This is the final assignment for Media Storytelling I: Spring 2016. The main portion of this assignment was to record audio and video of an interview, and create a video story.

Hear Nebraska is a non-profit organization that fosters Nebraska music and arts through multimedia journalism. Andrew Norman, the co-funder and executive director, created HN five years ago.

For this video assignment I contacted and interviewed managing editor Andrew Stellmon at HN who has worked about two years with the organization. Mr. Stellmon talked about the organization and gave a closer look at what the organization does and offers. The interview took place on April 27^th 2016.

With a Bachelor’s degree in History and Sociology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Andrew Stellmon is from Kansas City, Missouri and now lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. Covering Nebraska’s music, Mr. Stellmon considers as his favorite part of his job the ability to interact with many different people who have talent.

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During our last lecture, the instructors talked about breaking news throughout the history of the United States, and especially how social media has changed the way we receive breaking news.

The first breaking news presented was the assassination of president John F. Kennedy. After seeing this news story, Ms. Schubert questioned how the unfolding of news would have been regarding the Watergate scandal, with today’s technology and mediums as Facebook and Twitter.

The class also analyzed how different or similar might have been the unfolding of news during a natural disaster as the earthquake of Loma Prieta in 1989. Some classmates questioned how different or equally would modern audiences react to something like that. Would people be more interested on sharing what is happening on social media sites, would they be worried about their life instead of using social media, or would they report accurate information.

Following the earthquake news, the class also took a look at the assassination attempt of president Ronald Reagan on March 30^th 1981. Immediately after this event, Ms. Schubert presented the take down of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. In this particular case, Ms. Schubert remarks that she was almost nine years old and this event is something she remembers very clearly since her father wanted her to watch the event, as according to Ms. Schubert, he told her “is history in the making.”

The September 11 attacks were also discussed but not shown for understandable reasons. Ms. Townley closed up the lecture with an analysis of where social media has taking us to in terms of news, and how in past events we were at the mercy of the media, but with new technology, now we all can share and broadcast. Now we don’t just hear what the media says, but we can interact in various ways obtaining various benefits as enriching the stories, but also producing and getting information not always accurate.

Video assignment featuring Laura D. Weiss and Thrive Club Culture Event.

Uploaded and created by José Rodríguez from University of Nebraska-Omaha.

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In today’s class Ms. Townley talked about page design and Ms. Schubert about ethical and legal issues. Ms. Townley talked about links and how they allow the storyteller tell the story.

Content curation is another topic discussed on Monday afternoon. According to Ms. Townley, “Is the gathering, the organization and the presentation of content that currently exist online.”

Examples of this are blogs that use little to no original content but gather from other sources, or the photo site Pinterest. Another example talked later on the lecture was the Drudge aggregation website.

Regarding the topic of links, they were described as mediums that can be used to back up information or to provide details or information about related issues.

Ms. Townley said that when dealing with storytelling in journalism, you want to make sure you choose links carefully and present the information that draws your audience’s attention. Another tip given was to create links with three to five words.

At the end Ms. Townley discussed how page design has changed with the new mediums and mobile devices we access content. At the beginning of web design, “scrolling” was not acceptable and clinking menus was acceptable instead of scrolling because was believed that people were not going to scroll and seemed impractical when dealing with big amounts of information.

Now, not only scrolling but push notifications, sharing, and the ability to follow content, make easier to get the content to audiences and thus, web page designers do not worry about page design as in the past for a strict non-scrolling design.

At the end of the lecture, legal and ethical issues were discussed. Ms. Schubert explained how online journalists can be sued for libel. Obscenity was defined as “material that describes or displays sexual material in such a way as to cause arousal and the lacks artistic, literary or scientific value, and it is not protected by the first amendment,” while indecency as “a range of sexual and non-sexual material including certain words, nudity and things that offend manners or morals.”

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Rodríguez: Music around Omaha is very diverse, featuring various genres and demographics taking part of the music landscape. This is the case of mariachi “Las Cecilias” who was formed in late 2012, and we have Grabiella Robles to tell us more about it.

Robles: “I would describe mariachi “Las Cecilias” to be an all female mariachi group, we perform various of Latin American culture music, different genres. A lot of the women who play and perform in this group have had experience performing a wide range of styles of music outside of Latin genre all around of the Midwest area, with different musicians, various musicians, so we try to incorporate the different sounds as well with the traditional mariachi form of music.”

Rodríguez: When asked what message could Las Cecilias represent, Robles answered:

Robles: “Is not only about like performing in mariachi music, but just getting the message out to women that women can do anything that men can do and just if is something that you love to do just go for your passion, and do what you love to do.“

Rodríguez: Currently Grabiella and Las Cecilias hope to perform more this year and are ready to start appearing in public actively for the rest of 2016.

For the UNO School of Communication, José Rodríguez.

SoundCloud Link: https://soundcloud.com/jose-rodriguez-279164889/sound-story-featuring-gabriella-robles-from-las-cecilias