I believe that the future of journalism is bright. So bright, that all of this negative feedback the younger generation is recieveing is just the existing journalists being afraid to let go of their jobs, because they know they can’t control where the field of journalism is going.

They know they can’t use the technology that is becoming crucial to the media is too advanced to teach to these 40 and 50 year olds, and after they are taught, it will still take months for them to become “fluent” in it. I just believe that there is too much new talent coming out for the older generation to keep working after they have passed retirement age, just because they are too selfish to let go.

I have one last thing to say to this generation… LET IT GO!

You are over and done with, and there are hundreds of people that have more talent than you do, so I really do not understand why you are being so pig-headed about it. Give it up, all you are doing is making a behind of yourself.

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This is the final project that Cora Fox and I worked on together. To be honest, Cora did the most work on it, but she knew what she wanted, and just kept chugging away on it, while I just did the story on self image. I really enjoyed working with Cora, she is a great, hard working paartner, and she wasn’t afraid to ask me for help when she wanted/needed it. I am really happy with how the project turned out, but i think that maybe we could’ve added something to the bottom right corner, because my story wasn’t quite long enough to take up that much space on the page.

I like doing swimming layouts, because Maggie takes amazing pictures!

With this design challenge, i decided to use more color throughout, and have more corresponding elements than i did in my last design challenge. However, i did use Boys Swim & dive again, because Maggie takes awesome swimming pictures, and i just  couldn’t help myself. But i think that this design challenge is exponentially better than my first one, because i had more time to be organized and create a better layout for my challenge. I noticed things throughout the magazines i was reading, and elements from yearbooks i was looking at to create a spread that tied you in without overwhelming you with the contrasting elements.

I used A LOT of color, so i needed to make sure i wasn’t trapping white space that would draw unwanted attention to the weak spots in my design. I added a unique quote in the center, which added to my design considerably, drawing attention to my [filler] story, and the captions for Maggie’s awesome pictures.

This is my little Birdie Buddy. I got really Close, and s/he didn't even make a move to get away. It was awesome!

It’s my least favorite time of year. Our Blue Spruce trees become infested with birds, all nesting and raising annoying little chirpy birds, and emptying their crap on the patio. But there is one bird i like, it is the mama Robinthat nests on our front porch every spring, in one of my mom’s plants, usually her Fuchsia. This year, that poor Robin had to nest in one of the front yard trees, because we didn’t get mom her Fuchsia this year, but today I found out that she still had a successful spring. For some strange reason (i think it was fate) I walked out on the front porch this afternoon when I had made it home and showered after the Buffalo FFA Horse Show, and all I could hear, besides my lovely little neighbor buddies, Dawson and Whitney, was a kinda weird chirp sound. Upon investigating, I found a little baby Robin in the Egress Window “well” in the basement. Feeling sorry for the little bugger, I jumped down, careful to not squash him, and I hesitantly reached for the baby bird, not sure if birds can bite.

They can.

I finally pulled down my Buffalo Cheerleader sweatshirt sleeve over my hand, and picked the screaming little mass up. By this point I would like to add the fact that there were like 8 Robins flying around screaming and diving at me, not a positive experience, i assure you. I put the little thing, I just decided i will name it Emma, down and shushed her off of the landscaping rocks, so she wouldn’t hurt her feet, and so she could get under one of the spruce trees for some cover.

But of COURSE it couldn’t be easy…

First, Emma runs out on the driveway. Stupid bird, she sticks out like a sore thumb against the light grey concrete. So i chase her back on the grass, she can kind of fly, but not enough to get away from big, scary me. I feel mean. I get her back on the grass, and she goes and sits under the Crab apple tree, so I decide to push her a little further, about 5 feet, to our 10 or 12 feet tall Colorado Blue Spruces. I get her under the Spruce tree, and that is when it gets cool, and I feel like such a dork because of it.

Three adult Robins start to chase the stupid “Grackle’s” away from my little birdie pal, completely ignoring me now, the have found a bigger pest, and threat to little Emma’s safety than me. So i go in the house to look for something to throw at the Grackles, and I can suddenly hear a bird going “chirp chirp chirp BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP.” I go to the front windows, and here is a mama/daddy Robin sitting in the crab apple tree, keeping watch over the baby, who was firmly nestled under a heavy bough just off the ground.

But there was more birds doing the same thing!

There was one in the Spruce next to my little Emma friend, and one one the power lines, both of which were doing the same thing as the first adult bird! They had the little birdie surrounded, keeping bigger, meaner birds away!

