IRH Assignment #1

1.Pick a local topic worth investigating:
After a week of ongoing searching spanning across the borders of Nevada into California, The University of California in conjunction with San Francisco police have arrested Ernesto Manuel Gonzalez, the suspect in the slaying of the president of a Hells Angels chapter at a Nevada casino. He is being held pending the arrival of police from Sparks, Nev., where he is accused of killing Jeffrey "Jethro" Pettigrew inside a casino on Sept. 23. Sources say that video surveillance footage shows Gonzalez shooting

2.Come up with at least three secondary sources that have previously covered the story locally.

a.Reno Gazette Journal
b.KPIX/ KCBS San Francisco
c.KOLO Chanel 8 Reno
d.KTVN Chanel 2 Reno

3.Find the names of at least three people-either reporters, experts or other sources-who would be worth contacting if you decide to investigate this further.

a.Police Reporter, Jaclyn O'Malley (775) 788-6331 jomalley@rgj.com
b.Kellene Stockwell-KTVN-TV (CBS-2)
c.KCBS/KPIX Reporter- Holly Quan
d.Jimmy Arnett San Jose Hells Angles press contact-SanJose81@hamcsj.com

Charismatic Local: Reporter Frank X. Mullen

Frank Mullen sure does like to tell stories. He likes it so much; he’s managed to do it for a living for the past two decades. Mullen has been with the Reno Gazette-Journal for 20 years and is senior reporter. He has been telling stories for as long as he can remember and is what some people might consider to be a jack-of-all-trades. Prior to telling stories as a reporter, he told stories as a truck driver and as a car mechanic. Standing in a classroom surrounded by a couple dozen new Mac computers and students glued to their laptops and iPads, it’s hard not to think that Frank would have fit in a litter better at a newsroom where typewriters and telegraphs were the norm. He claims to understand Morse code and if you didn’t know any better, you might mistake him for a railroad conductor.

But make no mistake, Frank is a worthy storyteller and respectable reporter. Telling stories as a career is not something that has come easily to Frank, and he warns those interested in pursuing it as a career that it is a skill that he has honed over the years to insure that he is “great at it.”

Frank likes complicated stories, stories that require investigation and makes him ask the question, “what the hell?” Many people think that story telling in 2011 is all about technology, according to Frank, that shouldn’t be the case since you don’t have to depend on technology for the use of your brain.

Frank offers a lot of advice to us inspiring journalist-but most importantly he reminds us to find ways around the roadblocks, to know the experts and to rely on them. It is very hard as a reporter working on a deadline to obtain the knowledge of someone who has ben working in a profession his or her entire life. You simply cannot match them.

He cautions that being a journalist is about being a good reporter and also about feeding the monster-we must have persistence. Lastly, he wants all storytellers out there to know that the most important thing about the story is not the documents or what you find on the internet-the most important thing is the human aspect, “The human story beats the hell out of everything else.”

For more information about Frank check out http://frankxmullen.com/

The Social Journalist: @mchancecnn

“#Rixos crisis ends. All journalists are out! #rixos”

A few weeks ago, we watched the country of Libya begin to breath once again, after years of being suffocated by the regime of Moammar Kadafi'. At the heart of this fight was a group of 35 journalists from around the world, being held inside the Rixos hotel, located in the center of Tripoli. The hotel grounds were surrounded by armed Kadafi' forces who also made their presence known in the lobby and for five days the journalist were told that they could not leave.

One of the journalists hulled up in the Rixos was Matthew Chance, a senior international correspondent for CNN based in Moscow. During his traumatic time being “held hostage” his broadcasted his story and that of his fellow journalist to the world via Twitter. He engulfed Twitter with information, detailing every stage of a situation which many feared would end in disaster-many of the journalist spoke after their release saying that they feared they would eventually be executed or used in some way by the regime as collateral.

Matthew’s tweets allowed his followers and the rest of the world to get a view of the crisis in Libya, and the situation inside the Rixos unlike any other. During a time of such heightened emotions and with so many channels of information to filter through, Matthews tweets were a way to get straight to the facts. He tweeted exactly what was happening, as it happened, not taking into consideration the possible risks he was taking. Additionally, since Kadafi' forces had taken away their telephone access, Twitter was the only way for those being held inside the hotel to communicate with their loved ones.

"I think as you're following somebody, you can really get a sense of what's going on in a more intimate way than virtually any other medium," Matthew told the BBC a few weeks after the event. "I felt that I was communicating with a whole bunch of people who wanted to know more. Twitter offered a much fuller, more intimate look inside the hotel.”

