Wrapping Up The Week With #CannabisJournalism
University of Denver Winter Interterm
This week has been crazy busy in the Cannabis Journalism classroom. But what has really been happening behind the closed doors? Lets do a little week-long recap.
First, lets watch this informative video to get an overview of Cannabis.
Day 1 Recap
We had the pleasure of having Jake Browne come in and speak to us on his experiences as a cannabis critic. His talk was extremely eye opening as I learned parts of the industry that I did not know existed. I personally have an interest in the uses of Medical Marijuana. Having multiple types of cancer in my family history as well as a few mood disorders I came into this class wanting to focus my attention on the research of medical use of marijuana. He has had the ability to critique a lot of CBD dominant medical stands for different properties.
Day 2 Recap
In class we were introduced to @TheJaneWest. She focused her lecture on empowering women in marijuana industry and expanding their presence in the business all together through her program @WomenGrow which strives to connect and educate leaders in various aspects of cannabis. The second part of her visit she spoke about how she found herself in this business to begin with and where she wants to go with it in the future. She is focusing on launching her new website JaneWest.com which focuses on cannabis products.
Our second speaker on Tuesday was@LukeRunyon. Luke is a KUNC associate for NPR. He was very engaging and spoke to us about a few stories that he had to cover as a journalist. When asked what he would like to write a story on in the future he wants to focus his attention on the genetics of cannabis. He shared my same concern with the use of the word “organic” weed in the industry.
Day 3 Recap
This Wednesday we had the pleasure of meeting @RickBakas who is the creator ofWeedhorn.com. Weedhorn.com is a cannabis news website that focus on five main topics, including: Legalization, Daily Spliff, Lifestyle, Discoveries, andHeath.
However, one of the most interesting side to this website is that there in an online community where you can sign up to publish your own content on their site! Baka spoke to us a lot about how his background in Nike branding helped him in marketing his website out to the world.
Later in the afternoon we were visited by the founders of Sweet Grass Kitchen, Julie Berliner and Jesse Burns. Burliner walked us through the beginnings of her company. She started out the entire company with one chocolate chip cookie recipe. From there she grew it out to a movable food trailer that ultimately built its way into the booming edible business that she has today. Still to this day the chocolate chip cookies are the most popular edible sold from Sweet Grass Kitchen.
Day 4 Recap
Thursday morning we finally got to meet with the notorious Ricardo Baca. He is the cannabis journalist for the Denver Post and the creator of The Cannabist website. Baca is going to be the main character in the upcoming documentary about cannabis journalism called Rolling Papers. This documentary airs this February 2016! Baca also runa show out of his wesite The Cannabist called The Cannabist Show. In this show Baca interviews different individuals in the cannabis industry and talks to them about how they got started.
Day 5 Recap
Zachary Cohen spoke to us about branding for cannabis and his business Blank Space Media for marijuana companies. He gave a lot of lessons about matching the correct photos with the audience you are trying to reach. He was very knowledgable about the business and his work. I bet Zachary could have spoken for house however we had to use the rest of the day to finish up writing our final piece for the class.
Final thoughts about the class:
Using twitter again for this class was really fun and interactive! I loved being able to be up to date on the news happening around me and be able to use it to reach out to professionals that would otherwise be out of my reach. I believe that twitter is a wonderful learning and interactive tool for both the classroom and the world.
Some of my favorite tweets that I have tweeted out are:
I feel like I learned something new every single day in this class. Wether is was a fact about Cannabis or a new tech program that could benefit my every day life. This class was incredibly informative. I would recommend this class to anyone with questions about the Cannabis Industry or would like to learn more about the complications of Cannabis Journalism.
