America will soon have a regime of austerity.

That was the first comment of a panel discussion Wednesday night in Edwin Meese Conference room in Mason Hall on George Mason University’s Fairfax campus. Bill Schneider, a Mason faculty member and journalist, said these words.

“Whose death is it going to be?” Schneider said.

Schneider then listed various social groups that currently exist in society and the ways that they have largely planted themselves firmly on the side of democrats.

He spoke of women, African-Americans, gays and people without religious ties.

“20 percent of Americans have no religious affiliation. It’s the new America,” Schneider said.

Karen DeYoung, Washington Post senior national security correspondent, spoke next.

“Listen to what people say in public,” she said.

DeYoung was speaking specifically of political figures.

“I think you can see in those remarks that President Obama is a very cautious president,” she said.

“It’s likely to characterize what he will do in his second term,” she said.

Ran Halevi, an historian and journalist, of Le Figaro, a French newspaper, spoke next.

He spoke of polarization.

Polarization was a deliberate choice in American politics, he said.

“There is a kind of intrinsic sympathy,” Halevi said in response to a question about how the French people feel about Obama.

The panel then shifted focus to America’s capacity to fight multiple wars simultaneously.

“Now I think the assumption is that we could fight one big war if we wanted to,” Karen DeYoung said.

“I think there’s no question the military has been so incredibly bloated,” she said.

She then turned her attention to the sequester and where Americans might see spending cuts.

The panel then discussed Israel.

“This is an issue,” Schneider said.

“Obama will support Israel,” he said.

He said this stance could cause problems for Obama with relation to democrats.

“We never like to admit that we live in a world where things are just not predictable,” Halevi said, then, and encouraged the audience to recognize that many things could happen with regard to Israel.

From there the panel opened the floor to questions from the audience, a group of about seventy which was composed of students, faculty, staff and others.

Kathleen deLaski served as moderator of the discussion. She is a member of Mason’s Board of VIsitors and is president of the deLaski Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in McLean, Virginia.

I thought class tonight was refreshing.

As I listened to Government Information/GIS Librarian Joy Suh, I started thinking about ways I could make my stories richer and more informative.

I do worry, though, about overwhelming my readers with too many toys and multimedia add-ons. Something tells me that my readers would not feel that that is possible, though. I guess, in some ways, my real fear, then, is giving my readers so many toys that they won’t pay attention to my words. I am a word person. I worry about things like this.

I did get some ideas from Suh for things that I want to try, to incorporate into my work. I liked her tips about how to incorporate maps into my work. I think people can get some good information from maps.

I also liked the information that Suh provided about how to look up court cases on the library website.

I like writing court case stories and I think people like reading them. People need to know about the laws that affect them and how they are changing or how leaders are changing their interpretations of them.

I did think that I will need more time to figure out how to implement some of her other tips into my work. I think, for instance, that I would need more time to conduct research for stories using books and materials obtained from other libraries. I tend to think of news reporting as more immediate and less drawn-out. I know some reporters do long-term stories. Maybe I should become one of them.

I have given some thought to writing a news-style book. Maybe I could use some of this information for that purpose.

I am grateful, in any case for the lessons I received tonight. I just have to figure out how to make the best use of them.

Communication students have a lot to learn (or perhaps it’s just me.)

That was what I took from the lecture that George Mason University Creative Services Photographer Alexis Glenn and Creative Services Senior Photographer Evan Cantwell gave this week.

Consider this tip from Cantwell, for example: “If the image isn’t interesting, you need to fill the frame.”

Or this one: “I usually try to bring three lenses,” Cantwell said.

I usually use a point-and-shoot camera with a zoom, so this tip for student journalists surprised me. I never considered buying a camera–or really learning how to use a camera–with multiple, removable lenses. I am focused on the story, not the action that needs capturing with the camera.

I am beginning to realize that my point-of-view on that matter is hurting me career-wise.

I wonder, though, how one gets to the point where one understands how much to focus on images and how much to focus on writing. (You’ll notice that I have included no images in this entry. I think that speaks to my current mentality.)

When I was last working as a reporter, I don’t think I even had a good grasp of how to share my story workload with the staff photographer for my newspaper. We had different ideas and different approaches and this affected the results that we achieved.

