This week in Journ 420...

This week's lecture topic was outsourcing.  This is generally something I associate with anything technology related.  While, I have heard that certain newspapers have considered outsourcing for editing, I never truly realized just how many papers have tried it, and how big of a problem this truly is.  Our economy isn't doing so well right now.  I am all for saving a couple of dollars here and there, but is outsourcing really the answer for all of our editing needs?  I am going to argue that no, it is not.  In fact, I do not think that newspapers should consider outsourcing for anything but advertisements.  

After reading the comment from one of the outsourced writers for the Pasadena Now, I couldn't understand why some editors feel as though outsourcing is a good idea.  The outsourced writer was assigned to cover city council meetings.  The meetings are taped and posted on the Internet.  The first question I had was a simple one.  How can these individuals evaluate what is truly important to the community/what certain things mean for the city when they are an ocean's length away?  The only answer I can come up with is that they can't.  I have a hard enough time judging what I think should be important to communities when I am a part of them, let alone when I am on another continent.  

Another issue I had with the outsourcing idea also arose after reading the comment from one of the outsourced writers for the Pasadena now.  Within the first few words, it was evident that the English language was not the writer's strong point.  Seeing as he was writing for an English-language newspaper, I see this as a bit of a problem.  To me, this gives the paper's editors unnecessary work.  Does that make it worth it?  No, not really.  In addition, this particular writer thought that the Rose Bowl was some sort of food dish.  Now, I'm not a sports buff nor do I pretend to be.  I cheer when others cheer, and immediately ask why we're cheering.  However, I do know what the Rose Bowl is.  Perhaps that is because it is something that has been put into our culture and is recognized by much of the population.  Huh...I wonder how many other things these outsourced writers misunderstand.  Actually, I don't want to know.  It will only make me hate this concept even more.

I disagree...

Ever since my first journalism class, I have been told that print journalism is slowly dying out.  It's all going to be online soon, journalists say.  Not many people read newspapers anymore, computer nerds rant.  Up until our lecture on Monday, I began to believe it myself.  Now, I just believe that I was being brainwashed to believe what everyone else thinks.

I know better now.

My generation is obsessed with receiving information at lightening speed.  We cannot stand the unknown and, for some reason, having to wait longer than an hour for information is too hard to do.   Please note that this is my generation.  Considering my generation is not the only one that exists, I'm not quite sure why we are so panicky.  

Generations before ours have relied on newspapers forever.  People read them with their coffee, stuff them into briefcases and take them out on the train ride to the office.  Papers provide ample entertainment on the way to the office, during lunch and after someone gets home from work.  The generation of which I am speaking is not mine.  It is our parents' generation and the one before that...and, in some cases, the one before that.  Sure, my generation is going to take over all of those places, but it is not something that is going to happen any time soon.  

My advice to you is to stop freaking out.  It would be naive to say that the Internet has no effect upon print journalism, but it is also naive to believe that print journalism will die anytime soon.  The Internet obsessed era has yet to gain total control of the world, so until they do, take a breather, grab a paper, and actually flip through it.  Don't be afraid.  It is virus free and you might actually learn something new.  

So here's the deal.  I just got into an argument with one of my friends.  He is a pre-med major.  He thinks science and math are the only things that matter.  He told me that writing is pointless and communication isn't very necessary.  Needless to say, I convinced more people that it was necessary than he did.  Funny how that works, isn't it?  

For the sake of embarassing him via the internet, I will not say his name...even though I really want to.  After the "argument," I had an epiphany myself.  Despite how awful the economy may be at this point in time, companies will always need someone that can communicate.  Words are extremely powerful tools for a myriad of things.  How do you think those medical books were written in a way to make you understand, oh powerful med student?  It takes writing and communication skills to be able to pull something like that off, even in the world of medicine.

This epiphany gave me hope.  I tend to stress out about things, and the whole bad economy/me not possibly getting a job after graduation thing took about ten years off of my life.  Not that I want to write medical journals, or take notes for doctors, but I realized that there are so many opportunities available to me as a journalism major.  I am able to go into public relations type things, advertising, and business.  As much as my opponent would like to disagree with me, many fields would not exist without communication.  Although he is too stubborn to realize that he may have lost this argument, I know who the real winner is.   

Cutlines

I'm going to be honest.  When I first heard that we would be spending a week discussing cutlines, a little part of me shuddered.  "How boooring," I thought.  "Especially at 8:00 in the mooorning."  After being dismissed to do the assignment, my spirits hadn't lifted very much.  I sat down at the computer, headed to the AP website and became enthralled by all of the photographs that accompanied each story.  This particularly shocked me because, while I had heard about the earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy, I had yet to see actual photographs.  Hearing about the damage was nothing compared to seeing the sheer volume of destruction.  I heard about this story through Facebook.  I have friends (who remain unscathed) studying abroad in Italy this semester that were kind enough to let us know they were safe.  Also, despite the Irish front my red hair likes to put up, I am Italian, so this story hit particularly close to home because of my heritage and study-abroad friends.  

