The Picture in the San Bernardino Sun Telegram

Jennifer Bilek

MCOM 100W

Research Project

October 29, 2008

My Journey to Track down a Picture

My first step when trying to track down a picture that ran in the San Bernardino Sun Telegram was to call the newspaper. I went onto their website and found the number for their customer service line. I picked up the phone and dialed the number. I waited on the phone for close to fifteen minutes until a woman answered my call. I told her that I was looking for a picture that ran in the 1960s about a band called “Fly by Night Company.” She told me in a very confused voice that the San Bernardino Sun does not keep a record of newspapers that old. She told me the next thing I needed to do was to go down to my local library and have a librarian pull up the microfilms.

I wrote an e-mail to Paul Kauppila, the librarian for our department who did a presentation during one of our classes. I wrote him a very lengthy e-mail describing the assignment and asking him what my next step should be. He e-mailed me back with loads of complicated information. This is what he wrote.

-To look at the microfilm, you will most likely have to travel to a place that has it or request it through Interlibrary Services. You will need to be very specific about the dates you want. Details are below, including some important details about the newspaper:

-UC Berkeley has the Sun from 1966-1974. During the 1966-1974 period it was simply called The Sun, according to WorldCat.

-It gets even more confusing - there was an afternoon paper (remember those?) called the San Bernardino Evening Telegram, and according to the record, on holidays and Sundays the two papers printed a joint edition called the Sun-Telegram. So it’s possible that your article is in the Sun-Telegram and not the Sun - but only if it was a Sunday or a holiday. Unfortunately, the Sun-Telegram from those dates is only at CSU San Bernardino and at California State Library.

-I found out that in 1968, the National Orange Show ran from March 7th through March 17th. That narrows the dates down for you - at least, assuming the article was published in 1968, which we are still not absolutely sure of.

-But at this point, my next move would be to search the Sun microfilm for those dates. You could go to Berkeley or you can check with our Interlibrary Services people to see if they can borrow the microfilm from another library.

At this point Loa Phan found the image that ran in the San Bernardino Sun Telegram. I decided to try looking online for more information on the National Orange Show. I found their website and I looked through the different links to help me find any information about any previous shows. However, I could not find anything of value.

Next I went looked for some records on the Doors and who played with them. I found a DVD that has clips and segments of many of the performances they did during 1968 and it said in the description that it featured their performance at the Orange National Show. It did not mention anything about “Fly by Night Company.” It is selling for $14.88 on Amazon.com as of October 27, 2008.

Word count: 547

Focus Story Structure Exercise

Jennifer Bilek

MCOM 100W

October 22, 2008

Focus story structure exercise

Chrysler Workers Face Desperation

Bill Klisch has been laid off from his job at Chrysler, leaving him and his wife struggling to make it threw the upcoming months. “My wife is handicapped and she’s supposed to have an operation,” Bill stated. “Our medical coverage is running out. Tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

Unfortunately Bill is only one of the over 44,000 workers who were laid off from Chrysler. These workers have been unemployed for five months and next week they will receive their last supplemental unemployment check. They will be receiving 95 percent of their take-home pay, however, after next week, they will have to live on state unemployment benefits.

Despite the hardship these workers are facing, they decide to put on a mock funeral on April 1 to draw attention to their misfortune. Fifty workers, along with their spouses and children attended the mock service, including Henry Westoff, a 44 year old man who is one of the many people faced with this tragedy. Westoff states, “They’ll give us our jobs back after we’ve lost everything. They don’t care.”

Word of the Week #8

Jennifer Bilek
Word of the Week #8

Word: trenchant

Source: Machan, D. (2008). New Look, Same Mission. Smart Money, 17(6), 16.

How it's used: "it's got a new look that helps you navigate the site better by creating a clear division between our trademark investing stories and our trenchant advice on spending."

Definition: (adjective):
1. keen, sharp
2. vigorously effective and articulate.
3. sharply perceptive

Your Sentence: My french teacher told me that it was too hard to memorize all of phrases we learned the day before the test so I took her trenchant suggestion and I got an A on my test.

Word of the Week #7

Jennifer Bilek
Word of the Week #7

Word: consolidated

Source: Machan, D. (2008). By the Seat of Their Pants. Smart Money, 17(6), 62.

How it's used: "Putin, 56, consolidated state influence over the country's oil giants during his presidency from 2000 to the middle of this year."

