From the desk of Ren LaForme

http://www.ubspectrum.com/article/116

I have mixed feelings about covering speeches and press conferences. In general, the information is all right there, making the article quick and easy and somewhat pain free. However, I tend to document much more information than necessary, which makes it harder to pull a decent story together in the end.

This article was no different. I went to Annan’s speech, sat in the second row and diligently wrote down everything he said (on top of recording it, but don’t tell the Man). When I sat down, I spent a significant amount of time sifting through information to find the main point of his lecture.

Despite this, I’m fairly content with the way the article turned out. The adviser to The Spectrum, Charity Vogel of the Buffalo News, gave me some great tips and I think the article really benefitted from them.

Thanks, Charity!

http://www.ubspectrum.com/article/113

At the last minute we realized that we neglected to run a preview of Kofi Annan’s lecture. We generally always preview distinguished speakers, so I decided to write a quick bio.

Since it was so late in production, it ended up being Web only. There was a small box on the front page of the print issue advertising this fact.