Thursday, April 8, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Rise in HIV Cases Spurs Community Response
Courtesy of Creative Commons
Nine men under the age of 25 have been diagnosed with HIV in Onondaga County since January, according to Onondaga County Health Commissioner Dr. Cynthia Morrow.
Onondaga County usually has about nine new HIV cases over a year, according to the Post Standard.
In response to the news, the Black Leadership Commission on AIDS held a news conference this morning at the Southwest Community Center. Chairman Rev. Chauncey Brown says it's important for people living in Syracuse to know what has been going on.
Brown says he is pushing for more education, testing and treatment for those with HIV in Syracuse.
“HIV is 100 percent preventable," he said. "Education can stop people from contracting the disease."
Brown says he wants to organize a summit with around 75 local clergy members to more formally discuss ways to educate the Syracuse community. He says it's important to inform people on how HIV is transmitted.
The Onondaga County Health Department is still investigating whether there is a link between the nine individuals who have been diagnosed.
Democrats Propose Budget Reforms
The Democrat state senate proposed changes to the budget today in Albany. The changes are not actually to this year's budget. The proposal is so that the Senate can avoid the issues that they are having with this year's budget.
The problem with the budget this year is that the state can not find money to stay out of debt, something its not allowed to do. The budget was supposed to be passed by April 1, but it wasn't.
Almost a week after the budget was supposed to be passed, everyone was working non-stop. It was nearly impossible to talk to anyone in the state senate or the assembly, I tried to call several assemblymen and both Central New York state senators. Even though no one said it directly to me, it seemed like they all thought I was so naive for even thinking I could get an interview on such a busy day; everyone was in meetings all day talking about the budget.
But Senate Democrat Spokesman Travis Proulx finally returned my call a few hours after I had started calling people in State government. He said that the big reforms proposed by the Senate majority is pushing back the deadline to pass the budget.
He said New York is the only state who passes its budget before collecting taxes. He said only four states have a deadline as early as June 1st, but New York would do it to accommodate the schools in the state.
"Pushing it back to June 1st allows the schools to still vote on their budget." Proulx said. "They normally vote in May, but they could push it back to June after we vote, and still vote during the school year."
Proulx blamed the problems on the budget on the Republicans. He says Democrats were kept in the dark for over four decades; they only had the majority in the senate for nine months during that time.
SU Basketball Legend Returns to Talk Business
Dave Bing told an audience of SU alumni and students he still has orange in his blood during an appearance at the Whitman School of Management today. The former standout Syracuse guard spoke during the school's seventh annual "Whitman Day" for more than 45 minutes about his experiences at SU, politics, and of course, basketball.
See, Bing is now the mayor Detroit, a city reeling from the recession. He walked to the podium after being introduced by Melvin Stith, the dean of Whitman.
He didn't have notes or anything prepared, but Bing opened up with a joke about the daughter of his communications director. She's thinking about coming to SU next year and Bing encouraged her to do that.
Bing spoke at length about his decision to come to SU. The head basketball coach, Fred Lewis, recruited him only a season after the team lost 27 consecutive games.
"I knew I couldn't fail here because they had nowhere to go but up," Bing joked. "I was playing for a perennial loser."
Bing played four years at SU and he was Syracuse's first consensus All-American in 39 years during his senior season. But, he became a star in the NBA playing primarily for the Detroit Pistons.
"I learned something in the NBA that I often tell younger players in the league," Bing said, "You can't insulate yourself from the real world."
The conversion turned from basketball to politics when Bing discussed his political career.
Elected to complete former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's term, which ended when he resigned as part of a plea agreement, Bing has since been reelected and is working to cut the city's $325-million deficit.
As for his future plans, Bing says he's just enjoying his newest challenge: healing Detroit.
(photo courtesy of BET.com)
4:30 Team D Newscast
The day started off well as both Alyssa and Greg reported early and were back in the newsroom by 1 p.m. Although they were done early, neither slacked off, but instead worked hard on making their pieces the best they could be. This included spending a lot of time on the writing, and asking me to critique their writing multiple times. Alyssa seems to every week find good, newsworthy stories, and that was once again the case today. Syracuse is a city dominated by S-U sports, so having a story about the (in the opinion of Professor Nicholson, myself, and many others) greatest all-time S-U men's basketball player visiting Syracuse and giving sound about the team and Coach Boeheim, was phenomenal. Allie also did a great job setting up her phoner immediately after the producer meeting, and was always continuously working.
Click here to listen to newscast.
