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.