Maine Drops Two at Home to the Huskies

This weekends games at the Alfond left a sour taste in the mouth of many Umaine hockey fans. Friday night our boys lost in convincing fashion 5-0 to the currently undefeated Northeastern Huskies.

With little to talk about in regards to that game I decided to move onto Saturday nights game, which also happened to be a loss. Yes we did get swept in our first weekend at home!

There are however a few positives to get out of Saturdays 2-1 loss. First of all we managed to score a goal and keep the score close thanks to a young goalie Scott Darling.

Darling looked great in goal in his second career start for the black bears. Darling has started the season splitting time with junior goalkeeper David Wilson. But due to Wilson’s early struggles it looks like its about to be Darling’s job.

Spencer Abbott who also is a freshman scored the black bears only goal late in the first period to put the black bears in the lead. It was a power play goal that was assisted by Van Dyk and Danis-Pepin. Both of whom are solid defensemen for the black bears.

It looked good from there. Darling was playing an excellent game up until the third period.

We entered the third stanza with a 1-0 and nothing had even come close to scoring on Darling so everyone was feeling great about the possible outcome.

And then our hopes were shattered a couple minutes into the third period when Huskies player Rob Rassey put home his second goal of the season to tie up the game.

This goal seemed to knock the wind out of the Alfond crowd, we all remember last season and how tough it was to score goals in games. Let alone score another goal with minutes left.

When I asked our young goalie Darling about the lack of scoring he replied, “I think the goals are going to come. The freshman just have to learn the right way to approach goal scoring in college because it’s a lot different than juniors. I’m not worried about it.”

Now hopefully we won’t have much to worry about, but the outcome looked grim from here. Now we were pretty much playing for the tie. Most hope was lost a couple of minutes later when the Huskies scored again on a goal by senior forward Ryan Ginand.

With minutes left in the game fans pretty much conceded the loss and started filing out of the Alfond to go find something else to do on a cold chilly Saturday night.

After the game I asked Darling what the team had to improve on for next weekends games against Niagara and he replied, “We will just work on fine tuning all the things that we did this weekend. The guys played amazing on Saturday, we just have to build off of that.”

Well all of us fans hope that that’s the case. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens next weekend at the Alfond against the Niagara Purple Eagles.

my beat

I’m going to do my beat on the Maine Men’s Hockey Team. The reason I choose this topic is because i’ve been an avid sports fan for as long as I can remember and also the hockey team is followed by just about everyone in the regional area.

Quick Tips about Print Journalism

To be a good journalist you need to have an active voice and lots of perseverance. The man who told this to me is a professor at the University of Maine and his name is Paul Grosswiler.

Grosswiler began his career in print journalism as a graduate student in Missouri. His first job was writing a police beat for a newspaper there. He later moved to Maine and got a job at the Bangor Daily. He was an assistant features writer for the paper.

He then was asked to teach a class at the university. It was a news writing class and later a permanent position opened up and Grosswiler decided to take it. He’s been here ever since.

When I asked Grosswiler where he saw the future of print journalism going he responded with “The death of print journalism has been forecasted for a long time.” This of course becoming evident with the newspaper cut backs and layoffs across the country.

Grosswiler told us that he has a secret passion for muckraking. Muckraking is a term used for investigative journalism. A famous muckraker was Ida Tarbell; she most commonly known for a piece she wrote called The History of the Standard Oil Company. The point of the story was to bring down John D. Rockefeller and his oil monopoly.

Another tip of advice that we received was to keep a scrapbook of our writings. When you are looking to find a job as a journalist its important to be able to present some of your work.

Also it’s important to take good notes while conducting an interview. Grosswiler told us “Your story is only as good as your notes are.” It’s also important to be able to process information in your head.

Some more advice that we received from Grosswiler’s interview was that while writing a story its important to keep your paragraphs short and remain in an active voice. Also you should write your story using the inverted pyramid putting your important information first.

You must use good direct quotations. It all starts with the interview it’s the most important step in the process. You must take good notes and ask good meaningful questions.

At the end of the interview Grosswiler left me with some words of wisdom. He told me “Perseverance is the key. If you want to be a journalist you can be.”

