One of the primary annoyances that I have with using AP style, that I do not have when writing in MLA or creatively is the ability to use the title Dr. for both medical workers and people who have completed graduate school. I think it is just a matter of respect and that the title of Dr. is equally earned in both instances and should be able to be used in any type of writing. However, when using AP style it is only proper to use this title when referring to a medical doctor.
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What's a good editor? I'm not really sure because I've never had one. But when I do, here are a few qualities that I hope my first editor will possess. I think a good editor is many different things, thorough, persistent, dedicated and patient. Although, there is one quality that I think is important that I'm sure is so easily attainable. An editor's job is to make sure that when a print publication is being released that it is the most perfect that it can possibly be, by checking for grammar, punctuation, AP style, organization, structure and flow. I think though, in the process of doing this it is easy to take away from the writers style or voice. If an editor has the ability to produce good, tight, work and still can maintain the original intent of the writer, that's all you can really ask for. At the end of the day, when I see my piece in print and I read through it, I want to be able to recognize my own writing.
Out of the thousands of cases that Magisterial District Judge Joshua Kanalis deals with on a yearly basis, almost 1,000 of them are relating to California University of Pennsylvania students who end up sitting in front of the judge, hoping for leniency. Stephen Cuneo, 20, of Indianapolis was one of three Cal U students who made his way into the courtroom on Nov. 13, who like his colleagues, claimed to simply make a “stupid mistake.” Cuneo, followed by his father, walked into the courtroom wearing khaki pants and a white button up t-shirt in an attempt to make a good first impression. This attempt failed after he raised his right hand in front of the judge and the first questioned he answered was a known lie. “I think I paid $100-$150 for the fake I.D.,” Cuneo said. “I don’t know. I don’t really remember.” A smirk formed on the judge’s face. “If you want me to be gentle with you,” Kanalis said. “You need to answer me when I ask you a question and make sure you tell me the truth. I already know the answer. Why don’t you try again?” Looking over his shoulder at his father and then back to the judge, Cuneo paused and then replied in a muffled voice, “I think it was more around $250.” The Cal U student was given three different citations after attempting to use a fake I.D. to purchase liquor on Sept. 12 in the California Borough Wine and Spirits store at 2:49 p.m. In a college town, the use of fake I.D.to get into bars and to purchase liquor is a common practice, but because bars and state stores are well trained on how to identify an I.D. that is real, versus one purchased online, it’s a risky chance to take. “I was a cop for 10 years,” Kanalis said. “The balls that it takes to walk into a state store in a college town, well, I just couldn’t do it.” After being asked to show a second form of identification at the register, Cuneo says that he knew that he was caught and left the store immediately without the alcohol not knowing that borough police would be notified of the crime and would then use the California University student database to locate and serve him. Cuneo was charged with two of the three citations, having to pay a $477 fine. He will lose his license for 30 days. Although he is a full timestudent at the University with a 3.0 average, the judge urged him to spend less time drinking and more time studying. “To this date I have a never had a student with a 4.0 in this classroom serving as a defendant,” Kanalis said. “Hit the books, not the bars.” The second case involved another current Cal U student, as well as a former Cal U student, who after a night of drinking resisted arrest, that resulted in a female officer breaking her hand. The weekend after Cal U’s Homecoming, Chad Smith, Cal U alumnus and Brett Frantino a Cal U senior, stopped into Subway and got loud with an employee who didn’t know how to make the sandwich Smith was requesting. Smith, who just graduated from Cal U in December, asked to extend the hearing until the injured officer could be present. “I just got a job with a big Fortune 500 company,” Smith said. “I do not want this on my record.” Frantino expressed to the judge how badly he feels about the situation and takes full responsibility. “If I see the female officer again, I would like to apologize,” Frantino said. “I had too much to drink and it was not the right way to behave.” According to the judge, he believes that students watch reality shows on T.V. and mimic their actions. “When you see this shit n T.V., no one suffers any consequences,” Kanalis said. “Frankly, I only see a small percent of the students at Cal. I have to worry about the people who don’t ever make it in front of me.” In other court business, Phillip Stephens, of Fayette County, had been driving illegally for 24 years and was caught driving without a license during a trip to Wal-Mart. Stephens, who is unemployed, is required to pay a $500 fine and serve 30 days in jail with the option of house arrest. Jesse Wolfe, of Clarksville, was presented with two citations, the first for speeding and the second for operating a vehicle without a license. The defendant pleaded guilty to speeding, but provided proof of his license and the second citation was dropped. He was ordered to pay a fine of $175 Sirhona Turner, who recently moved into the Washington, Pa area, was given two citations for speeding and driving with a suspended license. She pleaded guilty to speeding and is being required to pay a fine of $200 over the course