Reflection

Over the eight times we have looked at our own news source, I have noticed that the Career is different than the others. I don’t mean the obvious, it’s a newspaper they are new stations, I mean the headlines and topics are different. I would have thought that they would have covered most of the same pieces of news. Sometimes they do, but other times, not so much. I have come up with some thoughts on why this might the way it is.

    One is the new stations can have more breaking news. Newspapers can’t, they come a day later. Maybe most of the stories that air on the news would really be “old news” if the paper were to print them the next day.

    Two is something I have already brought up in a previous blog. Many news stations are reverting to more of an infotainment setup. CJ is not doing so much of that. In my opinion, the Career is trying to stay elitist, and only give what they believe is newsworthy. That’s a whole lot harder for a new station to do, all they can do to make money is make sure people are watching, so they make the interesting important; not the other way around.

I like that I was able to look at the more unique news source the past couple weeks. One that tried to make the important interesting, and even though it had it’s flaws, I enjoyed reading the Career Journal.

Crime

    One of my favorite parts of the CJ is the lack of crime stories. Most of the other news stations have so much crime, constantly. The day we had the most crime stories was the Monday, the same day that there was shortage of stories from the paper. I like that they don’t have a lot of crime for many reasons, reasons that I think most everyone agrees with,

First, crime stories typically don’t have a lot of newsworthiness. They affect one family or two, but not the entire city of Louisville. Some crime stories aren’t like that, but the majority are. The CJ hasn’t posted many, and when they have, they have been slightly more newsworthy than others.

Second, that gives off a more elitist vibe. Like the CJ really cares about showing Louisville what really matters and not what they want. I like the lack of an infotainment setup. Excessive crime stories gives publications more of a populus theme so to speak. I like that the Career is going more elitist, and by doing this, less crime.

I’m not saying the CJ is some perfect newspaper that is strictly elitist and every other newspaper should follow it’s example. What I am saying is that I appreciate the shortage of crime stories. And when I read the paper, I get more of an elitist vibe.

Political Stories

    The presidential election; such a big part of our lives at the moment. I would have thought that all newspapers, local or national, would be talking about it. That isn’t really the case for the Career Journal. We don’t typically have more than three political stories, and those are mostly about local elections. For example, we have stories about the next Senator or state House of Representative. Even the other news sources talked about the third and final debate, and the second and first ones. We didn’t get too much of the national political action.

    I can understand that this is a local newspaper, but the presidential election is very relevant to all of us in the nation. It makes me curious on why they aren’t printed too many stories. CJ loves to print sports, and while all of them are local, sometimes they outnumber the politics 4:1. That’s just so shocking for me to read. I would, personally, care more about the government and where it stands, than a story about UofL basketball.

    Overall, I’ve noticed, not necessarily a lack in political stories, but a smaller number of stories I was expecting.  This really does surprise me, but overall, I can kind of see why a local newspaper would rather print local political stories over national ones.

Headlines

Headlines. They are one of the most important part of the articles right? That's at Leary my opinion. They are what draw the reader's attention to read the article in the first place. I figured, because of that logic, that the headlines would make sense. No, not at least in the Career Journal. The headlines for most articles aren't formally written, with weird and awkward grammar. I am really shocked by this discovery, here's why.

When I think of a headline I think of something that looks like this. “Teenager at DuPont Manual High School Speaks Out Against Homework.” The headlines for the main story for the Career are awkwardly worded. For example, “More Fake AP Test on JCPS” I just don't understand why they do this. It's not particularly difficult to word a headline right, so I know it's probably not skill holding them back from a better and more formal choice of wording. I guess it could be a stylistic choice, but why? I'm just so curious on why they word headlines like this.

Even though I don't have my answer, I think that the reason has to be stylistic, but I may never know.

Monday's Paper

As I was reading the CJ on Monday October 17, I noticed that our number of stories had dropped dramatically. Normally we had around twenty stories in the paper alone and seventeen or so online. We only had thirteen stories on Monday in the paper itself. I was really curious why. I have not come to a complete reason, but I do have some theories.

First is simply because it was a Monday. Maybe they didn't have anything that wasn't in the Sunday paper to be put in the Monday paper. It would make sense, considering that the Sunday paper is typically a bigger paper than most.

