kizziegooden-newmediajournalism

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Take a closer look at Cheetah from “Circle of Life” in THE LION KING on Broadway.

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Final Mastery Journal

During this month's class at Full Sail University, it was the final class for New Media Journalism. During this class, we covered our thesis, which is our final project for students. Going into this class I was a little scared because I never wrote a thesis before or knew of anyone who wrote one so I didn’t know what to expect from it. After the fear of writing, I realized it was an easy task especially with professors such as Mrs. Cochie guiding us through it.

Our thesis was the final touch of our Capstone Project from the previous month, which I covered funding for the art programs in Calhoun County Schools. My thesis helped me to think about all I did to gather information like interviews and video I needed for my Capstone Project. The thesis was split into different categories where I had to focus on why I did a certain thing or why I chose the topic altogether. This helped me to understand my topic better and understand how to promote future projects as well. Promotion played a big role in the Capstone Project and the Method and Results part of the thesis helped me to realize that even though it felt as if I did a lot in promoting myself, I really didn’t do enough.

In the end, after all the work on the Capstone Project and final Thesis, I was able to carry out my goal of learning what it takes to become a successful journalist. I have come a long way from not knowing how to promote myself as a journalist and what classify as a great news story. I now have a blog of facts that I will carry into the future and promote myself as a professional journalist thanks to the help of professors who’ve been there before.  

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Mastery Journal - New Media Publishing and Distribution

In this course, we had to put our finishing touches on whatever our Capstone Project was. Months of interviews, video and audio gathering and all the information about our topic came down to this one-month. We had to put all of our information into a soft launch and have a peer review of what we could correct before final launch. 

The peer review and teacher review was very helpful because it gave me at least another set of eyes that can tell me what more or less I could use before the final launch. I also had to do a review of my own work to go over what I did and didn’t think I’ve done well on the project and what I will correct before final launch. This helped me to stay focused on what I needed to do before final launch.

During the week of final launch, we had to post to our media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook about our post. This was to prepare potential viewers our report was on its way. We also had to complete a distribution plan on where we were going to post our work. This was my first time creating a distribution plan, so it was interesting on how it was set up.

Once I launched my plan I post it to Twitter and Facebook. On Facebook, I posted it to the school where I had student and teacher interviews from and I’ve gotten a lot of coverage and likes to the report. I’ve also emailed my Capstone to the local newspaper and other media outlets that focus on the same area my Capstone did. Doing this helped me to understand how important it is as a journalist to get your information out to people. I now know that in order to be the best I have to go out and produce quality information and post in places where I know others will share and view.  

The Capstone Project that I’ve completed is still getting views according to Google Analytics. I’ve even gotten a view from Uruguay. I plan to continue to post my content to other Facebook pages so I can get the same results that I have gotten from my Capstone Project.

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Mastery Journal Public Relations and Reputation Management

In this months’ class Public Relations and Reputation Management I learned that Journalist and Public Relations think in two different ways. What may work for one may not work for the other and we as Journalist have to work with PR reps to come in agreement somewhere in the middle. To make this happen in our second week of class, in our assignment we had to come up with positive ways that a PR rep could follow when dealing with a Journalist. After thinking of these and reading other ideas from classmates I began to understand the world of PR and Journalism a bit more. After doing this assignment, I believe it will help me as a Journalist because I will be able to better express myself to a PR rep and we can both get information out to the public in a timely manner.

My favorite assignment(s) from this course was when I had to put together videos. One of the videos I had to create was an “About Me” video for my blog. I think it was a creative way to show who I am and why I do the things I love. The video created is like a visual résumé for my blog. The second video I enjoyed creating was the PSA video. In this video, I had to have a call to action. I did my video on distracted driving. I chose this because I knew too many that was hurt or injured because of distracted driving. I was free to create the video how I saw fit to get the point needed across and I enjoyed every bit of it.

The knowledge I’ve acquired in this course have prepared me to be able to speak out to those I need to get in contact with in order to be successful. I now know what to expect from someone in the Public Relations field and how to let them know what works best for me. Even if we have to come to an agreement in the middle I am willing to work with them as a journalist so that we can have a long and meaningful relationship. We need this to get news and information out to the public in a timely manner.

