Underground Culture: Sydney Says.

To go to Sydney's post click this. To go to Sydney's Blog click this.

 The mainstream and underground have been eliminated. Sydney said this is because the Internet made everything available,  but what I agree with her upon is that the internet has made a new underground. It's special because the Internet has this potential to reach millions upon millions of people, yet exclusive communities still find a way to thrive. Although now you don't have to rummage through a pile of records to find an unknown song, all you have to do is type in the lyrics to Google and there you have it.

Crime Relevance

http://www.whas11.com/news/crimetracker/Change-231586121.html
http://www.whas11.com/news/crimetracker/Judge-orders-Robby-Albarado-to-get-new-trial-232070711.html
http://www.whas11.com/news/crimetracker/Louisville-woman-accused-of-using-rocks-to-break-into-ATM-machine-231595081.html

The stories listed above are examples of stories that ought not be covered by the local news station, WHAS. But that doesn't mean all crime stories are unsuitable for coverage, there is some crime that demands to be reported upon.

Based on the yardstick of newsworthiness. We can determine if a crime story is newsworthy if it is (but not limited to) one of the following:

• Someone whose identity is unknown is linked to a series of crimes. Like a string of murders or robberies that were likely committed by the same person. This affects a large amount of people until the criminal is caught, which puts civilians at danger.
• Someone that has committed a crime whose whereabouts are unknown. This affects everyone in an area until the person is caught for the aforementioned reasons.
• A kidnapping. It affects others in the community and it's a good way to get out the information and warn people to keep an eye open.
• If an important figure is killed. Sometimes this develops into another kind of story, like if it's a political figure it becomes a politics story.

If some obscure member of a community dies it isn't grounds for a story. It's a cop out (pun intended) all an outlet has to do is listen to the police scanner and send a truck to interview the person's family about how he or she was such a good person. This violates the journalistic yardstick of enterprise.

A Day In the Life of WHAS

WHAS11 is a local station is Louisville, KY promising to report the facts, but do they really hold true to their motto: on your side? Here's what they reported on October 15th, 2013.

First block, the top story was three children were found with E. Coli, their connection being that they had all visited Huber's Petting Zoo in Starlight, Indiana. This story lasted two minutes and discussed what E. Coli does and how to avoid it. This story is newsworthy due to the fact that potentially E. Coli could affect Kentuckiana for a while. However, as the stories continued on their importance diminished. There were stories like the David Camm trial, a murder that happened miles away, 13 years ago. His third trial should be covered once, the day of the decision, not for almost 2 minutes everyday. Western Middle School was evacuated due to a faulty heater, there was no fire and no injuries, also no need for coverage. The Blind Pig restaurant is closing because they owe rent, minute spent on an instance not out of the ordinary. Next and stupidest of all, WHAS spent a whopping 2 minutes 30 seconds on a showing a video of a police chase that occurred in 2012 .The man being chased was caught the day of and no one was hurt, the only new information is that he has a court date. 2:46 was spent on weather which is newsworthy, but, I don't know if  that much time should be allotted for it. There was approximately 3 minutes spent on sports which was ridiculous because it engages only a minute audience. 10 minutes was spent on news, leaving 14:54 for breaks. There is a serious problem when half of your new cast is commercials and promos.

There were some relevant stories however, WHAS reported on a case of arson, asking for the whereabouts of the suspected perpetrator. And they spent an appropriate :30 seconds on a job fair in Indiana because it is of human interest. They also covered the Government Shutdown, but a questionable angle was taken on the matter. They interviewed a couple in J-Town with a special circumstance, they should have been more inclusive and made it marketable to a broader audience.

Newsworthiness

What makes a new story worthy of coverage? It follows the principles and yardsticks of journalism. Now if you aren't in my journalism class you are probably completely confused. The principles and yardsticks are unofficial regulations known in the journalistic world. The principles are a list of nine determining factors decided upon by an organization known as the Project of Excellence in Journalism that dictate what a story is supposed to do in order for it to be worthy of coverage. The seven yardsticks are put out by gradethenews.org and strive for a similar goal of determining the quality of a given story.

