Catching up!

With Graduation nearly two weeks away, a trip back home to Denver, and a trip to Las Vegas for RTNDA@NAB conference it is finally time to catch up on my blog.

First my vacation home was needed and very productive. I got to spend some quality time with the family. It is crazy to think that is the last time I will go home as a college student! On top of spending time with the family I also spent sometime at KMGH in Denver. I got some great critiques on my tape from the news director and general manager. The critiques were both humbling and insightful. I definitely have many areas to grow as a journalist and look forward to improving those skills in my first job.

After getting back from Denver I also made a trip out to Las Vegas for the RTNDA convention. I was in Vegas a totally of 5 days and 4 nights. We had 1 evening of convention and then 3 full days. Looking back at all the sessions and mingling events I left feeling pretty inspired. Yes, the economy isn't great so no there weren't as many jobs or news directors there as normal, but that was an expectation going into the conference. I did though get to meet a lot of people and gain some important contacts in the business. It was also great to see so many journalists positive about the future. With the economy the way it is right now I feel like sometimes all you hear is the negative. And in being realistic yes it is very true that the job market isn't great but I believe that if you give in to that negativity it is just an excuse not to get a job. Going along with that though, it was reassuring to be surrounded by so many eager and positive journalist. Journalists who are working to create a new model of journalism one that creates content on multi-platforms. I left the convention will this message the news is no longer at 5, 6, and 10 it is 24 hours. When a story breaks it should break on the web and bring viewers to the 5 after it happens at 2. No longer will viewers wait because simply they don't have to and we have to jump on this idea and run with it. No longer can we work in the model that was created so many years ago. The exciting part about this is that I grew up with the internet and so did everyone else in my generation. Because of that fact my generation isn't having to go back and learn the internet we are simply just having to incorporate the two (internet & TV) together in a way we may have not thought of before. Overall, Vegas was a good combination of fun and learning.

Coming back from Vegas I was hit with the reality of Graduation. At first I was excited, which then turned into a little scared, and now a mixture of both. It is so liberating and exciting to think I am going to be on my own supporting myself and have no idea where I could be in 3 months. Columbia is home and I will be sad to leave but I truly am excited to embark on new things and go to a place where I can improve my skills even more. I promise to update this more in the upcoming weeks as graduation is coming closer and closer with each day!

Finishing up the website

It's Sunday, and as usual I am working on an array of things from cleaning, the job search, and homework. Right now, I am working on the final page of my website. The final page gives examples of the web content I have generated for KOMU.com. Content like for example extended interviews, flickr slideshows, and flash maps. Once I get the descriptions complete my website will "officially" launch before Wednesday of this week. I can't wait! It has been a lot of work but I am really pleased with how it is turning out. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think: www.JenniferKovaleski.com

Today, I also got a new blog template one that matches, to an extent, with the design of my webpage.

Monday is going to start the beginning of a long week. Good news is that all the hard work will pay off when come Thursday I will be back home in Colorado. I can't wait to! I miss my family the most I have in a long time.

Here is a pic of me, my sister Brianna, sister Broo

ke, and my Mom Laurie being silly on our cruise:

Love and miss them!

My biggest goals for the week are just staying up on school work and maintaing an optimistic outlook on the job hunt. Because the way I see it is yes the economy is bad but what is the point in being negative? So much exciting things to happen in the future! The thought of growing up is all of a sudden getting less scary and more exciting! Who would have thought?

Job Hunting

What a week it has been! I never realized how much work goes into to getting a job from the content, to the dvd labels, resume, resume paper, cover letter, and website.! I can say though at the end of the day it feels great to have accomplished so much this week. I am getting ready for an interview with a news director out of Dallas. Looking forward to showing him my tape and getting input from someone who is a veteran to the business. I am also looking forward to starting to apply for jobs here in the upcoming weeks. The final step is getting my cover letter together. Why does it seem it is just so difficult to talk about yourself? I have officially decided I could write someone else's cover letter in no time, but mine seems to be an endless process that involves a lot a back tabbing! I hope to have that finished by tomorrow. I have a rough draft I am working with that I just need to change a little bit. What else is new in my world, homework lots of that to work on, since the whole week was basically dedicated to the JOB I have to play some major catch up tomorrow on the homework front. I am getting excited to get feed back on my work ( look at me going back to finding a job seems to be the only thing on my mind lately) though because even if the economy and times aren't great right now, I know I have really done my best work. I have put in the hours and dedication that has allowed me to become a successful at what I do. At least I think!? Now only time can tell and who knows where I could end up in 6 months? How exciting is that! Well I think that is all for now, I am trying to blog more a goal of mine. We will see how it goes!

KOMU.com

This week was very successful! Jason and I worked on a flash graphic which turned out great. Jason is very familiar with programs like photoshop and flash so I learned a lot of information from him and feel a lot more comfortable working on flash.

Here is a link to the story:

We created a flash map that showed the county's in Missouri that have a cybercrime task force.

Flash Story

The main part of my shift was spent working on Kristin Arena's web extras for her financial HFR. I created a PDF file through scanning documents as well as added over four extra interviews to her story. This gave me a lot of experience added extras with avid content manager and I learned how to use the scanner which was good to know!

