bryan’s blog

1.) Why journalism?

2.) What do you think has lead to your success as a journalist in todays hyper-competitve and ever dwindling industry?

3.) What advantages do embracing the online environment are ther for journalists?

4.) What do you feel was the most crucial part of your education for where you have gone with your career?

5.) What do you think is the most important thing to focus on as a journalism student and soon to be graduate?

6.) What advances do you see further changing the journalistic landscape?

7.) Advice to young journalists/students?

The narrated slide show “Continuous War: Cluster Bombs in South Lebanon (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/interactives/lebcbomb), is haunting to say the least. It tells the tale of a young Lebanese girl how lost her leg to a bomblet, the product of cluster bombs used by Israel against Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

The short show, running only a minute and 44 seconds, tells the story of 17 year old Rasha, who picked up an undetonated bomblet thinking it was a toy, as they are about the size of a softball, and have a ribbon attached to the rear as a stabilizer. When it exploded it took her leg from the knee down.

The slideshow offers an often unseen look at the other side of the middle east crisis, the civilian toll. The black and white pictures convey the anger, sadness, determination and hope of Rasha, as she deals with the possibility of prosthesis and the fear of not being able to afford a prosthetic leg. The slideshow also deal with her struggle as a 17 year old girl with the shame of deformity, even if it is only a self perceived shame.

The slideshow works as a very effective way to bring to light, in as short and concise form as possible, a very serious and real human tragedy and socially relevant dilemma. The slideshow shows who really pays the price of war, the innocent and uninvolved.

Ages old art meets new media. According to Jill Rosen’s article “2 Baltimore men look to Twitter’s ‘Fail Whale’ for fame”, (http://www.baltimoresun.com/technology/bal-twitter0226,0,5041675.story) the two aforementioned men planned and executed their plot to gain followers on Twitter in an effort to promote their organization, the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitor’s Association.

The pair announced their plan online and also promised a live web cast of the tattoo session, which immediately began to draw followers. The pair held the attention of over 1400 ‘tweeters’ and were in the “most discussed” section of the social networking site. The tattoo itself went on one of the men’s left calf, and was the “iconic” fail whale, the message that appears when the site crashes or experiences technical difficulties, but was “Baltimorized” by the addition of the traditional Baltimore beer National Bohemian’s mustachioed logo.

 The use of tattoos to gain corporate attention is a rather extreme version of advertising. Recently a group of Nike employees began branding themselves with their company’s logo, simply out of enthusiasm for their work. http://wweek.com/html/nike_psyche.html.

Tax season is upon us, and with it the wonderful phenomena of tax returns. After gouging us a little too steeply, especially many of us students who work but fall below the minimum taxable income, we get to see our funds returned to us, often times totaling a good percent of annual wages in a single payment. In economic times these little bundles of finance can be saviors, paying off bills and maxed out credit cards, yet people with an urge to get tattooed find ways to spend that money on literally themselves, as the product consumed is a permanent addition to their bodies.

Ian Armitage, a 22 year old Baltimore native, he is a bar tender and in about a month a new father, did exactly that. In a simple typewriter font, he has the words “born into this” tattooed in black with the letters standing an inch high, on his inner left bicep. “I wanted to get a [Charles] Bukowski tattoo since I discovered him in high school”, he says, “His work has always spoken to me so strongly, and being that I’m about to be a dad, I figured this was the perfect tattoo to mark this time in my life.”, he adds, “And my refund was pretty big this year so the $120 I spent on it was no sweat to our [he and his fiancé] budget.

Tameri Harris, a 23 year old addiction counselor also indulged in some ink with her refund. “This was the first full year I have had a steady salaried job”, she says, “And I had no idea my return would be so much, so I decided to get these tattoos done because I had wanted them forever, and could finally go get them.”, the tattoos she is referring to are a woman’s face and praying hands, similar to traditional portraits of the Virgin Mary running the length of her inner left forearm, though Harris insists that the portrait is a testament to her own personal faith. On the same forearm is her other new addition to her body art, a full size sailor girl, in the style of the pin-up girls that adorned ships and planes during the Second World War. Though it is still just an outline, the clean lines and shading are a testament to the artist’s ability. Once again the slight financial boost of tax return allows the tattoo inclined to indulge in an annual ritual.