At the start of the crisis, Chance had 700 followers on Twitter. By the time of his release from the Rixos Hotel, this number had grown to 22,000.

My final project-Yes, this is only week 3 of classes.

Thesis Statement: Reno has inspiring and groundbreaking potential, as it moves out of an incubation stage of coolness to a full blown cool status. A town thriving with history, culture, entrepreneurial spirit, and an absurd amount of natural beauty, it is unfortunate that this little city is constantly being short changed. In recent years, the city has seen an impressive amount of new restaurants and cuisines call this city home. Far too many people think of Reno a place for the loose slots and not as a culinary destination. Many cities in the world have changed they way the public perceives them through food-can Reno do the same?

• The city has often faced an unfortunate negative stigma that is more or less due to a lack of understand about the area
• For much of its history, Reno has been considered something of a culinary dump: a city of free buffets and generic casino steakhouses.
• Unique factors have always brought people to the area. Examples being the “divorce business” and gambling.
• The arrival of celebrity chefs to the area such as Charlie Palmer at the Grand Sierra Resort.
• The creation of culinary focused publications: Edible Reno Tahoe.
• The recent influx of local famers markets to the area.
• Other cities that have been changed for the better by food; Oakland, and Ashland OR.
• Can Reno revamp it’s image? Is this necessary? And if so, where does food come into play?

Introductory Post: Why am I perusing a degree in journalism and what are my expectations?

I graduated college in May of 2008, at the beginning of a global financial crisis that some economist say could end up being the worst financial crisis since the great depression. I began looking for career-oriented jobs sometime around February of my Senior year of college. The problem was that there weren’t any jobs that wanted to be found. For over a decade it had been engrained into my brain that education and hard work were the keys to success. What about all of the promises that if I went to college, and received high marks that I could do no wrong? I had always assumed that if I did everything “right,” my dream career would just fall into my lap within moments of receiving my diploma. Wrong.

I took a job in PR in San Francisco because I decided that was better than being unemployed and living with my parents. After my previous internships in Boston, working in tech PR was about as satisfying as sugar free, dairy free ice cream. I lasted a total of 9 months before the company I was working for laid off 70% of their staff due to hard economic times and I found myself back at square one. I then decided to take a year off, move to Tahoe, and ski. After one year of waitressing, I not only yearned for a larger p aycheck, but I craved intellectual discourse as well. I wanted to be around people who were smarter than me and who wanted to teach. I wanted to get back to the heart of journalism. Since the economy hadn’t changed much and the jobs still weren’t there, I decided that going back to school and learning to become a better journalist was a great option. I wasn’t ready to leave Tahoe and the piece of mind that living in the mountains afforded me, so UNR seemed perfect.

So let’s rewind. Why journalism? Growing up I wasn’t allowed to watch TV on school nights. The first time I ever defied this rule, my mom caught me watching the KTVU Chanel 2 10 o’clock news. It fascinated me; for as long as I can remember I found real life more “entertaining” that fiction. I wasn’t sure which part of the industry I wanted to be a part of, but I just knew it was for me. I declared journalism as my major at freshman orientation and the next five years were the best of my life. My first TV production teacher told me I had “promise” as an on air reporter and “knack” for story telling.

My junior year of college I interned at CNN. Those 8 months solidified my decision to work in broadcast journalism. I learned and experienced more during that time then I had during the previous 3 years in school. I went straight from my internship with CNN to New England Cable News where I worked as an assistant to the chief political reporter during the 2008 Primary elections in New Hampshire. Once again, the experiences were priceless and it made me even hungrier on my quest to becoming a reporter.

I hope that my education and time spent as a graduate student at UNR allows me to be the best journalist I can be, and prepares me for whatever happens next in my career. I would love to leave UNR with a greater and more thorough understanding of what it means to be a journalist in the 21st century.

Cupcakes and Commas?

As an assignment for my Journalistic Writing class, I was instructed to create a blog. With very little guidance (aka creative freedom), I decided that I would name this blog after the two things in life that I tend to indulge in: Cupcakes and Commas.

From here on out, this will be a place where I post assignments for the course. Hopefully, they won't contain too many commas and writing them won't drive me to eat too many cupcakes. Am I funny yet?

Happy Labor Day weekend to my one loyal follower-Professor, please be kind.

-Marissa

note: The photo above was taken in Ashland, OR at Larry's Cupcakes.
Flavor: Red Velvet
Scale of 1-10 on the deliciousness scale: 10