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.