Thursday, November 14, 2013

Response to Sabrina's Blog

http://sabrina-carlisle.blogspot.com/2013/11/media.html

Sabrina, for the project, followed the same channel as I did (WLKY32). IN this post, we both seemed to agree on the fact that WLKY simply reports too many crime stories. They need to free up some space for more important things in the news, things that more directly affect the general population. Sometimes I feel somewhat heartless for saying things like this, and I don't want it to sound like these crime stories don't matter. Of course they matter- to the parties and the families of the parties involved, to the witnesses, even to any legal workers involved. When I or someone else says they don't matter, we only mean that they aren't importtant to the general public.

Right Now on WLKY

http://www.wlky.com/news/local-news

I haven't watched WLKY since the project was over, so I thought that I'd go check the website and see what the local news page looked like. What I found was a fairly even mix of relevant and irrelevant stories. The first story was about an investigation WLKY did on social networks. This, I think, is very newsworthy because in this day and age everyone is on social media, be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or something less popular. However, the next few stories were somewhat small crime stories (a child molestation and a follow up on the baby found in the Kohl's bathroom), which are only there, in my opinion, because the population seems to have a sick fascination with crime stories. These two slots should be taken up by something more newsworthy.

What comes next?

In class one day this six weeks, we discussed the Internet. A fact that has come up in many lectures about different mass media in class is that every medium seems to gain popularity fast, and then have its downfall. It happened with magazines, radio, and even television. Currently, the medium of choice is the Internet, and I have to ask myself, does it suffer the same fate? Will we eventually grow tired of it? At the moment, it seems not, as the Internet is used daily by most people and that continues to be the case. Another point to raise is that the Internet contains all other forms of media. It's possible to read books, magazines, and newspapers, you can watch television and movies, you can even download music. Because the Internet can do all of this, will it overtake even the most demassified of other media? And if not, if the Internet is to be replaced, I cannot fathom what comes next. It's very hard for me to imagine something even more modern and spectacular for media than the Internet.

Classmate Response- Hannah and Movies

http://hannahtsai01.blogspot.com/2013/11/response-to-class-lecture.html

Above is a link to my classmate Hannah's blog post about movies. She brought up some very interesting points. It's crazy to me, as well as to her, to think that movies have been around for 100 years. The technology has morphed so much, from just one camera and a tiny screen to huge, fancy silver screens and many intricate cameras. I really like going to the movies, and so I hope that movie theaters will be around for along time. There's no experience in the world like going to the movies with my friends or family.

WLKY Local News

     For my local news station, I viewed WLKY over these six weeks. For the most part, they did an okay job in reporting local news, which is their priority. However, there were some concerning things that I noticed while watching. For one, WLKY seems to really like their crime stories. I mean, there was a GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN in the middle of everything that started on October 1, and their lead story for October 2 was a local murder (http://www.wlky.com/news/local-news/kentucky-news/kentucky-supreme-court-appoints-special-judge-in-dishon-case/-/9718420/22574592/-/16jm9pz/-/index.html), presumably because it made for better TV.This is disappointing.
     Also while watching WLKY, I realized that TV news is more a part of my life than I anticipated. To be honest, I don't watch much television, I don't really have the time. But this project made me understand that sometimes sitting down to watch the news is on of the most important things you can do. After all, it's always a good idea to be very aware of the world around you.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Media Critique 26 September

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/25/world/gallery/china-baby-pandas-chengdu/index.html?hpt=hp_bn2

The article above is on cnn.com's world homepage. This article violates the principle of making the important interesting. While this story might be of interest to some people, it isn't important to a large population and it isn't very significant. For example, the other stories on the world homepage are about Syria and the massacre in Kenya. These stories affect the whole world in a more significant way than artificially-bred pandas. Certainly, pandas are interesting, but are they important? Not really. A way to improve the problem is to have journalists take a more important story and put it on the front page.

Class Response 26 August

The very first lecture we had in J1 was about the nine principles and seven yardsticks of journalism. I wasn't all too surprised at what these are, to me they seemed common sense. The one thing I didn't really expect is that out of all of the principles, watchdog is considered the most important. I didn't think about how someone has to keep the government in check, and I suppose journalists really are the best choice because of all the access they have to the government and people of power.

Response to Class 9 September

In class on the ninth we learned about newspapers and John Peter Zenger’s famous court case. I think that the ruling they made set the foundation for journalism. Imagine how many famous cases, such as Watergate or Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, might’ve been written off if the people involved had been able to sue the journalists for libel or slander and make the case go away! I feel like the idea that the truth is the ultimate defense should be applied more in real life.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Response to Grayson's Blog

http://graysonsmit.blogspot.com
On his blog, Grayson has an entry talking about how magazines played a role in "establishing our national identity." For one, I thought that was a really nice way to word it, but also I agree profusely. I never really thought about the history of magazines or how they started out very generalized. I guess I always thought, since there are so many different magazines out there, that they started out targeted to niche audiences. Grayson did a really good job with wording his entry.

Response to Camille's Blog

http://snazzysnazzgs.blogspot.com/2013/09/class-response-mass-communication.html
The link above will lead you to Camille's blog entry about the mass communication lecture. In her entry she points out how really cool mass comm actually is, when you think about it. I thought that her response was really well written and I agreed with my of the points she made. The SETDI process is complicated but it's really cool to think how it all works together to get information out there. Anyways, I thought Camille did a spot on job with her class response.

Response to Class 19 September

So we talked about recorded music in class on the nineteenth. This was really interesting to me personally because I'm a big music person and I constantly have my headphones in, listening to (recorded, of course) music!I never really thought of my iPod being used for mass communication before, but as we talked through things, they started to make sense. Before J1 my idea of "mass media" was newspapers and magazines and the like, and recordings never really crossed my mind. But you often do hear people talk about how music can carry messages. Also, when an artist or band releases a new album, they don't get immediate feedback, and you have to use technology to listen to it, whether that technology is something modern like an iPod or something a bit outdated but as an 8-track. So after Mr. Miller talked class through it and I was able to think some about it, recorded music looked more and more like a mass medium to me.

Response to Class 5 September

In class on September 5, we discussed the medium of books. A lot of what we talked about had to do with Johann Gutenberg and how his invention, the printing press, affected society. Just sitting back and reflecting, I realized how different life would truly be with out it. We'd probably be stuck back in the age of the Roman Catholic Church and society would be really unknowledgeable. I almost certainly wouldn't be here writing this now, because if we didn't have the ability to mass produce physical books and things then we most definitely wouldn't be able to mass produce virtual ones. I doubt that we'd even have the technology that we have now. I'm really glad that Gutenberg came up with this truly life-changing invention!