Nine Principles:

• Truth

• Loyalty

• Verification

• Independence

• Watchdog

• Forum

• Make the Important Interesting

• Inclusivity

• Room for Dissent

Seven Yardsticks:

• Newswortiness

• Context

• Explanation

• Local Relevance

• Civic Contribution

• Enterprise

• Fairness

In determining whether a story should be reported on or not the easiest thing to critique it upon is  newsworthiness. Gradethenews.org  dictates that newsworthiness is based on the question does this have a lasting effect (six months or more) on a wide audience (10,000 people)? With a local news outlet you may change that a little, does this affect most of the city for at least three weeks.

The Gene 'Synder' Fiasco

So I'm sure everyone in the Greater Louisville Metro Area has heard of the disaster that is "Gene Synder Apocalypse 2K13. Basically, some poor guy switched the 'n' and the 'y' in Snyder and ended up with 'Synder.' And so why is this news? It's not really. The story isn't really newsworthy because while it does affect drivers in Louisville it doesn't in the long run. They fixed it fast enough for it to not be a big deal. Also there weren't any accidents to come out of the misspelling, no "Breaking News: Driver causes 15 car pile up while craning his neck to read a sign he drives by passively everyday." Yet we see this:

http://www.wdrb.com/story/23687360/misspelled-interstate-signs-pop-up-across-louisville
http://www.wdrb.com/story/23712516/gene-snyder-freeway-signs-corrected
http://www.wave3.com/story/23689585/big-signs-feature-big-mistake
http://snyder-signs-new.rsspump.com/?key=2013101507127f.misspelled-interstate-signs-pop
http://www.whas11.com/news/Go-north-on-Bardstown-Rd-until-you-get-to-the-Gene-Sydner-Freeway-Wait-what--227677981.html

And even more randomly this:
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2022054537_apxmisspelledroadsign.html

I mean I know since most news outlets are in an agreement to let them share stories, but if we look at a map we see this:



So Seattle Times this is not at all newsworthy to your city and it's citizens, because it isn't even newsworthy to ours.

Television Response

You go to school, ride the bus home, sit on the couch, and what? Turn on the television. For citizens of the 21st century it's second nature, if a television is on we're paying attention. But how has TV impacted us?

First, television keeps us indoors. The average American spends 7 hours a day watching television. This keeps us form doing something social, like hanging out with friends or going to church. (But I mean we're all cynical and satanic nowadays anyway.) Television made us more introverted than any medium that preceded it. 

Second, TV influences our monetary habits in a negative way. It's great for advertisers because television makes us spend more. We see it on TV, through blatant or discrete advertising, and think, "I have to have that." Because when we see it on TV it becomes real, if it's not on TV it must not be legit.

Third, politics for years was a black and white race. Not anymore - it's in technicolor. To compete in a political campaign you must advertise on TV. It goes back to the whole thing about if it's on television it's real. If someone isn't on debate a on TV or has election commercials than that person isn't important. This marginalizes any social class except the rich because ads are expensive, and to really be effective you must use repetition to get it drilled into your viewers heads.

Last, TV changes the way we as society perceive the world. Television control what's cool and what's not.If it's real it's on TV. So the only thing that's real is a binary - The Kardashians or Honey Boo Boo. TV distorts and blurs the view of the average American.

Merchants of Wack

About a month ago we watched a documentary called The Merchants of Cool. It really dug deep into how PR and marketing controls the world around us. It talked about how much we're exposed to, and basically how the world is a sexual powder keg on the verge of explosion. The movie hit on two main points:
1) The idea of 'cool' is a paradox
2) Who keeps it cold?

What is cool? Cool is defined as being fashionably attractive and or impressive. But cool is never constant, it's relative and always changing. Cool is what comes before what's in  the now.

The paradox, as stated by Dee Dee Gordon, is that as soon as you make something cool, it ceases to cool. In the documentary, which was made in 2001, Limp Bizkit was really cool among alternative folk. However,  once they made it big, they got a gig on MTV. They then became regulars on this MTV show where viewers pick the music. People started calling them sell outs, and the band became obscure. You see, once something from the 'underground' makes it mainstream the underground deems it uncool and moves on to fresh meat, leaving the originally cool thing to die.

