Media Critique

Media Critique on "Grimes' Grandmother Stars in New Senate Ad"
http://www.whas11.com/news/politics/Grimes-grandmother-stars-in-new-Senate-ad-275637291.html

This article was on Whas 11's website under the "Political News" tab as the headlining story. This is very surprising, because it really isn't newsworthy at all. It violates the yardstick of newsworthiness because the topic this article is on is in no way going to make an impact on a large audience that lasts more than 6 months. This topic is not core! Most people will forget Grimes' grandmother starred in a Senate ad next week! It's ridiculous to think this was the headlining political story.

This article also violates the principle of "make the important interesting". In fact, it does exactly the opposite. Sure, some people might be amused that Grimes' own grandmother was in an ad, but is this important? Will this impact the way the election turns out? Highly doubtful. 

This article also violates the yardstick of fairness. The article only includes one statement from a woman dissing the commercial. The article omits a statement from a person in support of the ad. Journalists simply can not show only one side of the story. They must always show both to ensure fairness.

Nothing in this article was actually incorrect, except it's easy for one to be confused with the video sandwiched in between paragraphs. While the article states that Grimes' grandmother stars in a new ad, the video shows both of Grimes' grandmothers. There is no caption below the video explaining if this is a different ad then the one they are talking about in the article. The reporter should have been more clear on this.

This article could be improved by not being the headlining political article. It should also include a statement(s) from a person supporting the new ad, not just from one opposing. Also, as I said before, there should be a caption below the video explaining it's relevance to the article.

Response to Rebekah's Post on Magazines

I loved how Rebekah started out her post with talking about how the history of the magazine is more complex than it may seem at first. It instantly caught my attention and made me want to learn more. Her style of writing makes the important interesting, which is one of the 9 principles of journalism. I like how she guided us through the history of magazines and how she explained how certain magazines, like the Saturday Evening Post, impacted modern magazines. She then went on to explain the innovations magazines made in the journalism industry. This post was great and I enjoyed reading Rebekah's writing. All of the examples she gave made reading it so much easier and interesting!
Check out her post here: http://rebekahsrant07.blogspot.com/

Response to Rachel's Blog Post on the Printing Press

The other day, Rachel created a blog post about the in class lecture on the printing press. She pointed out all of the important parts of the lecture. She let us know how the printing press impacted our lives and backed it up with explanations that made it easier to understand what she was talking about. I really like how she talked about how without journalism, it would make our world both a better and worse place. She again backed up her idea with good details. She summed up journalism very well in the last paragraph as well. Overall, it was just a really well written post that put the lecture in a very simple and easy to understand format.
Check out Rachel's blog post here:       http://www.rtrachel.blogspot.com/2014/09/printing-press.html

Mass Communication-What is it?

Our first class discussion, back in late August, was about the fundamentals of mass communication. Some examples of mass communication are newspapers, magazines, and social media. One of the defining traits of mass communication is that there is never any immediate feedback. So, YouTube is an example of mass communication because a user can post a comment on a video a couple of weeks after the video is posted, which is not immediate feedback. Another defining trait of mass communication is that it has to have the potential to reach a large, or mass, audience. It also most communicate through a medium and travel through space and time. A medium can be anything from a newspaper to a blog post.

There are 5 steps to mass communication. First and foremost, one most think of an idea, or a stimulus. They then must put this idea into a share able form, or encode it. An example of encoding it would be making your idea into a paper copy of a script. Then you must put your encoded idea out into the world. This is transmission. After transmitting, it may take a while, but eventually people will begin to read your script, watch your movie, etc, and decode your encoded stimulus. The final step to this process is internalization, when others retain/ remember your stimulus.

There are 3 filters (things stopping you from internalizing) and 3 impediments (obstacles). I have listed them below, along with their definition.

Filters

1. Physical-physically preventing you from doing something (I can't)
2. Psychological-this happens in your brain; you can't internalize the info; you won't accept it (I won't)
3. Informational-when you are missing a piece of information (I don't know)

Impediments

1. Semantic noise-poor encoding
2. Channel noise-occurs during transmission that makes it hard to decode material
3. Environmental noise-occurs during decoding, such as when a truck is knocking down a tree outside while you are trying to watch a television program.

Magazines

On September 12, we had a class lecture on magazines, how they started, and why they are different than other mediums of communication. We began the lecture by learning about the first magazine to hit the newsstands- Benjamin Franklin's General Magazine. As the title hints at, this magazine was for anyone and everyone; it was not targeted at a niche audience. This means magazines in the early days had a national audience, a national identity, and national advertising. You could say these ads are "shot-gun approach" ads, meaning they were put out there in an attempt to attract only a fairly small percentage of the people reading the magazine.

Magazines were soon being shipped all the way across the country for the small amount of a penny per pound because of the Postal Act of 1879. More and more people began reading newspapers and enjoyed them, but some wished for magazines specific to their interests, such as sports, baking, etc.

