By Stephanie Snyder
A variety of musicians and artists supported downtown Phoenix’s black community in a celebration for Black History Month at the Civic Space Park. The event, which lasted from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Friday Feb. 5, featured a group playing the djembe drums, a pair of rappers and a ten-man jazz band.
Dan Neligh contributed to the production of this slideshow.
Contact the reporter at slsnyder@asu.edu
By LeeAnn DiSanti
It is the dawn of a new era, one where floundering online news sources have begun to charge readers for Web content just to keep some of the nation’s most historic papers from going under.
Readers have expressed mixed reviews after the New York Times recently informed the public they would be finalizing plans that would require some readers to pay a fee for their news content starting in 2011.
No matter the amount of readers that have taken the news lightly, some remain stiff-necked on refusing to pay for their news.
Think about it though; most marketing or research Web sites like Yankelovich.com already charge for content; some magazine sites like Consumerreports.com charge for use; and the Amazon Kindle has already hacked into its user base, charging readers for daily digital newspaper deliveries.
Which poses the question: If other news aggregators are already charging, why shouldn’t the news sources themselves?
Rupert Murdoch has already adopted a way of charging for access to the Wall Street Journal’s Web site, and it has done surprisingly well.
There has even been talk of Murdoch introducing the method to some of his other publications and even Hulu.
The Kindle has not only gotten away with charging users $13.99 per month to receive their daily dose of news but they have also made bank by taking 70 percent of subscription revenue.
On top of that, Amazon demands that content owners allow it to republish material.
Really now, who is being robbed?
As hard as it is to have to dig into our already shallow pockets, charging for Web content may be the only way to save the journalism world as we know it.
This is the ASU Downtown campus after all; a good portion of students are here to study journalism.
According to the Editor and Publisher International Yearbook, total paid newspaper circulation has dropped over 11 percent since 2005.
Newspaper sales are down while the costs to produce them have been on a steady incline.
This means more and more journalists are fighting to keep their jobs.
Some people may feel ripped off being forced to pay for news content, but what other options do newspapers have?
Advertising through the Internet is only a fraction as successful as it is in hard copy, so the revenue newspapers receive from advertising is too meager to sustain multi-million dollar publications.
Although the Times has not announced a solid outline yet, it plans to start charging frequent online viewers who have do not already subscribed to the paper.
Sure the switch will ruffle some feathers, but ultimately, it’s the best move news sources can make.
And hell, if products like the Kindle can charge for content that isn’t even its own, news sites certainly can.
Contact the reporter at ldisanti@asu.edu
The latest exhibit at the Arizona Science Center in downtown Phoenix, which opened on Jan. 31, gives visitors the chance to face their fears — in the most literal sense.
Contact the reporter at jessica.goldberg@asu.edu
By Dustin Volz
A chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists was started on Arizona State University’s Downtown campus by a group of students hoping to give the Hispanic community a voice both at the University and in the local community.
“One of our main goals is to establish an identity for ourselves at ASU,” said Gitzel Puente, president and founder of the NAHJ ASU chapter.
Puente, a journalism junior at the Walter Cronkite School, said she was prompted to start a chapter after attending NAHJ’s national convention last summer in Puerto Rico. As a national member, Puente was sponsored to attend the convention and was inspired to create her own chapter at ASU.
“We have a lot of Hispanic journalism students at the Cronkite School and a lot of Hispanic people in the Valley,” Puente said.
Puente said she hopes other students can benefit from being a member of the organization as much as she has.
“There are so many opportunities for scholarships and internships for aspiring Hispanic journalists (in NAHJ),” Puente said.
Former Vice President Ruben Veloz graduated from the Walter Cronkite School in December but was eager to get involved when Puente approached him to help Hispanic students.
“I’d like to see these kids presented with more opportunities in the journalism field and show them why they are important [to the industry],” Veloz said. “I got involved because there needed to be more involvement from the students at the Walter Cronkite School regarding Hispanics and Hispanic issues.”
