mollylawrence

“complex expression”

mollylawrence — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:54:45 +0000

Dear WordPress,

If “submit” is a complex expression, then I may now be motivated to utilize any complex expression imaginable, until the masses of individuals who unearth this page are compelled to have dictionary.com tabbed on their browser, just to comprehend my “complex” use of the english language. They will assimilate, and I shall be pleased.

That, or you seriously underestimate the reading levels of WordPress readers.

Transitions

mollylawrence — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:44:01 +0000

As I begin my senior year, the pace and the content of the blog is going to shift considerably. “Welcomed” with news that the school newspaper, The Pride, is no more I will start the process of trying to get a web-based student news outlet at Penncrest. Til then, expect updates on local issues, day-to-day life, and promotions for local events and shows. Not that I really think anyone reads this, but more as a rough draft to collect my thoughts and get used to updating and writing, so that if the web news idea picks up I’ll have worked out a style for all this shenanigans. My goal is to report on school and local events, as well as updates from our representatives in Washington, an Editorial and Free-Write section for students to submit artwork, poetry, writing, or whatever they feel. I also want to try to get a regularly updated list of events- school and nonschool related- as an effort to create a sense of community, connectedness and involvement among students. Be this school events and games, volunteer ops, high school band shows, or whatever else gets submitted, I want students to feel involved as a community and student. Plus, I hate the hometown hate and the “there’s nothing to do around here” attitude that plagues the student mind. If any of my WJMC friends and advisors are reading this, any help and suggestion you could offer would really be appreciated. I’m a bit in the dark and I don’t know much about any of this.
Thanks,

Molly

On hold

mollylawrence — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 19:06:08 +0000

I don’t like to think of the last day of the conference as the end. The relationships we’ve built, connections we made, and things we’ve learned are just the beginning of things yet to come. This conference was an incredible experience, and for the first time in my life I can see clearly that there is a path for me, not full of doubt or even slightly uncertain, and on it there is a future in journalism for myself and everyone who attended this conference, should each of us just reach out and walk towards it. To all that I’ve met: I thank you for everything you’ve shared and I would love to keep in touch.

twitter: molly_teresa

email: molly.teresa.lawrence@gmail.com

skype: loveherways

and you can find me on facebook by typing in Molly Lawrence Philadelphia

Love always,

Molly

Day Five

mollylawrence — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 05:05:22 +0000

Where can I start? Do I tell you about going to the Capitol to have a meeting with Ian Jannetta and Maureen O’Dea of Sen. Bob Casey’s staff, and another with Maureen Keith and Rep. Pat Meehan? Should I tell you about the conversations we had about their work, and the sometimes crooked path from their press releases to the major media viewers in their constituency? Or should I move on to the WJMC Gala, where the DJ played “Intergalactic” (Beastie Boys) and some Wu Tang Clan at my request, and where a certain Dean of Admissions could be seen belting out the words to “Fuck You” and “Don’t Stop Believing”?

I guess my rhetorical questioning saved me a lot of writing this evening. The morning will bring tearful goodbyes and hard parting after such at an amazing week at the conference with some truly incredible people from all over the country. I can only hope that I can manage to keep in touch with them all. This has been the best experience of my life. You can bet your ass I’ll be here next year to intern!

Day Four: on CSPAN

mollylawrence — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 22:32:22 +0000

For those who weren’t there, Tucker Carlson, a contributor to Fox News, said on Washington Journal this morning in front of an audience of WJMC students that he believed that those who aren’t informed should not vote. He followed up after that by saying that because there weren’t as many people on welfare as larger entitlement programs (and imagined there were very few people in the room who knew any one on welfare, backing that statement) that cutting it in the budget talks would be a simple solution.
As a girl living just outside Philadelphia and as a WIC baby, I was insulted on two levels.

“In saying those who “aren’t informed” shouldn’t vote, what would you say to those Americans hit by the recession, who cannot afford an internet connection, or a TV bill, or a weekly subscription to a newspaper? Do they still deserve to have their voice heard in American Democracy?” I asked. I also informed him that as a product of PA’s WIC program, and that his blanket statements and assumptions were not welcome.