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Mastery Journalism - Social Media & Online Community Engagement

This month’s class was Social Media and Online Community Engagement. This course was very detailed and to the point. Upon coming into this class I didn’t know much about how to get community involvement into the post I do on any of the social media accounts I had. I’ve also learned that there were other social media programs out there that I can also promote my work such as Digg and SlideShare. These were very simple and easy sites to use, navigate and helpful in promoting my site. The social media outlet that I need to familiarize myself with if I want to become successful with publishing my articles is Reddit. I honestly never used Reddit until this class, I’ve heard a lot of people say they go to it and read it but I never did. My first day on the site I was overwhelmed with the setup and structure of the site. Since I know a lot of people use it, I will continue to post there as well.

This month we also had to focus on our Capstone Project, mine was about Arts in Education. In my stories this month I covered programs such as the Orange County School of Arts and cover information from the New Jersey Arts Education Partnership. In my Capstone Project, I plan to expand on information collected from these programs. I am happy with the information I have gained from this course and will continue to grow my site with newsworthy information.

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Mastery Journal - Multimedia Reporting

In this month's class titled Multimedia Reporting I have learned the basics of refreshing a story to give it an update and to take it beyond what I’ve had it at first. To do that, I had to revisit my original story, look over and see what could I have added and then add that plus more. I ended up with a better story than what I had before. The first story idea was using audio to tell the story; once I revised it I had a visual story. I also had to use pictures and other visuals to tell the story as well.

I’ve also learned that to make a story a better story I need to have comments from more than one interview, I would need to have an expert as well. This expert will help the story progress and the reader will want to read more on the topic.

Later in the course, I had to evaluate my website. There was a lot that I have done right but I realized that there was more that I could do to reach my target audience. Without the guide of this course, I would have never thought to track my websites performance to see how well it’s doing.

I’ve stated this to say that Multimedia Reporting was a lot more than I expected. I was thinking that we would cover only one way to cover a report but we’ve done more. Now I know how to cover a story effectively with at least three types of media and I know the best ways to grab the attention of others so they can become aware of my stories. Having my target audience to read my stories is a crucial part of me becoming a successful journalist.

I plan on using what I have learned to further my career as a journalist. I want to be able to interview and report like some of the people I’ve looked up to in the industry. With the help of this class, I believe I will be ready to do just that.

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Mastery Journal - Digital News Production

This month’s class at Full Sail was Digital News Production. When I first read the title of the course I thought, this seems as if this will be a fun easy class. Little did I know the work that was to come would be challenging.

I worked hard in this class because each week I had to go to an event, shoot the event and then write and edit the video from the event. Some of the events I’ve gone to I had to put my interview skills to use and interview an “expert” in the field of the event. Doing this has helped me be able to write the story as well because I can rely on what the expert and my research on the topic to create a truthful story. All of it seems easy now that I’ve done it a few times. During this course, I had to also try not to become bias on any issue because becoming bias will change a story and make it a story that is an opinionated instead of the truthful.

Getting feedback from my professor and cohorts really helped this month because it gave me a chance to think differently. As much as I hate doing it, being able to critique myself was also a big help. I was able to look back at the video and watch closely for things that I may have missed otherwise, and I've had an opportunity to think about other ways I could have shot the video.

This course has prepared my career as a journalist by knowing how to correctly interview an “expert” in the story I am covering, how to shoot and edit video without jump cuts and how to properly write a story to go along with the video that I have shot. In order to become a good journalist, I believe that all these things make up a great journalist because people will look to me for a newsworthy story because I have all my facts straight. I’ve also learned how to tweet like a journalist. Twitter is the life of a journalist and without it, my story won’t be seen by the public.

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Mastery Journal - Multimedia Development and Editing

This month my class at Full Sail was Multimedia Development and Editing. I had mixed feelings going into this class because I love editing but I didn’t know what type of editing I would be doing for the class, hence multimedia.

From day one in the class, we went over photo composition and how to tell a great story using photos. Learning this was a great opportunity for me to touch up on my love of photography because I freelance photos when I am not at work so I knew I would love this class.

As the class continued, I began to learn about how to create interviews using just audio and relying on sound to get the listener involved. This was a little challenging because I had to come up with sounds that would engage the audience and give a complete story while using the sound to help the narrative. The last audio story I had to do was a story just using pictures. I thought it was going to be hard because I could only use pictures. It was easy and I was wrong. I went to the 2nd Chance Domestic Violence Walk. I was able to take as many pictures as needed to get the story across while using the voice of the director of 2nd Chance to talk about domestic violence.