As it turns out, I truly enjoyed this assignment.  By using the AP website, I felt as though I was let in on a secret that others were not.  At the end of the day, I felt as though I was solving a puzzle rather than writing cutlines.  I had to chose a picture that best fit the story and my audience.  I needed to write a lead-in of 2-3 words to grab a reader's attention (which proved to be difficult...I'm a wordy person).  Finally, I had to write the cut-line and make it fit the word requirement.

This was fun to me.  I mean, I wouldn't want to do this on a Saturday night, but I would be much happier writing cutlines than obituaries or police reports for the rest of my life.  

After Monday's class, I wondered if we would spend another day working on cut-lines.  The board made it clear to me that we would.  This time, my attitude was different, and I was able to enjoy the assignment from start to finish.  Feel free to chalk up a journalism nerd point for me.  I'm ok with it.

Online Reporting

I thrive on getting information fast.  I hate having to flip through the pages of a book or newspaper to find a jump.  I like being able to type in a keyword and have millions of articles/websites show up as a relavent search result.  However, the fact that newspapers are slowly starting to disappear is odd to me.

I talked to my dad about this during spring break.  Rather than spending my time on a beach, I spent my spring break searching for a summer internship.  I was interested in finding one that merged public relations and journalism.  This way, I would have experience in a field that wasn't becoming so hit or miss.  (Sad, I know.)

Anyway, the main thing my dad said was that he didn't quite understand why people were so fascinated with reading the news online.  I tried to explain how important speed is to everyone now, and he still thought it was pointless.  He brought up the fact that he is a commuter, and enjoys reading the paper on the train.  He feels bad for the people that have to squint at their Blackberry's and struggle with the small thumbpads.  

Those were good points.  I hadn't thought of many of those things.  He brought up the importance of the material object, holding it, flipping through it, running into articles you might not expect to, etc.  My need for speed slowly began to drift away after that conversation.  I can't imagine printing out pictures online and sending it to family members because they were pictured in some article.  Cutting it out of a paper gives you a totally different feeling.  To me, it makes it more meaningful.  Anyone can post pictures on the Internet, but not everyone can be pictured in a newspaper.  It's exciting when something like this happens.  

I'm crossing my fingers with hopes that the economy will turn and bring papers back, regardless of how important speed may be to the general population.

Last week's lecture

Swear words are interesting to me.  I tend to have my own rules as to what is considered acceptable, and who is allowed to say these certain words.  I don't swear.  Ever.  (Well, unless I'm extremely angry, but that rarely happens.)  I think my parents made it seem so taboo to me when I was younger that certain words just didn't enter my vocabulary.  I don't have a problem with it when other people do it; in fact, I usually laugh.  I guess that isn't a good thing, but I'm really only bothered by it when it is done excessively.  Being the age that most college students are, I have a feeling that most of us would shrug off an explicit word or two if our friends dropped them.  However, I tend to have standards when it comes to this type of speech.  It makes me laugh when one of my best guy friends drops the f-bomb all over the place for emphasis, but if a girl used that word to the extent that my friend Jack does, I think I would just stare at her.  My sentiments toward using swears in the news are pretty similar, actually.  To me, there are certain publications that act as "girls," and some that act as "boys."  (Sidenote: I'm starting to wonder if I should've lived in the 1950s...)  I don't think that adding a swear word to a written publication can be seen as a bad thing, so long as it is only used for emphasis and not dropped every other word.  Just like all other words, these words can help to convey emotion, just in a more attention grabbing way.  However, if I were to hear a reporter for CNN drop a swear word during a regular broadcast, I think my jaw would drop (unless he or she was reading something or quoting someone).  I can't seem to make sense of what I think is "ok" and what is "not ok."  All I can do is tell the difference between when I've been offended and when I haven't been.

Something to think about.

