Multimedia Reporting Fall 2019

Alexis Wanzell 

 

The Grand Bazaar NYC Venue located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan serves the borough as a marketplace rich in unique products from local artists and artisans. Though New York City is famous for its hole-in-the-wall artist markets, the Grand Bazaar stands alone in the sense that their profits go entirely to four local public schools, helping over 2,000 children. The venue serves as a win-win-win since it helps local artists and artisans gain exposure, local public schools gain funding, and the community surrounding it has access to local art and innovation. 

The Grand Bazaar NYC Venue originally named the GreenFleaMarket, started from a humble beginning. In 1982, a group of mothers decided to open a flea market in order to fund their children‘s public schools. Originally, the funding and donations went solely to the public-school P.S. 334 Anderson School, though once popularity grew, funding expanded to three more schools within the community including The Parent Associations of P.S. 87, The Computer School, and the M.S. 247 Dual Language Middle School. What began as a small flea market has now lasted and grown for nearly thirty-five years making it New York City’s oldest market still standing and its popularity is not fading. In peak season, nearly 200 vendors will occupy the 43,000 feet of indoor and outdoor space that cater to the local artists and artisans that set up shop from 10 to 5:30 every Sunday. The venue’s diversity and authenticity amongst the artwork and products throughout the market create a deeper awareness of the talent that lives within New York. In just 2016, the name “GreenFlea Market” was changed to “Grand Bazaar NYC” to pay homage to the enormous array of talent, creation, design, and innovation that have a place to be showcased every Sunday. 

Grand Bazaar NYC still stands alone in its mission to fund schools within the community. Though the donations do not just go anywhere, in fact, the funding mirrors the nature of the Grand Bazaar venue in that in focuses on art, creation, resources, innovation and its importance for children that are still growing and developing. The funding within the schools goes mainly toward art enrichment programs, books, supplies, teaching assistants, sports and chess programs. Much like the essence of the artists and artisans represented at the Grand Bazaar, its funding go toward programs that focus on the same principles. Since the market’s roots go back thirty-five years, students who attended the funded schools now come back to the venue as artists and artisans themselves, coming full circle back to the venue that helped them grow as a student. 

The venue in relation to the schools it funds has come in a full circle of support. Though Grand Bazaar NYC has funded and supported the four surrounding schools, the community gives back as well. The venue itself is located both outside on the court’s and inside of the cafeteria of The Computer School. The 43,000 square foot space is lent to Grand Bazaar NYC by the school every Sunday in order to host their events and have vast space in order to fit up to 200 vendors at a time.  

Grand Bazaar NYC serves as a venue unique in its quality to support multiple communities at once, including four local public schools, local artists, and the community surrounding it. It’s contributions to each community have created a chain effect of love and support shared within each that has created a unique dynamic between venue and community that has never been shared before.  

Evan Jamal

JRN 3510

Radio Script                                                    Ball In

The NBA played their first games in India early October. Following a successful outing in terms of ticket sales and TV ratings, the NBA is considering, starting a league there. Seeing as India is the second-largest country in the world with a population of well over a billion people, you would think there’s a hidden well of talent waiting to be tapped into. Following the NBA’s fallout with the Chinese government, now seems a better time than ever to go into that market. But can Indian athletes really keep up? To find out, we sent Evan Jamal to get some first-hand experience about what it takes to play basketball at a high level, and get a perspective on how NBA-China relations effect the Indian partnership. Evan Jamal went to Stony Brook and Queens, New York to meet with some young talent and minds.

Evan Jamal meets with Raihan Asif a graduate level economics student at Stony Brook. After Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, controversial tweet about political issues in China came out, it lead to heated comments from both the Chinese government and NBA professionals.

When asked about how the turmoil that may lead to China ending its TV deals with the NBA and pulling them altogether from their airwaves, effects India’s partnership, Raihan had this to say. “This is a huge loss for China, but a massive win for both the NBA, and India. NBA might lose 15 percent of their salary cap, but the partnership with India, will get that back and more. India’s entertainment market might be second to Hollywood, but globally they produce iconic stars, left and right. Stars like Shah Rukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra, can easily bring in crowds, now imagine that partnership, with the fandom of the NBA. Its success all around.”

After that Evan Jamal meets up with Austin, in an open basketball court in Queens,    where he’s practicing. Austin’s very humble when it comes to garnering attention, and very superstitious in his training ways.