The Birds stayed like that for hours, PLUS when i finally found where my mom put her Digital Camera and went out there to take pictures almost 3 hours later, they were all still stationed around my little baby bird! I feel like such a dork, but it was honestly the perfect thing to balance out a terrible day, it just made me feel so aware of the things around me, to sit and watch those three birds watch out for ONE baby bird, like it was the most important thing ever. I loved it, and it feels awesome to witness that, and to just be that aware of what is going on around me. i feel excellent.

I like James White’s blog for many different reasons.

James gives a lot of thought to racial perspectives in his blog, which I totally understand, but at the same time I think he over-does it at moments. He does have an awesome way to come across as different from everyone else in the class, and I love that. But I also think that he uses the black references as a replacement for real substance throughout his blog entries.

I consider the word cloud that James made to show how he deeply cares about how the world looks at people by their ethnicity, not their personality. James also uses the words brothers and sisters a lot, whether or not that is his actual brother and sister, or his figurative siblings; it makes him seem very family oriented and shows how much he cares about how everything involved in his life

I think James could really branch out and go to new topics he hasn’t hit before, including topics that are controversial for multiple groups of people, not just one race. He should show multiple topics of interest for many people, not only the topics that interest him.

James does a good job of adding successful links to his stories, and the links do a great job of adding to his page. He links to unique sources, and the sources are sites that are actually supplemental for what he is blogging about.

I believe that James has many different important values. His family seems to be his number one priority, judging from what is said in his blog, but obviously racial issues play a large part in what he blogs about.

James and I hit on similar topics, but we have very different opinions on these topics at places. We spend a lot of time finding things to connect to our different perspectives on the similar topics, but neither one of us is wrong, because we can both find knowledgeable sources for all of our posts.

I think that Americans are not any more informed now than they were back in the 1980’s because news outlets were fewer, and more respectable than they are today. People have so much to do in their day that it becomes a chore to sit down and listen to an hour of news. With online media, it is easy to access news that may not be 100% authentic, because it is easier to watch, and has some comedic relief to it’s viewers, where as the nightly news is so gloom and doom based.

1. I think that Traditional Media Outlets need to make changes to their programs and publications to attract the younger generations, and help the older generations adjust to the changing outlets for news media. These outlets need to realize that today’s youth are the key to the future, and the sooner they realize that, the more changes will be made, for the better.
2. I think that teenagers are gettting the news from their homepages on the internet, while they are on their way to check their facebook, or do a homework assignment for one of their classes. I personally think that the news, especially the national news, is presented terribly poorly, which has a very large part of why i choose to not watch the national news, and instead, get it from an alternative source, such as the Daily Show, or the Colbert Report, or even the Daily Onion.
3. I think that Fake News is an excellent outlet, to a point. When i was doing my college visits over spring break, i visited Ripon, and the journalism teacher there was telling me about the April Fools edition of their newspaper, College Days, a few years ago [the last year that they published it online] and they published a goofy story about how watching Scooby Doo gave you a brain tumour, but you could reverse it by eating Scooby Snacks.  BAD IDEA! Well, this story was published on the online version of their newspaper, and it made it on to Google, where these families of young children suffering from brain tumours found it, and started an all out war on the college. Lawsuits were filed, and the school had to make a public apology because of this simple little spoof on one of their publications. So, i think that news organizations should remain boring and ethical to prevent lawsuits, because unless you are a pro, mixing comedy with the news is a BAD IDEA.

at 08:57 on May 8th, 2009

No Name – No Credibility – No Need For Response

The Cynical Patriot

I do not think that this “Audience Member” has “No Credibility,” since he has obviously been calling you out on your errors, and your obviously non-credible story about your hideous experience at Buffalo High School. I also find it rather interesting that you have told him to “Grow a Pair” and told a faculty member at our school that you would be interested to have a face to face debate… Well, I for one would be very willing to not only watch, but also participate in that debate because, quite frankly, I think that this teacher, as well as just about anyone else in the school with half a brain, could absolutely rip you into pieces. YOU are the one with NO CREDIBILITY, and leaving out crucial details that explain why you were not seated with the rest of the press, AND having issues with the local Police Department. Our Journalism teacher, Ryan McCallum has taught us time and time again that intentionally leaving out facts or occurrences to change the happenings, and bias your story is NOT JOURNALISM! That is what any idiot with access to a computer, or any writing device or utensil for that matter, can do. It’s called creative writing. You know, where someone takes details from an outing or their imagination and makes up a story that ties them all together. This is such a terrible excuse for a story, that it can’t even be classified as an opinion column. I think you should take a day, and come down to see how Ryan McCallum runs a class, because I think some of your journalism skills could use a little polishing, or maybe you could just acquire some decent writing and grammar skills, because last time I checked, SPELL CHECK is available on most any computer, and even most cell phones, and in case you didn’t know, it is the little button on your WordPress or Microsoft Word with the blue check mark, and the capital ABC next to it. No need to thank me, it’s definitely a hard button to find, because it’s terribly hard to run your mouse over all of the little icons above your text box. But there are other statements of yours that deserve some reviewing. 

