Feature on Homelessness in Chicago

Here is a video I did to focus on people who are homeless in Chicago. This is their story.

The Next Big Website....CanISaySomething.Com

I've just discovered the next new website called CanISaySomething.Com. It allows me to speak my mind about anything and everthing no matter how controversial! The website caters specifically to any school and you can talk about the current events, or jobs, post surveys or bloids which is the comination of blogs and tabloids. It lets you upload pictures and embed video regarding topics such as entertainment, life, school, politics, health, buisness and such.

The best thing about the website is how global it is. People from all over the world use it and you can post specifically to thier country. You can basically make new friends from all over the world and get their opinoins on all the different topics. It's somewhat like having a online pen pal.

You can also upload photos and videos. It's not like a message board, its more of an ongoing discussion. The website is mostly interested in what you're saying instead of what you are doing. You can have people from all over the world commenting on what you write. It's great for writers of any kind...You'll love this website!

Q&A with Luis Arroyave, Chicago Tribune Entertainment Columnist

Click on the picture to read Luis Arroyave's blog
(Photo credits goes to Luis's Twitter page)


Listen to an introduction of Luis Arroyave

I interviewed Luis Arroyave from the Chicago Tribune for my interview with an online journalist. Luis has his own blog/column where he recaps the previous night which includes going to the hottest parties and interviewing the coolest celebrities.
His blog is cleverly titled "About Last Night." Luis grew up in Highland Park, Ill to Colombian parents who did thier best to keep their roots in a predominately white neighborhood. Luis did pretty well for himself by having one of the coolest jobs in the world.

MA: You graduated University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in English; did you have other aspirations before deciding to become an online journalist?

LA: I never planned on being a journalist, which is why I never wrote for my high school or college newspaper. To be honest, the only reason I chose the English degree was because I could graduate in four years. When I graduated college, I actually planned on going to film school. Unfortunately, I missed the deadline (or fortunately, depending on how you want to look at it) and then started thinking about other careers.

MA: You've said that your first big break came when you landed the internship at FHM, what was that experience like? How exactly did you land that internship?

LA: I found a job positing on mediabistro.com and emailed FHM a joke heavy résumé. In other words, I made sure that it stood out. They called me and said I would have to go to New York to interview, so I did - and I brought all my stuff with me. Good thing I got the job.

MA: After your internship, how did you end up at the Chicago Tribune and how has that been so far? You began covering soccer at first, right and then continued to cover celebrity appearances in Chicago.

LA: I couldn't find any fulltime writing jobs after my FHM internship ended and was even considering a career change. One day I hit the employee list on the Tribune website and emailed the first person on the alphabetical list "Who do I talk to about a job in sports?" In what can only be described as fate, the person responded something like "That's me." I was pretty lucky that the sports editor's name was Bill Adee. He told me to contact him if I was ever in Chicago. I once again packed all my stuff, headed to Chicago to meet with him, and was offered a job a few months later.

As for the experience so far, I complain a lot - it's a quality I'm not proud of - but deep down inside, I'm saying "Holy shit, how did you get this lucky?"

MA: How do you know when and which celebrities are going to be in Chicago? What exactly is the process of landing an interview with any celebrity?

LA: Because I'm still somewhat new to this, I usually have to do a lot of research to see which celebs are coming (I look at nightclub websites, ticketmaster.com and read other local entertainment writers). If I'm interested in interviewing a celeb that's coming, I'll contact their publicist and we'll go from there. Lately, I've had more and more publicists contacting me about their clients coming to Chicago, which definitely makes my job easier.

MA: Have you ever been star struck?

LA: Surprisingly, I really haven't been star struck. My biggest test was Dan Marino - my childhood idol - back in 2007. Once the interview began, I got in the zone and treated it like any other interview. If I could do that and not get star struck, chances are I can handle any interview.

MA: Is there any celebrity whose personality was unexpected in either a positive or negative way?

LA: I never know what to expect heading into interviews. Samuel L. Jackson wasn't the fun guy I thought he'd be while Vanilla Ice was way friendlier than I expected.

MA: Your column/blog "About Last Night" recently contained a feature called "About This Week" but has disappeared early September. What happened to it?

LA: I dropped it because I planned on putting a shorter version of that feature in the right hand column of the blog. That way people can see which celebs are coming just by looking at the right hand column. Obviously, we still haven't gotten around to adding that feature.

MA: Lastly, what advice would you give to aspiring journalists in this state of journalism?

LA: I'd love to give you encouraging advice, but I'm not a very good liar. It's tough out there - and it seems like it's only getting tougher with more and more newspapers struggling. But if this is what you really want to do, then I recommend you write for your school paper, try to land an internship in the summers and freelance for any publication that will take you.

My first article ever was for Chicago Innerview, a free publication that you find in front of a bar. You need to get a bunch of articles under your belt before anyone will take you serious. Lastly, make sure you read Luis Arroyave's articles. I hear he's quite good.

A Movie Recommendation via Video Blog

Mobile post sent by antoniom626 using Utterli. Replies.