Second, it could have been a low news week. There are always going to be some of those. The CJ could have just not had many stories to post. Something to back up this theory is the crime stories were higher than usual. We don't see too many crime stories in the CJ, but on Monday we saw more than usual. Maybe without the normal abundance of stories, they put more crime to fill in the gaps.

The like ability of these theories being correct is highly unlikely, but I still found it interesting that the Career didn't have many stories on Monday. That's why I came up with my theories.

    I’m happy to say that this is a post I’ve been waiting for. I have really enjoyed reading my classmate’s writing and I almost wish I could respond to everyone’s; to have a conversation with all the other J&C freshman. That made picking my last response harder to pick out who’s blog I’m going to conversate with. I went with my gut, and picked the person’s whose blog I read first; Kate Frey.

    Her blog post on the first couple of lectures was really interesting. It wasn’t just the way the blog was outlined, it was the interest that shown through the words. Kate obviously cared about what she was writing about. That kind of interest that I caught on to can only be passed on by pure passion from the author.

    Kate also made a clear connection about verification and context. I did not make that connection when listening to to lecture, but it does make sense. It’s interesting to see that connection made. I think, though, that we should still see those two elements as two separate things, but that’s not saying that they are no similar.

I also just love hearing about what other’s thought of something we all received. It gives you such a broader understanding of your peers and also helps you understand more.

http://enteringtheworldofjournalism.blogspot.com/

I was having a hard time finding out how to respond to a fellow classmate's blog. To solve this problem I just started to read other’s blogs. That's how I came across Patrick’s blog post on Print Journalism. I have already stated what I felt when listening to the lecture Mr. Miller gave and my thoughts on it, but I, of course, did not know Patrick's side. He, with his writing, said some things that caught my eye while reading.

The first thing that caught my eye was “One downsize of print journalism is that you do not receive the information or news as soon as it happens. With print journalism, you have to wait for breaking news for weeks or in many cases months.” This totally opened up my eyes. I had never even thought of that. I was so intertwined with my own little world that I’ve never gave a second glance to the fact that the print aspect of journalism is never an immediate resource to find out the very latest information.

Patrick also stated how he found that a lot of the lecture was date and history heavy, which I agree with. I do feel he put a more positive swing on that more than did. Overall, though, I really enjoyed reading Patrick’s blog post on Print Journalism, it really forced me to more open minded about topics.

http://patricksperceptions.blogspot.com/

Media Critiques

    We had already knew that were to be expected to write a media critique for this project, so I was very keen to know how. Obviously Mr. Miller lectured us on what they are and how a good one is written. Here are some of my lasting thoughts on the lesson.

    I think the thing that surprised me the most was the requirement of not being able to talk in first person when writing a media critique. I thought that since we were critiquing that we would need say, “This is why I find this article….” That’s not the case. I now know it’s a movement to being more objective, but I found it kind of surprising a first.

I also found the “No critiquing a review” a given. You can’t say someone’s opinion is wrong or it violates a Yardstick or Element. I did find the Inverted pyramid interesting, where we put the most important things on top. That makes sense; no one cares about all the added details before they know what happens. It was cool how that tied into with we were learning about in the lecture of print journalism. I love how all things tie together.

Overall, I found the lecture mediocre; it was very important and interesting, but I didn’t really give the lecture a second thought. It was cool to learn about, just not my favorite lecture ever given. Which, it doesn’t have to be. I’m not going to like everything we do in J1 and that’s okay. Just when I’m talking about lectures I loved, this one probably won’t make the list.

Media Critique

    An article was posted on CNN’s website on September tenth 2016 titled “Florida father arrested after toddler son dies in hot truck.” This article is not a newsworthy article for a couple of reasons, mainly it does not follow the ten Elements of Journalism or the seven yardsticks.

    The first Yardstick of Journalism is newsworthiness. The definition of newsworthiness is will it affect a large ammount for people for a long period of time. The answer for this article is no. A kid dying in Florida and his father getting arrested are not relevant to someone in Seattle Washington. It only affects the people involved. This story should only be on local news, or maybe not even that.

