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Two and a half Men

editorial review

I do not agree with Roy Disney who wrote about the NBC building at the Universal City site. The article can be found here.

My mother worked for NBC years ago, and I am a member of their credit union. They have always been a great company and broadcasting center. They did what was best for them and Universal by joining together. They had to have known that by merging together they would have to move somewhere. Those things are thought of ahead of time. Los Angeles is lucky that they stayed in the area.

Disney talks that the area will be filled with more cars and traffic. In reality, everywhere is full of traffic and cars. Nothing can be done about that. If the NBC building was not put there, something else would be. He focused more on cars and the tight area the building will be on. The whole improvement is merging the companies together and making it one big company in the city.

Editorial

Mattel and Fisher Price have been recalling many toys in the last couple months from China due to lead paint and other substances on the toys. America has been importing over nine million toys from China. Barbie, Batman, and Polly Pocket are some of the toys that have been recalled because of a lead paint issue.
American officials are saying they are tired of waiting for China to crack down on the recalls. Rep. Mike Ferguson is saying China needs to meet the standards of America. They stopped selling the toys and began investigating the toys. Officials began investigating in July when they found out toys may be hazardous. They finally began pulling toys off the shelves of toy stores.
Instead of just pulling the toys off the shelves, American officials need to go into further investigations. These Chinese manufactures need to be told what to do. The toys in their country contain some lead paint. So for them to use lead should have been expected. The toys should have been properly inspected before being put on the shelves. I would like to know these toys are looked at before my children were to play with them.
A California attorney general agrees with me that the toys need to be better inspected. There is a law suit saying the manufacturers sold the toys containing lead paint. If won, the manufactures would have to change their procedures to selling toys and inspect them to the fullest.
If the manufactures properly inspected all the toys, the situation would have been taken care of a long time ago. America assumed everything was fine and when it comes to children, the strictest rules should be enforced. Making more rules for manufacturing companies to follow would be beneficial along with better inspecting policies instead of just taking toys off the shelves.

Dramatic Narrative

This news link is about the life of author Norman Mailer who recently passed away. David Ulin discussed his books and life.

I met Norman Mailer in the early 1990s, during a party at the New York
Athletic Club. The party was for Mailer's friend Richard Stratton, who had a
novel out, and Mailer was the host, holding court at the bar, a flushed grin on
his face.
Knowing almost no one, I kept to the corners, avoiding Mailer altogether.
Still, I couldn't help looking at him periodically, and at one point, I caught
his eye.For a moment, the two of us watched each other, until I turned away. I
hadn't taken more than a step or two, though, when I felt a tap on my shoulder,
and there was Mailer, hand extended, having come over to introduce
himself.
That story illustrates everything one needs to know about Norman Mailer,
casting the two essential, contradictory threads of his personality, the ego and
the insecurity, in sharp relief.Mailer, after all, was the sort of author who
could both dazzle and infuriate, often within the space of a single paragraph.
He was a major talent who could not keep himself from reminding you that he was
a major talent, an astute observer of his moment, who tended to operate as if
that moment were entirely his.He was equally famous for his writing and his
exploits: the precocious 25-year-old whose 1948 debut, "The Naked and the Dead,"
is considered by many the greatest American war novel ever written; the
provocateur who co-founded the Village Voice in 1955 and, 14 years later, ran
for mayor of New York on a secession ticket (Jimmy Breslin was his running
mate), with a slogan urging, "Vote the scoundrels in."Although he liked to
dismiss journalism as less than artful -- "generally speaking," he told the St.
Petersburg Times in 2004, "journalism is sloppy writing, and unless you have a
real talent, it can injure you to write too quickly" -- his legacy rests on "The
Armies of the Night" and "The Executioner's Song," the book-length works of
reportage for which he won Pulitzer prizes in 1969 and 1980,
respectively.Mailer, for his part, preferred to think of himself as a
"novelist," which he saw as the writer's highest calling, even though his own
fiction was often sprawling and flawed. In his final book, "On God: An Uncommon
Conversation" (published only 3 1/2 weeks ago), he referred to God as a supreme
artist, the novelist at the heart of the universe. This tells us more than a
little about where his sensibilities stood.And yet, the fascinating thing about
Mailer was that he remained so, well, fascinating, so much at the center of our
cultural life.Partly, it was his prose style, which even at its most
self-promotional, was scalpel-sharp and piercing, the expression of a mind that
seemed to notice everything.Even more, it had to do with Mailer's sense of
engagement, of the writer as a public figure, the idea that art had a connection
to the world.That's a notion Mailer took from the French writers of the 1940s
and 1950s, people like Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, for whom literature
was a form of confrontation, a way of wrestling with the times.Mailer explored
this in both nonfiction and fiction: a 1967 novel was called "Why Are We in
Vietnam?" At times, he failed, maddeningly; his 1957 essay, "The White Negro,"
now reads as a bit of pseudo-hipster posturing, while his infamous stance on the
women's movement came off as shockingly uninformed.Perhaps his greatest misstep
had to do with Jack Henry Abbott, an ex-convict he championed for his writing;
six weeks after his parole, amid a swelter of publicity for his book of prison
letters, "In the Belly of the Beast," Abbott killed a waiter in a Manhattan
eatery. Years later, Mailer would call the experience "another episode in my
life in which I can find nothing to cheer about or nothing to take pride
in."Mailer's critics saw the Abbott saga as yet another symbol of the author's
ego: He so loved the idea of discovering this writer that he overlooked the
danger in the man he'd helped unleash.Abbott, though, was emblematic of Mailer
in another way -- his attraction to iconic individuals, people he might frame as
metaphors. His work is dotted with such figures: Gary Gilmore, Lee Harvey
Oswald, Adolf Hitler, Jesus Christ.On the one hand, this, too, has everything to
do with ego, but on the other, there's something more profound at stake. What
Mailer was after was a mythology of the modern era, an era bounded by war,
celebrity and religion, and played out across a vast social divide.It's been
said that no other major American author wrote so many bad books, and especially
in the 1970s, when he produced glorified works-for-hire like "Marilyn" and "The
Fight" while duking it out with Gore Vidal on the Dick Cavett Show. He drifted
into caricature in those years. But what makes Mailer remarkable is that he
never disavowed any of it; instead, he saw it all as part of his writing life.In
1998, to commemorate his 75th birthday and the 50th anniversary of "The Naked
and the Dead," he published a retrospective volume, "The Time of Our Time." It's
a revealing book for a variety of reasons, not least because Mailer left nothing
out. There it all is: the brilliant reportage and the inconsistent fiction, the
literature and the hack work side by side.Ego? Perhaps. Insecurity? Maybe. Yet
more to the point, what Mailer put on display is what, for better and for worse,
his whole career was about: one man's struggle to come to terms with himself and
the times he'd been born into, a portrait of the artist as he really was.