of three months. Sidebar Officer’s Best Friend (or maybe not) The Washington County District Court isn’t exactly like the courts that you see on T.V. There is not always an attorney or even a police officer present. Boxes are piled high along the walls and a harsh fluorescent lighting bounces off the mismatched tables and chairs that fill the room. It’s casual. Not only casual in appearance, but in conversation as well, proving that outside of their authoritative uniforms, police officers as well as judges are normal people, with normal complaints. Two officers sit in the front row of the courtroom, scrolling through Facebook on their cell-phones and waiting for the Judge. One looks to the other and says, “So I got this dog the other day…” Intrigued, the other officer then looks up from his phone. With a chuckle and a roll of his eyes, he puts down his phone on his lap and continues. “Yeah. It’s a Shit-h-tzu. I paid almost $400 dollars for it, but all it does is pee all over my new hardwood floor. I don’t understand it, I come home, open the door and before I can even pet it, it pissed right there in front of me…So I gave it to my brother and now it pees on his floors instead.” The officers smiled at each other, laughing, as the judge walked into the courtroom holding a can of air freshener. Pacing back and forth through the court room, his index finger seemed to be glued to the trigger of the deodorizer filling the room with a tropical aroma. Taking a whiff of the air and then directly looking at the officers in the audience along with a student reporter, he said, “Ahh, the smell of fear,” and then casually sat down his chair ready to resume his day. Court is in session. Taylor Brown is a junior at California University of Pennsylvania,
where she is majoring in journalism with a minor in creative writing. See her website at taylorshareebrown.weebly.com. Let me tell you a little bit about police reporting, it's probably my least favorite thing. While I enjoy covering breaking/hard news, I have found over my two years here at Cal that the police are the absolute hardest people to get in touch with. It's frustrating. But it's probably my favorite beat that we covered this semester because it's always interesting and different. It's fasted paced and constantly developing, which is nice because there is always more to say.
Meetings on the other hand, not very fun. Pretty boring, really dull. I think they are something that you need to be able to cover thought in order to be a well rounded reporter. Depending on which meeting you are covering, will depend on the story you can write. It's only as interesting as you make it, so use your senses. What do you see? What are they talking about before the meeting? How are people reacting to what is being discussed? It's your job to make the story worth reading. Reporting from the Westmoreland County District court, is casual. Definitely not what I originally expected. Depending on where you are reporting from and who the judge is, he could brief you on the cases that he is going to cover that day so you have a little bit of what's going on before the cases are actually heard. Fortunate for me, the judge was nice enough to do this for me. The most important thing about reporting in a court room, is that when you are writing you have to make sure that you are writing in language that everyday people will understand. The first case that I witnessed, I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about until at least half way through. Write in everyday English, not court lingo. Reporting is tough. One source can potentially make or break your story, but you can't let them dictate what you write. It's your job to be persistent, pushy and even annoying when you need to. At the end of the day, all you need is that quote and the rest is history. Quotes are what make the story, it's what makes it personal and real. Our job is to tell stories about other people, to give them a voice and to be as accurate as possible when doing so. I have my own voice, sure, it's snarky and sarcastic but when I'm writing a news article I can't write that way. It's hard to turn it off, but after writing so ma y serious news pieces instead of just features, I'm starting to get the hang of it. This might be bad advice, (sorry professor Wilson) but I think it helped me to not always go to the meetings with the class. Not because I needed extra time to write my stories, but because it gave me a fresh perspective and gave me the opportunity to write about things that they weren't covering. I think it's hard for fourteen students to sit in the same room and all come up with different story ideas, but at the same time, in the world of reporting you are not the only reporter or newspaper that is trying to get the scoop so being able to find a good angle is probably one of the best things that you can know how to do. When I first came to Cal U as a journalism major, I didn't really even know that AP style existed. My high school had no journalism class, no school newspaper, nothing. I came here blind and then one day, when I showed up at the first SPJ meeting and volunteered to be president all things journalism came crashing down on top of me. When I e-mailed the advisor of my new club, telling him that I was almost completely clueless as to what I needed to be doing, I met with him in his office and left significantly less terrified than I was a few hours before. The advisor of the club, turned out to be my academic advisor as well and when he told me that I should take journalism two before journalism one, the anxiety attacks started all over again. I sat down in this class in the front row and he started rambling on about all of the ridiculously long articles that we would have to write and sooner or later started talking about AP style and numbers and abbreviations that I never knew existed. I hated it before I even opened my style book.
