Fading fast

By: Alex Jones

It is not new news that print forms of media are going out of style but which newspaper will be the first to discontinue it's daily print edition?

Christian Science Monitor will be the first nationally read newspaper to discontinue the printing of the paper daily and move to only printing weekly. The more important move for Christian Science Monitor is the shift to the internet. 

Great emphasis is being placed on the paper's Web site which will be updated continuously through out the day. The newest technology is also being researched to place on the Web site which is expected to attract more viewers.

The Christian Science Monitor has been declining in readership for the past 40 years but has high hopes when looking to the future. Implementing this newer form of the paper in April 2009. 

It's only a matter of time when all newspapers move completely to the internet. 

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Unbiased?

By: Sarah Harl

Kelly McBride, columnist for Poynter Online, a source for "everything ethics," speaks her mind on "gotcha" interviewing in a recent column.

McBride is referring to recent interviews conducted with John McCain and Sarah Palin by Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. It was argued by some that these were more interrogations than interviews designed to embarrass the duo, specifically Palin.

McCain described his displeasure with the reporting, saying he felt the journalists were not providing all of the necessary information to make the questions clear and straightforward.

McBride proceeded to give the readers a textbook explanation of deceptive journalism, and how what Couric and Gibson did was not considered deceiving journalism, and was therefore not biased.

Now, it is true that none of these questions were out of order: McBride is correct about that. What she fails to understand is that people find it biased when you drill Senator McCain and Governor Palin about hypothetical situations of country A invading country B, and then you ask Senator Obama what he likes to do with his family.

If Obama had been as aggressively interviewed as the Republican ticket, there probably would have been inconsistencies in his story too. And that is what is unfair about this situation: not that Palin and McCain were asked tough questions, but that Obama has consistently not been asked the same questions.

So McBride could have saved the lecture in fair journalism, because it can simply be achieved by asking both candidates the same questions in the same way.

Unbiased.

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A worry for journalist

By Kellie Green

As a journalist class many of us may be interested in becoming journalist at some point in our lives. Will it become harder to become a journalist than what it was like in before?

The reason I decided to write this blog was because I saw a blog on poynter.org saying that USA Today was laying off a lot of their journalist and workers.

In the article in USA Today it says that Gannett, "which is the largest newspaper publisher" is cutting 10 percent of jobs. There was a fear that some people at USA Today might loose jobs but it was clarified that this wouldn't happen.

What I began to worry about is the future after this cut. We know that newspapers are not making as much as they had in the past, is it going to get worse in the future.

If it does get worse then there might be cuts in the need for journalist. The article doesn't say what exactly is getting cut but it does say that no jobs at USA Today are going to be cut.

It does send a scare to journalist now and future journalists because they are cutting either their jobs or jobs near them. Hopefully a career in journalism will always be around and never be threatened of disappearing.

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It's easy being famous

By: Gabe Gilson

If you were to watch any college football on a Saturday, possibly on ESPN, you would get the analysis of many people that know football. Of course, all the analysis is coming from former players and coaches that played and coached football.

It seems to me like no matter how good of a speaker, journalist, or analyst one may be, if you were once involved with a big time college football program your chance of getting face time Saturdays in the fall on ESPN is easy. Take Lou Holtz for example. Holtz is 71, deafer than a bat and about as easy to understand as Sloth from The Goonies. Whenever he does give an opinion, it is usually something insanely and annoyingly biased about team he used to coach, Notre Dame.

Holtz is not the only example of people hired on ESPN because they “know” football. Mark May, who used to play offensive line for the University of Pittsburgh, Lee Corso, who coached most notably at the University of Indiana and Desmond Howard who won the Heisman Trophy playing at the University of Michigan. All of these “experts” are not very good at providing the most essential information to the college football fan.

Not everybody on ESPN who comes from a football background is horrible at their job though. Kirk Herbstreit, who played quarterback at Ohio State University, does a great job providing excellent insight into the college football world. Maybe it was the excellent education he got but he always seems to have the right thing to say at the right moment.

If I wanted to be a college football analyst on ESPN, I think it would be very hard without doing a lot of coaching or making myself well known in the world of college football. It is really too bad that the only people who are hired these days are they big time football boys.

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Everyone knows who Diddy is voting for...

By: Jessica Hartgers

If any of you have been paying attention to American pop culture you have noticed that Sean "Diddy" Combs is taking every advantage of any publicity he has gotten to promote Barack Obama in the race for presidency.

Diddy, who is one of the most recognized male celebrity, is openly honest with his political beliefs. For example, he sports shirts that say "I heart Michelle Obama." But the question is have any of Diddy's millions of fans asked him why he supports Obama? My guess is no.

While Diddy is clearly not the only celebrity to voice his opinions in the media, he is a very influential person and I wonder how many of his fans see his great support for Obama and decide that they themselves are going to vote for Obama also, without making an educated decision.

The responsible thing for Diddy to do would be to use the journalists and free publicity to educate viewers instead of influence them.

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Swinging the axe

By: Lexie Hagerty

It isn't a surprise these days that newspaper and magazine advertisements are going down. Every other media news story is about a newspaper or magazine that has now cut more employees due to the decrease in ad sales.

However, Mediaweek's article about one specific magazine still came as a huge shock to me.

Rolling Stone had to let go of seven employees in the last couple of days, a cut of less than 2 percent of the magazines 400 full-time employees. It is a slow start, but cuts are inevitable.

The media world should have seen this coming with such an old magazine, but yet it is still so hard to believe. This is Rolling Stone we are talking about. The magazine that any celebrity would kill to be in or even mentioned in.

If Rolling Stone can't overcome the new change in media, there is definately no hope for any of the smaller printed media.

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