I think that my project’s theme was a good one, and that is the most important thing to me. I wanted to do a project that could help people out. People know journalism and the economy are not looking great right now, so I wanted this project to be used as a tool, and maybe spark some good ideas. There is so much to do in sports journalism, and it’s my goal to somehow become part of the business.

The most enjoyable part of the project for me would have to be the slideshow. It was my first time using soundslides. I’ve never done anything like a slideshow before, but I think I ended up doing fine. It’s a great story, and it worked well with the overall theme.

The skills that I have learned from this class will most likely be used again in the near future. Organizing and effectively putting together a package like this, where all the pieces need to work, is an important aspect to anyone interested in journalism in today’s world.

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“I just love sports,” she said. “I’m the only one out of all my friends who seems to follow them, so I’m always having to explain what’s going on when a game is on.”

As for Pressbox, she never thought that her first job out of college would be so enjoyable.

“I always pictured working at a few dead-end jobs until i got the job I wanted, but I have that job now,” she said. “It’s a very casual and cool atmosphere at Pressbox, and I’ve meet a lot of important people. Besides writing, I help out with making sure the site is running smoothly. I put most of the stuff up that’s on there, and I’m constantly editing.”

Lucido mostly writes about college sports in the area, and occasionally the Ravens and Orioles. It is not impossible to get your “dream job” after college. You just have to be motivated and look in the right places.

“I think play-by-play at this point is worthless,” says the veteran sportswriter (and ace blogger) Joe Posnanski. “It’s worthless because A) people have seen or heard the plays; B) people have seen the highlights and, most important, C) the play-by-play is easily accessible from box scores” and graphics showing how teams scored.

Fry goes through four ways to improve the current situation on the game story. I like to think of them as “The Four R’s.” He suggests to retire them, revitalize them, reinvigorate them and roboticize them (which touches on the whole StatsMonkey phase that I mentioned earlier.) I think all of these ideas could work, but I hope we don’t lose game stories completely. Sure, there are quicker ways to get the news now, but good detailed writing should never be thrown out. Even with the changes in the industry, people will always love a solid game story.

As for things on the main page, I wasn’t too impressed with the map. It didn’t tell us stuff that we didn’t already know from the video. Maps are supposed to present the facts in a way that is more clear to see. I also thought that it was a lot of information thrown on a page. It didn’t seem organized, especially the boxes on the brothers running down the center of the page.

Overall, however, it was a very powerful presentation.

He knows that people aren’t buying newspapers anymore, just like everyone else in the business. He had an interesting take on the situation, though.

“The decline of long-form journalism, whether it be month-long investigations that uncover corruption or just really interesting takeouts, is a tragedy,” he said. “I don’t necessarily hold blogs responsible for long-form journalism’s decline – it’s just the changing of the times. I still think there’s room for both. Hopefully good blogging will lead to more attention paid to “old-school” forms of journalism.”

Bracken believes that this new style/form of sports writing will somehow bring out the “old-school” form. It is a very interesting concept, but do find myself wanting to read sports articles from the paper even more after I finish reading a well-written blog.

In his own blog, Bracken doesn’t like following the same kind of concepts that every other sports blogger uses. He does not agree that it’s the opinions of the blog that make them so popular.

” I think readers are more interested in breaking news and good features rather than opinion pieces,” he said.

In this article, sports columnist John Smallwood had to step away from his job because of surgery. He explains how it ultimately forced him to enjoy the games more. During his time at home, Smallwood could only watch the games from the television, and he said it was very frustrating not to able to be at the court or the field.

Like the guy in my previous article from last week, Smallwood admitted that he had the coolest job around. He’s able to write about his passion and get paid for it. He is a Philadelphia sports fan, and he wrapped up his story by saying “Television doesn’t accuracy display the explosion of emotion during a big Eagles victory.”

This “explosion of emotion” that he is referring to is what makes sports so great, and writing about it even better.

She helped me out with my topic on sports writing. First, she mentioned the best sports journalism book out there right now, called “The Best American Sports Writing.” It is a composition of the best articles.

I was most interested in what she had to say about blogging (particularly because it is the topic for my module next week). She said that she doesn’t blog as much as other bloggers do. While she enjoys the blog, she says she would rather see people doing things to make an effort, rather than just complaining and writing their thoughts down. I never thought about it in that way.

I had a question concerning Twitter that I asked her, and she had a great answer. She told me the best way to utilize Twitter is to use it for networking. As for tweets, sometimes posting links is very important.

I think that her main message, along with Brian Stelter from the previous week, is not to wait to do what you want to do. You should be doing the job that you want out of college right now.

The first one discussed was Seattle 911 calls Now, I don’t know if I am just behind the rest of the world, but I had no idea that these maps could update so quickly. The green balloons represented the active calls going on in Seattle for emergencies. Every five seconds, the balloons were changing. It was amazing.

Next, I took a look at the FluTracker. Unlike the previous map, this one was extremely difficult to read. In this case, a short paragraph would have been more beneficial to get the point across. All I say were red and orange circles with big numbers in them. But the legend explaining these symbols was hard to find, let alone read.

I thought the Where is the Money Going map was the neatest looking, and definitely the most organized. Instead of using a bunch of overlapping symbols, it used a clean color scheme. The darker regions represented more funds available.

I think that maps can be very helpful in trying to get a point across. It can do things that an article can’t, because sometimes a visual embeds the concept in the reader’s head more effectively.

“Blogging is getting stronger every day,” he said. “In the beginning, the writer was pretty weak, anybody could do it. Now, anyone can still do it, but it is mostly qualified writers. This makes the stories more credible.”

However, Heitz does not like where this is going. He enjoys a good blog, but he thinks that it’s a shame we are straying away from longer articles that require more research and quotes.

“Now people just want quick facts,” he said. “There isn’t anything wrong with that, but we should not disregard the great journalism that goes on in other types of columns. I think blogging is taking the credit away from qualified writers who have been doing this king of thing their whole career.”

It is true. People do not want to read long articles over the internet, so blogging is the popular choice. Nowadays, blogs are also pretty accurate. Usually you can expect good writing. That wasn’t always the case in past.