Investigative story

The story of women in Cairo, Egypt are becoming more picky when it comes to marrying men. Elders do not always choose the mate anymore. Women are more educated and focused on work then just getting married. It is still a goal for them, but a career is important too. The reporter starts off with an anecdote of a single woman and what it is like. Then the story gets more in depth about the traditional women and the women now, who are more educated and taking time in choosing a mate. The reporter talked to many women on how things are changing in their city and what the women today go through. The link to the story is here.

Public Documents

1. To look for a staff report from the Los Angeles City Council I went to the Los Angeles City Council website and clicked on their reports. Every report they post has blue links which go to further information whether it's email or another website. The City Council website is here.

2. I started out by going to the GAO website, the General Accountability Office. I clicked on the reports and testimonials tab. That brought me to a list of reports created. An interesting report is on the characteristics of kidney transplants.

3. The California Public Records Act can be found anywhere on the internet. It is found on leginfo website.

Free Blog

I was looking up information on the fires by my house and one of the fires that forced me out of my home was on the Los Angeles Fire Dept. Blog Spot! I found that to be very interesting. I did not even think they would have one. These fires have been so stressful on my family and me. I'm glad I stumbled on their blogspot because I trust what they have been saying. They give a map and phone numbers and information on what to do if you evacuate. If I only saw it before I wasn't allowed to go home...

Fav Blog

My favorite blog is mlb.com/blogs. But I really like Todd Helton's.

He has been doing his blog since his team made the playoffs. The blog has been about what he has been going through, how excited he is to play, how the fans make a big impact, and the winning streak the team is on. It is always fun to watch a team win on television, but to read what a player goes through and know his actual feelings is even more awesome.

Here are some examples:

Wow. A 2-1 win and we’re going on to meet Arizona in the National League
Championship Series.
To get where we’ve always wanted to go, I knew we had
to win at least one of these close, low-scoring games. I’ve watched the playoffs
on TV for years. You always have close games like this in the postseason.


I want to talk about the more than 50,000 fans that helped us. I hope
they're loud and crazy and I hope they enjoy themselves, because we're going to
be playing hard and enjoying ourselves.

There's going to be a lot
of anticipation in the stadium. But when you get into that whole atmosphere, you
really have to calm down.


Seeing the fans, seeing the look in my teammates’ eyes, knowing that we
actually set goals that we were able to accomplish -- that’s the unthinkable, to
come back from where we were at, most people would just pack it up and make
plans for the offseason. We kept battling. Now we’re celebrating.

Internet Treasure Hunt

1. This is Assembly Bill 381
The bill is a Medi-Cal bill that she proposed. It is for low income people, like on Welfare, so they can receive reimbursments and get health benefits if they have a Medi-Cal ID card.

2. Find out how much money Jack Weiss has recieved in contributions here
L.A. Councilman Jack Weiss has raised about $$135,094.66

3. Check out "The Day the Earth Caught Fire" info
The movie was released in 1961 and the director was Val Guest.

4. Here is a source for water rationing in Southern California
His name is Glen MacDonald and he works for the Department of Geography at UCLA. His contact info: Department of Geography, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1524 Phone: 310-825-1071 FAX: 310-206-5976 E-MAIL: macdonal at geog.ucla.edu This is his website.

