I’m not a huge fan of group projects. In fact I wrote an editorial about group projects around this time last year. They stick in my craw and I think on the whole they are unnecessary. I can’t seem to go a single semester without having at least one. The problem never lies in working with a group. I think group work is great. It will be impossible to be successful in the professional world of news media without being able to collaborate. The problem I continually see is scheduling conflicts. Trying to sync the schedules of three independent college students has proven to be rather difficult, if not irritating for everyone involved. These last two weeks alone, my media convergence group has tried to meet two times and failed to do so (not because we are blowing each other off, but because things just seem to keep hindering the process).
We may not even up to Ron Burgundy's standards of journalism, but we're getting there.
Luckily for us, the professor of the class has decided to cancel classes for the next several meetings to allow us to work on the project. Today, after another failed attempt to meet up, we all agreed the best time to work together is going to be during Thursday’s class meeting time. It is probably the only commonality among our schedules.
The good news is we do have a very well thought-out convergence package; we will be telling a sequence of stories about Fake Patty’s Day here in Manhattan, a fake holiday that dates back to the mid-2000s’. Currently, the City Commission in Manhattan is trying to change the way the holiday is regulated in the local bar district, Aggieville. We will create a print story outlining the history of the fake holiday and recent development surrounding it’s regulation. Additionally, we will do a podcast and standup package to go with the print story.
This is a set of stories I really want to do. I think we have the potential to tell them in a way that will captivate our audience.
Fake Patrick, pray for us. In Ron Burgundy we trust.
Tim Schrag 