter and why:

• Selfmadepsyche: Megan Taylor is a cool cat. She is a former classmate of mine and has been doing the Twitter thing for quite some time. It’s fun to know what she’s doing because she’s so damn zany. Mainly though, she just knows where this whole online journalism thing is heading.
• Schwanksta: Ken Schwencke is a smart guy. He knows his programming and how it can help journalism. He’s also the managing editor of online media at The Alligator.
• gotoPlanB: Dave Stanton is the coolest journalism teacher around. He’s keeping me filled in on what’s around the corner for online journalism.
• Greglinch: Greg Linch keeps in the know for online journalism. He also is a former co-intern with me and currently interning at The Miami Herald. Mainly I just like to see what’s coming out of there.
• UFWebAdmin cause that’s where I work.
• Wimbledon because tennis is what I love. I just found this one today.

The main thing I’ve seen with Twitter is that it is fun and useful so long as you keep it under control. Just like your RSS, only subscribe if you are going to read it or else you’ll be inundated. The other thing is that the whole microblogging idea, to me anyways, is like the new online note taker. You put your thoughts into Twitter, and you collect your thoughts in a blog post. It doesn’t have to be all business though, which is what makes it fun.

Soon I’ll do a post about who I WISH had Twitter.

Juneteenth Festival Video

This is the latest video I’ve shot. I did this on Father’s Day and edited it yesterday.

I give it a B- because I probably could have gotten better b-roll, then again, there’s always something that could have been done better.

The video seems to be broken on The Alligator site, but here it is for your viewing pleasure:

Let me know what you think.