Arena HFR

I also helped with Reed's live shot but most of my time this week was spent working on extras. I really liked using flash and hope that I can get another opportunity to add too a story in that way.

As far as our capstone project goes I am starting to feel a lot better about it. We are very close to having all of the content we need. Our next step is working with Mark Jarvis to make the content work for itunesU. We already meet with him and have a general idea but still need some more information. We are planning to accomplish all of the content on the google docs my friday and then hopefully start putting that content on itunes.

Looking forward to getting a lot done this week including making big strides on my website!!

Nice weather is so fun!

The nice weather has been nothing but enjoyable lately! It has definitely put me in a better mood :).

My dot com shift went really well..I now able to do everything without needing any help. Haven't had a chance to do anything with flash yet hoping to work on that next week. Neither of the two reporters had stories that we thought really could have benefited from a flash project.

Here is some of the work I did:

State Revenue Down

Independent Film Returns to Columbia

Extended Interview Extra

Most of the work I did this week involved posting captions and web extras. It seems the reporters are starting to really get the hang of creating their own stories for the web which is nice. Both of our reporters Christine Gerli and Cassandra Novy completed both of their stories full with pictures and captions this week. The only stories we had to edit ourselves was the follow up files story and Reed Erickson's live shot. Goals for next week are to use flash I played around with it a little during my shift but I want to put a lot of effort into creating something.

As far as our capstone project goes we have finally figured out a time everyone can meet which is great. We are meeting up at KOMU at 6:30 tonight to go over everything. Nick and I have gathered a fair about of content. I'm not sure where everyone else stands but plan to get caught up on that tonight. We have an interview set up with Marty Steffens Monday to do a welcome interview, working with Brian Brooks to get something set up this week and hopefully Charles Davis. I also sent Mark Jarvis an e-mail on Wednesday so I am hoping to hear back from him soon so we can start to fully understand what we can and cannot do with our content.

My goals for next week are:

1. Gather at least 3 interviews for capstone along with create more video of the dorms and meet with Mark Jarvis.

2. Make progress on my website.

3. Create a flash graphic on Wednesday.

4. Get more of my video onto Vimeo so I can get it on my website.

Overall all though...this week was a success!

This week has been a crazy one...it started out great but that I came down with a terrible cold and ended up nearly losing my voice! I rarely get sick so coming down with the cold kept me from getting some of the things I needed to get done this week accomplished. Good news is that my voice is almost back still a little raspy but I am feeling much better.

I got started on work for the i-touch project I gathered a lot of content and I am currently working to put it all into the google docs group. Right now I have all the dining hall hours posted I was going to post the Tiger X times but then realized after making the excel sheet that those times will change next semester so they won't be accurate for the incoming freshman. By tonight I am hoping to get some e-mails out to some J school professors, Brady Deaton, and Gary Forsee etc... to set up a time to do some welcome videos.

As far as my dot. com shift went it was a little more crazy then normal. The reporters did a lot of things inaccurate in the posted of their images and content. We were able to fix them but Jason and I also found that the paid dot. com person was not given all of the information we were. For example she had posted some images to stories that had the KOMU logo on them because reporters didn't save images on their own. We realized that once receiving an e-mail from Jen but she had never been told not to do this before so she learned something and we were also able to go back and fix the images for the evening. The cool thing we got to do during our shift is that Jason and I created a flickr slideshow for Cassandra Novy's story about Josh Kezer the man who got out of prison after spending 16 years there. She had a lot of emotional and compelling video so we thought a slideshow would capture some of those moments and add to the story here is the link:

Josh Kezer A Free Man

Hoping to get a chance to work with flash next week and gather a lot of content for the i-touch project!

Jenn

Getting Excited for I-touch Project

At the end of the week I can say I was definitely ready for the weekend! Meeting with our group on Friday to talk about the I-touch project went well. I am really excited to work on the project and think the application we are creating will be really helpful for freshman. I would have loved to have had something like that when I came to Mizzou. I am still having trouble getting my i-touch to sync but was going to take it over to tiger tech Monday or ask Jen about it again. I will say though it really makes me want to save the funds and buy an i phone!

Im hoping to get a lot done on the project this week especially on Thursday...looking at the Google docs I think there is about two to three things I can complete before our meeting on Friday.

As far as my dot com shift went..it wasn't too eventful but I did work with a reporter to try to get more content out of her story that we could use for the web. She did a story about the Salvation Army and how they are having more people come in because of the current economic times. What was interesting about the story is that the director talked about how he thought the economic troubles could be eased if more people knew about the salvation army's services and used them more often. Since the reporter couldn't include all that information in her story we went ahead and put the full interview with the director on the web for people to watch. I also including pictures in the story (with better captions that were complete sentences :0) and I also put a tease in to the full video interview.

Here is the link:
Salvation Army Battles Economy

I edited a couple of other stories but that was the main story I worked on since there were only two reporters for the ten.

Looking forward to working on the i-touch project and hopefully using flikr next week!