This semester has been a wild ride. In the beginning where we were all in class together, to now where we are all behind screens. For my final post on this blog for the semester, I want to do a mini review for myself. To be honest, I could’ve done a lot better this semester. To be fair to myself, this was probably my worst semester of HCC to date. But I would be lying if I didn’t gain some improvements in some areas. One being I’m finding an easier time writing about things. I would always struggle to find something to write about for assignments or other things. Now I find it easy to create plans and do the interviews and research to create news stories. Another thing I improved in was taking on more responsibilities than I’m used to. During this period of social distancing and quarantining, I’ve picked up overtime hours at work, taking care of my baby siblings, all the meanwhile working on 5 different classes this semester. It’s been very difficult, but I’ve been trying my best and I feel like I’ve been succeeding.

When I talk about the word “love” in the title, I mean the review. The sonic movie was great too, but my review is what I’m talking about. It’s so good because instead of reviewing the actual movie in detail, I briefly talk about it and mainly discuss the controversy surrounding it. It’s interesting, the movie began being hated by sonic fans and adored by critics. But when the movie came out, the tides have turned, and instead the critics hated it and the fans love it. Most of these opinions come from the redesign of the character. The developers of the movie worked tirelessly to re-create the movie entirely to satisfy fans, and while the movie isn’t meant for everyone, it still shows that they cared and they put the effort in it to prove it. The article goes into much more detail and I had a great time writing it.

Newsy.com is a pretty interesting website. I find it cool that I can go on there and for free have unlimited options to news stories from around the world. For example, I was doing research on a story about Mark Zuckerberg and the corruption with Facebook, when I get intrigued by a side bar consisting of a news story about Chinese politics and kidnappings in Mexico. One of the news stories that stood out to me was a story about the citizens of Kansas City, Missouri are re-instating the original street name “The Paseo” from “Martin Luther King.” Originally, the street was named “The Paseo,” and it was changed by the Mayor for no particular reason as they are told. The street was very important to the residents living on it, so the change was quite jarring. They have started to create a vote to get the original name back. This is just one story from the potential thousands you can find on Newsy.com. It is a very good site to find local to international news for free on a daily bases.

Larry Lawton is America’s biggest jewel thief. I decided to write a profile story on him because he’s become very popular with young kids and adults who are finding themselves in the life of crime. I found it interesting that he came from a life of crime and ended up turning his life around for the better. It was a lot of fun to go through his book and youtube videos to break down his life and write an article on it. I feel like it was one of my best story assignments I have done so far.

The new semester has began and I am ready to start my new blog! The previous posts you may see are from last semester. While those were pretty varied when it comes to content but these blogs should be more focused on one topic. I will be covering news stories that I find interesting that are also not very well seen. Unpopular stories that aren’t on the front page is what you’re going to be seeing on here. Hopefully you enjoy and I hope to hear some feedback from my readers!

Recently, I took a day trip to Disney World to celebrate my cousin coming home from the military. I’ve been to Disney plenty of times, but this was my first time going to the new Star Wars themed land called Galaxy’s Edge. It opened in late august of this year, and has gotten a lot of praise (and some backlash too) for being authentic to the new trilogy beginning with Episode VII: Force Awakens. I’m a huge Star Wars nerd, always have been, and I was super excited to finally enter this new land. Safe to say, I was speechless. Large starships, futuristic sounds, and Star Wars related locales filled my heart with joy. I took a ton of photos, and I’m not even a camera person. With this experience in mind, I thought I could show off Galaxy’s Edge, and maybe entice readers who aren’t Star Wars fans to check out this new land. So I decided to focus my photojournalism story on it.

My topic came from my drugs and nutritious class I’m taking this semester. It’s all about how deodorants are causing breast cancer. Researchers have discovered that antiperspirants have certain chemicals that can infect the body and develop cancer cells in the breast area. In my class, we started experiments to test the effects of different deodorant brands in contact with blood samples. Using these results and research from professionals, I will write about how the research should affect the ideas of consumers, as well as describe what the research means to consumers and their own antiperspirants. I believe it will be a good topic because it has the ability to be relate-able to most readers of the article.

My interview was on a youtuber named Murder of Birds. He’s been on the site for over seven years and has been creating content for five. He has over 100,000 subscribers and is a very influential figure in the anime community. I decided to interview him because I thought it’d be cool to get a perspective on what life is like behind the screen for a popular online persona. Most HCC students watch popular online videos and creators; so getting a glimpse at what it’s like being one could impact multiple viewers.

To set up the interview, I got in contact with Murder by messaging him on his private discord. He agreed and I got to planning right away. I set a time and a date with him, and immediately started formulating questions. I created ten solid questions that covered a range of topics, and i improved some bonus questions during the interview. I set up a recording using an online program and the interview was a flawless success! I had so much fun interviewing Murder of Birds and getting a better understanding of a youtuber’s life.

“It started off as a hobby, and I got just lucky enough for it to become my lifestyle.” This is Arnold Delgado, a popular online content creator on platforms Youtube, and Twitch which goes by the alias “Murder of Birds.” When his first video was posted, he was working 40-hour work weeks at two jobs, with no education under his belt. The only thing creating happiness for him was his one video a week schedule for little to no views. Expressing himself online through Youtube was his only escape. Eventually, it became his main source of revenue. This is his story.

10 Questions I asked him were

• What did you do before youtube?
• What made you begin posting to your channel?
• What did your channel start off of?
• How long did it take until your channel started to grow?
• What led you to do youtube full time?
• How did you connect with your audience and build your community?
• Where do you see your channel heading into the future?
• Where do you see yourself going from here?
• What are your views on the platform?
• Do you have any advice for aspiring youtubers?

It was so much fun to interview him and I can’t wait to share with the class.

Interviewing others has always been something that I have struggled with. I’ve always had my dream interviewees, and one of them is a youtuber “MurderofBirds.” Arnold Delgado is his name, and his content primarily focuses on different anime and Roosterteeth shows. Roosterteeth is a company that posts webshows and other internet-related content. He has a relatively small channels compared to others at almost 100,000 subscribers, so he has a decent audience. I’ve been a subscriber to MurderofBirds for five years, and a twitch subscriber for two. Some questions I’d ask him would be, “What made you start your Youtube channel?” “When and why did you start doing Youtube full time?” And “Where do you see your youtube channel going in the future?”

If I got the ability to interview Arnold, I would not only be starstruck, but I would be happy to learn so much more of my favorite youtuber.