Boston Blogger

A night under the stars

2005-11-27T14:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.boston.com/travel/articles/2005/11/27/in_a_new_light/

The first travel story I ever wrote in my life was featured on the front page of the Boston Globe travel section today -- super exciting. My boyfriend and I took a trip to Washington, D.C. last spring break and wound up crashing in our hotel room at 7 p.m. the first night we were there -- missing out on the night festivities we had planned. When we woke up at 11 p.m., we decided to go on a walk, and wound up touring all the monuments at night, which was amazing. There was not a soul around and we had the entire city to ourselves. I wound up turning the experience into a travel feature for a journalism class at UMass, never thinking it would be published.

Black Friday

2005-11-25T21:38:00.000-08:00

Black Friday was amazingly tame this year -- at least at the stores I went to. But as usual, there were some people who reverted into a mob scene, injuring one individual in New Jersey and causing a ruckus in several other stores across the country. The worst thing I encountered was two women in a shoving match over a sound system at Best Buy, but it was quickly resolved by security.

http://www.kake.com/news/headlines/2017592.html

Girl dies from boyfriend's kiss

2005-11-22T08:26:00.000-08:00

A 15-year-old Quebec girl is dead after being kissed by her boyfriend. The girl, who was allergic to peanuts, went into shock after being kissed by her boyfriend, who had eaten a peanut butter sandwitch hours earlier. So incredibly sad -- I can't imagine how this poor guy must feel. I can definitely relate to allergy sufferers -- I am terrible allergic to bee stings and have to carry an EPI-PEN with me all spring, summer and fall. It's too bad they don't make something similar for nut allergies.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20051125/peanut_allergy_051125/20051125?hub=Health

Gas for $1.96?! Oh my!

2005-11-21T15:02:00.000-08:00

Gas prices are finally back to normal, at least in the Boston area. I actually found regular unleaded for $1.96 in Billerica today, which was the lowest I've paid since coming to Boston. It's amazing that just this past August, they were predicting that gas prices would be near $3.50 to $4 this December. I just hope the downward spiral continues, especially because it wasn't all that long ago that I could fill up my car for $13.

http://cbs11tv.com/topstories/local_story_329215622.html

Newspaper buyouts

2005-11-15T08:43:00.000-08:00

A buyout list will apparently be released sometime in the next few weeks according to my fellow employees, but no one knows exactly when they will come. One nasty rumor is predicting that pink slips will be slid into paycheck envelopes the day before Thanksgiving, giving all disgruntled employees the long weekend to sort out their emotions. So far, nothing big has happened yet, but I feel bad for these excellent reporters who have families and thought their top notch skills had brought them job security. It makes going into the journalism field much more intimidating for me. The field is going to be clogged with excellent, job hunting 35-year-olds, and I will never be able to compete with them. Blech.

Food pantries suffer from bare shelves

2005-11-13T12:35:00.000-08:00

One of the top stories I'm covering for the Thanksgiving season is food pantries in the greater Boston area, and how they've been affected by the poor economy, high gas prices, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Many food pantries are seeing a major drop in their donation numbers. So many people have donated to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, that they have nothing left to donate to the local needy.
While this situation is a major drag, it's being compounded by the increasing number of low-income working families who are turning up at food pantries for assistance with weekly groceries. Directors are blaming rising grocery and heating costs for eating away at family budgets, making it impossible to get through the week without some sort of assistance. Also, the cost of food at the Boston Food Bank, which supplies many shelters in the Boston area, has also gone up. In the end, it looks like Hurricane Katrina did affect New England, even if we are thousands of miles from the Gulf Coast.

And even worse....

2005-11-08T17:21:00.000-08:00

Despite being charged with two counts of extortion (see yesterday's post) Mayor Richard Goyette of Chicopee is refusing to step down from his post, despite pressure from city officials. He must be trying to prove something, but it definitely can't be his innocence after those FBI tapes. I also can't imagine what he thinks he'll get accomplished in office. I doubt he'll be invited to make any public appearances anytime soon, for fear of his own safety.

