Freedom Trail Trip

I am currently taking Introduction to African American Studies, in this class I am learning a lot about the history of blacks along with black culture. I was egar and excited to find out that the class offers a trip to students of the university. The trip is open to all students but, it is perfered that it is just to AAS students. During this trip we are going to Georgia as well as Alabama. We are going to visit a all black college as well as travel to the famous Martin Luther King Jr. Museaum, we will also be going to the Rosa Parks Museaum. To top off the trip we will be going to a Southern Baptist Church where after we will be served soul food. I am very excited about this trip but, the only problem is that there are not very many people that have signed up. There are still 15-20 more seats on the bus that need to be filled for us to go on this trip. I think that this can be an amazing opportunity but, we may have our once in a life time trip cancled due to lack of intrest. I just wanted to get this out there and I hope that maybe just one more person may read this and find some sort of intrest in this trip!!

Claire McCaskill

Today I have chosen to ask Claire McCaskill a few questions about the Farm Bill and US Agriculture.
Her stance on the farm bill is that she is happy with many of the provisions of the farm bill. She is pleased with the way that we use our tax payers money towards commidities. She was also happy with the $1 tax credit that you would recieve for cellulosic ethanol use.

Some of my open ended questions that i would ask are:
How did you go about getting members to drop the earmark that was added to the Farm Bill at the last minuite.
How would you go about keeping this from happening again? Would you try to start a new bill?
How do you see the Farm Bill helping our citizens.
How are you hoping to inforce the quality healthy food for all school aged children.
What are some ways that you have been helping to get the people of Southwest Missouri disaster relief when it is needed.

Some of my close ended questions that I would ask are:
Were you upset by not getting the earmark taken out of the farm bill.
Are you enjoying your new job as US senator
Do you vote often
Do you attended senate regularly
Are you planning on running for a second term?

Politics and Relationships

I find if funny how politics can bring people together or it can bring them apart. I recently went to a friends house where we had a little social gathering. When we were there one couple started to talk about politics. They were using the internet and newspaper in the house to argue with each other about the politics. One member of the couple is voting for McCain and the other is voting for Obama. They were using emails that they had recieved a long with newspaper articles to validate their points. Each of the members in the argument have very well stated points. They were also recieving input from outside of the couple( other people at the social gathering). If you were a person that would have been walking down the street you would have thought that they were just good friends talking about the election and their sides, you would not have known that these two people that were yelling on the top of their lungs at each other about the politics would actually have been dating each other. My significant other would continue to sit and listen to theses people that were arguing for an extended period of time for no reason. The rest of the social gathering went into the house to leave the loving couple outside to argue by themselves, They continued to argue for more than two and one half hours. It is crazy how neither of them could see how the other one was right because they were to busy trying to prove the other one wrong with the facts that they have about each canidate and their vice presidentual canidate that they could have went on for hours upon end.
I am glad that I believe that who you vote for is your own personal knowledge and I will leave it up to you to make the best decision that you can make even if it is not the same as my oppinion.

News leads

Drury University is offering to pay for two full-time Springfield Police officers to provide extra security on campus. The Proposal will be considered at tonight's City Council Meeting. Because it's listed as an emergency bill, there will be a public hearing and a likely vote by council.

I think that this news lead is of good quality. The lead does allow you to know the who what when. It also alerts the people to know that if you are interested in it you must be there because the council will vote on the matter at that time. It allows the reader to know what to expect and when the bill will be discused.

Utility crews and Ozarks residents spent Sunday mopping up after remnants of Hurricane Ike lashed southewest Missouri with Wind gust up to 53 mph and radar reports of 7 inches of rain. The fast-moving strom sent dozens of creeks out of their banks, inundated low-water crossings and caused area lakes to swell.

I feel that this lead leaves you a little confused. It talks about the hurrican but, it waits til the second paragraph to talk to you about southwest Missouri and the article waits even longer to talk about Ozark. I felt that the lead could have addressed the city of Ozark sooner in the article and then told about Hurricane Ike.

A push by people interested in water quality in Table Rock Lake has prompted environmental officails form Missouri and Arkansas to schedule a meeting in Branson early next month.

This news lead was very well written. It tells you who is involved and what their concern is right with in the first few words. It also tells you when you will be able to attened a meeting to talk about your concerns. This is allowing the citizens to be aware of this issue and be prepared for discussion.

Chapter 1 Exercise

I travel a good distance three days a week to come to school. I have started to read news papers from springfield as well as from my home town, I feel that the springfield newsleader and my local paper just do not compare. My local newspaper is really kind of a joke. It is very small and the articles are very badly written. The sports coverage is not very well done and being from a large wrestling family I always look at that section to see the highlights from the past evenings match. My grandfather used to work for my local paper, I rember when I would go in and help him count out the papers and roll them for him to toss out on his route, the papers used to be so large, and now they are so small. The reporters that they have working for them are not very good and it is also very small staffed. I think that the News leader is a much better paper as there is more sections in the paper as well as the articles are much better written. I also think that neither of these papers compare to any of the national papers. They are written tremedously better as well as more coverage for each event and article. My local paper really needs some help when it comes to writting, they do not cover the story very well and they do not cover very many things that are happing right now. Up today things are not covered well.

general 1

After having a week of JRN 270 I am really starting to enjoy class, we have not covered much but, it seems like a very interesting class. Befor this semester I was not an avid reader of the newspaper I was just a tv news watcher, I am not able to get more information out of the newspaper. I think that this class is going to help me understand more about journalism and help me decied If I can work under pressure or not. I have previously worked in a news room situation for week for the Missouri FFA orginazation and I have found that I really enjoyed writting the news articles and as so helping the young students learn how we wanted the news articles to turn out. I am excited to jump in and get started working on news articles and more hands on projects.