CCI possibilities

The Consumer Confidence Index comes out each month to report on how consumers feel the economy is doing. Whether or not they are confident in the market, and if they feel that there are jobs available out there for them. In last months report (for December) it showed that the consumer's confidence was up from November. It also showed that it was also one of the highs for the year. Consumers also feel that there is more of a job market for the month of December as well.

By looking at these numbers we can develop several different stories from this. You could do a story following different people who are looking for jobs, or even companies who are hiring right now, or not hiring. Another story could cover current consumer spending habits. You could talk to several local companies and see how they feel their customers are spending money in their stores.

There are a lot of possibilities in the CCI. You could make it national, state, or local all depending on how big the paper is.

Voicemails for newspapers on-line

Here is a story about the posting of voicemails, more like hate mails, from readers of the San Francisco Chronical. You can read it fully at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/business/media/29gate.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin.

This story does a good job with the lead. It catches the attention of the readers and introduces exactly what the story is about within the first two sentances.

This story was made to be just a small excerpt and that is all that it is. It gives minimal information about one newspaper, gives only a couple quotes from one person, and only uses one example. It felt like it was lacking something after the lead, but I think that has something to do with the size of the story.

I think that this story could be further developed and could really use some more examples from around the United States, not just one newspaper.

Terry Gross interview

Movies: Oscar Nominee Guillermo Del Toro

I listened to Terry Gross talk to Guillermo Del Toro talk about his new movie.

It was very obvious from the beginning that Terry Gross had seen the movie and and looked up the history surrounding the movie. She lead into the conversation by telling a lot about the movie and then asked longer questions that were also filled with lots of background information. When she asked a question, it wasn't just one sentance long, they were multiple sentences. She would give some information, and then ask a question about the movie that was related to the material that she was just speaking about. Also, she would ask very fact oriented questions. She never really put her own perspective into the questions, she just went after the solid facts.

Blogging Truths

Here is the link to my website about a blog gone wrong. Enjoy! http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/technology/22blog.html?ref=technology.

This article leads you on to be a big story about a CEO who lied on his blog, but as you read through the very short article it is evident that this CEO lead a small company that had less than 150 employees. The impact of this story is lacking. Blogging has become the "new thing" to do, but just like anything else that is posted on the internet there is a grey area about validity. That is simply the nature of blogging. Take the story about the woman who created a fictional blog about a girl dying of cancer. Everyone believed her only to find out that she was non-existant. I think that if they really wanted to drive home the impact of an executive lying on a blog they should have used a better example that effected more people.

YouTube crosses the line?!

My article is about YouTube becoming a site that has illegal video materials uploaded and the rift it is causing with producing studios. You can view the article titled: "Hollywood Asks YouTube: Friend or Foe?" at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/technology/15youtube.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=technology.

As I was reading through this article the same thought kept coming over my mind; I feel like I've read this somewhere before. Oh yeah, that's right, we went through the same mess several years ago when music producers got upset about illegal uploading of thier songs. Instead of putting a different spin on this story, I felt like they had just dug up an old article from the music downloading days and changed a few key aspects. There was no originality to this story, or catchy title, or exciting lead. The lead was even a question, which I thought was normally frowned upon. I know that this is a similar problem to that of the music industry, but maybe a few more key examples or numbers about how the uploading on YouTube is impacting movie producers would have helped. All in all, it was a long and repititious article about how the poor movie industry is being ripped off. I'll be concerned when they start getting paid less than me.

A new year begins!

This space is now being used for my Com 358 class.