President Cabrera’s AMA

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Earlier today, George Mason University President Angel Cabrera hosted an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on reddit.com

The new president of GMU was available to answer any question posed by a reddit.com user from 3-4pm. The session was full of a diverse set of questions for Cabrera. Ranging anywhere from questions about educational funding to questions about Cabrera’s personal involvement with GMU, the AMA session was informational, to say the least.

One user asked Cabrera if GMU is making an effort to distance itself rom its reputation as a commuter school. Cabrera responded by stating, “Can’t fit us in an easy category!”

“Any chance you could show us a picture of what your individual office looks like?” one user asked. Cabrera answered with a link to a twitpic of his office. This was a nice gesture from our president — showing us his modest workspace.

President Cabrera's Office -- Mason Hall

President Cabrera’s Office — Mason Hall

When asked why he chose GMU, Cabrera explained that our campus is, “awesome, diverse, innovative and in a perfect location.” Although his answers were mostly ambiguous, the information he conveyed was highly informative — mostly of his personality.

A seemingly upset user asked Cabrera why he didn’t support the sports here at Mason, only to feel the power of the president’s sarcastic side.

“I go to all the games! Where were you? Don’t you support athletics?” Cabrera said.

It was a novel idea to get the input of our new school president in a public forum where anyone could ask anything. Cabrera sure gave us some insight on a personal level.

Reportero

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Documentary filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz came to Mason Wednesday night to screen his documentary Reportero and answer the questions of the student body.

Since its original air date — Jan. 7 on PBS — Reportero has been screened in various continents. It has also already screened 13 times in Mexico. Of course, Ruiz is aware of the danger in airing such a film in Mexico, amongst the drug cartels.

Reportero

Ruiz’s film documents the personal journey of a Mexican journalist, Sergio Haro, and the newspaper he works for amidst the dangers of Mexican drug cartel news coverage.

“I love when I can go back-and-forth between an individual story and one with context,” Ruiz explained to Mason students. Reportero bounces between the story of Haro and the dangers of a Mexican journalist in general.

“What we need is deeper, more critical news coverage,” Ruiz said. His goal in creating the documentary was to get the issue of the drug cartels out into the general public.

 

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Mason Hall’s Meese Conference Room was full Wednesday night for the screening of “Reportero”

 

Number of people murdered in Mexico since 2006: Over 70,000

Current Number of journalists murdered in Mexico: 50

Kevin Goldberg’s Journalistic ‘Seven Deadly Sins’

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Professor Kevin Goldberg came into class to talk about his self-titled ‘Seven Deadly Sins of the Journalist.’ His points were derived from the actual Seven Deadly Sins — gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy and wrath.

The Sins

Gluttony: fair use, copyright is about exploiting your content for money

Greed: reporter’s privilege, there is little to no protection for a reporter in federal court

Sloth: using ‘alegedly’ or ‘in my opinion;’ don’t get it first, get it right

Lust: Section 230 of Communications Decency Act, a company takes no responsibility of another information provider

Pride: compensatory (monetary loss), special (emotional loss) or punitive (intended to punish) damages

Envy: permission and licensing, use of Creative Commons

Wrath: public spaces are fair game, private spaces are off-limits

Goldberg went on to explain the logistics and legal matters of trademarking. He spoke about the differences between trademarking and copyrighting (patent).

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A patent is protection of an idea, a copyright is protection of an expression of an idea, and a trademark is protection of specific branding or marketing.

What was more intriguing about Goldberg’s talk were the ideas of different product names. There is distinction between fanciful (made-up words), arbitrary (real-life words), suggestive (distinctive and arbitrary), descriptive (describes a product) and generic (it is what it says it is) names.

i.e. Apple is generic and Camel is arbitrary

How to Conduct Effective Research

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Government Information/GIS Librarian Joy Suh talked to our class Tuesday night about different methods of research. Ms. Suh led us in a tutorial around George Mason University’s library webpage. She showed us various databases that are available for us students to use and how to effectively use the catalogue search feature.

Ms. Suh began by going through key databases in our library. She chose to discuss the most heavily used and informative databases that GMU has to offer. Anything from scholarly resources to legal documents to multimedia can be found in the databases Ms. Suh detailed.

