Monthly Archives: April 2012

April 23, 2012 · 2:57 pm

The Beat Needs You, SUNY Purchase

Update: Weds April 25. They made their target! The Beat is officially funded. But the fundraising continues. The staff would like to raise as much as they can to be able to sustain the magazine and turn it into a permanent institution at Purchase.

Journalism Prof. Andrew Salomon and his dedicated team are sooooo close to making the $5,000 they need to launch a new music magazine for Purchase.

But they still need a little more. Can you help?

Last I checked, 65 people had already donated and they just had $800 to go. Click here to access their Kickstarter site and donate.

The magazine is not set to debut until next Fall, but they already have a Facebook page with updates about the Purchase music scene, and an able editorial staff has been assembled. Purchase journalism alums, Briana Rodriguez and Scott Duwe are heading up the masthead. A slew of the journalism program’s top talent have signed up to be staff. The articles for the first issue have already been written, the photos have been taken, Purchase design students have created the mag’s logo and page design. They just need the money to print.

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April 12, 2012 · 9:52 pm

What?! Your Dad’s An Associated Press Editor? Let’s Bring Him In to Talk at SUNY Purchase!

Kiley Stevens and her dad, Associated Press Albany News Editor Rik Stevens, after his talk in the SUNY Purchase Neuberger Museum Study.

And that’s basically how Associated Press Albany News Editor Rik Stevens ended up talking to a roomful of journalism students today in the SUNY Purchase Neuberger Museum Study about the news industry and the venerable AP.

His daughter, Kiley Stevens, is one of the bright sparks in my Journalism 1 class (which has a number of bright sparks, by the way.) And when she confessed earlier in the semester that her dad was in the news business, I asked if she’d hit him up for a visit. He said yes, and yesterday he put aside the news for a day and schlepped down to Purchase from Albany.

He told the students how the AP was formed (in 1846 by five New York City Newspaper bosses) and how it works (as a not-for-profit cooperative of news organizations.) I was reminded of their great motto: “We get it first, but first we get it right.”

I’ve always admired AP reporters for their precision and speed. They always seem somehow above the competitive madness that can grip the news industry. (They might disagree.) When I was covering breaking news, I always felt they were on my side.

Rik was upbeat about the news industry, which was refreshing. Journalists can be a cynical bunch. He  told some great war stories (including one about the time he saw a wanted criminal drive past a police station while he and a group of journalists and photographers were standing outside, and how he became the subject of the news that day after he alerted the police and helped them reel in a bad guy.)

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April 8, 2012 · 9:08 am

A SUNY Purchase Fashionista Blogs About Her Closet and Campus Fashion

The outfits! The nails! The hair! The tattoos! SUNY Purchase students have a reputation for their fashion sense. Take a look at this blog, which captures all the creativity that gets paraded around campus each day.

Click on a picture to see the photos up close.

Alina Suriel started this blog using her nom de plume – Alina Angelica – in my Journalism 1 class last semester and she’s worked hard to keep it going. She calls it her “virtual closet” and blogs about her outfits in photo-oriented posts. She also takes her camera out onto the Mall, around campus, and to parties, creating a digital canvas of the groovy Purchase sartorial scene.

She breezed into my office recently, and I persuaded her to answer some questions about her blog, which she was kind enough to do in a subsequent email exchange:

1) When did you start the blog and what was the idea behind it?

I started the blog about 4 months ago in your class. I had been meaning to blog for a while, and so sitting through a whole lesson about blogging was a great kickstart to that. This blog is a virtualization of something I would do when I was younger to keep track of my outfits. I would keep lists of the individual components of the outfit (black cowboy boots, striped blue shirt, etc) on index cards, as a reference if I ever didn’t know what to wear. In my blog when I post about myself  I still list the things I wear as tags which link back to other things I’ve worn with that item.

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