The Life of an Intern: First Experiences as an Intern

Just another of the News-Heralds blogs, this was another way we thought to get our interns immersed in the fast paced world of professional journalism.  Oh and that penguin she mentions, it was my idea as well. This is the first post in an all new blog, this one comes from intern Kellie Barrett.

The Life of an Intern: First Experiences as an Intern: 

When I began my internship at The News Herald Newspaper, I didn’t think I would spend one morning driving to a Halloween store and getting my picture taken in a bunch of crazy costumes. And I especially never thought that a picture of me in a penguin costume would end up on the front page.

Experiences like that have made my internship interesting. So far, it has not only been a great learning experience, it has been fun. I’ve met a lot of interesting and funny people in and out of the newsroom.

I spend the two days a week I’m there writing so I’m generating a lot of clips. I’ve covered interesting stories like a Downriver man who lost over 200 pounds with bariatric surgery and an event that consisted of high speed races to benefit cardiac care at Henry Ford Health System.

My stories have been published so I’m generating a lot of clips which is so important for an intern. But I’m also getting to know reporters and editors who seem to know everyone and everything Downriver. I’m also getting to know my community a little better and the nice people who live there.

It’s also nice to know that I still have about half my internship left to keep writing and learn about journalism skills such as editing and paginating. Basically, I still have time to learn as much as I can about the newspaper business and what it takes to be a good journalist.

Why Yes I Am Quite Random, Why Do You Ask?: Have I Got A Story To Sell You

Go check out my good friend's blog.

Why Yes I Am Quite Random, Why Do You Ask?: Have I Got A Story To Sell You: Word of warning, this won't really be a fun blog. Nothing really nerdy or geeky to discuss. This will be me getting up on my soapbox and ranting about a recent event down here in Australia. Granted, it's not like I have many readers at this point but if someone should stumble across it somehow, they should have fair warning. This is just my opinion, based on whatever information I've come across on this, and I don't know every little intimate detail.

For any overseas reader, here's the situation: over in Bali, a fourteen year old boy vacationing with his parents was arrested for buying drugs, in an alleged sting operation. He's facing at least 12 years in prison if convicted.
Now, I'm not blogging that he should be released, far from it. I mean, his defense at the time? "He said he [the dealer] needed the money". If I had a poster of someone facepalming right now, that would be the most appropriate response. Then it emerged he had a recurring drug habit before entering Bali. Yeah, now your story looks real credible now, kid.

2 For Tuesday -Special Double Blog Day

I don't have a terrible lot to say, but I just wanted to thank everyone that read this last month.  It's very tough to get a new blog going when you aren't famous or something. I've tried to write about a multitude of topics, share my personal thoughts and feelings, as well as touch on things that I just thought were cool. The blog has been active for about six weeks now, and we are nearing 4,000 page views. While I could still write without readers, I could not have fun writing without readers.

I'm very grateful for each and every one of you, and it'll only get better from here.  Lot's of changes going on here in the newsroom, for those of you that don't know, I will be moving from a political beat to the sports department in just over a week, in preparation for that I have started sports themed blogs for each sport that I am covering, they will all be live on the News-Herald site, thenewsherald.com hopefully by the end of the week. I'll do another entry on here with the specific links once I am ready to unveil them, hopefully those of you that like sports will enjoy reading about them on those blogs as well.

Once again, thanks for reading. -Dave

X-Men: No Class

   OK, the film doesn't really have no class, but it's far from "first class" entertainment when it comes to tying into the other movies in the series.  It obviously was trying to tie into those movies based on cameos and other small things, but way to many things don't add up when it comes to series continuity.  That aside, the film was still enjoyable. I mean who doesn't want to watch X-Men fight Nazi's? OK sure, that doesn't technically happen, but it could have.

   Plot Synopsis: Before Charles Xavier (McAvoy) and Erik Lensherr (Fassbender) took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time, working together to stop the greatest threat the world has ever known.  The film  features a star-studded supporting cast, including Academy Award-nominee Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone), January Jones (“Mad Men”), Rose Byrne (28 Weeks Later), Zoë Kravitz (“Californication”), Nicholas Hoult (A Single Man), Lucas Till (Walk the Line), and Emmy Award-nominee Oliver Platt (“The West Wing”).

   I'll start with the visuals like I did in my last review the transfer to the disc is great, very few flaws, and watching it HD rather than on the grainy theater screen was a true treat. (Jennifer Lawrence half naked most of the time didn't hurt either...) The effects were all pretty believable in this world, but nothing to write home about.

   The audio here was pretty standard, again nothing to write home about.  The only thing stood out as excellent to me was Magneto's daunting theme music, but nothing was blatantly bad so it's slightly above average at best. The sound mix worked well together, but it just felt like it was lacking something to me.

Now for the extras, this disc isn't packed full geeky goodness like some, but what it has is fantastic.  First off it starts with 10 free digital comics that help to tell the back story of the actual "first class" and they are all great, though I'm still adapting to the digital comic phenomena. Also included is a 7 part making of documentary, that while annoying to be broken into segments that run about 10 minutes a piece, is still a very fine documentary in the long run.  Several deleted/extended scenes are included (sorry I didn't count them and don't have the disc sitting next to me as I write this), as is some behind the scenes info on scenes, and a really cool feature that lets the viewer 'control' cerebro in a feature that when you find and click on the various mutants you get scenes from all of the films that mutant has been in within the live-action franchise.  The glaring  omission is the lack of a director's commentary.

Final grade is a 3 out of 5 on this one. There just isn't enough stuff to put this edition over the top.