Not Gay, Can't Sleep, full of Pride!?

So I am awake as usual in the earlier hours of the morning, watching green wing and trying to research for more possible articles for Birmingham Pride 07 for our newsite, and I come across this video on YOUTUBE:




I don't know about you, but this seems all very very professional and exciting, personally I can't wait fort his years events in May, and I have been told by the events director for pride, David Babbington, that this years theme- 'United for Equality', is alot more political based.

Gay and Lesbian rights are something that needs to be tackled, homophobia is still rife in this country, and others for that matter. A video below is to promote the gay pride festival in Israel. The video is not what is shocking, what drew my interest to this video are the comments that are left about the video, which include, "God hates fags" and "Your sadistic God cursed gays by creating them gay. Stupid fuck."

Take a look at the shocking comments on the You Tube page, and let me know what you think by emailing me here , or leave your comments.

This is the video:

On a more personal note....

..I owe this guy and his lock stock and smoking barrels for getting me through my editing dilemma's in the early hours of this morning.



what the hell was kelly Brooke thinking? Billy Zane!!!! REALLY?????

David loves the site!

As you know I have been emailing David Babbington, the Events Director of Birmingham Pride '07 , well I recently received an email apologising about him not emailing my interview questions back sooner, which was brilliant knowing that he was still planning to respond to me, despite a very busy schedule. Not only that though- he praised our efforts on the UCE Newsite

LOOK...he loves it:




So we have people interested, lets keep these hits high!

Stirring it up

Last week we all had a talk from The Stirrer website owner and editor Adrian Goldberg.

This talk was along the lines of any seminar talk from an 'outside speaker' in the field of media, but I found myself actually being interested in what he had to say, and pleased to see how much Adrian seemed to enage with us as a group of young professional writers. This 'talk' was arranged by our lecturer Paul Bradshaw , who is monitoring our progression as online journalists throughout our 'Online Journalism' year two module.

So......we all went around the classroom and introduced ourselves and our role for the UCE newsite, "Hi..yes, Hi I'm", "I'm sports", "oh yes I have been covering technology" "yes"...when it got to my turn, (thinking nothing at the time) "I am the gay community correspondant, but I also dabble with fashion and music stories", and that was that.

Later on in the seminar we were seperated into groups to brainstorm ideas for our Assignment 2 assessment- to produce somehing news worthy and relevant to Birmingham for our interactive part of the newsite . Which if you did click the link and go visit it, you would realise it is in serious need of updating.

Okay, so what is there at the moment in my opinion is rediculously simple and after seeing examples of interactive pages, such as this interactive database on the Florida Herald Tribune which is a brillaint example of how to use interactivity on line. The page is there to help tackle the issues of child abuse in the American state through the use of online interactivity. There is a particular page that demonstrates the process of filing a complaint of child abuse, which without this interactivity, and just text would not engage the reader at all.



Although very professional the page in the Florida Herald Tribune , this is something that I would be looking to acheive through this interactivity assignment.

After brainstorming within a group of four girls, myself and a fellow 'head strong' member Charlotte Dunckley decided that the most promising and definately news worthy topic would be Birmingham Pride 07. This would allow us to involve an interactive map of this years pride, the route of the parade history of pride- involving an interactive timeline, lots of colourful graphics and images of this years event and previous years.


This is the point where the need to voice our interactive ideas to Paul Bradshaw and Adrain Goldberg -Stirrer.com came about.

With my role being 'gay correspondant' for our news site, I took it upon myself to voice our ideas and pitch what we had in mind for the interactivity pages, so I voice our ideas as the 'gay correspondant', after which Adrian replies, "Well you would know what they have to offer you in the gay community".

GREAT, he thinks I'm a lesbian!!!


So I went along with it and replied to him as if I was a lesbian as not to offend him, or cause an wierd atmosphere. This little episode lasted several minutes in which I was an 'assumed lesbian'. I am not at all offended by this, I just found it comical that he thought I was GAY because I am 'the gay correspondant', then again, if you put it like that, then it does spell itself out.

