Good Night and Good Luck

I had not seen Good Night and Good Luck until this morning. It is a movie I had been meaning to watch and I was very impressed. 

I do not know much about broadcast journalism, but I do know newsroom structure, writing, editing and ethics. The newsroom was similar to what I know, throwing around stories and discussing what to report, but the overhead of Murrow’s boss, William Paley, was really shocking. He claimed that he never censored, always supported Murrow and lost advertising support to defend his reports. He gets very hot headed when discussing Murrow’s reporting and how omitting the other side of the story or the truth within Murrow’s stories was censoring. He moved Murrow’s show from Tuesdays to Sunday afternoons, a death sentence in broadcast, because his reports were losing advertisers support. 

This movie was an example of the good that journalism can do. Murrow and his supportive team exposed Senator John McCarthy of Wisconsin and saved a lot of people their jobs and the reputations. The one thing I kept coming back to and thinking about was the advertising. As long as news organizations continue to reach the public there will be advertisers, but pleasing the advertiser over reporting the truth leads to an ethical situation. The advertisers are the ones that are making news organizations profitable, but the job of the journalist is to report the truth, accurately and fairly. You can't always please the advertiser and from what I have learned, they will come back over time.

Good Night and Good Luck

Before class, I've never seen Good Night and Good Luck even though I'm wanted to for awhile. I knew the journalistic happenings surrounding McCarthyism, but brought a new view to censorship in journalism. If Edward Murrow hadn't taken that stand, and CBS that chance, who knows what would have happened. People would have lost their jobs because of the assumption they were communists, and Murrow and his coworkers stood up for those. I also know that advertising is what basically keeps a newspaper running. It was a strong point that even after hearing advertisers may pull out from the show, Murrow would split the cost and pay for the ads to keep the stand going.

I'm glad we watched this movie in class, though, I don't know if I viewed it different than I would have if I had seen it when it came out. Advertising and censorship wasn't news to me, but really seeing what Murrow and CBS did during McCarthyism showed me how serious things were back then, and if Murrow hadn't taken a stand, we'd live in a different media society.

Good Night and Good Luck

I've seen "Good Night, and Good Luck" a couple times before this class. I've been interested in journalism for a long time, so I don't think my perceptions really changed upon the viewing in this class.

The fact is that as long as journalism is profitable, there will be clashes over advertising dollars versus the content that's produced. Bill Paley's predicament is not unusual by any stretch of the imagination.

For instance, The State News won't publish negative stories against DTN because the loss of their advertising dollars in the paper would cripple the staff. Is an investigative article about the problems of DTN really worth the destruction of the paper? I'm not sure.

Edward R. Murrow probably would have taken that stand, though.

Dec. 4 and Beyond

Our last scheduled session is Thursday, Dec. 4.
I will meet with you individually to discuss your performance in the class and your final grade.
It will be an opportunity also for you to discuss my performance and what you did, or didn't, get out of the class.
The one-on-one meetings will be done in the following order, beginning at 8 a.m.:
Stephanie DeFever
Christopher Parks
Katie Kolenda
Akasha Starr
Peter Gross
Kelly House
Shelby Szkula
Mike Blasky
Nikki Koliopoulos
Michelle Crechiolo
I'm guessing each meeting will take no longer than 5 minutes.
We will not have a final exam, but I will be available during that time, 7:45 to 9:45 a.m. Monday, Dec. 8, in the classroom.
- Vic

Project #2

Our online publication The Grand River Gazette proved to be an interesting experience. Before the Gazette, I had never written in an online publication and didn't realize all of the work that  goes into making it happen.  The main fact that I realized is that everyone on the team has to be on the same page.  Through that assignment I truly learned about team work.  In order for the publication to turn out decent and enjoyable to read and look at, everyone has to do their part.  Some wrote stories, had multimedia and help make the website. Without Stephanie Defever, our publication would not have been possible.  I'm not even sure of all that she did to put it together to make it work, but I know that it involved long hours at her job working to produce The Grand River Gazette.  While I produced my stories, she made sure they made them on the Gazette.  All in all, everyone worked together to make our very own online publication for the first time in JRN 305.

GRG

Producing the Grand River Gazette for class was fun. I enjoy being on news staff's and turning the classroom into one was a good experience.

When comparing this class to another writing class JRN 200 or 300, this one was more relaxed and we worked together to put together something we can be proud of instead of having a bunch of stories that just get graded. The class was able to work together through ideas and reporting with a final product. The production of a publication although it was not physically tangible, was out there in cyberspace published for anyone to read.

The publication idea also was a way for us to apply our skills that we had learned over the semester. Editing each others work really allowed us to practice our editing skills and learn from our mistakes when we write.

Producing the website was a feat, but I enjoyed it and am glad that I could produce something the class liked. It also tested my design skills and now I have the website as an accomplishment, for my resume and as a skill set.

Graded Exercise

My feelings about the graded exercise for class where we created our own website to be mixed.  First the bad.  It was more stories that I had to write on top of my normal workload, which includes two other journalism classes, so needless to say I was swamped.  On top of all this I am an inherently lazy individual, so the prospect of any work generally fills me with a sense of loathing for the class, school, and life in general.

Before  get too morbid, let me also explain the good.  I did at the end of the day enjoy working on these articles.  I believe part of the reason I enjoyed working on them so much more than articles for my other classes is that I felt they would be graded and judged more by my own peers than by a professor.  This relieved some tension I normally feel when I turn in an article for, say Jane Briggs-Bunting.  I dread turning in those articles.  With regard to my first story about pets, it was an added bonus because I played with animals for the majority of the time I was working on the story.  The best was this cat named Bowie who is less than a year old and is so energetic I feel that the owner might be feeding it amphetamines.  The other writing was an article about thanksgiving which was genuinely fun to write.  For me, thats rare.  So there.  I enjoyed it.  And my drawing which should see the light of day soon. 