Lawsuits filed over DVD coping software

Last Tuesday the movie industry filed a lawsuit against the company RealNetworks.  RealNetworks is a software maker who has also filed a lawsuit back against the movie industry. The controversy steams over RealNetworks’ new product, it’s called RealDVD story and it allows costumers to rip or copy DVD’s onto their computer.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) isn’t ok with this new software being released. The movie industry will lose a lot of money if this software ever hits the market, essentially it allows anyone to rent a movie and copy it into their movie library on their own personal computers.

The MPAA claims that the program breaches copyright laws and encourages piracy. The lawsuits are still in its preliminary stages and all that’s been done so far is that MPAA asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order against RealNetworks and their new software.

The Man Behind the Scene at MPBN

As Director of Operations for Maine Public Broadcasting Network (MPBN) and Chair of the Committee for the Emergency Alert System (EAS), Tristan Richards is a busy man. Not to mention the fact that he’s also earning his doctorate in the process at the University of Maine. Richards received his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin of Milwaukee in 1989 and his Masters at Husson College in 2004. He received two degrees at the University of Wisconsin of Milwaukee one was in Journalism and the other in History. The reason Richards became interested in journalism was through radio. He traveled quite a bit while he was younger and eventually became a radio DJ. Richards had a passion for the radio and eventually it led him to the east coast where he accepted a job as the General Manager of WABI-AM 910 and WWBX 97.1. When Richards arrived at 97.1 the station was rated last in the market. Richards decided to change the format and within a year the station went from last in the market to second.

After working with WABI-AM 910 for two years, Richards was attending a meeting in Washington, DC when Gil Maxwell approached him. Maxwell is the Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President of MPBN. Maxwell and Richards became friends after meeting in DC and when the position of Director of Operations became available at MPBN it was offered to Richards, a position in which he had no prior experience. Within a few weeks of getting the job Richards was also appointed Chair of the Committee for EAS. It’s since been eight years since Richards accepted the job.

One of the biggest problems that Richards’ is facing with MPBN is the switch from analog cable to digital. The switch takes place on February 17th 2009. Richards has a lot of work ahead of him, not to mention he is also in charge of updating the master control area of the network, which alone is a daunting task. Richards is also in charge of making sure that everything is put on air at the right time and overall is in charge of approximately 95% of the programming for MPBN. When asked about any personal goals he had for MPBN, all Richards said was that he wanted to see more involvement within the community.

I also asked Richards where he saw the future of Mass Communications heading. He told me that there were problems in TV, radio, and newspapers. Richards believes all the problems involving TV and radio can be resolved rather easily. Yet the primary problem lies in the heavy amount of competition involving TV and radio. TV has also become more localized than it has in the past. While newspapers are now considered to be a dying breed the Internet has taken over as one of the biggest media outlets.

As if running MPBN wasn’t enough, Richards is also responsible for overseeing the Emergency Alert System for the entire state of Maine. When asked about some obstacles that he faced with EAS, Richards pointed out that the system is obsolete and that one of the biggest problems is ignorance. Many people don’t understand the system, how it works, or even what it’s used for. The largest problem for EAS is related directly to changes in technology. As Richards put it, “It doesn’t [change] and that’s the problem!” He also added, “People are afraid of making decisions or pulling the trigger, they don’t want the responsibility.” Richards isn’t satisfied with the Emergency Alert System. He wants the system to be totally revamped with a new delivery system. Some of his ideas include the use of Internet technology and satellites to help EAS become more effective. When asked to give a couple of examples of when EAS would be used in the state of Maine, Richards gave two examples. He said, “The two most common situations in which the system would be used in Maine are for severe weather alerts and amber alerts.” Although Richards is quite thankful that the amber alert hasn’t had to have been used yet. The Amber alert is a voluntary partnership between law-enforcement agencies, broadcasters, transportation agencies and the wireless industry, to activate an urgent bulletin in the most serious child-abduction cases. The state of Maine has been very fortunate in the fact that they haven’t had to use the system in the 5 years in which its been operating.

All in all Tristan Richards has made great strides in furthering the progress of both the Maine Public Broadcasting Network and the Emergency Alert System. Hopefully we can look forward to a revamped and effective form of the EAS all thanks to the man behind the scene at MPBN. I would like to end things by thanking Tristan Richards for his corporation and for allowing me to take up some of his time outside of work.