The New Hampshire: Hurricane Sandy Edition

So this past weekend presented one of the biggest challenges I have ever experienced. I am, of course, referring to putting together today’s – October 30, 2012 in case you are unaware – edition of The New Hampshire with Hurricane Sandy looming in the distance. It was a frighten experience to say the least, as the idea of a major storm slowly progressing towards Durham while my counterparts and I were racing to gather stories and lay out the pages before we lost power and before the staff in the MUB kicked us out of the building. It was a real test, to say the least, and it helped me – at least in my mind – as an editor as my co-sports editor and I were tested to make sure that we produced I high quality product as fast as we possibly could.

Well I am proud to say that we were able to get it all done – in less than four hours, which was even more exciting – and that the paper turned out alright considering the circumstances. I just hope those who pick up Tuesday’s paper appreciates the amount of effort put in to producing something like that in that sort of situation as it truly was a major challenge.

ENGL 621: Story Assignment

Taxpayers may be seeing an increase in their taxes soon, as the Portsmouth School Board proposed a change in policy that would require students with disciplinary problems to return to school for a Saturday session.

The issue came up at the School Board’s meeting Monday evening, when board member Time Stele made a motion to approve this new policy.

With this change in policy, as Steele proposed it, the session would run from 8 a.m. until noon several weekends throughout the year for students. In order to fund this change, Steele estimates that an additional allocation of about $3,000 per year would be required to staff the session.

Immediately debate rose at the meeting, with some parents being concerned that a new session would only lead to higher taxpayers and additional hassle for parents on the weekends.

“I work six days a week – including Saturday morning – and it’s bad enough to get my son off to school Monday through Friday,” Peggy Bacon, a parent who objected to the proposal, said. “Why should I have to worry about Saturday as well? Why do we need to change?”

According to Steele, the School Board has proposed this new disciplinary measure with in an effort to reduce the number of in-house suspensions.

Under the district’s current policy, in-house suspensions are given automatically to students caught smoking inside or outside of Portsmouth High School. In 1995, the number of students who received these in-house suspensions – which require students to spend an entire school day away from classes under the student of a faculty member – was 154.

Currently students are not allowed to make up any of the class work they have missed during their in-house suspensions, and under the proposed change students would not miss any class time.

“I know this isn’t good news for parents, but I hope the threat of Saturday classes will make the students think twice before breaking the school rules,” Steele said in reference to parents concerns.

Steele was not alone in viewing this policy change as something the school district needed. Local resident Bob Farley said he was in favor of the change, and hoped that this effort would get parents to take responsibility for the actions of their students.

“Parents can whine all they want about this, but maybe it’s time for parents in America were made to take a little responsibility for their kids,” Farley said. “That’s the whole problem – parents aren’t teaching their kids any discipline, so the kids have no respect for rules. Maybe if they have to miss a few Saturday morning cartoons they’ll start to wise up.”

Five students from Portsmouth High School attended and meeting and addressed concern about the proposed policy. One issue they felt still stood out was the actual enforcement of the policy.

“I think [the proposed policy is] just being done to make life easier for the faculty, so they don’t have to deal with detentions during the week,” Lisa Gallagher, a senior at Portsmouth High School, said. “Anyway, what if someone skips the session? What are they going to do, make them stay all weekend?”

Steele explained that, in that situation where a student skips a Saturday session, “he or she would not be allowed to return to school until the detention has been served.”

Steele also noted that one of the primary reasons for this proposed policy change is deter students from smoking at school.

“I just want to keep students from smoking in the high school bathrooms,” Steele said. “There are other problems, but smoking is by far the biggest one.”

After about 30 minutes of discussion, the board voted 5-3, with one member abstaining, to table the issue until its next meeting on March 7. At that time Steele was instructed to return to the board with figures on in-school detentions that have taken place so far this year.

Even with the delayed until further notice, this has certainly shown to be a polarizing issue for parents and students.

“I just don’t think it’s going to make any difference, and the parents are going to pay for it – in higher taxes as well as in ruined Saturdays,” Peggy Bacon said.

A slight clarification.

