Other Blogs

http://teawithahatter.blogspot.com/
What Kate pointed out in her reflection on the mass mediums unit really made me stop and think. What she said was spot on. I have learned so much in the past several weeks about journalism, mass mediums, and technology than I ever thought I would. Usually, I wouldn't think lectures would be fun, but I really learn a lot and I now look at things a lot differently. Before this unit, I looked at Yahoo as a good news source, but now looking at Yahoo's homepage, I can tell that most of their stories are celebrity/fluff stories that don't have much relevance to people. This is mainly because Yahoo doesn't try to be a big news source, they want ratings and viewers more than anything.
What Kate also pointed out was how much this relates to the real world. I have been able to see how the news really works and what websites to actually pay attention to. I know when someone is failing to do all the duties of a journalist, and I can criticize and understand them. I even remember a class discussion in my English class that involved what we have learned so far, and all of the J&C kids looked at each other and understood. Thank you Kate for making me take the time to look back and think about how much this class has meant so far.

Other Blogs

http://emilyjournalism1.blogspot.com/
As I was reading Emily's blog, I came across an entry titled, "I am Not a Happy Camper." She wrote about a WAVE 3 News story about a girl getting concert tickets. This story completely violated the yardstick of newsworthiness and a link to the article can be found on Emily's blog. She also pointed out how common some of these irrelevant stories are becoming on WAVE. I completely agree and I am also starting to notice this happening with other news stations as well like WLKY and WHAS. It is starting to seem like news stations now are just trying to find whatever they can and turning it into an article. These stations need to start focusing more on news than ratings.

WLKY News

http://www.wlky.com/news/local-news/louisville-news/festival-of-trees-and-lights-kicks-off-at-slugger-field/-/9718340/22985608/-/69qr5r/-/index.html
On WLKY's homepage, there is a story on a constant scroll of lead stories titled, "Festival of Trees and Lights' kicks off at slugger field." Just by the title, it can be guessed that this story is purely an advertisement. It is most likely meant to make people want to go to this festival, but there is a possibility that this festival has some major impact on people. If it does, there is no way to know by clicking on this article. The entire article reads, "WLKY is proud to be a part of the event, which benefits diabetes care at Kosair Children's Hospital." The whole article is one sentence and one video. "Maybe the video contains some information," one might think. Nope. The video lasts two minutes and about 30 seconds of it is a lady (no significance is given to her) trying to convince viewers to come to the festival. About 20 seconds is a broadcaster talking, reciting the exact sentence shown in the article, and finally, the last minute is a group of girls from Sacred Heart singing Christmas carols.  
This video/article was purely an advertisement and had no business being part of a scroll of lead stories. It violated one of the seven yardsticks of journalism: newsworthiness. This story isn't part of one of the key core/peripheral topics, and doesn't have any affect on anyone's lives. WLKY shouldn't completely stop showing advertisement news like this, but they definitely need to find somewhere other than the scroll of lead stories to put them.

WLKY News

WLKY's homepage, http://www.wlky.com/,  like all other large local news networks' home pages, are meant to show people who access the site large local news stories. Usually, on a news network's homepage, a person could find lead stories, trending stories, and late breaking news. A lot of news stations even have a box at the top of their homepage which either constantly scrolls or shows the top stories on that website. WLKY is one of the news stations who has a box at the top of their page scrolling the top stories. On November 15, 2013, they scrolled the top fourteen stories through that box of top stories. Yet less than sixty percent of their "lead stories" were actually relevant local news stories. Six out of the fourteen stories were either advertisements for themselves or other companies, or "fluff" stories.
These stories consisted of:
"25 animal facts you didn't know" http://www.wlky.com/news/25-animal-facts-you-didnt-know/-/9366352/22388016/-/p3wbhqz/-/index.html,
"Share your weather photos on u local" http://www.wlky.com/ulocal/share-your-weather-photos-on-u-local/-/9365640/9718014/-/il8pxl/-/index.html
"Show us what you are thankful for on u local" http://www.wlky.com/ulocal/Show-us-what-you-re-thankful-for-this-Thanksgiving-on-u-local/-/9365640/17451016/-/9k2o37z/-/index.html,
and more. The whole purpose for a box of "lead stories" is to put lead stories in it. WLKY might need to work on finding where to put their advertising stories so people can still see them while they don't interfere with actual lead news stories.

