Blog #7: Recommendations from the textbook

The textbook gives many examples of effective, informal-sounding leads for features stories. It also gives certain guidelines:

• A lead should be concise. It shouldn't be excessively wordy or witty, but rather direct and to-the-point. Typically it should be less than 40 words.
• It should grab the reader: the purpose of a lead is to convey the main purpose of the article and make the reader want to read it.
• Be creative when writing a lead. The book lists many different examples of good leads, but what makes all of them good examples is that they are varied. Each lead (and for that matter, each article) should have its own distinctive style and flair, and should fit the story in a unique way.
• A lead is pronounced like "leed," not "led." You are not writing a piece of metal. This is VERY important.

Blog #6: Photography

http://www.pulitzer.org/files/works_images/2009/winter03.jpg


I love this picture because it is at once inspiring and disturbing. It is a crowd of children behind the fence of a high school in 2008, waiting for Senator Barack Obama to arrive. They are so eager to see him that they are pressed up against the fence, even climbing on their friends' shoulders, craning to catch a glimpse of him.

The disturbing thing about this picture is how strikingly it resembles a zombie movie. The figures are silhouetted, and their uniform outstretched limbs connote a certain sort of hunger - reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead, a little bit, especially the bright sun in the background and the shapes the shadows cast on the fence. Mrs. Hall just came by and pointed out that it looked like some old photographs of concentration camps.

I find it very interesting how Obama supporters have been typecast as a sort of mindless mass not entirely different from zombies, believing him to be a savior of sorts. And like all stereotypes, there is some truth to that - it's pictures like this that really bring that point home.

Blog #4: Feature Story Progress Blog

1. Rough Draft
   
   
   http://www.ypa.org/about_whoweare.php
   
   
   Why Should Politics Matter to Teens?
   
   
   The vast majority of teens are completely apathetic about political issues and voting. For that matter, so are the vast majority of adults. I personally plan to vote when I'm older, but right now I intend to enjoy the apathy of not-being-able-to-vote while I still can (and I think that's a popular opinion). Is that bad? Is that harmless? Why should the average teen care about something that a) they can't effect, and b) has no immediate effect upon them?
   
   
   Also: Effect that views of parents have on political views of teens
   Charlie Conellan
   Amelia Courtney
   Various other politically inclined students/alumni
   
   
   Interview Non-politically inclined people. See why politics disinterests them.
   
   
   Mr. Beliveau
   
   
   Linda Valentino (running for state senate) - ask her this question. Get the perspective of an older professional in the field of politics - probably hasn't been asked this question too often.
   http://www.lindavalentino.com/home.htm
   and I'll use that contact information you gave me.
   
   
   Interview Cynthia Dill - running for US senate. Ask her this question for same reasons as listed above, except more so.
   
   
   On the other end of the spectrum, interview Justin Chenette (running for state Rep). He has probably been asked this question incessantly, becoming involved in politics from a very young age - and I want to know why.  His name is familiar to every Thorntonite who doesn't have their head in the ground.
   
   
   You wake up every morning a half hour after your alarm. You throw your things haphazardly in a backpack, skip your breakfast, and go off to spend 6 hours at school attempting to process information your brain doesn't care to process. You come home, take a nap, procrastinate on the internet for a few hours, take a few stabs at doing homework, eat dinner, text your friends, and go to bed. Even if you're not as apathetic as this introduction is making you sound, you probably simply don't have time to care about who's president or state representative or president representative. If you're like most teenagers, you also have an extracurricular activity, family problems, or a job to worry about - not to mention that that television doesn't watch itself. Whenever you do bother to turn on the news, it's just pundits making faces at each other and presidential candidates calling each other liars. It's just like Mean Girls, but boring. Why should you, the average teen, care about politics? Maybe I should make THIS point through interviews with students. And then have Linda Valentino and Justin Chenette respond to that through their answers to the questions.
   
