Week Twelve: CHAOS!!!!!!!

Bob Garfield’s opinions in Chaos Scenario were very… strong. I wasn’t a huge fan of the jargon. It may be direct, but I prefer to be treated like an intelligent audience. Looking past that, however, Garfield’s arguments can’t be ignored—if they can be disputed. Admittedly I don’t really have much stock in television—it’s nice to flip it on and watch Family Guy or How I Met Your Mother, but it’s not anything I’d hate to live without. What’s more disturbing to me is the state of the New York Times (or the New York Fuckin’ Times, as Garfield so aptly calls it) and other papers, which are struggling as an industry. The fact that even the Times struggled off to pay its debt of $400 million is more indicative of this fact of anything. However, I don’t think that newspapers are going to die off. Other print media are still around—Kindles haven’t eradicated books yet. It’s true that it’s far easier to put a newspaper’s contents online than a book’s due to length, and we’re seeing a lot more of that with the latter. However, newspapers have weathered the test of time and the changes that accompany it. Radio didn’t obliterate papers, and neither did television. The Internet is the next big thing, but it, like every other media that was once new, does not guarantee the same qualities that print does. Having the same material online is just not the same, for online material is under pressure to be short and watered-down. Online material of the print media will likely at one time or another assimilate to these standards to reach readers, setting them apart from their printed counterparts. Thus there will still be a demand for a product that’s still original. I’ll be the first to admit not knowing enough to make an adequate hypothesis, but there it is. Have at it like piranhas.

I was one of the few kids who read the Times last semester—before things got insanely busy, anyhow. One of the things that struck me was that the coverage on Romney exceeded the coverage on Obama during the 2012 presidential campaign, but I supposed that that was because Romney was the new candidate. Speaking as a liberal, I do not believe the Times is slanted. Of course, I don’t really read the Opinion section where the slant purportedly shows. Anyhow, I chose “In Gun Bill Defeat, a President Who Hesitates to Twist Arms” for this week because I’m trying to follow the standing of gun control in America. One thing I found interesting was the statement that Obama “rarely demonstrated an appetite for ruthless politics that instills fear in lawmakers.” What about drones, then? I do love Obama, but I wouldn’t call his instances of ruthlessness rare. However, I do agree that Obama uses reason to get his way quite often (more often), as this is one of the many things I like about him. I wouldn’t have seen this if not for the NYTimes because I deactivated my Facebook and am not active with Twitter, and I don’t own a radio or a car or a television or seek out television news. Talk about cut off.

Week Eleven: Public Relations

PR is one of those topics I admittedly know nothing about but have long been interested in in theory. Thus it’s probably the only topic we’ve discussed this year I’m completely objective about. (It must be a nice break for others having to read me spout off on my blog.) I liked our discussion in regards to it on Monday and found it interesting that a few students were wary of it. As a journalist, should I be wary of PR? I’m still not sure, though Wednesday’s class gave me a bit of an idea. I’ve actually got endless admiration for the people who have to put up with politicians’ crap and was highly amused at John Coffin’s reaction to the question: “What do you do when your politician makes a really stupid mistake?” (I’m paraphrasing here.) I mean, at that point, there’s really nothing to be done except back slowly away. Too bad for Mourdock. Mwahahahahahaha. (Pardon my schadenfreude.) Going off on another tangent: like Franki, I had no idea about DePauw’s party ranking upon coming here—to be truthful, it amused me more than anything—so DePauw’s PR people must’ve done a good job covering that up. My mom actually just today made a remark on seeing DePauw’s high academic ranking and how she knew it was good, but not that good. Bravo! Brava! Bravi! to public relations. My expectations are a little bit more specific this week. I’d love to talk more about how PR ties into our careers, especially if we’re aspiring journalists.

Because of a continuing discourse on gun background checks, I decided to go with “Seeking Gun or Selling One, Web Is a Land of Few Rules.” I had a bit of an idea from the aforementioned discourse but was mostly unaware of the online spin, so no, I wouldn’t have known about this without the good ol’ New York Times. Anyhow, Armslist is just… ugh. First of all, I love the hypocrisy of their theoretical mission of “creat[ing] a place for law-abiding gun owners to buy and sell online without all of the hassles of auction and shipping” while selling guns to people who legally cannot own them. (77% of sellers would sell guns to people who admitted they probably wouldn’t pass a background check, it says later in the article.) Then it feels the need to “protect the anonymity of their users.” Everything about this operation is shady, sounding paradoxical to “law-abiding.” I’m honestly aghast at people’s problem-solving skills or lack thereof. If this disgusting franchise is going to continue (and it will, beyond any doubt), background checks have to be done in tandem with the sales.

Anyhow, salaam, shalom, peace out, wear a flower, promote positive change, and make love, not war!

Week Ten: Lectures Galore!

Last Friday we heard Dave Weatherwax, photographer for the South Bend Tribune. His lecture was pretty interesting. What stood out for me, however, was his point that some local story beat Bin Ladin’s capture for the front page story and picture. Pardon the strong reaction that is to follow, but... what the hell? Is small town media really that self-absorbed? I understand that a drastic occurrence hitting a little closer to home (literally) is the easier draw, but why not at least put a little of both stories on the front page rather than allow a huge photo to hog all the room? (Yes, I understand that this is in direct contradiction to the lecture, but... I think what I think.) This is nothing against Dave--it’s more a question for the editor than anything--and most newspapers in smaller towns are surely in this vein of thinking, but I just find it ridiculous to condone the insular frame of mind that is exhibited by many Americans today.