Freshman journalism student Pedro Silva said he joined the ASU chapter because it was the club on campus that resonated most with him.
“Latinos are gaining presence in this field and it’s important to have a club that promotes Hispanic values,” Silva said. “It’s a club I can identify with.”
Silva said there are a lot of issues facing the Hispanic community in Arizona and thinks the chapter will help promote them.
“It’s about time,” he said. “Latinos are the fastest-growing demographic in Arizona so it’s great to have a club that caters to our concerns.”
During the three meetings held from October to December in the fall semester, the club discussed promoting itself, bringing in guest speakers for next semester, ways to raise funds and starting a club Web site.
“[With a Web site] we will establish our identity as a club and a credible source, so other students can join,” Puente said in an e-mail. “This will be a way for us, reporters, to give a description of ourselves and state our goals, write Hispanic-oriented news stories in the future, blog and create an outlet for other ASU students to get involved with our club.”
Puente said the club hasn’t created a club Web site yet, but it did make a blog that she hopes to further develop during the spring semester by reporting on events happening in the surrounding Hispanic community.
The club currently has 10 to 15 active members, but Puente said she hopes it will expand once more students find out about it.
“The students are so excited to be a part of this club,” she said.
NAHJASU is holding its first meeting of the semester on Feb. 8, featuring its second guest speaker, Yvonne Wingett, a reporter for the Arizona Republic.
Puente said her semester goals for the organization are to plan events, like a mixer between students and Hispanic media professionals in March, continue the blog and promote the benefits of the club.
“We just want to get the word out that we’re here to help,” she said.
Stephanie Snyder contributed to this report.
Contact the reporter at dustin.volz@asu.edu
By Salvador Rodriguez | DevilCast by Jessica Goldberg | View bike route
About 100 Phoenix cyclists rode around the downtown area Friday to raise motor-vehicle drivers’ awareness on sharing the road.
As part of a worldwide event that happens the last Friday of every month known as Critical Mass, the bicyclists met at Steele Indian School Park at North Third Street and East Indian School Road illuminating the streets of Phoenix with their safety lights until reaching the Civic Space Park where they lifted their bikes in unison.
Blaise Faber, 24, of Phoenix, participated in the event riding a penny-farthing bike, which are known for having front wheels much larger than their back wheels, and said this isn’t the first Critical Mass in Phoenix but was the biggest due to promotion on Facebook.
With “social networks like Facebook and other things like that, it’s just so easy to get the word out,” he said. “I knew this went on every last Friday of the month, but I actually got a Facebook invite from a friend of mine who got it from a friend of his.”
Faber, who restores, buys and sells bikes as a hobby, said bicycling hasn’t grown in Phoenix in part because of the lack of social awareness. Promoting cycling to more people, as was done for Critical Mass through Facebook, is what the Phoenix bicycling community needs.
Josh Enns, 24, of Phoenix, said Critical Mass is a chance for people to get together, ride and talk about bikes but also to raise awareness for motor-vehicle drivers.
“It’s all about letting the cars know that we’re here, and they’ve got to share the road,” he said. “Don’t yell and don’t throw things at us. Don’t honk you’re horn.”
Enns, who has been going to Critical Masses for about a year, said before this event, about seven people would participate each month.
“Critical Mass is a nationwide thing,” he said. “All across the world now, people are doing this … we’re just trying to make it a little bit bigger and funner and just get more people out here.”
Amy Stewart, 28, of Phoenix, who helped organize the event, said hopefully after January’s large turnout, more people will come to Phoenix’s Critical Masses and more motor-vehicle drivers will know to share the road.
“Some people will appreciate it and honk,” she said. “Other people might find us to be in their way, but the idea is that cyclists should be on the road riding.”
Contact the reporter at salvador.rodriguez@asu.edu
By Stephanie Snyder
A new weekly lunchtime concert series launched Thursday at the Civic Space and will continue for 14 weeks.
