Homecoming Assignment

This post isnt really for this class but I had a prompt for english where I could write in any format I wanted. So of course I decided to kill two birds with one stone and do a journalism style essay. I haven't actually read the book about how to be a journalist yet. This essay is kind of like a before point in my journey to become a journalism master. Hopefully one day I will be able to look back at this post and laugh at how terrible I was. Here goes nothing.....

Palatine Highschool is celebrating Homecoming week with a variety of spirit days to get students excited for the big game on Friday. Each year the football teams play against their biggest rivals, Fremd. After the game a dance is held for the highschoolers at Palatine High School. Pep rally's marked the beginning of the year and introduced the theme of this years celebration. 2012 is the year of the circus and the school has been decorated for the occasion. Streamers hang from the ceiling and walls. Members of each grades club made posters with all of the students names, and sports teams made banners that get people excited for the game.

Fun clothing spirit days were also held. This year these included: pajama day, sports day, clown day. The decorations brighten up the school and gave the student body a great sense of Pirate Pride.

 A pep assembly, aptly named Royal Rally, was held after school on this Thursday. Performances from Poms, Flags, Orchesis, Pep Squad, Cheer, and the Marching Band were given to a large group of students, faculty, alumni, and parents. This year was band director Mrs. Horn’s last year at Palatine. A selection of junior and seniors gave speeches to honor her. At the end of the assembly this year's Homecoming King, Queen , and court were announced. Nominees from each grade were announced. The winners will also be presented at the football game.  With all the anticipation this years game will definitely be great. We hope to see you all there to cheer on your favorite team, regardless of preference.

I don't really think this turned out to well but I guess its a good start for now.

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Group Project, Progress and Problems

This I going to be basically a live post so I'm just going to be writing as I get ideas.

People havent seemed to think to much about the project since last meeting.

We need the software to produce (Ryans) posts.

Im not very famillar with the google sites format.

We need a timeline, when each character does the actions in a specific story, Old age-remembering past experiances,

Topics:
Introduction
Job
War (Conflict)
First/Last Day


This post may be updated later with more info.

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Fundamentals Of Journalism

Today is the day of the random posts, youre just going to have to deal with that for now. I just wanted to share a picture of the second book I plan on reading on journalism.

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Suggestions.

Ok so I have a lot of planned post topics and things I'm going to unveil in the coming months. I was just wondering if anybody else had topic ideas/suggestions/critisism for me. Feel free to leave it in the comments.

-Victoria

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If It Bleeds It Leads

I decided I should probably show you the book I'm going to be/have been reading and analyzing. So here it is, I got it at my local library, I got a bunch more books that I will probably be reading as well.

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If It Bleeds It Leads: Rundown, Disclaimer

I've began reading my first journalism book for the year. It is entitled If It Bleeds It Leads: An anatomy television news. The book seems to compare the different kinds of journalists. It's mission thus far is to show how much talk show hosts and the hard hitting journalists you watch everyday actually have in common. Because this book is a little old, some of the specific people they mention arent actually on the air anymore. I dont think this makes any of the information given any less valid, and I am still very interested in it and cannot wait to continue reading.

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Looking To The Future By Learning From The Past

I hope to start making more "regular" posts here and the majority of them will be relating to the books I (plan on) reading. The majority of these books do involve techniques and information relating to radio, television, and print. This information will hopefully guide me along to knowledge relating to more modern forms of news, the internet in particular. I feel like these medias are more alike than they are different. Each of them deliver the news in a quicker time than the one before it. My studies will be focused more towards the internet because I believe it to be the most important form of news that is popular today. The intenet has the possibility to spread more information faster than any media at this day and time, and I feel like speed is as important as any other qualities that news contains.

-Victoria

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The Ramblings of A Crazy Person

The first thing that went through my mind, as I assume it went through the minds of my classmates is when we got our class assignment is one that's been bothering me for quite a while. Our topic is supposed to be our life's focus, the interest to end all interest. Is journalism the thing that I want to do with my life.

The simple answer to that question is yes, but so many other things challenge me with this decision. I would love to work in journalism, honestly it is one of the most interesting things to me at this point in my life. After taking my personality test I have become more aware of my tendencies to over think things; the idea of being a journalist fascinates and terrifies me at the same time.