That was two years ago. I'm a junior now and AP style has become a pretty big part of my college career considering I am a journalism major, regardless, I'm still pretty awful at it. My life in college is like a light switch, that turns on AP style and turns off MLA, only to turn it back on again. Being both a creative writing major and a journalism major, is a constant tug of war between these two writing styles. In the middle of trying to write a literary analysis, I frequently find my self attributing sources by saying " according to blah blah blah..." like I'm writing a news feature story about Medea. As frustrating as it is for me, I bet my professors get a good laugh out of grading my papers. Westmoreland County Court of Common PleasWell, reporting on my first court session was definitely an experience, but it was more casual than I originally expected. The court house sat long Route 40 in a small tan trailer, when you first walk in there are four or five mismatched seats and an office that is twice it's size. The court room itself sits off to the left, hosting maybe twenty seats two rather large tables, one wooden and one plastic. The room itself is filled with a harsh fluorescent lighting, the walls are piled high with brown card boxes labeled with different categories and mix-matched letters and numbers that I don't know the meanings to. For some of the hearings, (most of which were for minor/major traffic violations that day) were casual. Sometimes the officers would show up, two out of four times they didn't, which made for a relatively boring day for both me (the observer) and for the judge. After an hour break for dinner from 4.p.m. until 5 p.m., I headed back for a second round of criminal hearings that both dealt with underage drinking and false identification. Needless to say, these hearings were much more interesting than simple traffic violations. It also made for interesting personal experiences after seeing this same "criminals" walking around on campus the next day.
All in all, I really enjoyed my experience. It would be a beat that I think would be fun and interesting to cover on a more frequent basis. “Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it’s just an One of the most important things about being a journalist is remaining objective and keeping yourself OUT of the story that you are covering. Blogging in journalism allows us to break that rule, just a little bit. It allows a journalist to express themselves outside of a story by commenting, reflecting and venting about our successes, our failures and our annoyances within the field or just life in general. It is also a good way to gain the trust of your audience, by allowing readers to be involved in a more personal aspect of jouranlism. I think that it's pretty evident that the world of journalism is changing and with that the role of a journalist is also going to change. Now, more than ever we are relying on the public to supply us with our information and with their opinions on our writing as well as the topics that we are writing about and blogging is a pretty efficient way to do that. Blogging is simply away to personalize our thoughts and express them to a large audience in order to generate feedback. I wouldn't turn to a blog for a "reliable source" but if I am doing a feature story or editorial piece, a blog is a really good place to find colorful people that could add a lot of character and different perspectives to writing. As journalists we have to utilize all resources that are available and blogging is certainly one of them.
- Taylor Photo By: Taylor Brown Bud Murphy's Sports Bar/Restaurant Connellsville, Pa. It’s a little after five o’clock and the parking lot of Bud Murphy’s Sports Bar is already full with a sea of cars, which means that every seat around the bar is probably already taken. For bartender Lisa Cameron, 36 of Scottsdale this means that she will be pouring her first beer within seconds of stepping behind the bar and clocking in. This is something all too familiar to Cameron and is nothing more than another hectic, but typical Friday night at work. Cameron earned a degree in communication disorders from California University of Pennsylvania in 2011 and was hired almost immediately after graduation with the Intermediate Unit one as an early detection speech therapist. During her time as a speech therapist, Cameron had two children and committed herself to the role of stay-at-home mom to Ryan, now 9 and Carlie, now 7. It was also during this time that she realized that she was not where she was meant to be in her life, so she made the decision to drift away from her first degree to pursue something that she had always been passionate about; journalism. “My first degree was my parent’s degree, but journalism will be mine,” Cameron said. “I know I am a talented writer and I believe in the power of words.” In order for Cameron to return to school and make her long time dream a reality, she knew that she would need to find a part-time job that would fit into her already hectic schedule. It was then that she found her way to bartending, which became a better fit than she could have hoped for. “Returning to school for me just made sense because I was going back for something that didn’t seem like work,” Cameron said. “I was going back for something that was a true passion.” These days, Cameron finds herself doing her own homework beside her two children. “We grow together,” Cameron said. “I teach them that it is never too late or inopportune to reach a goal.” Although the process for Cameron has been slow moving, with every class that she takes her dream of becoming a professional writer gets closer to being realized. “I have more on my transcript than the Gettysburg Address,” Cameron said. “So in other words, four score and a bazillion classes later, I am still pursuing my dreams.” Cameron has no specific timeline about when she will graduate from Cal with her journalismdegree, but she hopes that with the support of her family she will graduate within the next two years, but even then she is not sure she will be ready to step out from behind the bar. “I may hold onto bartending until there is greater stability,” Cameron said. “And I am OK with that, provided I do not stagnate.” Someday Cameron hopes to have a column in a newspaper or magazine in which she can voice her opinions to a large audience or perhaps do some freelancing. Until then, bartending is going to allow her to keep her people (and interview) skills polished. “Bartending is reaching out loud live and in person,” Cameron said. “Writing is reaching out with thought and consideration. It’s all a matter of semantics.” Taylor Brown is a junior at California University of Pennsylvania, where she is majoring in journalism with a minor in creative writing. See her website at taylorshareebrown.weebly.com. |
AuthorMy name is Taylor Brown. I am 21 years old and a junior at California University of Pennsylvania. I am a Journalism Major with a minor in Creative Writing. I write for The Cal Times and will hopefully have an editorial postion there sometime before I graduate. I am also president of Cal U's chapter of SPJ. Writing is what I love to do and I'm working full time to achieve the goals that I have for myself in this field. Archives
February 2014
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