Austin Thomas is a semi-pro Indian-American athlete who plays as a reserve for Penn State (Division one school), and also plays pro league tournaments around the country. He thinks that there’s potential for good basketball players to come out of India, but that it will take time.

Austin says, “If you make it, where sports (basketball) is prominent from a young age in India, then that could change the way things go. Over here we start kids from 1^st graders and put them all the way to high school and AAU. There’s more opportunities here for kids, vs. if you just bring a league into India where they’re older, no matter what resources, training you bring in later, they’re not going to be much. If you use the youth population in India and start pounding away from a young age, then it can be more successful.”

A sport that relies heavily on height, size, and strength, Austin defied a lot to make it this far, but many Indians aren’t gems of physicality. The average Indian man is about 5 feet 5 inches. Indian players will not wow on physicals abilities alone, they usually aren’t NBA heights and sizes.

When asked about which is more important, crafting your skill vs. having the natural physical talent, Austin responded with,“For sure,crafting your skill. That is a given. I wouldn’t have been able to play at the levels I’ve played at if I didn’t. You have to work hard from a young age. No matter the god given talent, you have to work hard.”

After I finished my talk with Austin, it was clear that he felt a league in India would work if they trained them from young ages. Hard work beats talent any day. Following the success of the NBA India games early October, the NBA is considering starting a league there. Looking like a fallout between China and the NBA is on the horizon, India falls into the market in perfectly opportune time. This is Evan Jamal reporting for, Ball IN.

You will need to host your radio story file on Soundcloud (create a free account and upload it here) and then embed the player (by copy/pasting the link) into a post here, along with your photo/photos and script that has been adapted to read like a news story. You have the option of embedding it on Exposure as well.

Example of a recent radio story from my podcasting class: listen

Example of a radio project (from this class) on Exposure: here

Example of a radio project (from this class) on the class blog: here

Also: please listen to the following NPR stories before class time on Monday so you can come prepared to discuss them with our guest speaker Scott Hensley:

https://reemadoleh.exposure.co/indigenous-peoples-day?source=share-reemadoleh

 

New Yorkers are no strangers to the limelight. As one of the most famous cities in the world, New York has been featured in films, books, and probably on your favorite podcast. However, there are some neighborhoods in the city that have kept their distance from the media. A short train ride away north of Manhattan into the South Bronx, a predominantly Latino and Black working-class neighborhood has become an overnight attraction. People in Highbridge are finding themselves split over what has become known as the “Joker Stairs” as fans of the new film flock to the location en masse. 

After its opening at the box office as one of the top 10 highest-grossing films of 2019, the Joker has made Highbridge a new tourist attraction. In this new adaptation of DC’s villain the Joker–Arthur Fleck–portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix–is a failed clown with mental illness who lives on the outskirts of Gotham City–a fictional city that resembles New York. In the film, Fleck ascends a long narrow set of stairs located between two old apartment buildings just to get home after long days. In what is one of the most iconic scenes in the film, Fleck–now dressed as the Joker in a red suit, green hair, and clown makeup– is seen dancing down the stairs. 

Word of the location of this scene spread quickly through social media and fans from all over have started showing up. Ana de Leon tells me that she finds this trend strange. “This is a form of transportation for me to get to the train, people coming here to take a picture it’s strange,” she says. De Leon, is divided on her opinion about the Joker Stairs. “I think it could be a good thing, because of a movie and where it was filmed everybody is interested in where we live it could be a good thing for the neighborhood,” she adds.

Aidibell Feliciano, another resident of Highbridge tells me that this new wave of tourism gives the neighborhood character. “It will probably bring more productions to the neighborhood and a lot of recognition and finally because this was a famous neighborhood and it’s been put behind. People are afraid to come this way but we are all nice and welcoming,” she tells me. But Cris Yanes–a teenager who traveled with his family from Queens to visit the stairs is not one of those peoples who are afraid to shoe up to the Bronx. “I heard about it since the movie came out since the trailer. I wanted to know where the stair where and I wanted to do the dance. I searched up on google because I wanted to know where it was. I knew it was somewhere in New York. I got excited when I found it was close, so we came,” he says. Yanes reenacted the dance in costume as the Joker—but came as another, also an iconic version of the character. “I wanted to make it more original, so I went with a bit of Heath look. I wanted to go with a more original idea when dancing down the stairs.”

Other tourists like Aidan Hubbard and Ryan Martin, fans of the film also used Google to find the location of the joker stairs. It was the first time they came to this neighborhood. “He actually googled it and it was popping everywhere from the movie,” says Martin while pointing at Hubbard. “I’ve been to a couple of Yankee games before and I’ve kind of explored a little bit passed 169th st but otherwise this area I mean, it looks like any part of the city but now it’s kind of a little icon up here in the South Bronx,” says Hubbard. 