5. Want to know facts about California. Look here
The median age in California is 33.3 years old.

Narrative Story

this is the link to a narrative story

Breezie James' last memory on June 14, 2006 is eating chili with her
step-grandfather Bud Jevyak in a diner around 7 p.m. The next thing she
remembers is five days later, waking up in a hospital bed, tubes and needles
sticking out of her everywhere.

For The Master's College volleyball player,
what happened in between
those two memories turned out to not only be a
life-threatening experience,
but a life-changing one.

Driving on Interstate
80 in Cozad, Nebraska on the way to a family
reunion in Iowa, James was sleeping
in the back seat of an old Explorer
while Jevyak was driving. Jevyak was 79, and
didn't really believe in
wearing seat belts. James was sleeping, so she didn't
have one on either.

At 4:30 a.m. on June 15, the rear passenger tire blew,
and though Jevyak
tried to get the car back under control, it went airborne.
Jevyak was thrown
from the vehicle after the first flip and died instantly.
James endured five
rotations in the air before being ejected.

The list of
James' injuries is longer than most would want to have over
an entire lifetime,
let alone all at once.

Her nose was completely crushed, as well as her left
eye socket. She
broke five ribs, and her jaw was broken in three places. James
lost two
teeth and broke 17 others. She suffered a punctured lung and fractured
both
of her shoulder blades.

The plot line is her being able to live a normal life and play volleyball again when people said she would not be able to. Even though she went through a horrific accident, she overcame it all and can live her life the way she wants to.

community story

The streets of downtown Newhall were filled with the sounds, smells and sights
of an artistic renaissance Saturday as masters and novices worked side by side
to create temporary masterpieces for the third annual Street Art Festival.

Inspired by traditional Italian street painting, the city of Santa Clarita's
two-day outdoor festival showcases the artwork of professional chalk artists and
guest participants, lined in rows along San Fernando Road for visitors to see.

The festival, taking place on five blocks closed off to traffic of San
Fernando Road between Lyons Avenue and 5th Street, includes live performances by
dance groups and bands, an arts and crafts area, fine arts and crafts vendors
and a makeshift theater where visitors can view a series of short films hosted
by the Santa Clarita Valley Film Festival.

This is a community feature story from Santa Clarita. It is a human interest story because it reflected on the street fair that was open to the public. The story described what happened at the event and who was at the fair. It explained where it was and that it also helps people understand other cultures.

non traditional lead

here is a link to a non traditional lead
The lead is a quote lead. The article opens with a snip of a quote and then the second sentence is a full quote. It does not work very well, because the quote is so short it does not make much sense to the topic. It is very brief, but the quote in the first sentence is so short is means nothing to the topic. It could have easily been left out and put in a different part of the article.

blog #2 news follow feature

here's an example of a news feature follow

TOKYO, Sept. 15 — Since the credit crisis started shaking the world financial
markets this summer, many professional traders have taken big losses. Another,
less likely group of investors has, too: middle-class Japanese homemakers who
moonlight as amateur currency speculators.

Ms. Itoh is one of them. Ms.
Itoh, a homemaker in the central city of Nagoya, did not want her full name used
because her husband still does not know. After cleaning the dinner dishes, she
would spend her evenings buying and selling British pounds and Australian
dollars.

When the turmoil struck the currency markets last month, Ms.
Itoh spent a sleepless week as market losses wiped out her holdings. She lost
nearly all her family’s $100,000 in savings.

This is a news follow feature story. It is because it follows the event of online currency trading that went downhill over summer. This does not follow breaking news at this moment because this happened a couple months ago, but it does follow a breaking news event. It also tells a story about a woman who went through the crash. She invested a lot of money in the currency trading and lost most of it because of the crash.

It contains a nutgraph that starts out by saying,"Tens of thousands of married Japanese women ventured into online currency trading in the last year and a half, playing the markets between household chores or after tucking the children into bed."

It explains exactly what the story is and who was involved in it. These women are just examples of what they went through.

My bio

My name is Renee Stuart. I am a 22 year old graduating senior at California State University Northridge. I am majoring in Journalism with an emphasis in public relations. This is my blog for the journalism 310 class that meets on Wednesday afternoons.

I have lived in Southern California my entire life, so I did not want to attend school far away. My parents and my brother still live in Santa Clarita, where I am from. My brother just started school at a local community college, so it is nice to be close to him in case he needs help.
Staying close to home let me work close to home and go to school at my convenience. I work at a coffee shop in my home town. I also work part time with my mom. It is just to make a little extra money while I am in school.

In the very little free time I have, I try to hang out with my boyfriend, Casey. We have known each other for four years now. I still have my best friends from elementary school that I see occasionally. One of my best friends and I are even in the same major. So it is nice to have her around.

I am just a normal girl trying to make it through school and start my life.