Palin preps for debate

By:  Erin Floro

Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin met with world leaders on Tuesday, September 23.  These included Afghan President Karzai, Colombian President Uribe, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.  She was preparing herself for the upcoming debate next week with the Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden.

At least five U.S. news networks protested the fact that she would not let them sit in on the meetings.  She also refused to take any questions from journalists.  In meeting with these dignitaries, Palin was trying to prove that she is comfortable and can handle herself in these situations dealing with foreign policy.

The Democrats are trying to draw attention to her inexperience in foreign relations.  However the Republicans defend Palin, that she is no different than Reagan and Clinton who also prepped themselves with international leaders.  

Palin herself, even though she is being attacked for lack of knowledge in international affairs, feels confident that she is ready for the job of Vice President.

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Chrysler and GM's eco-friendly investments don't look promising

By: Kathryn Lisk

As gas prices continue to soar, the features people seek in a new car have shifted immensely. People care less about the convenience of SUVs and more about gas mileage. Americans continue to buy into the foreign car industry because the Toyota Prius simply can't be beat by any American car. 

It seems  Chrysler is ready to stand up to the challenge. They have designed vehicles that still have the convenience of an SUV or the luxury of a sports car without the gas price. Tom LaSorta, president for Chrysler, unveiled their plan to release three electric cars, including one resembling their current mini van, a four-door Jeep Wrangler, and a Dodge sports car by 2010 that will run exclusively on a lithium-ion battery.

Chrysler is not the first company to bring these ideas to the table. General Motors has already released information on the Chevy Volt, which is also scheduled for 2010 and will run exclusively on battery, as well.

 Chrysler and GM are both praying that releasing eco-friendly vehicles will be exactly what the public has been waiting for. But is it?

The Chevy Volt is currently priced around $40,000, which is a little expensive for a family looking to save money from gas prices. Plus, most cars within this price range are faster and obviously don't need to be charged every 400 miles. This makes long road trips inefficient and difficult. 

Not to mention that neither company has formally contracted someone to produce the lithium-ion batteries. Producing this product on a large scale has never been done before and will be a challenge for either corporation to find someone who can do it by 2010. 

I was very happy to see that American car companies were trying to go green, but I don't think 2010 will be a shifting point for GM or Chrysler. It is definitely a step in the right direction, but it looks as though America hasn't found the answer to the energy crisis yet.

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Fake news story

By: Jessica Hamell

Writers from the Los Angeles Times are suing ex-subscribers because they “failed to appreciate our bodacious journalism and recklessly canceled their subscriptions.” they are suing 425,000 of the ex-subscribers.

A piece of the lawsuit states, “By recklessly canceling their subscriptions, these morons have caused irreparable harm to the newspaper, breached their civic duty to stay fully informed, and missed some totally awesome articles by Pulitzer Prize-winning auto columnist Dan Neil, as well as money-saving Sunday coupons that could easily offset the subscription price.”

It isn’t fair to sue these people because they don’t know for sure what their reason for cancelling was. You can’t prove that every one of those 425,000 people cancelled just because they didn’t appreciate the writing.

Who would think of suing someone for not wanting to read your newspaper? If you have 425,000 people cancel their subscriptions you must be doing something wrong.

The lawsuit is seeking damages of $2.99 a week.

I am pretty sure this is a fake story because is comes from The Fake L.A. Times Web page. This somewhat shows that you can’t believe everything that is written.

This Web page has established itself as untrustworthy by the stories it writes which are just to amuse the readers.

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Journalist's Display of Tact Refreshing

By: Sarah Harl

Over the last few weeks, it has been no secret that the economy has encountered its most difficult stage since the Great Depression. It has caused a financial crisis of epic proportions. But one place where you won't find words of doom and despair is the printed pages of a newspaper.

Not wanting to cause panic or rash decisions by readers, journalists at many newspapers across the country have refrained from using language that would cause panic among their readers--words such as "crash" or "failure".

This is not to say that journalists are not accurately and harshly reporting on the shortcomings of many of the financial institutions in the US. Nor are they downplaying the current economic status of the country.

Instead, many journalists have consented to the fact that they are not, in fact, financial experts, and realizing the weight of some of the articles they write with everyday Americans.

It is the job of a journalist strictly to report the news and what is happening. Not to convince people to move around their money or pull out of the stock market. That job belongs to professionals who are frantically working to minimize the damage of this economic downfall.

A display of journalists remembering what their job is, as opposed to trying to offer advice they have no expertise in giving is refreshing, and will help to keep panic to a minimum. And if panic is kept to a minimum, we will be able to recover from this period of time hopefully on slightly worse for the wear.

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How old are you again?

By: Jessica Hartgers

A 37 year old woman has been arrested for allegedly having sex with a 15 year old boy. Shannon Rew of Indianola was turned into the police by her mother who was fed up with the whole situation, later Rew admitted to having romantic feelings for the boy.

Rew is being charged with 12 counts of third-degree sex abuse after having a sexual relationship with the boy that lasted approximately two months. Rew is also being charged with dissemination and exhibition of obscene material to minors and admitting minors to premises where obscene material is exhibited.

The day after the Indianola police got the call from Rew's mother, the police and local news crews showed up at Rew's place of work which happens to be a day care in Indianola. In the background of several interviews held at the day care there are children playing outside on the playground. The news crews should have chosen a different location to use as a background for their interviews, young innocent children should not have been in the news at all.

In fact, the local news stations should not have even shown up at the day care. The 15 year old boy Rew was having sexual relations with was in no way connected to the day care, yet the journalists made it seem that way.

News reporters and journalists held out this major detail until the very end of the story to keep the viewers attention and to keep them tuned into their channel. The way the journalist reported this story on television was a sneaky way around the truth.

