In his 2005 book, Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News, David Mindich argued that because youths weren't reading the news that civic engagement and democracy as we know it were faltering. However, the campaign and election of Barack Obama engaged the youth of America, which turned out in record numbers to help Obama get elected as president of the United States. Obama and his up-to-date, hip campaign team used their online communication strategy to the fullest to engage the generation of digital natives whose votes were essential to them.
This just shows that young people are getting news, and they are engaged. However, it is in a completely different way than any generation ever before them.
Obama utilized every online tool such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and his own extensive Web site.
In a Pew Research Center poll, more than 75 percent of Internet users used the Internet during the election to get information or participate in the election.
A different, not so surprising Pew Research Center reported showed that 40 percent of Americans use the Internet to get national and international news, which is a 17 percent increase from just more than a year ago. However, in this report, it was the first time that more people cited the Internet over newspapers as their main source of information. Only 35 percent of people surveyed read newspapers, while 70 percent said television was their main news source.
I remember being very small and playing computer games on a gigantic consul. Around the time I was ten, I remember using America Online and getting really excited when I got mail at my first e-mail address, which was Froggie722. I also remember reading international news stories from the Muncie Star Press everyday at the kitchen table after my dad had messed up all the pages of paper when he read it in the morning before me.
As a so-called digital native, it makes sense that my main source of news is the Internet. (I don't really watch television. I hate local news, and I generally only watch national television news broadcasts with my parents who watch them every night.)
As a journalist and a consumer, I'm torn. I never have time to read the whole New York Times, my paper of choice, during the day so I don't want to subscribe because I feel like it's wasteful. I spent at least 20 minutes to an hour online every day reading news, but that's sporadically. I also refuse to buy the Chicago Sun-Times because I think the journalism is shoddy, and I can't support the Chicago Tribune because I'm offended by Sam Zell's interpretation of journalism. Therefore, I would have to answer that I consume most of my news online even though I've always dreamed of working at a daily newspaper.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Comments on Newspapers' Web Sites Create a Better Public Sphere
When mainstream newspapers provide their content online they give readers an opportunity to easily become active in dialogue about important community and even world issues. In this way, the Internet versions of newspapers function as a public sphere, which is defined in Jurgen Habermas' theory as an area in social life where people can get together and freely discuss and identify societal problems and through that discussion influence political action.
Newspapers, especially local papers, provide an easily accesible forum for discussion that may not have happened had it not been for the ability to provide immediate feedback on something that you have just read online.
In my small hometown of Muncie, Indiana, I've seen extremely active discussion when I read the stories at the Star Press, which I grew up reading everyday in its paper format. Just recently, I saw a very active thread with more than 60 posts. The discussions encompassed a vast range of issues such as the differences between the basketball team from the Southside of town and the rural county school, which had recently won the sectional championship game. The commentors discussed the issues of race, teen pregnancy, socioeconomic status, and the impact of sports on young people's lives.
Many bloggers and columnists for national newspapers and magazines end their posts with a question to stimulate discussion and responses to other comments on their site. The readers' answers to these questions often create a dialogue amongst themselves that the author can revisit and respond to. This creates dialogue and increases traffic to the site, which is beneficial to the newspaper because the more traffic a site receives the more revenue it makes from the advertisments posted on the page. I was also encouraged to end all of my blog posts with a question by my Writing for the Web teacher, Patricia Lamberti.
Though comment sections can sometimes get out of hand with anonymous commentors disregarding respect for others' opinions under the guise of anonymity, they still provide a vital space for discussion among citizens of a community who are reading the paper.
Former Loyola Phoenix editor-in-chief Katie Drews wrote a column in February about the difficulties editors face in drawing the line between progressive discussion and derogatory disgression. She wrote, "The tool allows people to immediately post an emotionally charged remark, along with the protection of anonymity. No filters, no edits and sometimes no thought before the click of the mouse."
The Poynter Institute even offers guidelines (or pointers hehe) on how to handle the comment section. In the world of the Internet, it's important for newspapers to keep their fingers on the pulse of the world and the comment section allows journalists to keep in better touch and communication with their readers.