Allow me to clarify a few things. I feel over the past couple of blog posts I may have – and that is me putting it lightly – been harsh in regards to the idea of inclusive with my news consumption. I have championed the idea of niche news, mostly to distract from the fact that I am really just an uninformed college aged student who simply wishes he had the time to sit down with an issue of The Boston Globe or any other newspaper for that matter and just read.

In fact that is something I have made an effort to try and do at least once per week. With time permitting I attempt to read an issue of any kind of newspaper I can get my hands on, such as The Wall Street Journal for instance and try and catch up on what is going on around in the world. Or, if that is not at all possible for some reason, I try my very best to sit down and sift through various news websites – a find it hard to just stick to one – and consume as much news as possible.

I hope that clears things up a bit, and stops me from coming off as some sort of exclusive individual who only reads what he wants to read. With the rise of Twitter, it has just become the norm for me to pick what I feel is most relevant to me at any giving point in time.

What is going on?: Obama's gap begins to grow.

I’ll admit it, I have not done a whole lot to change the way I consume news. And to be frank, I simply don’t have adequate time to do it any other way. I have gotten into a routine, if you will, of scavenging through my Twitter feed a couple of times a day and picking out the news stories that I feel are most pertinent to me and my little world and I have no problem with that.

Because even if I may not grab onto everything that one particular individual finds newsworthy – such as, for instance, the state politics and other happenings of a state like Massachusetts or the death of a baby panda – I still feel that I have a relatively solid grasp as to what is going on in the United States at this particular point in time.

I just tend to specialize is all.

For instance, I know from all sorts of reports that have popped up on my Twitter feed – examples being The Washington Post, The Huffington Post and CNN just to name a few – I have been informed that the gap between President Barack Obama and his Republican opponent Mitt Romney continues  to widen in favor of the incumbent. At the same time, I am also aware that some conservatives are skeptical of the polling that has come out showing Obama having significant leads in crucial swing states.

This is what I mean by specialization, and I feel as if that is perfectly acceptable of me as a journalist.

News and me, a brief essay.

The concept of the news nowadays is such an evolving one. How people digest it is drastically shifting towards a more digital realm, and with the emergence of outlets such as Twitter and Facebook that allow people to hand pick what they consume in terms of news it ultimately leads people to only learning about what they want to know.

I am no exception to this rule, and I feel like I am not alone in this respect when it comes to my generation. I know that I, much like many people my own age, only wish to learn about what they wish to learn about in regards to news. Everything else is just clutter, or in some respect noise that a lot of people in my generation – who were raised with advertising shoved at us from every direction, and thus have become quite adept at blocking out anything type of information we find irrelevant – that people like myself are quick to shove to the side.

That is what I do every day after all, when it comes to my ‘news’ consumption. As I sift through Twitter, assuming of course I have that kind of luxury on that day, I know that I will only pick out posts that engage my interest in certain topics. When one looks through my Twitter followers, they will easily find a wide variety of political news outlets that keep me constantly informed about what is going on with the 2012 presidential election as well as other political news that is taking place all across the country as well as throughout the world.

In addition to that, you will find that I follow a wide variety of football analysts and other sports personalities in satisfy my desire to be kept up-to-date with what is going on in the sports world, and in particular the National Football League.

Now do not take this to mean that I block out the rest of the world around me. With Twitter I follow a lot of general news accounts that keep me, to an extent, informed about what is going on in the world around me. For the most part though, if I don’t care about it I just won’t read or invest the time in learning about a particular news event.

This I feel is something that I most people within my demographic can relate to. With society becoming increasingly fast-paced, or at least it feels that way, many have come quickly to the realization that we as a society can’t afford to dwell on certain bits of news that we, as harsh as it may sound, just don’t give a damn about.

So what I think this means for the future of journalism, to kind of sum up this entire post, is that we as journalists need to become more and more specialized. There will always be those people who want to know everything, and there will always be a medium for them to consume all of that information.

But there is also now emerging a group of individuals, such as myself, who will pick and choose what news they consume and it is up to journalists such as us to try and obtain every type of news imaginable to try and satisfy every niche one could possibly imagine. Because that is the direction journalism is heading in, and that is something we should embrace.