Issue reporting, beyond cultural difference!

My third soundslide is about the issue–lacking of affordable housing. I named it as Affordable Housing: How Attainable is the American Dream?

I was quite confident about my soundslide 3 topic when I first started it because I knew who I wanted to interview and I had a certain idea in my head that what I could get from the interview. However, after doing the interview, I feel a little bit confused now. Does this issue really matter?

My issue topic is the lack of affordable housing in the United States. As an international student, study in this peaceful small town, I was really worry about the issue topic I could find. Fortunately, I discovered this topic when I have a conversation with my classmate Laura. I contacted the organization Habitat for Humanity and went to shoot photos on Saturday. I got quite good pictures at the construction site where volunteers built houses. Also I talked to all three of the house owners there. During the interview, I found Radha, the lady I interviewed, lives in a rental apartment, in which her son and daughter share one bedroom. I thought pictures about her apartment may help me show the strong comparison that how terrible the living situation is. However, I soon found that I was so wrong. I went to her house and felt disappointed. Her apartment is much better than I have imagined, and their living situation is much better than most of the Chinese in my country. In the eyes of American, this may be a problem that a 17 year-old son and 10 year-old daughter share a bedroom, but look at the whole world, there are millions of people homeless. Owning a house is an American dream for every American, but does this really matter for the rest of the world?

When we have seen so many serious issues covered by media, such as AIDS, poverty in Africa, wars and conflicts, can this affordable housing problem really be called an issue? I think I am facing a really significant cultural difference or social difference here. From my angle, who is from the Third World, this is really cannot be called a problem. How can I change my viewpoint and view the issue like Americans?

Journalism, a challenge!

When I was browsing other classmates’ blogs, I saw a comment Mindy made on Laura’s blog. Mindy recommended one of her favourite Journalism blogs, so I clicked into that one and found many great things. The blog was called Maranda Writes, written by a new graduated journalist. She shares her experiences as a new journalist in her job and what she learned in journalism school. All her experiences, struggling and thoughts remind me of my last year experience as a journalist in China. Though we are in different countries which enjoy really different media systems and regulations, the feelings as new journalists are kinda of similar. She said that challenge is the core of journalism and liking challenge is the essential quality of being a journalist. I have been asking myself the same question “what’s my advantage of being a journalist” since I stepped into journalism school five years ago. I don’t know any field very well and I cannot write very well, I am always in a situation of question my capabilities. However, I know at least I have some merits that I like communicating with others, I like going out to find something I don’t know and I like challenging the world and myself. Knowing nothing is not the worst, but don’t realize that you know nothing is the worst. Challenge the knowledge you have may be the key of being a successful journalist.

Also I like all the quotes on her blog. These are the quotes I really like:

• “I became a journalist to come as close as possible to the heart of the world.”
  — Henry Luce
• “I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.”
  — Aldous Huxley
• “It does not matter how slow you go so long as you do not stop.”
  — Confucius

HTML and web design

Before my toolkit class talking about HTML, I only used HTML to add some images to my BBS posts in order to make them more interesting. But every-time, I made mistakes when I tried to write the image HTML, as I didn’t know how HTML works and the basic rules of written HTML. For many times, I just forgot to put “/” or other signs, which messed up the whole process. It is so complicated for me to understand how HTML is written to make a website work.

In fact, when I knew that I would learn HTML in my toolkit class, I was doubt why we should learn it when there are so many different ways of designing a web which are much easier if compared with HTML. Using HTML seems a little bit out of date. After the toolkit class, though I know I still cannot write HTML to design a whole web page, at least, I have some clear idea about HTML and at least I can understand HTML page. I can figure out where is the title, headline, image, paragraph, etc. Thanks to that wonderful HTML tutorial page HTML Dog, which makes the way of understanding and writing HTML much clearer.

However, I am still kind of doubting how far HTML can work to design a web. I have no idea about the new technologies in web design field. But when I told my friends that I was learning HTML, they reacted with a “surprising” face, asking why I was learning this “out-of-date”web design method. In class, we were talking about the basic functions about HTML. But the sample web page we made looks a little bit simple, which made me question how far HTML can do in designing a web. Can we create any kind of web page as complicated as we want by HTML?

soundslide2, what is the story?

I finally finished my soundslide 2- Artists’ Community at Farmers’ Market, which covers a place called Farmers’ Market located in Downtown Community Plaza. I re-edited my audio for three times, every time from a different angle. I just keep asking myself, what is the story I want to tell and what is the story others may interested in.

To me, interviewing Farmers’ market, the experience itself raised so many different angle for me. This farmers’ market is really different from what I thought before I went there. In China, farmers’ market should be crowd, dirty, smelly and noisy, but here, things seems opposite.  In China, we will never have artists in a farmers’ market. People go to farmers’ market not to enjoy themselves, but to buy food and rushly go back home to cook the dinner. There will be no band playing music, no kids playing, running there. So all the differences give me so many cut-in points which makes my confused. And when I interviewed a vendor there, I found that she has gotten a master’s degree in Linguistics in UF and now stay at home, and she seems really satisfied with her life. This makes me get interest in her.

So at first, I made an audio based on this vendor, to see how she feels about being a vandor and bringing her kids here, later, I made another audio based on why she comes to Farmers’ Market. However, both of them are not interesting. When I talked with Mindy about my confusion, she told me that I should never take these people as celebrities, because my background of being an entertaiment reporter, every little thing about stars can be interested by lot of people. But in fact, no people will really care about the vendor’s daily life. So I ask myself, what kind of story can be interested in this market.  Then I come up the idea, what about talking the artists’ community there? As the market’s name shows, we think that the vendors in this market should mostly be farmers, but the truth is more and more artists now join this market. So how is the market like after they join in? I really hope this will be a better angle.