After the seminar finished I shared this amusement with my classmate, and cooky housemate Roz(Rosalind Brabner), to which she responded with large amounts of laughter......and who was to over hear and get in on the laughs but
Paul Bradshaw ...I find it wonderful I am now the centre of a run in joke with my lecturer regarding my sexuality! HA!

So Paul, and Adrian I suppose (ha ha ha), I leave you this:






P.S Thanks for an entertaining and informing lecture last week.

Edit Edit Edit

I have finally realised why none of my links are working on ANY of my articles on the UCE news site , so after some painful editing of html- I blame new times roman and their 'curly' speechmarks- I think that I have got it sorted, so click away.

I have now finished my article on Birmingham Blaze football team, which features an interview with the teams manager Garry Brown, and posted it on the UCE Newsite , in the Local section.

I am still researching news worthy stories for the 'gay' section of our news site, and I am waiting on an email interview response from Birmingham, 'Pride 07' events director Dabid Babbington, and hopefully will have another story for the gay section on our newsite.

Online Interviews

I have had some promising responses from my contacts regarding taking part in interviews via email.

This method works very well for both myself and the people that I have been chasing down for interviews.

Its fast, it's reliable and no doubt convienient to those with busy schedules- they can respond as an when they lack (within a certain deadline of course), and it all works out for both 'parties' involved.

So, in the next few days I should have had responses- and hence more articles that are relevant for the gay community section of UCE News.

I have already received a more than positive response from the captain of Birmingham Blaze- a gay and straight football team in Birmingham, and hope to ficnish this feature with images and links shortly.

Other than this I am looking towards some more Music based articles, review local gigs in Carling Academy and The NIA. Yet I feel that this has less relevance as news on a 'local level'- which is what we are aiming to acheive within the website.

Interviews are obviously something that are core to a promising article.

Perhaps with the growth of online journalism we will see the growth of 'online interviews' and a whole new approach on how to get that well needed quote.

Article Leads

Although I am not necessarily struggling to find out the 'gay goings on' in Birmingham, I am just finding that the 'news' stories that I am being faced with are just plain press release type articles and have no scope for creativity or even some sort interest angle, that is away from an act being announced for DV8 or the plans for Gay Pride.

I hope I am not stomping on anyones feet- i.e Julie, with her being fashion correspodant, but I am going to cover the Mencap fashion remix show involving UCE fashion students, that is happening in the City on Friday evening, and then i may perhaps have something different, and that little more challenging to write.

Website problems

I just don't understand but whatever links i go through to try and get logged in to post a news article it just won't do it.

I'm going to try a different way today, if not then i will just have to end up posting them on here.

I haven't heard back from come of my contacts so haven't got as many articles as I thought but I am working on it.

Responses

I now have replies from all my contacts that I have made regarding news articles for the 'gay community' section for the
UCE news website.

I will be working on some interview questions, and hopefully will receive swift responses and have some rather large feature/profile articles for the site soon.

I am also looking to review some small gigs that i am going to over the next few weeks, including one tomorrow evening, so I will have some in put for the music section of the site aswell.

Contacts

This is the email that I have sent in order to persue my articles for the 'GAY' section of our community website.

Hi David, I found your contact details on a regional BBC news website for Gay pride 2007 in Birmingham. I was wondering if you would mind answering a few questions about the event this year, and a few about last years event, comparisons, views, events, excitements etc!!!
I will be publishing the final article, about Birmingham Pride 2007, online, as part of the 'UCE News Site'. It would be brilliant if you could get back to me as soon as possible to let me know, and I will finalize my questions for you, and get the article on the way. I don't know my scope on word count for the article as yet, but I am wanting to make it quite a large feature/interview piece in our Gay Community part of the site, with lots of colourful images. This will be great publicty/pr for PRIDE 07 for the student community. I look foward to hearing from you, thanks for listening.

Jessica.

His contact details are: everevent@blueyonder.co.uk

I am still awaiting a reply in order to write up a large feature article on this massive event. information about PRIDE, are easily accessible on the internet, and from the gay community section on BBCnews site for birmingham I have also found further stories of interest for the site, I am emailing other contacts for leads on other stories.

It is just a matter of waiting for reply's from my contacts.