Quote of the Week

"There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew."-Marshall McLuhan

This week my mind is on the environment and how important it is that we each do our part to help sustain our beautiful planet. Luckily, awareness of the environment has increased tremendously over the past few years and the going green movement is at operating at full speed in a positive direction.

My thoughts about the fascinating world around us and the plants and animals we share it with, started on Sunday night when I sat down to watch Discovery Channel's new series, Life. Similar to Discovery Channel's other series, Planet Earth, this new show focuses more on the animals in each environment and how they thrive and cooperate to sustain life. The first episode entitled "Challenges of Life" focused on the unique strategies certain animals and plants have adopted and acquired to survive the challenges presented in their environments. The second episode highlighted two interesting groups of animals, reptiles and amphibians, from all different habitats including deserts, ponds, swamps and even the rainforest. Due to my broadcast background, I was in awe with the videography and editing the show uses to showcase these animals in their natural surroundings. The equipment, time and labor put into these episodes was astounding--talk about dedication! The music was well-chosen and the pacing of the story keeps the viewer wanting more.

Good news is...there are a lot more episodes to come! After the first two aired last Sunday, two more episodes will be shown every Sunday night until April 18th. This coming Sunday's episodes are mammals and fish. Also if you missed the first two episodes, want to see behind the scenes footage, photos or learn more about the making of Life, click here. Can't wait to watch more of these adventures through our world this Sunday!

Quote of the Week

"If you're lucky enough to be Irish, then you're lucky enough."-an old Irish saying

And this week I feel very lucky! This past weekend, I took my travels to Chicago to celebrate my birthday in the Windy City. Little did I know, that the entire city would be celebrating as well, but not my birthday...St . Patrick's Day! Chicago holds a huge all-day festival including a parade and dying the river bright green. The celebration was surely a sight to see and it made me very excited for the upcoming festivities on the actual holiday this Wednesday. Even though most people wear green, drink green beverages, eat corned beef and cabbage and celebrate with family and friends, regardless of their heritage, St. Patrick's Day has a special place in my heart because I do have a large amount of Irish family history. Both sets of parents have Irish lineage and my red hair does not hide those Celtic family roots.

So as part of my observance and celebration of this fine holiday, I decided to take this week to educate myself and you, the avid blog reader, about this festive day of green shamrocks and drinking.

St. Patrick, whose feast day is March 17th, is the patron saint of Ireland. It is believed that he died on March 17th 461 and to this day, it has been a celebration of Irish culture and history. St. Patrick's Day is a national holiday in Ireland. The largest celebration of this holiday takes place in Dublin, with a four-day festival from March 15th to March 19th. Some of the events include a parade, family carnivals, a treasure hunt, traditional Celtic dance and music performances and a theatre festival. One million people are expected to participate in the Dublin festivities this year. The grand parade on the 17th will include 3000 street performers and an expected 650,000 spectators. Traditional dress in Ireland on St. Patrick's day consists of green ribbons in the womens' hair, high-crowned green leprechaun hats and shamrock pins. The saying "the wearing of the green" refers to wearing a shamrock on one's clothing. And the party continues even in the United States. Boston, MA has hosted a St. Patrick's Day parade since 1737.

Fun Fact: Over 34 million Americans have Irish ancestry. So whether you are one of them like me, or you just want a reason to celebrate-wear your green proud and celebrate the Irish on this lucky day!

Working the Web

This week my web adventures included making a web extra for the top story of all the nightly newscasts, President Obama's visit to St. Charles to rally support for his health care plan. Our lead videographer/photographer accompanied one of the student reporters to cover the story for our evening newscasts. Once they returned to the station, they showed us all of their video and photos from the day. Since they had so many photos, the other dot com person and I decided to pick the best ones and put them on the web to enhance the visuals of the story.

We edited the 7 best photos in photoshop, sized them correctly and saved them to the KOMU account on Flickr as a slideshow. Once it was ready on the online account, we copied the html code into our web content management system to embed the slideshow into the correct web story. Here is the link to the slideshow and the story!

Obama's Visit to St. Charles

First Nation Report

Tonight's First Nation Report included a proposal of new national educational standards and changes to Bank of America's debit card program. Enjoy!

Supreme Court Examines Free Speech

This week the Supreme Court decided to hear a case that could set a new precedent for freedom of speech laws. A professor at MU Law has been keeping close touch with this case. A fellow reporter and I spent the day researching the events that caused the civil lawsuit and how the case has been dealt with in the district courts. Due to its possibility of changing privacy laws in public places, the case is now in the hands of the Supreme Court. We managed to set up an interview with the professor who is an expert on the case to get a first-hand look at why it is so unique and what this professor thinks of the new developments.