   
   “Because,” said Linda Valentino, current Maine state representative for District 134 and hopeful state representative, “it’s your future that we’re deciding up there.”
   When asked this question, Valentino immediately went to fetch an article from the Portland Press Herald from the recycle bin. The article detailed a vote by the University of Maine System’s board of trustees to extend the current tuition freeze (a government mandate restricting colleges from raising tuition). They did this, however, on the condition that the state provide $176 million a year for education and general operations at the University of Maine.
   Sounds boring. But as Valentino goes on to point out, what this signifies is that the money that YOU - yes, you - will have to cough up in order to continue your education is usually decided by people like Linda Valentino: elected officials, often at a state level. The only reason many University of Maine students can still afford to go this year is because of a vote from the Maine senate and house of representatives.
   Even if you don’t plan to go to college, politics still affects your life (talk about driver’s licenses, length of school year, minimum wage, # of hours you can work during school week, other stuff government affects in high school student’s life: Then move on to what affects your life after high school if you don’t go to college, or for that matter after college: taxes, ???)
   “There isn’t a thing that doesn’t affect you,” said Valentino.
   
   
   When 2009 TA graduate Justin Chenette was attending high school here, he interviewed many significant political figures on The Issue, TATV’s news and politics show. After one interview, he remembers that a woman running for office asked him his age. When he responded that he was 17, she replied, “Oh, you’re under eighteen. Your opinion doesn’t matter.”
   
   
   “As young people, we have to make ourselves heard,” said Chenette. “You need to be informed before you turn 18 - whoever you want to be, you need to figure that out at this point in your life.”
   
   
   According to the U.S. Census, the demographic of voters aged 18-29 has fallen steadily since 18-20 year-olds gained the right to vote in 1972, hitting a low in 2000. The twenty-first century, however, has seen a rise in young voters - especially in the 2008 election.
   That’s one of the remarkable things Obama did with his campaign in 2008, remarks Chenette: He made young people feel like they had a voice.
   
   
   
   -Young people do care about issues. they just need to talk about it in an engaging way. Political discourse at a teen level needs to be conversation, not just someone talking at you.
   
   
   “Having young people run for office or in leadership roles can inspire other young people to either get involved, or at least learn about the issues in their community or in their own lives.”
   
   
   The larger issue isn’t even politics. It’s about being immersed in the world around you, finding something you’re passionate about - and, if you don’t like something, changing it.
   “If young people pursue something they’re passionate about, they end up being a productive member of society.”’
   
   
   Chenette listed following ways of getting involved:
   
   
   • Volunteer/intern with campaign. Huge resume builder.
   • communication
   • leadership
   • interaction
   • Intern w/ City Hall
   • Chenette was a communications intern in high school: Even if you don’t have a direct interest in politics, there are plenty of offshoots, if you’re interested in writing, video, or any kind of media, it’s a good place to hone your abilities/start out
   • Just stay informed somehow. Just being aware of what’s going on in the world around you and what affects you. And you can affect that, even without being able to vote (see above methods)
   • Just posting on your facebook
   • “Social media can be a tool to learn to talk back, and to interact with your extended community”
   • Provides safe environment for teens to make their voices heard on issues they care about.
   
   getting involved in current issues helps
   
   
   
   Questions:
   
   
   1. Principal Question: Why should politics matter to teens?
   2. Were YOU interested in politics as a teen, or younger? Why?
   3. With all the shenanigans going on with the current presidential election, many people are of the opinion that politics is becoming petty and dysfunctional. Do you agree? Would you say that it's different on a local level? What are some key differences between voting for a president and voting for a state senator or representative?
   4. What can teens who are interested in these issues do to get involved?
   