After hearing about the New York trip, I came to the semi-harsh realization that I am a total wimp.  I would NEVER be brave enough to drop everything, move to New York, sleep on couches and hope that I could find a job.  Why?  Because I would be afraid to fail.  How lame, right?  Half of that experience would be for the excitement, and all the while I would be wasting my time being practical.  I wish I could do something like that.  I wish I could just drop everything (and by everything I mean my inevitable time in the Chicago-land suburbs after graduation) and head to New York with hopes of getting a job at Rolling Stone Magazine.  I had a friend who did something like that....  After we graduated high school, he went to college for a couple of months and decided it wasn't for him.  He said that his time in a classroom made him realize that he wanted to pursue music.  So, he packed up and moved to L.A. with a friend.  He didn't make it in the music industry, so he came back home.  No harm, no foul.  He's fine with it.  He doesn't feel like a failure.  In fact, he lives in Seattle now because he decided that would be more fun than L.A.  I need gumption.  In other news, I actually enjoyed the story we read about the freezing cold day in New York.  Then again, I'm obsessed with descriptions.  I feel like I'm being cheated out of the whole story if I don't hear every last detail, no matter how minute it may be.  The writing made me think of The Catcher and the Rye.  The descriptions were wordy, but I could picture every single thing he was describing.  Interesting...I hated that book but I liked the article.  I did have to re-read some of the sentences to make sure I understood them completely, but I didn't mind because once I did, I was granted with a whole different picture.  As I said before, I think I'm just a sucker for descriptions, but you should know that by now; I just told you all about my friend from high school...  

I'm nervous.

For a majority of my life, I have always wanted to do something that involved music and writing.  No...I do not mean music writing; I'm not cut out for that.  Until high school, I never realized that this was possible.  I knew about music journalism, but I had never considered it for myself.  This past summer I fell in love with it.  How dramatic.  Music journalism allows me to insert my opinion and be passionate.  Writing about a board meeting wouldn't quite have the same affect.  Now, I am very aware that this is a specialized topic.  Chances of me getting the chance to write about music while in my twenties are slim to none.  What will I do, then?  After going through the sports and business sections of the Associated Press Stylebook, I became even more nervous.  I don't know anything about business!  I don't know anything about sports!  These are two major sections in most newspapers.  This freaks me out.  I know that these aren't the only sections, and that there are numerous things I would still be able to write about, but does this make me underqualified?  Should I start studying all I can about business (bleagh) and sports?  I have a hard enough time following the stock market, let alone the various chapters of bankruptcy.  That's a completely different ball field.  Eek.  Maybe I should subject myself to reading the business and sport sections of the Chicago Tribune.  Too bad my parents didn't use that as a punishment tactic on me when I was younger.  It would have been horrendous at the time, but perhaps I would be better versed in bankruptcy and rabbit punches.  

Photo Choices.

Printing photos of a man's suicide is in no way, shape or form appropriate. I feel as though only one of the four photos depicting the suicide of Pennsylvania treasurer R. Bud Dwyer is appopriate. Why? When choosing what I consider to be a suitable photo of a tragic incident, I feel as though it is most important to consider the friends and family of the individual. In this case, I would only post photo 1a. Dramatic, appropriate, and accurate, it captures the incident in a manner that cannot be misconstrued as poor taste. The gun is still visible, but it is not yet evident what he is planning on doing with it.

As for the rest of the photos...I would refuse to post any of them. How visually boring, right? I believe that a journalist's job is to cover a given story with the use of words, primarily, and the use of photos to emphasize the story. In the fourth picture, a young child is seen with part of a fence piercing his throat and coming out of his mouth. Maybe I have a weak stomach, but if a journalist was to describe this photo in explicit detail, I would cringe. It is easy to visualize after hearing a description, and I feel as though showing it is a bit too explicit. The reader doesn't need a photo. The words should be enough. If they aren't, perhaps the journalist hired to cover the story should look into another line of work. I hate to sound boring, but my sentiments for the rest of the photos are similar. I find them to be inappropriate. Graphic displays of a dead child being mourned by his family, a woman whose clothes have been torn to shreds by a mob of Mardi Gras driven men, or a photo of a murder victim sprawled across a printing press is probably NOT what most people expect to see while pressing a hot cup of Folger's to their lips. As journalists, we should all understand that words are powerful. Describe these photographs! Explain how the drown victim's brother has to be held up by two different adults because he is so distraught.

Yes, descriptions can be important. We often strive too much for short, concise sentences that we forget to include some much needed description. I am not against visual aids. I enjoy pictures. They enhance stories. However, if a story is full of detailed descriptions, maybe photos of dead bodies wouldn't be necessary, and a flood of letters to the editor can be avoided.

I hate being gullible.

