CitrusTV's first full HD show

Watch the first full HD show in the history of CitrusTV... The last 2009 taping of "Juice & Java," Syracuse University's morning talk show, was shot in 1080 HD before the semester ended.

The episode features interviews with the editor of campus magazine 20 Watts, president of the SU Anime Club, and two members of Orange Appeal - the male campus a cappella group that performs "In the Still of the Night" in the last block.

The show was produced by Hannah Kollock and Chris Shepherd, and directed by me.

"Interviewing" Ted Koppel

It's been an incredibly busy semester for me so far. With a really compact class schedule, I've had a lot of time to do a bunch of cool stuff for CitrusTV and the Orange Television Network. I covered an event on the Syracuse University campus featuring Vice President and Syracuse Law alum Joe Biden a few weeks ago.

Just this past week, I directed a shoot of a student dance showcase, coordinated the semester's first "SUper Sports" play-by-play broadcast of a women's volleyball game and shot today's homecoming football game against USF. And there was one other highlight this week, check out the video below in all its HD glory to see it for yourself.

Summer's end

It was a busy and productive summer for me. Here are a few of the projects I've worked on this summer.

NYC - MTV Networks internship

In May, I was living in Brooklyn Heights. Through a special program at Syracuse University, I had spent my spring semester teaching at the High School for Leadership and Public Service - a public high school in Manhattan's Financial District that was established by SU's Maxwell public affairs school.

During my last few weeks in Brooklyn, I started a 10-week internship at MTV Networks with Spike TV's digital team in New York City. The internship gave me a look at a side of the TV business I previously didn't have any professional experience with: distribution.

My time at Spike helped expand my Photoshop skills, as I was responsible for preparing photos and screen grabs for the designer on our team. I learned how to use Spike's custom content management system, and had an opportunity to fine-tune my Microsoft Excel skills, developing and maintaining a spreadsheet of legal details for posting Spike's many shows on the Internet.

Aside from the work itself, I was fortunate to be with a team full of cool, friendly and interesting people. Outside of cutting out several hundreds (I lost count) of photos of Jesse James for his new series on Spike, some of my tasks included:

• Watching episodes of "Deadliest Warrior" and writing down timecodes of good clips
• An unsuccessful pizza pillage from a screening of TV Land's "Cougar"
• Meeting MTVN digital executives who are some of the most powerful frontiers in the marriage of TV and Web
• A top secret mission one day to pick up cupcakes at Magnolia Cupcakes

Extra, extra, read all about it

Back home in Milford, PA I continued my third year as a regular correspondent for The Gazette, a weekly Dow Jones community newspaper distributed by the Times Herald-Record.

Among the events I reported on and photographed, I met Grammy-nominated singer and pianist Vanessa Carlton, a native of my hometown who played at the Milford Music Festival. I also had the privilege of shooting photos on the field at the graduation of my brother and several good friends from Delaware Valley High School.

In mid-June, a new weekly newspaper launched in the tri-state NJ/NY/PA area called the Pike County Press. After hearing about the newspaper from my high school journalism teacher, I contacted the manager who took me on as a freelance photographer, reporter and videographer. As a result, the Press became the first news site in Pike County to have video content. Since June, I've taken thousands of photos, written several pieces and produced a handful of videos for the Pike County Press.

Check out highlights of my photojournalism work on Flickr.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

On the Web

I began work on a Web site for the new Brooklyn Heights Wine Bar, co-owned by my best friend's dad. The site launched in July. Designed in Dreamweaver, the site has a Wordpress back-end for the owners of the wine bar to easily update content themselves.

Myer and Myer, CPA in Milford contacted me to do two Web sites, one for their CPA office and one for Myer Property Management. The property manager recalled my name from back when I used to maintain the school Web site DV World when I was in high school. Their sites are still under construction.

And Myer's the lucky name for me. I've been working with Myer the Florist (no connection to the CPA...) on a Web site for the past year and a half. This summer we got the e-commerce portion of the site up and running, and the first online order came in just this last week.

