Take a stand!

The story I just read was very eye opening. I have always seen the media as more of a "you tell me what I want to know" sort of business. After reading "Taking a Stand" I get the feeling alot of what I always thought was ligitimate news is actually a well placed PR stunt. Many news agencies are simply broadcasting a pre-determined message, perhaps not presenting all the sides needed to make a fully informed case. Never have I thought about the power the media holds in this light. The News media could have shed more light on the racial issues of hurricane Katrina, and they didn't, for the most part the Media has been all about attacking the already wounded.

A press that is not informing the people for the public's sake, and instead informing the people for a corporate agenda is not a press I want to be apart of. Perhaps that is why the current infrastructure of the news media as we know it is changing.

Newspapers cover ordinary bland stories for most everyday of the week,Television news covers the same 6 stories for three days at a time, but after reading "Take A Stand" I have come to realize that our media is failing us. The everyday stories should be reduced, and filled with more stories like this one, A story about a homeless man that died at the bottom of an Elevator shaft. The story goes on to highlight the run down streets of Detroit, and how one man who owns many of these buildings should be held accountable. Journalism like that is what people need, journalism that gets things accomplished.

The truth is we will always need journalism, and in today's world of information, we will always need a credible source to lean on. Citizen journalism is not the answer to get the kind of journalism we need, but it is the best thing we have to fighting the one way street news that we get now.

Some Stories shouldn't all be commented.

I recently Read what Trisha Hackman wrote in her blog about the transition to electronic media. In particular I thought about what she said about the "Interaction" with digital media, and I realized I agree with her in reguards to people keeping comments to themselves Recently somone in my city was murdered and it made the local news and it's website. Shortly after the story was posted a link was posted that showed a link to the alleged murder's facebook. Suddenly his facebook, which was there for his kids to see, was filled with all kinds of hate mail, telling him to "Go to hell" and all sorts of nasty things. In today's version of the media, we are allowing people to not only interact with the writer of the story, but we are allowing them to interact with those involved in the news. This could impact everything, including the trial and lives of the rest of the victims family.

Mike O'hara's "voice"

It took me a while to pick a "voice" that I really liked. My passion is sports, so i dove into my local sports page to search for a voice who I really enjoy, and really would like to imitate. I started with perhaps the most popular sports journalist "Mitch Albom", after up on a couple of his columns I found that I actually do not like the way he wrote sports. When reading his sports article I felt like I was reading one from someone with minimum depth of knowledge about our local teams. Perhaps the writer with the Voice I most related with is Mike O'hara with the Detroit News. He isn't too optimistic, and he isn't a pessimist either. This is impresssive, because after so many years of covering a team like the Detroit Lions, you might think he had nothing but bad to say about the team.

How does the online news environment blur the distinction between news and information? Logan mentions Northwestern’s Rich Gordon, who says that for citizen-journalism to be effective, the enterprise needs a “citizen-editor.” What is the role of the citizen editor? Do you agree with Gordon here? Why or why not?

The online news environment makes the distiction between news and information a heck of a line to find. There is alot of information out on the web, but only a small fraction of that information is news. News is information that is relavent to a large group of people, and usually has some sort of time restraint on it. Information can be presnted in the news, but it is only news when it is timely and relevant.

The role of the the citizen editor should be to guide a citizen jounralist in the direction of what is important.Part of what blurs the line from newa and information is the person who is presenting it. most people will accept it as news when they read it from a credible sourse, like if broke a story on this blog, it would basically be information, until you could confirm it.

Newspapers lose to Digital Media

Newspapers rarely get to break a news story anymore, and most websites beat the cable news channels to the punch. Digital journalism allows for Reports to start out vague and general, and progress to a better put together story. Newspapers and TV cable are at a disadvantage because they generally can only put together stories when an ample amount of detail and information is available. Newspapers many times have to wait for the next day, or even two days later if it is late breaking, before being able to address a story! The physical newspaper looses a lot of ground to it’s online counterpart, Ad revenue has shifted to the internet, and subscription to the printed paper has gone way down. People are now able to go and see the news they want, when they want, without having to flip pages, fold the paper, or in most cases pay.

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Sun, 4 Oct 2009 01:20:07 GMT
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Sun, 4 Oct 2009 01:20:07 GMT

As a Journalism major I have always wondered how the future of news would be affected. I read "No Free Lunch" The article was brief, but what i found most interesting is that the writer of the article took time to respond to the comments. Prior to digital journalism there was only one way to express your thouhgts about an article, and that was the good ole'm fashioned letter to the editor. Which involved writing the letter, putting it into an envelope, having to lick that nasty glue, buy a stamp, wait for the mailman to pick it up, then wait a few days and hope that your letter to the editor was addressed in the weekend, or next edition of the paper. Now you can simply write your thought, and only have to wait for maybe 25 minutes, and get a response. I know this doesn't, address the actual content of "No Free Lunch" but I think it may be an overlooked benefit of a new age of digital media.