I think I did a good job making the rundown, and made sure A Block went in an order of newsworthiness but also flowed. State legislators meeting today for the first time since the Easter break was the only newsworthy event which occurred today, so that story was going first. The park budget wrap connected to it, as parks budgets are affected by the county budget which is affected by the state budget. The consumer confidence story connected financial issues, and the job cuts survey story showed a contrast in opinion from it, with its first sentence connecting the two.
The West Virginia mine story did not really connect, but it has received a lot of media coverage and is a national story which people are interested in. This was the best place to put it in the newscast, so that it neither disrupted the previous flow nor future flow.
The Chiefs story was not extremely newsworthy, but in a dead news day like today, I decided to put it in there. Some people care that Opening Day is tomorrow, but since no one cares about the game preview, I used weather preparation as the angle. The Dave Bing wrap, which is a nice feature-esque wrap, is not very newsworthy, but definitely interesting to most listeners. The Chiefs and Bing stories were connected because of sports. All these connections in the newscast made it flow very well.
At the producer meeting at 12:45 p.m., 4:20 newscast anchor Jake Levy said he was going to get sound from Albany's State Legislature meeting via a phoner. I told him I was planning on using his sound for the SOT and information in my top story. After making many calls, Jake told me all the legislators were in a meeting, and he could not get sound from them. At this point, I quickly looked online for information, and could only find an article from The Albany Times-Union. After meeting with Professor Nicholson, we decided making this story a copy with a citation to The Albany Times-Union, was the best option. Jake continued to try to get sound by calling local legislators, but none of them knew about what had happened in Albany. I later learned during the post-newscasts meeting, that Jake had gotten relevant sound right before his newscast. Although I wish he notified me of that, considering he had notified me about everything else pertaining to the story and our newscast was after him, I understand he was focused on doing his story and ensuring a quality newscast for his team.
Timing was an issue in our newscast, which prompted cutting the tease and kicker. We were gradually going a little over for each story, to the point in which we were 20 seconds over going into the Dave Bing story. We went over an additional 10 seconds on that story, which could have been avoided if I took into consideration that in-studios wraps generally always go longer than expected. The Chiefs story then went over a few seconds, but more importantly, it included a terrible blunder which negatively impacted the quality of the newscast.
I had cut a 10 second soundbite on Audacity, and the rest of the sound which I cut the bite from, was on another track and after it. When I saved my bite as an MP3 into the 4:30 newscast folder, I forgot to delete the sound on the second track. So during the newscast, after the 10 second soundbite played, the extraneous sound played, which happened to include information repeated in the anchor's next track. After a few seconds I realized this, and the engineer stopped playing the sound. However, the story's credibility, the newscast's quality, and our timing, were really hurt by my mistake.
Overall, today was a very good newscast. I did a good job with the rundown and writing. I was on top of the rundown,writing, talent, and the entire newscast throughout the day. Everything was done about 15 minutes before our newscast, so I double-checked and triple-checked the rundown and script for errors. However, I did not double-check the soundbites, which was a problem.
Allie, Alyssa, and Greg did a great job with their voicing and writing, and it showed in the quality of their work. Allie is generally a soft-speaker, but she has greatly improved that this semester both in broadcasting and in conversation. She sounded clear throughout the newscast and really did a great job anchoring. Although all of our writing could have been tighter, its quality was the best I've seen in a newscast this semester.
Click here to listen to newscast.
I think I did a good job making the rundown, and made sure A Block went in an order of newsworthiness but also flowed. State legislators meeting today for the first time since the Easter break was the only newsworthy event which occurred today, so that story was going first. The park budget wrap connected to it, as parks budgets are affected by the county budget which is affected by the state budget. The consumer confidence story connected financial issues, and the job cuts survey story showed a contrast in opinion from it, with its first sentence connecting the two.
The West Virginia mine story did not really connect, but it has received a lot of media coverage and is a national story which people are interested in. This was the best place to put it in the newscast, so that it neither disrupted the previous flow nor future flow.
The Chiefs story was not extremely newsworthy, but in a dead news day like today, I decided to put it in there. Some people care that Opening Day is tomorrow, but since no one cares about the game preview, I used weather preparation as the angle. The Dave Bing wrap, which is a nice feature-esque wrap, is not very newsworthy, but definitely interesting to most listeners. The Chiefs and Bing stories were connected because of sports. All these connections in the newscast made it flow very well.
