New challenges bring the anxiety

Apprehension is a common feeling anytime something new is attempted.

I felt that apprehension with this week’s assignment, writing and recording a blog post. I didn’t know the first thing about making recordings and working with audio files. I even had a hard time coming up with a topic and writing a script.

So, I fell back on my training from Reporting for Mass Media. I thought about what was going on in my state of Missouri regarding student and press rights. I remembered reading that the Walter Cronkite New Voices Act had made it through committee, and was set for a vote on the Missouri House floor soon.

What better topic could a guy ask for?

Though I knew about the Act, I didn’t know that it was being sponsored by a Republican, or that there was mostly Republican support for it. This is very different from the situation when I was in high school. Most Republicans opposed the Student Freedom of Expression Bill we were trying to pass then.

Researching the Act made me realize that some of that support is suspicious. I think it may have more to do with getting back at the Concerned Student 1950 protestors on the MU campus than protecting high school journalists. That’s just a feeling I have, and I didn’t want to include that speculation in my recording.

While using Audioboom, I was a bit lost. My first recording was barely audible. I figured it might be because the built-in microphone on my Mac isn’t very good. I borrowed a microphone from our broadcast teacher, and the recording is easier to hear, but is nowhere near loud enough. I tried to play around with the levels on it, but couldn’t get it right.

I suppose one of the things I learned was that I still have a lot to learn regarding audio files.

The delivery in the podcast is a little on the dry side. I tried to vary my voice inflection, and it comes through at times, but for the most part it sounds like an NPR segment, without the volume and compelling background effects. That isn’t what I was trying to do, and I’d like to work with this more to perfect it.

I was surprised at how easy it was to embed the podcast into my blog. One of my first Google searches took me to Audioboom’s own FAQs page, and in just two sentences it perfectly outlined how embed the file. I had trouble loading my slideshow in a previous week, but this was easy. A quick copy and paste function into the HTML side of the blog, and there it was.

We have already had a lesson over how to edit audio files and splice them together, and I’m gearing up to work on that assignment. Though I like the overall topic and theme of my podcast, I’ll be happy to try my hand at something a little more complex.

Here comes all that apprehension, again.