Michele Topor's North End Market Tours

The North End of Boston is the oldest Italian neighborhood in the nation. It's a quaint little section of town, with brick buildings and sidewalks, and pastry and coffee shops on every corner. 


But the North End has much more to offer than what the average tourist comes to find. Michele Topor's North End market tours take tourists around the neighborhood, showing them the most authentic Italian cuisine. I had the pleasure of taking one of the tours just last week. 


Jim Becker, my tour guide, has been working in the culinary industry for about 25 years. He began at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, and eventually opened his own Spanish restaurant which won two Best of Boston awards and two Wine Spectator awards. Becker was also the executive chef at Taranta Cucina Mediterranean, a restaurant in the North End for a year before starting his journey as a tour guide. 


So, it's obvious that Becker is an expert in the food industry, and it became more obvious on the tour. Rather than a typical food tour where guests eat their way through a city, this was mainly educational, with a few tastings of course. At the first stop, Maria's pastry shop, Becker spoke about how Italians like their pastry, describing how most will have something sweet around 3 p.m. with their espresso. Staring at the wall of butter cookies in Maria's made my mouth water, never mind all the other pastry they have to offer.


After Maria's, we briefly stopped at Mercato Del Mare, a fish market, and then headed over to Polcari's Coffee. Polcari's is a small narrow store filled with every herb and spice imaginable. One of the shocking parts of stepping in here was the comparison between the Nutella (a hazelnut spread) sold in American grocery stores to the Nutella sold in Europe. The American version has 7 grams of trans fat, while the Italian version, which comes in a glass jar rather than plastic, has none. Becker also showed the us different spices like licorice root and compared the cinnamon stick we find in grocery stores to the cinnamon found in Italy, which is thicker and more bark like. 


Alba Produce was the next market to visit. There is no sign advertising Alba's, which makes it a bit harder to find, but they feature a variety of produce that is unique to the Italian culture, like bulb fennel and chicory. Then, we went to Monica's Mercato which features many different treasures of Italy. This gem of a store, owned by a brother/cousin trio, has a variety of Italian cheese, including a special form of mozzarella they get imported from Italy. They also make their own pasta and bread and have a variety of ready made foods like antipasti and sandwiches. Yum!


Of course this wouldn't be a tour of the North End without some cheese and wine. At The Cheese Shop, Becker spoke about the many different olive oils they offer and discussed what true balsamic is, compared to the balsamic vinaigrette we Americans like to drench on salad, which he calls a "scam." Real balsamic, Becker said, takes years to make, and I can personally say after tasting some, it is ten times better. We also tasted homemade ricotta cheese and Pecorino cheese before heading over to V. Cirace & Son, INC. fine wine shop. Here, Becker spoke about the different wines this award winning store offers and how to pair certain wines with certain foods. 


For those who want to try this wonder of a market tour, they can visit Michele's website to buy tickets. 

Those 18-22, start Tweeting now!

It is pretty clear now that Twitter is a social networking mecca. It gives businesses the opportunity to go viral and people the chance to connect via links, hashtags, and photos. 

But for college students especially, being on Twitter is essential. Sure Facebook is great. We all connect with one another, sharing laughs over the drunken pictures, and checking up on what old high school friends are up to. However, our Facebook profile is not what is going to help us network with potential employers or allow us to make a name for ourselves. If anything, those raunchy pictures and status updates could hurt our chances of getting a job after graduation, and in this economy, who needs that?

Even if you are someone who doesn't want to tweet often, just being on Twitter and checking your homepage will link you (literally) to information you might not have otherwise heard about. I am tired of hearing students criticize Twitter as this Facebook wanna be website. For those who think that way, you couldn't be more wrong. Stop your whining and read this list of the top reasons why all college age students should be tweeting:

1. Follow newspapers, magazines, radio stations, and television networks to get all your top news for the day, updated constantly.

2. Follow your school on Twitter and get to know all the new happenings around campus

3. Follow experts in your field of study and stay up to date on news within your career path

4. Get links to internship opportunities and job postings

5. Have the chance to communicate with other experts and professors on Twitter outside of the classroom

And most important, be ahead of the competition!

Sharpen those pencils...or should I say keyboards

There is nothing like the smell of freshly sharpened pencils to get you in the mood for a good class. This week kicked off a new semester of classes and boy was I ready to get writing again. As of right now, it looks like this is going to be a great semester because not only do I adore a couple of my journalism classes, but the professors aren't half bad either. Here are some first class quotes from my professors that make me excited to be a journalist, and should make you excited too:

"You will learn to appreciate journalism as a service profession, one upon which individuals, communities and the country at large depend."
"Pictures are the primary mode of story telling in the modern media."
"Do not show a source you are weak. If they don't want to conduct an interview with you, tell them you will wait."
"You are going to learn to think like a reporter and read like an editor."

