Friday, August 20, 2010

BYU Shaking Things Up ... Plus Education Week

My level of journalistic activity this week has been inversely proportional to this week's blog activity. Time to catch up.

It's a break between semesters, but The Daily Universe has still been published every day of Education Week. Without any COMMS 321 reporters available, four or five of us have been going to Education Week classes and writing stories about them. The rest of the paper was filled with AP stories.

Getting to go to Education Week classes for free was even more fun than I thought. Here are the stories I did:

Lessons from Lehi's dream a source of hope
by Ron Bartholomew

When I saw that Brother Bartholomew was teaching a class at Education Week, I immediately assigned myself to it. I've had two classes with Brother Bartholomew, and he is one of my favorite BYU professors. He is amazingly personal and touching, and has a gift for speaking to college students. A lot of my post-mission spiritual growth came thanks to him and his lessons. (My second class with Brother Bartholomew I took after being married, and Erin had the class with me. So we both love Brother Bartholomew and the blessings that have come from his influence.)

The eternal perspective: being the best parents in the world
by Richard Eyre

Bythway: The hazards of criticism in marriages
by John Bytheway

I used to be in love with John Bytheway as a teenager, but I think I based my young testimony too much on his talks and not on my own scripture study and personal revelation. And I know many LDS youth are doing the same thing. But it's not necessarily John Bytheway's fault, and he is a good, inspirational speaker and he is very funny.

It's sort of interesting to hear him give a talk about marriage, because I remember listening to talks he gave back when he was famous for his perpetual bachelorhood.

One strange moment ... in John Bytheway's talk, he interrupted himself to say he hoped there were no reporters there from The Daily Universe or anything, because he's never read an article about him that he liked. I have no idea how that thought connected to anything else he was saying. I took it as a challenge, to write the first article about John Bytheway that he would like. I wonder if he read it.

Second Coming unknown but not scary
by Randall Bird

Understanding our pre-mortal existence

by Craig Ostler

It's really strange discussing subjects like Lehi's dream, the Second Coming and pre-mortality in a journalistic setting! But it was pretty fun and I think I did a good job with it.

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I would have gone to more Education Week classes, but some breaking news took precedence.

On Wednesday, rumors of BYU football going independent and other sports participating in the WAC became more legitimate. And, BYU fired its men's volleyball coach, likely because of some NCAA violations.

So I skipped a class to write about the volleyball coach leaving:

Volleyball coach fired; BYU investigating program


And, I spent all afternoon yesterday gathering reactions and quotes from students on campus about the changes in BYU sports:

Students react to possible BYU football independence


And a viewpoint on the subject:

BYU appears ready to venture into great unknown

My viewpoint may make me sound like I don't approve of football independence, but I do. I do think every other sport will suffer, which is unfortunate. But that doesn't outweigh my hopes for Cougar football. I think I maybe focused more on the plight of other BYU sports in my viewpoint just because that was easier to write.

Whew! Well there's a week's worth of journalism in one blog post.

Next week, David and I will be preparing for fall semester, especially writing about the football team. Stay tuned!

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