This class makes me feel like I'm being lied to.  No, not the lab...but for the past two weeks, I have left lecture feeling like I need to read the paper and question every little detail.  First, we covered how some reporters have been found guilty of making up sources, details or even stories in general.  On Monday, we covered doctored photos.  What?!  Sure, I'm not so gullible as to believe that every photo I see in the paper or in a magazine isn't tampered with, but if I see a picture of four men talking, I assume that there were, indeed, only four men talking.  Our reading from this week made me realize that this is not so.  People can be taken out of photos without so much as a hair left behind.  Ok, that's fine if you're posting these pictures on Facebook and you wanted to remove the random guy that jumped into your photo with your sister, but actually publishing fake photos isn't right.  Aren't there people that check this?  Probably.  What's worse is that they most likely don't care so long as it makes their paper/magazine more visually appealing.  (<--That is only an assumption.)  I guess I'm kind of mad at myself for believing every picture I see.  I mean, I don't want to look at every photo or newstory with an extremely investigative eye.  I would rather enjoy it a bit.  What's funny to me is that I ask so many questions that it has become one of my flaws.  When people are telling me a story and I think something doesn't line up, I have no problem interrupting with a question--how rude of me!--but when I'm reading something, I don't question it, unless it is blatantly obvious that something is not right.  As I said, I do not want to start reading things and question if the murder really happened or not, but there is nothing wrong with looking at things a little more carefully than I have been.  I suppose that can be the second thing I am going to work on.  1.) Be more grammatically correct in text messages, despite what the receiver may think (see previous post) and 2.) Question things I read, but not to a fault.  

I suppose that is all for now.  Oh, and this video is what came to mind during lecture.  It's pretty crazy what computers can do.  I wonder if people were more commercial in the 1900s...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U

I wonder if I've ever been lied to.

Well, by a newspaper, that is.  This thought resonated through my head throughout the course of the readings we had to complete for Monday's lecture.  I don't consider myself to be a naive person, but I do tend to trust people until they give me a reason not to.  This goes for professors, friends, family and newspapers or magazines.  Now I'm starting to wonder just how much I should trust the last two.  Clearly, I know that mistakes and typos will always find a way to slide past some editor somewhere.  People make mistakes, and people miss things.  However, I'm not quite sure how someone could fabricate names and quotes and feel comfortable enough to publish it.  Just as we said in class, pulling that off takes serious talent and could be considered an art.  Oh wait...it already is!  Storytelling has been around since the beginning of time, and fictional writing is praised all the time today.  Why the journalists that fabricated names, just as Steven King and Stephenie Meyer do, is beyond me.  Part of me wants to know how some of these conniving journalists got away with lying for so long.  I understand that there may have been no reason not to believe them (other than the fact that their stories were full of lies), but some of them got away with this for far too long.  Ugh, I feel as though I'm rambling and sounding scatterbrained, but that's how I felt when I was reading the articles.  I couldn't get my brain to shut up and stop asking questions or go off about a particular lie.  Hopefully I will catch one of these liars.  I think that would be an extremely rewarding experience.

I think I have a problem.

Hello, again!

Grammar, grammar, grammar...

In 3rd grade, I learned I was a bit (understatement) of a grammar cop.  This was the year all of us learned when to say "my friend and I" verus "my friend and me."  Regardless of whether I was in the classroom or choosing my team for kickball, whenever someone used "me" instead of "I," I was all over them.  I would clear my throat, just as Ms. Oakley, my teacher, did and ask, "Whoooo?" in a drawn out manner.  The number of eye rolls I received from the general 4" tall population that year was countless.  

This memory flew back to me after reading chapter 1 of When Words Collide.  The "Insta-talk" section spoke to me directly.  Why?  Because I, Annie Colletti, in addition to being slightly obsessed with grammar, am a texting fiend.  If I leave my phone at home, I feel like I've lost a limb.  Sad, I know, but I can't help it.  Despite the fact that my relationship with texting is going quite well and may even be considered unhealthy, I do have one slight problem with the system.  Just as Kessler and McDonald wrote in When Words Collide, it seems as though a texter's respect for the English language vanishes just as quickly as his thumbs fly across the tiny keypad.   I have even noticed myself do it here and there.  While I always include colons, periods, commas and apostrophes when necessary, I do not always capitalize proper nouns or words that I should.  The difference between those that throw out the entire language and me is that I know exactly what I am doing.  I do it because I don't want people to think I am a "know it all" or something of the like.  It makes the conversation more informal and casual, which is how it should be.  Deep, grammatically correct conversations are not meant for a Nokia screen.  I do not know why, though, and that bothers me.  I couldn't agree more with Kessler and McDonald.  The English language has one set of rules, not various rules depending upon the medium.  For this reason, I am going to take a stand.  I will capitalize when I should and avoid the "hahas," even if I really did laugh.  It'll be interesting to see how many virtual eyerolls I get this time.

I have never blogged before!

Hello, blog world!

Even though I'm a journalism major, I have never had a blog.  It's not as though I've ever had anything against them, but I just never set one up.  The thought that my ideas are floating around the Internet could be the reason.  Anyway, I missed doing this in class so I hope I'm not messing it up!  That's all for now.

--Annie