Multimedia Reporting Fall 2022

HOST INTRO: The second class of Baruch College’s senior undergraduate students graduating after the Covid-19 pandemic is approaching in less than a year. Seniors are finishing up their final coursework and actively looking for future career or graduate opportunities in a post-covid world. Elissa Leung spoke to one Baruch College senior student about her current courseload and her future plans after graduation.

AMBI: Nat sounds of students talking by the gym

TRACK: I’m here with Julia Cuttone in level B2 of the Newman Vertical Campus, next to the crowded entrance of the gymnasiums and the overhead of the swimming pool. She’s a senior undergraduate student-athlete at CUNY Baruch College. Cuttone says she’s been able to relatively manage her course load so far.

ACT: JULIA: Honestly, all my in person classes have been going really well, it’s just my asynchronous class I’m finding it’s hard to manage because I’m not able to stay on top of deadlines, so that’s just a work in progress for me.

TRACK: On top of her rigorous academic studies at Baruch she also juggles different extracurricular activities and leadership roles.

ACT: JULIA: I’m actually the Baruch SAAC president, so I have a lot of responsibilities with that, planning events, getting the student athletes involved in community stuff. I also write for the Ticker a little bit on the side. And I’m on the softball team.

TRACK: While she finishes up her eventful last year at Baruch College, she thinks about her future plans after graduation.

ACT: JULIA: So my ultimate goal is to become an athletic director at a Division III college. So, I’m hoping that I will be going to grad school within the next few years for business administration or sports management and then taking it from there.

TRACK: Seniors like Julia Cuttone will continue to power through their last couple of semesters at Baruch College and work towards their future goals after graduation. For Baruch College, I’m Elissa Leung.

HOST INTRO: As Baruch transitions back into in-person learning fully, many students are already gearing up for graduation in spring 2023. Speaking to one Baruch senior about her plans after college and what she hopes life will bring, Samantha Sollitto has the story.

AMBI: The light hum of the vent in Baruch’s Journalism Conference Center.

TRACK: I’m here with Ashley in Baruch’s Journalism Conference Center as she nervously shakes her knee and makes small talk with a friend. She is currently on track to graduate from Baruch this spring. Ashley will be obtaining a degree in accounting and is hoping that she can get a job in
PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Ernst & Young, or Deloitte, also known as the “Big Four” accounting firms.

ACT: ASHLEY: I plan to be an audit side of the firm, but I always wanted to do MNA, but as an F1 student, my Visa only allows me to do what my major in college was and that’s the only Visa they will sponsor me for.

TRACK: Ashley notes the difficulty of searching for a job she truly wants as an F1 student and how getting a green card plays a big role in her career.

ACT: ASHLEY: I heard for the most Big Four firms that you have to reach a certain level of latter, so you have to be a senior associate before you get sponsored for a green card.

TRACK: The stress of having to go through the process of receiving a green card has certainly been present as she nears the end of her college experience. Knowing that it could possibly take a toll on her mental health, Ashley tries to joke with her friends about the experience, making light of an otherwise daunting situation.

ACT: ASHLEY: I always joke with my friends that they need to marry me for a green card because that is the fastest way for me to secure a place in this country, but I think it’s kinda sad that that’s what I’m thinking about right after college and not the money I’m gonna make or the things I wanna do with my career.

TRACK: As graduation approaches, she is confident that all will work out in her favor. Regardless of the struggles Ashley knows she might face, she remains hopeful for a bright future and successful career in
accounting. For Baruch College, I’m Samantha Sollitto.

Practice Radio Assignment

There are several steps to producing a radio news story, so we’re going to do a short practice assignment to give you a feel for how it all comes together.

1. RECORD your interviews and other sound.
2. WRITE the script. (You can’t do this until you’ve completed the reporting, because you need to write around the scenes and sound bites you’ve gathered.)
3. TRACK. Once you have finalized your script with the help of your editor (in this case, me) you can move forward with tracking, or recording your narration.
4. MIX. Now that you have all the sound elements you need (sounds bites/acts, narration/track, and natural sound/ambi) you can go ahead and edit the radio story in Audacity and export the finished WAV audio file.
5. PUBLISH. You’ll upload the WAV file to Soundcloud and post a link to the class blog along with a good title and your final script.

By Tuesday’s class, you’ll need to have completed the first three steps (of the practice assignment, not your actual radio story).

Recording Exercise

Partner up with someone in the class and interview them for 3-5 minutes about a hobby or interest of theirs. This part we will do before we leave today. The other parts you can complete at home if there isn’t enough time.

Script Writing Exercise

Write a very brief practice script with only 2-3 sound bites taken from the classmate interview you did. Post your practice script to the class blog by class time on Tuesday.

Here’s my example script based on a very short interview I did with another professor back in the spring. Note some of the different elements of script writing:

• Visual/descriptive, paints a picture to add context to the natural sounds
• Sets up sound bites by introducing the person by their full name and often by paraphrasing or hinting at what they’re about to say.
• No long, rambling, complicated sentences.
• Ends with a final line of narration that looks to the future in some way.