I hope that was inspiring. Now onto more important things... A few weeks ago I came across a fascinating article on ReadWriteWeb about a cool new way to research info on the Internet. Apture, a startup web company, allows readers to highlight a single word on the screen and search the Internet for information about that particular word without leaving the page. Crazy right? No, more like AMAZING.

So what does this mean for students like us? Well, for starters, if you don't know the definition of a word, you can just look it up with the click of a button. But if you are a journalist on deadline, and need to do some quick research on your source before you go out for an interview, this is a great time saving technique. Technologies like this are changing online news content and will continue to influence how we write for the web. Apture is the new link.

Check out this video with one of the creators of Apture. He describes how with the help of some journalists his multimedia tool became a hit.

Time goes by too fast

August really has a way of creeping up on you. I can't believe that I have less than 30 days before school starts back up again.

Anyways, with more than half the year over, it is time to reflect on those little New Year's resolutions I made. In a post titled "Some Goals," (original, I know), I wrote that I wanted to have a podcast posted on this blog, learn some HTML code, post pictures, learn more about video documentaries, share thoughts about new media, and get some followers.

Well, three of the six have been accomplished, so I guess I better get moving on learning the whole HTML thing and discover a bit more about video documentaries.

So, naturally, I googled "video documentary" and went straight to the infamously helpful eHow.com . Doesn't get much better than that (well, it does, but you have to start somewhere right?)

This fall I will be starting fresh at a new school, and therefore starting fresh writing for a different college newspaper. While I will still be pursuing a degree in journalism, writing for a college press is not strictly limited to those looking for a career in communication.

Michael Koretzky, adviser to the Florida Atlantic University Press, says "No other extra-curricular activity on campus is better for your career-- no matter what it is-- than the newspaper."

I couldn't have said it better myself. Writing for the student newspaper is no easy task. Every week the staff has to come up with new content that will catch the attention of the student body. Sure, the Student Government Organization may have organized a great concert, but it took them a year to do so. And maybe GSA had a successful fundraiser, but it took months to get it off the ground. The newspaper staff gets a finished product out on the news stand within a week.

Harsh deadlines teach you to stop procrastinating and put you in a pressure situation where you may have to think on your feet to get a story done on time. You gain managing and multi-tasking skills that you may not have learned you were otherwise capable of. And, let's face it, what student doesn't need to brush up on their grammar and writing skills?

As a staff writer for any university press, you gain people skills that you will use throughout your career, no matter what path that may be. I am eager and ready to join a new staff in the fall and can't wait to start seeing my name in print again.

"What's black and white and completely over?"

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-9-2008/clusterf--k-to-the-poor-house---final-edition-edition

Nothing is off the record

When do journalists agree to allow a source to be "off the record?" The answer should be never. It seems that sometimes we are afraid to tell a source that everything they said is fair game to be printed. Sometimes our ethics are brought into question and giving a highly recognized source a bad reputation can really impact a journalists career.

Case in-point, Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone Magazine. Rather than receiving praise from his colleagues, Hastings is getting some backlash for not understanding the "unspoken agreement" that you will not embarrass the troops. Lara Logan, CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent, criticized Hastings, ultimately saying she doesn't believe the story, and to her, "something doesn't add up."

We are taught everything is on the record, unless the reporter agrees otherwise. Journalists shouldn't be afraid to take some risks, our job is to write great stories and share great news with the public. If some risks weren't taken to do so, then we wouldn't have a job. 

 I think Steve Buttry sums up the matter beautifully, saying, "Our nation's founders did not protect the press so the press could protect the government." 

On to the next one

Multimedia Immersion rap from News Photog on Vimeo.

Priceless.

"Don't take no for an answer"

With plenty of time to read books that I actually enjoy this summer, I have been enjoying one book titled God Never Blinks: 50 Lessons for Life's Little Detours by Regina Brett. Brett is a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and in her book she writes the 50 lessons life has taught her.

One lesson that is probably relevant to most journalists is Lesson 20: when it comes to going after what you want in life, don't take no for an answer. Brett describes the struggles she faced when looking for a steady job after graduation. After a professor told her that she wasn't ready for the world of journalism, Brett didn't take no for an answer. She began writing for a paper with a beat she didn't want to cover, yet took every story she could get and finished it. 

Many more no's came to Brett, and she fought through each one, until she eventually got her own column. At the end of this chapter Brett writes, "I have a dream job. All because I wouldn't take no for an answer and kept shoveling."

Every college student is working through school to get to their dream job. However, as Brett demonstrates, a dream job isn't just going to be handed to us. Now more than ever journalists have to create a name for themselves, going above and beyond in order to beat the competition (get it, "beat"? ok, bad joke). We know we want to be writers, that part is accomplished, but becoming a great writer with great content comes with the perseverance to prove those who tell you "no" wrong.