Link to my story

Quote of the Week

"We wander for distraction but we travel for fulfillment." -Hilaire Belloc

Traveling is one of my true passions in life. Whether it is an hour away for a weekend to boat, hike and shop or halfway across the world to see castles and eat exotic foods, traveling fulfills my innate zest for adventure and discovery. Recently my travels have taken me just a short plane ride from Missouri, to the Windy City, Chicago. I have been to Chicago once before when I was in my middle school days to see the sights with my family. Highlights of that trip included an architectural boat tour, an authentic dinner in Greek Town, emptying our wallets on Michigan Ave and walking along the Michigan Lake shoreline. I was also a student at Northwestern University for a summer in their journalism program during high school and definitely took advantage of a quick "L" ride into the city to explore. I love the sights and sounds of Chicago. The music, the history, the museums, Miracle Mile, the food and the hustle bustle make it a busy yet friendly city.

Chicago is a great place to go for weekend trip and an easy jaunt for me from school, so my mom and I met there this past September to celebrate her birthday. Her birthday dinner was spent at the restaurant on top of the John Hancock and we wined and dined looking out over the city lights. The Jazz Festival in the Park happened to be that weekend as well so we took one afternoon to walk around and listen to some talented jazz and blues artists of all ages. In the mornings, we would power walk along the the shoreline of Lake Michigan, stop for coffee after our workout and spend the day shopping and sightseeing. Dinner and a taste of Chicago nightlife filled the evenings. My mom and I really enjoy live music so we went to a few different bars, clubs and piano bars playing blues and jazz or contemporary music. Finishing the night with some dancing was always a must. Another highlight of the trip was a fireworks dinner cruise around the Chicago harbor. The view of the skyline with bright fireworks dazzling over the buildings is something I will never forget. I am very lucky to have such a great, close relationship with my mom and that we can share our passion for travel.

This coming weekend I am making another trip to Chicago to celebrate my birthday. The weather may be a little chillier but just a quick change in my packing plans and I will be on my way! I am very excited to spend another weekend discovering new sights and sounds in a city that I love. Get ready Chicago, here comes the birthday girl!

Your View-KOMU 8 presents your view of the news

This week I worked on a segment called Your View at KOMU. It is a short weekly franchise package we do every Friday on the 6 pm newscast. One of the anchors, Sarah Hill, is the face of the story and general assignment reporters take turns each week deciding the idea, gathering the video, the sound and writing the package. A fellow reporter and I did this week's Your View segment on a news coverage decision that KOMU made last Friday.

Last week an incident of racial vandalism occurred outside the Black Culture Center on the MU campus. Cotton balls were thrown across the lawn around 1:30 am Friday Feb. 26th. Administrators at the Black Culture Center found the cotton balls on Friday morning and called police. This incident provided some interesting differences on how local television stations covered that crime. When the story broke on Friday morning, KOMU was the only station to cover the incident on their nightly newscasts without showing video or images of the cotton balls. Since we were the only news outlet to make that choice to withhold visuals, this week's Your View segment explains why our station chose not to show the video.

To show viewers why, I interviewed our news director Stacey Woelfel. His basic answer about our coverage reflected his opinion that by showing the racist display on television, we would only be delivering this message of hate to more people over our airwaves. I also interviewed Professor Charles Davis from the MU Journalism school and he agreed with KOMU's decision not to show visuals. Davis was extremely disappointed with the other news outlets for their actions and believes by focusing on the imagery rather than the impact and investigation of the incident, we are only "spawning more hate." After getting the interviews, my partner and I gathered the coverage that we did run to use as video, along with all of the follow-up coverage from this week about a meeting that was held to address the issue and the arrest of the two students who perpetrated the hate crime. After I was finished writing the script, it was approved and voiced by Sarah Hill and the editing process began. By noon on Friday, the segment was good to go for the 6 pm newscast. Here is the story-enjoy!

First Nation Report

Tonight's First Nation Report included more troubles for Toyota, as well as a possible improvement with airport security hassles. Enjoy!

Quote of the Week

"Eventually everything connects-peoples, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se."-Charles Eames

This week my way of connecting to the world around me changed significantly. Due to a funny series of events over the weekend, my "little red flip phone that could" decided it had seen its day and was too tired and worn out to forge on. It was also extremely embarrassed due to the fact that it did still flip to open and close, and had no internet capabilities whatsoever. After a long time of debating, deliberating and saying goodbye to my old precious phone-I knew it was time for only one thing-A BLACKBERRY. Dare I say now that I am in full swing when it comes to being completely connected through my smartphone to the world of internet, updates and fancy applications. As a multimedia journalist, my life just got a little easier and a little more exciting. Getting used to my upgraded phone plan as well as setting up my blackberry with all the necessary bells and whistles will take some time and effort---but it is an awesome new adventure. I have successfully added my email accounts and I am now exploring the different web options on my blackberry browser. Having this capability and this connection is a great step in my journey to a new career outside of Columbia, MO. I needed to make this switch sooner than later and I am so pleased to have this new tool to use as a platform of communication.

Watch out BlackBerry world, here comes Bonnie!