Todd Rasel, an artist at American Tattoos in Baltimore says that tax season is one of the primary influxes in business over the year. “Some people wait all year for that check to come from the feds”, he says, “And they come in and sometimes get pretty substantial work done, dropping their entire refund on a piece, because it might be the only chance they get during the year.” He also notes that the dawning of spring and the thaw are timed well with the release of the checks in late March and early April, becoming a sort of “kick off” to the summer tattoo season. “Oh yeah, as it gets warmer business steadily increases, the more likely skin is to be exposed, the more likely someone will want to put a tattoo on it.” Rasel says, “And the initial wave of work paid for by tax refunds kind of kicks off our busiest time of the year.” So get in those W2s, 1040EZs and 1098s, and then go get a permanent scar, apparently, ‘tis the season.

With striking visuals, seamless transitions, a clean, interactive site, it’s no wonder that the “The Soul of Athens” multimedia package took the National News Photographers Association’s top honor in multimedia design.

The site is a collection of multimedia files that contain narration, photography, and sometimes video. The tone of the package varies from piece to piece, from a sultry pole dance instructor to a group of people using photography as a way to deal with mental illness.

The site’s design holds this very different material together. The site is broken down to the sections; Mind, Body, Spirit, and Place. The content of these categories fits the topic and as a whole each provides a great overview of the human experience in Athens Georgia.

Overall,” The Soul of Athens” is a far reaching project that reaches its goal of showing life in Athens, in all its joys and all of its sorrows, to the rest of the world. The most important part of the sites success, however, is the ability to show Athens to the outside world using an expertly rendered inside view.

   “Soul of Athens” (http://www.soulofathens.com/#index/)

Kenny Henderson was 19 when he was sentenced to two years at the Upper Marlboro Corrections Center for Breaking and Entering. Henderson, a big guy with tattoos covering his broad, well muscled shoulders and gentle eyes, now 24 and a union carpenter /who works at the historic Mall in Washington DC, is sitting outside his apartment in an under shirt and black sweats on an unseasonably nice day.

“It was hard, you know” he says, “19 just a kid and that place was scary.” , he continues “It’s not like the movies or TV, guys aren’t getting raped everyday or stabbed, but some bad shit happened in their every once in awhile and that was enough to keep you scared, but then again that kept you focused.”

Henderson sports a near photographic portrait tattoo of a young girl over his heart. “She’s really how I got through it, man”, he tells me, “This is my little sister Shemeika, she died from smoke inhalation in a house fire when she was 10.”

He stops here, obviously affected by the direct memory, and then continues, “I got this when I was locked up,” he says pointing to his sisters face, set in a blazing smile on his chest, “A guy I knew did it from a picture my mom sent me while I was inside, I kept the photo on the wall and looked at it every morning and every night, and it kept my mind straight, it made me focus on getting out. When I decided to get [the tattoo], about 14 months in, they told me I was up for early release, overcrowding and good behavior, I was free before she finished healing.”

Henderson credits his time in prison as revelatory. He says that it was a terrible, mundane and nerve wracking at the same time experience, but he came out of it and dedicated himself to personal improvement, and has never seen the inside of a cell since.

“It’s her, it’s the time in there I spent with her spirit that saved me”, he says.

At 50 years old, this gal is not only adventurous, but slightly revolutionary. She’s friends with her ex, and getting tattooed. That’s right Barbie, the root of misconceptions about body image to adolescent girls all over the world now will come with a tattoo kit, allowing little girls everywhere to sleeve out their idyllic toy, or just give her a plain old tramp stamp.

In her article “Barbie gets a tattoo for her 50^th Birthday”, http://www.troyrecord.com/articles/2009/03/09/news/doc49b4a964c4dee479841236.txt,  reporter Danielle Sanzone goes on to guide the reader through Barbie’s 50 year stint as every little girl’s favorite toy, and how the doll has been reflective of the society in which she is currently in.