Just a note, Lesson 20 goes hand in hand with Lesson 1: life isn't fair, but it's still good. 

Fact Check Please

I spent a part of my Memorial Day weekend at my dad's house bbq-ing it up. Of course the evening could not end without my dad and stepmom coming up with some insanely right sided thing to say about President Obama. Screaming at the top of thei lungs, (yes, SCREAMING) they both start in on how Obama is "the first president to not attend the Memorial Day ceremonies at Arlington!" Continuing on their rampage, they said "he was on vacation with his family! I don't care who you are as president, but you show respect and go to tomb of the unknown on Memorial Day."

Well, one conservative source mentions this is because Obama doesn't like the military, another also criticizes the president's vacation. Neither mention that the presidents weekend started with a trip to the Gulf Coast. And, it isn't as if he blew off Memorial Day all together, he went to the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Ill. As left columnist David Corn writes, Obama is not the only president to not go to Arlington on Memorial Day. A few other presidents have missed out as well.

A professor told my class once to only believe half of what you watch, read, and hear, especially when it comes to politics. Before we get upset about a certain topic, it is important to investigate on your own before drawing conclusions.

Oh summer, the things you do to me

Summer has gotten the best of me already. I went all last week without posting a single thing on this blog. Oops. But sometimes I think we need a little break from the world of social media to just let ourselves be.

Anyways, I'm back now. As I was catching up on my twitter feed and reading some other blogs I follow, I came across two posts that really caught my attention. The first reminded me of a post I did a while back. I was sitting in the cafe on campus right in front of a giant stack of newspapers and hardly anyone was picking on up. While I can't say that all students don't read the news because of this one moment I witnessed, one Harvard survey, mentioned in Tony Rogers Journalism Guide, found that only one in 20 teens and one in 12 young adults read a newspaper on a daily basis.

Are young people actually following the news online? There are so many different, new, exciting ways of delivering content, but are those methods sufficient? While teens today may not read the news because they can't relate to it, they should still have an interest. New technologies have given the public easier access to news but teens still ignore it.

Something young people are more aware of is social media. "Networked," a blog about digital journalism from SPJ, listed the Top 10 Social Media Best Practices. Definitely gave some handy tips, mainly warning not to just jump into a site without a plan in mind of what exactly you want to accomplish there.

It's amazing to see how many interesting articles I missed in just one week of not reading my newsfeed.

Holy Twitter!

So last night I participated in my first Twitter chat. I guess it's called a Twitter chat, I'm not really sure, but that's what I am going to call it for now. While I have been on Twitter for some time now, I was still a little shaky on the lingo. What does putting # before a word mean? Why are people using the @ sign so much?


Well I can say I have mastered the # and @. Every Wednesday night, there is a chat on Twitter about web journalism (#wjchat). People of all different experience levels participate and answer questions that are posted every five minutes or so. One of the questions I answered was "how do you make your idea have multi-platform potential? Are you thinking outside of HTML? Mobile apps, geolocation, etc."


So, I thought, hmmm multimedia, my new found love of audio plays a role here. I tweeted that everyone brings the video camera with them, what about a high quality recorder? And, who would have thought, someone tweeted at me! Ha! I couldn't believe it. It was great, I felt powerful. Everyone talks about how powerful Twitter is, but at that instant, I truly understood its power. People who have never met, who don't know a single thing about each other, but all share this common interest were all online at the same time, answering great questions and having great conversation about online journalism.


I guess I know what I will be doing on my Wednesday nights this summer. Can't wait. 

Sound bites from the full podcast

Here is a two minute clip of sound bites from my podcast on College Journalism Students. I am working on getting all the audio on one page for easy access. Until then, you can find all the episodes in each of their separate posts in the months of April and May.

Here we go:

"Can technology help make online content pay?"

Type "How to paint with water colors" into the Google search box and a whole slew of answers are at your disposal. A recent article from The Economist, discusses the use of content farms, websites that create content to drive up search traffic and therefore revenue. One of the largest of these "content farms" is Demand Media, which according to the Economist article "Emperors and Beggars," is a combination of science and art. Special software seeks what topics users are most interested in as well as how much revenue a certain topic will create.

About 7,000 freelancers write articles or make videos about each topic. They must have a "college degree, writing expertise, and a specialty." On average, they make about $20-$25 an hour.

Should this be considered journalism? The content posted on these websites is at best mediocre. The point gets across to the reader, and ultimately gives them the answer they were looking for. The writers get paid, and must have some sort of expertise to be posting articles. I have a hard time calling these writers journalists. Are they seeking out a story and finding answers? Or do they themselves already have the answers? The content of a story is what drives it, and if readers are getting what they want, and it brings in revenue, perhaps this is the future of our online articles.

