News Anchor Injured in Iraq

It was shocking to read that ABC "World News Tonight" co-anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were injured in an explosion while they were working as imbedded journalists in Iraq on Sunday. Perhaps the most surprising element of the story is the fact that this is a rare occurrence, normally I do not see stories of journalists hurt in attacks on the military personnel that they are following. I am surprised that more of these types of stories do not exist with the amount of journalists performing these tasks. It seems as though the military does a very good job protecting themselves and the journalists who are imbedded with them.

The only problem I had with the format of the story was that in the lead the writer (David Bauder) identifies Bob Woodruff but says "a cameraman" when referring to Dough Vogt. Later in the story Vogt is identified by name, and the reader get a brief history on him (the story tells us that Vogt is an award-winning cameraman). If I were writing this story I would have mentioned Vogt by name in the lead and not waited until later in the story to do so. Another aspect that I would have liked to see how many journalists suffer the same fate as Woodruff and Vogt did, because it wasn't addressed in this story. Even though I have said it seems like not many of these situations happen, I do not know for sure, and would be interested in seeing some sort of report on how many journalists have been injured while they were imbedded.

Publish Date: January 30, 2006 in the Missourian.

Building Toward Success

Stephen's College is an all-girls school in Columbia, Missouri. They have a basketball team which isn't very good (5-17 record this year, and the school's all-time single season win record is just 9), but that didn't stop Dave Mezz from writing an excellent story about how the team is building friendships, and coming together to play better basketball. Mezz paints a picture of a team-building exercise that went for the first thirty minutes of practice in which team members had to say 3 aspects of their life, 1 of which was untrue, and other team members had to guess which one was false. To me it showed a program striving toward improving their basketball record as well as building friendships for those girls on the team. The team does show promise with 10 freshmen on their roster, and by doing team-bulding activities such as the one described head coach Dave Pavlovich hopes to build a team that will have more success than the program has had in the past.

I thought that Mezz's story had an easy-read type format to it, and that it flowed together very well. I would not make any revisions in what he did, because I enjoyed this story very much. To me this article provided a good look at an aspect of Columbia that gets forgotten in most resident's eyes, Stephen's College. And how even though their record may not reflect it, the Stephen's College basketball team is building toward a successful future, both on and off the court.

Publish Date: January 26, 2006 in the Missourian

Rising Homeless in Columbia

Carrie Garza's article in the Missourian about the homeless population and the problems they face with homeless shelters in Columbia, Missouri was both interesting and troubling. It was interesting because of the way it described the homeless shelters and how they operate, and troubling because of the difficulties that occur while trying to form some sort of census on the homeless. The homeless situation in general seems to have flaws when it comes to figuring out how to help those who are without homes. It seems very difficult to take an accurate census of the homeless since they do not have an address that one can mail census forms to. The article discussed how normally a census is conducted at homeless shelters, which is a good way to get a grasp on the size of the homeless population, but the problem is that not all members of the homeless population go to shelters.

When it comes to Columbia's homeless problem I was very surprised at how many homeless there are in the city. Coming from a major metropolitan city, Chicago, I am used to seeing homeless people, but I honestly did not expect to see many, if any, homeless when I chose to go to college at the University of Missouri. Columbia is a smaller town, but from my own experience it seems like, per capita, it has a high homeless rate, and I don't know what the explanation for that could be.

This is an ongoing problem in this country and throughout the world, not just in Columbia, Missouri. I was happy to see the Missourian address the issue, and report on the state of Columbia's homeless situation.

Publish Date: January 25, 2006 issue of the Missourian.

Kobe's Big Night

Kobe Bryant and 81 points are now forever linked. It sounds like something that would happen in a week of basketball games, or maybe for the high-scoring Bryant a mere two games (He had been averaging 40-plus points in his last nine games). But that is not what happened. He scored 81 points in one game on Sunday January 22, putting him second all-time in single-game scoring behind only the incredible 100-point performance of Wilt Chamberlain. I'm still dumbfounded by what Bryant did on Sunday night. When I first saw the story I was glancing through headlines on Yahoo Sports, and quite frankly, I thought it was a mistake. I thought there was no possible way anybody could score that many points in a game with the talent that is in the NBA today. When I looked at the box score, it looked even more like a joke being played by the Yahoo staff. I am accustomed to seeing big numbers in box scores, players scoring in the 40's, 50's, and even rarely in the 60's, but to see Bryant with an "81" next to his name, it seemed like a dream, it couldn't be real. Kobe's night has been talked about being better than Chamberlain's 100-point onslaught. Some people feel that because Chamberlain was such a massive man (7'1" 280 pounds) in an era when nobody was that big, and the three-second-lane violation did not yet exist, that Bryant's barrage was a better performance. I disagree with that notion. Chamberlain and Bryant were in the same class when they had their huge nights, nobody on the court could cover either one of them, Chamberlain because of his size and inside skill, Bryant because of his quickness and jump-shooting ability. The fact is Chamberlain scored more points, his night was better, but that doesn't take anything away from Bryant's performance. It is one of the most spectacular offensive shows put on in NBA history, and will be remembered right alongside Wilt Chamberlain's performance for as long as scoring is a statistic in the NBA.

Publish Date: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 in the Missourian.