Tough times for all

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

By: Callie McBroom

Most of the news attention today is focused on tough economic problems for the country. Issues with personal finances that have a limited impact have now come alongside wide-spread concerns of failing financial institutions and insurance companies. Failure is not, however, limited to only financial institutions. We are also seeing some of these failures within the newspaper industry.

We all know that print newspapers have taken a substantial hit in recent years. Print revenues have been in a continuous downward spiral for years. This can be attributed to newspapers bringing in billions of dollars less every year in advertising revenues. Many newspapers are taking their news to online sources in hopes of finding revenue to balance out print sources. But even these revenues, according to Erick Schonfeld, were down 2.4 percent in the last year.

This could be turned around for newspapers soon because of a new platform just introduced by Yahoo. ATP brings the opportunity to publishers to sell into Yahoo local inventory and then brings several newspaper properties to national advertisers.

Newspapers are the first to have access to the new technology, which allows them to target advertisers and sell audience as opposed to section. Many are hoping that these new abilities will bring in revenue and save the future of newspapers.

Read more...

A picture's worth a thousand words, but what about YouTube?

by Peter Merchlewitz

Following my last blogs' theme of censorship, I found myself once again at David Lee's jBlog, and this time, he's not talking about cropping sections of a photo from a Middle East reporter, but this time, he tackles the topic of removing footage from video.

Peter Horrocks, head of the BBC newsroom, posted on the BBC Editors' Blog, commenting on the YouTube clip showing gunman Matti Juhnai Saari, stating:

"Our competitors chose to run the full footage of Matti Juhnai Saari issuing his threat 'You will die next', followed by him firing towards the camera and the explosion of pieces of fruit across the lens as his bullets found their target. The BBC chose only to run the verbal threat, but not the firing or the splattered fruit."

Well, that's all well and good...but the fact of the matter is, you lied. As it turns out, the BBC did end up showing the YouTube clip in its entirety. However, when the six o' clock news came on, the BBC had ended up censoring the clip. Is there even a valid reason as to why the BBC would want to edit the showing of the clip?

First off, news is news, no matter how graphic or violent it is. At least have the newscaster comment on the graphic nature of the video clip, and then offer viewer discretion. Secondly, wouldn't the YouTube clip be considered a terrorist act? By definition, terrorism is the act of using violence and threats to intimidate or coerce the public. So by that means, wouldn't the BBC be fueling terrorism by editing their broadcast of the shooting clip during their news?

The clips were shown, Mr. Horrcks, so why lie?

Read more...

If you can't write, don't post

By Austin Bates

Recently, I stumbled across a small blog post that reminded me of one of my greatest pet peeves: incorrectly spelled, edited, punctuated, or otherwise written comments, forum, or blog posts. Of course, this also extends to news media and print media in general.

I'm a bit of an amateur blogger, as in I constantly post to discussion forums and group walls on Facebook. Some very contentious topics are brought up on occasion with some of the discussions, and though I may completely disagree with them, I respect their contributions, thoughts and opinions. That is, unless they misspell everything, have improper grammar, and no or limited punctuation.

Some of these people bring up good points, and frankly, they could have the secret to the meaning of life, but as far as I'm concerned, if they're not even willing to take an extra minute or two to spellcheck, use punctuation, and make sure that sentences read correctly, than I have to assume they're also that unwilling to check their facts and make logical arguments. Besides, as much as I want to take two minutes to read a 30 second post, I have more important things to do, including reading and responding to the posts of people who care about presenting a proper argument and have the decency to write correctly.

The same goes for professional print media. I can understand a simple word misspelling every 200 words or so, or an incorrect word-swap (for example, "their" instead of "there"), but if the publication is routinely using incorrect sentence structures, fallacies in their arguments, have dozens of words misspelled, and generally make the publication harder to read than it should be, I begin seriously questioning the legitimacy of the publication.

In terms of a newspaper, one must consider that there are supposed to be a slew of people looking over and working on one article, and if ALL of those people missed something, that calls into question their dedication to accuracy and just how factual their facts are. And a book with major errors is even more suspect, because of any lack of urgency or deadlines that must be met (in most cases).

Words are things that, once said or written, cannot be withdrawn or redone or corrected. It seems only logical then that one take even more caution with what one says and writes before it gets sent to the public. Making an incorrect product of manufacturing is one thing, but spouting a bunch of non-sense and typographically filled sentences damages, or even destroys, your reputation, and a reputation is not something easily repaired or rebuilt.

Besides, with all this modern technology, including spell-check, you would think that people would be better than ever at writing. That seems not to be the case, though. In the end, all I ask is that if you're going to post a response to what I, or anyone else, has to say, do yourself a favor, and those reading your response, and take time to spell and write it correctly. Then I'll take what you have to say more seriously.

Read more...

  © Blogger template On The Road by Ourblogtemplates.com 2009

Back to TOP