Few local restaurants offer menus in braille for the vision-impaired

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EL PASO – Trying to pick from the vast number of dishes on a restaurant menu can be challenging, but imagine not being able to see the menu. Blind or vision-impaired persons must deal with that anomaly. Only a few restaurants in El Paso offer braille menus to their blind or vision-impaired customers, according to phone interviews with 21 local restaurants. The only ones were the national chains Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Applebee’s, and BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse. Some 21 million adults – about 9 percent of the U.S. population over the age of 18, reported having vision problems, according to the 2011 National Health Interview Survey prepared by the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Borderzine.com to host second Multimedia Journalism Academy for college instructors at UTEP

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EL PASO — Borderzine.com at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) is set to host its second annual Multimedia Training Academy thanks to generous support from the Dow Jones News Fund. The $24,000 grant from Dow Jones News Fund provides scholarships to 12 journalism professors from Hispanic Serving Institutions across the country to attend the multimedia training academy at UTEP May 20-26.  After the week of hand’s on training in the latest digital tools for producing multimedia journalism, the professors will complete multimedia assignments in the field for posting on the Borderzine.com website. “The Dow Jones News Fund is delighted to partner for a second year with The University of Texas at El Paso and its Multimedia Training Academy,” said Rich Holden, executive director of DJNF. “I had the privilege of visiting last year’s program, and I was impressed with the facilities, the quality of training and the interest shown by all of the participants.

Elio Leturia (far right) and his group of reporters, photojournalist John Freeman and multimedia professor Elizabeth Marsh, interviewing Kate Bonasinga, director of the Rubin Center. (Lourdes Cueva Chacón/Borderzine.com)

Dow Jones Multimedia Training Academy

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Twelve journalism professors were welcomed in early June in El Paso where the temperature hit 110 degrees. “Summer started earlier for me,” I thought. We all had been selected to participate in a multimedia training geared to journalism professors who teach in cities with a large Hispanic population. The chosen states? California, Florida, Texas and Illinois.

UTEP Summer Workshop to Focus on Web Journalism for a Multimedia Age

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NOW ACCEPTING HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT NOMINATIONS FOR JOURNALISM IN JULY

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: APRIL 2, 2010 (Deadline extended to April 16, 2010)

To all El Paso area high school journalism/media advisors:

We invite you to nominate your top journalism students for “Journalism in July” on the UTEP campus from July 9-17. This summer’s 9-day residential workshop trains high school journalists in the basics of news reporting and writing and how to use digital tools (video, audio, photography) to tell stories on the web. Students will also create their own multimedia web magazine filled with news and enterprise stories and featuring digital photography and video. The 20 student journalists will live on the UTEP campus  at the Miner Village dormitories. There is no cost to attend the workshop.

Spiralmind Comic Delivers in English and Spanish

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EL PASO — On a recent Friday afternoon, three engineers in baseball caps and sneakers sit in a downtown cafe plotting a narrative that involves werewolves, fallen angels and a rabbi who performs exorcisms.

Ben Perez (39) and Matt Rothblatt (37), test engineers at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, grew up watching horror films. As kids, they created make-believe radio shows and stuffed animal theatre for their sisters. Now adults, the two cousins maintain an active imagination. They’re self-publishing a comic book series called Spiralmind; and they’re releasing it in both English and Spanish. The idea for the main character has been living in Perez’s mind since childhood. Related: Few realize Syfy comic book character’s links to El Paso

“When I was a little boy my mom would take us to go see the movies,” he said.