Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Catching the "Cowboy Spirit" this summer!

As I make my last-minute plans for a summer internship back home in Springfield, I have found myself adding a little bit of "spice" to my typical summer plans, thanks to one of my fellow agricultural communications peers. Though plans are still in progress, I would love to attend the National Ag Media Summit, which will be hosted in Texas this summer. Besides getting to enjoy the beautiful scenery, I would have the opportunity to interact with media professionals in the industry from across the nation. Several public relations professionals, photographers, journalists and designers attend this summitt to learn about the most up-to-date ideas in the industry.
So you may be asking what there will be at this summit. Several seminars and workshops will be held that will give students the opportunity to discuss the future of agricultural journalism, how consumers and producers can reconnect with each other, and what to expect from this type of career in the future.
I am hoping to broaden my horizons this summer and attend this year's 11th ag media summit. Hopefully I will be able to travel with a few of my ag comm. peers and have the opportunity to site-see around Texas at the same time!

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

My Discovery of the AP Exchange!

Let me just say that as a college student, I sometimes lack on listening to the news. Back home, I always watch the 6 o'clock news each night. However, here at school, it's just a different story...as a student, you are "busy." Each semester, I make it a goal to catch up on the world around me, but sometimes it just doesn't happen. I was happy to discover the AP exchange web site in lab this week. It gives a quick and easy way to browse not only breaking news, but also developing stories. It is convenient, and for people who only want "selected" news, they can simply choose which category they would like. This is not to say other news web sites do not offer this. The AP exchange, however, just lists the stories without distractions.

My favorite story was about the South Carolina widow who had been dead for 18 months and nobody even noticed. While this is very sad, I enjoyed the conversation I had with my news team about this bizarre story. The first questions most of us had was, "Oh, so the dog died, too?" Come to find out, the dog had actually died of thirst. Authorities said there was enough dog food in supply. Readers tend to enjoy these types of stories, because they offer a break from the typical hard news each day. It leaves the actually story to the imagination, which is what many people enjoy, just as my news team did.