More bad news for western Mass.

2005-11-07T16:54:00.000-08:00

Richard Goyette, the mayor of a small western Massachusetts city, Chicopee, has been charged with two counts of extortion after FBI surveillance tapes caught him receiving bribes from a local business owner. Its made news across the state and New England, bringing more negative press to an area of the state that has already been under scrutiny for the high crime rates and corruption in Springfield. It's disappointing for an area that's already struggling with poverty rates and a bad job market. It also doesn't make me want to stay in the area.

http://www.wrgb.com/news/regional/regional.asp?selection=article_42589

Free animal videos

2005-11-02T09:45:00.000-08:00

I was really surprised to find a television site that gives away free episodes. http://animal.discovery.com/ lets viewers watch 15 minute-long stories of SPCA rescue missions to save abused pets. I hope to include a feature like this on my own website. The only thing I would change -- having to watch the same stupid IAMS commerical before the start of every video.

Halloween in Salem...craptacular.

2005-11-01T20:11:00.000-08:00

Yeah. Halloween out here is not all that it's cracked up to be. My advice? Don't bother. The traffic is impossible, the tow trucks are out in full force, and two people got stabbed in two separate fights. Either the city didn't plan enough events to keep people occupied, or it was just way too warm outside. I was pretty content to walk around and gaze at the costumes, but my friends (all men) started to drag after two hours of staring. Between today and my last entry, my car was actually towed out of a Salem parking lot in the middle of the night. I had to pay $110 to get the damn thing out and my mother, who was with me, tried to pulverize the tow truck driver. Everyone in the office thought this was hilarious, which led to the debut of my first-ever suburban diary.

I'll post the link as soon as it's up on Boston.com

Halloweeny time

2005-10-29T13:43:00.000-07:00

So it's that time of year when Salem, where I live, gets mobbed with every sort of tourist imaginable, feeding off the biggest tourist traps imaginable. If you've ever driven through the city, you know that Salem is still designed only for the traffic of the late 1600s. It sucks. And tourist season makes it that much more horrific. To get across town should take me 10 minutes. In the month of October, it takes no less than an hour and a half. In order to prevent road rage, I've begun downloading Pod casts on my iPod to listen to. The Globe can be hard to read in the car because it requires so much spread-out space. I guess I could just listen to the radio to get my news, but the iPod makes me feel so much more tech-savy.

A neat series

2005-10-27T13:00:00.000-07:00

Everyone should check out the Globe's online series at Boston.com on the making of an ICU nurse. A very powerful story about the blood, guts, and grieving an ICU intern must overcome before getting the priviledge of becoming a Mass General nurse, which has one of the most intense ICUs in the United States.
While I read the text version offline, (each of the four sections is over 3,000 words) I used the web afterward to look at the photo galleries and listen to the narrated version of the story. It's like hearing a totally new story the second time around.

Ebay

2005-10-21T20:15:00.000-07:00

So, the dam never collapsed. Dissapointment. I guess it was a blessing considering an entire city could have been wiped out. I thought of another area of the web that could really benefit from online journalism.

Ebay.

How much cooler would it be to be able to watch someone "try on" a bag to show the bidder how it falls, or fire a water gun to see how well it squirts, through video. Also, if a seller could attach news reports to their product, like a Consumer Affairs quality report or a newscast on a hot new product, buyers and consumers could both benefit.

Flooding

2005-10-18T06:13:00.000-07:00

This week in the Taunton area of greater Boston, a major river dam is waiting to collapse as we speak -- an event that could give websites a great chance to make use of their streaming video capabilities. If I were them, I would have been advertising this event throughout flood-related stories as soon as I heard about it. "Watch the dam collapse live on our live streaming video" type thing. Maybe it sounds like a huge advertisment, but I would have polls set up about when people think the dam will collapse, how much the repairs will cost, etc., just to get people excited about our live streaming video feature. How cool. People love seeing demolition and mass destruction, and this is a very well predicted event that could really raise traffic numbers for a lot of media websites if they are smart. I'm curious to see what Boston.com does with the whole thing -- I doubt they'd take my idea very seriously because there are so many more important things to cover. But the thing is, sometimes news becomes important not because of what it is, but because people are talking about it.

