Woman journalist has come a long way

By: Erin Floro

Boston University Communications professor, Caryl Rivers was recently awarded the Society of Professional Journalists Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement honor.  She began her journalism career 40 years ago as a sports reporter, which was unusual because most assignments were given to males to cover athletes.

Her notable career has spanned over four decades.  She has gone from interviewing local swimmers and baseball players to attending press conferences with important political figures such as FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

Rivers is now a role model for potential female journalists.  As a Washington newspaper correspondent she has covered such issues as, the civil rights movement, the Kennedy presidency, and Vietnam.  She has written 14 books and continues to contribute to major newspapers in the United States.  While appearing as a panelist on a Boston television program, she focused on discrimination in the media against women.

She feels that she is paving the way for her students in the field of journalism, especially women.  By looking at her accomplishments, she hopes that they are inspired that anything is possible.

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Risky business

By: Jessica Hartgers

The McCain campaign is in attack mode and taking out all aggression on Obama and the democrats.

Opinions of McCain have started to drop as the republican presidential nominee has taken a negative tone and is throwing personal attacks in the direction of Obama. As a result, Obama looks to have a clear lead in the recent polls, whereas before the margin was smaller.

With three weeks to the upcoming election the topic is on every one's minds. Why would McCain use such tactics this close to election day? The McCain campaign is at an all time low and it is critical that they recover from this drop.

McCain's intentions were to use the personal attacks to decrease Obama's rankings, however they were viewed to the public as "low blows" and resulted the opposite for McCain. Majority of voters think that McCain has spent too much time attacking Obama in a time that he needs to be explaining his plan of action for presidency.

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Journalistic waste

By: Gabe Gilson

College students these days have too much time on their hands. I know, anybody reading this probably thinks it was written by a crazy guy who was bored at the time but it is true.

In preparations for writing this blog entry, I sat down at the computer and looked at the Des Moines Register for inspiration. After flipping through the fifth section, the Iowa Life, I found a section at the top for an article online about popular pet names. Oh buddy! Time to waste some more time!

I see the advertisements for dogs and click on something entitled English Bulldogs for $500. Being a lover of these ugly mutts, I had to check this out. Immediately after reading through this I realize, wow, I have a blog to write. I better go somewhere else to look for blogging inspiration.

So after exiting out of the tabs that had facebook, my Simpson e-mail, McDonalds Monopoly and espn.com, I looked back to the Register’s homepage. I clicked around there for awhile reading about Phillip Bates quitting the Cyclones, and some stuff about the local elections. I decided that nothing here was worth putting inside blog that had to be journalism related.

Of course, the place where news happens is the New York Times. I had to go look at their website. I read a little about McCain attacking Obama then saw an advertisement for my credit score. With me being the curious cat that I am, I had to spend twenty-five minutes looking that up only to learn absolutely nothing at all.

With all the wasted time that I spent doing absolutely nothing, I have learned something: This is only going to get worse if I was to become journalist. Journalists are always doing research with their stories and if I was to be in this field, I would really have to buckle down more when that time came.

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Protecting its readers

By Kellie Green

What should the media post and what should they not post? On editorswebblog.org I came across a blog referring to a news paper in Scotland that publishes photos of the worst criminals within their area.

I found this really interesting because I think that the media should print this information so that their citizens know about dangers that may be lurking in their area.

In the newspaper, News and Star ,it has a gallery of photos of these criminals. It is a lot like how the Des Moines Register puts in a list of Iowa sex offenders. It shows photos of the criminals, their name and what they did.

It helps keep people aware of what is going on in their area. I think that allowing these in newspapers is very important but at the same time it makes me wonder how far can media go with this.

What if the newspapers start publishing everyone, that gets arrested, in the newspaper? Not saying that they will but it might get out of hand someday. However, at this point I think it is well needed.

The newspapers are printing about criminals that everyone needs to know about. The ones that knowing who they are might save or protect a citizen in the long run. It feels as if the media wants to protect their readers as much as the police try to protect their citizens.

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Here's what I know

By: Lexie Hagerty

Matt Haber wrote a blog in the Media Mob of The New York Observer about magazine retouches on political candidates like Sarah Palin and Barack Obama.

First, Newsweek published a close-up picture of Palin, revealing a small mustache.

Second, The Weekender is running an unretouched picture of a weird birthmark on Obama's face.

Why are these magazines revealing these small "imperfections?" Are they out against these candidates or are they trying to reveal everything about each candidate in order to keep things fair?

Either way, a birthmark or a mustache is not going to make my decision in this election. These issues, however, do remind me that not all things said and shown in the media are true. Even now, I am not sure if the mustache or the birthmark is real.

Once again, I don't know what to believe. So, I am going to stick to what I know is true about this campaign, which is very little.

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