Profile tips

JOURN 300/SPRING 2013/ Possible questions to ask your profile subject:


• The reader wants to know what makes your subject so unique or interesting that you want to write about him/her. Ask the other people you interview for your story to help you with this. For instance, the omelet lady is unique, because she 1) interacts with the students so closely, 2) keeps up a steady stream of banter, which not all DC employees do and 3) seems so proud of her job.



• Provide examples that illustrate/SHOW the qualities you think make your subject so interesting. So, SHOW the omelet lady talking to a particular student at a particular time about a particular subject. Don’t just sum up what she USUALLY talks about, or if you do ALSO add a PARTICULAR example. How do you show she is proud of her job? Ask her why she is. Mention that she has a Facebook page. (It turns out her husband started the FB page; interview him! Ask him if she has always been so invested in all of her jobs. Have them met a lot of people through her job? What does she say about it to him? Has she told him of any particularly memorable things that happened on the job? )



• Once you’ve established that this person is unique or otherwise interesting, ask questions about his or her background to discover things that LED to him/her being the interesting person he/she is. For instance, the basketball player SC is shown in his room amid a LOT of clothes, but it is apparent he keeps all his clothes well organized and that he takes care of them. *Ask him WHY he thinks he is neat? *Were his parents neat? *What did they do? *What kind of a house did he grow up in? *Does he value orderliness? If so, does he think it is because the value of it was ingrained in his childhood? Or is he neat because his childhood was kind of chaotic, for instance? *Ask him who has been a big influence in his life and why? *Can he remember any particular instances of this person helping or guiding him or any particular advice this person offered him? You don’t have to go on at great length about his in the piece. Just a couple of sentences would help us “picture” the subject and where he came from.



• Ask some “evergreen” questions that will help you paint a multi-dimensional picture of your subject that goes beyond the main thing you’re concentrating on in the piece. For instance, Angela McMahon is a lacrosse coach at UMass where she once was a player. She is well-respected by her players for her strong work ethic. Ask what else she does besides lacrosse? Does she bring this strong work ethic to everything she does, would she say? (Maybe she’ll say she’s got a dog, but she’s totally undisciplined when it comes to training her dog and she lets the dog run all over the house and knock things over, for instance.) Where does she think she got this strong work ethic she brings to coaching lacrosse? When did she first start playing lacrosse? Was it her first choice of a sport to play? Did someone encourage her? How?

GOOD EXAMPLES FROM SOME OF THE PAPERS:

“At the beginning of class Lamb walks over to her desk – her gait is punctuated by a preference for her right leg – and places what looks like thousands of paper down with a thud. She eases herself up onto the desk and it momentarily tilts forward and supports Lamb with only two pegs. She doesn notice, pounding the desk and calling out for “offerings for the gods.” – Araz

“When Keller was moved to Berkshire while Hampshire is renovated, she was excited that she got new omelet pans. But the excitement wore off quickly, as she had trouble adjusting to life at Berk. “The stir fry lad who has my space after me always comes over and tells me she has to start at 11, but I end at 11!” said Keller in frustration to a group of students. – Shannon

AP tips Spring 2013

AP tips

• Spell out an organization's name the first time you use it: University of Massachusetts on first mention; UMass after that
• Time: 9:25 a.m. and 9 a.m., midnight and noon. When describing when an event will occur, say the time before the date. For instance: The event begins at 9 a.m. on Sunday, March 10. (NOT 10th)

• Names of most websites and apps are capitalized without quotes, like Facebook or Instagram. Use quotation marks for "Farmville" and other computer game apps.    
• While titles are capitalized and abbreviated when placed before a person's name, titles that follow a person's name are generally spelled out and not capitalized. An exception is President. Example: Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts was in attendance at the school's basketball game yesterday. (vs. Gov. Deval Patrick)

• Round off numbers greater than a million: 2.77 million (vs 2, 752,123) About $2.35 million (vs. $2,349,999)
• Capitalize days of the week. Do not abbreviate except when in a graphic or headline
• In football, use numerics for yards not downs Fourth-and 4, Run for 20, Punted from their own 3
• Street, Avenue and Boulevard are abbreviated when they are part of a numbered address. Court, Drive, Lane and Way are not abbreviated. For example: He lives on 123 Hilly Ave. Hilly Avenue is in South Amherst. She lives at 45 Pond Drive.
• Lowercase for seasons. For example: Her favorite season is spring.
• Use figures for all temperatures except zero and spell out degrees. Wednesday will be in the 70s (no apostrophe).
• More than vs over. Use more than when referring to numbers. For example, he had to run more than 20 miles in the marathon. NOT He had to run over 20 miles.

Notes from the James Welling photography exhibit at the Fine Arts Center Museum of Modern Art

James Welling  wants his photos to be a puzzle or something to decode -- which is what viewers said they found themselves trying to do at "Open Space."

Welling tries to make photos that are more "complicated" or "dense," he told about 75 faculty, students and community members that came to the opening day of  "Open Space," a new exhibit of Welling's photography and paintings at the Fine Arts Center Musuem of Contemporary Art. Most photographs are "uninformative," with the role of the person holding the camera being quite small, he said.

Welling created most of the work shown in his homestate of Connecticut in the 1970's.

The New England native is visiting from California, where he is a photography professor at UCLA. He himself didn't major in photography, he said. He got into it at the suggestion of a friend who told Welling when he was 25 that he should get a camera and take photos like Ansel Adams.

Welling thought the suggestion was absurd at first but ending up buying a camera -- he said at one point that he always buys used equipment -- and "apprenticed himself to the camera" while also researching the history of photography. At first, his photographs looked liked everybody else's photos, Welling said, but there was a moment when he "remade the medium for himself." 

Welling is often said to be a member of the "Pictures Generation," whose most famous member is probably Cindy Sherman, who photographs herself in costumes and disguises. Welling said members of the "Picture Generation" were looking for ways out of an "imaginary confinement"; they wanted to create photography that was different than what Welling referred to as 1960's photography. "It's kind of like Sonic Youth says: 'Kill your idols,'" Welling said.

Welling's work is hard to characterize, according to speaker Lorne Falk, a visiting professor at Hampshire College. Falk said he finds some of Welling's work to be romantic, with elements of the "tragic. 

Speaking with students before the talk, Eva Fierst, education curator for the museum, described the "Open Space" exhibit as reflecting Welling's strong connection to Connecticut, nature and abstraction.

Asked what he thinks students think of photography today, Welling said there are two types of seeing: 1) "Normal seeing" and 2) "More aware seeing." Welling doesn't think it makes much of a difference whether the medium is digital or film photography.

Welling is influenced by poetry, especially that of Wallace Stevens, which Welling described as being "seasonal," "about place" and "extremely vivid. Other influences he mentioned include Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Emily Dickinson.