My Mastery Journal

Oscura Cafe & Bar serves up craft culture to Downtown Bradenton

Oscura Cafe & Bar serves up craft culture to Downtown Bradenton Alex M BuonoJan 21, 2019 As evidenced by the ongoing “revitalization” of new storefronts populating the 13th street and 6th Avenue west corner in downtown Bradenton, native Bradentonians Keith Nasewicz and Ben Greene of Oscura Cafe and Barare hoping to make Oscura the hub of local, craft culture. “I think we’re trying to create a…

Oscura Cafe & Bar serves up craft culture to Downtown Bradenton

Hiding in Plain Sight – Manatee County Law Enforcement’s Complex relationship with Cameras

Manatee County Law Enforcement is one of the select counties in Florida that has not opted to integrate body-worn cameras within its ranks and yet, has found recent success utilizing automated license plate readers as a tool to combat crime in Manatee County, according to recent articles in the Bradenton Herald and WFLA.com.   The beginning of 2017 sparked a new public policy debate in the state…

For my final mastery journal, I will reflect on the goals and objectives set in advanced of my completion of the final course of my graduate program.

The first goal was to create an engaging journalistic package for final project by reaching out to industry mentors throughout the final project process to pitch ideas and receive feedback. In reflecting on creating the final project in my thesis, I certainly leveraged my mentors at Fullsail University throughout the various stages of creating my final project. Whether it was consulting Meredith Cochie on how to orient myself to public information officers or reaching out to Dr. James Carstens on post-mortem feedback on the project, I feel strongly that their contributions to my project have enhanced it’s quality greatly. 

The second goal I set for my final project, was to discover the single subject of the project by referring back to my research and work from previous courses. Throughout this year of study, I have produced several articles on the ongoing immigration debate occurring with the U.S. In focusing initially on local individuals affected by the uncertain future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act Program, also known as DACA, the initial contacts made through immigrant rights organizations in these previous articles acted as a springboard to the focus of my final project, detailing the local impact of a statewide agreement between law enforcement agencies and U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement, (ICE).

The final goal of this course was to learn how to create an engaging website for my final project via a lynda.com tutorial on Muse. Admittedly I did not employ techniques laid out in the tutorial since, in the last 12 months, we have done extensive critiques and work on how to best optimize our websites for our final project. In New Media Publishing and Distribution the most rigorous evaluations pre and post-release of our final project helped shape our website for optimal presentation. In this course by reflecting on the statistics of our project in the graduate thesis and by also evaluating the website for post-graduate work, I feel that I have accomplished this goal thoroughly.

Columbia County Sheriff releases “basic ordering agreement” ICE data

The Columbia County Sheriff’s Office has provided via public records request the agency’s transactional data of individuals held under the “basic ordering agreement” or BOA with U.S Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE). According to their data which accounted for individuals held under the agreement’s parameters from the initial start date to June 30, only one out of a total of six…

In this mastery journal entry, I will detail the goals and objectives I set out to achieve in “New Media Publishing and Distribution.”

My first objective was to learn about the economic issues facing new media publishing and distribution by studying current profit models utilized by news organizations and discuss with peers.  In participating in the newsu.org course, “Anatomy of a Multimedia News Organization” I learned about the organization structure of a multimedia news organization. In completing the course’s exercise on conducting research on two different projects that utilized different profit models, one through digital ad revenue and the other through a content licensing profit share, I learned how newsrooms weigh their options when endeavoring to integrate new revenue streams that are effective and will yield the most positive result for the company. Additionally, in Lesson 4.1, we learned the various profit models that freelancers can utilize before we get to the newsroom; be it banner ads, affiliate links or a paywall. In experimenting with these models post-graduation, I now have a launching pad to start generating revenue for my freelance career.

The second objective for this course was to learn how to anticipate global competition in distribution and publishing by investigating current trends in platform distribution for international markets. I frankly didn’t spend enough time on this objective independently regarding international market distribution, but from what I was able to understand with regard to distribution planning as we learned in Lesson 2.2, having a distribution plan is essential in being able to be a competitor whether the objective is to drive local or international traffic to my website.

Manatee County Pilots Controversial ICE Agreement as Deportation Fears Increase  Alex M BuonoJuly 23, 2018 (Bradenton, Florida)| On Jan. 17, 2018 in Largo, Florida, a press conference was held by Tampa Bay law enforcement agencies to announce a new inter-govermental law enforcement partnership with ICE called a “Basic Ordering Agreement.”

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In this mastery journal entry, I will detail the goals and objectives I set out to achieve in “Public Relations and Reputation Management.”

