Why do I hate grammar, well where do I begin. I believe that basic grammar is essential to the writing process but some of this more complex grammar is so stupid. I believe it’s stupid mainly because it screws me over on papers. I could spend days working on a research paper and turn a great paper into my professor only to have it brought back to me bleeding red ink. I will end up with a B paper all because of my grammar. If I put an A paper on the table I should not get a B grade back just because I failed to make everything grammatically correct.

Honestly, I don’t think anything would help me understand grammar better. I have had english teachers my whole life try to drill the grammar rules into my head and hardly any have stuck. It is definitely a lost cause for me. Some people understand grammar and some people don’t and I definitely fall into the don’t category.

Despite my personal opinion towards grammar, there is one grammar pet peeve I have that drives me insane. When people text me and use short slang for a word it drives me crazy. Like if somebody sends me wat instead of what I want to throw my phone into a wall.

All in all I hate grammar and probably have multiple grammar mistakes in this blog post that further proves my point.

For my group project Bobby and I are going to analyze whether the College Football stars have the right to be paid and make money from the NCAA. The reason we chose this issue was because the autograph scandal with Johnny Football and the Oklahoma State scandal have been in the news a lot lately. There is a huge controversy over whether the NCAA has the right to keep athletes from making money since the NCAA makes so much money off the athletes already. I am hoping to learn whether or not athletes deserve compensation. It has been the most talked about issue in college sports for awhile so I am hoping that my research will clear the air and finally show who is in the right on this issue.

David Miller: “I believe athletes should get some monitory payment for their performance on the field. The good athletes should get paid and the bad ones shouldn’t.”

Austin Tyler: “No athletes should not get paid. I go to the same school and get the same education but I don’t get paid to go here. Athletes aren’t special.”

John Damon: “College athletes should not get paid from the schools. I believe they can go get endorsements and stuff like that but definitely no money from the school or NCAA.”

Baylor Simpson: “Hell yeah athletes should get paid. They earn it on the field and they should get rewarded for their play.”

Dylan Innes: “Yes athletes should be paid because they are the one that make money for the school through playing football. Without the athletes on the field, Baylor doesn’t get paid. I mean come on, give a dog a bone.”

Lindsay Reagan: “I think football players shouldn’t receive money because education is their payroll.”

Grant Kawata: “Athletes should definitely not get paid, I don’t get paid to go to Baylor so why should they?”

Taylor Blackburn: “Athletes should not get paid. They are student-athletes and that comes with privileges already. They get free tuition, meal money, and all sorts of other things. They definitely should not get paid.”

Today I decided to visit the Baylor Lariat website to look for a story that I believed used quotes effectively. It took some searching but after a while I found an article over Bryce Petty that I believe hit the nail on the head. In the article, the reporter asked Petty questions about the football season and the main topic they covered was whether Baylor could win the Big 12. “Really, just a Big 12 championship, that’s what I want to do,” Petty was quoted saying in article. This a good quote for this story because people who support the Baylor football team want to see their quarterback having his eyes on the prize. “… As a team we really want to end it out right,” Petty again. This quote shows that the rest of his team is focussed on this championship and how they want to win it in the final year of Floyd Casey. “We know we are a good team,” Petty said. This shows confidence in our teams starting quarterback and is essential to put in the article. There are plenty more good quotes in this article I can list but I won’t trouble you with all of those. The main point from these quotes being put in this article is that it shows that our team has the right mindset and the confidence to go out there and reach their goal.

When it comes to me being quoted in a newspaper I say been there done that. In high school, after football games, we would have reporters come up to us and ask us stuff about the game. This happened to me at least twice and I felt comfortable with it. So, yes if the opportunity arose I would not mind being quoted in the newspaper.

This week I decided to evaluate the Huffington Post for my news paper evaluation. This may be weird but, this is the first time I have ever heard of the Huffington Post and was really anxious to see what it was like. The edition of the paper I evaluated was the issue from September 19, 2013.

When I went to the website the news source was set up like every other newspaper website. It had the main stories on the home page, with different categories on the top that you could select. Unlike other news websites though, there is a substantial amount of news stories on the home page. You can scroll down for a while before you run out of stories to look at. Just like other news outlets you can evaluate a lot of different topics from politics to entertainment. Unlike other websites though I did not see a sports option at the top and did, however, see a comedy section at the top which is pretty unique to the website.