 *QUOTE FROM the CYNICAL PATRIOT*But  it is not necessary that  you, like me,  my  ethics and morality  are  absolute and  not conditional  upon your generations likeing me. Please take  this paragraph home to your parents and  ask them what this means.

I do not know why you are so CONDESCENDING towards the younger generations, but from looking around your blog, I really think that you are AGAINST this younger generation, not for us as you claim. You are talking down to a group of kids that run groups of better publications than you are even capable of dreaming of.

We are a courteous, independent, and intelligent group of students, who are running these publications how we believe is responsible and courteous to all people involved. BHS journalism/publications students double check facts, names, events, times, and anything else that could be wrong, none of which you seem to be too fond of following through on. BHS is a big school, and we have too many people watching our every move to make a mistake.

I was talking to my best friend, aka Tanner Bauman, about my blog for this week, and we started talking about weird things that happened to him when he was little, and these are his two favorite memories.”

“I was like 3, and we were on our way home from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I was sleeping, so was my brother, Cody. We had all of the windows in the truck open, and we were in the middle of traffic when I woke to my brother screaming , “there is a Dragon Bee on me!!!!” and my mom and dad were laughing hysterically in the front seats, and that is all I remember, but I am sure there is something else that happened.”

“I was like four, we were down in Windom at a Pinto show, and my big brother Cody and his friend Michael Houske were watching some Kevin Bacon movie in the gooseneck horse trailer, and i really wanted to get up into the gooseneck to watch the movie, but it was only one of those fold down step things, and i wasn’t tall enough to help myself up there, so i kept asking cody to help me get up, and he wouldn’t stop watching the movie. I slipped, fell, ate shit, and hit my face on the doorjamb, and sliced my forehead open, and I had to go to the hospital and get 3 stitches in my face. It hurt right away. My mom freaked at Cody for not helping me, because it was such an easy thing.”

The last couple weeks have gotten me thinking about advertising, and how Subliminal Messages are affecting us on a daily basis. My first question, is what exactly is Subliminal Messaging? Subliminal messaging is signals or messages embedded in another medium, designed to pass below the normal limits of the human mind’s perception. These messages are often unrecognizable by the conscious mind, but in certain situations can affect the subconscious mind and can negatively or positively influence subsequent later thoughts, behaviors, actions, attitudes, belief systems and value systems.

Now that I know what subliminal messaging is, I can kind of understand how it works, but I still am not totally sure how to go abut creating a subliminal message. Derren Brown is known as a successful Mind Control Magician, specializing in subliminal messaging leading to mind control. In Mind Control, Derren showed people how easily he could manipulate their mind. There were three seasons of this show, each one trying new ideas and showing people how easily he can take control of their minds.

Advertising plays such a major role in this country, that we have been successfully trained to strive for perfection, when the so called perfect person that we think we are seeing isn’t real.  To thoroughly demonstrate my point, look at Cfox’s Blog. As an experiment, Cora took a picture of herself and used Photoshop manipulation to completely change the structure of her face, reduce her jaw line, made her nose smaller and longer, lightened and enlarged her eyes, among numerous other things. The finished product looks nothing like Cora.  The fact that she learned how to do this simply on YouTube, and there is no professional Photoshop experience behind this, other than the fact that she is a Hoofprint Editor. The things she did to her picture are so creepy, but it is a really good lesson about how easy it is to make a model look much better than she actually looks. They can remove acne, wrinkles, blemishes, and everything that makes the model look human.  These people can add makeup, fix eye color, change the shape of facial features, basically anything that makes them look human. Advertising has changed how we see the world.

Another way that advertising is taking over the world is Facebook. Most everyone knows what Facebook is, even the older generations. The fastest group of Facebook users is the women over 55. In recent statistics released by an independent blog Inside Facebook, popularity in facebook among 55+ year old women has increased 175.3%! (Taken directly from Ali’s Blog) AKiernan’s Blog shows just how much of an impact Facebook has on the population of the United States. McCallum has even told us that his mom and grandma are both his friends on Facebook. There is finally a place that people can all get together and talk about anything and everything.