Globe goes high tech

2005-10-14T18:41:00.000-07:00

So today at work we had a meeting, and a new reporter demonstrated how he has been creating live audio interviews and narrated stories to go with his picture galleries and stories within the greater Boston Bureaus with his high-tech minidisc recorder. Right now, the bureaus, which cover everything outside of the Boston metro area that isn't breaking news, don't have a whole lot of play on Boston.com. Our regional editor wants to make the bureaus more high-tech so they do get more play and localized web traffic. It's neat to be taking this class, and then go to work and see it happening. The mini disc recorder looks just like a small walkman with a set of headphones and a microphone attached --perfect for doing interviews and picking up sound. I want to invest in one, but they're upwards of $300...I'll have to consider the investment.

Bush PR bites back

2005-10-13T21:27:00.000-07:00

Yeah. So this week, Americans learned exactly what happens when you use technology, such as video phone interviews on live television, to convince people of something that isn't entirely true. You usually get caught. While nothing illegal was done in the "briefing" of American soldiers on how to react to questions on the live broadcast, it still shows that even the government is willing to use new technology unfairly to their advantage -- even if that means proving something that isn't there. Luckily, because technology is so good, most of the deception is uncovered. It just goes to show people that even the President or the media can portray things inaccurately. Overall, everything, including news (sadly) is best taken with a grain of salt.

Marriage sucks

2005-10-07T23:08:00.000-07:00

This is the first time that a celebrity story has actually bothered me emotionally.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9600529/

I never care about who gets married or pregnant or divorced, but Jessica Simpson I really really liked. She seemed the most real and thoughtful out of most of the celebrities out there. Althoug she's been touted as a dumb blonde, the girl definitely has class, style, and some argueable talent, if not just stunning beauty. It's really too bad if these gossip columns are true -- Nick and Jessica were the one example in Hollywood of young marriage and innocent love that actually worked.

I guess I should've given them more than 3 years.

Lesson to young impressionable women and girls everywhere: Never get married. Unless you want a divorce and nasty stories told about you.

I like cheese.

2005-10-04T18:53:00.000-07:00

Say that slang style. A very unique information forum I've found is www.urbandictionary.com
It's basically an online dictionary that users can post their own slang words and definitions. While some of the entries are a little over the top, many of them reflect buzzwords from all around the world -- many of which are hilarious. I guess, in some weird way, it's a really neat way of communicating with other people (mostly college students) who have time between classes and bar-hopping to make up this stuff. My upcoming submissions?
Adventurating -- to wander the college campus randomly at 2 a.m. with your roommate because the Round Robin on your dorm hallway got shut down by the RA and everyone else in your building is either arrested, being written up, or passed out. (I did this a lot with my roommate freshman year when we couldn't sleep due to the racket)

Fooding -- Participating at meals in the Dining Commons, where you consume you third daily ration of cereal, diet coke, and whatever looks edible on the dessert cart. Fooding happens not because you want it to, but because you are famished, dead broke for takeout and all you have is three day old Easy Mac in the microfridge.

Croc in the crack house

2005-10-01T14:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, maybe this story had nothing to do with a crack house. But the owner of a three-foot alligator certainly had an explanation for Amherst police that only a crack head would give.
"It's a really big lizard."
Yeah, right. While alligators might be legal to keep as pets in Rhode Island, where the guy bought the "iguana", they certainty aren't allowed in Amherst.
I just wish there was a picture of this guy, because he most likely had dreadlocks down to his belly button, or else he's just another local stoner having a nasty night with the cops. (And what UMASS student hasn't?)
This is the kind of story that never seems to disappear. Ten years later it will still be getting passed around as a chain letter --- something like a picture gallery and extra hyperlinks will just add to the fun. A video...ahhh...that would be the best. Things like that wind up on Leno. Or Springer.

