This new gig

The following was posted on my new blog. The post below is the only thing I have up now. I will still post to stlstreets, but most of the posts will be cross posts from the new blog. There may be occasional posts on stlstreets only.

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My name is Steven Smith. I run a bar in a state that fought on both sides of the civil war. I live in the city that sided with the Union. And to look at the how Missouri is today, things do not appear to have changed all that much. We are still in a contentious situation , as we have historically for Missouri even had a controversial foundation based in a compromise.

There is a profile page with a bit more on the specific particulars about myself. My formative years have been here in Saint Louis, the big city on the eastern half of Missouri. The bluest part of the blue dot in a red state. I am Jesuit educated, but I have not been trained in journalism. I have not been trained for news writing. I studied history. And I worked. A lot. My first job was selling newspapers on the street corner. The Post-Dispatch. That was my first of many jobs, but none of my jobs were in professional news writing or
video production. Until now. Now I am to produce it all.

I have been contracted to do a blog on the 2008 campaign covering Missouri for MTV. The program is called Choose or Lose or the think.mtv.com site. I am a part of the 2008 Street Team. The job is open ended which allows me to cover any issues that impact the state of Missouri. My primary demographic are the 15-24 year olds in the mighty state of Missouri.

I was sent to New York at the MTV headquarters Viacom for a week of training earlier this month. Fifty other young Americans were contracted to cover their states as well. We were saddled with a mound of electronic gear, video camera, mic, laptop, software etc. We are to produce one post a week, and at least two of those posts will need to be video. This will be interesting, for I am used to blogging at stlstreets.com. I have been playing with shooting and editing video. This new blog will naturally develop from that base at stlstreets.com.

So what will I produce for this blog? Well, that is in development. I have my interests, but I am open to all issues. I have already started developing stories in immigration, voting, economic opportunity, civic engagement, education, urban environment, the war, health care and more. This will be more of a free form blog style than a formal news report or news story.

Please contact me here for any ideas or thoughts. And join the think.mtv site to explore and learn what this is all about.