Brain Graden says what MTV does wrong, especially in the above instance was that they broke the number one rule of marketing: don't show your cool. Even though everything on MTV is a commercial, you can't make it apparent, the audience can't know that.

To avoid doing the aforementioned they must do marketing research to see where the cool trend is heading. Research isn't about studying someone as a person, it's about studying them as a customer. The goal is to sell them something, not to make them happy.

But in marketing who is dictating the standard of what is cool? Marketers ask the teens what they want so that the advertisers can market for it, but kids want what they see on television, and what is on television is what kids said they wanted. So who's calling the shots here? Answer: no one. We all fall prey to the viscious cycle of society.

Crime Made Easy

The Internet. A learning tool, a cultural experience, and... a gateway for crime? The Internet makes so many great things easily available, but along with that it makes crime easier and more effective, with less of a risk factor.

Anything that is digital is free and accessible to someone somewhere. Whether or not it's really free or even available to the public doesn't matter - it's available to internet criminals. I mean we're all technically internet criminals, because we've all probably downloaded or viewed an illegal file, however, in this sense I mean hackers. It;s not like in WarGames where some kid accidentally finds himself logged into a military database, it's very real and very intentional. Said hacker will probably not infiltrate something like a military database, they'll go for some kind of entertainment, and either leak it or make it free. Woah, that's illegal! You're darn skippy. However, when you steal and pirate something n the internet it's more convenient and much harder to find you than in real life.

Easier - databases and firewalls are all relatively similar. All it takes is a good hacker to tap into numerous amounts of businesses and accounts.
More Effective - there's no third party. There's no bystanders or physical barriers. Just the criminal and the victim. Also, there's no need to set up getaway vehicle or purchase a ski mask. You could rob thousands with the click of a button, sitting on your couch.
Less Risk- there's no weapon. It's robbery, but it's always unarmed. There's no shooting the cashier or clumsy dude in your way, so no death penalty.

With technology advancing and piracy increasing, I'm sure more laws and harsher penalties will be putt in place. But then again how do you arrest a criminal, if there;s no way to know who they are?
  

Media Critique: Verification and Context

New York’s Air Is Cleanest in 50 Years, Survey Finds. (New York Times)

Obamacare delay for small business exchanges. (CNN.com)

New York Times and CNN, supposedly the most trusted national publications, violated both a principle and a yardstick today, Thursday, September 26, 2013. These newspapers made a very simple to correct, yet lazy mistake: verify.

Verification - seeking out multiple witnesses, disclosing as much as possible about sources, or asking various sides for comment.

Context - measures the number of sources, and independent expert sources. 4 regular sources and 2 experts merit a good article.

The New York Times' story about the cleanest Air in 50 years did a lot of things right. It was newsworthy, it affects 8.245 million people's health and well being for a long period of time. It's truthful, the article's goal was to get across the message honestly, and it succeeded. But The author made one mistake: verification and context. In the article it provides us with the following sources: Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the NYC Community Air Survey. First off are these expert or regular sources? Well, I'd say that in many situations Mayor Bloomberg would qualify as an expert source, but in this instance, no. I think that what could qualify as an expert would be a scientist, sanitation expert, etc. Not someone who just looks at a survey. Next, does a survey even count as a source? Here, yes. Since this is a scientific survey, I'll let it slide, but typically it wouldn't.

The CNN article is on Obamacare, which we all know some one who has something to say on the topic. But this is also CNN Money, a business geared new source, so  I'd expect the sources to be some business aficionados. In the first paragraph it cites the source as "according to a U.S. Health and Human Services Department official." This is too broad and ambiguous. I mean how do we know this is even true? We can't back it up without some of that information. Later in the article it keeps sighting a press release by that organization, so you'd just have to check with that Press Release, which isn't clarified. In general it uses the following terms as sources:

•  Senior Obama administration officials
•  Critics of Obamacare 
• Timothy Finnell, a health care broker who services small businesses in Tennessee.