http://www.masslive.com/news/umass/weblog/

Mold Monster attacks the deep south

2005-09-29T14:32:00.000-07:00

I love the mold stories this week. Mold, mold, mold. It's so disgusting, yet so fascinating. The water that has been stagnant in Louisana homes for almost a month now has become a breeding ground for every species of mold imaginable, some of which are absoultely beautiful. However, some types give off toxic fumes that can trigger migrane attacks and other nasty stuff. Worse yet, it's almost impossible to get rid of, even with an army of cleaning products. (Try moving into an apartment in Puffton Village in Amherst, and you'll see what I mean.)
I love looking at the photo galleries online of how this stuff is forming and eating away at the walls and furniture of people's homes. Don't get me wrong, I feel horrible for all those people who are going to lose what was left of them homes and lives, but it's like nature is finally polluting us for a change.
http://www.dailyrecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051001/LIFE01/510010302/1072/LIFE

2005-09-23T13:51:00.000-07:00

Gangs are so...Primitive. The mentality is seriously a combination of marking territory and gaining power. Monkeys do that crap. We should have evolved past that by now.
The Haverhill area has been having a major surge in gang problems that I've been watching, but it's not just disappointing to see in just one city. In Chicopee the other night, a driver was gunned down by another while both were behind the wheel, shutting down a four lane highway overnight. I guess the guy was seriously blown to pieces. What the reporter often fails to do is give a background on the different gangs, who belonged to which, and what the fight was over. Editors generally don't like those details, and I have no idea why. I think they're important.
I understand that most gangs have to do with money, drug, and poverty issues, but it's one cure for humanity that someone needs to come up with fast. I can't imagine growing up with the mentality that the only way I'm going to get anywhere with my life is hustling drugs on the street. If illegal activities make more money than a basic job, maybe we should all be taking a look at how we treat the poor. Or minorities.

EEE threats

2005-09-18T09:41:00.000-07:00

Out by Boston and around the North Shore, there has been a pretty severe threat of EEE, a virus carried by mosquitoes that is transmitted to humans when they are bitten. Symptoms start out like the flu and then turn into brain swelling. Many people who are not treated wind up with mild to severe brain damage. On the North Shore, one poor 20-year-old girl was rendered brain dead after doctors failed to diagnose the symptoms correctly. Schools have cancelled recess and athletic events, in hopes of preventing more cases.
At times like these, it's good to be informed, but technology still hasn't caught up with the problem of overloaded web sites. The Massachusetts Department of Health's webpage was taking an average of 15 minutes to open last night -- slower than fossilization in computer time.

Volunteers already

2005-09-14T13:42:00.000-07:00

Okay - a small gripe. I understand that people from all over the country are risking life and limb to volunteer in Louisiana. I know they are performing great acts of heroism and selflessness that will never be forgotten. Soy comprende. Or whatever.
This may sound awful, but to my high-wired, easily bored generation, no one gives a shit anymore. While media coverage of these things is great, to be over saturated with it can almost be desensitizing. Seeing and hearing the same stories over and over doesn't make me want to help people or give my money. It leaves me wondering what else is going on in the world. I felt the same way with the tsunami coverage last winter. It was important to help and important to hear, but did not need to be the top story every single night. I do believe that no matter how tragic an incident, the media can definitely beat an issue to death. Another example? The O.J. Simpson case.

Another Sept. 11 over...whew.

2005-09-12T17:46:00.000-07:00

News coverage around the world of yesterday and today were more relaxed and less emotional than they have been in, well, four years. It's tough to remain interested in the same memorial services and view the same footage over and over again, and I think it's been a struggle for the media too, especially online media.
Should every text story have links to stories about the Iraq war, picture galleries of mourning families and video replaying the second plane crashing into the Trade Center? They sure seemed to think so, until this year. I have noticed little to no Sept. 11 coverage. There was one headline story on most news stations and whatever most dot-com media outlets covered was hidden in a "Sept. 11" sidebar, rather than displayed front and center. A wise move in my opinion. Let those people who want to hear about it have it. Just don't make the rest of us suffer through it again. We all know what day it is.