At first I wouldn’t like the idea of having to do anything with “journalism“. When I would hear Mr. Gertner talking about getting people to join this class I would think, “What the hell? Why would people want to join this? Little did I know that my senior year I would become a part of the Journalism staff.

Journalism has been a different but great experience. When I joined the class, I was still doubting whether or not I made a good choice. Little by little I got more and more involved in the class. I remember I was able to cover a soccer game for the first time. I had to learn how to work the camera and everything. Then I also had to take notes so later I would be able to present a good article.

In journalism you learn little by little, but you learn something new everyday.  I like being in this class where we can inform the students of the things happening in school and in their community. Interviewing people can sometimes be very fun, but I am a very shy person and most of the time i’m really nervous, so my interviews are very quick. But I still get all the 411.

Journalism doesn’t have to be a boring class that you have to attend to everyday. If you like reporting and finding out about the things going on with your school and the community then journalism is the best class you can join.

It’s not always gonna be fun and games because when the newspaper comes out there is a lot of work to be done and to be taken seriously. but when you are reporting on something you like then the class becomes really easy.

Esmeralda Bermudez visited the Rough Rider staff in 2008

As of September 9, we have started the first traditional-calendar school year in 15 years at Roosevelt High School. It’s exciting that all the students and teachers are in school at the same time, since it unites us as one school, something we desperately need at a time that our school has felt the most divided I have known in the eight years I’ve been teaching here.

I will certainly miss the two-month break in the middle of the school year, but in exchange we get a shorter school day, more instructional days, more of the single days off, like Yom Kippur next Monday, and summers off!

I have been hearing different numbers from different people, but we definitely have more students on campus at once. A lot more, Last year, when A and C Track were both on, the student population was something close to 3,300. Right now our student population is anywhere between 3,700 and 4,200, depending on who you ask. I’m sure a Rough Rider staff member will get the correct number soon.

This year I am happy to have around 9 students returning to the staff from last year. This means we should be able to get the new students trained and be producing a higher quality newspaper with a greater frequency. Next week the training begins!

Look for new blog entries in the coming weeks and don’t forget to follow TheRoughRider on Twitter (http://twitter.com/TheRoughRider). We’ll also be continuing with the Rough Rider Podcast and experimenting with video!

On top of all that, expect expanded and improved sports coverage, with frequent updates to our My High School Journalism site.

Next week we welcome two rising stars of journalism to our new classroom, R205. Esmeralda Bermudez of the Los Angeles Times will be visiting on Thursday, and Gustavo Arellano of the OC Weekly and Ask a Mexican fame, will be joining on Friday. I can’t wait!

The support we’ve received from professional journalists, academics, friends and family has been a key to the success of the ever-improving journalism program at Roosevelt. Keep checking back, and expect great things this year!

Writer Daniel Hernandez, who has spent the last 18 months in Mexico City researching youth culture for a book project, will be visiting Los Angeles later this month, attending the wedding of a Roosevelt teacher (not yours truly), and giving a public lecture on Thursday, June 25 at 7:30 pm at MoCA downtown as part of the Zocalo series.

Now before you say to yourself, “Public lecture? And your point is?” I want to let all of you know that Daniel came to speak to my journalism class a couple of years ago and had the whole class captivated by his storytelling. Not only does this guy kn0w how to write, he also knows how to keep an audience’s attention.

Swine flu, a contracting economy, rising unemployment, a wild and bloody conflict with drug traffickers, the constant threat of natural disasters and ransom kidnappings—Mexico faces several serious challenges. Since the contested 2006 presidential election there, the country has suffered crisis after crisis, constantly testing the Mexican people’s ability to realign their everyday lives. Some seek economic refuge in the United States, but most remain home, adapting, tuning out, dancing with Death. Daniel Hernandez, a former Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly writer who has spent the past 18 months blogging Mexico City, visits Zócalo to share his insights on that sprawling capital, its youth culture, and the alternately defiant and detached, resigned and resistant approaches of Mexican people to threats always looming.

Hernandez has put out a special request for young people to attend his lecture, so I encourage Rough Riders to represent in full force.

But I’d like to envision a different kind of dynamic for this lecture. Bring the kids. There are few things I enjoy more than speaking about my work to audiences of young people. I am constantly amazed by the sophistication of their thinking, by their ability to quickly synthesize new information and challenge assumptions.

