Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan’s King Hussein ended 46 years of war Wednesday with the signing of the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace. Leaders from both sides along with President Clinton cited the desert as a symbol of the once arid relations between the two nations that now can flourish together.
A judge Wednesday gave the three killers of American student Amy Biehl 18 years in prison instead of the death penalty, saying the three had a chance to become useful citizens despite showing no remorse. Biehl was in South Africa to educate voters and was driving friends home when she was pulled from the vehicle and stabbed to death outside the city of Guguletu.
One of the nation’s first female combat pilots was believed killed when her Navy F-14 fighter jet crashed into the ocean. Lieutenant Kara Hultgreen’s plane went down Tuesday off the southern California coast after taking off from the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on a training exercise.
And all California residents may have to carry tamperproof ID cards to prove they are U.S. citizens if the state’s political leaders have their way. Republican Governor Pete Wilson has built his re-election campaign on a call for a crackdown on illegal immigration. Wilson said the ID cards would also be used to verify eligibility for health and social benefits.
Sunny and mild, a high of 71 today; cool tonight with lows in the mid-40s. Currently it’s 48 degrees.
Newscasts varied throughout my four years of undergraduate school, both in scope and involvement. They were obviously meant to be informative but you had to wonder about some of the stories that students chose for inclusion.
Troy Meadows, the News Director my freshman year, had spent some of his summer refining the previous newscast schedule to ensure this semester’s programming included a mix of local, national, and international stories. Looking back, this school year was the next-to-last year to put any sort of focus on world news – something that later faculty advisors said was covered by numerous other media outlets that we weren’t competing with.
Troy might not have liked that mentality. His schedule for this school year had seven daily newscasts of varying lengths that each figured in international headlines:
- The newscasts at 9 A.M., 3 P.M., and 6 P.M. were to be three-minutes and lead with the at least two prerecorded international stories that we got from British Information Services. Then we tossed some national stories into the mix, as well as local packages that were voiced by “reporters” who had done stories in and around the Grandville area. Recollections? First, this “British Information Service” was nothing more than pre-packaged stories recorded from an 800-number someone dialed on a daily basis. There was a tape deck in the news room (the more studio-based newsroom) that we used to record the phone call; someone else listened to the cassette and edited out the stories he or she wanted to use. Because Troy was really into radio news, I think he found this “BIS” service an impressive tool that sort of made our tiny station sound like it had world-wide connections. I know he championed the presumably free service on many occasions and went as far to defend our using of it when word got around that it was the “BS” service. Second, the national stories were to be rewrites of the top stories off the Associated Press wire service in the news room (the more classroom-based newsroom). I’ll get into “rewriting” later since it was something most students did extremely well in no way at all. Finally, the pre-packaged local stories would have been interesting to hear, but I only had a hand in creating one of them and my 7 o’clock newscast never featured them. I tend to think that more upperclassmen that did radio news did these newscasts since they had seniority and the programs aired during the time of day when more college-aged students were listening.
- The newscasts at 4 and 5 P.M. were to be sixty seconds and were described as more headline driven. Troy said in his notes that ideally this would be the top international, national, and local story of the day – maybe with a quick 15-second-or-less sound bite. Recollections? None – I don’t think I was listening to our station that late in the day.
- The newscasts at 7 and 8 A.M. and at noon would be ninety-seconds and would be the top international stories of the day and one or two local or national stories. Recollections? There are many, seeing how this was my scheduled time three days a week, but sadly, in looking over my obnoxiously-typed scripts I see three or four international stories and the weather – nothing about anything close to home. It sort of makes me wonder if I misunderstood which type of “newscast” I was supposed to be preparing. There is also some mild curiosity as to how much Troy listened to these newscasts – I don’t remember a lot of feedback. Well, there was some feedback. One morning after one my newscasts the DJ – probably Big Dog – gets on the microphone and says, “that's was the 60 seconds I've ever heard.” What an ass.
And we all know what we students should have been doing, anyway.
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Information Overload
(Rose)
Al Rose
From the album Information Overload
1995