My first goal was to learn ethical responsibilities of multimedia journalism by reading supplementary material in, “Ethics for Digital Journalists: emerging best practices,” by Lawrie Zion and David Craig. In Chapter 3, the book discusses the best practices for the network journalism sphere. In this chapter I discovered a helpful piece of information regarding how to vet and fact-check social media sources. They advise to collaborate with international journalist organizations for training in order to create a stronger fact checking “node.” I plan on following this advise in my postgraduate career by attending training at the nearby Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg for additional training. This additional information was helpful in deepening my understanding of the ethical responsibilities of journalists and PR professionals as covered in week 2. 

The second objective for this course was to expand my awareness of organizational responses to audience feedback. The initial strategy was to research press releases and analyze the audience feedback, but what ended up being more effective in understanding this concept was the week 4 material cited on the U.S Navy’s flow chart in how to respond on social media. The formalized workflow represented in the infographic perfectly demonstrated how and when to comment in response to public feedback on social media. This model will serve as a template for my own rubric for social media responses in the future.

Finally, the third objective was to understand the basics of public relations via the Lynda.com video course, “Public Relations Foundations: Media Training.” The most interesting takeaway from this training course was the techniques described in how to deal with “hot seat interviews”. In identifying how important it is for the interviewee to control the interview and steer it back to their talking points, it is helpful to be able to recognize these techniques as someone who hopes to be on the journalist on the other end.

A Smarter, Civil Discussion. Try Kialo.

Kialo encourages users to engage or follow “pro-con style,” online discussions.

Some say the social media landscape has turned toxic in recent years with regard to public debate, which has made it difficult for some to find a platform for a more civil discussion on the topics of the day.  According to a Dec. 2014 research article featured in The Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Mediatitled,…

In this journal entry, I will discuss the impact of lessons learned in the course, “Social Media and Online Community Engagement,” or SME.

 My first goal in this course was to learn how to effectively use social media as a community engagement tool by researching prominent journalists on social media and discuss with peers.

 One of the course objectives for SME is to identify signals and metrics to evaluate audience engagement. In Tutorial 1.3 of the course, we learned how to develop a social media content strategy to this end. I first set out to study the frequency of how many posts per day/week journalists like Vox.com’s Matthew Yglesias produced. It was instructive to understand the frequency of postings on each platform from thought leaders in journalism like Yglesias. Additionally, Tutorial 1.3 suggested developing a social media content strategy by analyzing Pew Research Demographic data to find where your audience is on each social media platform.  In my research of the Pew Research Study on different U.S immigration news sources linked to on Twitter, I learned that Reddit is the 4th ranked social media platform that provided news sources linked to Twitter. This Pew demographic data now gives me the opportunity to find my audience on Reddit that I will cultivate further in my professional journalism career.

 My second personal goal for the course was to learn how to use social media for generating story ideas and promotion by engaging online communities for research and to build an audience. In setting this goal, I tried to achieve the course objective of creating and engaging in a conversation with personal learning networks. Tutorial 2.1 detailed how to use Facebook in our professional endeavors, where one tip suggested to create a public Facebook profile to promote our stories and engage our audience. I decided to create my Alex M Buono public Facebook page and followed the tutorials suggestions to adhere to shorter character length and asking questions to my Manatee County audience to drive the conversation. This garnered some success, where on April 3,  I posted an article on Facebook by asking Manatee County if President Trump tweets that threatened to end the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and U.S aid to Honduras was a justifiable position? According to the page Facebook metrics, the post reached 148 people, where I engaged in an exchange with supporters of President Trump’s position. This was the first successful engagement of an audience to any site of mine, and it was extremely fulfilling. In using Tutorial 3.4’s suggestion of using Scoop-it as a news-based social media aggregator to curate the article that I posted on Facebook, I believe I achieved the course objectives and my second goal. In carrying out my first online interaction and execution of a social media strategy to engage my audience in this course, I believe building on the strategies I have learned in this course is a building block to creating a measurable social media presence in my professional career that I can advertise to prospective employers.

 For my final goal of the course, I hoped to learn best practices for social media use via a Lynda.com tutorial on managing online communities. In the hope of achieving both the course aim of optimizing audience participation by integrating best practices, the Lynda.com tutorial advises to “take care of your community members and regularly seek their input by creating a feedback loop.” In the Facebook article that I previously mentioned above, I made sure to clarify my comments to a commenter that was slightly hostile in the hopes of deescalating the tenor of their responses. In honesty, I do not believe I achieved the goal but I believe using the best practices guidelines given in the Lynda.com tutorial, I can further set the boundaries on future conversations to show prospective employers that I keep a professional and respectable online community.

The Intercept’s Viral Immigration Article is Retracted During Tense Week for Undocumented Immigrants

On Monday March 26th, The Intercept posted an article written by reporter Lee Fang, with the headline that implicated that ICE was using private Facebook Data to find and track a criminal suspect that was an unauthorized immigrant, via a public records request filed by The Intercept. In both asserting that the suspect was an undocumented immigrant and that the ICE officials were using private…

Multimedia Reporting was another stepping stone in my mastery journey towards completing the New Media Journalism Program.