On social media, Joel Martinez, a comedian mostly commonly known as Mero the Kid from Showtime’s Desus & Mero, tweeted a sarcastic message to his followers telling them to show up with expensive electronics and cash at hand as The Bronx suffers from high crime rates, according to the New York Police Department. In aviral video posted on social media, an angry man is seen throwing eggs at visitors. You can hear the man say, “Y’all not spending no money in my store, but come here to take a picture, Yankees Stadium is where the tourist go.”

This has become a well-known sentiment among local business owners. Tourists are not contributing to the local economy. Fatima and Kevin Reyes workers at Shakespeare Deli Grocery, say that despite all these new faces in their neighborhood, their business has not had the economic impact they expected. “Honestly, we haven’t seen anything different. There are more people coming for the stairs, but we haven’t seen any uptake in our business,” says Fatima. “We thought that when people came here to film they would be doing good things for the neighborhood. We should’ve seen better opportunities in business or a better quality of life for everyone who lives in this location. But we don’t see any changes,” she adds. Kevins tells me that when there are too many people outside, many of our customers prefer to shop elsewhere instead of dealing with tourists. “It’s affecting our business. What Can do?” he says.

The Joker stairs have started a conversation among residents of the area. Ana de Leon says that to the neighborhood just to take pictures. “sometimes it could take away from the actual place we call home because they want to post it online and be apart of something,” she says. Arthur Fleck has transcended the screen and cause a rift in the real world. There are neighbors who welcome the change and others who oppose it. For now, this neighborhood in the Bronx will have to deal with the masses of Joker fans. 

 

Intro to Audio Editing

You have the option to edit your audio projects on either Audacity or Adobe Premiere Pro.

Pros of Audacity: Free to download. You can edit at home/on your laptop.

Pros of Premiere: Better editing program. More intuitive to use. Less buggy/prone to crashing. Will also give you a head start on getting familiar with the program, since it’s what you’ll be using to edit your videos for your final project.

Cons of Audacity: Sometimes prone to crashing. Doesn’t allow for more complex, nuanced sound mixing.

Cons of Premiere: You’ll either be reliant on school computers and lab hours (they have this program on the computers on the 6th floor of the library as well as in Studio H) or you’ll have to pay $19.99 a month to subscribe to it.

Audacity shortcuts to know:

Play/pause: space bar
Split track: Command I
Zoom in: Command 1
Zoom out: Command 3

In the tool bar, this is the selection tool that allows you to click and highlight and delete sections of track or select a spot where you want to split it:

And this is the tool that allows you to move sections of track:


And this is the one that lets you adjust the volume, basically the same way the pen tool works in Premiere:

Sound files download: acts/ambi and narration.

Script download: Trade and Manufacturing Script

In both programs, when you’re finished editing, you’ll need to export the finished sound file before you can upload it anywhere.

In Audacity, it’s File –> Export Audio –> select “WAV” from dropdown menu and give the file a name and location, then hit “Save” and “OK.”

For Premiere, it’s File –> Export –> Media. Select “Waveform Audio” from the “Format” dropdown menu if it’s not already there. Name and locate the file in the “Output Name” field. Then hit “Export.”

In-Class Exercise: Script Writing and Audio Editing

ACT: TRUMP: “NAFTA was the worst trade deal in the history – it’s like – the history of this country. And China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization has enabled the greatest job theft in the history of our country.”

HOST INTRO: That was then-candidate Donald Trump hammering the North American Free Trade Agreement while delivering a speech on trade last year in Pennsylvania. Just last month, he threatened to scrap the deal altogether. He isn’t the only politician to blame trade deals for lost manufacturing jobs—they’ve been something of a punching bag on campaign trails for years. For anyone seeking votes in places where factories have been shut down, globalization has proved to be an effective scapegoat. But the reality is not quite that simple. [Your name] went to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia to investigate.

Okay, there’s your host intro. I want you to use the following information to write the first scene of a script for a radio story.

Location: The factory floor at Vaughan-Bassett in Galax, Virginia.

Source: Safety coordinator Brian Reavis.

Reporter notes: You’ve been given safety glasses to wear by Reavis. Reavis has a thick Virginia accent. The place smells like sawdust. The noise is deafening. Reavis points out a conveyer belt where workers are building nightstands assembly-line style. They’re building 16 nightstands every minute. It’s a chilly, cloudy day in October.

