Racking my brain!

It has been a truly choatic few weeks of my life! I'm trying to get back into the swing of things and catch up on on the assignments and midterms. Below are some of my ideas for the audio assignment:

• Budgeting money in a tight economy for the single off-campus student. (Natural sound could be of a calculator)
• Grocery shopping for a week on $20 or less. (Natural sound could be the sound of the checker at the grocery store)
• Dealing with the stress of living on your own. (Natural sound could be the television and radio on and people talking in the background).

Lights, Camera, Action--Broadcast News

As my mass communications class moves forward, we begin to learn about the many different styles of writing for media. The most recent style is the "broadcast". The assignment for this blog post is to take three recent summary leads to real news stories published by either The New York Times or The Baltimore Sun and turn them into a broadcast lead.



(Photo courtesy of Sustainable Design Update / March 8, 2009)

My first summary lead is from The New York Times. The article is headlined, "A Rising Dollar Lifts the U.S. but Adds to the Crisis Abroad," and written by Peter S. Goodman (Published March 8, 2009)

• Summary Lead: "As the world is seized with anxiety in the face of a spreading financial crisis, the one place having a considerably easier time attracting money is, perversely enough, the same place that started much of the trouble: the United States."
  
• NEW Broadcast Lead: Today the United States is having a considerably easier time attracting money compared to the rest of the world since the financial crisis bega
  

(Photo courtesy of http://www.youbettheirlife.com/ / March 8, 2009)

My second summary lead is from The Baltimore Sun. The article is headlined, "Debate smolders over coal ash safety," and written by Timothy B. Wheeler (Published March 8, 2009)

• Summary Lead: "FROSTBURG - The state fined Constellation Energy $1 million for contaminating wells in Gambrills by dumping millions of tons of ash from its power plants in old gravel mines there."
  
• NEW Broadcast Lead: Gambrills residents are angry after Constellation Energy Group dumped millions of tons of ash from local power plants into old gravel mines.

(Photo courtesy of http://www.turbosquid.com/ / March 8, 2009)

My final summary lead is from The New York Times. The article is headlined, "Obama Is Leaving Some Stem Cell Issues to Congress" and written by Sheryl Gay Stolberg. (Published March 8, 2009).

• Summary Lead: "WASHINGTON — While lifting the Bush administration’s restrictions on federally financed human embryonic stem cell research, President Obama intends to avoid the thorniest question in the debate: whether taxpayer dollars should be used to experiment on embryos themselves, two senior administration officials said Sunday."


• NEW Broadcast Lead: Officials say President Obama intends to avoid the thorniest question in the human embryonic stem cell research debate by letting congress decide if taxpayers should foot the bill.

Unlocking a new lease

(Photo courtesty of Google)

The article I chose to review for this blog assignment is from The Washington Post. "What Every Renter Should Know," by Stacy Gilliam, is about, in short, how to find an apartment or home to move into. The article discusses topics from finding residences within a particular budget to making your home uniquely yours through splashes of color on the walls. One quote that was interesting to me was "Your quality of life is really far more about who you live next to, then how much square footage you have in your apartment" (Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan). I only have two real objections to the article:

1. No topic is covered in detail longer than two sentences and


2. The excluesively online article only provides one link (a reference to a source) to help readers find more information about the topics she discusses.

I would add these pieces of information for readers to the article. I would also include more sources of information. The only source included was that of an interior designer. I would most likely speak with leasing agents or possibly a lawyer to talk about common issues with leases.

Overall, the article was informative but as a reader, I wanted more. The article stopped short of telling me beyond one sentence on each subject, everything I need to know about moving out.