I love to comment on articles and blogs. I do so much more often when they are written by people that I know. I love being a part of something greater than myself. The public sphere of the Internet allows my thoughts and opinoins to heard among the multitudes of voices that fill the Internet. Most of all as a journalist I love to see my articles commented on whether it is positive or negative. I appreciate the feedback. I often comment back to my readers to better faciliate the public sphere in my own little corner of the World Wide Web.
Newspapers, especially local papers, provide an easily accesible forum for discussion that may not have happened had it not been for the ability to provide immediate feedback on something that you have just read online.
In my small hometown of Muncie, Indiana, I've seen extremely active discussion when I read the stories at the Star Press, which I grew up reading everyday in its paper format. Just recently, I saw a very active thread with more than 60 posts. The discussions encompassed a vast range of issues such as the differences between the basketball team from the Southside of town and the rural county school, which had recently won the sectional championship game. The commentors discussed the issues of race, teen pregnancy, socioeconomic status, and the impact of sports on young people's lives.
Many bloggers and columnists for national newspapers and magazines end their posts with a question to stimulate discussion and responses to other comments on their site. The readers' answers to these questions often create a dialogue amongst themselves that the author can revisit and respond to. This creates dialogue and increases traffic to the site, which is beneficial to the newspaper because the more traffic a site receives the more revenue it makes from the advertisments posted on the page. I was also encouraged to end all of my blog posts with a question by my Writing for the Web teacher, Patricia Lamberti.
Though comment sections can sometimes get out of hand with anonymous commentors disregarding respect for others' opinions under the guise of anonymity, they still provide a vital space for discussion among citizens of a community who are reading the paper.
Former Loyola Phoenix editor-in-chief Katie Drews wrote a column in February about the difficulties editors face in drawing the line between progressive discussion and derogatory disgression. She wrote, "The tool allows people to immediately post an emotionally charged remark, along with the protection of anonymity. No filters, no edits and sometimes no thought before the click of the mouse."
The Poynter Institute even offers guidelines (or pointers hehe) on how to handle the comment section. In the world of the Internet, it's important for newspapers to keep their fingers on the pulse of the world and the comment section allows journalists to keep in better touch and communication with their readers.
I love to comment on articles and blogs. I do so much more often when they are written by people that I know. I love being a part of something greater than myself. The public sphere of the Internet allows my thoughts and opinoins to heard among the multitudes of voices that fill the Internet. Most of all as a journalist I love to see my articles commented on whether it is positive or negative. I appreciate the feedback. I often comment back to my readers to better faciliate the public sphere in my own little corner of the World Wide Web.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
The idea that Facebook will need 50,000 servers is really interesting to me. They have to pay a lot of money to set up servers so I can do the mindless clicking that was discussed in the Huffington Post article.
I would like to delete my Facebook to give me back all the time I've wasted on it during college, but Facebook also does so much for it. It keeps me in touch with my friends from back home in a way that never would have been possible before Fbook came along. I also talk to friends across the country and the world that I made during my experiences studying abroad. I network with other journalists such as Hannah Allam, the youngest Baghdad bureau chief ever at 25, who I interviewed at the SPJ Conference in August, and Saeed Ahmed, a CNN journalist who comments on my Facebook status when he's working at 3 a.m.
Right now I'm meeting the people I will work with in Teach for America in New Orleans. After I graduate, Facebook will be essential for keeping in touch with my "college" friends.
I was a little confused by the abstractness of the Charlene Li article, social networks are like air. We interact with people in a social context everyday. I do not want my digital social network to become like air. I like to control my digital social network because unlike in public, where I know who's watching me because I can see them and I know who will be where, everyone is everywhere on the Internet. I keep my Facebook very tame. No profanity, no alcohol, no cleavage, etc. You can't really get a sense of who I am through my Facebook page because I do not want people to get to know me through the Internet.
Over the past few weeks, reports have abounded on the Internet about the purchase of Facebook by an outside company such as Yahoo, which will force users to pay for the service. I absolutely love that Facebook users response to the suggestion that they pay for Facebook is the group "We won't pay for Facebook. We are gone if this happens."
