The reason? I simply can’t help it. I’ve known since tenth grade, when I actually began thinking about my future career, that I would go into a writing career. Journalism just makes sense. My natural curiosity extends far past my city’s, and nation’s, boarders. Local, national, and international occurrences are equally as important to me. I realize the power that the media has, and I want to be a part of using that power for positive change. If I’m never a part of this… I don’t know what I’ll do. I have to be. I’ll feel like a failure otherwise.

Besides, the doomsday shouters aren’t journalists anyway.

Newspapers are in a crazy-awesome transition right now. Multimedia is becoming the norm. Newspapers are still story-tellers, but the medium is changing. Blogs, video, sound bites, interactive photos… you name it, newspapers will have it one day. Who knows? Maybe one day there’ll be an all video newspaper, or a feature where you can click on a story about a concert you can add your photos/input if you went.

It’s going to be a wild ride, and I’m ecstatic to be in the car–scared for my life but enjoying every minute of it.

As of now, the Neighbors section is on the main website, but you have to scroll down a ways to get to it. The section is broken up into the two counties and myriad cities by two sets of tabs–two top tabs and many, many side tabs.

When you click on a city, say… Miami Shores, and select “more news from this area” this is the screen you get:

I think the Neighbors section needs its own website that the main page would link to. Here’s my ideal Neighbors website:

Now picture that both the “Broward County” and “Miami-Dade County” tabs would link to individual pages of news found in that area. Also, pretend that each city on that map would link to a page of news about their city and surrounding cities. It would be up to the editor to say which regions overlapped, but for the sake of an example let’s say there was a story about a new school in Miami Beach. The Miami Beach, Surfside, and Bal Harbour websites would be updated with the story. The stories with the most hits in the entire local section would be displayed on the front page with the map, along with the day posted (or perhaps the number of hits). The actual county/city websites could look much the same as the website now, with headlines and short story blurbs, but I’d suggest they be condensed to a square form instead of the spread-out layout. Condensing the page with more photos and fewer strings of sentences would make the page more appealing, and more interactive features could be included, like videos.

As I said before, I think The Miami Herald is an excellent newspaper, especially the Neighbors section. It has some amazing writers and editors, but the website certainly needs work. Local coverage of news is very important to the people in that community, and every step should be taken to improve such an important section. Plus, if the website looks prettier and is easier to get around, then more people will read it (including local advertisers).

In a revolutionary combination of computer design and instrumental performance, students are learning to make their own musical Iphone apps to play in concert. They conceive, design, and perform the avant-garde instruments themselves.

Some say this is not real music. Why not? Is not music simple the alteration of sound into something meaningful? If one were to listen to a performance by these students I bet no difference could be found between a “real” orchestra and a digital one (under the assumption the students have had sufficient practice).

This raises the bigger issue of what is real in a technological world. No, I’m not talking about The Matrix. Is using Google Scholar an adequate substitute for rummaging around in a library? Are christmas cards sent by email looked down upon? Is a video of your child’s piano recital good enough to send to grandma (or should you fly her down from North Dakota to hear your little darling play)? Can technology replace what we perceive to be physical interaction? Perhaps not replace, but certainly enhance.

It really all comes down to your mind. Is it closed to new possibilities? Then maybe you should skip the next E-Beethoven concert.

Ok, so it isn’t so bad today, but just keep scrolling down:

Every single bit of multimedia is crunched into one area. No, no, no, that’s not right! If journalism school has taught me ANYTHING so far it’s that multimedia is the way of the future, and therefore should be incorporated into every part of the newspaper, not shoved into its own block. The 60 second review should go into the Tropical Life section, high school football should be within the Neighbors online section, college football should go into sports, and so on.

Next down we have The News Grid.

I fail to comprehend the necessity of this section. It’s far too cluttered, eclectic, and all of the articles start to look the same after a while. On top of that, AP stories are categorized as AP stories… Aren’t they supposed to be assimilated into the rest of the newspaper? Stories are being organized based on where they’re coming from, not what they’re about.

Now we reach The Neighbors online section…

And a part of me dies inside.

I am extremely partial to The Neighbors section. I adore it. A speaker from the New York Times came to my journalism class and told us that local news is what will one day keep the big newspapers afloat. I whole-heartedly agree. People want to know about what’s happening in their city, in their neighborhood, down their street, ect and so forth. This tiny online section does not do the justice that Neighbors needs. So far it has a selectable bar of cities; however, that list hardly changes from Aventura to Downtown to Kendall, and if you’re from Miami you know that those cities are extremely different. The idea that the public can submit photos for publication is a great idea, as long as they’re diverse enough. One photo for the entirety of Miami will not do. On top of that, it isn’t like they’re crammed for space. It’s the internet! There’s unlimited space! I have an idea about how to improve The Miami Herald Neighbors website, which I will include in my next blog post–sketches and all.

Now I don’t have any problem with the quality of The Miami Herald. I believe their writing is excellent and quite honestly I think they’re the best newspaper in Florida. Basically, they rock my socks. However, with this new age of newspaper digitalization, The Miami Herald is going to have to kick it up a notch to stay in the game, and that starts with having an eye-catching and easy to navigate website.

