Hey everyone! My name is Allison Kenney and I am from Haddonfield, NJ, which is right outside of Philadelphia. I am just spending my first bit of free time today setting up my blog and getting moved into my dorm. Today was a busy and tiring day. I have been looking forward to this conference, but after being in the car for over three hours, I was in no mood to talk to any new people, or to begin the conference. I was tired and just wanted to take a nap. I soon met my roommates and my group and got settled into the conference.
After all the new blogs for the conference crashed the server, I have finally set up my blog and I am excited to post updates during the conference. I have never consistently stayed with a blog, so hopefully I can find time during the conference to write about this hopefully wonderful experience. I plan to cover events of each day and I also plan to add photos and videos from the conference activities and hopefully have time to try out different types of journalism like articles about what I have learned or interviews with people I’ve met here.
I am a pretty quiet person, but don’t be afraid to talk to me. I think I first come off as not wanting to talk to you, but I’m bad at starting conversations, so I’m much more comfortable if you start the talking! 
I’m not exactly sure if journalism is the right field for me. I know at different points when I was younger I wanted to be a reporter, but as times change so do interests, but journalism has been a recurring base of some of the careers I have had an interest in. I started with wanting to be a meteorologist on the news, changed to be a field reporter, then I had an interest in being an anchor. Right now, I feel my main interest is covering sports, but I am also interested in learning more about politics. One of my favorite sports writers is Todd Zolecki, the Philadelphia Phillies beat writer for MLB.com. I read his blog “The Zo Zone” everyday, and also follow his twitter feed.
I recently also became interested in going into film or TV production, but I’ve also thought about broadcast journalism or producing newscasts. I am not sure I want to be in front of the camera, I think I would rather be behind the camera or behind the scenes editing clips and sound and putting the final project together. I hope that I will learn more about the field of journalism and media from this conference and it will give me and idea of whether or not I would consider being a journalist in the future.
We started off the conference tonight with a speech by C-SPAN founder and CEO Brian Lamb. I really enjoyed it because it was different than what I was expecting. Mr. Lamb is older and I was expecting him to give a boring lecture, but he kept everyone’s attention by involving some of the correspondents by calling several students to the stage and asking thought provoking questions. He asked questions such as “Why are you here at the WJMC?”; “What do you want to accomplish at the WJMC?”; “What is your definition of journalism?”; and “Where do you think the future of journalism is going?” He made me really think about why I am interested in journalism and added some good insight into the field of journalism and how he got to where he is now.
I’m running a long post here and it is getting late, so I’ll stop here, but I will continue to blog throughout the week and I am really exicited for the rest of the conference! Follow me at www.twitter.com/jerseygirl3033 — Warning: I tweet a lot! 😀
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