I would like to delete my Facebook to give me back all the time I've wasted on it during college, but Facebook also does so much for it. It keeps me in touch with my friends from back home in a way that never would have been possible before Fbook came along. I also talk to friends across the country and the world that I made during my experiences studying abroad. I network with other journalists such as Hannah Allam, the youngest Baghdad bureau chief ever at 25, who I interviewed at the SPJ Conference in August, and Saeed Ahmed, a CNN journalist who comments on my Facebook status when he's working at 3 a.m.
Right now I'm meeting the people I will work with in Teach for America in New Orleans. After I graduate, Facebook will be essential for keeping in touch with my "college" friends.
I was a little confused by the abstractness of the Charlene Li article, social networks are like air. We interact with people in a social context everyday. I do not want my digital social network to become like air. I like to control my digital social network because unlike in public, where I know who's watching me because I can see them and I know who will be where, everyone is everywhere on the Internet. I keep my Facebook very tame. No profanity, no alcohol, no cleavage, etc. You can't really get a sense of who I am through my Facebook page because I do not want people to get to know me through the Internet.
Over the past few weeks, reports have abounded on the Internet about the purchase of Facebook by an outside company such as Yahoo, which will force users to pay for the service. I absolutely love that Facebook users response to the suggestion that they pay for Facebook is the group "We won't pay for Facebook. We are gone if this happens."
Friday, March 27, 2009
Uses and Gratifications
I use the print media to relax and reduce tension because I love reading the Economist and National Geographic whenever I have a little bit of free time. In terms of other media, I've basically been banned from watching television with my roommates because I always point out the inplausibility of the program whether it is Grey's Anatomy or CSI.
We would like to think that we are not media dependent but in being technological depending we don't realize how much the two are interconnected. While this is only slightly related, I had a minor breakdown when my Google documents weren't loading since my life exists in Google, which I would consider to be part of the media world to some extent.
We have a variety of media outlets available; therefore we would assume that we are less dependent on a single media. However, I realized that I often only visit the same media sites even though I'd like to expose myself to many different opinions and interpretations of the news. I am dependent on certain media Web sites because there is never enough time to read everything I want to.
I also really don't like to read conservative opinions in the news even though I know I should. I always laugh when I get e-mails from David Horowitz, a conservative author and activist, who I interviewed when I was a sophomore. Two years later, I'm still included on mass e-mail lists from the David Horowitz Freedom Center bashing the left and liberal media.
As news editor though I do tend to skim through the Catholic News Service to keep track of Catholic things that we might want to cover for the school newspaper, but I don't enjoy it. I do it because I have to for my job. I don't independently seek out this alternative news source.
The common experiences section of the Sunstein article made me think of the one thing almost everyone in my generation and now many in yours do share: Facebook.
In terms of media consumption, my newsfeed is filled with my conservative and liberal friends posting articles from different media outlets that they're read. Whether I disagree with them/would have sought them out myself/have already it, I still see them and sometimes read them.
People keep telling me journalists will just work online and everything will be fine. Yet while news consumption is actually UP meaning more people are reading more news people are reading it all online. This report from Paid Content shows that readers in the UK who report reading newspaper has also slightly increased while circulation is still down.
While the media has many different definitions, the mainstream media particularly the print medium that I love makes me more depressed with every news story I read particularly this one about the closure of the Chicago Tribune Beijing bureau, which I visited when I was in China last year.
We would like to think that we are not media dependent but in being technological depending we don't realize how much the two are interconnected. While this is only slightly related, I had a minor breakdown when my Google documents weren't loading since my life exists in Google, which I would consider to be part of the media world to some extent.
We have a variety of media outlets available; therefore we would assume that we are less dependent on a single media. However, I realized that I often only visit the same media sites even though I'd like to expose myself to many different opinions and interpretations of the news. I am dependent on certain media Web sites because there is never enough time to read everything I want to.
I also really don't like to read conservative opinions in the news even though I know I should. I always laugh when I get e-mails from David Horowitz, a conservative author and activist, who I interviewed when I was a sophomore. Two years later, I'm still included on mass e-mail lists from the David Horowitz Freedom Center bashing the left and liberal media.
