Sharing Stories?

by: Jessica Hamell
Isn’t the point of having three different news papers to compete against each other? The Miami Herald, the Sun-Sentinel and The Palm Beach Post announced that they were going to start sharing basic news stories. This kind of threw me off, three different papers would run the same story with the same facts. The good thing about not sharing stories is that each paper would have different facts and information to give the readers. Each paper also has a different demographic to please so they should write there stories differently.
The editors said they would still “preserve” the competition between the three papers but I don’t get how that would be possible. I understand that each paper would still have different stories but the articles about what was going on around their area would be the same.
Two of the Three papers I think would lose business just for the simple fact why buy three different papers when you can read the same story in all of them and still have others that catch your eye. Think about it for a second, why share stories?

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A Career in Journalism? Nah...too hard!!!

By: Lexie Hagerty

After reading the article about the sports columnist who quit due to the decrease in newspaper sales, it is becoming obvious that the way in which are news is being reported is changing. Instead of newspapers, information is being reported through cell phones, the Internet, and television. Many articles have been published about drops in newspaper advertisements. Even larger newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times are losing profit due to the decrease in advertising sales. In reaction to this decrease, journalists are losing their jobs and the publishing companies are selling assets. So, basically one would have to have the skills to publish his or her work online to succeed in the journalism world.

I was previously interested in a journalistic career until I interned at Meredith Corporation in Des Moines, Iowa. The majority of the employees worked for the web journalism rather than the normal print magazine journalism. Without proper education and computer skills, it would be very hard to make a career in magazine journalism. Therefore, besides the stress of finding a story and making it interesting to readers, I would also have to have the skills to display it online. Also, it still wouldn't be much of a career after all of this work, since anyone today can publish his or her work online. Basically, the story I worked so hard to write and publish has to compete with millions of others around the world! This is not an easy job to succeed in. With those odds, I might as well take my chances in professional volleyball!

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When is it considered crossing the line?

By LIZ TJADEN

The Summer Olympic Games. It’s every athlete’s dream for a chance to prove to themselves, their country, and their competition that they are the best. But is it more than that? Paul Farhi from the Washington Post has been enjoying the Olympic Games like any other fan but feels like we are missing out on the bigger stories around Beijing and the Games. He talks with Brooke Gladstone from On the Media.

This sparked an interest in me, not only because of my recent trip to China and Beijing, but also because that is how I felt while watching the games this past summer. Where were the stories of the people and their society, the pollution, and protests that have surrounded the Games? I know from experience that China is quick to cover up what they don’t want other people, especially people from other countries, to see. The government has a vision of China that they want to portray to others and they try their hardest to cover up the poverty, parts of their history, and anything that makes them stand out from others.

I noticed that NBC had little segments on the Great Wall, Three Gorges Dam, and the Forbidden City. But they were so small and insignificant. Farhi points out the spot that NBC did on the Three Gorges Dam. The problem with it was that it was only a few seconds long and failed to mention the 1.5 million people who were kicked out of their homes and forced to live on the countryside.

One could argue that the Olympics aren’t for news. They are for the athletes and the games themselves. But I think one of the great things about the Olympics, no matter what country, is that it gives people a chance to peak into a culture that they wouldn’t normally get to see without going there. Even during the cycling races, when the athletes are competing, they were biking through Beijing towards the Great Wall. I thought it was cool to just see the city and part of the countryside in the background of the race. Actually, I will be honest, it was more interesting than the race itself.

If NBC had taken this opportunity to not only show the games but also use it from an educational standpoint, I think a lot more people would have benefited from it. They didn’t need to bash China or point out everything that was wrong but a little more hard headed reporting wouldn’t have hurt either.

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