Black Friday at The Falls

Despite discount signs on most store windows, The Falls shopping center located in South West Miami wasn’t particularly attractive to Black Friday shoppers this year.

As other malls were swarmed by discount-geared crowds, Black Friday was like any other Friday at this shopping center.

Some shoppers say that their visit to the mall on Black Friday was merely a coincidence.

“I’m here because my computer’s music stopped and I had to come to the apple store,” said 71-year old Robert Torres.

Neye Coker, an engineer who was shopping with his two daughters on Friday, doesn’t believe in the Black Friday hype.

“My sister is having a baby shower so we came to get some gift prizes,” he said. “We don’t believe in Black Friday, it’s too commercialized.”

Despite shoppers’ lack of Black Friday enthusiasm, revenues for some locations were positive.

Patty Smith, 40, has been operating a candy stand since May of this year.

“I’ve asked around some stores and they said it’s been a little bit slow compared to last year,” she said. “But my sales have been better.”

Normally security is increased by the mall management to prepare for the Black Friday crowds, but The Falls was mellow this year.

“No problems today, everything’s been kept well,” said Lester Abreu, 19, one of the security guards at the mall.

Election Coverage

I just wanted to share some pictures of Alec Scott and Luis Roca doing some great reporting. It was a lot of fun.

Aventura Mall maitre d' is music to shoppers' ears

Hey everyone this is my very own article that got published in The Miami Herald on Sunday Nov. 7th. It's about one of the aventura mall piano players that has been entertaining shoppers and working in the food court maintenance staff for almost two decades.

This is the very definition of a feature story. Also please watch the video and tell me what you think.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/11/05/1909614/aventura-mall-maitre-d-is-music.html

Freedman's Letters to a Journalist serves to mentor

Freedman used a very distinctive approach rarely seen in any type of writing. All 167 pages consist basically of one single letter to the reader. Any person reading this book will take all of the anecdotes and advice very personally. By the end of the book, one might feel as though he/she knows Freedman personally.

This book can be used as a life manual or instructions for a journalist. It's packed with priceless and selfless advice that every aspiring journalist should read. But most importantly, people contemplating a future as a journalist, even is he or she is in school.

Having experienced a long and successful career, Freedman teaches you all the warning signs to watch out for. He also bestows insightful information about reporting and writing upon every journalist aspirant.

His "stages of writing" come in a cleverly organized order. Conceptualization, reporting, outlining, re-reporting, drafting and revision. These stages should be taught as journalism requirement to all journalism students. Although writing can come naturally to some people, it's always difficult in the beginning of one's career as a journalist. This leads to intimidation, and for some people, failure.

If students are taught a specific way to go about the writing process, they wouldn't have to learn the hard way and could go straight to becoming great writers.

His lessons on reporting are invaluable. The anecdotes that Freedman shares on his experience with different obstacles throughout the reporting fraction of his career, demonstrates to the readers that great reporters don't all start out great. He made mistakes that anyone can make. But he exposes an imperative lesson, which is that it's essential to gain knowledge from these mistakes and use that knowledge to improve your skills. Making mistakes and learning from them is the only way to become great.

As Freedman stated more than once in his book, "My virtue derives from my failures more than my successes."

A 400 year old song becomes itunes hit!

The title of the story written by Herald reporter Howard Cohen reads: "That hot new song? It's really 400 years old." This story appeared on the bottom right corner of the front page of today's newspaper, then continued in section A1 - 7A, which is only a few turns later.

If I would have to sum the story up in one sentence, I would say: Coral Gables choral group, Seraphic Fire, released a 21st century version of the 1610 hit, Monteverdi's Vespers of the Blessed, and has topped several iTunes charts as a result.

The article was published as the top story in the music section, and rightfully so. However, why is this story given such relevance? I believe that although it may not be of importance to our well being or the health of our futures. It's of cultural importance to many people. Not to mention it's very interesting. I say interesting because it can appeal to people of all ages, anyone who likes music or even anyone who downloads music on iTunes.

On another note, how often do we hear of a 1610 year old song becoming a hit of any kind in another millenium? Not very often. So that makes it newsworthy right there.

Here is a link to the online version of the article: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/02/1805931/that-hot-new-song-its-really-400.html.

Conflicting quotes - Publish or not to publish? That is the question.

On Wednesday, Sept. 1st, Professor Reisner asked our class a very unexpected question. If you are covering a speech and the speech giver lies, and you have solid proof of this, would you publish his quote?

An example he gave was of a rabbi who at one point said, "I am a terrorist." Would you publish this very eye-catching quote although you knew it to be a false statement?

Although I consider myself a toddler in the journalism and media industry, I opine that the quote in fact should be published every time hands down. However, this can completely change the direction that your article was supposed to take originally.

There is a point I'm trying to get to. When I started working with the South Florida News Service at FIU, one of the students asked the director Chris Delboni if she could pursue a story about an elementary school basketball coach, who had won all types of championships and titles during her trajectory as an athlete. Problem was, she knew the woman and wasn't sure if this was a conflict of interest.

Delboni asked her one simple question that makes this dilemma simple to solve. "If you found out something negative about her, would you publish it?" The student immediately shook her head. "Then that's your answer right there," said Delboni.

So in retrospect, if you find out someone is lying and misleading the masses, I believe it's our job as reporters to expose these lies and provide truth. If you feel that you wouldn't be able to expose someone, then you know that you shouldn't be working on that story in the first place. Yes, you definitely will end up writing a completely different article than what you originally planned, but the principles instilled in us as journalists throughout the course of our education should be priority.