*Just as a side note, I was looking up some different ways that reporters tend to write columns and i came up with some interesting stuff. I thought that I would try to write this assignment in the style that I found to be most effective for me, a style where the reporter almost spoke to me personally. It was not casually written per say, but it was a little less formal, and i thought with a topic that was more of my opinion it would be fitting.
January 28, 2010
Is the world going towards journalistic convergence or consolidation? For some reason, in the back of my head, I want to scream “NO!” and give you a billion reasons that we should not be moving in either one of those directions… but the hard truth is that we are.
Convergence is described as “the approach towards a definite value, a definite point, a common view or opinion, or a towards a fixed or equilibrium state.” (www.wikipedia.ore/wiki/convergence) This means that everything is constantly changing and evolving to get more streamline and able to fit into every ones fast pace life. If you think back to about 10 years ago, technologically, everything was extremely different. Logging onto your e-mail was not the 1 minute process that it is now, where I can log into my email, see what is in my inbox, and log out in under 3 minutes…multiple times a day. You were not connected to your wireless network all day so there was not that quick access log in. There was dial up. You had to log onto your account and listen to that awful static and beeping combination while you slowly connect to Internet explorer. Then, you had to patiently wait second after second for your page to finally load and allow you to read your spam.
Internet was only the beginning of it. Telephones, something made strictly for calls, turned into something made for calls anywhere, the Internet, making videos, taking picture, playing games, playing music, even finding all the “Thai Restaurants” in the greater Bangor area. That is 6 different gizmos all put into one to make our lives easier. And we love it. This technological convergence really thrives on the shifts within industries, cultures, socially, and how we interact with the technologies that exist.
There are a few down sides however. When an appliance is made for a specific function, then you add on other things that it is supposed to do, those add on functions never seem to work quite as well as if they had been made specifically for that function. For example, if you try to play a DVD in an Xbox consol there seems to be way more issues then if you had just used a DVD player.
As far as consolidation, or getting rid of forms of media and combining them all into one, I have to say that this is not going to happen in my lifetime or yours more than likely. I do believe that there is going to be a time when news papers are not printed and everyone just goes online to read the news, although it would take just about every person in the world having some sort of smart phone (Media Convergence!!). People like to be connected and know what is going on, and until everyone has a hand held device that will allow them to do so, there will always be the printed-paper.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Assignment 2-1
01/20/2010
Pictures of Missing Baby Released
CNN News
Nancy Grace
Elizabeth Johnson, the mother of eight month old Gabriel Johnson, was indicted with intent to cause custodial interference, kidnapping, and child abuse in mid January, 2010. January 20, 2010 CNN ran the story about the missing child and their suspicions when photos came to light literally hours before his last credible sighting on December 26, 2009 in Miami, FL.
“Why is she taking these photos? Is it because she wants to remember her child? Not likely” Says Michael Boar (WOAI news radio).
When I started to critique this story, and thinking about the components of stories, I immediately thought that the most important factors would be focus, balance, completeness, and accuracy. Although the focus was clear, concise, and the story itself was well written, I found that there were a good handful of components that were not taken care of how they should have been.
The introduction of the story was vague, and for someone that had not been following this story very much, I was quite lost. There should have been more of a brief background to recap what had been going on in the case or at least a brief overview of who everyone involved was (ie. Elizabeth Johnson, the mother, Logan McQueary, the father). As the story progressed I began to think that it was also a little unbalanced. Although the mother had been indicted already, Nancy Grace, the reporter covering the story, was very one sided about what had happened. She seemed sure that Johnson had not only been one hundred percent at fault for baby Gabriel’s disappearance, but she seemed almost sure that she had killed him even though that had not been confirmed. “In my mind, telling the biological father that you smothered the baby, concealed his body in a dipper bag, and threw him away in the trash is reason to suspect the child is dead… agree or disagree?” (The police had said that this statement received in a text message was not believed to be what happened).
