When Asley Boer hits the court with the Morningside Volleyball team, she leaves her mark on the game from the back row.

Her duties as a back-row player mostly consist of reading hitters and defending balls hit deeper in the court, called “digging”, making sure that those hits get turned back into play. She also serves for the Mustangs.

With Ashley’s help, the Morningside Volleyball team was able to secure a spot in the NAIA national tournament for the 3rd year in a row with a win in yesterday’s regular-season finale vs. Dakota Wesleyan.

For Ashley and the now 8-8 Mustangs, the GPAC tournament will start this Saturday in Jamestown, North Dakota.

Ashley is from Rock Rapids, Iowa, which is approximately one hour and 15 minutes away from Sioux City. She found her way to Morningside to play Volleyball and pursue an Advertising degree with a graphic design minor. She also said that she came to Morningside because “it felt like home”. 

Ashley enjoys hanging out with friends, listening to music and watching all kinds of sports when she is not on the court herself. When asked what three things she likes best about Sioux City, she was quick to respond that she likes the food options here, especially Buffalo Wild Wings, the size of the city which she described as “Not too big and not too small” and the close proximity to home, which allows her to see friends and family often.

What was supposed to be celebration of love, turned violent yesterday, when a shooting erupted at the site of a local wedding.

Richard and Laurette Brunson were married on the front porch of their home in front of 30 relatives and friends, as well as the bride’s 3 children. At the reception following the wedding, a fight broke out which led to Richard Brunson, 50 shooting his newly wedded wife Laurette, 38 in the abdomen with a small handgun.

Let’s hear from our correspondent live at the scene.

Thank you, I am here with sergeant Mann from the Sioux City PD, who will tell us more about the events leading up to the shooting.

“The shooting occurred at 5p.m. It happened after she threw a plate of wedding reception macaroni salad at the groom. His whereabouts are still unknown.”

Thank you, sergeant Mann! With the groom still on the loose after such a traumatic event, the guests of the wedding, like Ms. Corse, are still in shock!

“I just feel so bad for the kids to see this! He ran off with no shirt or shoes.”

With that back to you in the studio!

Thank you! Mrs. Brunson was transported to St. Luke’s Hospital where she remains in “satisfactory condition” according to hospital officials.

With Richard Brunson still on the loose, police officials warn to stay away from shoeless, shirtless men on the streets.

This article compares two new story about the current wildfire situation in California.

One story, titled “Winds will continue to spread the California wildfires” is a broadcast story by CNN, that shows the weather forecast for the region and explains what that weather could mean for the situation at hand. The other story is a collection of updates by the New York Times that is updated in real-time as new developments become available.

The CNN story does a good job focusing on one aspect of the situation which is the windy conditions that are currently fueling the wildfires. The meteorologist is easy to understand and uses simple language to describe the conditions at hand. He also does a good job staying calm and collected given the less than promising forecast he is presenting. The disadvantage of the broadcast format is that it is impossible to present all aspects of the story in such a short amount of time. This segment focuses on one aspect and does a complete job.

The NYT story is much more complete in terms of coverage but is very long and detailed, which makes reading the article time-consuming. What helps is that due to the updated format of the story, bolded headers mark different updates, which makes it. easier to maneuver through the mass of information. The authors do a good job of being detailed and complete while staying objective and calm in their writing. This story covers most aspects of the fires from evacuation plans to what major buildings and highways are threatened.

Overall the main difference between the two stories is that the broadcast story has limited time to work with while the print story has nearly endless space to be as complete as possible. This results in the very clear an concise nature of the broadcast story, while the print story is not holding back words in an effort to be as complete as possible.

Sources:

CNN:https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/california-fires-los-angeles-october-2019/h_e3ab9350057796a2220e342166fa57fb

NYT:https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/us/getty-fire-california.html

In a fiery speech at the UN Climate Action Summit, Greta Thunberg, a 16-year old Swedish climate activist who is credited with initiating the “Fridays for Future” movement, calls out world leadership on the topic of climate change.

She speaks on behalf of her generation. “You are failing us!” is her reaction to the action that the global leadership has taken so far to combat climate change. These actions would, according to Thunberg only provide a 50% chance of staying under a 1.5 degree rise of temperature, a tipping point that could initiate irreversible changes to this world that would be out of human control.

Her frustration with being part of a generation, potentially left with the irreversible environmental damages produced by generations before hers is evident throughout the speech.

Thunberg’s main message is “We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.”. She also calls out the lack of urgency displayed by leaders across the world, calling out current approaches to combat climate change as ” just ‘business as usual'” and warns that “With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than 8 1/2 years.”

Thunberg’s speech talks with the anger and urgency of a whole generation, a generation that sees the world at the brink of collapsing due to careless and economy-driven decisions generation before have made.

And it seems that this urgency and anger that has already moved millions of students out on the streets to protest for better and more effective solutions on climate change every Friday, has made a difference once again. Today, just one day after Thunberg’s speech, 65 countries have pledged efforts to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

When entering the weightroom of the Morningside College Rec. Center, also called HPER, in the afternoon or evening, two things quickly become evident. 

Firstly, a surprisingly large amount of people are  working out in that space, especially given that it is mainly designed for the small non-athlete student population of Morningside. 