   Questions to ask normal students:
   
   1. Have you been following the current presidential election?
   1. If not, why?
   2. If so, what do you think of each of the candidates?
   2. Do you have any interest in local politics?
   3. Name and grade

Blog #5: Death Valley officially the hottest place ever. . . again

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9541972/Death-Valley-officially-the-hottest-place-ever.html

Death Valley officially the hottest place ever. . . again
by Balthasar Salazari

Death Valley has long been known as one of the most inarable and dangerous places on the planet - an interminable landscape of desert that easily dessicates the unprepared traveler. But did you know that Death Valley's propensity for extremes is not, in fact, ubiquitous?

In 1913, the hottest outdoor temperature ever recorded,134 degrees Fahrenheit, was observed at Death Valley. But DV's presence in the record books was tragically truncated in 1922 when an observer in El Aziza, Libya recorded a temperature of 136.4 degrees.

Wrenching, I know - especially to the staunch patriot. But maintain equanimity for a moment! Because recently, meteorologists investigating the claim discovered that the weather report in Aziza in 1922 was extremely frangible, replete with systematic errors and malfunctioning equipment. That temperature was anomalously high for the climate in that area of Libya, and the type of thermometers used back then were notoriously inaccurate. The observer may just have been a bit too zealous about getting his world record.

And so investigators declared a moratorium on misinformation and deemed the 90-year old record inaccurate, saying that it "just didn't match up." And so, with camaraderie and goodwill the world record was returned to its rightful owner, the American landmark Death Valley.

Balthasar: this is awful. Seriously. It's boring, it's uninteresting, it doesn't grab the reader, it's. . . what would you say? It's a litany. It wouldn't hurt you to use the vernacular once in a while. Rewrite it or you're fired.
-Autumn

Lugubrious much?
-Balthasar

Shut up.
-Autumn

The Lorax Review - Second Draft

CONTAINS SPOILERS: Aaron Lockman Reviews Movies

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS usually contains spoilers. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

When choosing to adapt a Dr. Seuss story for the big screen, one is faced with the precarious task of taking a very simple premise and adding an entire intricate backstory. The trick, which has succeeded in some Seuss movies and failed spectacularly in others, is to make the audience believe that the backstory really was happening behind the borders of the picture book. The plot, while it must be intricate in order to fill an hour and a half, must still be simple and effective. The Cat in the Hat did not do this. Horton Hears a Who and The Lorax did (Did The Grinch Who Stole Christmas do this? Someone please tell me. I know, I know, I’m a horrible critic).

So yes. I friggin LOVED this movie. I LOVED the story of Ted, who started his search setting out to impress his true love, but ended up getting caught into an adventure for an entirely different reason. I LOVED the friendship between the Once-ler and the Lorax, and how the Once-ler’s mostly harmless intentions ended up hurting not only the earth, but his only friend. I LOVED the idea of Thneedville being an oasis of happy, prosperous ignorance in the middle of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. And for that matter, I loved the movie’s idea of apocalypse - not a matter of impending doom and quick heroics, but of what lies at the end of gradual decline and of humanity’s insane ability to avoid thinking about the uncomfortable.

I LOVED the voice cast. Danny DeVito brought a gruff charm to the Lorax that was always present in the book. Ed Helms was very good as the Once-ler, effectively portraying both a young, sarcastic, headstrong man who is always sure of his own superiority, and a sad old man who has learned from the young man’s mistakes too late. Betty White was hilarious (as always) as the witty, insane grandmother we all wish we had. Elmarie Wendel (from the wonderful old 90’s sitcom Third Rock From The Sun) was simply delicious as the Once-ler’s surly Aunt Grizelda. Jenny Slate was adorably fun as the protagonist’s nasally, shallow mother, and Taylor Swift did a surprisingly good job of providing a voice for the love interest that was both sweet and nuanced. All the other voices were certainly adequate for the film’s purposes. The only one that really irked me was Zac Efron, the voice of Ted, the protagonist. The kid was supposed to be like, what, fourteen or fifteen? Zac sounded like the ‘teenagers’ on Glee look - twenty-four at the youngest. However, it didn’t really detract from the film and you got used to it after a bit.

