Courtney Condron

Today was a big news day, as Chancellor Robert Hemenway announced that he is stepping down on June 30. Two of the reporters went out to cover the press conference and reactions. Bryan put up a little blurb about it on the web as soon as he heard.

I created a time line with an online time line builder. It shows accomplishments during the Chancellor's 14 years at the University of Kansas. I then went ahead and put that into the story that is already online, and it will be also used in the news story tonight.

One of the graduate students created a follow-up to his in-depth package about the Lawrence Transit System. I worked on exporting that file in the correct format and uploading it to web elements.

Everything else was pretty much my usual activities. It's kind of weird that this is already my last news shift :(

Today was mainly the usual. There was a package about preparing your home for winter, and she had a lot of sidebars. She had created a powerpoint, and so I converted each slide to an image and then put the images into a slide show in shadowbox. Then she had some sidebar information, so I created a winter-looking sidebar in InDesign with little snowflakes. Yes, this would be the second little wintery snowflake sidebar I have created.

I typed up a couple of the stories, and added the big news of the day to Beyond Lawrence. Apparently we have been in a recession since a year ago. That was the big news of the day.

Today's newsroom shift started out like another newsroom shift. I uploaded videos to YouTube, typed a package in and added some web elements to it. I also created a sidebar for the Salvation Army story.

I forgot to write about my news shift the other day.

I posted stories on YouTube and I created a graphic for how to winterize your car. I made little snowflakes in InDesign. Alex didn't think they were cool enough, but they were the best I could do and personally I think they look like snowflakes. I did have to ask Bill and Dick for some information about anti-freeze and sub-zero washer fluid. I wasn't too sure about the difference between the two. Usually my Dad winterizes my car for me, and this year he said "Has your car driven better after I got it all ready for winter?" and I was like "No, what are you talking about." But for those students who don't rely on their Father to winterize their car, they now have a cool little graphic complete with snowflakes to help figure out what to do.

After that I just worked on the usual tasks and then helped with the news update. Mainly I've just been trying to finish my final project that is running tomorrow!

Since KU is playing Nebraska this weekend, I shall take this opportunity to point out something very wrong with this state. A law called the "safe haven" law that was passed in Nebraska in July says any person can leave a "child" at a hospital without any charges of abandonment.

This has led to 28 cases, and counting, of people from Nebraska and other states bringing not just little children, but also teenagers to hospitals and just peacing out. I understand that we don't want children to be brought up by parents who don't want them, or it an unhealthy environment, but is this law really the answer? If my parents took me to a hospital and left me when I was 15-years-old, I don't think I would ever recover.

A USA Today article even reports that a man came in and left nine siblings, ages one to 17. This guy is now just automatically relieved of all his parental duties, and is probably out at a bar celebrating that he doesn't have to spend money on diapers anymore. While these kids are sitting at a hospital wondering where their dad is, and what's going to happen to them. That's sick. I don't care where these teenagers are abandoned, it's still abandonement. At this age, they will never be the same.

One 14-year-old girl was dropped off by her grandparents, and then continued to run away from the hospital to Texas, where she was going to get a job. I don't think it sounds like she was in much of a safe haven at the hospital if she is now on the run to Texas.

Luckily an emergency session has been called to look at this law again. Now, some legislators want to change the age limit to three-days-old. Hmm...vast improvement...what a great idea. Why didn't anyone think of this before?

Today there was a story about the political masks that Professor Williams showed us in class, so I made a graphic in InDesign for that story.

I decided to get a little creative today. There was a story about Homecoming, so I used InDesign to create a chart of the activities for each day. I made it crimson and blue and put a little jayhawk on it so that it was beautiful and festive.

I was the web producer for the package that ran today also, so I created a list of quick facts in InDesign for that as well. It just had some of the important highlights of the story. It wasn't quite as pretty as the Homecoming chart however.

The bad thing was, the Web site was acting strange. It kept saying page error when I tried to add a story or click on a story. I'm not sure what the deal was, but hopefully they can still post my charts later.

Every October you are bombarded with Breast Cancer Awareness fundraisers and merchandise. For me, this marks the one-year anniversary of when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.

It was a big afternoon as the House voted on the bailout plan and rejected it.

The Web site is all up to date with the latest news though. I put the bailout being rejected and Citigroup buying Wachovia under beyond Lawrence.

Bryan ordered Indiana Jones pizza, and he said he had some staff profiles I could work on, but then he left for jury duty so I never got the staff profiles to work on.

The other day my roommate started cheering when Sarah Palin came on the TV, and we looked at her and said, "Wait, aren't you an Obama person?"