As news editor though I do tend to skim through the Catholic News Service to keep track of Catholic things that we might want to cover for the school newspaper, but I don't enjoy it. I do it because I have to for my job. I don't independently seek out this alternative news source.
The common experiences section of the Sunstein article made me think of the one thing almost everyone in my generation and now many in yours do share: Facebook.
In terms of media consumption, my newsfeed is filled with my conservative and liberal friends posting articles from different media outlets that they're read. Whether I disagree with them/would have sought them out myself/have already it, I still see them and sometimes read them.
People keep telling me journalists will just work online and everything will be fine. Yet while news consumption is actually UP meaning more people are reading more news people are reading it all online. This report from Paid Content shows that readers in the UK who report reading newspaper has also slightly increased while circulation is still down.
While the media has many different definitions, the mainstream media particularly the print medium that I love makes me more depressed with every news story I read particularly this one about the closure of the Chicago Tribune Beijing bureau, which I visited when I was in China last year.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Agenda Setting
I will be honest and say that I voted for Barack Obama. The mainstream media also seemed to be behind the Democratic candidate even though they struggled to remain objective in their reporting I'm sure it was had to do so as the nation was being swept up in Obamamania.
Was it on the American media's "agenda" to get Barack Obama elected President of the United States? Maybe.
He is Number 44 on the List of Stuff Journalists Like.
The Media Research Center, which bills itself as America's Media Watchdog, was highly critical of the mainstream media during the 2008 presidential election for its praiseful coverage of the presidential candidate.
But if Barack Obama leads this country into an untimely demise (i.e. the economy doesn't recover, there's another terrorist attack or China calls in all those loans) will the media again be criticized for playing the cheerleader role like it was after the Iraq War went poorly?
The Phoenix advisor Bob Herguth and I have this discussion time and time again because I want to tell the story exactly how it happens and he always wants me to play up the most sensational parts. In my opinion, that would be agenda-setting because I'm choosing what's most important for my readers instead of giving them all the information and letting them decide.
I know what it means to pull the most interesting information into my lead to make sure my readers stay engaged in the story, however, I'm torn between playing up the most interesting parts to the point where everything that might be important to readers but I deemed unimportant doesn't even make it into the final draft.
It's a fine line that journalists walk, but if we don't walk that line then both the profession and our viewers lose out.
P.S. (I chose that video because even though I'm already critical of some of Barack Obama's policies it still gives me chills. When LeeAnn covered the event in Grant Park she was dying to write a firsthand report because she was having trouble not cheerleading because the emotion of the election was so high and meant so much you would have to be a robot not to feel it.)
Was it on the American media's "agenda" to get Barack Obama elected President of the United States? Maybe.
He is Number 44 on the List of Stuff Journalists Like.
The Media Research Center, which bills itself as America's Media Watchdog, was highly critical of the mainstream media during the 2008 presidential election for its praiseful coverage of the presidential candidate.
But if Barack Obama leads this country into an untimely demise (i.e. the economy doesn't recover, there's another terrorist attack or China calls in all those loans) will the media again be criticized for playing the cheerleader role like it was after the Iraq War went poorly?
The Phoenix advisor Bob Herguth and I have this discussion time and time again because I want to tell the story exactly how it happens and he always wants me to play up the most sensational parts. In my opinion, that would be agenda-setting because I'm choosing what's most important for my readers instead of giving them all the information and letting them decide.
I know what it means to pull the most interesting information into my lead to make sure my readers stay engaged in the story, however, I'm torn between playing up the most interesting parts to the point where everything that might be important to readers but I deemed unimportant doesn't even make it into the final draft.
It's a fine line that journalists walk, but if we don't walk that line then both the profession and our viewers lose out.
P.S. (I chose that video because even though I'm already critical of some of Barack Obama's policies it still gives me chills. When LeeAnn covered the event in Grant Park she was dying to write a firsthand report because she was having trouble not cheerleading because the emotion of the election was so high and meant so much you would have to be a robot not to feel it.)
