Month: September 2015

Sorry this is so late — I was just able to finalize my interview today. I will be interviewing Aaron Liberman. Liberman is an orthodox Jew who played division 1 basketball first for Northwestern and then for Tulane before transferring to Brandeis this year. I will be asking him about his basketball history and why he decided to transfer for Brandeis, a division 3 athletic school. Some of my questions for him include:

1. When did you start playing basketball?
2. Did you play other sports growing up?
3. When did you realize you’d be able to play collegiate basketball?
4. How has it been being a religious Jew while playing basketball in a secular college world?
5. How was the basketball scene at Northwestern?
6. Why did you decide to transfer to Tulane?
7. How was basketball at Tulane different?
8. Why did you decide to transfer to Brandeis?
9. How has basketball been different at Brandeis, a div 3 school, as compared to Northwestern and Tulane?

Hello Basile, Anu, Karen, Elan, Jamie, and Mark,

This past week, the flow of ideas has been as dry and shriveled as California. However, sitting in class, your energy has inspired me.

If possible, I would like to interview an art model. I met her at the Rose Art Museum opening and took pictures of her and her son in front of her painting. She modeled for Lisa Yuskavage, whose work is featured at the museum. I plan to attend a talk on Saturday with Yuskavage, and will ask the artist for her model’s contact information. I have been considering asking the model, whose name is Ivan, the following questions:

-Do you feel shy about posing naked?

-Is there a difference between modeling for a painting versus a photograph?

-Is art modeling a hobby or a full-time job for you?

-How do artists find out about you?

-Do you see yourself in the finished painting?

-Do you want the public to know who you are?

-Do you give the artist parameters for how you’d like to be depicted?

I hope this woman accepts to be interviewed. I don’t yet have a back-up plan.

-Jacob

Hi all,

My plan is to discuss the series of concerts taking place at the Rose Art Museum. The second installment, this past weekend, was the first to feature an artist not based at Brandeis. I already interviewed Fritz Oleshansky, the student behind the idea and at the head of SCRAM (the student body involved with the museum,) prior to the concert. Here are some follow up questions

• the goal of these lamplight sessions is to get people to the Rose, since not a single student entered the museum after the concert, are you looking to change your approach?
• It seems most people who come are friends with the performers. Will having a Brandeis-based opening act every time be the way to get people there? How else would you get students motivated.
• In our first interview, you mentioned being in touch with the Rose in the hopes of bringing the concerts inside. Has that idea advanced at all?
• How would you accommodate for a bigger crowd?
• The artist, Scott James, admitted to it being one of his first concerts, in spite of his already decent online following. Is it the kind of  artist you will try to get in the future?
• I noticed that the genre the artist played was similar to your own personal taste. What is the selection process like?

Hello Class! So here’s a fun fact about me: I love slam poetry. When I was in eighth grade, I found a couple of YouTube clips of Def Jam Poetry and I’ve been hooked since then. Based on the slideshows we saw in class last week, I thought I would use this opportunity to ask a slam poet about the first time they performed. I asked Janae Johnson, the Interim Director of the ICC, if I could interview her. She is a national champion in Slam Poetry and she started her poetry career in Boston. However, in case I am not able to interview her, I will interview a poet at an event on campus this Friday, Ebony Axis Launch Party. Ebony Axis is a zine created by Lashawn Simmons, a sophomore at Brandeis, and it is filled with poetry by black women on campus. I think it would be better to interview a student at this event because I could take a couple of pictures of them performing.

The questions I would ask are:

• Why did you decide to become a slam poet?
• When did you perform your first poem?
• How did you feel leading up to your first performance?
• What is your creative process? How do you find the focus of your poem?
• Are there any themes or motifs that you gravitate to?
• Is slam poetry something you do in your spare time or is it more than a hobby?
• Do you feel a sense of community when you are with other poets? Do you do group pieces?
• How do you contribute to the poetry scene at Brandeis University?

Hi all — so I’m going with the idea of writing a story about the challenges and benefits of biking in Waltham, and how Waltham is a reflection of or departure from general biking culture in the greater Boston area. I haven’t exactly picked an interviewee yet but I do have a couple students in mind who I know bike around the area a lot.

These are the interview questions I’ve cooked up so far. I’m looking forward to reading yours and getting feedback!

1) What are the major benefits and disadvantages of owning a bike in Waltham?
2) How does Waltham compare to other urban/suburban places you’ve biked (in terms of your subjective experience)?
3) At what point in your life did you connect with biking?
4) Is safety ever a concern? If so, what makes you feel most unsafe and why do you still bike despite these concerns?
5) What do you wish you could change about the way public spaces, infrastructure, and resources are for cyclists now?
6) Could Boston ever become a real biking city, with large portions of the population commuting via bike? What sorts of obstacles stand in the way of that happening?