The only other problem that seemed to stand out in this article would be the accuracy of some of the things that Nancy was talking about in reference to the ‘adoptive parents’ in this case. Upon doing a little research of my own on other news sites, I began to find about that the people that Nancy was calling Gabriel’s ‘adoptive parents’ were really not that at all. Tammy and Jack Smith were attempting to adopt Gabriel after randomly befriending Johnson at an airport although the baby’s father had just attained legal guardianship. I thought that it was a bit confusing referring the Smiths as Gabriel’s parents when they have no legal president over him in the slightest.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/crime/2010/01/20/ng.baby.pics.cnn?hpt=T2
Pictures of Missing Baby Released
CNN News
Nancy Grace
Elizabeth Johnson, the mother of eight month old Gabriel Johnson, was indicted with intent to cause custodial interference, kidnapping, and child abuse in mid January, 2010. January 20, 2010 CNN ran the story about the missing child and their suspicions when photos came to light literally hours before his last credible sighting on December 26, 2009 in Miami, FL.
“Why is she taking these photos? Is it because she wants to remember her child? Not likely” Says Michael Boar (WOAI news radio).
When I started to critique this story, and thinking about the components of stories, I immediately thought that the most important factors would be focus, balance, completeness, and accuracy. Although the focus was clear, concise, and the story itself was well written, I found that there were a good handful of components that were not taken care of how they should have been.
The introduction of the story was vague, and for someone that had not been following this story very much, I was quite lost. There should have been more of a brief background to recap what had been going on in the case or at least a brief overview of who everyone involved was (ie. Elizabeth Johnson, the mother, Logan McQueary, the father). As the story progressed I began to think that it was also a little unbalanced. Although the mother had been indicted already, Nancy Grace, the reporter covering the story, was very one sided about what had happened. She seemed sure that Johnson had not only been one hundred percent at fault for baby Gabriel’s disappearance, but she seemed almost sure that she had killed him even though that had not been confirmed. “In my mind, telling the biological father that you smothered the baby, concealed his body in a dipper bag, and threw him away in the trash is reason to suspect the child is dead… agree or disagree?” (The police had said that this statement received in a text message was not believed to be what happened).
The only other problem that seemed to stand out in this article would be the accuracy of some of the things that Nancy was talking about in reference to the ‘adoptive parents’ in this case. Upon doing a little research of my own on other news sites, I began to find about that the people that Nancy was calling Gabriel’s ‘adoptive parents’ were really not that at all. Tammy and Jack Smith were attempting to adopt Gabriel after randomly befriending Johnson at an airport although the baby’s father had just attained legal guardianship. I thought that it was a bit confusing referring the Smiths as Gabriel’s parents when they have no legal president over him in the slightest.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/crime/2010/01/20/ng.baby.pics.cnn?hpt=T2
Friday, January 15, 2010
Doctoring Photos.
Should journalist, or more specifically photo journalist, be able to doctor photos to more effectively push the ideas behind their stories? Should it be ethical to manipulate photos to better support the article it goes along with?
My immediate reaction was to just say “NO WAY!” that there were no exceptions to photo editing other than the basic techniques to make the photograph a little sharper or just lighten things up a bit, but the more I think about it, I am not sure if all manipulation is completely immoral.
If you think about it, if every major news paper manipulated different major details in the same picture… you would never really be certain of what was happening in the story. Doctoring photographs is sort of the same idea as finding out facts in a journalism story and then purposefully changing them to something completely different just to get people to think differently about the topic. This is not telling the facts and it is not allowing people to make informed, intelligent opinions about what is going on in the news.
I would say the only time that I would think that it was one hundred percent allowed to do photo manipulation in photojournalism would be when doing a photo story about nature or things on that topic. Georgia Okeef is known for a project that she did where there was the skull of a cow in a lot of her pictures. Although Georgia herself put the cows’ head there, I do not think that this caused any harm or changed public opinion in any way.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Welcome Blog
Hey Everyone! I am Laura Levesque, a 4th year in the New Media Department. I am graduating in May and hoping to get into advertising and start my own buisness selling natural, Green, clothing.
Although I am not in the journalism department I think that this class will help me with advertising in a way. I am hoping to just get more knowledge in the general field, and I think that this class is going to be quite interesting.
Although I am not in the journalism department I think that this class will help me with advertising in a way. I am hoping to just get more knowledge in the general field, and I think that this class is going to be quite interesting.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
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