And if you’ve seen the trailer, you know the visuals are stunning. The thing that made them stand out, though, is that they very much preserved the Seussian style and spirit; goofy, but not schmaltzy. The Once-ler’s house, in particular, looked completely identical to its 2-D counterpart - and, more importantly, felt identical too. Many things about the film felt like that, but the things that didn’t stood out a LOT. More on that in a moment.

I loved the animals of the Truffula forest. They were the indescribably adorable comic fodder for the film. I liked that the Once-ler interacted with them more than in the book, and so was truly horrified when he indirectly forced them to leave.

HOWEVER: I sometimes felt that the animal-related comedy really went over the top. Remember how I said that visuals kept the Seussian spirit by being goofy but not schmaltzy? The comedy in the film came awfully close to that line. It danced over that line in the most irritating manner possible, like those annoying people in fifth-grade capture the flag who dance into your territory just quickly enough so that you can’t tag them.

For instance: There were scenes when the animals, in their seemingly inexhaustible cuteness, began to eat various objects that the Once-ler had brought with him, such as marshmallows and playing cards. While it was funny, it raised an unintended issue: why doesn’t that have any adverse effects? These animals have eaten only Truffula fruit their entire lives. What if there were a scene where the Humming Fish chokes on the playing card, or if the Barbaloots become sick from the marshmallows? Humans don’t just pollute by spewing gloopity-gloop into the water. There are other, simpler ways - like littering - that the film’s young audience could better relate to. Instead of using comedy for the sake of the film’s message, oftentimes it just used comedy for the sake of comedy.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Aaron! Stop analyzing everything! It’s a children’s movie. It is meant to keep a child’s attention span, not satisfy your need for there to be a deeper meaning in everything. Ease up on it a little bit.”

And you’re kind of right. And with any other film, I would. But that is not what Dr. Seuss would want. The reason Theodore Geisel started writing children’s books is because there was (and still is) an appalling lack of juvenile literature that didn’t seek to do more than simply “keep a child’s attention span.” He wanted children to be able to think AND have fun. Which is my primary complaint with the truly awful The Cat in The Hat film. Everybody’s primary complaint, really.

But where was I?

Oh, right, things I didn’t like about The Lorax.

The musical numbers. The music wasn’t bad, per se, but it lacked any original style or flair. It just felt like the generic happy music that most children’s films have these days. Some musical numbers were placed effectively throughout the film in a way that moved the story forward, and some were not (more on that later).

The marketing surrounding the movie. I mean, seriously? The Lorax is selling SUV’s? That is completely deplorable. BUT, that’s not the people making the movie. That is Hollywood being complete jerks. So I’m willing to waive that criticism.

To effectively explain the thing that irked me most about this movie, I must first explain three things: a) My favorite scene, b) my second favorite scene, and c) how my second favorite scene quickly descended into my least favorite after about sixty seconds.

My favorite scene came towards the beginning of the film. In it, Ted is trying to find the exit to the high metal barricade that separates Thneedville from the rest of the world so he can try and find the Once-ler. He does so by opening an imposing steel door in the side of the wall, which takes him into a huge cavern where gooey black schloppity-schlopp from the city’s machinery is being emptied into a canal, flowing to the outside. The sight is horrifying - particularly to Ted, who has never seen anything outside the safe little bubble of his world.

But that’s nothing compared to what Ted discovers outside the wall, on the threshold of the outside world. Off to the horizon, he can see nothing but barren purple soil and smog, as well as ruins - of a stone roadway, of an old bridge. Riding along at top speed on his bright red motor-scooter-mono-cycle-segway-thingy-I-want-one-really-bad, he nearly kills himself running into the dark, looming remains of an abandoned Super-Axe Hacker.