WHAS News

http://www.whas.com/articles/national-news-104668/school-bans-mother-with-cancer-from-11831488/
WHAS recently reported a news story on their website about a mother and who has not allowed to enter her daughter's school because her cancer treatment caused her to let off a strong odor. There is a short 2 minute video to accompany the article. The article reads,
"Tierra Antigua Elementary had their Thanksgiving lunch today in the school's cafeteria, but because of what happened last week, Kerri Mascareno and her daughter Lynsey decided to spend the day relaxing at home together.
For Kerri, it's time that she doesn't want to waste.
"It's precious. Every little time is precious being with them," Kerri said."
What is shown above is the entire article. That might be okay if the video consisted of more information, but the article was taken from as a direct quote of the video.
 Aside from the lack of a legitimate article, this news story also violated the yardstick of "fairness." The reporter gave a brief summary of what the story was about, then spent the rest of the time interviewing the mother and child. The principal nor any administration members were interviewed, and the reporter didn't imply that any administrators had even been asked. Not even students, teachers, or other parents involved with the school were asked to comment. The news story only had one side of the story, which wasn't fair to anyone who had a problem with the mother being in the school.

Class Talks: Popularity

Something that I keep noticing about the popularity of different forms of media is how it grows. When something is first created, most of the time, people don't just automatically get used to it and incoorperate it into their everyday lives. It usually takes a while for something to gain popularity, but when people start to notice, its popularity sky-rockets. Internet, for example, was first created in 1969. It wasn't actually coined the term "internet" until 1974. When it started becoming popular though was in the 1990s. In 1995, there were 16 million users, and the next year there were 36 million users. That may seem like a big jump, but just 5 years later, there were over 500 million users, and a little over 10 years after that, 2.4 billion internet users. It really surprised me how long it takes something like the internet to get noticed, then how  it can become that popular that fast.

Class Talks: Movies

In Mr. Miller's class, we had a discussion on the history of movies and one thing that I learned that really intersted me was how different movies were when they first became popular compared to now. Movies were so popular in the early to mid twentieth century, that they were not only used much more, but they were also used for much more. Now, people go to the movies every once in a while to actually go see a movie with friends. Before, TVs hadn't become popular, so people would go to the movies weekly to not only see the movie, but for other things like advertisements and news. It was amazing how much the purpose of movies have changed overtime.

Other Blogs

http://jamiefightsbadjournalism.blogspot.com/
Jamie has created one of the best amateur blogs I've seen. I wasn't impressed by just one single post, I was impressed by the whole thing. Jamie puts together great titles followed by great in-depth articles about her topics. The page as a whole is eye-catching, and I love how the pictures tie everything together. Jamie puts a lot of insight into her posts and does everything she can to improve her blog. Kudos to you Jamie.

Class Talks

One thing I learned about in Mr. Miller's class that interested me was demassification. At first, I thought it was similar to conglomeration, something a company chooses to do to improve their business. I soon learned that demassification isn't just for one company, its for a whole type of media, and its definitely not a choice. Demassification is breaking down a company to target niche audiences. This happens due to either loss of viewers, advertisers, or both. What really surprised me is what things have already demassified. Magazines for example, used to have everything. Now, there are certain ones for sports, clothing, shopping, etc. Then radio had to demassify due to television taking advertisers and viewers. Currently though, internet is forcing television to start demassifiying along with so many other things. The good thing is that many of these national medias are still successful through demassification. Some aren't (I'll miss you, Blockbuster), but meanwhile, it looks like radio will stay a while longer.

Class Talks

Conglomeration. Probably one of the most interesting things I've learned about all year. Conglomeration is when one larger company starts buying off smaller companies and then adds aspects of that company into its own system and revenue. It seems like such a technical and complicated term but it really is a huge aspect of business and is constantly making a difference around us. 

You might be surprised by this map, but it is just a few examples of conglomeration. In class, Mr. Miller showed us a different map about conglomeration, but it was just as interesting. Disney owns ESPN. Time Warner owns the Atlanta Braves. General Electric owns banks. 

Look at the food map though. Are you a Coke or Sprite person? Doesn't matter. Coke not only owns Sprite, but Minute Maid, Fanta, Monster, and Mello Yello. Welcome to Mars, home of M&Ms, Snickers, Twix, Skittles, and more. Study the map some more. You'll be surprised by how much conglomeration effects everyday things you do and eat.