The top story on the website was about Cruz peddling Obamacare repeal. The main idea of the story was that Cruz is upset at house republicans for not going full out trying to repeal Obamacare. He states that the republicans are just giving up and need to continue to push forward on this issue or Obamacare won’t be repealed until we get a new President.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/ted-cruz-government-shutdown-2013_n_3953754.html

Besides this main article there were two other stories I looked at. The first was about a man, Thomas Marrone getting a DUI charge while driving a lawn mower. Apparently this man was trying to drive on his lawn mower home, about 6 miles away, and was completely drunk and deserved the charge. This was probably one of the funniest stories I have read. The second story I looked at was about more mass shootings that we haven’t heard about since the Newtown shooting. It was shocking to me to see that there have been 16 mass shootings since then that I have not heard about. This story made me sick to my stomach seeing that all these terrible shootings take place frequently.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/17/mass-shootings-2013_n_3941889.html?utm_hp_ref=crimehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/thomas-marrone-dui-lawn-m_n_3954012.html?utm_hp_ref=weird-news

The audience for this outlet would have to be more towards people under 30. This media outlet has more stories that would favor younger audiences like the comedy section or the weird section. Older people would probably not be too interested in these sections and would chose another media source to get their news.

Overal I believe this media outlet appealed to me due to the reason I set above. I’d rather read about weird or comedy stories than a political story. I know that sounds bad but I like to be entertained when I’m reading news and I can’t be entertained when I’m reading about politics.

For this assignment I chose to look at the Dallas Morning News for an article that would show off good writing rules. After scanning over a few articles I found one that interested me. It was called Report Urges Reform on Texas Death Penalty System.http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2013/09/report-urges-reform-of-texas-death-penalty-system.html/

Upon examining this article, it was immediately clear to me that a lot of these rules were put to good use. Examples are as follows:

“An assessment team found that Texas’ death penalty system falls short when it comes to ensuring fairness.” – The rule used here is good writing comes to the point quickly. By reading this lead, we automatically know what the whole article is going to be about.

“Anthony Graves became the 12th death row inmate to be exonerated in Texas after 18 years in prison.” – The ruled used here is good writing has short paragraphs. This paragraph takes this rule literally and keeps its paragraph to one sentence.

“The state has executed 503 death row inmates using lethal injection since 1982. Robert Garza, 30, is scheduled to be executed tomorrow. He will be the 12th inmate executed this year.” – The rule used here is good writing uses short sentences. – This paragraph has three short sentences that get the point across quickly and effectively.

“Texas is the 12th state to undergo this type of assessment by the ABA.” – The rule used here is good writing eliminates wordiness. This is apparent here because instead of writing out American Bar Association, he just put ABA to make it flow smoother and sound better.

Hope y’all learned something about good writing rules in newspapers because I definitely did!

When I sat down to do my leads homework, last Saturday night, I was overwhelmed with frustration. I could not tell top from bottom. In class it came to me so easy but for some reason Saturday my brain shut off. Maybe it was because I am not used to using the inverted pyramid style but who knows? Anyways, it did not go pleasantly for me writing with this style of writing. It took me a while to figure out what words to even include in the lead. It was a lot harder than what I expected.

After going over our homework in class today though, I feel as if I have gained enough knowledge about leads to write them correctly and efficiently. If you gave me an inverted pyramid style lead, I would immediately recognize it now. It really helped me to hear all the leads out loud, especially my own. It became clear to me, while listening, which leads were crap and which leads were golden. Plus hearing my classmates falter, made me feel better about how I did on my leads assignment. All joking aside though, hearing the leads greatly improved my knowledge and skill with leads.

The media outlet I researches this week was again a newspaper but this time it was the Washington Post. Unlike last time, this was not a hard copy newspaper but rather the online version of it. The day that I decided to visit this website was on September 12th. When I looked at the website it was very obvious how the website was set up. It was very easy to navigate, with all the different types of stories placed at the top. The types of topics it covered range from politics to sports to even opinions.