At the producer meeting at 12:45 p.m., 4:20 newscast anchor Jake Levy said he was going to get sound from Albany's State Legislature meeting via a phoner. I told him I was planning on using his sound for the SOT and information in my top story. After making many calls, Jake told me all the legislators were in a meeting, and he could not get sound from them. At this point, I quickly looked online for information, and could only find an article from The Albany Times-Union. After meeting with Professor Nicholson, we decided making this story a copy with a citation to The Albany Times-Union, was the best option. Jake continued to try to get sound by calling local legislators, but none of them knew about what had happened in Albany. I later learned during the post-newscasts meeting, that Jake had gotten relevant sound right before his newscast. Although I wish he notified me of that, considering he had notified me about everything else pertaining to the story and our newscast was after him, I understand he was focused on doing his story and ensuring a quality newscast for his team.
Timing was an issue in our newscast, which prompted cutting the tease and kicker. We were gradually going a little over for each story, to the point in which we were 20 seconds over going into the Dave Bing story. We went over an additional 10 seconds on that story, which could have been avoided if I took into consideration that in-studios wraps generally always go longer than expected. The Chiefs story then went over a few seconds, but more importantly, it included a terrible blunder which negatively impacted the quality of the newscast.
I had cut a 10 second soundbite on Audacity, and the rest of the sound which I cut the bite from, was on another track and after it. When I saved my bite as an MP3 into the 4:30 newscast folder, I forgot to delete the sound on the second track. So during the newscast, after the 10 second soundbite played, the extraneous sound played, which happened to include information repeated in the anchor's next track. After a few seconds I realized this, and the engineer stopped playing the sound. However, the story's credibility, the newscast's quality, and our timing, were really hurt by my mistake.
Overall, today was a very good newscast. I did a good job with the rundown and writing. I was on top of the rundown,writing, talent, and the entire newscast throughout the day. Everything was done about 15 minutes before our newscast, so I double-checked and triple-checked the rundown and script for errors. However, I did not double-check the soundbites, which was a problem.
Allie, Alyssa, and Greg did a great job with their voicing and writing, and it showed in the quality of their work. Allie is generally a soft-speaker, but she has greatly improved that this semester both in broadcasting and in conversation. She sounded clear throughout the newscast and really did a great job anchoring. Although all of our writing could have been tighter, its quality was the best I've seen in a newscast this semester.
Chiefs Staff, Benetti, Gear up For Opening Day
The grounds crew seemed to be hard at work this morning at Alliance Bank Stadium. Workers were mowing the lawn, raking the infield and putting advertisements up on the outfield wall to prepare the field for tomorrow’s Opening Day game. But inside and up a few flights of stairs, Chiefs broadcaster Jason Benetti was just as busy.
First on Benetti’s to-do-list was attending Media Day today with Chiefs coaches and players. He said he would also have to do plenty more research on the Chiefs opponent, Lehigh Valley, before he’d be ready for tomorrow’s game.
Tomorrow should be just as demanding for the SU alum, with TV promos to do for Time Warner in the morning and then some final preparations before his two o’clock TV broadcast.
Sounds pretty hectic, doesn’t it? Not to Benetti. The young broadcaster says he doesn’t mind the pressure. “I think in order to be in radio and TV you have to enjoy the white-knuckled nature of it or else you wouldn’t be doing it,” said Benetti. “I enjoy stress.”
As confident as he sounds, tomorrow should still feel a little different for Benetti, who is used to doing radio play-by-play announcing. “The one difference for me personally is that I have to put on make-up. I have to do TV tomorrow instead of radio,” he said.
Benetti, who is entering his first full season as the team’s lead play-by-play announcer, says he’s as excited as anyone for tomorrow’s season opener. “I think on Opening Day there is an excitement that the season is building. It ends up being less than one percent of the season but it feels like more.”
Rain is in the forecast for tomorrow but if it holds off, at least for a few hours, it should be a pretty special afternoon for Syracuse baseball.
(Photo taken from http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/images/2009/03/20/QMoLz4oT.gif)
Clean Tech Center and SBDC Helps People Get Involved with Green Economy
The Clean Tech Center has teamed up with the New York Small Business Development Center (SBDC) to help advise people on how to get started with a green business. On the first Wednesday of each month, prospective green business-people are invited to go to the Syracuse Technology Garden and receive tips and guidance for their green business's.
"We get people who merely have their ideas written out on a napkin, to people who have the technology developed but need proper business guidance," said Emily Weldon, the program director at the Clean Tech Center.
The Green Business Development Days are aimed at getting small business's moving in the right direction. The appointments can be scheduled with an SBDC councilor free of charge.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)