Photo from: stylianosm on Flickr

Blasphemy

A tweet on my twitter popped up this morning with an article titled "Cable news is most trusted in new opinion survey."My heart sank a little at this headline. Then, the article proceeded to state that those polled found CNN and Fox news to be more trustworthy than other newspapers and broadcasts. Fox News?! Really?!! What is the world coming to?

Just wanted to share that bit with you today. I have so many posts I want to put up this week I just don't know where to start. Hopefully this little tid bit of info prompts some deep thinking about what your favorite news source is, and how trustworthy you believe it to be. More to come this afternoon.

Final Episode: College Journalism students

God, why am I such a rookie? Noticed this morning that I mispronounced my interviewee's name wrong in the introduction. Sorry in advanced Hallie, improved version will be posted Monday. Although I made such a terrible mistake, a final episode I promised, and a final episode I shall give, good or bad.

(Note, below is the corrected version as of 5/3/10)

Hallie Mathia is a sophomore at Emerson College. What is interesting about her interview is how she explains what her goals are after graduation. Unlike most journalists who plan on writing for a publication after they earn their degree, Hallie wants to go into an entirely new field.

Listen here:

The Home Stretch

Exactly 12 days from now, I will no longer be a freshman in college. Thank goodness for that.

This past year at school has not been easy, but nevertheless, I made it through. I feel like getting through your freshman year is a certain milestone. It's your first try at being independent. No more mom or dad to get you whatever you need. You have to take everything you've learned over the past 18 years, and start over, on your own.

This year I have learned more about myself than ever before. Especially in regards to the future I want to make for myself, I have come to love journalism and all it has to offer. When I interview someone, I get this high, because I'm in control, it's my story and no one and bring it down. I love hearing what people have to say about a certain topic. I love hearing someone's story. It's just great. And if there is anything that I have taken out of my academics this year, it is the reassurance that this is what I am meant to do.

Whether or not I will have a solid career doesn't really matter to me right now. I should probably be biting my tongue when I say that, but I have just finished my first year as an undergrad, and I have faith that there will be plenty of methods of news delivery when I graduate. Journalism isn't dying, it's changing.

To be posted tomorrow, the last episode of my podcast on journalism students, featuring Hallie Mathia, a sophomore from Emerson college.

"You need to be like the one man band"

This week's podcast features Alexis Brown, a senior at NYU. When Alexis first got into journalism she focused on hard news pieces, but living in New York City has taught her that journalism is much more than only covering one topic. Alexis' beat lies in covering art. I love the story she tells in this podcast of learning glass blowing. As she says, it demonstrates that to really make the most of your story, you have to make the most of the topic you are covering. If that means jumping in and getting your hands dirty, then so be it.

Next year Alexis will be attending grad school to expand her knowledge of the arts and she hopes to travel to experience different cultures around the world. This will definitely make her stand out from other freelance writers and hopefully give her a great career.

Listen here:


Congratulations Alexis, and good luck next year!

The Best of the Audio (so far)

Here is a small track I made of the best audio clips from my podcast thus far. I mixed in a bit of the interview that will be posted later this week, featuring Alexis Brown, a student from NYU. Consider it a sneak preview of her interview. Enjoy!:

Who actually takes a newspaper?

Right now I am sitting in a cafe in the Endicott academic center. Coincidentally, I am directly facing the stack of newspapers that are put out everyday for students and faculty to take. The newspapers are part of the Collegiate Readership Program and feature some big name metro papers like USA Today, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times.

It has been about 40 minutes. As I sit on this fancy laptop, people watching as flocks of students run in to grab a coffee before their next class, I can't help but notice that not one student has taken a newspaper. Interestingly enough, about four faculty members came and got one, some took one of each paper.

This right here is living proof that....wait.... a student just took one....

Anyways, its practically living proof that young adults don't have any interest in reading a newspaper. The last thing on their mind in the morning is sitting down to a nice cup of coffee and reading the top stories about the airports closing in Europe or the latest on the war in Iraq. To be honest, most of these students could care less. Maybe they will go online to the Globe and read the headlines, but it is highly doubted. Students want quick info, snippets, and if it sounds important, or of interest, then they will read further.

My guess is that most people in the younger generation get their news via twitter updates or from a link a friend posted on facebook. Maybe they will go to AOL or Yahoo for some human interest stories. The big question is, are students today savvy about what is going on in the world around them? If I were to randomly select one student in this cafe right now, would they be able to tell me about the debate on healthcare legislation? I'll admit, I'm a bit worried that if my generation doesn't care about the news now, will they ever?

Soon enough, I'm sure, a new outlet will be created to get the days top stories across to those who aren't your daily news readers. Soon, however, can not come soon enough.