Ted Talk: Crowdsourcing the news.

Today in class I watched this Ted talk entitled Crowd sourcing the news. In this talk, Paul Lewis, discusses the benefits that are achieved by using social medias like twitter, and facebook to create a complete version of events. He discusses two events where police reports are incorrect and using the power of the Internet he completes the story of two men's deaths.

Here are my semi-coherent notes that I took while watching the video.
strangers help in teaching and co-producing news
different perspectives added together to complete the story
the top officials can mislead people with their stories
newspapers accounts can change with edition
eyewitnesses collaborate and tell the real version of events
find people with the same information to prove
skeptical articles draw peoples own questions
someone somewhere has the proof
when people see the proof the other stories fall
the Internet can connect eyewitnesses who are very far away
information travels randomly through Internet but often gets to the correct place
people want to tell the truth and seek to get it off their chest
citizen journalism may be less respected so it needs exact verification
verify against other accounts to remove misinformation
people document significant events and share their stories
examples include the political unrest in middle east, Japanese earthquake
utilize the technologies that allow you to see individual stories in order to complete the story

Read More

Resource Breakthrough

I have been struggling to find more newspaper articles that deal with exactly what I need. Today during English we were researching for our next paper when I realized what I needed. THE DATABASES.....there is a database that focuses just on newspapers and more that have valuable information on my topic. I have to admit it was pretty stupid of me to not realize they were there the whole time. The next analysis will be up soon, after posting so much so quick I got a major case of writers block/apathy.

Read More

Journalism Analysis Project: Beginning

In this post I am going to explain this mythical journalism project I have been hinting at and have made a page for. So far this year I have explored some of the characteristics of modern news. Now I plan to compare modern news sources, ways the news is presented, and whether print journalism produces news similar to all digital formats.
A common thread has been found in each article, and report I have chosen. They are all reports on the events of the Newtown shooting. I chose this topic because it has had a great impact on modern life and was reported on my many sources.
I have saved a newspaper, several online articles, infographics, and videos that have this topic. In the end I hope to have a better understanding on the quality of different publications, and the medias in which they present news; whether it is wise to still directly pay for news in the modern age; as well as which forms of media provide the most in depth, balanced, knowledgeable news.

Read More

Raising Prices on Mobile Subscriptions

The following is an article I wrote for my group writing blog thirdquartet.blogspot.com. I'm focusing on displaying the theme through the "narrators" thoughts on the topic. I tried to tie this writing into my analysis project which will begin next week. In the article I attempted to keep a structure similar to that used in news articles. A more in depth analysis of this work and the work of my group mates will be posted next week.
_______________________________________________________________________________
This week it has been reported that The New York Times may be significantly increasing its subscription prices for mobile readers. It unclear whether or not this change will be implemented but if it is this change could mark a significant change for the publication.
Many factors could be attributed to this change; costs are being cut to compensate for lack of revenue, and as more and more people are getting their news online it can be important to benefit from this format.
Although I agree that if subscription based news is better than its free counterparts it deserves to come at a price. The problem comes when the same content is found on both free and priced news publications. If the New York Times rises their subscription fee but does not provide superior services its readership will certainly go elsewhere for its news.
Many people are not willing to pay to obtain news content. More and more news is in fact free and the sites that provide the best free content are getting more viewers. If the New York Times raises its mobile subscription cost the people who were willing to pay for it might consider going elsewhere.

Read More

Create: Part One

I have had the creating aspect of this blog in my head for a while and as my individual deadline had grown closer I have been striving to achieve it more and more. Honestly my english skills are being suppressed a bit in the class I'm in so I am needing to almost relearn things that I was a pro at last year. I have never really been educated in the art of journalistic writing. This lack of knowlegde lead me to the "all-knowing" google. Here is what I have come across thus far.

From Writing Journalistically to Learn In Any Classroom By Jackie FolkertPortage Northern High School, Portage, MI
Writing Journalistically

"When students write journalistically, they use
higher-order thinking to learn as they demand
accuracy, pinpoint relevancy, consider audience, and
synthesize information. When teachers trade
formulaic writing and worksheets for journalism,
their students have opportunities to personalize
meaning."

I believe this means that a sucessful journalist strives to achieve the truth, write with a specific audience in mind, and summarize the important details while still thouroughly covering the topics necissary. The higher order thinking is a bit offsetting, it may or may not be a fancy way to say an order of thoughts but im not quite sure.

'News writing places the most pertinent
information in the first paragraphs of the
article. In typical inverted pyramid fashion,
the importance of information decreases as
the story continues.
News writing is specific, accurate, and
delivers concrete, factual information.
New writing displays information clearly.
Sentences are short and paragraphs contain
one element of information; paragraphs are
rarely more than three sentences long.
News writing uses direct sentences, most
often subject-verb-object sentences.
News writing does not include the writer's
Opinion.
News writing focuses on one dominant
meaning.  The reader should be able to
answer the question, "What's the single,
most important element in the story?"'

This helps with the understanding of the higherarchy. The way knowledge is to be displayed mirrors the funnel form of a conclusion in the papers that I am writing in my english class. The formatting description makes sence, but I feel as if this is less important in the electronic news that is becoming more popular today. I am aware however that people are more likely to read something if it is not just a wall of text so I will write as the article suggests. This page describes the sentence structure well. I have read this article, and it seems as if the stucture eliminates and condenses sentences well.

Read More

Still No Scholarships

I posted a while back about looking for scholarship opprotunities for people my age. It seems like all of the ones readily availible are either for higschoolers entering college or college students entering the job market. I did find one website that offered scholorships for highschoolers but ut seems that the website hasn't been updated in almost a year. There is probably something out there and I will continue to keep an eye out but the outcome is looking pretty bleak.

Read More

News Anchors vs. Journalists

Most news anchors arent journalists but the most prominent ones that I have come across seem to do both. In order to become a news anchor you dont really need to posess the skills of journalist. Local anchors often times dont even know exactly what they are going to be talking about untill they are about to be on the air. One the most popular anchors of modern time, Anderson Cooper, at least makes it seem like he knows what hes's talking about. If he is completly cut off from the production of his show he hides it well. His enthusiasm for the topics he is reporting on resonates with the audience. He does seem to be a lot more connected to his work than many journalists. It seems that even if you arent a journalist being a sucessful news anchor comes with at least a little work into the creation of the what they present on the television.

Read More

Scholarships?

After hearing about someone in this class who was looking into scholarships regarding their topic I decided to see what I could find regarding journalism. There are tons of opprotunities availible but the majority (all) of them are spscifically for upperclassmen, and college students. I have found a couple that could be related to me but Im not sure if much will come out of it. Nevertheless I am looking more into it and maybe, if im lucky, something good will happen.

Read More

Writing Journalism

An article I read by The Guardian has helped me quite a bit in my pursuit to begin writing quality journalism. The biggest aspects that I took away from this article are that sucessful journalists need to be cunning, entertaining, and oftentimes able to throw out their inhibitions in order to get the good information on a topic. Articles are written very quickly and need to be very good in order to even make it into publications. If a journalist cannot deliver quality work they wont be published. Now that I know some of the characteristics of a good journalist I need to find something that describes how to write well. The easiest way to do this would probably be through my English class but I dont feel that me teacher would be a lot of help in this outlet.

Read More