In the community

Once the local schools went out for summer, I volunteered at the Pike County Public Library's summer reading kickoff, which included a concert with world-renowned children's singer/songwriter Steven Courtney and his Band of Friends. The concert and a few others I volunteered at this summer were sponsored by the Friends of the Children's Room, a teen-led group I presided over in high school that raises money and awareness for children's programs and resources at the library.

I was the M.C. and auctioneer for a fundraising children's art auction held by the Friends of the Children's Room, and helped the library with its PR efforts for a proposed dedicated library tax to ensure adequate library funding.

Two PBS affiliates contacted me this summer looking to obtain copies of Controversy on the Delaware, a short documentary I directed and co-produced in high school. Ken Burns has a documentary on national parks premiering on PBS in the next month, and my documentary uncovered the shocking and widely unknown history of the Delaware Water Gap, a national recreation area at the northern part of the border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

WVIA in Scranton, PA has added a copy of Controversy on the Delaware to its library, and Thirteen in New York City is currently reviewing the film.

I also attended a handful of school board meetings this summer. I still publish a blog about the school district, and though I've slacked off a bit on keeping it as updated as I used to, it still serves the community as an outlet for exclusive information and multimedia about school board affairs.

Back in 'cuse

This week I moved back to Syracuse for my junior year. As a peer adviser at the Newhouse School, I've been helping out with the freshmen class that's coming in. And there are a bunch of exciting things around the corner with CitrusTV, most notably our foray into HD with the capability to broadcast 720p on the campus' Orange Television Network cable channel. At some point in the next week I'll post an update about what's going on this semester.

Letter to the editor: Library tax a bargain, not a burden

To the editor:

It’s a difficult and frightening economic time for everyone who reads these words. In these financial hardships, there is one recovery plan that can help us. We don’t need another stimulus package; what we need is to stimulate our minds. One answer to our economic woes is the Pike County Public Library.

With free books, free DVDs, free CDs, free audiobooks, free children’s programs, free teen programs, free adult programs, free Internet access, free research assistance, free specialized databases, free newspapers... well you get the idea, there’s a lot of free stuff and free things to do at the library. And free isn’t a word you hear often today.

With all of the resources and services Pike County Public Library provides our community, there’s a small way we can give back and we can make sure we continue to have unlimited access to PCPL’s resources.

The solution, despite being only three letters long, is a frightening word for anyone – a college student in tens of thousands of dollars of debt (like me), a struggling working parent or a retired senior citizen living on limited income. The way we can keep PCPL running for ourselves and our neighbors is a... a... tax.

I can imagine what you’re thinking. The last thing we need is another tax. How could I have the audacity to say that another tax is the answer to our economic woes?

Well, let’s think it through.

The proposed library tax of 1 mill would cost the average homeowner just $35 a year. For the price of two movie tickets and popcorn, every Pike County resident is entitled to a year’s worth of unlimited access to all that free stuff I mentioned earlier. For the price of four McDonalds value meals, we can come together to improve our community, to develop the minds young and old in Pike County.

If everyone checked out just two or three books a year, we’d be getting more than our money’s worth. When you look at all the resources and programs – both educational and entertainment – that Pike County Public Library provides, a library tax is no burden at all.

It’s a bargain.

Even if you hate the new library design, a “carbuncle” as it may be, this tax is for you. The money will go straight toward the operating budget – putting new books on shelves, teaching children how to read, purchasing technology to collaborate and learn with. Your tax dollars will NOT enter the pockets of any pesky architect. The new library in Milford has almost entirely been funded by private donations and grants. This tax will make sure we have the operating budget to keep our library system and its future branches.

So say goodbye to expensive movie rentals. Say goodbye to purchasing books from Amazon just to be read once and collect dust. Say goodbye to having nothing to do around here. And say hello to the Pike County Public Library. Say hello to what is an extremely cost-effective tax to keep the operation running.

Please, stop by any branch of PCPL to sign the petition to get a referendum about the tax on this November’s ballot, and vote YES in November. Your signature and vote are for your personal unlimited supply of staff, resources and programs at PCPL – and for a brighter future for our community.

Thank you,

Ryan Balton
Volunteer and former president
The Friends of the Children’s Room at Pike County Public Library
Milford