Honestly, I wish I was more interested in a field that was less risky. I envy the people who want to be engineers, but to be honest I hate math. The creativity of writing is something that I need in my life. Risk is something I don't like to take. Even with this topic I had to whittle it down from several related topics that I deemed too dangerous to pursue as a career.

 Because I am smart, everyone seems to want me to go to a good college and get a great job. Although I agree with the first part of that statement, the second part frightens me to no end. I know that working as a journalist is certainly not a bad career. It just doesn't have the steadiness of many other careers and I am working my hardest to deal with that.

-Victoria

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Background

I have been watching the news for as long as I can remember. Television has always been a big part of my life, for better or worse, and I have learned so many things that way. As I got older and my interest (obsession) with the internet grew it became another new way for me to learn what is going on in the world. I spend a lot of my time on websites that mix journalism and entertainment. Because of this I have learned a lot about things that television news shows don't talk about.

I'm not quite sure if this post made sense but I know a lot more facts from journalism than facts about it.

-Victoria

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Topic Tags

I just decided to post a list of some of the topics I will be blogging about this year and the tags to them if you want to see every post about a topic, once I get started that is :)

USA

World

Politics

Justice

   Entertainment

Tech

Money

Lifestyle

Sports

I cant promise there will be a top of posts on all of these topics but I think this is at least a good start. 

-Victoria

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Introduction To The Internet

At this moment I am sitting at my computer with eight of the most popular and well-known news websites displayed, eight pages that serve millions of people knowledge about the world around them daily . Each page is displaying similar news articles but each seems to have its own opinion and a different way it delivers news to the people that visit it.

cnn.com
cnn displays the most multi-media on its front page. A variety of pictures, articles, and videos covering topics from the Chicago teachers strike, to where you can find mermaids. The most sad news is displayed in small text with no images, but the lighthearted entertaining news has larger text and is illustrated with bright images. Even if it is harder to find the more "important" news is still rather easy to find, but this website seems to focus on covering up the sad with the happy.

bbc.co.uk
bbc displays a lot of news from countries around the world. This page has a news that might be difficult to find on other pages displays front and center as important headlines. The colors are a lot more subdued than the majority of the pages I have viewed. This color palette, combined with how the news is displayed provides a simple, straightforward way to view the news. bbc seems to be a way to learn current affairs that are a little less mainstream easier than other web pages.

cbsnews.com
The most prominent color on this page is black which seems to go well with the darker nature of the news cbs provides. I find much more mentions of terrorists, arrests, and killing here than on the other websites. At first glance this page seems a lot more serious than the other news sources I have seen. 

reuters.com
reuters is primarily a business news source and the headlines definitely display this.Affairs involving the stock markets, both global and national, are shown much larger and more often than any of the other pages. Reuters seems to be the page to go to if you want to find out whats going on in business, and finance. 

buzzfeed.com
buzzeed may seem like an odd choice in news source, but I think there's great value in entertaining news. Buzzfeed has the widest variety in news topics. Most of the news stories, which are adorned with many different pictures, and graphics, are written to entertain while still usually teaching something. This website is mostly for fun news, and interesting things you might not learn anywhere else. 

foxnews.com
The first and most prominent thing you see when you go on fox news is politics, and lots of it. The affairs of the president and legislation are all over the top of the page. Red, white, and blue are also basically the only colors you see on this website. I imagine this is to show patriotism. If you're not looking for the top articles you may have a hard time. Everything under the first four or five breaking news articles are rather small and hard to read. Fox seems to be a good place if you want to read the most important news at the moment.  

news.google.com
Google news has the simplest interface but the most text. At first glance all of the information can be a bit annoying to read through. Lack of pictures does give the page a much more straightforward feel. In my opinion the best part of google news is that the articles are actually links to many of the other pages on this list. 

ABCNews.com
ABC seems to be a little bit obsessed with Obama, the majority of the top news articles are about him. There are plenty of other news stories displayed through ought the site but the bigger more prominent stories all relate to either the election, or Obama. ABC news definitely seems like the place to go for lots of news related to politics.  

-Victoria

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Mission Statement

This is my mission statement for this blog. 

The mission of this blog is to provide an outlet, and a way to share my studies in the subject of journalism in my Critical Thinking class this school year. I will be sharing interesting articles that I come across from various news sources and giving my own opinion, and point of view on the news. A variety of sources including television and the internet covering any topics that I find interesting and/or important. These topics may include but aren’t limited to: trends, politics, sports, technology, humor, and art.

-Victoria

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