I decided to do my story on a party that was taking place in an apartment over looking the marathon on Beacon st. and Park dr. A.K.A. prime Marathon Monday real estate. We even had roof access until the cops kicked us off.

Here’s the story:

click the image!!!

(By the way, I’m a photojournalism major at BU…graduating next month…awesome)

Apparently, there are a lot of amateur photographers out there who are selling their pictures to stock-photo companies like Getty. The problem is, and I quote from the NYT article, “amateurs are largely happy to be paid anything for their photos.” This means stock-photo companies (and maybe some news organizations) will pay professional photographers less money for their photos because they can get pictures from amateurs for a lot less and sometimes for free.

I’m not trying to bash amateur photographers. It’s great that they are getting money for their photos. But I believe there’s this idea out there that photojournalism and photography aren’t real professions and that it’s an easy field anyone can be a part of. They’re never taken seriously.

It’s true that “anyone can take a photo,” but “not everyone can take a good photo.” And that’s the difference between professionals and amateurs.

….but maybe I should start posting more pictures on flickr so I can get a deal with Getty and make some money on the side? You know, graduating from college doesn’t guarantee you a job…wish it did though, haha.

Here’s a link to the NYT article.

Any thoughts? Think I’m crazy?

All the mac forums and message boards have been saying it should be out already, but of course it’s not.

I’m due for a new laptop, but maybe I should just suck it up and get an iPad.

…nah, that name still makes me want to puke

Exciting stuff is on the way:

-WTBU Radio iPhone application that streams over a 3G network

-WTBU News iphone application with a push notification for breaking news

The WTBU Radio app should be out by the end of the month and the News app should be out a month after that.

be sure to follow @wtbunews and @wtbu on twitter!

-John

…nothing’s really going on here.

It just looks like an abridged version of Politico’s home page; a few headlines that I guess college kids would probably be interested in. You know, hot topics, like abortion and donuts … I don’t see any hip college language though…I was kinda looking forward to that.

But what’s actually cool (and college) about this page is that it has a box on the lower left part of the page that lists the top campus headlines from College Media Network aka MTVU aka the poorly designed Daily Free Press site here at BU.

Here’s a shot of it:

Basically it lists the top stories from campus newspapers across the country. Which I think is pretty cool.

Maybe they’ll post one of Tiffany Ledner’s columns from The Muse section of the Freep??? Fingers crossed.

This Campus page also includes a link to widgetbox.com where you can get a Campus Politico widget that lists the college headlines and puts it on your blog. That’s pretty cool. I think Politico is in the right direction with this one, getting students and young people involved with their site. They’re not there yet, but they are on their way.

(I would have pasted the embed code for the Campus Politico widget in this blogpost, but wordpress is still being really lame about embedding stuff because it could be malicious code!!! What are they talking about?!?! MySpace let’s you embed code and they’re doing great!!! No spam there!!! And everybody still uses it!!!…right?…do they?)

I thought to myself, “WTF does that mean?” So of course I had to check it out.

What I saw was a crappy video about a small party celebrating author Matt Continetti’s new book, “The Persecution of Sarah Palin.”

It looked like it was shot with a Flip video camera, which is fine, but camera shake was making me sick (should have used a tripod, like I realized after shooting my video on the South End Dog Park with my Kodak Zi8). And it sounded like the cameraman was using the Flip’s on camera mic which everyone knows sucks. And there was no editing to make it look at least a little bit professional. The cameraman just shot it, asked a couple questions and cut it up. It was full of jump cuts.

Basically what I’m saying is that my whole Jo540 Media class can shoot better video than this and many of them learned how to make video news stories from just one 3 hour class.

There was no story to this video, in fact, there was no news. It look like some crappy PR video advertising this book about Sarah Palin. This makes me not want to read it.Why is this even on Politico??? The written stuff under the video is even more embarrassing. The authors of this story ranked different aspects of the party on a scale of 1-5, including a categories like “Booze” and “Fun Factor.” Fun Factor? You’re at a stupid book party for a stupid book about Sarah Palin! ZERO FUN!!!

If this is what it takes to make online videos for a major news website like Politico.com, then my whole Jo540 will have no problem finding jobs when they graduate.

Enjoy!!!

The Joe Wex Dog Recreation Space at Peter’s Park in the South End, Boston:

http://www.thecoolhunter.net/article/detail/1498/get-them-off-your-dog–people-as-fleas

Sure there are a lot of videos and photo galleries, but they’re lacking in something that’s so important to today’s multimedia journalism!

THE AUDIO SLIDESHOW!!!

They have countless videos, photo galleries that are updated weekly, but only 8 Audio Slideshows.

And look at some of their slideshow topics:

Some of these topics are old and outdated. Politico has made only 8 slideshows and never updates this section!

That seems so bizarre to me because the audio slideshow is so popular in the journalism world and it’s such a powerful medium.

All of Politico’s slideshows were made using Sounslides, which all multimedia and photojournalism students learn today. It’s such and easy program that there is no reason Politico shouldn’t be utilizing it.

So I have a proposal to Politico: Hire me to make your Audio Slideshows!!! You really have nothing to lose by hiring me.

…wow I didn’t know it could be this easy to get a job after college. If Politico needs multimedia people then think of all the other news sites that need them too. The future is looking brighter everyday!