Classmate Review: Maddy Williams

While reading Maddy's blog about television, I was felt like I was getting the information, but not really understanding what she was saying. She gave the information, but not with details or examples. She says, "Television comes with many positive impacts but also some negative." This is a great lead, but she only goes on to list one negative impact. She fails to mention a positive effect of television such as the communal experience. She touches on the impact of Political ads, but she doesn't mention if it is positive or negative. I think that if she had given examples in her writing her blog would be one of the best I've seen among our class.


Maddy's TV Response

Classmate Review: Olivia Dawson

After reading Olivia Dawson's blog about radio I feel like anyone could understand the history of radio. Her first paragraph is strong, outlining all major parts of radio's history. However, her second paragraph is not entirely accurate. radio did not directly demassify because of TV. Radio demassified to movies, which then demassified to TV. While movies did most of the work, I am sure that TV did a good deal of damage to radio as well. Other than that minor misstep, Olivia's review was well thought out, organized, and easy to read.



Olivia's Radio Summary

Classmate Review: Skyler Markwell

One thing I have noticed about Skyler in Journalism1 class is that she always pays attention to the details. She can usually tell you exactly what someone said, even though they themselves might not even recall what they said.

Skyler's critique on the Courier Journal was very factually based; it does have way too many "fluff" stories, as I talked about in my critique of them. However, one part of her critique is not backed up by facts. She claims that they covered the Grimes vs. McConnell race very well, but how can this be if they had very few political stories? On October 28th, just 7 days before the election, the Courier Journal had only TWO stories about politics! 

Other than this slight mixup, Skyler's review was structured very well and had a lot of helpful information. Overall, this was a very good critique of the local newspaper, the Courier Journal.


Skyler's Critique

Classmate Review: Sylvia Goodman

I thought that Sylvia's media critique on WLKY was spot on. She clearly stated what the problem was, and presented examples of the problem, which was too many crime stories on WLKY. I love that she used a graph to give the reader a visual representation of what WLKY was doing wrong. Using a visual helps appeal to all types of people. Another thing that I like about Sylvia's critique is that she presents possible reasons as to why WLKY has so many crime stories. I like that because it helps the reader to better understand the topic she is writing about. A link to her critique is below.


Sylvia's Critique

Why is No-one Covering This?

My last two critiques were both about the local news paper, The Courier Journal. However, this critique is about five local news outlets: WAVE3, WHAS11, WLKY, WDRB, and The Courier Journal. On October 28th, 2014, there were zero stories about War on ANY of the five named publications. Now doesn't that seem odd considering that a new terror group has emerged? Whether you call the group The Islamic State, ISIS, or ISOL, they are still a threat to the American Society, as they have stated in many of their public protests and executions. So why is not a single one of these media outlets covering such a serious event like this? Even though it ISIS might now affect Louisville of southern Indiana, it may still affect the United States, and we need to know as much as we can about them in order to be prepared if anything were to happen. This violates the principal of Loyalty because they are not doing their duty to educate us on this important matter The local news outlets need to do a better job of covering the ongoing "war" between ISIS and the United States.


Links to the five websites-

WAVE3- http://www.wave3.com/
WHAS11- http://www.whas11.com/
WLKY- http://www.wlky.com/
WDRB- http://www.wdrb.com/
CJ- http://www.courier-journal.com/

It's Too Fluffy!

The Courier Journal is a local newspaper that has countless subscribers across the Louisville and Southern Indiana areas. The idea of a newspaper is to bring important happenings to the people of the subscribing area. However, this has not been the case for the Courier Journal. On October 28th there were thirty-seven stories on the newspaper's website. Thirteen of these stories (over one third of the stories on the website that day) were about celebrities or other things that were not important for people to know. This violates the yardstick of newsworthiness because these stories will not have a lasting affect on a large group of people. The Courier Journal needs to stop publishing so many "fluff" stories and perhaps focus on more important things, such as the upcoming election.


Here is a link to a "fluff" story on The Courier Journal- http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/indiana/2014/11/02/new-albanys-jr-stuart-slips-easily-character-mark-twain/18396293/

What about politics?

In Journalism-1 class I have been following the local newspaper, The Courier Journal. While I have been recording each type of story (business, disasters, etc.) I noticed that there have been a lack of political stories, which is odd considering that the election for the senate race in Kentucky is tomorrow, November 4th. On October 28th, just one week before the election, there were a measly 4 political stories in the actual paper, and only 2 stories in the online version of the Courier Journal. What this boils down to is that the Courier Journal is not keeping up with the principal of Watchdog. This means that they are failing to keep up with political figures, even 7 days before the election that could change the majority of congress from Democrats to Republicans, ultimately changing the course of our nation. The Courier Journal must make a serious effort to bring more political news to the people of Louisville.