MoCA is located at 3rd and Grand, just a short bus ride away. From Boyle Heights, you can take the 31, Montebello 40, 68, or the 720 Rapid Bus. Check the Metro Trip Planner for exact directions.

Click here to make reservations.

Well i never had planned in joining journalism. But i was influenced by Norma Briseno and Elizabeth Bolanos 11C to join. Also my counselor only gave me two options which were journalism or the chicano history class.

So i decided to join Journalism because of my influences and because i thought it would be fun and because of what i was told. Besides i didn’t want to join the Chicano History class because i told myself that i really wasn’t interested in that class especially because i ain’t chicana or etc. So i thought i’d give journalism a try so i did.

The first day it was fun so i was convinced that the class would be so easy and exciting and etc. As the days went buy i realized there was so much to do and that things weren’t like the first days of school. You have to do so much research, interviews, and etc. You are expected to do so much and take responsibility which really isn’t bad it’s a good thing.

Many times i felt like dropping the class because i always thought that  it was too much with the classes and events i was involved with, but i thought i would give it some time and see what happen then. Afterall i decided to just finish the year there because thought to myself that i couldn’t leave them hanging. I was convinced that next year i wouldn’t want to take it, but i been thinking about it and in a way i miss it i love writing and maybe it wasn’t what i expected but it was pretty cool and i think next year it’s going to be better so i will take it again.

After this oppurtunity i learned so much and developed too. I feel it actually has helped and been a great experience so why not take it again. Many times am not gonna lie i’ve felt it’s been too much, but then again i think about it realize it’s not so hard unless you make it be that way so really at a point i regret joining the class but now as i put my puzzle together i really don’t. I mean i’ve had my up’s and downs in that class it’s not so bad.

Now that Roosevelt is going to be on a single traditional calendar, there are a bunch of summer opportunities available to students on B and C track for the first time.

In journalism, there are many summer workshops around the country. Before I started as adviser, I attended the Columbia Scholastic Press Association conference in New York City. It was an amazing week of learning that continues to help me do a better job in guiding the Rough Rider staff.

I would love to see some of the staff attend a summer workshop. In Southern California there are two workshops happening that I know about. The first is called Newspapers2 and takes place on the campus of Cal State Long Beach from August 10-14. I’ll post more details about that one later.

The 58th annual California Scholastic Press Association-Cal Poly Journalism Workshop – the most prestigious high school journalism seminar in the nation – will return to the beautiful California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo campus this summer.

The workshop, from Sunday, July 12, through Friday, July 24, 2009 is limited to 25 high school juniors and seniors considering a career in communications. The students will be housed in the same dorm on campus used by most of the faculty, enabling the participants to meet and confer with these professional journalists throughout the day and evening, as well as in the classroom. Deadline for applications is May 1, 2009.

Participants will complete 35 journalism assignments, and have the opportunity to:
• Attend several press conferences
• Learn how to cover a simulated breaking crime story
• Cover a trial
• Write a football game story
• Conduct an interview
• Report on a simulated major disaster
• Prepare a magazine story
• Learn editing techniques
• Have their high school newspapers critiqued
• Practice online journalism, writing their own blog
• Produce and tape their own television newscast
• Shoot and process news photographs
• Create and maintain a daily personal blog using multimedia tools

Check the website for the application and apply soon! The deadline is May 1

Hey photographers! Check out this info about a photography contest. If you win, I win. So enter!

Celebrate, Collaborate & Contribute – that is the focus of CCETC’s CaliforniaStreaming community! The judges of the CaliforniaStreaming Digital Photography Contest will select up to six student winners and two teacher winners that best reflect the 2009 contest theme: LIFE!

Winners will have their photographs incorporated into a collectable CaliforniaStreaming poster, which will be distributed to classrooms across the state of California. Two teacher winners will receive a 16GB iPod touch and six student winners will receive 16GB iPod nanos. In addition, the teachers of the students with winning entries will receive a VHS Limited Edition American Film Institute’s (AFI) Century Collection of “America’s 100 Greatest Movies,” courtesy of the AFI.

CaliforniaStreaming, a collaborative non-commercial service offering multimedia from video to podcasts, is available from twenty-five California County Offices of Education. CCETC invites you to join the ever-growing community of classroom multimedia enthusiasts! For information or a free trial, email info@californiastreaming.org.

