Final Thoughts

I  have  finally  submitted  my  podcast  episode  and  I  am  quite  satisfied  with   it. I  am  also  a  bit  relieved  that  it  is  finally  over. I  worried  about  the  outcome  from  the  day  i  started  to  the  day  i  finished  it. 

If  i  had  the  chance  to  go  back  and  do  things  differently, I  would  definitely  chose  a  different  topic, maybe  one  that  would  be  easier  to  conduct  research  on. If  I  could  do things  differently  with   my  present  podcast, I  would  start   very  early, try  to  be  ahead  of  the  class  if  possible. Time  management  proved  to  be  a  very  difficult  area  for me  in  this  assignment  and  in  this  course   generally.

One  piece  of  advice  I  would  give  to  any  student  just  starting  this  course  is, be  on  time. Do  the   blog posts  on  time, do the  work  for  the  assignments  on  time, do  everything  on  time, because  this is  not  a  course  that   can  be  rushed  through  at  the  last  minute. 

I  am glad   to  have  come  to  the  end  of  this  course. It  was  interesting, but  also  really  tasking. I  might  even  take  more  writing  courses  in  the  future. 

DUIs: Should They Be Private issues, or Breaking News?’

This  is  my  podcast  segment  for the  show :On  The Media. I  have  analyzed  the  case  of  a  16  year  old  boy  who  was  arrested  and  charged  with  a  DUI  after  driving  while  he  was  drunk  and killing  and  injuring  a  few  people  in  the  process. My  podcast  segment  shows  the  media's  portrayal  of  the  case  and  discusses  whether  the coverage  was  ethical  or  not. It  also  asks  the  question, should  cases  like  this  be  reported  in  the  media  in  the  first  place?

Digging Deeper

I   recently  got  the  feedback  for  my  podcast  pitch  and  realized  that  I  have  to  do  some  more  work  on  my  topic.  I  will  need  to  take  some  extra  time  to  further  refine  my  topic  before  I  can  settle  on  any  sources.

So  far,  I  have  found  many  popular  sources  and  very  few  scholarly  sources  that  deal  with  the  issue  of  DUI  reports  in  the  media.  One  popular  source  I  found  is  an  online  show  called  The  Young  Turks.  The  network  usually  focuses  on  political  issues  and  is  very  interesting  to  watch,  on  the  other  hand,  the  reporting  is  very  opinionated  and  depicts  a  very  obvious  bias  towards  liberal  views.  I  might  not  be  able  to  use  this  source  after  all,  unfortunately.

The  popular  sources  I  am  looking  for  would  have  to  be  mainly  magazine  articles  and  news  reports.  I  will  have  to  put  in  some  extra  time  and  a  lot  of  work  this  reading  week  in  order  to  make  a  podcast  show  that  I  can  be  proud  of,  and  one  that  will  also  get  me  a  good  grade. 

Topic Refinement

I was one of the people who signed up for a pitch presentation date just before that approach was cancelled and we were assigned pitch presentation dates. I had signed up for the 5^th of February, so I thought I had enough time to work on my pitch presentation. I was going to write it and practice for a whole week. Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed when I logged on to Moodle and saw that I had been assigned to present on the 29^th of February. I panicked for a while, then I realized that I had to work on it….fast. I was upset at first, since I have a terrible fear of public speaking and I felt like I did not have enough time to do the assignment properly, but  I look back now and I am actually grateful.

The pitch presentation exercise helped me to refine and decide upon my topic, in record time. I knew I had to present something feasible and I did not want to look stupid in front of a group of people. I sincerely believe that if I did not have to do the pitch exercise, I would still be struggling with my topic. My refined idea happens to involve two of my favorite things – Human rights and the media. I pitched to the On the Media podcast, and my episode will present information gathered on DUI arrests and how they are reported by the media. I will take a look at the impacts of media reporting on all the people involved in these cases and I will also present my answer to the question: should the media report DUIs? In my pitch, I only cited one main incident, but in my final podcast I will be drawing on several case examples to formulate my narrative.