The program, Lunch Unplugged, will have a local musician play at the Civic Space every Thursday through April 29 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. to give the downtown Phoenix community a place to take a break from work or school and enjoy a free musical performance with their lunch, the series coordinator said.
Laci Lester, the community liaison and events director for Karuna Village Fair Trade, a nonprofit organization, developed the idea from her love of music and from her insight of parks in other cities, like Bryant Park in New York City and Millennium Park in Chicago, she said.
“Those are kind of my inspiration of urban parks, and they really utilize a lot of their community to bring programming into the park,” Lester said.
Lester began planning the concert series in mid-September and enlisted the help of Radio Phoenix, a nonprofit radio service, and the Downtown Phoenix Partnership.
“It was a challenge to make sure that I was talking to the right people and making sure that I was aligning with the right missions, but once we got the right people to the table, the process was pretty smooth,” she said.
Clinton Switzer, who partnered with Lester to plan the series and is the event coordinator for Radio Phoenix, opened the concert series playing the acoustic guitar and harmonica. Booking musicians for the 14-week series was not difficult, Switzer said, since many artists went out of their way to contact either him or Lester about participating.
“The other musicians in Phoenix who are doing this for 14 weeks, they are definitely going to have people there watching them, and that’s always an awesome feeling,” he said.
Downtown Phoenix’s music population is excited about the venue at the Civic Space, Lester said.
“They’re really excited to have a space that is innovative,” Lester said. “It’s not your typical venue to play at, so we had a lot of musician interest.”
Since the event is available free to the Phoenix community, the Downtown Phoenix Partnership financed the program, said Jim Flynn, director of marketing for the Downtown Phoenix Partnership.
“It’s a very, very inexpensive investment to get real folks doing real music in a real park,” Jim Flynn said. “So we got excited about it, and we’re more than willing to participate.”
Flynn said he doesn’t expect the series to attract many people initially, but the quality and location of the program will help establish it.
“It’ll gain its own attrition and pretty soon we’ll be an ongoing part of the scene in downtown Phoenix everyday,” he said.
Tony Sziklay, a biology junior who attended the concert, and said he is happy to see local musicians have a place where they can play since there is so much concentrated talent in Phoenix.
“I’ve been to all the bigger cities ¾ Chicago, L.A., San Francisco, New York,” Sziklay said. “Here artists seem to be more genuine and dedicated to their craft.”
Thursday’s concert attracted several passer-bys and a crowd of around 20, but Sziklay said he expects to see more people in the future.
“It’s such a great location that I can’t see how it wouldn’t attract more people to come out each week,” he said.
Lester said depending on the community response, the concert series may be extended to May and possibly started up again in the fall.
“We want to make sure that we’re not over-programming the park, but we also want to make sure that people know that there are things to do,” she said.
Contact the reporter at slsnyder@asu.edu
By LeeAnn DiSanti
After the quake in Haiti, volunteers all across the world banded together to support the aching nation. The Downtown campus intramural department is also taking initiative with a Haiti-relief basketball tournament Saturday.
The 3-on-3 tournament is the first charity event organized by the department, with all proceeds being donated to Haiti relief.
“After what happened, it was anything we could do to help,” said Cailyn Bradley, league co-manager for the department.
So far seven teams have signed up for the tournament, and organizers are still determining the details of how the tournament will be set up.
“We’re still having sign-up sheets come in,” said Jordan Hamm, league co-manager for the department.
Teams can register until the day of the event.
“A lot of people are very last minute,” Bradley said.
Alan Wang, a student at UA’s College of Medicine⎯Phoenix in partnership with ASU, said his team might not be able to participate in the tournament because of the short notice.
“I didn’t find out about the tournament until Monday or Tuesday, and it’s already this Saturday,” Wang said.
The league co-managers said they are hoping the success of the tournament will lead to more charity events held at the YMCA.
