The Lack of Pepsi

Watching the commercials during the Super Bowl has become near a tradition since it became a media blitz to sell products. While watching this year it may have become apparent that there was no Pepsi Commercial. This broke a 23 year streak of Pepsi having a commercial during the Super Bowl and it was snapped due to Pepsi's interest in social media.

The Super Bowl was broadcast by CBS this year and they wanted $3 million dollars for a 30-second commercial. Instead of investing in this as Pepsi traditionally has they have decided to pour their advertising dollars into social media. This movement into social media is what Pepsi is calling the Pepsi Refresh Project.

The point of the Pepsi Refresh Project is for Pepsi to become more involved with its customers. "The project is about creating a movement, not just a moment." said Bonin Bough, Pepsi's global director of digital and social media. Pepsi is donating $1 million dollars in February and is committed to $20 million dollars overall to social causes and community projects.

Pepsi is not the only big company getting into the social media craze. Budweiser let its customers vote on its Facebook site which commercials they wanted to see and Monster.com's Facebook page had videos on it of the fiddling beaver from its Super Bowl commercials.

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Writing is Not Enough For Journalists

These days everybody is practically a journalist. Typically, people wrote only when the teacher told them to, but real journalists wrote and reported stories outside the classroom.

The Internet has made it easier for anybody to become a journalist. Blogs and sites such as Facebook and Twitter allow people to write what they want, when they want.

Therefore, people who desire to earn a living as a journalist will need to acquire new traits in order to get hired or accepted into journalism school.

According to Robert Niles, a writer for the Online Journalism Review, journalists must be able to discover and analyze new information that would be of interest to their audience.

In order for this to happen, journalists are going to have to develop several characteristics, including strong analytic skills and the ability to uncover a story.

Just as the publishing market is competitive, so too is the market for journalists with numerous different skills.


I think it is very important to have multiple skills. In today's environment, it's not enough to just be able to write.

Social journalism is imperative for journalists. They have to be able to engage their audience and find and share stories that would be of interest to readers.

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Reporters banned from Olympic site

In Vancouver Canada the Olympic officials have banned news reporters from the site where freestyle and snowboarding events are to take place. The site has been plagued by a lack of snow. Therefore the officials closed the site to the media and the public as helicopters and 300 lorries were used to bring snow down to the site from higher altitudes. Vanoc vice-president Tim Gayda assures the community that there is nothing to hide as he is thinking of safety first.

As far as a ban on the public that is understandable but the media should be able to view the ferrying of snow down to the site. If there is nothing to hide then why not let some of the reporters or just camera men in. Of course since it's in Canada the laws may be a little different for this sort of thing. However a complete ban just does not make much sense. This is the Olympics, the news coverage is crazy so to hear that the media has been banned from an area is really hard to fully comprehend, and of course, the reporters who are there are not too happy.

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