Purdam Interview

I called Dr. Norman Grossblatt, the owner of the pharmacy, last week to try to set up a time to meet in person. Up until that point, I kept missing him in person at the store, so I decided to call. Unfortunately, he felt that he would not have time to meet in person because he did not want to do an in-person interview and potentially take time away from customers. He did kindly offer to do a phone interview instead; he said that if customers came in, it would be easier to put down the phone rather than asking me to wait if I was there in person. Either way, I was glad he talked to me.

During our conversation, we discussed how the pharmacy is one of the oldest running businesses in Towson. Apparently, the business has not moved from its location since 1927, despite several ownership changes over the years. The doctor also mentioned all of the stores that have come and gone from the strip, including: a shoemaker's shop, bakery, convenience store and gift shop. All of the stores that have existed, Purdam is the only one that remains.

We also talked about how the pharmacy used to have a food counter that served breakfast, "pretty much any food that could easily be cooked on a grill" and drinks. He said the feature would attract older people in the mornings and students in the afternoon. The counter was eventually taken down due to increasing pressure to accommodate increasingly particular health regulations and the cost of maintenance. In the end, the owners decided the costs did not outweigh the benefits.

From my interview I was able to come up with an idea for a module: medication home delivery service. Despite the high prices for gas and service charges, the pharmacy still delivers medications to Towson residents upon request. With a Rite Aid and Walgreen within 2 miles from its location, it is no surprise that this convenient option continues to draw customers to the store.

I will use Dr. Glossblatt as a incredibly helpful fact source, but I plan to base the article around someone who has used to service.

Link to homepage

Here is my Towson University homepage updated with a link to my first module:

Homepage

Interview with Lisa Nesmith

I drove to Parkville to visit the tiny shoe boutique "Lisa Knows Shoes." When we were doing peer editing in class, Emily, who sits next to me, suggested that I move away from just including older businesses in my project to including a newer store. She also mentioned that her former coworker at Provident Bank, Lisa Nesmith had recently opened a small shoe boutique and the business was doing quite well.

When I walked into the tiny store, the first thing I noticed were the bright purple walls adorned with shoes and matching handbags. As a girl who loves shoes, I was in heaven. Lisa was incredible inviting and as agreed previously through e-mail, sat down and chatted with me for about 20 minutes. I found out that she initially started her company online; she would attend designers shows and conferences, order the footwear, send out advertisements on cars and other places and would mail the shoes directly to respondents. She further described that she eventually moved into her current building because she was always taking packages to the post office across the street to be mailed out to customers. When her building went up for leasing, she thought it was the perfect place.

Lisa and I also discussed how small businesses need to have truly outstanding characteristics in order to succeed against corporate chains. She said the designs and color choices make her shoes desirable against those of her competitors. By attending the shoe shows and galleries, Lisa is able to get a sense of which shoes are in style for the season. She also studies which colors department and chain stores may order and will get the opposite to have a different variety. I thought that the most interesting anecdote was a tale about how a woman drove from Washington D.C. to get a specific style and color of shoe that only she ordered, according to the designer.

I loved interviewing Lisa and I felt that this was a worthwhile interviewer. Not only did Lisa answer all of my questions with great detail, but I was able to really sense that she loved her job as a small business owner.

Her website is currently being worked on to update shoes for the spring and summer, but when it is completed, the following link will take you there: http://www.lisaknowsshoes.com/.

Critique of "Afro-Latin Americans" article

“Afro-Latin Americans”
http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/news/afrolatin/multimedia/map.html

The above multimedia package was designed by Marco Ruiz and researched by Monika Leal, both associated with The Miami Herald. The package was created to inform readers that nearly 25 percent of Latin Americans have some form of African ancestry. The inter-racial crossing is largely attributed to the slave trade, when over 10 million African slaves were brought to Latin America. This article not only includes an interactive graph, but slideshows with audio and print articles highlighting various aspects of the Afro-Latin race. To a region like Miami, with a high Hispanic population, this story would be especially interesting to The Miami Herald’s readership.

The intended purpose of the multimedia article is to show readers how Afro-Latin Americans are highly discriminated against in their home countries, despite being a consideration amount of the population in each country examined. By clicking on a specific country, the interactive graph in the beginning of the presentation allows readers to see what percentage Afro-Latin Americans are of the population. The pop-up boxes also give readers an introductory sense of how black descendant are treated within the countries. For example, the pop-up box from Brazil describes a 15.4 percent illiteracy rate among blacks and nearly 50 percent less wages than whites of the country. The discrimination is further explored in the written segments, part 1-5, which cover the lack of anti-discrimination laws in Nicaragua, Brazil and Honduras, as well as a lack of racial pride among woman in countries like the Dominican Republic. The discrimination issue is further exemplified in the multimedia slideshows, which show how Afro-Latin activists Latin America are fighting for civil rights.