He answered by first clarifying his statement about welfare, saying along the lines of that he did not mean to attack welfare, but to simply point out that with fewer people in that system, it would be an easier program to cut, because programs that get minority distribution are simply unpopular in tough economic times. Okay, I can see where you stand, and I’m glad that you clarified where you were coming from. He then responded to my question, a bit awkwardly at first, by stating that he believes there isn’t an excuse for people to be uninformed with venues like public libraries for citizens to get information, that the internet was free, and that there were no people in the United States in the situation I had just mentioned. I had a problem with that.

Living next to Philadelphia, Chester, and Camden, I know that this is not the case, especially as state and local budget negotiations are closing public libraries, and poorer areas are seeing reduced school funding and higher local taxes. (LINK 1) To say that the uninformed shouldn’t vote is in my mind the equivalent of a literacy test. But I could see how, from his viewpoint, he worked around my question to try to respond and still standing true to his beliefs. I can respect that, especially in a time where political commentators and politicians often work as, “people pleasers” and make people like them by flip-flopping and agreeing with their challengers. But, how would such a system be implemented and who would do the judging of who is “informed” and “uninformed?” Wouldn’t such a system prey on the poor who lack the resources to get information (a population which, by the way, does exist)? If implemented, I think that such a system would repress the vote along the lines of age, education, and socio-economic status, and simply would not be possible to put into place. I realize I may be taking his statement a bit too far and being a bit over-analytical, but if someone brings out statements advocating the “uninformed” not to vote, they have to be prepared to look into the reality of that statement, and how it applies to the American populous and a functioning democracy.

Unfortunately I was not able to respond, otherwise I would have led the conversation into the misconceptions forced on many viewers done by media outlets. I see today a very non-existent line between reporting and commentary, which leads many viewers to take opinion as fact, and which leads to a bias presented to viewers that warps the very image of reality in many cases. I would also liked to have him whether polls that have shown that Fox viewers are constantly misinformed on basic facts of domestic and international policy (LINK 2), and the fact that Fox news has won two Politifact “Lie of the Year” awards ( LINK 3) would label Fox viewers as “uninformed,” justifying their disenfranchisement? Just something to think about.

Link to the video: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Tucker

LINK 1: http://articles.philly.com/2010-08-06/news/24972581_1_library-board-three-libraries-library-book

LINK 2: http://iowaindependent.com/49303/study-finds-fox-news-viewers-more-likely-to-be-misinformed-on-basic-political-facts

LINK 3: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/jun/22/jon-stewarts-politifact-segment-annotated-edition/

Update: Taking a cooler headed look at the CSPAN video of Washington Journal, I rewrote some of what was posted earlier. I’d like to make it clear that in no way do I want to attack Mr. Carlson’s personal beliefs. I did however want to challenge a set of statements I found to be particularly vague, blanketed, or unsound and to have them addressed and clarified.

On a separate note, I thought that Gov. Tim Caine’s talk was both balanced and rational. I would definitely support his election to the Senate for the state of Virginia. His views on the budget talks and of his home state of Virginia were well calculated, honest, and incredibly refreshing.

Brian Lamb, CEO of CSPAN led an excellent talk on the journalist creed displayed in the Washington Press Club. I started a discussion about what bias means, how we know when news organizations are telling the truth, and where we get our information from that I personally think should be happening on a national level.

I was unimpressed by Josh Earnest, who made also made some blanket statements and assumptions about the views of the crowd that I found startling.

Enough blogging, it’s time for dinner.

Day Three

mollylawrence — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 03:50:48 +0000

“How many Todd’s could a Chuck Todd chuck if a Chuck Todd could chuck Todd?”
Credit to Anna for this little mantra of the day. Press club today, arrived back at the dorms at 11, alarm set for 5:15 am. Hence: short post. Tonight’s “sleep” will be more of a nap than anything.

But hey to all you avid CSPAN fans: be prepared to have your morning programming interrupted tomorrow.

Day Two

mollylawrence — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 03:43:23 +0000

Bacon and hash browns kicked off another excellent start to a day at WJMC.