There's only only source in there that can be background checked to be verified. The rest would cause you to have to dig up the source yourself to double check. There should be enough active reporting to get more than one name in an article. And I wouldn't call Finnell an expert, so he's only a regular source.

So you have a New York Times article with two regular sources, and a CNN article with one name in the entire story. So both fail to meet the journalistic standards of verification and context.  
 
   

Newspapers: The Top Priority

   I have two parents who have worked in the journalistic field in a number of jobs. But there's one that always stuck out: News Journalist. My mother worked at the Courier-Journal and my father worked at the Herald Leader (I know, they're basically Romeo and Juliet), so you'd think I would grow up having a journalist's #1 duty drilled into my skull. Nope. That's not because I'd never heard them (or anyone else for that matter) say it, it's because it's so simple: report the truth.

   What, That's all? I mean duh, first amendment, I thought. But the reason we have freedom of the press is partly because of this man: John Peter Zenger. He was the creator of the first (failed) newspaper in the American colonies. It's name: Publick Occurrences (spelled with a k.) It only had one issue, but that's besides the point.

   Later on, in another newspaper, Zenger criticized a British governor. Obviously the governor wasn't thrilled, and so he had good ole Johnny  tried. But what Zenger said was true, it just shone a bad light on the governor. At the trial it was discovered that truth is the ultimate defense.

   This standard would later be tweaked to be our first amendment, and is still a journalist's top priority. I thought this lecture was important and interesting (principle.) It was also well-rounded and covered multiple components of a newspaper.

Why Syria is Syri-ous

   It's in our newspapers. It's on our TV's. It's on the radio. And it's been on all of our current event quizzes. But why is such a small nation so focused upon? Why do we care what  is going on in Syria?

    First off, the reason we care so much is that it's in our nature as Americans to care about what goes on everywhere at all times. We're the world's mediator, which is a heavy burden to place upon ourselves. However, Syria is something we must keep our eye on.

    Syria or the Syrian Arab Republic is a country located in Southwest Asia, specifically the Middle East. It's bordered by Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, and Jordan, this is significant because of a chain reaction known as, The Arab Spring. Originating in Tunisia, it set off series of events throughout the Middle East shaking it nation to nation. Finally it reached its way to Syria, whose people have had enough.

   Currently in control is Bashar al-Assad. He is a socialist dictator who oppresses his people, who are dying every day. The Assad family's cruel reign began in 1971, however people have gained the courage to stand up recently, because of other countries' reactions. Assad along with the rest of the government are harsh and unwavering. The attacks include the use of chemical weapons which have been in the news recently because of the agreement to not use them. Sarin gas is the weapon of choice. It can kill  you in minutes with the use of just one drop. It disrupts your nervous system, destroying organs and muscles. It is used as a mass suffocant, because when inhaled it paralyzes the muscles around your lungs. And while supposedly chemical weapons are off the table, the torture and killing will continue. 

   Recently in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof wrote a story about a boy, only 11, who stood up to injustice. He protested against the violent torture of students who scrawled anti-government graffiti upon buildings. He, along with the rest of the child protestors, was arrested. Then what else? Tortured. Beaten and whipped. His knees were beaten with the butt of a rifle, until they were shattered. This boy's father finally had to pay to have him released before the family went into hiding. (For length's sake I saved some of the more maleficent details out.)
    
   One of the reasons Syria's government is so powerful right now is because of its allies. The main 3 being China, Russia, and Iran. This is something that could be further extended upon in class. But it has a lot to do with geographic location, military, and similar styles of oppression.

   But I think we should all be informed about this issue so that we can form our own opinions. Public opinion goes hand in hand with democracy. What our nation, America wants, not only as a whole, but also what politicians and your average Joe wants.

  Syria is the cause of tension world-wide, and that's why we should be informed about it, and discuss. 

George H.W. Bush goes to wedding: Kitty Says.

To go to Kitty's post click this. To go to Kitty's Blog click this.

