Final Project Blog…
Dec. 7, 2009 – For my story idea, I have a couple of things in mind. For a business story, I was thinking of possibly going with a poker story. I’m pretty interested in poker and have been playing for a few years now – mainly hold’em, but a few mixed games like razz or stud are also intriguing enough for me to play. In the last few year, the poker world has been radically changed by the huge popularity of the World Series of Poker held in Las Vegas every year. It’s the world’s largest and widely recognized series of poker tournaments and a great way to gain recognition as an elite poker player. Also aiding in the poker boom is the advent of several software programs that allowed users to play poker online. Sites such as Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker sponsors professionals and have their own teams of pro players, and the increase of users who play for real money online has bred a whole new species of poker players.
However, since this is a business themed story, I was thinking of focusing on the monetary aspect of poker and how people make a living off of it. Since the online poker boom, several people including those who are legally underage to be gambling, have been turning a profit online by playing poker. There is a specific “guide” called bankroll management, which refers to players following a set of principles and rules on how to properly manage their poker money for the best possible results in trying to make a living off of poker. This is the information I also plan on using in a graph by gathering data from hopefully some professional online poker friends I have. I would interview them through Skype or the phone and record the conversation for audio, and use pictures of them playing poker, as well as pictures of what the online platform for several poker programs look like so that viewers can get a good visual on what online poker is about and “how to” make a living on poker with proper bankroll management.
Dec. 14, 2009 – The reporting process thus far has been fairly smooth. I’ve had all of my interviews lined up and just need to knock them out but it’s been difficult getting a good time to get together. One of my subjects lives in New York with a three hour time difference, and the other just recently moved to Thailand, so communication hasn’t exactly been the easiest. For research, I’ve been looking up charts and graphs that looks similar to what I was going for in terms of proper bankroll management or showing the plus-minus swings of playing poker, thereby showing the importance of proper bankroll management in order to make a living off of poker.
Capturing photos hasn’t been difficult at all because with my friends’ permission they allowed me to just use their pictures that they have uploaded on Facebook of them playing poker. One of the photos shows my friend Steven playing online with about 16 different poker tables running at once, essentially meaning he’s playing 16 different games of poker all at the same time. The proper term for that is multi-tabling. Steven multi-tables so often that he needs to hook up 2 more computer monitors to one computer in order to play all at the same time. It might seem pretty intense to someone who hasn’t been around poker before, especially online.
If I could give one piece of advice for future students who are going through with this project, it would just have to be to plan wisely. Without proper planning, things can get confusing and a bit hectic. Make sure that you and all of your sources can each agree upon different times of meeting in order to capture the interview, and don’t wait until the last minute to start getting your work done. Even though as journalists some of us may work better under pressure, truth be told it’s a lot less stressful and more rewarding if you can plan thoroughly before tackling this final assignment.
Dec. 18, 2009 – So I don’t have much to say for this production process because my poker business story has fallen through. =( The experts I’ve been looking forward to interviewing haven’t been able to follow through with the interview, so I’ve been scrambling to find a new story to write. As a result, I decided to go with a profile of my friend Jasmine Pacis. She is originally from the Bay Area, and she is absolutely the biggest San Francisco Giants fan I know. Her love for them nearly borders on obsession to me, and I tease her about it all the time. Regardless, she has an undying loyalty to her team and I respect her for that. She collects several memorabilia about the Giants, and she goes to several of their home games at AT&T park. Being from Los Angeles, where the Dodgers are the Giants’ long-standing rivals, I thought it’d be intriguing to just capture Jasmine’s love for her team and everything that she devotes to expressing that love.
UPDATE – So this production process has been time consuming to say the least. I’ve been working on editing the sound clips on Audacity, and busy editing the photos and putting them together to make a decent slideshow. I’d say the most challenging thing during this process is just making sure the edits in the sound bites don’t sound choppy and out of sync with the timing of the photos. Some of the sound bites don’t sound very clean during the editing, but I’m hoping that with more practice I will eventually become a lot more better at it than I am now. I’m nearly done and hoping that it doesn’t take more than an hour to completely upload onto Youtube or the class blog because it’s almost time to be turned in. EEEK!!!
Dec. 21, 2009 - GAAWWD!!! It feels SO good to be done!!! As you know, I’ve had a bit of a stressful time trying to make sure that I turned the project in on time and that it was completed without looking absolutely terrible. LOL Since my original idea fell through, my last second adjustment to working on the profile story worked out ok because luckily my friend didn’t have any plans at the time I called her for the interview. It’s been tough for me in class this entire semester. I swear I feel like God just decided to step on me at random times just so he could watch me suffer and stumble through the class. From losing my completed assignments to having my camera broken to having my final freaking project idea not pan out, I’m surprised that I didn’t just give up.
However, despite the fact that I’ve been stressed out from this class this semester, I’m glad I took it because I was able to learn somewhat on how to use applications like Audacity and Soundslides. I’ve been writing for a while now, so that process in this class wasn’t anything really new aside from the fact that it was a blog, but in terms of gaining more familiarity with online and media tools in order to package and get good journalistic multimedia stories, this class has been invaluable in showing me how awesome one can truly make a story with the right pieces and elements in place.
If I was to do anything different for a next time, I’d just make sure to be more on top of my interviews and stuff. I admit that I could’ve been more personally adamant to my friends about keeping their word for the interview about the poker story, but at the same time there were also other elements outside of my control (i.e. time zones, finals, work, etc..) that kept us from connecting. I would just say that next time I would make sure that I’d have the proper time to get the interviews knocked out of the way first, because I thought that since I had all my interviews lined up already that things were going to go according to plan. I didn’t really have a backup plan for the business story in case it fell through, but thankfully I had another idea for my profile story that came to save the day. Hopefully the work I submitted is good enough to give me a decent grade for the class. =) Once again, thanks Staci for the experience and the memories this semester. I’ll be sure to bring my puppy by your class in case you ever want to see him again…but I can’t let you keep him…I love my little pup too much. hahaha….