Secondly, when looking at the machines, squat racks and free weights in the room, the run down and in some cases non-functional state of the equipment is noticeable.

The students working out at the HPER weight room are overall discontent with the state of the facility. One of the students, Madison Reed, states: “Not only is the HPER weight room, in its current condition a hazard to the well being of the students working out there, but also does not provide a welcoming and motivating atmosphere due to dim lighting and dirty floors and fixtures.” 

Madison, who worked out at the HPER weight room for over a year, observed the decay of equipment first hand. “There are eight non functional barbells in the weightroom, which makes working out with them impossible. There are also many broken and missing cushions on the weight machines, which makes working out on them uncomfortable and even dangerous.” Madison also adds that “a renovation of the HPER weight room is overdue and the quality of life for all students on campus. 

While the students that work out in the HPER regularly are certain that a renovation of the weight room is more than necessary, the fact that this weight room mainly serves the non-athlete population on campus and that this population is fairly small might make school administrators hesitant to put large amounts of money into the project. 

For our in-class writing assignment, we were tasked to describe the experience of tasting a certain food item. I chose to taste a Pirouline, a “Dark Chocolate, creme filled wafer.”, as the packaging proclaims.

The Pirouline looks like a long wafer roll, filled with chocolate. When I took the first bite, the wafer was tasteless but added a crunchy texture to the bite right away. After biting through the wafer, the chocolate cream was in stark contrast to the crunchy wafer, soft and creamy with a distinct dark chocolate taste.

What was interesting to me was, that while the wafer gave the distinctive texture of the initial crunch, it did not provide any flavor and while the chocolate did not give me any textural impressions, it provided all the flavor. So, for the food to provide the full experience of texture and taste both of these components are necessary, even thougheach of them only provides one distinct facet.

While writing my news article “The Case Antonio Brown”, the part of the process that I put the most effort in was writing a good and concise lead and then to be as complete as possible with my information throughout the article. The part that I should have put a little more effort into was to find good quotes from other new articles that would have enriched my story.

The most difficult part of writing this article was to strike the balance between being concise and featuring all the information relevant to the story. I think this is the biggest challenge of news writing in general because stories should be short but also as complete as possible.

The biggest problem was to strike exactly that balance but I think I was fairly successful at reporting all the relevant events without having the article be too long. 

Tasked with collecting a creatively bent paper clip and a musical recommendation from people around the Morningside campus, I set out on the quest to collect these items and hopefully meet some new people while doing that.

First, I encountered Kevin, a fellow Morningside student, who was studying on a bench next to one of the main paths on campus. I decided to ask him for a musical recommendation, mainly because there were no paperclips around to be bend. When I approached Kevin and asked him what song he would really want me to listen to, he reacted a little surprised and did not know what to say right away. After I explained it was for a class and not just a random question, Kevin opened up a little bit and told me that I should definitely listen to “Give it all” by Rise Against, a rock band. When I asked him if Rock is his favorite music genre, he replied: “Yes, I listen mostly to rock and punk.”

Happy that I found such a good musical recommendation, I proceeded to walk to the Lincoln Center, in hopes of acquiring a creatively bend paper clip. When I arrived at the building I first visited the business office administrator to acquire a paper clip. I then found Jason Hahlbeck, who was studying at one of the tables in the lobby and asked him to bend the paper clip. The result was a cool looking knot-ish object, shown below, that describes his “brain after a business law class.”

The Vox article “The next global pandemic could kill millions of us. Experts say we’re really not prepared.” shines a light on a report conducted by the Independent Preparedness Monitoring Board, which states that there is a growing threat of a global pandemic of disease and that the world is overall ill-prepared to prevent or stop such a pandemic.

The report states multiple reasons for this state of unpreparedness, for example many of the things that make our lives easier on a daily basis like the ease of global travel would actually help to spread a disease around around the globe in the matter of hours. Paired with emerging social trends like not vaccinating children, these factors create a threat of global pandemics that could kill millions, according to the article.

The article is aimed at people that are unaware of the threat that pandemics pose to the world and does a good job informing about that threat and the basic concepts of diseases and how they spread.

The author does a decent job at staying objective but falls into subjectivity when talking about the severity of the threat and the wisdom of the report, which shows some preoccupancy of the author. This is understandable, given the seriousness of the matter, but takes away some of the validity of the article.

An article in the New York Times, called “E.P.A. to Roll Back Regulations on Methane, a Potent Greenhouse Gas” talks about efforts made by the Environmental Protection Agency to deregulate the emission of methane gases, which is a known greenhouse gas coming from oil wells, pipelines and other facilities in the oil and gas industry. In the light of all the awareness brought to climate change and environmental problems, this article seemed very newsworthy to me, as it shows that the US continues to reduce their efforts to combat climate change, while most of the world is trying to up their efforts.

The article does a good job staying objective and presents the facts of the matter as well as quoting both sources supporting the role back as well as sources condemning it. It also briefly talks about the role of oil and gas companies in this issue and states that most of those companies actually do not support the rollback. This is an interesting aspect in my opinion since the rollback on methane regulations is a result of Trump’s executive order to eliminate regulations that hold back growth in those oil and gas industries.

The high volume of information and lengthy nature of the article aims at an older audience that has enough interest and prior knowledge to value all the extra information.

Link to the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/climate/epa-methane-greenhouse-gas.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage