You Are What You Read
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
"'Facebook Friend #1276' read 'The World Mourns the Death of Dippin' Dots' on Yahoo!"
The latest in news-industry issues, as written by multimedia journalism and integrated marketing communication students at Simpson College.
The Pulitzer Prize Board has announced it is requiring all submissions to be digital starting in 2012.
Another person who participated in the News of the World's phone-hacking scandals, Bethany Usher, was recently arrested for participation in the phone hacking.
Recently, Nick Davies of The Guardian admitted to paying child prostitutes for information for one of his articles.
Davies claimed in a testimony before a U.K. Parlimentary committee, "I [paid them] for two reasons – first that I thought it was better for them to earn the money by talking to me than by allowing somebody to sexually abuse them; second that it seemed fair to them, if i was depriving them of ‘working time,’ that I should compensate them for their loss."
Even though Davies is writing on a very touchy topic is it ethical in any way to pay your sources for their time? If Davies hadn't paid the children to talk, would any of them spoken out to a reporter? Or would Davies's article consisted of facts, not first-hand stories, about the horrors of child prostitution?
A newspaper or reporter paying sources for information is known as checkbook journalism. According to the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), the practice of checkbook journalism is unethical, wrong, and should not be used in any situation.
Citizens who read no news are more informed than those who view Fox News.
For a long time citizens were not able to purchase news papers from news racks at Raleigh-Druham International Airport. After taking legal action for six years they are now back in the airpot and people are now able to buy the New York Times, USA Today, and News and Observer.
News websites have been making an interesting discovery when it comes to their website's news. They are seeing that there is remarkable strong traffic towards older stories than their newer stories...this is bringing up the question: Is it really important for News to be new News?
What appears to be happening is that one person would read a weird story and it would automatically link the story that they had read to his or her facebook wall. This could lead to his or her friend's reading it and then it would be automatically linked to their facebook wall as well. Leading in an unending cycle of sharing this media. It is very unlikely that the readers know that this story is an older one, or perhaps they really don't care. After all some people tend to generally look at it this way,a good story is a good story as long as it's new to you.
I believe that this is an interesting story and it does show some of the things that I agree with. I don't mind if a story is perhaps even a few years old when I read it. As long as I haven't read it before and it perks up my attention, I have no issue with reading it. Its more for amusement and the 'Wow' factor really.
works sited: creativecommons.org ; poynter.org
Black Friday draws huge crowds, greedy people, and bargain shoppers. According to Amazon, online sales in 2010 were raised only 9 percent and this year a whole 26 percent online sales were raised.
People are becoming more reliable on online purchases because it’s fast,easy, and convenient. Online sales have steadily increases and will continue to grow if stores continue to have bargains online as well as in the store.
Dale Hudson, Nevada Reporter, stated that 50 million people flocked in and out of stores on Black Friday in Nevada. Top four stores that received the most sale increase from most to least was Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, Apple.
Is standing in line for 5 hours waiting to get in the store, waiting to check out for 2 hours, and losing 8 hours of sleep really worth it? Most people would said yes according to Hudson’s report on Black Friday. People live to save $2 dollars on almost all purchases anymore. A sense of accomplishment comes from Black Friday.
We should forget the presents, stop with the greed, and drop the Santa image. We should all stop and think what Christmas really means. Does Christmas mean spending $5,000 and being greedy towards others? People go overboard on Christmas shopping and overboard on greed.
Black Friday is becoming a holiday that destroys the image of Christmas. Should standing in line for over and hour and becoming greedy really what Christmas should be all about? No! We should all take the time to be with family, do a kind act, and donate to the Salvation Army or charity.
It's hard to admit you made a mistake. Daniel Klein, an economics professor at George Mason University, can tell you that, but he can also tell you how to move past it. Klein wrote an opinion column over a year ago saying that liberals score much lower than conservatives on a test over basic economics, according to his newest study. He published his column in the Wall Street Journal, which headlined: "Are You Smarter than a Fifth-Grader? Self-indentified liberals and Democrats do badly on questions of basic economics".
Klein later took a second look at his data and concluded that his questions were loaded, or followed what he termed the "myside bias"- human's tendency to judge an argument based off of how closely it fits to their standard political views. Klein recently recanted his earlier findings and published the new results- but not in the Wall Street Journal. The Columbia Journalism Review emailed Klein asking why the new column appeared in the Atlantic instead of WSJ, and he responded that they had "declined the idea of a follow-up".
But shouldn't that be considered irresponsible journalism? The well-respected journal now has full knowledge that it ran an erroneous article, and the author is stepping up of his own free will to correct his past mistake. For the Wall Street Journal to decline the corrections is a loss of responsibility to their readers, some of which will never see the corrections simply because they don't read the Atlantic. The editors need to swallow their pride and put their reader's needs first.
Photo credit/creativecommons.org
For years women have had to overcome certain hurdles. With the growing integration of social media in the world of journalism, female journalists have a new hurdle to leap over.
While covering a story about a naked drunk driver involved in a high speed chase, WOIO reporter Paul Orlousky appears topless while recreating the drivers stunt.