We toured Newseum, which if you are not familiar with it, is the Duncan’s Toy Chest for journalism nerds. With exhibits on Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, and the Pulitzer Prize photographs among others, we were kept occupied for hours exploring and learning about the impact that reporters can have in not only how news events gain public attention, but how the world perceives those events and the impact journalists have in forming that perception.
During our group sessions, our members got into a very long discussion about what we saw in the museum and what affected us personally. Beginning with the photos and blending into Katrina, 9/11, and the Berlin Wall, we quickly began discussing issues of when journalists may face in having to choose when to be a reporter and when to be a human being. Many of the photographs we saw were brutal and heart-wrenching to say the least, visible in the deafening silence of the exhibit and the visceral reactions of those viewing the images. While an image from Boston of a woman and child plummeting downward, literally to the death of th 19-year-old girl, after a fire escape collapsed led to an overhaul of fire escape standards in the US, an image of a mother and father wailing after their child was swept out to sea was less newsworthy so much as a sensational invasion of privacy. Our group leader, Matt Schott, was working for a newspaper in Florida on September 11, 2001 and argued fiercely to publish a photograph of workers jumping out of the towers which some found brutal and overly graphic, but which he perceived as a report of the events. Whatever one’s views, we found ourselves strongly connected by the vulnerability of the subjects in these frames of time in incredibly beautiful or terrible parts of human history. This was especially true in subjects here in the United States: Hurricane Katrina and 9/11.

The Katrina exhibit became my task for the day: find something that strikes you and tell the group about it. I suppose what struck me most among the wall of sequential national front pages, with titles such as, “Thousands Expected Dead” and “Our Tsunami,” one page in particular grabbed me by the guts with a bitingly ironic set of stories. Just below an images of New Orléans disaster and a story two days out from the storm, a story was printed about FEMA efforts on the Wright tornadoes, shedding what seemed like a ray of hope towards a recovery among reports of total carnage. Yet, at the bottom of this report, a statement from Charles Henderson, spokesman for FEMA, said that FEMA would, “Rather not be in areas struck by Hurricane Katrina.” With Governor Kathleen Blanco ordering a too-late evacuation of the area in Louisiana struck by Katrina in the story above, the front page of this paper captured the very image of government reaction to the disaster from those viewing in hindsight.

Later in the evening, I attended two separate talks, one led by David Farnsworth on how Politicians and especially presidents present themselves and market through the media, and another lead by Michael Shear of the New York Times “The Caucus” blog about his work covering politics and his career as a journalist. Both speakers pointed out two important truths that I feel have had me disheartened by American journalism in the past few years: Mr. Farnsworth pointed out that journalists do very little explaining anymore, and qualified my statement that an oversimplification of events by both politicians and journalist, as well as a relaxed approach to policy making by our president have led us to some of the policy disasters that we face today. On a separate point, Mr. Shear seemed very proud of his work at the times due to the fact that, “much of what passes as news today is punditry.” That hyper-polarized activist journalism exhibited in such cases as Fox News and MSNBC is not factual, or does not tell the most objective and truthful view of the story when it presents events to the American people. I referenced a story by Jennifer 8. Lee in Page One: Inside the New York Times in which she says that early editions of the Times looked much like todays modern blogs, all sort of hap-hazard junctions of non-news and news conveniently onto one page. I posed to Mr. Shear a question of whether he believed that blogs would make the kind of strides toward an organized and professional approach to news coverage that newspapers had made, or if it was too unregulated a medium for that to take place. He told us that already gains were being made in to that end among mainstream media outlets, and although non-professional blogs will forever exist people have begun to weed out the Michael Shear blogs from the Joe in his basement type blogs.
In all, it was a very productive day, leaving me with much more to think about and leaving me with a hope that I’m not alone in a desire for a more fact based, relevant, objective, and professional media.