My name is Karen Seymour and I am a junior studying Sociology and Film Studies. I like to read and listen to personal idiosyncratic stories, through documentaries, radio specials, and memoirs. Through the journalism program at Brandeis, I think I can hone my skills as a writer, while keeping up with what is going on in the world. I want to learn how to cover art stories–like how to structure an article about a film screening in Boston or a gallery opening.

For an on-campus story, I was thinking about covering the gallery talks in the Rose Art Museum. This Saturday, there is a talk about one of the exhibits on the bottom floor of the Rose Art Museum, The Brood, by Lisa Yuskavage. Yuskavage will be talking about her work on display.

For an off-campus story, I wanted to cover cultural/museum events happening in Boston on the weekend. I was thinking of attending ICA Boston’s film talk about the documentary VIDEOFREEX. This documentary is basically about a group of video artists that want to democratize television. One of the filmmakers and Skip Blumberg are going to be a part of the panel, so I thought I would report the interesting things that come up.

 

 

Hi everyone. I am a senior studying IGS and computer science, with minors in journalism and economics. I am interested in covering any subject, from technology to politics, science to social issues, but not including sports. On campus, I would like to cover the series of concert which started at the Rose Art Museum two weeks ago, and which had its second installment yesterday. I already have an interview of the student who instigated the project, which I had to do for another class. I am still missing a clear idea for an off campus story idea, but I was thinking along the lines of, either low-income housing in waltham and preparing for the winter, or about Brandeis’ relationship with Waltham police.

Hi- my name is Elan Kane and I’m a senior majoring in American Studies and minoring in Journalism. I first became interested in journalism after studying sports journalism freshman year. Since then I have had a number of different sports journalism internships/writing opportunities. Since my focus so far has been on sports journalism, I’m hoping to expand my journalism experiences to cover more general topics.

I’m still looking for some more story leads on campus, but I have had a few ideas for outside-campus stories. One of my ideas is to find out more information about the reservoir that is near Brandeis. Many students go there to swim or hang out, and I would like to find out more about what the reservoir is used for and the history behind it. Another story idea that I had (which is actually on-campur) was to interview a orthodox Jewish basketball player who just recently transferred from Tulane to play at Brandeis.

My name is Jaime, I’m a Senior English major with minors in Politics and Environmental Studies and this is my first post. I guess the title is redundant now. Oops. As a journalist, I’m interested in stories with a strong human-interest angle first and foremost. I prefer stories that use feature-style reporting to humanize policy issues, especially in the areas of urban planning and sustainability. I also love reading non-fiction about subcultures and personal histories–I’m currently reading a fantastic book called Random Family which tracks the lives of two young couples from the Bronx struggling in poverty. And as a campus journalist I’m excited about hyper-local reporting and the role it plays in a community, as well as the first amendment rights issues as they relate to college newspapers.

On the topic of first Amendment rights, the national news story I wanted to mention is about the University of California’s recently proposed, “Statement of Principles Against Intolerance” with the goal of combating intolerance and protecting students from bigotry. It sounds good in theory, but the language of the statement seems to potentially umbrella together acts of intolerance with some non-violent expressions and opinions. I don’t love the idea of Universities micromanaging dialogue and personally I’d rather virulent opinions be thrown in the ring along with productive ones rather then try to devise some way of magically filtering out which is which. That’s free speech. This issue is right at the heart of a conversation we had in Prof. McNamara’s class last week about fostering healthy and open campus dialogue for those of you in that class.

A piece of on-campus news I’m a fan of is the decision to remove bacon from The Einstein’s menu. It might not seem like a huge deal but some people are pretty upset, claiming that it’s kind of unfair for a secular school to make this change for the benefit for the kosher population.  This move is the latest in a long string of decisions that have removed and re-added pork and shellfish products from Brandeis dining menus in varying degrees and I just find the long-standing nature of this otherwise seemingly minor issue pretty fascinating.

Right now I’m deciding between two stories to pursue further. The first would be a continuation of a series I attempted to start with the Justice last year called, “Deis Discoveries.” It attempts to uncover the history of unique campus fixtures like buildings, statues, etc. Right now though, I’m leaning more toward my second idea about biking culture — in Waltham and among students at Brandeis. It would investigate Waltham municipal efforts (or lack thereof) to make the roads safer for cyclists. I’ve already snapped a few relevant photos for that one!