I’ll outline two options for examination, and you can always add your own take on this issue.
Part of this prompt was inspired by the 2004 documentary “Control Room” about Al Jazeera’s coverage of the War in Iraq. Here’s the trailer. Caution, there are some graphic images of war and one use of the F-word.
Option 1:
Determine where you get most of your news online. This doesn’t have to be a place that only serves news. It doesn’t have to be a site that Mr. McCallum would be proud of, either. It could even be Facebook or Twitter. Just pick the site where you get the most of your news from.
Now, analyze that site and deconstruct it. What type of news does it serve? Where does it place the news? How do you use the site? How much of the news is “hard news” and how much is fluff or just human interest stories. How deep are the stories? How much bias/opinion/slant is there to the news you see.
Break down the web site and analyze it. Provide screen shots and comparisons. Highlight the best and worst of the site and then come to a conclusion about how well you think this site delivers the news.
Option 2:
Compare two or three sources of news. These sites should be based on web news, but could be the web sites of existing broadcast stations, newspapers, and magazines. Like in the option above, the sources don’t have to be good examples, they can just be examples. You can compare local and national, print-based vs. web only, gossip vs tech news. It doesn’t matter.
Take screen shots and highlight the different ways the two sources cover the news. Break down the way they cover similar events. Decide who their audiences could be. Compare the two sources in any way that makes sense to you. Take an original spin and try to make your writing have a central point.
Option 3:
Decide entirely for yourself how you want to take on this issue.
HEY! THERE ARE ABOUT A DOZEN LINKS IN THE TEXT. I KNOW THEY’RE HARD TO SEE, BUT PUT YOUR MOUSE OVER THINGS, AND YOU’LL FIND THE LINKS.
A good source for this week comes fro Sam Mailhot’s blog. PanicWatch tracks current issues with media and panic as they happen. Take a look back to see some more recent issues with the media selling panic.
From XKCD.
Last semester, Cody Smallwood brought in a very interesting source in his entry on the subject of media-induced panic. He brought in the issue of Moral Panic and writes:
According to Goode and Ben-Yehuda, moral panic consists of the following characteristics:
Concern
Hostility
Consensus
Disproportionality
Volatility
Have you seen examples of this progression? What happens when news organizations dwell on potentially alarming or concerning news too long or if a person chooses to immerse himself or herself in that news? Can you think of more modern examples than the Swine Flu panic to bring into your writing?
For your blog this week, challenge yourself to find examples of the media dealing with panic and information. Look at the balance between writing too much about a topic and not covering a topic thoroughly enough.
You can also look at examples where media sources allow bias to taint their coverage of a topic or event. Look for liberal and conservative biases, or simply biases where a publication is protecting itself from scrutiny.
Jon Stewart can even come back into the picture here. There are examples of him talking about Media panic recently, but the most famous example is his confrontations with Jim Cramer about using panic to his advantage and manipulating the stock market through his nature and reports.
So, it’s all over the TV, Radio, and Internet, but it’s also dominating what we’re talking about. A person can’t even sneeze without being accused of having the swine flu. Schools are shutting down due to suspisions. Just today, Osseo has closed its doors.
This week, let’s get back to the foundations of good journalism.
Find a story online that has writing so compelling that people would read it no matter how it was designed. The story should have an outstanding lead and follow through with a story that really delivers on the same level.
You aren’t just picking a neat topic or an interesting issue, you’re picking and justifying great writing.
I’ll be leaving comments about your choices, and I’ll encourage you to find better sources if you aren’t really picking great ideas.
Good luck!
You can check out the link to my Reading Log above or on the J2 class page to see what I’m reading. You can check out old blogs as well. There are a lot of examples there, but you may have to look at earlier examples.
Your task this week is to create something totally unique. You don’t have to link anything, find any outside sources, or process. Your job is simple, but it’s the most consistently challenging task for great journalists.
Go out and find a person with a story to tell and get a story from them. Pass that story along on your blog in the form of an extended quote. Challenge yourself to keep your post to only the quote and descriptions of their speaking.
You’re not allowed to do internet/IM reporting. This should be a quote you get as a result of a conversation. Think about relatives, teachers, siblings, bosses, or just interesting people who will let you talk to them. You do not need to put the person’s name in your post if they aren’t comfortable with you using it.
The story could be sad, funny, nostalgic, powerful, or mundane. The most important thing is that you’re finding it and getting it down to share. Use your best judgment about what is appropriate to publish online and protect the identity of your source if the story is sensitive.
Take a few minutes to look back at your blogs from this quarter. Create a blog entry that outlines how your thinking about truth, journalism, media, technology, and news has changed over the past eight weeks.
What blog entry are you most proud of? What are your conclusions from the first quarter of this class. What discussions, articles, topics, or work that you did stands out as most important.
What do you want to learn more about or start learning about next quarter?
A Study by the Pew Research Study claims that people who view The Daily Show and Colbert Report are more informed than other people when it comes to the news. At the very least, they are as informed as readers of Major Newspapers.
Data from Pew Research Study
However, the study also found that
Since the late 1980s, the emergence of 24-hour cable news as a dominant news source and the explosive growth of the internet have led to major changes in the American public’s news habits. But a new nationwide survey finds that the coaxial and digital revolutions and attendant changes in news audience behaviors have had little impact on how much Americans know about national and international affairs.
Essentially, it found that Americans, in general, aren’t any more informed about current event news stories now than they were 20 years ago, despite CNN, MSNBC, CSPAN, and thousands of online news sources. We’re also less informed than Europeans about World issues (CJR – A News Deficit). That could bring up the first question – why do you think that is?