Background info:

• Vaughan-Bassett is the largest wooden bedroom furniture manufacturer in the US.
• Galax, Virginia considers itself the world’s capital of old-time mountain music.
• There used to be six furniture factories here in Galax.
• Cheap, imported furniture has disrupted the American furniture market.
• Vaughan-Bassett is the only factory left in Galax.
• Many furniture companies have moved operations overseas where manufacturing is cheaper, or closed down completely.
• Galax sits at the “gateway” to the Blue Ridge Mountains.
• There has been an emphasis on tourism in recent years since the factories closed.
• Vaughan-Bassett employs 650 people, many of whom are longtime employees and work alongside members of their families.
• Galax population: 7,042 people as of 2010 census. In 2018, the population was 6,423.

Soundbites (Reavis):

“My mother worked here for 35 years, she started here in 1972 making a dollar 62 an hour, I think minimum wage was a dollar fifty back then an hour, she brought home 80 dollars a week and she just retired probably 12 years ago. But a lot of folks are impacted by these furniture factories …I mean, it’s a vital part of our mainstay, our life, and we’re very fortunate to have it.”

“Oh yeah, we had BC Vaughan, TG Vaughan, EC Dodson, Webb 1, Webb 2, all within eyesight of this facility. Unfortunately they’re gone, and chances are they’ll probably not be back.”

“The process that’s going on here is Henry Ford’s assembly line personified. Every employee has a specific job to do to successfully put that piece of furniture from Point A to B…”

Your assignment is to write the script up to this point:

TRACK: Fortunate, yes. But it’s no accident that Reavis and the others at Vaughan-Bassett still have their jobs when so many others don’t. To show you why, we need to make another stop, over the border in North Carolina, where the Bassett family is gearing up for the world-famous, semiannual home furnishings trade show in High Point.

Remember, your script should follow a template like this:

HOST INTRO: 

AMBI: This is your natural sound AND your room tone.

TRACK: This is your narration.

ACT (NAME): These are your soundbites.

You should also include notes as to when your AMBI fades up and down.

Your sound files are downloadable here. Time permitting, we will also do an audio editing tutorial.for rob

https://maykhin.exposure.co/the-heart-of-the-burmese-community?source=share-maykhin

Dear editor, 

Baruch College Undergraduate Student Government is often overlooked by the students but USG put so much effort and dedication towards the Baruch community to make effective changes on and off campus. The club life at Baruch is a lifestyle, a choice and a lot of commitment and many students cannot handle both club life with their course load, jobs or extracurricular activities. However, there are some bearcats who are very active in the community and club life and have been showcasing their leadership skills to make important changes to the Baruch community. The current President, Dakshatha Daggala, is very well-known in the Baruch community for her leadership and services. Her passion and contribution led her from the Chair of Clubs and Organizations last year to the current executive board position – the presidency. She has been implementing her initiatives in diversity and voter registration to raise awareness on important issues and she is bringing so much to the USG table. Therefore, I will love to interview her on how club life has changed over the years and how campus life and club activities will continue to affect the overall student body at Baruch. I was hoping to interview the former Chair of Clubs and Organizations Arvis Chen (2017-2018), Dakshatha Daggala (2018-2019) and the current Chair Denise Rojas (2019-2020) on how the club life has changed over the years and what is next for club life in the future. Please let me know your thoughts. Thank you so much for your time.

Sincerely,

May Khin

Info session with admissions director of the Newmark J-school (CUNY), Max Patino.

Reminders/Upcoming dates:

Scripts for the radio piece will be due next Wednesday, October 23. We will NOT be having class as normal that day. Instead, I will be holding one-on-one edit sessions with all of you that day. You can sign up here. Time slots will be first come, first served. If you absolutely can’t do any of the available times, you can contact me about potentially setting up a phone call.

Your final produced radio story will be due Wednesday, October 30. As a reminder, here are the requirements:

Assignment #2 will be a 5-minute news radio feature (a “wrap”). A wrap is a scripted radio piece that weaves together natural sounds, interview clips (known as “actualities”), and reporter narration to tell a story.

These are the components you are required to submit for the final draft:

1. A good headline/title.
2. Your final 4-5 minute edited audio file, posted to Soundcloud and embedded on the blog or on Exposure.
3. At least one photo.
4. A slightly reworked version of the script that reads like a normal news story, similar to the examples we looked at in class.