Walking away from this class I learned a lot that will help me in the future, one being the use of pictures as a way to tell stories. I may have to use that more often now that I know how easy it is. This class has prepared me in more ways that I thought was possible. One, it gave me a whole new way of editing than what I gave myself credit for, secondly I now have more confidence to go out and get a story without being afraid of being turned away.

I can’t wait to start the next journey of classes at Full Sail.

[kizziegooden-newmediajournalism]

Mastery Journal for Research and Investigation Skills

During this month class at Full Sail, we covered Research and Investigation Skills and I’ve felt overwhelmed coming into this class with the amount of work that was proposed to us. I thought that I would never get to finish the work on time or get a good grade. Fast-forward four weeks and here we are creating our Mastery Journal. I for one can say that I’ve gotten a lot out of this class because it was so intensive.

During the first week, we’ve covered how to find things and make sure we have accurate information. Having this information helps our readers know that they can trust us and that we’ve done out homework, researching the information we’re giving them. We also covered how to log on to the Copyright office page plus many others to a search of the topics we’re covering so we can get a feel of how to get correct information from governmental sites. We also learned about the importance of hyperlinking our work. With hyperlinking, the reader can go directly to the source that we referenced.

Week one also started our publications we had to write for our website. My website covered theatre so I wrote about the community production of The Addams Family presented by C.A.S.T. I had to do a lot of research for this article and I actually enjoyed it. I found all the support information needed and I also had to make an infographic for the article as well. I got the chance to use my creativity to explore ways I could incorporate an infographic into my article.

Week one carried over into week two with the article; I polished my article and published it on my website. We also discussed the differences of a good infographic and a bad infographic. There were a lot of bad ones online and researched. We used this in our discussion to have a better eye on how to correctly make one for our article. We also covered where to place an infographic in our article so it won’t be overlooked in the story.

Weeks three and four covered the interview process. We’ve learned the best ways to interview a person. In our discussion post, we had to find a journalist that correctly asked questions and post it to the board. There are so many good ways to interview and I’ve seen so many styles that I am willing to try so I can become better at interviewing. I’ve learned that experts in the field I am writing about are also helpful too. If the viewer of my website sees that I’ve interviewed an expert, they are willing to keep reading for more information.

I will take what I have learned from this class and continue to expand my knowledge into future classes and into my professional career as well.

[kizziegooden-newmediajournalism]

Legal Aspects of Media - Mastery Journal

My Mastery Journal for this month covered the following questions. I have enjoyed this class even though going into the class I was intimidated when reading the title of the class.

What was your favorite assignment in this course? Please explain.

My favorite assignment in this course was when we covered Copyright. I knew a little about it coming into the course but this help to expand my knowledge on what could be copyrighted, how to fill out the form and how long it takes to become public domain.

Of the course topics covered this month, which one(s) do you think will be most helpful to you as a communication’s professional?

Defamation is the topic I believe is the most important. Getting the facts straight and checking your facts, even if it means going over the facts two to three times, make sure it correct. Having false and misleading information about a person or a group can do harm to them and to you as a writer.

How will the knowledge you acquired this month prepare you to handle potential legal issues in the communications industry?

I now know how to better prepare myself to go out and cover a story. I know that quoting misleading information can hurt the company and me eventually. I know how to make sure that what I am saying are facts and how to correctly attribute them to the place or person that said the statement. I know now that even sometimes the best of us can do something without thinking that may cause us to end up in a legal case. I don’t want that, I want to make sure that before something I’ve done went to print or even online or in a newscast, it’s correct.

Did this course meet your expectations? Please explain.

Yes, this course meet and exceeded my expectations. I learned a lot more than I thought I would have in this class. I at first thought that it would just be another class that was tough and I wouldn’t get much from it, but I was wrong.

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Writing for Interactive Media Mastery Journal

In this month's class, we’ve had to write two papers, one short and one long, on topics of our choice, which included one to two interviews in each. At first, I was a little scared because I never thought of my writing style as good as the next persons. I’ve always felt that other journalist writing styles were always better than mine, and mine could never hold up to become as good as theirs.

During the class, I realized how important it was to correctly interview a person to get the correct information needed for the story you’re writing. I also was able to correctly paraphrase a speaker from a video that I watched which was useful for what I was writing about. I thought both stories would be hard to write in the third person, mostly because I thought I would slip up and put “I” in the report.

