OIDJ at Gaylord College

Monthly archive

August 2015

A huge thank you from the OIDJ 2015 participants

by

The  following quotes come from the 2015 OIDJ high school participants from all over the state. The students and the OIDJ director would like to thank the Dow Jones News Fund and the Gaylord College for their financial support this year. “Everyone with a hand in this program has allowed many students the opportunity to really learn and stir up some great potential. I have seen students become very inspired in just a matter of days. You are all so great, thank you again.” “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to have experience in the world of journalism… Journalism is…

H&8 Festival celebrates local food and music

by ,

The quaint corners of the Midtown district in Oklahoma City are mostly quiet during the day. But one night a month, from the spring to the fall, the H&8th Night Market brings the downtown area alive with vibrant food trucks and live music. The nickname H&8th stands for the intersection where the event takes place, between Hudson and northwest 8th street. “The point of all this is to create an Oklahoma City night on the town,” said Brian Bergman, event coordinator for H&8th. “In the four-plus years we’ve been an event, Hudson Street was empty businesses, now they are full.”…

Oklahoma milkweed supply decreases, affecting monarch butterfly migration

by

As recently as 2008, Oklahomans were able to witness hundreds or even thousands of monarch butterflies on their journey south for the winter. However, last year festivalgoers at Monarch in the Park in Blanchard, Oklahoma, only saw a few butterflies. One local factor contributing to the population decrease of monarchs is the killing of milkweed plants in the Midwest, particularly with herbicides and roadside mowing. Global factors include deforestation and urban development, as well as biofuel development. These factors are “indicators that we are poisoning our environment,” said Robert Robbins, a Smithsonian curator of Lepidoptera — or the order of…

The Purrrrfect way to spend your ‘Caturday’

by

The third annual Internet Cat Video Festival will arrive at the Myriad Botanical Gardens in Oklahoma City Saturday, August 1. Organizers call it “Caturday.” The festival is one of several touring this summer. Most people pay a fee to see the videos in other cities, but Tinker Federal Credit Union is underwriting it in Oklahoma City, so it is free to the public. Starting at 7 p.m. there will be pre-festival events, including live music, ice cream and face painting. The videos start at 9 p.m. According to the Myriad Botanical Gardens website, the festival celebrates “the world’s most aloof…

Looks aren’t everything

by

Somewhere, an overzealous mother in her mid-thirties calls out: “Smile!” Her daughter, 5, stops mid-backyard-play, constructs her lips just so and freezes for the camera. “Look happy,” the mother says. The little girl stretches her mouth to the point her cheeks twinge. “Yay! Good girl!” “Oh, wait! No! You’re squinting. Let me take one more.” In a world where social media’s influence grows by the second, just smiling isn’t enough anymore. Users of Instagram and other social media find validation not in the quality of pictures, but in pursuit of the perfect moment. With so many competing for followers and…

Native American-themed mascots falling from one Capitol Hill to another

by

Renewed debate about Native American-themed mascots is rippling from the Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., to the one in Oklahoma City. Prompted in part by the legal fight to force the renaming of Washington’s National Football League team, school mascots are getting attention from the public, and questions as to whether or not schools should change those mascots are asked more frequently. Closer to home and after weeks of controversial debate, Capitol Hill High School this spring abandoned the Redskins nickname its sports team had played under for 88 years. “We started to notice that schools in other surrounding areas…

Some flood victims denied insurance

by

Earlier this year three feet of rushing water came up from the nearby creek and into Norbert Heckman’s home. The muddy water destroyed some things in its path, and rose as far as 18 inches. He moved into his home in Indiahoma, which is in Comanche County, in 2008, and was told he could not get flood insurance by Humble Insurance Agency. “When I asked my (insurance) agent if I could get (flood) insurance, he said I could not because I didn’t live in a flood zone,” Heckman said. A flood zone, sometimes called a floodplain, is a low-ground area…

Confederate flag not just about heritage

by

Racism is nothing new—not around the globe and not in America. In 1619, slavery began in America. While the country has come a long way in nearly 4oo years – even electing a black president, some Southerners remain stuck in the past when it comes to issues like the Confederate flag. When I was little and growing up in northeastern Oklahoma, I remember going to the Saline courthouse with a friend and her parents to take pictures. There’s a tree there that everyone calls the hanging tree. Her dad told us stories about how people used to be hanged there,…

Native Storytelling: passing down tribal history

by

“For many years the animals had no control of fire. They, of course, had always seen the forest fires and the lightning. They knew that the fire was powerful, beautiful and dangerous. … The little water spider watched the others, and she quietly thought, ‘All these animals want the fire badly, but something is missing. The thing is preparation. We must prepare if we are really to get and keep the fire. …’ She needed something to carry out the fire so it wouldn’t get wet, so she wove a little basket to carry the fire. She carried the little basket…

’50 Shades’ article removed from high school yearbook

by

Working hard on a story only to have the content scrapped before publication is something former Norman High School student Makenzie Millsap is familiar with. Millsap wrote an article about the popular but sexually explicit book “50 Shades of Grey” by E.L. James for her high school yearbook, but school’s Principal Scott Beck removed the story before it could be published. Millsap said she knew the story might be controversial, but she thought she could “write around the parts that were bad.” “My main goal was to write an interesting story on how big the movie got and how crazy…

1 2
Go to Top