The presentation is divided into three types of sections: the interactive graph to give pop-up boxes about individual countries, written articles about issues in several countries and a multimedia section with multiple slideshows of Latin American countries. Immediately upon clicking on the click to the article, a very brief introductory pop-up box comes onto the screen to give a few sentences about how Africans came to Latin American. After clicking out of the box, readers can click on the red numbers on the individual countries to read about the percentage of blacks compared to other races. After interacting with the map, readers discover a list of subtitles below the border that say “Overview” and “Part 1-5.” If readers click on any of these links, they will find articles about various discrimination issues against blacks in the Latin American countries. For example, Part 1: “Afro-Latin Americans: A Rising Voice” describes the poor living conditions of blacks in Nicaragua. According to the article, only about 20 percent of the country’s 477,000 blacks have clean water and between 4 and 17 percent have electricity. The rest of the article describes how the movement to change the status of blacks in Latin American is growing and improving. To the left of the articles in each section are links to related articles and slideshows. The “Afro-Latin Americans: A Rising Voice” article has links for an article about Garífuna, a small community in Honduras and slideshows with audio and picture about Honduras and Nicaragua. The other parts follow a similar format, giving a full experience and overflow of information about each featured country. If readers want to watch the slideshows without the text, they simply click on the multimedia subtitle to click on any of the visuals.

I feel that the strongest aspect of the presentation is the complete coverage of all aspects of media: detailed text, an interactive graphic and photographs to help viewers visualize the articles. Without the text or slideshows, the presentation would greatly lack appeal. The staff at The Miami Herald understood that a graphic with pop-up boxes would not be nearly enough; detailed articles were needed to greater emphasize the purpose: to tell the public about discrimination of the Afro-Latin Americans. Reading full accounts of black citizens in Latin American countries as lower class fully bring the issue into the forefront for readers.

Despite the immense amount of information presented in the article, I felt that it lacked an explanation of the various types of ethnic and racial groups in Latin American. For example, if you click on Columbia in the interactive map, it says the population is divided into whites, blacks, Mulattos, Amerindians, and mixed blacks and Amerindians. As a reader, I cannot get a true sense of which of these groups is discriminating against the Afro-Latin Americans. If you read through some of the articles, it will briefly describe some of the ethnic groups, but if you briefly want to know, that is too much information to sort through. An additional subtitle with descriptions of the other Latin Americans would be quite helpful.

Finally, I felt that the interactive graph at the beginning of the presentation should be smaller. I found that when I first looked at the article, I nearly passed over the links to the articles and multimedia because they were so tiny in comparison. I feel that it would greatly benefit the reader if the links were bigger and to the left of the graph, clearly pointing to the additional information. Despite minor complaints, I felt that this article included basically everything it needed in general. Not only was there an interactive and attractive graphic, but text, audio and visuals that all tie together, making this a genuinely fulfilling multimedia presentation.

Looking for story angles that will be interesting.

When I chose my topic, I initially thought it would be fairly easy to come up with story ideas. Unfortunately, finding out-of-the-ordinary stories has been much harder than anticipated so far. At this point, I am going to persevere with my topic because I feel there has to be bigger stories out there, and if I am going to find them, I need to work harder. My greatest pitfall so far has been a lack of information on the Internet. So far, there has been virtually no information relating to any of the companies I want to include in the project. I'm the type of person who likes to get background information if I can before I meet someone I want to interview. This way I don't embarrass myself by asking an obvious awkward question. After finally realizing the Internet is not my greatest resource, I have decided to venture out to the businesses on my next free day, Thursday. If I can't have help come to me, I need to do something greater to kick start my flow of information.

In all fairness, I did find a few interesting articles online through the Towson Times website. Several years ago, the newspaper did an article on road construction on York Road. I am planning on talking to the owners of Harry Little's, a sub shop that sits in a strip mall off of York Road, up from Towson University. The shop has been in business for years, but these days, it is struggling to stay open, according to a family friend who knows the owner. Not only have customers opted to go to chain restaurants such as Panera Bread and Chipotle, but Harry Little's location has also been a deterrent to business. According to the previously mentioned article, construction on York Road really hurt the tiny restaurant several years ago. People already have a hard time parking on that part of York Road, but the construction left almost no room at all. I believe it said Harry Little lost about 40% of it's business at the time.

While this may not be a full story, this could be a start. It would be interesting to know if business ever picked up again afterwards, and if they did not, how the restaurant to is still open.