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Key Databases:

  • ProQuest – archives of assorted mediums
  • Academic Search Complete – scholarly / multi-disciplinary database
  • Lexis-Nexis – legal and public records database
  • JSTOR – scholarly journal database
  • ARTstor – image-related database
  • Social Explorer – census and demographic informational database

The next part of Ms. Suh’s presentation involved the library’s catalogue search. In the catalogue search, she explained how we could use the builder search mode and narrow our searches.

Catalogue Search Functions:

  • AND – searches for multiple keywords at once
  • OR – less specific and searches for either one keyword or the other
  • NOT – more specific and searches for a specific keyword but not another

This discussion was extremely helpful, since I’m sure most of us didn’t know much about the catalogue’s more advanced features. In regards to my group’s project, the databases Ms. Suh outlined are going to greatly aid us in our research.

Photojournalism

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Alexis Glenn and Evan Cantwell of GMU’s Creative Services came to class to talk about photojournalism. They provided us with many tips on how to take great, professional photos for our stories.

Key Ideas:

  • Anticipating the unexpected and expected
  • Finding the right angle to shoot
  • Shooting photos that don’t look staged

Glenn and Cantwell told us that it is important to get to events early and to stay there late. “No matter how mundane, you never know what’s going to happen,” Cantwell said.

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Since most of our class is composed of writers — rather than photographers — they gave us a metaphor for angles. Being stuck in one angle is like repeating a paragraph of a story over and over again. This makes sense, being that if you can only take photos from one position, there’s only so much you can portray.

Technical Aspects

Glenn and Cantwell also talked about the technical side of photojournalism. You need to understand your equipment and surroundings. Taking the light source into account is a major factor. If the light is poor, the photo will lose its intended effect.

  • Shutter controls ambient light levels
  • Aperture affects artificial light levels
  • The rule of thirds should be taken into account when there is sufficient time to shoot

News As a Collaborative Effort

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Chapter 3 of Mark Brigg’s JournalismNext discusses the ideas of news as a collaborative effort between journalists and their audiences.

Crowdsourcing: According to Briggs “harnesses the sustained power of community to improve a service or information base.” In a sense, it uses the power of the many readers to aid with the few journalists. Crowdsourcing allows for a more efficient way to report on news in a more insightful manner

  • Firefox uses a volunteer team under the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation (giving Microsoft a run for its money)
  • Wikipedia allows for users to post on individual pages (Encyclopedia Britannica can not keep up with updating articles and information)

Open-Source Reporting: A form of transparent, distributed news reporting used to benefit the audience while acquiring benefits from the audience. While a news story is being formulated, bits of pertinent information can be posted.

Types of Open-Source Reporting

  • Beatblogging: A method of forming a network on a traditional beat then leading a discussion in order to provide more in-depth coverage on a story
  • Link Curation: Linking to other news outlets (news organizations used to think that if they sent readers somewhere else, they wouldn’t return…Google sends readers away but they come right back)

Pro-Am Journalism: Allows an audience to publish directly to the same platform as professional journalists, thus sharing news and making it interactive

  • Neighborsgo.com allows for Dallas, Texas citizens to post small news items (A newspaper staff can’t get to every single event in a community)
  • MyCommunityNOW uses the same concept but in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It uses the best submissions for local print editions

Parking An Ongoing Issue at Mason

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Even after construction has ended around the Patriot Center, parking at George Mason still seems to agitate students.

Over the Fall 2012 semester construction was being done around the Braddock Road entrance to campus. Now, in the Spring 2013 semester, the construction has concluded. Parking, however, is still an issue among commuting students. There seems to be too little spots in the lots around campus. Of course, if you get here at certain times throughout the day parking is easier to find.

Parking

“Now I have an early morning class and I’m one of the first people here,” says Jose Lechuga. “Last year I had later classes so all the spots were filled.” Lechuga has been commuting to Mason for a year now and still finding the same issues with parking.

If you’re early there are enough spots. If you’re late the lots are full. Unfortunately for Mason commuters, many of them have later classes.