This is the end…(the doors)

With three stories down and the fourth and final one in the works, it’s hard to look back and say I haven’t learned anything. Actually, I’ve learned a tremendous amount.

My reporting skills have skyrocketed and my innate curiosity level has jumped as well; all things that lead to being a successful journalist. 

Also, I can use Final Cut Pro. Well, maybe I’m not an expert, but I certainly feel comfortable enough to edit and produce videos for the web. I give all the credit in the world to our professor and my mentor Chris Delboni with a helping hand from Millennium Beat’s web editor Dena Giannini. 

Tonight, Olivia and I are going back to the Temple Beth Shmuel Montessori school to film our new media component for our final story. The pressure is building to get the story done because our current draft of our print story is far from par. Once we get this footage tonight of children singing and dancing in front of family and friends for Israeli Independence day, it’ll all be in the hands of Final Cut to get this story done. 

Besides for two finals, this is it. College is over. Wow.

“Houston, we have liftoff…”

Our classes Millennium Beat website has finally [soft] launched.  We’re trying to get as many comments as we can and make a few tweaks here and there before we make the site findable through Google and other search engines.

The entire class, especially Dena Giannini our web editor, has pulled together throughout the semester and it has all culminated to this! It feels good to have worked hard and now have that hard work displayed so beautifully for anyone (literally) to view. 

But it would be a lie to say there weren’t some bumps along the way, and I am certainly not expecting it to be smooth sailing until then. It just never is in journalism. 

Maybe that’s what this business is really about, maybe that’s what any business is really about: being able to hurdle the challenges along the way, and if you fall, well, get your ass back up.

I might be getting philosophical because I am graduating in about a month and the world that lies ahead seems dark and dismal, but I think I have gotten my point across and I think I will probably end up surviving.

Stress for the stressful

Well, some great lessons learned this past week. Hopefully I’ll be able to make some sort of full-circle conclusion by this weeks end.

Olivia and I have been working extremely hard on our Goal8 story, which we knew was going to be difficult to do, but nevertheless we battled on with endless calls to the Israeli Embassy in New York, the Consulate General of Israel in Miami and left many voicemail’s sans response. 

Beyond the Consulate and Embassy’s ridiculous hours of operations, our main “colorful” source in our story was Ruth Behar. She gave us some wonderful information and gave us ideas for some awesome sources. Had we received any response, success would have flowed like wine in ancient Rome.  

This is a story that needed time to develop. Time is so precious in journalism… lesson learned.

The video/slideshow we’re working on as our new media component is an entirely different issue.  The photo’s Ruth gave us from Cuba were awesome and the one’s I used from my past Israel trips were just as useful. 

With over 40 minutes of Ruth on videotape, I had trouble grooming that down to 40 seconds. It was easy getting rid of the stuff not regarding Israel, but I’m still having trouble choosing the right clip.

Maybe I just need some guidance.

Goal Eight, Struggle and Strife

MDG eight is an interesting one to say the least.  The other seven goals are pretty matter-of-fact, to the point: end hunger, education for everyone, equal rights, increase child and maternal health, combat AIDS and sustain the environment. And then finally lucky number eight: Develop a global partnership for development… how vague, it even has the word “develop” in the six word title twice. That means 66% of the goal’s title is repetitive… but I digress.

Choosing to tell a story relating to this goal could not have been a heftier task. First of all, I’ve never written anything political and didn’t really know how to deal with officials. Olivia initially got rejected from the Israeli Embassy in D.C. and then I got denied by the Consulate General of Israel‘s office yesterday. Through hours of automated voices telling me to dial 1 for English, 3 for the office of media relations, and 8 for a free pen, I found myself lost at sea. I left Ariel Roman-Harris a couple of messages, but to no avail. What surprised me most was that there was no human operator to speak to; dialing zero just restarted the automated messages telling me what to press for a free pen. I admit, I did get frustrated.

Fortunately though, Ruth Behar gave Olivia and I an excellent interview and helped us gain a true direction for our story. There were many angles we could have tackled it from, but Jewbans who immigrate to Israel either for religious reasons or simply an exit strategy from Cuba have to go through a lot before they are greeted with open arms in their true homeland.