Orlousky, a reporter for WOIO Action News in Cleveland, Ohio, went to the courthouse to try and get some answers from the woman who was arrested for drunk driving while wearing nothing but a thong.
A study by Optimedia US concludes that a television show's advance buzz doesn't predict its rating performance.
When journalists go to work in the U.S., every day they know they might inadvertantly annoy or anger those who hold public office or employment. However, this is America- we hold expectations that journalists have the right to freely gather and distribute information to the general public. Lately, in the name of "protection", as New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg charactized it, journalists have been dealing with serious obstacles.
According to the First Amendment Center, on November 15 over a dozen journalists were arrested while covering the overnight raid of Occupy Wall Street's encampment, and many more were kept at a distance from the developing story. Julie Walker, a freelance radio journalist working for National Public Radio, was arrested for disorderly conduct while walking a few blocks north of Zucotti Park. She said the officer grabbed her arm twice, took her recorder and arrested her after she asked to know his name and badge number.
Why is the police force wasting time trying to block journalists from accessing an event of national interest? American foreign correspondents risk their lives travelling to many brutal dictatorships to cover protests, yet here in the American democracy journalists are arrested for their own "protection". City officials are protecting no one but themselves. It is a journalist's right to put themselves at risk for a story, and they are not in need of officials helicoptering over them. The American public deserves to know the story.
Twitter is the ultimate instant news source.
Reporters have the ability to tweet from anywhere with cell reception or Internet access, and most put this on-the-go capability to use every day.
An article from Poynter. reported that because journalists were tweeting and updating statuses about being arrested at Occupy Wall Street. While this use of social media is effective, some critics argue that the arrested journalists actually scooped their own newsrooms.
Although an official statement was released by the journalists' newsroom denying that the employees' tweets scooped employers, there is an idea that other news sources could become obsolete.
The biggest (actually, shortest) obstacle for Twitter's takeover of breaking news is 140 characters long. Limited to 140 characters, Twitter is heavy with headlines but short on content.
For a quick news fix, Twitter should be the go-to; however, other media, such as print and online newspapers, television, and radio, are better equipped for whole articles and in-depth pieces.
Photo by Creative Commons
There has been recent concern about the speed of the internet, the promise of access to a vast amount of information, and a reliance on the internet and computers, and, that if these needs and expectations continue to increase there is a large possibility the the world system will crash.
A recent article posted to Poynter.org brought to light that some news corporations are getting upset with journalists who use social media to report news to early.
Recently, NBC News hired Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, as a full time correspondent who will be reporting "feel-good features."
Last Wednesday the Iowa Court of Appeals ruled that school districts can not discipline newspaper advisers for allowing students to run material in student publications that the administration does not approve of. According to the First Amendment Center, the Allamakee School District reprimanded adviser Ben Lange after students at Waukon High School published material in the school paper's April Fool's Day edition that the principal found offensive. Find the case, Lange vs. Diercks and Allamakee School District, here.
The case is being hailed among students and journalism instructors as an acknowledgement of student rights, feared by some to have been taken away in 1988 after the Supreme Court ruled in Hazelwood School District vs. Kulhmeier that administrations had the right to censor student publications.
What does this case really grant students? Admittedly, some of the content that Waukon High School's newspaper the Tribe-une can be considered in poor taste- for instance, the students included a derogatory name for a rival high school and a parody cartoon of a biology teacher caught running a meth lab. But the students involved in the scandal are going to learn a lot about the journalism world.
First, edit your content- just because you have the right to say it, doesn't mean you always should. Making sure you can stand by what you write without holding regrets is a valuable skill in journalism. Basically, if you're going to get in trouble for it, make sure it's good. But also, students do have rights. Critically assessing every situation, both in the classroom and out, is a good way to monitor when your rights are being violated. Students should want to know when boundaries are stepped on and how they can fight back.
Students, stand by your words. And if someone is getting punished for that, then there's a problem.
Photo credit/NCinDC,creativecommons.org
The Monitor of McAllen, Texas, is now printing the Twitter usernames of its reporters by their articles so that readers can follow them on Twitter.
After the allegations of Herman Cain's sexual harassment, people started to view Cain in a new light.
Theres one thing that can truly hurt a presidential candidate when he or she is in the process of running, and that thing is scandal.
It is then when people really start questioning, "Is this guy the guy we really want running our country?"
But good news is, Herman Cain has found a way to fight these allegations head on. By using social media and a popular search engine as his aid. Cain is using keyword Google and Twitter search ads, such as: "Cain Sharon Bialek", which leads to an option of Cain's website CainTruth, which was a paid attempt to bi pass the scandal. The campaign had also bought a promoted Tweet when anybody searched "Herman Cain" on Twitter.
I believe that Cain has made a pretty smart attempt on continuing his campaign and trying to get away from these allegations.
Works cited: www.poynter.org
www.creativecommons.org
For a long time the citizens of West Valley City had been reading articles about their town in the Desert News written by a freelance journalist named Richard Burwash. Little did they know who exactly Richard Burwash was.
A student newspaper at the East Carolina University, The East Carolinian, ran uncensored photos of a student who streaked the ECU v. University of Southern Mississippi game.
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