In the latest update from the US Census Bureau, San Jose, CA recently surpassed Detroit as the nation's 10th largest city, third in California behind Los Angeles and San Diego. Perhaps in trying to reflect this big city image, the new City Hall was recently completed and opened up for media tours (the grand opening is Saturday, October 15, 2005). What some now call the "Taj Gonzales," after San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales, with its R2D2 shaped rotunda, is truly a sight to be seen. But was the $382 million price tag worth it?

According to an article in the September 18, 2005 edition of SJSU's Spartan Daily, the new city hall was "built with public use in mind." This public use includes a banquet facility on the top floor of the Fourth Street garage, conference rooms available for rent, and "the controversial Rotunda, which is available for anything from weddings to Christmas parties to corporate functions."

This seems to contrast sharply with a previous article on Sunday, September 11, 2005, which featured a convention for the homeless to help assist them in airing their grievances and getting off the street. Ironically, the convention was held at the First Christian Church on South Fifth Street, in the shadow of the new City Hall. While I do not doubt that having the new City Hall will help to centralize and speed up city government (previously offices for different aspects of government were leased in various buildings across town), I cannot bring myself to agree with a $382 million wedding chapel. This is especially true when there are 7,600 documented people such as Dave Lima, pictured above with the rotunda in the background, living life homeless in Santa Clara County.

A difficult problem in every major city, I would hope that San Jose officials make efforts to address the concerns of the homeless and aid them in becoming financially stable taxpayers, as most once were. The new City Hall can then be the beacon for a shining city that it was meant to be, and not simply a glaring medallion meant to blind you from the city's surrounding problems.

I have hit a wall.

Perhaps I was a bit overzealous in enrolling in five classes in addition to the school newspaper, the Spartan Daily, which has only four photographers on staff this semester. As with any job, there is always a matter of time management and prioritization of energy and effort. In majoring in photojournalism, this process has proven to be very difficult. Do I attend every class session because I have always been taught that grades are important? Do I accept as many assignments as possible because I was recently told that grades are unimportant and improving my portfolio should be my main concern? Does attempting to balance the two ultimately hurt me by having a marginal portfolio with marginal grades?

Will I ever find time to blog?

Shooting for San Jose State's Spartan Daily for just over three weeks now, I have found shooting features and wild art to be one of the more difficult tasks. Limited by the size of the campus, shots that have been taken every year, and attitude that feature art is simply space filler to be taken at a moments notice, I have struggled to find fresh ways to view the campus and campus life. Photojournalism professor Dennis Dunleavy addresses feature photography on a recent post in his blog:

There is a tendency to see the function of features as something to fill space. I think this perception is pervasive and misses the mark for setting high journalistic standards...

When editors say they need features, it generally means that they have no clue about what is going on in their backyard. When someone says they need features it means that they are afraid they won’t have enough words or images to fill the paper. This is the “fall-back and punt” approach to doing journalism; honestly, it is not journalism...

Since the chance of editors and reporters thinking visually ahead is rather slim, this burden falls on the photographer’s shoulders. The photojournalist must do his or her homework and stay on top of what is going on in the community.

In an earlier post, he states "I am now making a commitment to referring to such efforts and images as 'stories' rather than as 'feature art.' The goal is to encourage students to engage in their community and to visually put the "interest" back into "human interest" stories. In doing community journalism, I believe, every effort, every image and every word should tell a story of human interest and import."

Professor Dunleavy suggests:

• Keep a log of everything that pops into your head that may make a meaningful image of your community. Look at the list every day.
• Make a list of contacts on campus or in the community of people that are doing interesting and good deeds. Call them from time to time.
• Read, read and read. Read everything about what is going on in your community. Look at bulletin boards, bumperstickers, post-it notes, read the classified section, talk to people, hang out in the same spot every day for a week and watch what is going on. Follow the news. Read your newspaper.
• Do journalism.

Professor Dunleavy is correct in that we should be striving for good journalism and not simply space filler. However, there is little chance that editors will stop calling on photographers to find features in an hour because a story fell through. Instead, the Spartan Daily staff is taking what some have suggested, writing down future feature ideas down in a book, and keeping an idea wall of possible features and photo stories that we hope will help students to learn more about the campus that they are on for most of the week.