Definition: (verb):
1. to join together into one whole
2. to make firm or secure
3. to form into a compact mass

Your Sentence: I took all of the vocabulary words I had learned in my classes and consolidated them when writing my final paper.

Query Letter #2

Jennifer Bilek

MCOM 100W M/W 12-1:15 p.m.

October 20, 2008

The Salad Bowl of Improvement

Many of my family members, close friends, as well as myself, have fallen victim to the curse of obesity. It is no surprise that the United States has been struggling with obesity for many years. However, it took shocking statistics such as childhood obesity tripling over the past two decades for the government to step in and help reverse this nation wide epidemic. Now that Gov. Schwarzenegger has passed the bill forcing restaurant chains to place the calorie content on their menus, people will be slapped in the face with the reality of the high calorie foods they are consuming. This change will have two ultimate outcomes. People will continue to eat as they did before or they will learn from it and begin making healthier choices. Conversely, restaurants could panic from the possibility of plummeting into bankruptcy from the reducing number of customers, or they can benefit from this bill by altering menu items to accommodate people who strive to eat healthier foods. Ultimately, this bill is about more than another rule for society to accommodate, it is about learning about how to treat our bodies properly by providing the necessary nutrients that the average American is severely lacking. I just pray that this bill will be the first piece of lettuce in a salad bowl of improvement.

NPR Radio Interview Analysis

Jennifer Bilek

MCOM 100W 12-1:15pm

October 15, 2008

Interview Analysis and Techniques

The interviewer knew some information about the author, Leslie Chang, before the interview began. She had read Chang’s non-fiction novel entitled “Factory Girl” which is set in China. The interviewer focused on finding more information about the protagonist in Chang’s novel. The interviewer asked about the protagonist’s age, lifestyle and cultural differences compared to the United States, such as the rise in prostitution.

The interviewer started asking questions that were very simple and easy to answer. Then she progressed onto in depth questions about the novel and began to incorporate her own opinions and speculations within the interview. She did this in a very professional way which made Chang feel comfortable and encouraged her to explain many points more thoroughly. She also asked Chang to elaborate on many sections of her book. This was the interviewer’s main tactic to encourage Chang to talk more about specific topics in her novel.

The interviewer had a very direct strategy for this interview. Every question was asked in chronological order in relation to the novel. This gave the listeners a synopsis of the novel through the descriptions presented in the interview. This also made it easy for Chang to know the exact section of the novel the interviewer was asking about.

The relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee was very friendly while staying professional. I sensed that Chang was very comfortable around the interviewer because she conveyed her answers in a causal yet confident way. This demonstrates the great deal of experience from the interviewer because she was able to gather difficult information while staying respectful and considerate of Chang’s feelings.

What I learned from listening to this interview is how vital it is to do research on the person you are interviewing ahead of time so you know what type of questions you should ask them. It is difficult for many people to open up to a complete stranger and talk about their work, but if you know what to ask, an interview can become very successful.

Word of the Week #6

Jennifer Bilek
Word of the Week #6

Word: barons

Source: Slenske, M. (2008, October). London Calling. Best Life. 5(8), 80.

How it's used: "Though he grew up in Ireland and Wales, Timothy Everest moved to London at the age of 20 and took an apprenticeship with Tommy Nutter, the last Savile Row tailor to the Beatles, Mick Jagger, and various boardroom barons."

Definition: (noun):
1. one of a class of tenants holding his rights and title by military or other honorable service directly from a feudal superior.
2. a member of the lowest grade of the peerage in Great Britain: a nobleman on the continent of Europe of varying rank: a member of the lowest order of nobility in Japan.
3. a joint of meat consisting of two sirloins or loins and legs not cut apart at the backbone.
4. a man who possesses great power or influence in some field of activity.

Your Sentence: Tiger Woods is the most famous baron in the golfing world.

Mystery Character

Jennifer Bilek
100W MW 12-1:15pm
October 13, 2008

Mystery Character

He is known for his scratchy laryngitis sounding voice which is commonly projected at a very high decibel. Although he is predominantly white, no one would dream of calling him Caucasian. He has an extremely short temper and has been caught in many occasion yelling in public. His wardrobe consists of one blue shirt and one blue hat. He doesn’t own a single pair of pants but he still raps a towel around his waist when he gets out of the shower. Who is he?