HOST INTRO: With CUNY schools transitioning to online learning this week amid the coronavirus outbreak, professors across New York City are getting creative. Emily Johnson spoke to one CUNY adjunct about what it’s like trying to teach during a pandemic.

AMBI: Nat sounds of tea kettle boiling (FADE DOWN AS TRACK BEGINS)

TRACK: I’m here with Anna Ficek in her Brooklyn apartment, watching her make tea while she works from home. She’s a PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center and when she’s not working on her dissertation she teaches art history at Baruch College and Borough of Manhattan Community College, or BMCC.

ACT: ANNA: When I found out that everything was getting shut down and especially CUNY I felt extremely sad. Because CUNY is such a big part of my life, such a great community that it was hard to feel that kind of dissipating.

TRACK: She says teaching from home has been a real challenge because of the way she runs her classes.

ACT: ANNA: It’s been very difficult to adapt to teaching remotely just because I really value the discussion I have with my students.

TRACK: Still, she’s trying to see this as an opportunity.

ACT: ANNA: What I’m hoping to get out of this is more time to really focus on what’s important both in terms of teaching and my own dissertation and my own research and trying to figure out creative problem solving ways to deal with these new issues that are going to come around like libraries being closed and inaccessibility to archives and how myself as an academic and as a researcher can get around that. So challenges, but also good challenges!

TRACK: CUNY schools will continue with distance learning for at least the remainder of the spring semester. For Baruch College, I’m Emily Johnson.

Recording Narration

Finally, record the narration you wrote in your practice script. You don’t need to submit this to me by Tuesday; you will use it in a sound editing/mixing exercise that day.

You’ll need to record your narration in a quiet place with sound-absorbing surfaces. Some people use their closet as a makeshift studio; others just throw a blanket over their head. If your room is carpeted, has curtains and lots of plush surfaces, the sound quality should be decent.

It’s best not to drink or eat dairy products right before recording narration; it makes your voice sound thick.

Try not to speak from high up in your throat. Speak from lower in your belly.

Good posture is important.

Some people in the radio world warm up their voices by singing, stretching, and/or doing tongue twisters.

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So, to recap:

By the end of class time, you should have finished interviewing a classmate for 3-5 minutes.

And here’s what you need to have done by class time on Tuesday:

1. Write a short practice script based on your practice interview and post it to the blog.
2. Record the narration you wrote in your practice script.
3. Have those recordings, along with your interview audio, accessible for an audio editing exercise in class on Tuesday.

Now that classes are back in person, many grade schools are no longer using online classes, however, most schools have integrated online learning heavily into their curriculum. According to the Washington Post, 40% of elementary students time in the classroom is now spent using laptops and tablets. I am curious to see if it is because of legitimate learning reasons, or if it is because that is the only way teachers can keep students entertained now.

I would like to see how this is affecting students, specifically those in elementary school who have historically not used technology heavily at that learning level, but due to the pandemic and an easier access to technology, the teachers and classes had to adjust.

I would like to speak with some teachers and students (and administration if the story pulls me there) to see what their perspective is on the situation and see how this increase in technological usage is beneficial to them. The class room noise (general talking, silence from being on the laptops, small taps from the keyboard) would be the background noise I would be using.

NYC Landmarks

I would like to talk about the personal struggles of F1 students at BMCC. I want to highlight not only the struggles and calamities they have but also appreciate and show support on their accomplishments and their inspiring stories. For sound, I plan to use the busy background of BMCC. I would like to reach out to not only F1 students but also reach out to the ISSO office to hear some information from professionals. 

Senior day and the CUNYAC championship is is coming up for cross country on Sunday, October 30. There will be about 10 seniors graduating for the Bearcats. After this season, they will no longer be running cross country at the collegiate level anymore and some have been running for their entire life. Do they have plans to continue running with bigger goals? Are they preparing for a marathon one day? What is going to be there relationship with running now that they will no longer be running for a team? 

Head Coach Angeoline Piguave-Cowan, has to experience losing seniors every year and it is something as a coach that has to be bittersweet. How does she deal with her student-athletes coming going especially if she built a close relationship with them? 

This year both the men’s and women’s team have a big chance of winning CUNYACS. For the men it would be the first time in history, no other men’s cross country team has won before.

The Mishkin Gallery at Baruch College presents the exhibition “Who Speaks for the Oceans?” from September 1^st to December 9^th. 

The featured multimedia art pieces were co-curated by Mishkin Gallery director Alaina Claire Feldman and professor of Biology and Environmental Sciences David Gruber.

This collection of multimedia artworks displays environmental issues through auditory, visual and tactical means so individuals can become immersed in a marine animals life. Specifically focusing on the life of whales, musician and creative Miho Hatori will be doing a live performance of her audio-visual production of “Do Whales Dream of Electric Human?” on October 13^th. 

For my radio project, I hope to speak more with the curators about the meaning or message behind this exhibition and why each art piece was chosen to display. I will also showcase the audio elements of the exhibit, and speak with environmentalist artist Miho Hatori following her live performance at the gallery.