Sunday, March 8, 2009
MTV
As a journalist, I understand the need for public relations, but as a field I'm completely opposed to ever joining it because I feel like it's fundamentally dishonest. After reading about Bernays' writings, I think even less of the field because it was founded upon making sure the aristocracy could still rule the masses they just had to make sure the masses understood what was for the common good. "The public claiming the birthright of democratic citizenship and social justice increasingly called upon institutions and people in power to justify themselves and their privileges."
This passage makes it seem like Bernays was actually opposed to a more justice and democratic world, which as an advocate of social justice I strongly disagree.
There's a friendly competition between the public relations and journalism majors. (At least between the chairs of the departments when it comes to recruiting students.) I don't have much interaction with many public relations majors because I'm so involved in journalism field. I think it's important for everyone to know how to market themselves to future employers, but I feel public relations just teaches you to frame whatever product, idea or person in a positive way because you are paid to do so.
If I were forced to go into public relations to pay off my insane student loans, I would have to do PR for a non-profit that had a mission that I actually believed in so that I wouldn't hate myself for selling out.
The PR people I've talked to actually seem to believe what they're telling me even when I can tell they're full of it, but that's their job I suppose.
The midriff section of the video was actually really depressing. I'm not that much older than a teenager and I still remember having to have this type of outfit and do these type of things to be cool, but I went school with the same 200 kids for seven years so all that kind of faded once we were sophomores in high school.
However, I do think that the public perception of young women and women's perceptions of what they should look like dramatically effect the extraordinary rate of eating disorders in this country. According to the National Eating Disorder Association, as many as 10 million women suffer from eating disorders. I can personally attest to an outrageous rate of eating disorders among my college friends.
Yet we are still celebrating the fabricated ideal image that is Barbie 50 years later. This idea has been packaged to women our entire lives. According to this CNN report, Barbie was originally based on a German doll that was a gag gift for men. The Lilli doll was a cartoon character who used sex to get what she wanted so the ideal image of a woman is actually based on a prostitute.
If I ever have children they won't play with Barbies because of the vast disparity between what woman actually look like and what marketing tells us they should look like. If Barbie were a real women, she'd be 7 feet tall, have FF breasts, and she would probably die from malnutrition because her waist is too small to fit the appropriate intestines needed to survive.
This passage makes it seem like Bernays was actually opposed to a more justice and democratic world, which as an advocate of social justice I strongly disagree.
There's a friendly competition between the public relations and journalism majors. (At least between the chairs of the departments when it comes to recruiting students.) I don't have much interaction with many public relations majors because I'm so involved in journalism field. I think it's important for everyone to know how to market themselves to future employers, but I feel public relations just teaches you to frame whatever product, idea or person in a positive way because you are paid to do so.
If I were forced to go into public relations to pay off my insane student loans, I would have to do PR for a non-profit that had a mission that I actually believed in so that I wouldn't hate myself for selling out.
The PR people I've talked to actually seem to believe what they're telling me even when I can tell they're full of it, but that's their job I suppose.
The midriff section of the video was actually really depressing. I'm not that much older than a teenager and I still remember having to have this type of outfit and do these type of things to be cool, but I went school with the same 200 kids for seven years so all that kind of faded once we were sophomores in high school.
However, I do think that the public perception of young women and women's perceptions of what they should look like dramatically effect the extraordinary rate of eating disorders in this country. According to the National Eating Disorder Association, as many as 10 million women suffer from eating disorders. I can personally attest to an outrageous rate of eating disorders among my college friends.
Yet we are still celebrating the fabricated ideal image that is Barbie 50 years later. This idea has been packaged to women our entire lives. According to this CNN report, Barbie was originally based on a German doll that was a gag gift for men. The Lilli doll was a cartoon character who used sex to get what she wanted so the ideal image of a woman is actually based on a prostitute.
If I ever have children they won't play with Barbies because of the vast disparity between what woman actually look like and what marketing tells us they should look like. If Barbie were a real women, she'd be 7 feet tall, have FF breasts, and she would probably die from malnutrition because her waist is too small to fit the appropriate intestines needed to survive.
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