Right now, I am covering sustainability issues on my own, so I have control over all aspects of what I produce. I am OK with these multiple hats, and, as a matter of fact, spent today out on the street reporting. I know what I need to do to get the story ready and posted, so I am hopeful that it will turn out well.

While I work on it, I will ponder how best to implement some of Glenn and Cantwell’s other tips, as well. I made note of the following ideas during their presentation:

From Glenn:

-Always take many more photos than you need.

-Seek angles that don’t look staged.

-Use lighting to convey your point.

From Cantwell:

-“Identify the amount of access (that you have in a given setting).”

-“Look for expressions.”

Hopefully no one will notice the confused expressions I will surely wear while I learn and perfect my digital photography and multimedia skills.

I have decided to share some of my other photos for the purposes of tonight’s class. I took these photos while I served as part of the Mason yearbook staff.

I am not a fan of photographs.

Why?

When I got fired from Broadside in 2005 for peacefully confronting the editor-in-chief about her underage drinking problem, I went to work for the George Mason University yearbook, GMView.

One minute I was a journalist and the next I was a photographer. I was not happy.

I wasn’t just a photographer. I was PR/recruiting director. I took pictures, I went to the communication reception to entice people to join the yearbook staff and I put up flyers for GMView around campus.

I loved parts of the job. I sold more yearbooks than anyone in my Yearbook Workshop class. I had fun doing that. I also loved representing the group at the communication reception–the best event at Mason, bar none. You should go to one. Then you’ll see what I mean.

Still, though, I did not want to be part of the yearbook staff. I wanted to be at Broadside.

That was a long time ago, though.

Here are the things that I learned about that from Mark Briggs and his 2013 book “journalismNEXT”:

-Briggs writes on page 147 that a picture is like a gift box. He writes there that it is information that you are giving to the reader, and, thus, you should pack it with as many details as you want them to have.

-He writes on page 150 that a picture should be a truthful representation of a situation or setting.

I agree with each of these things, but I disagree with some of the other things Briggs writes in this chapter.

I disagree, for one thing, with the notion he presents on page 155 that journalists should “Tone and color correct the picture[s] [they take].” I think that doing that violates the rule above–the one from page 150 about providing a truthful representation.

I also disagree with the idea that, as Briggs writes on page 170: “Blogs without art are lame.”

I read blogs for the words they present, but still, I will supply some images here in order to learn from you, my readers.

I took the image above (of the student-made path to the sidewalk next to the Johnson Center) to depict the interaction of people with the natural environment. I am focusing on sustainability, so I wanted an image that would make people think about that relationship.

I took that image and the two below with the intention of using one of them as my blog header.

This is the grassy area by Mason Pond.

This is the gazebo beside the pond.

I settled, in the end, on the image at the top of the blog, at least for now. I will probably replace it with some flowers blooming or a collage of sustainability-themed images. Tell me what you think. This blog is for you, my readers, as much as it is for me, if not more. I aim to please and to serve. I welcome your comments.

If a plane crashes in a city and everyone is around to see it, whom do you ask what happened? Whom do you believe?

I struggled with these questions as I read chapter three of Mark Briggs’s 2013 book “journalismNEXT.”

I don’t know that I have answers to these questions, even now that I have finished the reading. I don’t know that I ever will. I don’t know that right answers to these questions exist or that one answer would be right in every situation.

Here are the things that I do know. (Please note that I am a fallible, unfinished, learning journalist.):

-When I first became a student journalist in 1993 (my freshman year of high school), there were journalists and there were sources. Journalists gathered the news from sources and reported it to readers, viewers and listeners. Sources never expressed much interest in becoming journalists, though they may have occasionally penned letters to the editor.

-This is 2013.

I understand the demands of the 24-hour news cycle and the pressure of looming deadlines. I understand the desire to get the story to the public first, or at least in a timely fashion.

I can’t help but wonder, though, if people won’t wake up one day and want long-form journalism produced by people who do nothing but seek information for them. I wonder if the pendulum won’t swing so far in this direction–the direction that says that everyone can be a journalist–that it swings back the other way.

I think that scenario could happen, but I think it is far more likely that passionate journalists will simply one day look around at each other and find an audience. I think journalists will stop trying to reach everyone and simply start writing and reporting for their peers–people who appreciate the work that goes into good journalism.

If journalists did that, they wouldn’t need to worry about the masses.

Obviously, I have trust issues. I am working on them, I assure you. Like I said, I am a learning journalist.