Day One

mollylawrence — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 03:36:41 +0000

I should have known as soon as I picked up a loose copy of The Onion’s Summer Music Issue at a local deli that it would be a good day.
The start of the Washington Journalism and Media Conference kicked off today, rushed in by eager new hello’s and awkward, “So, what do you like to do?” sessions with roommates who will, within the next week, see what I look like in the morning and possibly walk in me on the bathroom. Soon we gathered in our groups and introduced ourselves again. The ice began to crack as we settled back into our chairs, comforted by the friendly yet nervous stutters of the surrounding group members. I found myself volunteering to ask a question of my choice to Chris Cillizza, writer of “The Fix” at the Washington Post. Or rather Joe from Texas opted out of rock-paper-scissors for the job as soon as we discovered we’d be on our own for the questioning.
At dinner, I was surrounded by Andrew Flagel(Dean of Admissions for George Mason), Caitlin Shear(Director of the Conference), Chris Cilliazza(aforementioned guest speaker), and three other eager students who were equally surprised by the networking opportunity handed to them. Immediately we began with the introductions and the small talk, the where your from’s and the who are you’s. When I imagined what I would be doing at this conference, I expected tailored suits in white halls, very professional, very adult, a bit too formal. When Chris came to sit down at our table, what I saw was not the Washington Post hot-shot I had envisioned. The height was about right, but at 6’6″ this mega media blogger dawned a comfortable blue jeans and sport jacket, not the navy suit I had pictured of a White House reporter. He was incredibly personable as were Caitlin and Andrew as I soon found myself in a conversation about big families and dropping cell phones.
Titled, “The Future of Journalism and Media,” the talk was not the “blogging is cool” talk I expected from reading the assigned articles and books that had basically followed that pattern. Chris gave a very encouraging talk about the true gift that is technology to a young aspiring journalist. He himself fell upon the trade almost by accident; various networking led him into Washington politics and when he reached the Post, he became their blogging guinea pig. For him, coming onto it at the dawn of its esistance gave him an edge, but it is an edge everyone can use to make themselves known.
When it came time for me to ask him my question, it felt almost ridiculous to have to speak into a microphone across a stage to this man who had from his entrance presented himself in so humble and friendly a fashion that the mic seemed an annoying formality. I also did not have a fully thought out question, so I stuttered a bit.
“So, as a reporter in the, uh, fast paced and ever, uh, changing scene that is D.C. politics and the uh, center of American politics, how do you find yourself able to get information out of those who at times make it their job to be ambiguous as possible?”
His answer wrapped around his job, to the basic steps of asking for comments on a story, to finally revolving around to one basic point: part of journalism is relationship building. Like highschool, while we have to know who’s saying what about whom and for what purpose, we also will find ourselves being told information from the relationships we have built with our subjects.
I suppose finding the human within your subject was a bit of a universal theme tonight.

One in the Same

mollylawrence — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:04:30 +0000

In the last week of school, I was told that I needed to come up with two art pieces for our National Art Honors Society “Cat Walk” for next year. Nice heads up. Art wasn’t in my schedule that year due to the extra AP social studies courses I had squeezed in, so I had nothing new from the year. I had done an exceptional portrait for the memory project, but that was in the hands of a Peruvian orphan by now. I decided to take the difficult route and create two new pieces. Enough background, now to the point:

The so-called Arab Summer of uprisings resulting government-versus-civilian clashes have been particularly saddening to watch. Especially considering our country’s pretentious, half-assed involvement in the issue. Oh, and did I mention hypocritical?
While we continue to denounce Bashar al-Assad’s torture of civilian protestors, we still have a torture center open Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A bit of a, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” don’t you think?
So, my photo project is an image from a protest of the death of Hamza al-Khateeb spliced between an image of two US soldiers escorting a blind-folded Guantanamo Bay prisoner behind fences. Maybe one day, we’ll see all mistreatment of human life as deplorable, and we will make excuses for no one.
Maybe that’s too large a metaphor for one high-school hallway. That’s alright, because my second project was a sassy old woman playing bingo.

Eight More Days

mollylawrence — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 16:31:37 +0000

It’s official: I’m packed, I’m anxious, I’ve paid even more painstaking attention to the news than usual, and the only thing left to do is the reading list. After being sticker-shocked by my amazon.com total, I thought maybe I’m better off guzzlin’ some gas and getting the books the old-fashioned way. There’s a hammock and a glass of lemonade calling my name; time to cram.