On Monday we were graced with the presence of Kim McDaniel who works with various media for the Salt Lake Tribune. I didn’t really understand the ideas surrounding various online media, but the manner in which the Salt Lake Tribune, a print source, connected to audiences using Facebook, Twitter, etc. was really fascinating, especially in how it reached differing demographics. I think it ties in really well with Losing The News in that the Tribune, along with many other papers, is doing what’s necessary to survive--going multimedia. I only know what Facebook and Twitter are and have no clue about anything other platform mentioned, but I think I got the gist of it: online media are being integrated into print news. Papers are reaching out to new audiences by expanding their output to online media. It’s neat.

Wednesday might’ve been my favorite class this week. Even though I couldn’t really relate to Jill’s stories about the Ellen (Degeneres?) show, her enthusiasm was infectious. Besides, I’ve always wanted to go to Australia. What she said about working her way up by doing tasks quickly and thinking on her feet is applicable to most any occupation, so I did appreciate that bit of advice. I learned from Alyssa the benefit of interning at smaller locations. She mentioned getting to do a lot of things while she was in Paducah, KY, even directing a little bit. There’s the logical progression of everybody knowing each other and then the also obvious idea of less people, more work. It sounds vastly appealing. I enjoyed Dave’s talk and appreciated that he disagreed with the commonly-held belief that downloading songs was leading to the music industry’s demise. I did wonder why he wasn’t in the School of Music if he aspired to be a musician as early as college, but I forgot to ask. Whoops.

Talking to Angie over Skype on Friday was really cool because before college, I’d listened to NPR for most of my life. Now that I don’t own a radio or a car, it’s less practical to do so. However, I’ve always been impressed by the balanced perspectives. (At a young age I recognized this; Dad never failed to scream at an opposing viewpoint, provided it was dumb enough.) Of course NPR also exudes a quality in its news output that is nothing to be sneezed at. It’s the only source I trust that isn’t a newspaper. Anyhow, what I found perhaps most interesting about Angie’s lecture was the fact that NPR receives no government funding. I knew that they pushed the donations from listening to the show so often, but I guess I didn’t realize why.

For this week’s article analysis, I chose Friday’s “With Police in Schools, More Children in Court.” So far police officers are creating new problems, and it’s unclear as to whether or not they’re solving the problem at hand. (The NRA has seized the opportunity to advance their views according to the anecdotes they provided in the article.) What seems to be the issue here is this: school officers are hypervigilant. They’re wasting their time on the smaller issues, which could mean they’re missing the bigger ones. (Marijuana crowd: does this sound familiar to you?) Until this problem is solved and officers learn to treat school principals as superiors except in cases of emergency, it is unfair to judge their effectiveness. I would not have known about this were it not for the NYTimes. Without a working laptop, I didn't even know Margaret Thatcher died until Media Fellows class later on that day. The one I have right now has a slow connection because I haven’t got an ethernet adaptor, so I still don’t receive much news. Anyway, my point is proven.

I know not what my expectations are for subsequent classes, but I do know that they are high. All of the alumni and guest lectures this week got my head spinning about internship possibilities, and, needless to say, I’m excited.

Week Nine: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

For my article this week, I chose “Syrian Newspapers Emerge to Fill Out War Reporting.”
 In the midst of the revolution, news standards are going down. Some sources are even using Facebook updates as official sources. In the midst of this, a newspaper called Sham uses 15 reporters all over Syria, none of them activists, to promote objectivity and write good news. I actually found this while in the middle of another story and felt it better suited my interests as a journalist. I definitely wouldn’t have found out about it any other way since my computer and charger finally succumbed to old age and years of being battered around. Any electronic work I want to do is moved to the library until I get a new computer, which doesn’t exactly leave time for web-surfing and other extraneous activities: if I trek out to the library, I mean business; no way am I going there to Google every little term that catches my fancy, so I’ll have to live archaically for a bit. (I wish I had the hard drive of my dictionary and thesaurus.) Anyway, quite frankly, the lack of factual material in news reporting in Syria is anarchic in a way and pretty scary in another. The media controls our perception of events beyond the places we can see, and thus it must be pretty hairy when it’s contaminated with bias and unverified facts. One can only hope in such a case that people there would know not to believe what they read, but even then it’s a world of paranoia where one doesn’t know whom to believe. It’s a lose-lose situation.

I read Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death before starting school and was highly impressed by it. I never watched television news to begin with (Dad raised me right),  but I was even more wary of it after reading this book. (I suppose it can’t be too bad if cross-referenced, but why do that when my sources now are perfectly sufficient? *wink) Yes, I love Sesame Street—who doesn’t?—but I see Postman’s point there, that it makes education entertaining and, through his eyes, superficial. I would agree that “Sesame Street is an expensive illustration of the idea that education is indistinguishable from entertainment,” though I’d disagree that watching it would have any serious consequence. Children are children. They develop concepts of deeper subjects and their serious sense as they grow.