This was the sequence that defined the movie for me. By showing Ted escaping from his perfect world and finding a horrible, mysterious truth that he can’t believe he never knew about, this movie took a very simple, effective environmental message and used it to create a stunning, disturbing, hypothetical, dystopian future. As with all good modern dystopian fiction, there were echoes of 1984 and Farenheit 451 in there. The Lorax shows us a society not unlike our own, were the happy people of Thneedville live fake, plastic lives - not caring about where their products come from, or where their waste goes, or whether or not their society is sustainable. Ted, by discovering the wasteland outside, discovers that the Thneedvillites’ commercialist utopia can’t be achieved without first destroying everything around it. And that is what truly hits home for me, because that is simply our society taken to an extreme.

My second favorite scene is at the very end of the movie. Ted, Audrey, and Betty-White-Crazy-Grammy have just toppled the statue of Aloysius O’Hare and whacked a hole in the artificial turf in the middle of Thneedville town square, and are trying to plant the Truffula seed in the ground for it to grow. The people of the town are understandably confused and miffed, and start to circle our gang of heroes to stop them. But before they can, Ted climbs up on a nearby bulldozer and proceeds to knock down a portion of the city wall, exposing the desolate outside world for the whole population to see.

And I LOVE that. It’s a perfect way to expand the point Seuss made in his books; that the Lorax is not the one who is going to fix things. He merely speaks for the trees; he cannot act for them. We are the ones who must help the Earth, and the ones who must spread that awareness.

Ted gives an impassioned speech, pointing out that everything is not, in fact, perfect in Thneedville and that their society is based on a lie, etc., etc. That’s all good, but THEN the movie takes a turn for the bad. The townspeople stare in shock at the barren landscape for a moment, and instead of exclaiming “Um. . . WHY is there a desolate barren landscape outside the city? What does this mean?” they immediately launch into a musical number about how they feel like they should give the Truffula seed a chance to grow. They’re not horrified or angry or even surprised. They just launch into their Disney-esque musical number, with the bad guy Aloysius O’Hare being publicly embarrassed (via slapstick comedy) but not really punished in any effective way. All the people of Thneedville are suddenly hunky-dory, despite the complete economic and social upheaval that the ousting of O’Hare will cause. Many jobs in the city rely on O’Hare - and now that they know he’s a greedy dirtbag, will they still buy air from him? Will he go broke, like the Once-ler did? If so, the people of Thneedville are doomed because he kind of seems to have a monopoly on the bottled air industry. And one Truffula tree in the middle of town just can’t produce enough oxygen for everyone.

I am not defending the actions of Aloysius O’Hare. I am merely pointing out that, in the words of John Green, “The truth resists simplicity.” Having a complete, abrupt, simplistic turnaround as its ending diminished the positive impact of the film on me. But I LOVED the epilogue, which featured the old and scraggly Once-ler finally leaving his Lerkim and looking out into a world that is still barren, but filled with hope in the form of hundreds of small Truffula buds. And the Lorax and all his friends start to come back, and the Lorax and the Once-ler reunite, and I get chills! It is the constant contrast between amazing scenes and stupid scenes that frustrates me when watching this movie.

But the truth is that I’m coming up on 2000 words and I’ve mentioned 80% of what I didn’t like and about 50% of what I did. And that’s the final thing that I like about The Lorax: that it promotes conversation. There is so much more to say about this film - and I encourage you to do so! If you agree/disagree with anything I’ve said or have opinions of your own about this movie, please feel free to continue the conversation with me by email (aaron.lockman13@thorntonacademy.org), Twitter (@TheLockperson), Tumblr (Lockmusings), or in person (do I need parentheses for this?). Or just talk/write/blog about it yourself! You don’t need me.

Because, as the Once-ler points out, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” Caring about and talking about and discussing these things is the first step in making our world a better place, and there are so few movies that encourage us to do that these days. And that, in the end, is why I approve of The Lorax - and why I think that Dr. Seuss would have, too.