I can't find a place to record my video blog that won't disturb others so I have to speak through written words. But if I could speak and it wouldn't take Uterrli 2 hours to post or not freeze...I would say to go see Paranormal Activity because it will leave you thinking that you are hearing noises in your sleep. All sounds begin to paranoid you. You will not trust anyone to sleep in the same room with you. You'll start imagining things. But all that wears off after about a day. Paranormal Activity is just fun, scary and creepy. It is filmed Blair Witch Style. Another movie that is playing at the Chicago Film Festival is "Precious" and stars Mo'Nique and Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz. It is getting Oscar buzz and it looks really good!! The trailer speaks for itself.

Mash-Ups Are Not Only for Songs, but Websites As Well!

Imagine you are at Enclave nightclub on a Friday night and suddenly you hear two songs being played against each other. This is called a mash up. Now you are at home surfing the internet late afternoon looking for a house and you come across housingmaps.com and you wonder what it is. Well that my friend, it a website mash-up!

As college students, we are always trying to hustle by finding the cheapest apartments in the greatest locations. If we just look at a map we know where the good neighborhoods are, but there are no listings. If we look on craigslist.com we find the listings but may not exactly know which neighborhood it is in. Housingmaps.com combines both quikmaps.com (which we’ve used) and craigslist.com (we we ALL definitely know).

Another website that is very similar to housingmaps.com is chicagocrimes.com. It combines a map with the exact location of the crime selected.

As university journalists, all these websites are very useful to us. For all us search engine fanatics, we can safely assume that Google and Yahoo are two of the most popular search engines. What would happen when you combine both? You get www.doubletrust.net which combines top search results from both search engines and also shows results that do not appear on one or the other’s site.

My favorite mash-up website that I have seen after thorough investigation is http://popurls.com. It combines some of the biggest social, political, news, entertainment websites. It features websites we’ve worked on in class such as twitter and delicious. It has the top You Tube videos and the top Flickr photos.

You can find all the news you would ever need on this one website with combinations such as Google news, Newsvine, and the famous NY Times. Want to watch a clip of your favorite Family Guy episode? Well it is on popurls.com.

One of the best things about this mash-up is that it can be personalized! You register with the website and indicate your interests and the website caters to you. The homepage only features what you want it to.

Websites like these are crucial for a journalist because they save us time and in the news world it is all about who can report it first. Instead of having to visit each website and looking for a story the story comes to you. Mash-ups are definitely worth getting to know and definitely worth checking out!

What Are You Doing? Facebook Status Vs. Twitter

Facebook, a social network that has overtaken Myspace in popularity within the last couple of years, still has many loyal followers, but it is apparent that Twitter is stiff competition, but why?

Facebook’s newsfeed seems to be very similar to the home page of Twitter. Twitter seems to be more accessible and simpler. Twitter is accessible through all smart phones and through different applications meanwhile Facebook is accessible through one mobile application and through its full website.

Facebook has more distractions with thousands of friends, photos, links, applications, and updates. Although Twitter has all the same features, it is all narrowed down to 140 characters. This means a lot more abbreviations, link-downs, and simplicity.

Founded two years apart: Facebook in 2004 and Twitter in 2006, it does seem that Twitter could be heavily influenced by Facebook. Both have garnered millions of users in such little time and Twitter has been heavily promoted through big name celebrities such as Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears both with over 1 million followers.

The simplicity of 140 characters allows celebrities to reach out to their fans while maintaining a form of privacy. Although celebrities still maintain a Facebook most of them don’t keep it up to date. They do not want people looking through personal photos, knowing their location and their history. This is the main reason why college students are constantly on Facebook.

I was lured onto Facebook because it was a great way to casually keep in touch with high school friends, co-workers, and far away relatives without constantly being on the telephone. I tried to remain off of Twitter, but I eventually gave in because I wanted to know what all my favorite celebrities were doing.

Both websites do have their flaws. Both are bombarded with spam, fake tweets and profiles and sometimes the websites can be a source of stress for an individual. Internet bullying and potential employees being denied employment may persist more on Facebook while Twitter can be too time consuming if a user has too many people following and too many tweets because unlike Facebook, Twitter doesn’t require a confirmation between both users.

If you look at both homepages of these social websites, they look awfully familiar. The newsfeed is centered and all other features are on the side. Log-in information and logos are located at the top.

The future of both these websites seems to be very secure as long as they both continue to be free!

"I Feel Like Somebody Is Watching Me"

Over the summer there were a considerable amount muggings that occured in the second richest neighborhood of Chicago. It made a big splash because the muggings occured in Lincoln Park.

I have mapped out where the actual muggins took place with information with BLACK markers. The RED markers represent what I consider popular hangouts for DePaul students and inhabitants of Lincoln Park and Chicago. The box indicates the concentration of where the muggings are. The line connects the muggings that occured only minutes within each other.

Police have linked the first five muggings, but there were two other muggings in Lakeview where the cases seem very similar, but it is not certain if they are related.

The victim of the North Cleveland Ave identified an attacker in a line-up, but the suspect was released due to lack of evidence. All the victims were men who were walking alone at night and asked for their wallets and then beaten. Two of the victims were hospitalized.

This story hits close to home because we are DePaul University students who party and walk back to our homes late at night sometimes at night. We "think" were safe because we are in Lincoln Park, but this shows you can get mugged in any part of Chicago.