The top story of the day was Kerry: U.S. ready to Strike if Syria Deal not Reached. The main concept in the story is that the U.S. will use military action in Syria if the Syrian government does not give up its chemical weapons. As of now the Syrian government stated they aren’t willing to cooperate unless the U.S. stops threatening military action. Kerry is leading the way on this issue and said he will not back down either.

Two other stories that interested me were The Hot Hitting Nats sweep Mets and Car Bomb goes of Outside the U.S. Consulate in Afghanistan. The first story being about how the Washington Nationals are playing real good baseball and swept their series and the second story being about the tragedy of a bomb going off by the U.S. Consulate in Afghanistan. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/car-bomb-goes-off-outside-us-consulate-in-western-afghanistan-7-civilians-wounded/2013/09/12/b9d0438e-1c1b-11e3-80ac-96205cacb45a_story.html?hpid=z3 & http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/hot-hitting-nationals-sweep-mets-to-win-sixth-straight/2013/09/12/b12ed424-1bef-11e3-8685-5021e0c41964_story.html.

The audience for this outlet is for anyone that is interested in the news and is probably younger and does not like reading the newspaper. I believe this because statistically older people enjoy having a hard copy newspaper and younger people prefer the ease and convenience of going online. Overall I’d say this media outlet appeals to me because it is really convenient for me online and is good because I don’t really read the paper and this wouldn’t require me to pay for a subscription to a paper I barely read.

This week I was assigned to evaluate the New York Times. Now most of you know that this is one of, if not the, most read newspapers in the world. I, like many Americans, sat down today on the 4th of September to read this paper and to see what all it has to offer. As I scanned through the paper I immediately realized that there is a lot more news stories in here than the local papers I used to look at growing up. On the front, the paper obviously had the top news stories of the day which happened to be U.S. relations with Russia and U.S. talks with Iran. This particular newspaper happened to have four sections: The normal New York Times section, the Arts section, the Science section, and the Business section. All four of these sections cover a range of topics from our dealings in the middle east to the newest movies coming out.

The top stories, as I stated early, were the U.S. relations with Russia and U.S. talks with Iran. Out of these two stories, I chose to read the story titled, Drawing a Line on Syria, U.S. Eyes Iran Talks. To summarize this story, the main theme was that the U.S. does not want the use of chemical weapons in Iran because of what happened in Syria. Recently, the Syrian government released chemical weapons on their civilians, which killed thousands of people. To prevent Iran from following suit, the U.S. government decided that they needed to have some talks with Iran and let them in on our strategy to strike back at Syria. A military message is almost inevitable with Syria at this point and the U.S. does not want to have to do that with Iran too.

After reading this top story, I went on two examine two more stories in this paper. The first was about the 64 year old woman that swam from Cuba to Florida; a trip that is 110 miles. The title of this story was Sharks and Nature Cooperate for Solo Cuba-to-Florida Swim. The next story I examined was titled  In Mountain Air, Foresight (Maybe), which was about the new movies at Film Festivals that may or may not have success at the oscars. (The assignment says to post links to these stories but I obviously can’t because they are in the hard copy of the New York Times.)

This media outlet is obviously meant for All Americans. I say this because this paper has stories that would be interesting to almost anyone. If you like to see whats going on in politics it has that or if you like to see news about upcoming movies then it has that too. Almost anybody could pick up this paper and find something interesting to read. I don’t even like reading the paper and I found a few stories in there that I actually enjoyed reading.

Overal though I would say this media outlet barely appeals to me. Out of all the stories in there I only found a few I found interesting and entertaining. Honestly, I am the kind of person that likes watching the news on T.V. rather than reading about it in the paper. I hate reading so it’s just obvious that I would not like reading from this paper either.

Lance Kay’s Blog

            Hi, my name is Lance Kay and this is my blog. I’m a junior S3 major here at Baylor University and have loved every second of it. This blog, which I shall be adding to all semester, will contain all sorts of information. Mainly though, it shall be my exploration of various news sources that I will be learning about this semester. As of now, the only news I really explore is ESPN. I view ESPN news on TV, the Internet, and on my Mobile Phone. I also sometimes acquire my news from various social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. As this semester progresses though, I would like to broaden my media horizons to maybe the newspaper or even watch the news on TV. Well anyways, that’s a little about me and I look forward to continue to post about all the things that I will learn in this class.