Freelance journalism is not only a way to open a door to a full time reporting job; many prefer the freedom that freedom that freelancing allows and also the fact that they can start without a college degree. Here’s the best way I know of to get assignments at newspapers.

First find out if the newspaper uses freelancers. The Writer’s Market online version currently lists about 360 newspapers, including specialty ones like the American Jewish World and legacy newspapers like the New York Times.

If you are browsing through newspapers in your library, you can determine if they use freelancers by looking for byline tags such as “for the Ashland Tidings,” “special to,” “special writer,” “correspondent,” etc. instead of tags like “of the Ashland Tidings,” “staff writer,” etc.

In preparing to pitch an idea to a newspaper editor, get a good sense of its style by reading it from front to back page, paying extra attention to the places they use freelancers. Many papers are online now, and if it’s a good prospect it may be worth paying for an online subscription.

When creating ideas to pitch, check back issues if possible to see if your stories have been covered in the past year and a half. If a topic in general was covered but you have a fresh angle pitch it, note your angle. Newspaper editors love hearing new ideas – if they’re in tune with their paper/readership.

If you have clips (published articles), select your best (no … Continue Reading ...

Before beginning arguments into critically exploring the fascination with body trauma in television medical melodrama, it is first essential to define melodrama, its aesthetics and its relevance within television. By definition, melodrama is ‘a drama, such as a play, film, or television program, characterized by exaggerated emotions, stereotypical characters, and interpersonal conflicts’ . It is therefore apparent melodrama shifts between forms of media and thus over time between cultures and decades. It is a form of genre that was crucial to genres development and ‘understanding [of] shifting borders between high and mass culture’ . Although it must be noted that what constitutes a melodrama in terms of aesthetics is shared between these sections.

In terms of the general characteristics and aesthetics of melodrama, often primarily related to film, it can be said it produces recognition for a range of audiences from different classes, localities, and national groupings. Gledhill states that it draws upon ‘social, popular, and high-art cultures and discourses into its orbit, packaging them in different combinations through its cluster of genres for consumption by a newly emerging mass audience, whose social and cultural differentiations can be appealed to and exploited within a broad generic system’ . Melodrama searches for the truth and authentic experience in the world of everyday reality. Gledhill states that ‘the drive of realism is to possess the world by understanding it’ . Melodrama looks for post-enlightenment reason and rationality in order to understand the world. Melodrama socially externalises ideas of moral conflicts, ethical concerns, … Continue Reading ...

You shall be wise to abide all municipal, state, national, international, and the universal law. This is because, any individual while deserving rehabilitation yet is escaping from a prison by breaking any law is never a good move.

What about Prison Break? To me it is just a television show, yet there are beneficial lessons contain in each episode should any individual prefer to apply these in his or her own life. Especially you who enjoy your total freedom.

Nevertheless, please be wise in the selections of any learning from Prison Break, a truly popular television series, since 29 August 2005, for it does also contain acts that need to be studied further, before you even apply these in your life.

At this moment, viewers who have viewed an episode, a part or the entire series expanding into two seasons already, are presenting their views at various portals and other platforms of communication that allow discussions. Although through these discussions there are various kind of opinions and differences in views, yet the majority has voted an overwhelming thumbs up for Prison Break.

Why? Why are these viewers attracted to and then hooked their loyalty to continuously watching Prison Break, episode after episode, and season after season, since the airing of its pilot? Next, why you shall prefer to watch the entire episodes of Prison Break?

Here, please allow me to present my view so that you may review your interest, and then you may prefer to join the ardent viewers … Continue Reading ...

There have been many great characters throughout television history, but not many of them can claim to be as complex, round, or hard to figure out as Jimmy McNulty from the Wire. McNulty may be the most interesting and deep character ever created. The Wire has many great characters, including popular favorites Omar Little, Stringer Bell, and Avon Barksdale, but Jimmy McNulty was the poster boy for the show and he is the central figure of the show.

Jimmy McNulty is the character featured in the opening scene of the series, and for the next three seasons he plays a prominent role. McNulty is the character rattling the cages of those in charge of the police department. McNulty is the only character putting the job ahead of himself. He wants to catch the criminals, rid the streets of drugs, and make Baltimore a better place. Everyone else in the show is simply holding Jimmy back. If the Wire were a melodrama like most shows on television, it would seem natural to place Jimmy McNulty as the hero of the Wire. He may have a little too much to drink sometimes, he may have cheated on his wife with another woman, and he may have no respect for anyone but himself, but perhaps we can pity him for this rather than hate him. However, the Wire is not a melodrama. It is a drama based on the reality that is Baltimore. Jimmy McNulty does do great things as far as working … Continue Reading ...

Ernie Kovacs was television’s most original visual innovator and surreal comic genius, who made us see the world in a different way. He was a true artistic pioneer, who created his unique magic when the medium was just in its infancy.

The pictures that Kovacs conjured along the way, have had an enormous influence on a variety of television shows, as well as individual performers and writers who followed. These included: “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” and “Saturday Night Live,” to name just a few. In addition, performers and writers, such as Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Chevy Chase, and Mel Brooks, all owe a great deal to this inspiring and creative free spirit.

In 1986, the Museum of Television and Radio (now the Paley Center for Media) presented an exhibit of Kovacs’s work, called “The Vision of Ernie Kovacs.” In the Museum’s booklet for the show, the Pulitzer Prize winning television critic, William Henry III wrote:

“Kovacs was more than another wide-eyed, self-ingratiating clown. He was television’s first significant video artist. He was its first surrealist…its most daring and imaginative writer. He was television’s first and possibly only auteur, and he was a genius… Kovacs’s genius lay in the realm of art. There, a genius is someone who causes an audience to look at the world in a new way.”

MEETING ERNIE KOVACS

In 1953, I first encountered Ernie Kovacs when I was 12 years old. Ernie’s early morning television show, “Kovacs Unlimited,” was being … Continue Reading ...

There is an ongoing debate about the effects of television on children. Some believe that TV has a lot to offer. It can educate, stimulate and entertain. If parents are discerning about what their child watches and how much they watch, there is nothing too harmful about TV. On the other hand, some experts say that any children under two should not watch any television. They feel that it hinders a child’s growth and development in many ways.

So before you sit your kids down in front of your huge plasma TV, have a think about what they are watching and how long they are watching.To get a look at both sides of the debate, lets break this discussion down in to the positive and negative effects of television on young viewers.

Positive:

• Children can learn about numbers, letters, colours and shapes by watching quality educational programmes.
• Children can learn about social interaction and manners on good quality dramatic and educational programmes.
• For many parents of young children, a day at home is many hours to fill. Sometimes a familiar or appropriate movie or programme can provide a relaxing moment both child and parent.
• Children enjoy the familiarity of a movie or show they have watched many times as much as they love to read the same book again and again.
• Many movies and shows have a moral tale, and this can sometimes provide a helpful way for parents to introduce moral themes and ideas into their children’s lives.
• Quite