Our 41st president was the official witness went to a wedding of two lesbians. But does that really qualify as "the news." In Kitty's opinion, no. She used the argument that the article did not meet the journalistic standard of "newsworthiness." On this we agree. The Fox News article did not share the story of a long time, influential, republican in opposition, turning supportive. It merely showed him going about a personal event. Kitty's main two criticisms are: that it is peripheral, and the former president is viewed as a celebrity; and that it did not have a lasting impact toward a wide audience, which is journalism's goal. I think these are not only valid opinion's, but it was well written and researched.

Libel and Slander: Morgan Says.

To go to Morgan's post click this. To go to Morgan's Blog click this.

My peer, Morgan, recently posted about libel laws, and their importance and relevance to us as students. Before reading this I kind of glossed over the part about libel and slander laws, but I've come to the realization now, that they're similar to plagiarism and deserve focus. So first off, I suggest to Mr. Miller that we discuss these in class. And Secondly, I suggest you go read this post (heck, go crazy, read the whole darn thing.)

Conglomeration: Sweeping the Nation.

   Conglomeration is a word my grandpa uses to describe a mess or of jumble of things. Usually he uses it in lieu of the word tarnation, but I mean that's just a personal preference. 

   Conglomeration in the journalistic sense is similar. Conglomeration-the process of taking small media organizations, purchasing them, and pulling them together. It's sounds like a game of monopoly, and it can easily become one. So let look at the side of the conglomerates and everyone else.

First the pros:

•  efficiency
•  more money with less of a risk
•  and of course, if you buy up all the companies, you'll have less competition

 These obviously cater to the conglomerates themselves, and not the consumers or smaller companies.

Cons of conglomerates:

• risk (the conglomerates are putting all their chips in one pile.)

 Cons to everyone else:

• less competition (conglomerates can price whatever they want)
• less diversity (conglomerates can use one idea in every one of their facets)
• less jobs

   But I'd like to tie back into the monopoly observation. I think our class should discuss which conglomerates monopolize, and that toll on society.
 

Demassification

Demassification. According to dictionary.com, demassification is to cause to be less centralized. But I think in order to really understand what demassification really is, you must be familiar with what is classified as a mass media. 
   
To be a mass media, a medium must fill these 3 criteria: 

1. You must have the potential to reach a mass audience. 
2. Must you some form of technology. (Remember books and magazines use technological tools too.)  But something has to be going on so that it can transmit.
3. You cannot receive immediate feedback (ie: clapping, body language.) This is because the audience is on the other side of the transmission.

Now that you understand what a mass media is, we can begin to discuss demassification. Understand this: demassification does not just happen to one company or conglomerate, it happens to an entire medium. All the magazines. All TV stations. All the radio channels. Next, demassification happens when a medium loses one of the following: audience or advertising. Because shortly after you lose one, you lose the other. So once those are lost you are forced to demassify. That's right, forced. A medium doesn't want to demassify. If you're reaching a broad audience, why would you want to narrow it? You wouldn't. Demassification forces the medium to target specific, "niche" audiences. They are smaller so their needs must be specifically catered to. 

So why do mediums lose advertisers and audiences? Easy. Something bigger and better comes along to take them away. Magazines and radio were demassified by TV, which in  turn was demassified by the internet. I know, I'm leaving out books, newspapers, and the internet. Books were technically never demassified because they never really had to be. I mean, they started off being about religion and keeping records, but branched off naturally. Speaking of, the internet, by nature was already demassified. Similar to books, computers were once just used to spread military information, but the internet is different. Websites are designed to separately and specifically cater to the needs of the  individual. Ergo, the process of demassification never really needed happen.

Then what about newspapers, are they demassified? Yes and no. While newspapers have differentiated themselves into categories, they haven't started to fully demassify. There are newspapers like The Wall Street Journal which is geared toward businesspeople. They tell the news, but with a twist that keys in stockbrokers and investors. Also you have unbiased newspapers, which can lean either right (conservative/Republican) or left (liberal/Democratic.) But why are there still clear-cut sections to the news? (ie: features, sports, metro, comics, etc.)

That's what I think we should focus on in class, because it is clear that the lack of demassification is causing monetary issues.