Eh, I’m ashamed
to say that between missing class due to illness on Wednesday showing up half
an hour late because of a lengthy interview on Friday, my attendance wasn’t
exactly up to par this week. *bows head However, this seems just as good a
place as any for shameless advertisement: go read my story in next Tuesday’s
issue!
The bits of
class I did catch were certainly more
print journalist-y than I had anticipated, and I was elated. Telling True Stories is giving me the
tinglies, from Jacqui Banaszynski’s nod to The
Things They Carried in the first few pages to the whole section on travel
memoir in Part III. (Morocco memoir, here I come.) Not only is the writing
exquisite, but it’s providing excellent tips on assembling a story, conducting
interviews (nice to know I’m not the only one who hates tape recorders), making
characters come to life, etc. I know I’ll be going back to this book again and
again to remember how to put a fresh coat of paint on that story, how to find a
new angle to replace a tired and formulaic old lead, how to arrange things in
an order that makes sense. I’m glad I didn’t rent this one because it’s
certainly a keeper. In actual class, I really enjoyed the avalanche video and
found that I could apply that to storytelling in print media, too, because in
many ways it’s really similar across the board. My expectations for this course
remain the same, concerning learning media production across the board, but I’m
infinitely more excited about it now that I have an idea of how these different
media click together.
Ah, the New York Times. Apart from my
thirty-minute rant about the Superbowl photo being the cover photo as opposed
to something more newsworthy such as maybe, hmmm, a perfectly decent photo
accompanying PENTAGON EXPECTS TO KEEP
PRESENCE IN AFGHANISTAN on the very next page, it was an enjoyable
experience as always. I’ll talk about both pieces of news, since they both
affected (afflicted?) me in—ah—very different ways. I would not have heard
about the Superbowl blackout had I not seen the NYTimes—I would not, in fact, have known about it at all had I not
been in class on Monday, seeing as I was too busy ranting about “that sports
photo” to note what it was about. As I’m rather a dullard about sports, I
didn’t even realize that the Superbowl was happening. Even if there was a blackout, I still think that’s no
excuse. Boot it over to the sports section. The article that most caught my eye
was As Extremists Invaded, Timbuktu Hid
Artifacts of a Golden Age (with another photo that should have beat out the
Superbowl one, even more than the Pentagon one, on A8) for two reasons—one,
I’ve always been fascinated with the methods of preserving artifacts in warfare
and two, I was staying a country up in the Sahara just two or three weeks ago.
I hated to hear that the Tuareg were burning so many artifacts because I had
met some Tuareg traders in the desert and understood them to be a peaceful
tribe. They comprise a demographic of the Amazigh people (or, as the West
derogatorily calls them, “Berber” people), and the Imazighen (plural for
Amazigh) are working toward recognition from their respective national
governments by demanding that their languages be taught in schools along with
Arabic. Amazigh methods are peaceful, and they get their message across through
music and cultural messages. There’s a certain allure about the Imazighen that
attracts me as a pacifist and as a musician, and thus I forged a deep bond with
Amazigh culture. Every bull has its horns, and I met Tuareg people from a
different location, but it still hit me hard. I had heard about French and
Malian troops advancing to Timbuktu on NPR when I was at home a little while
back, but I wouldn’t have heard about this current story otherwise because I
have no car and no way of listening to NPR. Either way, this blog is getting
too long. Toodles!
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