Blog #3: Pulitzer Prize Inspiration

http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2008-Feature-Writing

The most valuable thing I learned from this article is to be focused. Focus very clearly on your question. Even  if it is a broad question and does not need a specific answer (such as "Will people recognize genius if it comes from somewhere they don't expect?" or "What significance should politics have to high school students?"), you have to focus in on your subject, and write your article neatly and with pinpoint accuracy, class, and style. It can be long, but it still has to be concise, if that makes any sense. It should be elegant, but there should be no fluff. Every single thing in it should go towards your one central idea.

And yes, I'm zeroing in on doing the politics side of things. You're welcome.

On an sort-of-not-completely-unrelated note, the author of the Pulitzer Prize piece used a quote from Billy Collins (OH MY GOOOOOODDDDDD!! is the sound my brain makes when somebody mentions Billy Collins) to illustrate a minor point that fits into the larger point of the article. I like it so much I'm going to copy and paste it here:

"The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother's heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too."

I promise this is the last thing: This Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter got much of the interviews and statistics that he did with the help of some of his fellow reporters. He told them what to do, and orchestrated (pun not intended) the whole thing himself, but he had help. That's a good thing to take to heart, that not every single feature piece has to be done alone.

Blog #2: My story. . . and first interviews!

• before interview, establish purpose
• Good solid background of interviewee - avoid extraneous details.
• Research hard facts beforehand
• make sure each question is relevant to your purpose

I'm thinking of launching a story with the main premise of: Why should politics matter to the vast majority of high school students, who cannot vote? I could possibly do the campaign volunteering thing and speak to actual politicians on the subject. Ask them why they got into politics, particularly what they thought of it as a teenager. 

OR Eastern trail. What it signifies to us as a community, what people think they will use it for in the future. That would mostly involve interviewing people ON the eastern trail, and possibly calling someone from a planning comission that set up the Eastern Trail? I don't know. That would require RESEARCH!

Possible feature ideas

• Eastern Trail. Why is it there? Why is it cool? How will we use it as a community?
• Why should people under 18 care about the election? Why should we follow election coverage when we can't affect it?

Today's Post.

Today I read a piece of journalism online about the Happy Wheels skating rink in Portland. It was a wonderfully crafted piece of writing, focusing on the atmosphere and feeling of a typical evening at Happy Wheels, but more so on the stories of the individual people there. It discussed the decline of skating since the 60's and 70's, but it never came off as whiny or overly nostalgic - merely appreciative of past eras, and those scarce places like Happy Wheels that aim to preserve those past eras.

What I learned today was that a good piece of journalism is deeply personal, and connects with the reader using true stories of romanticism and emotion.

Yesterday I biked a decent portion of the Eastern Trail, and reading this article just now I've started thinking that I want to do my article on that. The Eastern Trail is in many ways the opposite of Happy Wheels, a new place of recreation recently created out of the desire to have something southern Maine has never had.

Those people who walk or bike the Eastern Trail most certainly have stories, but most of them probably aren't very long, given the recent nature of the trail. However, what trailgoers probably do have are hopes for the future - what they hope to do on the trail, what they think the trail will do for the region, whether they think it'll still be there in forty years.

The one problem I can see with this is that the Trail is a place of motion. It is not a place where you stop and talk to reporters. It's not a particularly wide place, either - an interview would very probably clog traffic unnecessarily.

But the Eastern Trail is very relevant to us as a school, because the portion of it that runs offroad from Saco to South Portland starts right in our backyard. So yeah. That's my idea.

Blog #1: Structure of Radio Story

• Open with very personal detail, perhaps description of subject or surroundings to pull audience in.
• Whack audience with central idea/concept of story: WWWWWH - Nut graph
• Expound on idea/concept of story: give background, statistics (this one lasts for a while)
• Move to another source or person, or give story scope somehow
• Get into emotion/significance of event. What does this mean? Give many specifics.
• Last section: separate event/events/detail that proves/accentuates the point you've made in the conclusion.
• Final detail or statement - personal or intimate

Throughout:

Voices of characters brought to life by key quotes.

single object or event used as symbol to illustrate larger story.