So Barbie is getting tatted up, while it’s no Mohamed Ali breakthrough in social liberty through American icons, but it is a step towards a far more tattoo friendly America.

The podcast “Living in a Dollar a day in Malawi, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6167846&sc=emaf, is riveting. While the tone of the reporter, Suzanne Mariman, is the definition of cool and calm, while the material she presents is tragic, and very real.

The podcast includes the voices of the family in Malawi that she stayed with. The trials they faced living in one of the nations poorest countries was staggering. The audio aspect of the article gave it more depth, and made the piece far more relatable. The determination and the subtle hints of hope and strength that come through in the Malawians’ voices as they describe salt charges of two cents and how they may not eat on a given day really gives a soul to the article.

“Kelly you’re going to have to cover that”, said a young barista’s manager as I waited in a four strong line of fellow addicts for the first fix of coffee on a Tuesday morning at a Starbucks near Towson University.

“I know, sorry”, she replied pulling the tail of her shirt down where it had risen to show traces of a beautifully tattooed lotus flower, softly colored like a sunset in the desert with soft intflections of pink red and yellow, on the left side of her lower back.

“It’s a newer rule”, she tells me, sitting outside of her store, “about a year ago they made visible tattoos against dress standards. Before that their was no rule on tattoos, facial piercings were against the rules but not tattoos.”, she continues, “a lot of people had a lot of work done actually left because they were forced to wear long sleeves to cover up [the tattoos], even in the middle of august.”

While the company itself prides itself as a progressive, down to earth corporation, that takes the individual into account, the ban on tattoos seems out of place to some.

“I don’t understand it,” said a regular customer and Towson student named Matlock, “When I think of coffee shops I think of places where people go to discuss politics and read literature in a relaxed atmosphere, the rule against tattoos seems so conservative.”

However, the ban on body art isn’t so awkward to others. Tattoos have long been taboo in American society at large.

“I don’t think theirs anything wrong with not being allowed to show tattoos when you’re working,” says fellow caffine fiend and local teacher Tara Spinelli, “If I showed up to class with a skull or even just rose on my arm, visable to the kids, their would be a major problem. I don’t dislike tattoos, its just unprofessional, and especially in my profession, just unacceptable to some people.”

 It is only in the last decade or so that tattoos have crept into the light of social acceptance. Even the US Army allows decent tattoos on the hands and necks of its personel. (http://usmilitary.about.com/od/army/a/tattoopolicy.html), the move was said to be made due to the significant increase of potential soldiers, whose body art disqualified them for service.

Starbucks implementing a ban that a incrediablly professional and refined organization as the US Army has recently repealed, is an unforeseen backwards step in the acceptance of tattoos as a viable form of expression, as well as an acceptable form of self ornamentation, such as make up, facial hair, and jewelry.

Yet on the otherside of that argument, appropriateness has always lain at the discretion of a particular environment, and Starbucks has a right to implement standards of appearance upon it’s employees. To due the company justice, it does treat its people well. They offer full health benefits at remarkable rates, as well as paid vacation and guaranteed bi-annual wage increases. For now Kelly will just have to tuck in that shirt tail, and hope for a slightly more liberal CEO.

http://www.bmezine.com/, a self described, “Comprehensive resource on piercing, tattoos, scarification, subincision, castration and all other forms of body modification.” is exactly that.

The site boasts a seemingly infinite amount of material on the subject of body modification. From the realtively simple (not to say some if not most pieces featured are extremly intricate and detailed) arts of tattooing and piercing, to the undeniablly extreme acts of branding, suspension (a tribal ritual in which the body is suspended off the ground using hooks passed through the skin.), to the unfathomable act of willing self castration.

The site relies expressly on viewers and artists for their photographs and stories. The stories range from experience stories in which and individuals process is documented, to technical Q&A’s on the industry. The site is extremly well organized and has a social networking feature at work as well as it connects those deeply involved in body modification all over the world, it even has a section of couples who met through the site.