Owen Rush

Ona Rush is a local esthetician who much like many other people in the beauty and service industry, have been without work during this whole quarantine.  Rush got her License in esthetics back in 2016 at Xenon school of cosmetology. She since has worked at beauty brands doing facials, waxing and makeup. She says that one thing she love about her job is being able to make people feel confident. “I like to make people feel good about themselves, I always say I could not be a nurse or a doctor I would not want to poke you or make you feel bad I love making people feel confident.” She also says that it has been hard during this time but she looks forward to the future. She says it is difficult because she has to wear a mask and the people she works on have to wear mask but is optimistic about the future

Illinois Public media recently wrote an article about the struggles that Journalism students are facing due to the Coronavirus. Their classes much similar to the journalism program here at University of Nebraska at Omaha produce A weekly newscast about local events they cover in Illinois which is similar to the capstone class that we have with Omaha news.  A lot of the students were upset because it was something they had looked forward to during their college career and they were upset because a lot of them felt as though the it was something that was being snatched away from them. The professor was also stressed because how do you teach a live-in studio broadcast class online and get teach them to go out and get stories when their state is in a shelter in place. A lot of the students are still working and going strong during this time. The students have been making vlogs on Their phones. Some of the students do not even have laptops or editing software to get this stuff done but are making it work through these hard and unprecedented times the professor of the course could not have been more prouder and thinks that being able to work and be flexible during these times and to document it. This news story got me thinking that if I was in the same position who and what would I interview to help still get coverage out into the media If I were in the same situation covering this pandemic a story beat that I would still choose would be the local arts beat. I think that in times like these it is important to still have that and show how those people who work in that field are doing. One person that I think would be interesting to Have a zoom concert would be Jocelynn music. I had met her a couple of times at a party and even at the women’s march two years. She is such a bright fun spirit and I think a zoom concert talking to her and even having her play a couple of songs on zoom would be super cool to have and produce to give people a little entertainment in their lives during such a hard time like a pandemic. Another person I would love to have do a story on via zoom would be Eden soul. She is a local artist making music and was recently at the Grammys and I think it would be interesting to see how she is dealing in a time like these but also how the success went from at the Grammys and seeing what her next move would be. I also would love to get in touch with people at the Omaha fashion institute to see how they are still handling things. I would love to know if Fall fashion week is still going on and To see how things are going with people in the studio and seeing how they are handling in such a trying time.

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Ona Rush is a Local esthetician in Omaha Nebraska. She got her license at Xenon school of cosmetology back in 2016 after she had graduated high school. She has worked at Beauty brands doing facials, pedicures and waxing while they were open. Now she spends her time working at massage envy doing facials. COVID-19 has put a strain on her working and has made it hard for her to have any business due to social distancing guidelines. The beauty and service industry is one of the hardest hit but she says that her goal is to always to make people feel good. “I could not be a nurse because I do not want to prick or poke you but I want to relax you and make you feel beautiful” Massage envy is back open but estheticians will not be back until June or further notice or if the governor says sooner.

For media story telling we had the lovely pleasure of having two people in journalism come speak to the class and talk about their experience and life in the field of journalism and Public relations.  We had Jeremey makel and Maggie Cunningham join our zoom both are former University of Nebraska students and talked with us about their experience. They both had and still do work at KETV channel seven. Maggie does social and digital media content management at channel seven and Jeremey maskel does reporting and anchoring at least he used to. He also now is active in Public relations and communication.  He is also Chief of communications for Ralston public schools. Both of them have very active social media platforms with a lot of local content with stuff native to Omaha and surrounding metro areas.  I think having guest like them come speak to Us is very important because it helps us see people who have walked the path that we have and made successful careers out of it.  A lot of us college students do not know what we are going to do when we leave but seeing this stuff and seeing people doing well helps us get an idea of what we can do to help better ourselves. I think that Jeremy maskel and Maggie Cunningham also gave good advice when they came and talked about how to get a good foot in the door and how important the kind of content is right now in such a digital age. I think it is also good to see people who are dealing with some of the hardships of the pandemic. Both of their jobs are demanding and require a lot of knowledge about what is going on with the virus and keeping us up to date whether that be school systems or just local news

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Dance is Life for a lot of young dancers, Spending countless of hours in and out of the dance studio. Working all this time just to get ready for their upcoming competition season. But that soon was halted when Covid-19 came along

“I felt upset because it’s something we’ve worked on for almost a year and it was gone like that”

Onyah Rush is a competitive dancer at the I AM dance studio in Omaha Nebraska. Who was one of the many dancers effected by the cancellations of the competition seasons but says she want let this get her down