I also realized that I struggled with thinking of topics on my own to write about. I don’t know why I struggled with topic choice this month as much as I did because I usually can voice an opinion about any world event that’s happening at that time. I think I just wanted to stay original at the time and not write about what everyone else in class would write about. I need to stop over thinking topics and write from the heart.

I plan on taking what I’ve learned in this class to help me professionally and personally because I want to grow in this career path. I want to not be as hard on myself as I was in the past and not think of my writing style as a bad thing. Yes, I know I have to stay hard on myself to think critically, and write proficiently but I want to still be able to mature with each step. I want to become proud of my work and love what I do.

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Mastery Journal - New Media Communications

This month in my New Media and Communications class for the month of May has taken me to new levels that I didn’t expect. First of all, it has taught me that I shouldn’t try to please everyone because that’s close to impossible. If I can reach one person, then talk to that person and that’s all that matters. If I can keep one person interested in what I am saying then that is a good starting point and who knows, someone else may come along and join the one person that have read my blog and they would like to know more about what I am writing.

Secondly, I had to read information of how people can start a blog and become unsuccessful at it and give up. They give up because they lost or never gained any readers. The readers they’ve lost is because the writer didn’t stick to the subject of the blog or website or didn’t try to keep the fresh new spark that the readers came for in the first place. To keep readers coming back for more means staying on subject, steering away distracts the reader. I think I made this mistake once before on a project where I needed to make a blog. I started it off as a music blog then it turned into a random blog that was off subject. I’ve learned my lesson now; I will not change the subject unless the new subject can tie into the previous subject.

Lastly, in which this is not actually all I have learned, media is changing every day. As a journalist, I have to change with it. People are constantly looking for ways of getting information fast and with social medias such as Facebook and YouTube people are becoming their own journalist. In order to get the correct information out to the public and in the quickest time frame possible, I need to know as a journalist what is the most popular source that viewer and reader will go to first. After finding that out I must continue to change with my audience and follow their lead in what newest media available to keep their interest.

I plan on taking these and more with me in my career and keep up to date with my audience media choices. I want them to follow me for the correct and honest truth in the fastest way possible.

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F.L.Y. - First Love Yourself, Others will come next.

Unknown

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The top is a logo I created for me to use at anytime, the bottom is the logo for my photography business.

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About Me…(in the most creative, visual way possible)

Hi everyone my name is Kizzie Gooden. I am a graduate of Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville Alabama where I received my Bachelors in Communications. I then went on to Full Sail University and received a Masters in Instructional Design and Technology, but my heart was always with the broadcast or journalism field so I came back to Full Sail for the New Media Journalism program. I want to become better at what I do in the media world.

                                                   (I graduated in 2010)

                                                   (December 2015)

I work at TV24, which is a TV station in Oxford, AL where I do the programming of shows and I also direct shows as well. I have a fun crew of people I work with daily.

                            (Me in the new studio preparing for a show)

                                     (Our old studio taken in 2012)

My hobbies include: taking photos (I freelance a lot of work such as weddings), playing music (violin, piano and sometimes voice) and I have a love for theater. I enjoy life and everything in it and just try to live it to its fullest.

                                           (Me doing what I love best)

                                                (Playing the piano)

                                 (A picture I took for a photography class)

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Mastery Journal

kizziegooden-newmediajournalism

Mastery Goals

As a child I’ve always wanted to become a teacher and I’ve always told people from the beginning that I will be one. That is until I also fell in love with media and technology. From day one when I first step foot in a TV studio I knew that I would absolutely love the behind the scene of television. As I grew I still wanted to teach others and I also grew even more passionate about the behind the scenes work. I then wondered if I could use both to help the world one day. I believe that time is drawing near.

My dreams are starting to come true by working at a local TV station. Working at a TV station has helped me set my foot in the door of learning myself so I can teach others. I enjoy hands on learning and see it as a way to eventually help others. While there I get to teach inters that are coming to the field how to do the job I am doing so that one day they can do it as well.

I want to finish my degree at Full Sail and be able to help others that may be passionate about the same things I am passionate about. I hope I can learn everything I can on how to teach others about the ways of learning through technology. I want to teach them what I love and hope that one day it will inspire them to want to help others.