“Since we work in cooperation with the Y, we work to promote families—not just ASU Downtown Phoenix (campus) recreation but all members of the communities,” Bradley said.
Contact the reporter at ldisanti@asu.edu
By Dan Neligh | Grade: C+
Indian food is by far my favorite type of cuisine. While it is notoriously difficult to cook, I have found that the symphony of flavors created by the delicate mix of spices in curries and marinades is unparalleled in the cuisine of other cultures.
Needless to say, when I heard that an Indian restaurant had moved in right across the street from ASU’s Downtown campus, I was more than a little excited.
That being said, Hurry 4 Curry was something of a disappointment.
Hurry 4 Curry opened its doors earlier in 2009, providing shoppers at the Arizona Center with what had seemed to be a unique alternative to the more conventional eateries that fill the outdoor mall. And while I was wowed by the touch-screen ordering system and the chic atmosphere that could be pegged somewhere between that of Mojo Yogurt and Chipotle, I couldn’t get over the fact that they only serve one good dish.
For those who want a filling and satisfying Indian meal, the butter chicken with naan is the way to go. Truthfully, the flavors of the dish are pleasantly reminiscent of some of the more noteworthy Indian establishments I have visited; however, most other dishes should be avoided.
As a general rule, the food was too salty and lacked the type of full-bodied tastes expected from a traditional Indian curry. Although the prices are notably lower than they are at most Indian restaurants (with plates costing $7.50), the quality of the food means customers are hardly getting a bargain (except for the butter chicken—really, that one is worth trying).
I would love nothing more than to see a good Indian restaurant move in near the Downtown campus. I look forward to the day it happens.
Contact the reporter at dneligh@gmail.com
By Salvador Rodriguez
An ASASUD senator for the Walter Cronkite School resigned from his post Monday, the third Senate resignation this semester.
Charlie Jannetto, a journalism junior, said he decided to quit because of scheduling, other priorities and also because he does not think there has been much progress with ASASUD.
“A lot of what we focused on was concerned with the facilities fee,” he said. “I think it was pretty clear that students don’t support it … I just didn’t see a whole lot of benefit to being involved.”
The executive board expects the senators to do an amount of work not equal to that of a senator’s stipend, currently $200 a year, Jannetto said.
“If they wanted us to be just senators and just deal with voting on different issues and that sort of thing then I would be fine with what they pay, but if they want us to be actively involved and actually be doing the work that they’re supposed to do then we should be compensated more,” he said.
After ASASUD elections last April, members of the executive board proposed salary amounts to the Senate after doing research on the Tempe campus’ student government and those of other universities, said Olga Lykhvar, ASASUD director of administration.
“The senators voted on the budget,” she said. “They voted on their own stipends, they voted on our stipends, they voted on everything completely on their own … Not one single person objected to it.”
Members of the executive board receive stipends of $2,000 a year while Vice President Beth Wischnia receives $4,000 a year and President Tania Mendes receives a $5,000 stipend this year.
Lykhvar said the Senate has control of how their budget is divided and it can make changes.
“They’re the voting body on this campus,” she said. “They decide how they want things to be done.”
Last semester, members of the executive board addressed the gap in salaries at a Senate meeting after some senators brought the problem to their attention, Lykhvar said.
Sophomore Sen. Amanda Cram, College of Nursing and Health Innovation, said most student governments are voluntary, but if senators were paid more they might be more committed to ASASUD.
“When I was running my campaign, I didn’t do it for the money,” she said. “I didn’t know I was getting a stipend, but some other senators may feel that they would stay if they got paid more.”
While resignations have also come from the executive board, such as journalism sophomore Lisa Diaz’s resignation as director of parliamentary procedures last week, Cram said stipends are a way to hold people responsible.
“There’s other measures of accountability, but the stipend is a way to hold us accountable,” she said.
Contact the reporter at salvador.rodriguez@asu.edu