I am glad to say, I now look forward to putting together my podcast episode. 

PITCHING

This week, while I was preparing for my blog post, I had to search for advice for making a pitch online. Some of the resources I found were very interesting, but there were three of them that I felt had reasonable points and sound advice.
From the CBC website, I found a pitch guide which contains a top ten list of tips for pitching. Two of them were particularly relevant to my podcast pitch and they are:
*Listen to several podcast shows while preparing for the pitch
*Ask for unbiased feedback and be open to it.
(http://www.cbc.ca/pitch/radiopitchguide.html)
I deemed this source to be reliable because the CBC is a national and well respected radio and television broadcaster.

My second source is the podcast show This American Life. On the website's submissions page, there is some advice on submitting a podcast pitch. The pitches that worked for This American Life had a story with characters and a conflict. I think that applying this to my podcast pitch would make it more interesting.
(http://www.thisamericanlife.org/about/submissions)
 I chose this resource because This American Life is a show that has been mentioned in class by Professor Bell and the it receives several podcast pitches at a time.

My final source is a blog,  waxmarketing.com, which has a post; 10 steps to pitching radio, one of which is: Get to the point right away, write it in 200 words or less. I think that this is probably the most important point I found because when a pitch is short, people are more likely to listen  and be interested.
(http://blog.waxmarketing.com/2009/06/01/10-steps-to-pitching-radio/)
I chose this source because the point that I got from it has been talked about in class and the blog itself generally has very good advice concerning marketing and communications for professionals.

Based on this advice, I need to listen to a lot of shows, ask for feedback from my peers, make sure that my pitch can be seen as a story in a traditional sense, and I have to be able to keep my pitch as short and as interesting as possible.

TOPIC SELECTION

The Podcast show I have chosen to emulate is On The Media. I like the way it takes events and stories that  have been shared in the media and gives an in-depth explanation for each of them and then presents a fresh perspective on the highlighted issues. I chose this podcast show mainly because I have noticed that when any major News story is discovered, it is usually interpreted in different ways by members of mainstream media. Only once in a while do most opinions on a News story go in the same direction, and it is one of such stories that I would like to use as my podcast topic.

I have not yet made up my mind completely on what particular topic to pursue for my podcast. I am currently considering a fairly recent story in which a teenager in the United States was able to escape jail time after killing people while he was driving under the influence, because his lawyers were able to convince the court that he suffered from influenza. I am doing a little more research on the story and I should be able to narrow down my topic in a very short time.

In trying to select my topic I was not able to use SPARK, because I did not find anything that was very helpful to me at that point in time. Although, I was admittedly not very patient when I started looking through it, so I will devote a few hours of my study time this week to really go through it and see what I can use. The story I am looking at for my podcast is one that I am very interested in, so hopefully at the end I will be able to do it justice.

INTRODUCTIONS

Hello, my name is Oghogho Lila Eka and I am currently in my second year, studying Health Informatics. The majority of my work in university so far has involved research, but most of the time I feel like I am not doing it properly. That's why I decided to take this course; I want to learn the most efficient ways to conduct research.

I have always been interested in creative writing, even though I chose not to pursue it as a career, it is still something I love to do and I would love to be able to use the knowledge I gain from this course in anything I write from now on. The only information management software I have ever used is Ref-works Honestly, it did not work very well for me at first, but I did learn to use it properly after a while. 

Last year for one of my classes, I had to do some research on the most recent technological breakthroughs in medicine, and I remember feeling completely overwhelmed because of the amount of information I got. It took me a while to sort everything and actually write my report. Hopefully, after this class, I won't face problems like that anymore. I have no experience at all with radio or pod-casting so I am feeling a bit intimidated by the assignment, but I'm also excited to try something new.

For the course project, I am considering just one of the podcasts right now, which is on the media. There were several stories and scandals that were reported by the media all over the world late last year, I would like to analyse at least one of them very carefully and see what interesting details I can uncover. I look forward to participating in this course and getting a very good grade.