A 2006 Study showed that more than half of American teens got their news from entertainment sources (including the Daily Show and Colbert Report) at least once a week, and that
Only 10 percent of teens say they are not at all interested in the news, mostly because they feel it isn’t presented in an interesting way.
Things brings up a second question, but look for that later.
Recently, Jon Stewart has gone on the offensive against the media, claiming that it’s not only boring, but also harmful to American. The first clip is his now famous appearance on Crossfire, where Stewart argues that the show is hurting the country when it could be helping the country. He argues that the focus shouldn’t be on debate and contention but on informing and analysis – looking for meaning from both sides.
The second clip is more recent. After trading barbs on their own shows, Jon Stewart and Jim Kramer went face-to-face on the set of The Daily Show, and the general opinion is the Stewart dominated the discussion. He accused Kramer of being, in a word, evil and showed evidence of him manipulating the stock market for the benefit of his own show. He once again pointed out a way that the media is twisting reality for profit and drama. Are his criticisms of specific shows representative of the news media as a whole, or is this just a battle for ratings between two shows?
The backstory:
The Summary of the show:
In class this week, we’ve seen examples of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report using their status as Wise Fools to tell the truth about news in the name of Comedy. We’ve also seen C-SPAN and CNN and the way they’ve presented news.
Who do you recognize? From Pew Research (2007)
A recent book I read said that most people view The Daily Show as more honest than other news sources because they believe that the voice of Jon Stewart reflects their own voice better. His outrage mirrors their outrage, his desperation matches their desperation, and his sense of helplessness is something they can relate to. Simply because he’s free to be funny, emotional, confused, and angry – something traditional journalists all have been trained to avoid – he gains credibility and popularity. The Pew Study shows that his delivery isn’t making people dumber, either. His audience is as smart as any audience. (I won’t go as far as to say that he’s making people smart. Maybe smart people are more likely to watch his show for any number of reasons.)
So, here are the questions I can come up with. Feel free to make your own questions. You get major respect for that.
Do you think that traditional media outlets should attempt to change their presentation to get more of an audience? If so, how should they change?
What do you think about the fact that only 10% of teens are interested in the news and that most of them say that it’s because the news is presented poorly? Why do you think that is? 66% of teens say they get most of their news only from the front pages of portal sites (like Yahoo, Google, and MSN’s default front pages).
Do you think that Fake News can be better than actual news, or is this a dangerous road to travel? Should news organizations ignore Entertainment to adhere to strict ethics codes, or should they start dabbling in Comedy, too?
CNN is supposedly the most trusted name in news, but check out this topic on the message board. What do you think of the direction of news in general? Is The Daily Show closer to the right direction than CNN? Is CNN still better for actual news? Is Jon Stewart right to be critical, or should be save his criticisms because he operates with a different set of rules?
You’ve all been very quick to declare that traditional print media (newspapers and magazines) and perhaps even traditional broadcast media is dying fast and being quickly replaced by digital content. This week, let’s think about the ways traditional print media can still be important or valuable. I’d also like to see what you think about other dangers associated with this shift.
There are positives and negatives to the use of digital media as opposed to traditional sources. One of the most dangerous questions that has arisen is the question of Media Ownership. If something doesn’t have to be newsworthy to become news, and if there are no gatekeepers to screen out biased content, and there is no consistent ethical standards for the content. At the same time, this could be closer to truth than traditional methods.
The people and places we allow to define our truths creates our daily realities. Who defines the truth in the age of Digital Media? Who creates our realities? The choices you make on a daily basis define your world.
Feel free to engage as many (or none) of he the following questions in your blog this week. A good blog post can come from answering even one of the questions or by posing your own.
What role do you think traditional print media still serves?
What danger is there when people can choose their sources and be exposed to only things that interest them?
What do you think about the fact that government agencies and personnel can communicate directly and create their own media more easily than ever?
How likely will you be to subscribe to a daily newspaper (local or state) or a weekly/monthly magazine when you’re our of college?
Does being exposed to a variety of ideas from unexpected sources – traditionally supplied in print publications – help a person be more literate? If so, how can you be sure you stay well informed about new things?
What’s the job of a reader in the digital age?
Is Democracy in trouble when people stop reading traditional media? How can we protect our democracy in a digital age?
I bolded #6 because this is a question that is intriguing me a lot right now. Can readers actually own this new media, or are we just being made to feel like this so we accept it more easily? That doesn’t mean that you need to answer this question. It’s just what’s on my mind.
This site, produced by the Columbia Journalism Review, gives you a comprehensive look at what media companies actually own. You can see everything they own and when they acquired it. For one surprising example, take a look at Time Warner and see how much of what they own is a part of your life.
Consider using some of this information in your blog.
2. In the second text box (The one where you paste a feed or a web site address), paste in this code:
http://blogs.bhs.cc/YOUR_USERNAME/feed/
Change the YOUR_USERNAME with your username on j2blogs (for example rmccallum).
3. Edit it to make it look great and click “Submit to Public Gallery”.
4. Copy and Paste the Embed Code and paste it into a post on your blog.
This gives you a complete picture of everything you’ve blogged about this year so far.
Now things are getting crazy. You’ll be blogging about your blog.
Take a look back at the things you’ve written and done for the past six weeks. What trends or major discoveries do you notice? What can you learn about yourself as a student/journalist from the things you’ve produced or the writing you’ve done? How have you grown or changed as a writer or journalist?
So far in this class, we’ve looked at some great examples of New Media – journalism that goes beyond the printed page. That media has come in the forms of blogs, traditional news media outlets, and independent publications. We’ve looked at ways that print journalism may eventually be replaced by these new media sources. At the very least, they’re going o become a larger part of media than they currently are.
McCallum
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