My primary mastery goal for Multimedia Reporting, (MR) was to learn how to process and transfer electronic news related information. The strategy I set to complete this goal was to study current industry best practices with regard to transferring electronic news. In Lesson 4.4 of MR, we learned best practices with regard to web design and layout guidelines, an essential component to transferring electronic news to your audience by following aesthetic guidelines that reinforce a legible transfer of information with a professional quality of photos. Without these guidelines, the transfer of information into a sloppy and unprofessional format can result in a credibility gap with your audience and prospective employers.

For my second goal to learn how to develop stories and packages for online consumption by studying current story models with online media outlets, in our second week’s discussion post I studied the March 12 New Yorker article by Jane Meyer titled, “Christopher Steele: The Man behind the Trump Dossier.”

“https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier”

In learning the storytelling techniques of narrative journalism in Lesson 2.2, the article demonstrated the techniques of narrative journalism by focusing on the character of Christopher Steele with a sense of time and drama through a non-linear mystery narrative structure. This was the highlight of the class for me in terms of learning the ways in which creativity can be expressed in the storytelling, where as a student it pushed me to move beyond the inverted pyramid and traditional narrative structures that I’ve utilized in previous stories. 

This was a fun experiment.

The third goal of this course was to learn hardware and software tools for visual storytelling through a Lynda.com instructional. In this instructional, I plan to utilize the technique of utilizing Lightroom to Premiere Pro to create a time lapse for an upcoming story. I have been wanting to use the still photos in a more creative way for my video packages, and the instructions given in the tutorial make this a fun and creative visual element to incorporate in my next article.

Overall this course has taught me the valuable knowledge of different storytelling models for my upcoming projects, and to consider the different ways I can approach telling a story through visual, text and audio elements. It has greatly expanded my knowledge and I hope to utilize and improve these newly acquired skills for the rest of my career.  

District 73’s Coleman is a Professor, Political Scientist, and First Time Candidate

Liv Coleman hopes that Manatee County will send her to Tallahassee to unseat Republican incumbent Joe Gruters  as a first time Democratic Candidate for the District 73 seat in the Florida State House of Representatives. Coleman, 38, received a strong introduction to voters from Manatee County Democratic Party Sheryl Wilson at a local workshop last month, and has been a resident of Bradenton since…

At Drago’s, Fernando Drago’s Passion is Serving his Community

Fernando Drago, owner of Drago’s Cuban Cafe. (Photo: Alexander Michael Buono) Fernando Drago has led many different professional lives. He’s worked as a carpenter, construction worker and an oyster shucker. For the last three years, Drago’s latest incarnation has been the Chef and Owner of Drago’s Cuban Café in Downtown Bradenton,…

Digital News Production was a significant step forward in my mastery journey.  This class was the most challenging for me so far in this program, but was very rewarding in terms of the content I’ve created this past month. My first mastery goal for this course was to learn journalistic skills for the news environment by studying journalistic technique and confirming with industry professionals. In DNP, I’ve learned how to employ new techniques with regard to approaching creating video packages for the web. In Lession 1.2 of DNP, I learned the five shot method, and employed this methodology during my third and forth week shoots.  Over the past three months I have been in touch with Wendy Dewhurst-Clark, a senior photojournalist at the Sarasota-Herald Tribune.  I plan to share my work with Wendy and get her feedback on my work at the completion of this course and integrate any suggestions she may have.

My seconds goal for DNP was to distribute news style content across platforms by leveraging my awareness of the reporting style of prominent online news organizations. In this course I believe I improved my social media writing skills vastly. In modeling some of my social posting style after journalists that inspire me, such as Ezra Klein amongst others and I hope to continue to refine my voice online throughout the rest of my education.

Finally, the last goal for this course was to learn how to assemble journalistic content for distribution. In learning the various lessons on platform distribution and through Jeff’s notes on how I can improve the presentational aspects of my multimedia articles to render the maxim effect for the audience.

Manatee Democrats Hold Saturday Workshop to “Build on the Blue Wave”

On Saturday morning, the Democratic Party of Manatee County held a training event for prospective volunteers in advance of the 2018 midterms at IMG Academy Golf Club in Bradenton. The local party is hoping to build on the momentum of last week’s special election win by Sarasota Democratic Challenger Margaret Good, as reported in the…

Manatee County NAACP President Rodney K. Jones addresses the audience on Thursday. (Photo: Alexander Michael Buono) On Thursday, the Manatee County NAACP held an “emergency” meeting for Bradenton’s minority community at St. Mary Missionary Baptist Church in Bradenton. The meeting was in response to county officials meeting with the Florida Department of Transportation on their Desoto Bridge…