Once again, if you win you get a 16gb iPod nano and I get an iPod touch! So enter!

Click here for the contest flyer.

So what’s the deal with subs these days? Well, our journalism class has been experiencing bad luck with them.

Everytime Mr.Gertner has been out.. abandoning us! We seem to get this really weird sub.

Last time he came, there was a burrito and rather than letting us get some on our own, he went out of his way to keep me away from it. There was an abundance of chicken burrito stuffed with beans and rice, but NO! “Wait until the last ten minutes,” he said.

I accepted that and realized hey, this guy won’t come back right? WRONG!  Today as I walked into class, expecting to see Mr. Gertner’s glowing face, I stumbled in and walked to my seat, observing the sub…from hell!

Later in class as we were blogging, typing our articles, and some working on them, hand written style, we started discussing the idea of “cousins” and “2nd cousins”. This discussion didn’t proceed for that long because he yelled at us and told us to stop! As journalists, I think we deserve the right to discuss crucial topics as this.

Thank god the period is almost over though, and HOPEFULLY I won’t see him again.

I wrote a proposal on DonorsChoose a while ago to get donations to purchase a voice recorder to start doing radio pieces and audio slideshows with my journalism class. The deadline has arrived and I am still a bit short. As of midnight on the 20th we have $140 to go. Please help out if you can so that we can go forward with our efforts to tell our stories using multimedia. Journalists need these skills in the internet era, and by donating you will help make sure that Roosevelt students have an advantage.

To view the proposal, click here.

For more on the proposal, see my earlier post here.

Updated (10/21): We got funded! Thanks to everyone who helped out. Look for audio slideshows starting in January!

We had a wonderful discussion a couple of weeks ago in class about journalistic ethics and legal protections for high school journalists. The staff took quite seriously the responsibility of choosing wisely what gets printed or not, even knowing that they have the same first amendment protections as the professional media. Thanks to the California state education code, the Hazelwood case does not apply here. This means that administration does not have the right to censor the newspaper, and neither do I as adviser. 

Unfortunately for me and other advisers, we have been the victims of retaliation by school boards and administrators when they don’t like what appears in the high school newspaper. Fortunately up until now the administration at Roosevelt has been supportive, even when the students have printed things that bothered some in community.

Thankfully, according to the Center for Scholastic Journalism, a bill sponsored by State Senator Leland Yee of San Francisco has just been signed by Governor Schwarzenegger.

No official confirmation from the governor’s office yet, but our sources in California tell us that over the weekend Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law SB 1370, the bill to protect media advisers and other school employees from punishment based on the expression of their students.  More details to come this week.

I’m safe! But class, if you’re reading this, remember what I said: Just because you can print something, doesn’t mean you should. But remember the converse as well. Just because you can choose not to print something, sometimes you have a responsibility to print it to make the truth known. In journalism, unlike politics, nothing is more precious than the truth.

Photo courtesy of Senator Leland Yee.

Picture Courtesy of http://www.shawnolson.net/smo/cartoons/muckraking.jpg

The term “muckraking” refers to a literary and loosely knit journalistic movement that flourished from 1903 to 1912. People who were muckrakers appeared to expose political frauds, corruption, and abuses of power. So in other words, muckraking is the art of exposing the secrets and lies that our country and superior systems keep from us. By pointing out the corruption and secrets our country has, the muckrakers hoped to lead the country’s people to reform. For example, the great activist Eugene V. Debs used his powerful speeches to expose the social corruption going on in our country during the Progressive Era.

I even consider myself a muckraker because in my two previous blogs, I sought out to expose the true ways of our government and how so much corruption is now running our country. Am I afraid to be silenced by the government? Well like Martin Luther King once said, “We start dying the moment we become silent.”

Our voices need to be heard if we ever want change. In order for our country to reform, we must have no lies and barriers that prevent us from seeing the truth. Our government should be telling us all of their plans and if anything unjust is being kept from us, we must expose the government.

Although many have been incarcerated like Eugene V. Debs was, and silenced for muckraking, it is our duty, especially us as journalists, to get the real story out and shine light on all things that are kept from us. It is our duty to show the people what’s really behind the curtain and if educated about the correct information, our citizens can lead this country to a politicial reform.