Today, each magazine publication creates magazines very specific to a certain topic to attract a niche audience. For example, celebrity magazines tend to sell to young women, family-centered magazines appeal to parents, and magazines filled with pictures and easy to read short stories are enjoyed by children. Advertisers put their ads in magazines that their consumers are most likely to read. For example, in a celeb magazine, you will most likely see page after page of ads for new young adult fiction novels, make up ads, perfume ads, etc. This is the exact opposite of the "shot-gun approach" I explained earlier. Magazines are not only interesting and enjoyable for us to read; they are also enjoyable for advertisers because when they place their ads in the right magazine, they are sure to see a rise in sales!

Newspapers: A Dying Industry

On September 8th, we discussed the printing press and newspapers in class. We learned of the time before Johannes Gutenberg, the man who is famously credited for inventing the printing press, where inefficient things, such as stamp seals, screw presses, etc, were used to produce papers.

Then, Gutenberg came around and introduced his idea of a movable metal type printing press that was much more efficient than the old printing presses. Because of his invention, the world was forever changed. If he nor anyone else had ever come up with this invention our lives would be so incredibly different.

Without the printing press, corruption in religion would be much greater than it is today because priests or preachers could say certain things are written in the Bible when they are actually not. We would have no way of seeing if the words they spoke were true because, unless we were in a position of power, we would not have the resources to learn how to read in the first place. We also would have no journalism if not for this invention. This is a huge deal; how could we spread news if not for journalism?

Newspapers have been around for an extremely long time; although they have evolved quite a bit over the years. Fewer and fewer people have been buying newspapers over the last few years. The reason why is because how much technology has evolved; I can read "Google News" and get the top news stories in under ten minutes, and it's so much easier than getting the paper and attempting to find what I want to read about.

While I agree that newspapers will never be truly extinct, I do believe that the number of consumers will continue to decline. Technology will keep evolving as long as we live, and it will be easier and easier to read the news on our phone. Why bother with the paper?

Well, there are a few qualities a newspaper has that cell phones, the evening news, and your computer will never have. Newspapers are low tech; so they appeal to older people. They are nonlinear, so you don't have to sit through an entire evening news broadcast just to watch a 2 minute story; you can skip around and find what you want to read. Newspapers are affordable, portable, and a physical object. And of course, we all know newspapers are a huge tradition in the United States. My parents always get out of bed Sunday morning and read the paper while eating breakfast. However, I don't feel like in 20 years I will be having this same tradition. Traditions evolve and change, and I have to wonder how different journalism will be when I am an adult.

Binary Models

On September 2nd, we had a class lecture on binary models in communication. We learned of the different models and what they each entail. I personally was very interested with the elitist/populist model. The populist side of the model shows just how truly greedy a huge part of our society is. The television industry is primarily a populist industry today, and with each decade it is becoming more and more so. It's sad really, that these companies will play whatever on their network just as long as it attracts a large audience. 

The elitist side of the model, however, shows that we do still have people that honestly don't care how much attention they get from the shows they air; they just want to get a message important to them across to others. It is extremely hard for a company to be elitist because, as everyone does, they still have to pay bills to keep their company out of debt. In 50 years or so, I bet there will be very few elitist companies just because money controls our world. 

The other 3 binary models are hot/cold, content/distribution, and information/entertainment. Hot media is media in which you do not have to devote all of your attention. For example, I could be listening to music while cleaning my room; I do not have to just be sitting at my desk listening to the music. Cold media, on the other hand, is media in which you do have to devote your entire attention. An example of this is a novel; I could not be reading a novel while doing my math homework!

A content-based media is a media that shows their own content, while a distribution-based media is a media that, put simply, distributes other's content. Netflix is an example of both these models because they not only create their own shows and movies, they also show others programs. As you can see, sometimes a company can fall in two contrasting binary models.

Information and entertainment media is pretty self explanatory. Informational media shows only educational and fact-based programs while entertainment media, such as Disney, show things people want to watch for the fun of it; they are not in any way educational and are just for laughs or to put you at the edge of your seat.

Mr. Miller also touched on conglomeration, and demassifcation in this lecture. Conglomeration, also know as consolidation, is when a huge company (think Disney, Comcast, etc.) buys a lot of smaller companies. A major disadvantage of this is the lack of choice us consumers have. About 6 or 7 big companies are controlling just about everything we watch and listen to. It's kind of a scary thought. Thankfully, monopolies are illegal, so a bigger company can not buy every company in the industry. 

Demassification is when a media company stops trying to reach a mass, or wide, audience and instead tries to reach a tinier, or niche, audience. This often occurs when the audience for a program drops or when talent is lost.

This lecture really opened my eyes to the world of mass communication and how really only a few companies control everything we see. Because of this lecture, I now fully understand the four binary models, along with conglomeration and demassification.