Like The Sims, Farmville represents the calm, fair cause-and-effect lifestyle that we often dream of. You plant a tree and it grows. You forget to water your squash and it dies. There is no war, no bug infestations, no cancer or two-headed pigs due to pesticide use, and no recession.

It’s addicting. Because it runs in real time, players find themselves planning their day around their crops. THe articles mentions a man who sets his alarm for 1:30 am for harvesting.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say we all want to be farmers. On the contrary, we go to college so we won’t have to to work on a farm (except the Agriculture majors), but it certainly provides a dreamy, albeit time-consuming, break from out fast-paced urban lifestyle.

Football fans may groan, but in the end this new rule could save your heros. With the proof, and common sense, at hand that poorly healed concussions lead to brain damage I say let the guy rest!

What good is it to have a powerhouse player get hit time after time until he cannot remember his last name let alone the name of the play? Not good at all.

Had Tebow sat out of the LSU game after his concussion during the Kentucky game, Florida may have suffered a bit at first, but the rest of the team had the ability to pick up the slack (yes, I realize Florida is a college team and not in the NFL; bear with me, it’s the only example I have).

And if they lose the game because of the exclusion of one player, then maybe that team needs to rethink its strategy.

As with all flu strains, swine flu was bound to mutate at some point to become resistant to Tamiflu, but thankfully it has mutated at a slow rate. When compared to the sheer amount of people infected with swine flu in the past year, 75 new mutations is hardly a cause for concern.

I do feel bad for these 75 people. A few close friends of mine had swine flu, and they said the first few days before the medicine kicks in feels like you’re dying. Of course, you don’t die (usually) but experiencing the full force of that flu must really be a headache.

But with all strands of flus and colds, mutations will happen. That’s why we have a flu season every year and people don’t build up immunity. The best thing to do is get vaccinated as soon as the shot or nasal spray become available, and simply stay calm. It’s just a flu.

Somehow, I’m not surprised. The fact that even my own country holds innocent people against their will isn’t a shock. It’s become part of our post-9/11 life. If you say “bomb” in an airport, you get detained. If you have too long of a beard and a tan, you get detained. If you start yelling at police in Punjabi, you get detained. It seems silly, but we adjust. This newly uncovered secret prison slides right into this mold.

Is it fair that several innocent goat herders were scooped up by the military and held for months because they had a name similar to a known terrorist? No. It is necessary? Probably not. Still, I am unfazed, and that in itself is a problem.

Yes, I am extending my own emotions to stand for those around me, but hear me out. There is a certain level of apathy that comes with each new discovery. I recently learned Guantanamo hasn’t closed yet. I was more shocked by my level of misinformation and not with the information itself. It was found that Iran has secret bomb-making sites. And? It’s Iran. You really didn’t expect that? For all I know, there is a top-secret POW internment camp under the golf course beside my house. I really wouldn’t be surprised. In fact I’d like to bring them sandwiches (without getting shot).

For some reason I am not appalled, horrified, or disturbed by these discoveries. It seems like the military has always, and will always, do things the general public considered immoral in order to do what they think is right. And likewise, the public will ignore what the military does, because we view them as our protectors, and like a small child we watch them whip our neighbor playmate, unsure of the transgression but certain that he did something bad. What we fail to realize is Dad is drunk and the neighbor kid just stumbled onto our yard at the wrong time.

It appears that NASA stockpiled the International Space Station with turkey dinners and all the accessories. Some kind-hearted, or greedy, astronauts then smuggled some dinners onto the space shuttle Atlantis. The shuttle left the International Space Station recently, and the astronauts are on their way back home, but they will be able to munch on turkey as their shuttle orbits the Earth.

I think this is a rather adorable story if it works out as I’m imagining. I would like to think that there was a meeting among the astronauts on the Space Station, and they all agreed to sneak on packets of turkey, cranberry sauce, and stuffing for the returning Americans to enjoy. After all if a Frenchman were returning on July 14th, or if an Englishman were orbiting on November 5th, and I was on that station I would certainly make a big deal of their holiday. It’s silly little country-specific celebrations like Thanksgiving that really bring a sense of nationalism, and I appreciate that the astronauts recognized this.

An interactive feature of a Mayan calendar accompanies an article on why the Earth will not be destroyed in 2012 (as if any intelligent person didn’t already know that). Personally, I think they just ran out of room on the rock.

The feature, while it’s rather limited, is very cool. They put the five indications of time on the Mayan calendar: the bak’tun, the k’atun, the tun, the uinals, and the k’ins. You can flip through them to create a new calendar day, as well as see what today would look like on the Mayan calendar. It even goes up to the 6000 ADs and back to the BCs, if you flip the Bak’tuns back far enough.

Good news world! I went through the 2012 calendrical year on my computer, and it did not crash, nor did the world explode, so I think we’re going to be ok. Relax, stop freaking out about doomsday prophesies, and remember back to Y2K.

Personally, I think the Mayan calendar could catch on. No one would be able to tell when I have a date if they steal my planner and every day is marked with little faces. Besides, isn’t foreign communication hip now?