Here is a link to one of the few political stories on the website for The Courier Journal-  http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/elections/kentucky/2014/11/02/alison-grimes-pounds-street-western-kentucky-bid-upend-mitch-mcconnell/18389983/

Classmate Reaction

I recently read Olivia Dawson's news media critique, and from the opening paragraph I couldn't look away from the screen. Her opening paragraph was very intriguing, which is an essential for good writing. Olivia followed up the strong lead-in paragraph with a lot of description as to why it failed to meet the yardstick of newsworthiness. Also, she finishes with a shut-down idea in which she states that the story is unimportant due to the lack of lawful repercussions. Overall her critique was very well written and she obviously put a lot of thought into each sentence. Great job Olivia!

Reaction the Skyler's blog

I read through Skyler Markwell's blog about the class magazine lecture and let me say, I was impressed. Skyler went in depth on her thoughts of the lecture. While reading it I could picture her saying it. I felt like she did not hold anything back when stating her opinion. Overall I felt like this was good blog with a lot of quality. Good job Skyler!

Link to Skyler's blog- http://markwell0819.blogspot.com/

Binary Models Lecture

Binary models were the topic of a recent lecture in Journalism 1 class. There are many different kinds of binary modes such as: Content- Distribution; Elitist-Populist; et al. This lecture was very interesting because I had never thought about the what a news outlet's focus was. An elitist outlet does not worry about the outcome of their publishing, they just want to convey their message. A populist outlet is only concerned about getting the most views, making the most profit, or as it says in the name, being popular. Another model is the Hot-Cool model. I thought this was interesting because hot medias (such as a book or any type of print) require your full attention and cool medias (such as music or T.V.) don't require as much attention.

Newspaper History Lecture

A few classes ago we talked about the history of newspaper; the first newspaper, the first US newspaper, and so on and so forth. Previously I had pondered why newspapers were still around given all the technology that humans have at our fingertips such as cell phones and tablets, all of which can get news apps or websites. The answer to this question was given to me during the lecture: The older generations are who keep print newspapers alive. Older people grew up getting the newspaper and they just stuck with it either because they like reading it or they have always done it so they keep doing it. Now I wonder what will happen when my generation becomes the older generation? Will newspapers completely vanish into the shadow of news apps? We'll just have to wait and see.

9 Principles and 7 Yardsticks

The first lecture that Mr. Miller gave us was about the nine principles and seven yardsticks of journalism. These 16 things are what a journalist should do and the guidelines they should abide by. I thought that this lecture was very important because knowing these things will help me and my fellow classmates during our four years at Manual and for the rest of our years after high school, wether we are journalists ourselves or just critiquing the news. Specifically I found the the yardstick "Newsworthiness" the most interesting because in today's world it seems that a lot of "breaking news" isn't really news at all.

New Device... Same release. (A Media Critique)

The Courier Journal recently published an article about the new phones by Apple; the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. More specifically the article talks about how people will have to wait in long lines for hours on end if they want to get their hands on one of the phones on release day. This article fails to stick to the concepts of Newsworthiness and Local Relevance.

         Newsworthiness means that it is new, or important news, and this story is neither. Whenever a new device, especially and Apple device, is announced there are always long lines to get it. Since it has been happening since the release of the iPhone 3 in 2008, it is not news. If the Courier Journal had known that a certain store would have a significant amount of iPhones and then published a story about that, then that would have been newsworthy.

         Local relevance is also an important factor when it comes to a local media outlet such as the Courier Journal because it's stories should mainly be about news affecting the Louisville area. This article does not once mention anything about the Apple store at the Oxmoor Mall, which is sure to have the most new devices. It mentions a few stores such as Target and Wal-Mart but those could be any Target or Wal-Mart around the country or world. If the article contained information about how much stock the Apple Store at Oxmoor Mall would have, then the story would have some local relevance.




The link to the article is- http://www.courier-journal.com/story/tech/2014/09/16/iphone-long-lines/15721253/

Mass Communication Lecture

The lecture from a couple of weeks ago about the different types of communication (Mass,  group, and individual) was very interesting to me. I had never thought about the different ways an idea can be mass communicated. The process for mass communication goes like this: Stimulus (thinking of the idea), encoding (putting it into writing or typing),  Transmission (publishing the idea or releasing it to the public), Decoding (when the reader reads or listens to the information), and Internalizing (when the reader processes what they have read). I think this lecture will help me and the rest of the J&C students throughout our manual careers and life.