Jo(hn)urnalism

In a recent article written by Wave3 news, journalists, Sarah Jackson, and Sara Revest covered a story on a recent incident in which an officer from LMPD was exposed to suspected drugs during a traffic stop. The Officers were searching a woman's car when one was exposed to needles possibly containing a mix of drugs. The officer was then given medical assistance and the woman's bond is set for twenty-five thousand dollars. Now while this story may be interesting to some, it completely violates the Journalistic yardstick of   Newsworthiness. The basic guidelines for something to qualify as newsworthy are that it must affect a lot of people for a long time. And in this case, although it did affect those involved with the situation, it does not have any lasting impact on the community whatsoever.  The journalists in this case simply made something they saw as dramatic and made it into a story. This wasn't just any article though, it was featured as ...

Christeen's Original Post When I read Christeen's blog entry about mass communication in the modern world, I really understood what what she was saying. Christeen stated that " You don't have to be an award winning author or director to get a message across." This was a statement I could understand and made sense for me. In our new era of technological advancements, we all have access to the Internet. To agree again with Christeen, to have access to an Internet connection is to have a massive amount of power right at your finger tips. Even I have the ability to mass communicate. In fact, I'm doing it right now. As I type this blog about one of my high school classmates entries for our first real project of our freshman year, it's being saved for anyone who can get to the Internet to see for years and years to come. Although it may seem unlikely, this very blog post has the potential to reach hundreds, thousands, even millions of people. It's crazy t...

Liz's Original Post When I read Liz's post, I totally agreed with what she had to say. I believe that what happened to Botham Jean is completely inexcusable. I also believe that this was another example of police using their power and authority to target unarmed, black men. I agree with Liz that it would be absolutely terrifying to be in his situation. He was doing absolutely nothing wrong. The fault of this crime belongs on the shoulders of the Dallas police officer, Amber Guyger. It's a disturbing and contradictory thought. Police are meant to be the watchdogs and protectors of our communities. They're meant to keep us safe. It's in their job description. So why would someone, who should be the most trained member of our society in gun safety, be so reckless. How come she didn't see the moved furniture? How didn't she see the doormat? Why was her gun her first reaction? It is because of tragedies like this, that men, women, and children of color see th...

In class today, we learned about the ancient forms of printing. We discussed the Mesopotamian form of stamping important documents, the Roman screw press, the wood block method from the Han Dynasty and the Egyptians, the first ever mobile type press created in China, and the Gutenberg created in Germany. When we were talking about the Gutenberg and how its creation made printing the bible much easier,  I was very interested in the fact that the top tier of the social pyramid disagreed with the creation of the press. Because only the rich, powerful, and influential could even comprehend purchasing a bible at the time, what they said of the bible was the truth to those who could not afford it. With this power, these people could tell the lower class anything, and pass it off as "God's Word." With the creation of the Gutenberg printing press though, it made writing these bibles cheaper,more efficient, and better for the people, as it was written in their own language, Germa...

Something that I was really excited for when I first started Mr. Miller's class was the quizzes. More specifically, the current events quizzes. Initially, I thought of myself as a proficient news watcher. I believed that I took in a large amount of new from the television, NPR, and occasionally, news paper like the New York Times. But what I've come to realize is that by the standards of Mr. Miller's class, I'm definitely not as active in my news comprehension skills as I once thought. For the first quiz, I got a great score of seven out of seven. It might no have had the extra three points that I wanted, but for the first quiz, I was pretty proud of myself. I thought everything to be okay. That was until I took the most recent current events quiz. I scored a four out of seven. Pitiful. How did I manage that? I thought that I knew the news of the day to a deeper degree. It appears now that I have to really be an active listener and reader. I think my strong suit is wa...

For this blog post, I decided to take it back to the very beginning of school. To our discussion of what makes a good journalist. When we discussed what makes a good journalist and good journalism, the class was asked to share out what we believed the aspects of good journalism to be. Among the many standards, the quality of unbiased  was presented. This aspect stuck with me and made me think deeper about what it entails from a journalistic point of view. Of course it makes since. We as people appreciate our new and media to be completely objective. We want the facts with one hundred percent certainty that they haven't been given to us with a kind of filter on them. But i think it's important to realize just how biased we as humans are. No matter if we'd like to admit it or not, everyone has biases. Even journalists. Which means that a lot of the things that you'll find out in the media is definitely biased. Whether it's that of the writer or the company overlook...

In Mr. Miller's class, we discussed conglomeration and the pro's and con's of it. At first, I honestly hadn't thought that deeply into giant corporations such as The Walt Disney Company or AT&T. But because of our discussion in class, its helped me realize more about the affect of conglomerates. What I had thought was obvious before class was that these huge corporations has a massive impact on what we as a society think, believe, and hold true. But what I thought more about after the class is what information these conglomerates could be feeding us. When these big companies own dozens or even hundreds of smaller companies, they have the ability and the means to display their own message in whatever way possible. These messages could be beneficial to the public, or completely against the people's best interests. But no matter the content of these messages, they have the full potential to control the public's views and opinions. Because of this I see congl...