When Did Youth Sports Become a Corporation and Not A Pastime?

Hen­ry Wyard
Online Jour­nal­ism, March 2017

The chang­ing of the sea­sons means more than just a change in the weath­er. It means the start of anoth­er sea­son of youth sports.

Whether it’s anoth­er sea­son of stand­ing in the out­field for a sea­son because mom is mak­ing you play yet anoth­er year of T‑ball, or count­ing down the days to lace up those cleats every year, youth sports is a rite of pas­sage for many Amer­i­can chil­dren. Play­ing on a team can help kids learn valu­able lessons about prac­tice, team­work, win­ning and los­ing, while also mak­ing life-long friendships.

However,what kids and their par­ents can expect out of youth sports has changed dras­ti­cal­ly over the last few decades. Youth sports has changed in the last 10 years since we were chil­dren grow­ing up, and nei­ther are any­thing what it was like when our par­ents were grow­ing up. What change has come in the mod­ern day that has had such a sig­nif­i­cant impact on some­thing as time­less as youth sports? All paths seem to lead to the grow­ing impact of tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments as the com­mon denom­i­na­tor for change. READ MORE

 

Will Con­necti­cut be the next Green State?

Hen­ry Wyard
Newswrit­ing 2 / Novem­ber 2016

Mar­i­jua­na is cur­rent­ly cat­e­go­rized as a Sched­ule 1 drug by the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion, which places it among drugs like hero­in, LSD, and Ecsta­sy. These drugs are said to have no med­i­c­i­nal ben­e­fit, and their cat­e­go­riza­tion lim­its doc­tors from pre­scrib­ing the drugs as med­ica­tion. With that being said, mar­i­jua­na has been used in Amer­i­ca for decades both recre­ation­al­ly and for self medication.

It was not until 1996 when any legal move­ment was made. Propo­si­tion 215 passed by major­i­ty pub­lic vote (54 per­cent) to legal­ize the usage of mar­i­jua­na for med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es in Cal­i­for­nia. Since then, 24 oth­er states have deemed mar­i­jua­na to have med­i­c­i­nal qual­i­ties ben­e­fi­cial enough to prompt legal­iza­tion. What would legal­iza­tion mean for Connecticut?
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Mans­field CT pass­es Ordi­nance Ban­ning any Social Gathering

Hen­ry Wyard
Broad­cast Journalism/Nov ’17

Mans­field, CT, passed an ordi­nance over the sum­mer bar­ring any “fra­ter­nal” orga­ni­za­tion from hav­ing any off cam­pus social event hold­ing more than five  peo­ple. Take a look at this video that I helped to pro­duce and edit as we took a look at the ques­tion of constitutionality.

Pho­to of Ryan Kim doing standup, tak­en by Gar­rett Spahn for our Broad­cast Jour­nal­ism class.

Her­itage Hunters : A Look Into The Past In Our Attic

Hen­ry Wyard
Intern­ship at Out­line Pro­duc­tions / Sum­mer 2017

Over an tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion intern­ship this sum­mer, I spent some of my time cre­at­ing what are called “treat­ments,” basi­cal­ly pow­er­point pre­sen­ta­tions of what was going to be includ­ed in an upcom­ing new pro­gram. Here are a few of the slides I cre­at­ed for one of the shows.
See Here :

Where Will Amazon Land?

Hen­ry Wyard
Copy Edit­ing / Novem­ber 2017

Inter­net jug­ger­naut Ama­zon is look­ing to set­tle down for a sec­ond head­quar­ters. With sev­er­al major domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al cities vying for Ama­zon’s atten­tion, where will Jeff Bezos choose to have Ama­zon’s sec­ond home? Check out this map here, for a list of some of the possibilties.

Con­tent in Tele­vi­sion Hav­ing an Effect On The Youth?

For a Com­mu­ni­ca­tions class about media lit­er­a­cy, I sat down with a fel­low stu­dent here at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut to talk about the effect of tele­vi­sion pro­grams on a young audi­ence. Click on the graph­ic below to hear our conversation.

Hen­ry Wyard
Media Literacy/February 2018

 
Oba­ma Gives Speech to Coast Guard Graduates

Hen­ry Wyard
Broad­cast Journalism/Oct ’17

For­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma took the time at this com­mence­ment speech in 2015 to talk about the need for the grad­u­ates as well as the peo­ple of the world as a whole to start cli­mate change seri­ous­ly. Here is a sound bit I did high­light­ing some key aspects of his speech.

Oba­ma at 2015 Coast Guard Com­mence­ment Speech, Cronkite­New­sOn­line, Free to Use

A Summer Trip to London For a Television Internship