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Gay news is great news

By: Kayla Miller

Of course, we all have a tendency to make sure we are up-to-date with the latest news of the celebrities. Especially those who are gay. I mean, of course, it is juicy gossip when you hear that Clay Aiken came "out of the closet" to People Magazine.

I can hear it already, friend to friend, "Did you know that Clay Aiken is gay and has a baby?" Most people had a clue about his sexuality way back from when he won American Idol. But now it is finally real news when it comes out into the public and makes the topic of conversations.

How does the media know what kind of stories bring in viewers? Do they ever think that they are invading Aiken's space? Well, by the looks of it, Aiken wanted people to know by saying, "I cannot raise a child to lie or hide things." And according to People Magazine, they wanted the world to know, too, because of course... gay news is great news.

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Wall Street for dummies

By: Gabe Gilson

There are many newspapers out there for a college student to read. Of course, any student would like to read the local student published paper, or maybe the city run paper. As a college student, I cannot be sure how another student my age could read The Wall Street Journal for more than five minutes.

Over the past few weeks, I have tried and tried to keep up with the newspaper. It seems as if one would have to have multiple degrees from Harvard or Yale just to understand the topics of some of the articles.

And while not everything is that confusing, inapprehensive and downright befuddling, how can a newspaper come out without even a sports section? Is this not unconstitutional? Yes, this may be the business man’s paper but, would you not want to know a few scores here and there?

U.S.A. Today has become my favorite nationally published newspaper. When reading this particular publication, one can find out everything you ever needed to know in the sporting world as well as the news about the $100 billion tax break passed by the Senate, or about Clay Aiken coming out of the closet, or even information about business that The Wall Street Journal could provide.

So here is my proposal to The Wall Street Journal: make a daily edition of the paper entitled The Wall Street Journal for dummies. This is why it would work. The writers that would be hired could be just people that got C’s in college rather than A’s. The reading audience would be much larger because America has become stupid (watch Idiocracy anybody that argues). There could be an entire section that defines those hard vocabulary words in the big boy Wall Street Journal
of that day.

So why not Wall Street? Why not make my day and publish a newspaper for those who were not the valedictorians of their respective high schools. Hell, why not a paper for those who do not have to use spell checker to spell valedictorian? Just a thought.

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Blogs are media

By: Alex Jones

Blogs are becoming more popular among today's Web-surfers. 77.7 million people in the U.S. visit blogs each day and  Along almost 1 million posts per day are made. Blogs are even being compared in relevancy to the New York Times. 

With the growing number of viewers, blogs are slowly being transformed into a source of media. They are providing lots of people with information that is credible for them. Not only is blogging a way to get information to a large audience it can also be a way of earning an income. 

Attract 100,000 viewers and you could be looking at a $75,000 paycheck per year. Blogging is a simple and effective way to get your points heard. You no longer have to be a serious journalist to have people listen to your opinions, perhaps why blogging is so popular? 

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First Amendment Doesn't Protect Poor Choices

By: Kelsey Knutson 

According to FOX news an 11-year-old boy was suspended from school after he refused to take off an anti-Obama shirt. Daxx Dalton walked into school Monday sporting his "red, white, and blue," however he did so in tasteless fashion.

Dalton was given the option of turning his shirt inside-out or being suspended from school - the 5th grader chose to be suspended. 

The FOX article suggests how Dalton's father was upset about his son being suspended, and how Dalton and his father both agree that they are taking away his right to freedom of speech.  Freedom of speech or not, how in the world does any parent allow their child to leave for school in a shirt like that?

Over the course of time the media has gotten away with outrageous print and accusations towards people in society. Our culture as changed and allowed people (even fifth graders) to test the boundaries and limits set up in society that are actually set in place to protect them. The "freedom of the press" and therefore "freedom of speech" issues have trickled down into our everyday lives.

We now have parents who think it's okay to let their kids go to school with homemade t-shirts bashing a particular individual - and then say that it is considered "patriotic."

Where are the parents, where are the rules, and where is the respect? 

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What we do for a story

By Kellie Green

Governor Sarah Palin has been big news ever since Senator John McCain named her his Vice President running mate. The media keeps coming up with more news about her for citizens to read. However, when does it just become to much?

I know last week in my blog I talked about how I wanted more. Now I am contradicting myself. In going over an article in Journalism.org , I found an interesting story on Governor Palin. It was talking about Palin's religious views and how they can and might affect the votes.

We have heard almost anything and everything about Governor Palin but the media keeps coming up with more. I am not a support of Governor Sarah Palin but I still don't think that she should have things, like their religious views, strung out through the papers.

In the article, it talked about how a journalist reported in World Magazine about Palins views on religion and how she expresses them. Religion is a big thing in our country but is it what makes a person who they are?

Seeing all the stories being posted about Governor Palin I thought this was the most interesting because it is basically saying that her religion is what is going to swing people's votes. Which may be true. However, shouldn't our society be focusing on what she is wanting to change or do if she holds office.

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New change of topic

By: Lexie Hagerty

In the campaign coverage index on Journalism.org, there was an article about how economics has become the new topic for the campaign. The article focuses on how it took a meltdown on Wall Street for anyone to notice that the candidate's views and ideas to help the economy might make or break their campaign.

I personally love the article and am glad someone has finally pointed out that the elections are getting off track.

It is not necessarily society's fault, however. Society learns of the elections through the media. The campaign article said that the Wall Street story is only the second time this year that an event other than the compaign emerged to the no. 1 topic of the week.

Thus, the media should quit focusing on Barack Obama's race and Sarah Palin's sex and instead inform our nation about important issues like the economy and the financial crisis that could take place.

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