    This failure to meet the newsworthiness yardstick could have been avoided by simply not posting the article. It is not a story to be posted on national news, so therefore to not have posted the article they would have not violated the Seven Yardsticks of Journalism. Another fix would have been to give a “so what?” at the end of the article. Give a tie into something else that would have increased the affectance that the article had on people. If the purpose of the story was to make people more aware, it would have a higher newsworthiness. The article did not include such, so the media critique.

    To summarize, an article posted on CNN’s website was not newsworthy of being on national news. They could have added an explanation at the end of the article to make their article more relevant to national audiences.

Mass Communication

When Mr. Miller told my class that this was our next topic that we were going to learn about, I mentally groaned. I thought I knew how communication works, and I really took for granted the amount of impact it has on our lives. Nevertheless, pre lecture me was not looking forward to the class.

I have to admit that the first part of the lecture wasn't very intriguing. Looking back I know why; we were talking about the communication that we were already familiar with. After what seemed like thirty minutes, even though it was ten minutes tops, we were asked the question, “What is Mass Communication.” No one answered. After proving that group communication could reach huge audiences as long as they were present, no one knew what to say that could potentially be a correct answer.

Now, of course, I know. It was that moment though I realized never to believe I knew everything that was going to know everything Mr. Miller is going lecture, because I won't. None of this proves why I found the topic so interesting. The answer is fairly simple.

Mass communication is something we are so used to, yet it's something no one acknowledges. I think that's why I found the lecture so interesting, it was so natural to understand. I love it when that happens, it makes you feel smart, just by being simple. It's fascinating how the way the human mind works for things like this.

To wrap up, I liked this lecture because of its surprising amount of new knowledge, that was simple and intriguing. I’m, as always, ready for what we learn next.

Print Journalism

I was really looking forward to the lecture that was finally given to us today. I’ve always wanted to go into a career of writing, so print journalism was something that I was greatly looking forward too. When we sat down, I was ready to learn, and overall in a very attentive mood. What I got was not what I expected to get.

    The lecture today was very based on dates and facts. One of my favorite factors of journalism is the fact it is based in modern times. We don’t have to memorize dates to be a journalist. I understood the reason of going back to when the first printer press was created to understand the depths of print journalism, but it just didn’t catch my attention as much as the other lectures we’ve had.

    Another reason I found today’s class less interesting is I thought that we would have been going over how to write, not the backbone. This could definitely me just getting my hopes up, or expecting something that wasn’t there for me to expect.

    There could have been outside factors on why I wasn’t as attentive today. Little sleep, no food in my stomach ext. The final product though was me getting less out of the lecture than usual.

    Though, today was probably an introduction into basics of print journalism, I can say with confidence that that it did not catch my attention as I would have hoped. I am still looking forward to going deeper into this topic in future class, with a hope of being more attentive.

Today was the day we got our first lengthy lecture from Mr. Miller, about the Elements of Journalism, and I have to say that it absolutely met the standards the older students drew out for me. The class was not only interesting, but he also made the class an interactive environment.

Even though it was our first true lecture, Mr. Miller didn't make us feel like we knew nothing. He made sure to ask questions that we could answer, then bumping up the level of difficulty as we progressed. Using a PowerPoint, the whiteboard, and his own words, we were able to not only decode his message, but internalize it too. This doesn't just make the class interesting though, the message of the Elements of Journalism was interesting in itself.

I think the reason I found the Elements of Journalism so intriguing was the thought, “This is going to help me pursue my dream to become an author.” I was also constantly thinking about what I needed to do to stay attentive, but I never really dwelled on the fact that I was already giving my undivided attention to the lesson at hand. It is very difficult for me to get to that point; further proving my point that the lecture was interesting.

I think my final reason for finding the Elements of Journalism interesting hit me in the middle of class. I will use this for the next four years. I think that’s a big worry when you go into something new, “What if this isn’t for me?” I realized in the middle of the lecture, that this is interesting. That I didn’t make a mistake applying to Manual, all of the Elements made sense and intrigued me.

Overall I feel that after going through the first lecture, I am able to have confidence and my own standards of what I think class will be like in the future. I’m going to now and always be able to explain the Elements of Journalism and why they are important, because of the interesting lecture we had in class.