So I take the class out to the little six-block enclave between upper and lower campus and explain this is our beat for the semester. A friend from Communication strides by. I intercept him, and he kindly agrees to be interviewed. You will notice my sly and subtle pedagogical methods.

Toan Lam's Latest GoInspireGo Video

Kate Elston off to Chile for Print Internship

Thanks for the recommendation for the Adelante program in Valparaiso, Chile! I got accepted and will be interning for a newspaper or magazine (still to be seen) for the month of October. On either side of that internship, I'm going to Ecuador and Argentina to do some volunteering and traveling. Super excited.

Here is the website of the program: http://www.adelanteabroad.com/Chile/chile_intern.cfm, in case you're interested or want to pass on more information to others about it. It seems really awesome so far. I'll tell you more about it as I'm there (I'll be blogging, of course) and when I finish.

Congi and the Big Marijuana Bust

from Facebook:

Anthony T.C. Congi Covering the biggest marijuana bust in Idaho history. Details to come

about an hour ago · Comment · Like

$47K to Attend Columbia J: A Guy Wonders If He Should've

A friend sent the Gawker link.

Last week, the University of Georgia journalism school published a report about the horrible employment prospects and salaries awaiting j-school grads. As anyone reading this site knows, for the last few years media outlets have constantly been folding, firing people, and slashing pay. Things have gotten so bad in the media industry that some observers now say j-schools should be closed altogether. So, what are we all doing here?


But he's going to stick. The comments are interesting.

Toan Lam and the Ripple Effect

Entrepreneurial Grads Joe and Julianna Acken Walters

Just got this email:


Jules and I are really excited about our new business venture and we wanted to reach out to you because we value your support.

While living in LA, we successfully ran a bakery business. We really enjoyed working with each other - we complement each other well. A couple of months ago, we had a long discussion about what we could do together to support our growing family and put our talents to work in the service of others. We came up with the business model for Face Time Marketing.

Between my Agency experience managing marcom events and interactive projects for Fortune 1,000 clients and Jules' years of small business ownership, great writing skills and social media mastery, we have put together a business to provide Strategic Internet Marketing Planning and Consulting Services to small business clients.

Why Internet Marketing?

The ROI in Internet Marketing for small business is off the charts! There are so many free and affordable tools out there for small business owners. The Web 2.0 shift and the dawn of social media and mobile internet have changed the world of Marketing and Advertising, and leveled the playing field for small businesses. We want to help people to take advantage of this.

We begin with a free, one-hour consultation where we learn your needs and provide some advice to quickly improve Internet marketing. Then we conduct an extensive review of your existing Internet marketing initiatives and create a unique Internet Marketing Strategy for your business. After that, we offer a-la-carte implementation services including web design, search engine optimization, web analytics, copywriting, and training. Our rates are reasonable and affordable - for the cost of a monthly ad in a "Clip-It" magazine, we can get you on the road to effective online marketing.

We are confident in our value proposition. Our goal is to enable our clients to manage effective Internet marketing efforts themselves. We support Open Source technology and web applications like Wordpress and Drupal because we don't want our clients locked into solutions that they can't easily update or integrate. We are not here to sell websites, we're here to help create comprehensive and integrated Internet marketing strategy for our clients.

A Dispatch from Our Ambassador to Minnesota

Image via Wikipedia

Greetings from Minnesota! I've officially completed my first year of grad school and will begin my second (and last) year this September. I'm happy to report that my program of choice - Masters in Advocacy and Political Leadership at the University of MN Duluth - has been a great experience so far and has expanded quite a bit since I started. New cohorts have increased in size and various schools across the country have expressed an interest in implementing similar programs in their states. (In fact, the director told me that one of the reasons MAPL got the huge grant that they did a few months ago was due to the fact they could say someone from CA moved all the way to MN to participate. Ha!) It's a great program for studying politics in a more applied manner, rather than theoretical; the best way I've heard it described is that MAPL is to political science what entrepreneurial programs are to business school.

My current job has also been a great learning experience. I'm working on a gubernatorial campaign, and my desire to work in politics is actually one of the reasons I haven't kept my personal USF Journalism blog up-to-date. The last campaign I interned on (before getting this current job) requested that no one associated with the campaign put anything "out there" that could be considered controversial, and everyone was asked to be very conscious of what we put on social networking sites - Facebook, Myspace, etc. - as well as blogs, so just to be on the safe side I took a break, which I've kind of carried over into my new role. I don't have a personal objection to such discretion, but believe it to be an interesting topic of conversation considering how relevant and crucial such media outlets are to politics these days. I doubt there will be anyone running for office 5, 10, or 15 years from now who won't have a personal history that can be tracked on the Internet through such sites, but at the same time I see the value of moderation, and even limitation.

All in all, Minnesota has been an interesting ride. The weather is less than ideal but the people are gracious and welcoming. I'm learning how to cast a fishing pole and deal with my In-N-Out cravings, and if I could just find a decent place to get a haircut, things would be pretty darn good.

Kate Elston at KALW

I've been interning with KALW this summer, helping to produce their daily call-in show "Your Call" and it's been really awesome! I produced my first show last week!

Teresa Rochester Interviews the Survivor of a Partial Nuclear Meltdown 50 Years Later

Teresa says she found this story -- all 82-column inches of it -- particularly satisfying. Here's an excerpt:

An improvised cleanup

It’s also true, Pace said of a story that seems more lore than fact, that women’s sanitary napkins were used to wipe down contaminated surfaces with cleansers gathered from around the 2,850-acre Field Laboratory after the meltdown. The absorbent material was more effective and longer lasting than sponges. A secretary suggested using them, he said.

“It was brilliant,” Pace said. “When we were done we’d throw it in a plastic bag and throw it out back.”

It’s likewise true, Pace said, that radioactive gases were released. The night of the surge, the men — dressed in nothing more protective than cotton coveralls — worried about venting “hot” gases into the air.

“The big thing on their mind was which way the wind was blowing,” Pace said. “They released that (gas) and it went out over the San Fernando Valley where all their children and families were, and they couldn’t say a thing about it because it was top secret.”

The Agony and the Ecstacy, or Do I Mean More Agony?

Corinna Halloran is not only running the NYC Marathon -- and quite properly asking for donations to fight childhood obesity -- she's blogging her prep day by day.

Will she twitter the race itself?

Toan Lam Back Up at Huffington Post

His previous post led the Living section in hits. Here's the new one.