“As a studio, we’ve been doing zoom classes to prefect when competitions do come back up. Personally, I have been working out and perfecting my technique so I can get better”

For the Omaha school of communication, I am Owen Rush

For media storytelling, we spoke with University of Nebraska at Omaha professor Jodeane Brownlee. She came to talk with us about storytelling and how the coronavirus is affecting that. She talked about how that this is very weird that we don’t have sports this season and specifically in Omaha. Since Omaha does not have many sporting events in general the only few we have is the swim trials and the college world series. Now that those are not happening this year Omaha is going to take a big impact because of that. Especially with the coverage of sports in Omaha and in general we are going to take a hit. One thing Jodeane also talked about was the fact that she has taken a break on the news because everything is so saturated. She said that it has been hard on her hearing all of the coronavirus coverage and how heavy that can be and exhausting that can be to constantly hear all of the negative stuff on the news 24/7 She says that the news is not putting a lot of other content and that what the world needs right now is an escape so they do not have to focus on the coronavirus right now. Lastly one thing that Professor Jodeane talked about was the welcome back video for the college of fine arts and media also known as CFAM. She said that she had made it and it was something she loved and made her happy and it was something that got her mind off of the Coronavirus outbreak. She said that one of the things that was hard was the fact that the audio levels did not match and that was something she had struggled with. She said that it was something that she loved and made the CFAM feel like a family

A lot Of University of Nebraska students taken a hit due to the coronavirus outbreak.

From social distancing, changes in jobs and even facetime voice lessons, life has been rather different for one Music Education student at the University of Nebraska Lincoln

“Yes, I think the coronavirus outbreak has changed a how our class structure and how student organizations run…”

Run:                               :20                               OC:  to meet with our colleagues

Jacob Thomas is a Junior music education major at the university of Nebraska Lincoln. He also is one of the soloist of the all man acapella group Bath tub dogs.

Bath tub dogs is also set to release an album this year but the album has been pushed back due to Coronavirus

“with the coronavirus, it has been harder for us to plan because we don’t know when is the right time. We wanted to have an album release but….”

Run:       :30                                            OC: Hopefully it will be out in the next month in a half

For the University of Nebraska Omaha school of communications, I’m Owen Rush

Mariah Rush is a 16-year-old westside student with and old soul, big dreams and a passion for fashion. She currently does fashion for Kent bellows program here in Omaha. Where she recently had her fashion, designs modeled on the runway in the annual spring Omaha fashion week on student night along with other students in the program and pick two students form each high school in the local area to have a mentor for the program.

Kent bellows a local mentorship program based on a local artist from Omaha. Which helps students be creative in various fields. Teens meet with mentors to help them be creative and to look at things with an artistic approach. They do it for 3 semesters for two years and

For Mariah it is about inspiring others through fashion. What inspires her the most is the way fashion is constant.

 “I feel like fashion is a way for me to express myself, the way it constantly changes it represents how people and society change and evolve.”

She said that fashion is something she always has cared and had a passion about. From an early age she; loved dressing up her dolls and changing their outfits and making them her own. She also said she draws a lot of style inspiration from old movies from the 50s and 60s. one movie in particular is Funny Face with Audrey Hepburn. She said for the most part that she doesn’t ever plan most of her outfit designs out and that they just come to her.

“I always knew I wanted to dress like them so one day I just started putting outfits together and making clothes.”

She recently had her fashion designs modeled at this springs Omaha fashion week on student night. She was joined their by her friends and family and mentor Celeste Butler Where her and her fellow students of Kent bellows also had their outfits modeled and show on the runway.

“I liked seeing all of the other students and their designs, I also liked being around like-minded people there.”

Mariah also has some goals for herself and things she hopes to see in the upcoming Omaha fashion week. She said that diversity is important to her. She says that having plus size models and models of other skin tones is something she hopes for the next Omaha fashion week. She said that is something she hopes they can have more of. She has a dress she is working on now for the next Omaha fashion week which is a plus size wrap dress with flannel on one side and sunflowers on the other that she is excited to share next Omaha fashion week.

She said that diversity in fashion is important to her and a lot of young people today because growing up she never saw anybody that looked like her. In magazines or runways, the industry mostly had skinny, tall and blonde women doing fashion. She said that she wants to be seen and see people that look like her.

“I want to see people that look like me and my size especially as a black girl.”

Soon Mariah will be wrapping up her first year of the program and has big dreams of going to The fashion institute of technology for college when she graduates to study fashion and design clothes for models of all different shapes sizes and colors.