New Directions

After taking this course, I have decided I definitely do not want to pursue Public Relations. When we had the guest speaker from the PR company, I was just not entertained or impressed. After that, I was assigned PR as my front for the media controversy. The entire project made me dislike PR a little bit more. However, it wasn't just the class that made me change my mind.

Mid-February, I went to Maryland with the women's basketball team and had possibly the most miserable weekend of my life. Not only was I missing out on part of my Freshman year, but I was bossed around and yelled at the entire time. That was it for me. Goodbye to my Sports Agent/Publicist dreams. If it was anything like this, I was out.

About a week later, I was trapped in the locker room studying for some midterm in front of the non-stop ESPN that dominates the flat screen. Up popped Rachel Nichols. The girl had no idea what she was saying, or what she was even talking about, but she made working on ESPN seem so easy, so I decided to go after her career as an ESPN sportscaster.

Through the NCAA tournament, the guest speaker from Carolina Week, and talking with a friend who writes for ESPN, I've decided that this is definitely a career path I am interested in, so I guess it's away from PR and off on the new path of Reporting!

Absence of Malice

Summary: The story of Absence of Malice centers around the murder of the head of a labor union and a chief suspect, a character named Gallagher. Gallagher is fighting to clear his name after Megan Carter publishes a report that Gallagher is a "prime suspect" in the murder of the union leader. Gallagher immediately goes to the FBI, the DA, and Megan to clear up the misunderstanding. This leads to a new investigation in which Megan learns Gallagher's controversial alibi (that he was in Atlanta with his friend who was getting an abortion) and Gallagher manipulates the DA into allowing him to be an informant, a role that allows him to turn around and ruin the careers of some of the investigators.

There were many controversies:
1) Publishing information that is unknown and just based on suspicions.
2) Publishing personal information (such as the abortion that lead to the best friend's suicide)
3) Befriending a subject of an investigation
4) Wording an article to create a public attitude against a figure
5) Writing an article about a non-public figure (slander?)