Class Talks

In Mr. Miller's J1 class, I always love listening as Mr. Miller reads off the answers to the Current Events Quiz. This is partially because I want to know what I got right, but mostly because most of the answers are very interesting and can lead to great class discussions. For example: recently, the world found out about racist things going on in the University of Alabama. Mr. Miller explained how this was only discovered because of some investigative reporters at the university. I understood that journalism was a big part of the world, but the fact that a major university could get in trouble for racism due to journalism really surprised me. I'm impressed and it has really opened my eyes to how journalism really effects the real world.

Media Critique

The New York Times is usually a very reliable newspaper/website to use, mainly because people can generally find good news stories about relative topics written by good journalists. So who gave Robert Seitsema an article? This article, titled "Dog Ziggity: New Jersey’s Own Hot Dogs," is more of a short story than a news article. The article starts by explaining how most people view hot dogs as part of New York culture while they are mainly part of New Jersey culture. This article falls in line with, "Ex-Chief of Charity Charged With Stealing Millions" and "Kenya’s President Says Mall Attackers Are ‘Defeated’" both of which actually have relevance to the public. Articles should try to make the important interesting, but Robert did the opposite and tried to make the interesting important, and did a crummy job of that too.

Robert violated several Principles and Yardsticks of Journalism. To be exact, Robert violated the principle of verification as well as the yardsticks of explanation and newsworthiness. First, he violated the principle of verification. Verification is using credible sources and being unbiased in any way. Robert used no sources, just himself, to describe the hot dog styles of just New Jersey, possibly offending some New Yorkers.

Robert also violated the yardstick of explanation. He never really explained anything except the form of the hot dog. How is this important? Why does this matter? What was the whole point? These same questions can be asked to show how Robert violated one of the most important yardsticks, newsworthiness. This article has nothing that the majority of New York Times readers need to know. People read the New York Times to learn about world news and major crimes/arrests, not to learn about hot dogs from one state. One- fiftieth of the United States of America. It won't have a long-lasting effect on people and doesn't apply something that a lot of people will need to know.

Not only is this a bad job of the journalist, but also a bad job on The New York Times' part. This could have easily never have happened if the New York Times would stop and think about the article before putting it on the front page. Now, they are stuck looking silly with an article about hot dogs right next to articles about terrorist attacks and million dollar robberies. The New York Times needs to watch who they give front page articles to.

Other Blogs

http://blsj1.blogspot.com/
Wow Brigid. Your comments on the 9/11 video we watched were spot on. I never really thought about it the way you did until now, but you are right. The way the video was put together really helped get its message across. Photographers and photojournalists really played a huge part in conveying the tragedy of 9/11. One thing that Brigid said really summed it all up; "The fact that photographers were able to capture the second plane, poised to strike, was proof. It was not a horrifying nightmare that we could all wake up from. It was not an accident. The pictures all those photojournalists took that day were proof, and for that I'm grateful." Those photographers and photojournalists took a tragedy and turned it into a reality. They never get enough credit for that, so thank you to all the photographers that day, and thank you Brigid for bringing this to mind.

Class Talks

On Friday, we discussed recordings through history in Mr. Miller's J1 class. Recordings brought up music and we talked about how new music is viewed today and how new music was viewed before. It seems like now, people except new music much more than before.

Mr. Miller explained and played to us the song "Louise Louise" by the Kingsmen. It was so hard to understand that people thought the singer was speaking a different language and convincing kids to do illegal things and rebel. It is a song about a guy who goes on a boat and misses a girl.

This got me thinking about music in this generation. Some of this music is hard to understand, especially with the popularity of rap music, but music has been around long enough for people to realize that music is more for entertainment than conveying messages and for the most part, not dangerous. This and more trust being put into children is the reason why people are more accepting now than even a few decades ago.

This especially reminded me of a story I heard about the rapper, "Eminem." His daughter introduced him to her new boyfriend. The boy idolized Eminem and his music, but Eminem didn't appreciate that. He didn't want his daughter dating someone who grew up idolizing alcohol, drugs, and violence. Even though he raps about that kind of stuff, he still understood reality, and that's how far music has come along.