GRG Edition 2

In keeping with the theme of this week, I'd like to give thanks for having really good writers and editors to have my back in this class.  Everyone has so much more experience in print and I'm lucky that my stories can go through someone to clean it up.  I get really frustrated because I feel so out of touch with campus, but I think I found stories that worked, that I could relate to and apply to campus.  I don't like to be bad at things, so it's hard knowing that my stories are lacking, but focusing on the positive, I think that collectively a very good publication was produced.  If nothing else this project has affirmed that while I like writing and the English language in general, investigating and interviewing is just not my strong suit.

Grand River Gazette

I didn't know what to expect from our group projects, but I think they went well. It can be difficult to have a 10 person team working on the same project and I think we did a nice job writing our stories and making two professional-looking publications. 

The aspect of our project I was most proud of was the teamwork. A few people volunteered for big roles and that was important to our success. There weren't any fights and we got everything done on time that needed to be finished. 

The hardest part was coming up with stories ideas. If there were to be another issue of the Grand River Gazette, we would need to come up with better ideas and create a better flow within the publication.

Overall, I think it turned out great! 

Learning from group project

From working on the Grand River Gazette, I've learned to deal with a new set of deadlines. Although I've had deadlines for class articles before, I've focused on copy editing instead of reporting. To get things done on time so they can be put on the Web site, and include multimedia, which I've never done before, was a good experience. It was a project where we could all work together, and putting out a class news site is different than anything I've ever done. I also liked the group editing we did. To edit each other's articles and see what kind of editing others were doing helped me learn more about what to look for.

Class Project

For our project, the biggest thing I feel it gave us was the closest thing to a real world experience within the classroom, which is something that's valuable but difficult to achieve. It really forced accountability on our part because we weren't just writing for ourselves, and then giving it to a professor. We had to be accountable for our own work for the sake of one another, because we were all tied together by the nature of the project. Deadlines needed to be met so different members could do their part of the project, and work needed to be as polished as possible, aside from obvious reasons, but also for the sake of our editors. The whole idea of working together and people picking up slack where it was needed and helping in other places when possible was a rewarding experience, and the publication truly was something we could be proud of.

Exercise

I think a classroom is a tough environment to replicate a newsroom.

Even though we were only publishing "semi-weekly," even weekly newspapers meet every day to discuss stories, assign media, and brainstorm ideas. We only had a maximum of one-third (or so) of about four class periods to discuss ideas and assign stories.

I think it's also difficult to assign editor positions and reporter positions. Although Kelly may have been our "editor-in-chief," all that really meant was she had more responsibility. I don't think a lot of the stories made it in on the deadline she had assigned. 

In a real newsroom environment, if your stories don't make the deadline you're assigned and there's not a great excuse, you get fired or yelled at.

It's also harder to edit these stories, because I don't want to be too negative to my fellow classmates. I don't think it's my job to critique their stories in a classroom environment -- that's the professor's job. If another student gives you feedback it can come off as snobbish or rude.

Anyway, just my opinion. That being said, our paper came out well and I was pleased with the content.

Super Graded Exercise

This is the super quiz originally scheduled for Nov. 20.
You must complete it before our next regular session, Dec. 2.
Please email your answers to me at vrbjrmk@aol.com by midnight Dec. 1.
All of the questions are based entirely on what is in the textbook, "The Editorial Eye," second edition.
JRN 305 Graded Exercise, Fall 2008
Name: ____________________________
1. The textbook cites what it calls "Dirty Dozen: 12 areas where errors lurk." Name each of those areas, and briefly describe what you can do to avoid publishing errors in each of those areas.
2. Why should you not change words in direct quotes? Paraphrase what the textbook says. Also, why should you NOT put quote marks around indirect or paraphrased quotes?
3. Read the following sentence: "The person who is suing was identifiable in the statement." What is meant, according to the textbook, by this element in a libel case?
4. As an editor, you are expected to help direct writers to sources. The textbook suggests three questions that "can help you develop almost any story." What are those questions?
5. Using the textbook as a guide, describe what makes a good photo. Explain the parallels between writing and photography, as stated in the textbook.

Landslide Victory

One of the determining factors behind Barack Obama’s presidential victory was that he managed to convince my generation that our votes actually mattered. Not just votes for him, but votes for his rival John McCain and anyone else in the running to be elected president of the United States. So thank God I decided to send in an absentee ballot. Originally I got an absentee ballot because I didn’t want to go through the trouble of trying to change my address, but I got the additional bonus of avoiding the ridiculous lines at the polls. This gave me the opportunity to kick back and watch some of the TV news coverage of the presidential election.
All I can say is that CNN dominated. I tried channel-surfing between CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC for the purposes of this blog, but found myself irresistibly drawn to CNN. They put up the news I wanted to know, and didn’t add anything unnecessary or extra (at least, not for the duration of the election—but come on, a Will-I-Am hologram? How was that relevant?) I loved the ticker at the bottom that showed minute updates of the status of the presidential, gubernatorial and senatorial elections in each state. The “projections” confused me at first, especially when a state only had less than 10 percent of their vote in because I thought CNN’s projections were what actually happened. Once I grew used to it, however, I didn’t mind that much. I stayed up until 4 am watching the coverage. I didn’t want to miss anything.

I rocked the vote.

So my first experience voting in a presidential election turned out to be a bit different than I had expected.
I found out Thursday night that The State News had gotten a credential to go see Obama speak in Chicago's Grant Park, and I was the one who would be going to cover it. I was uber excited to get to go witness history. Then I realized I wouldn't be in EL to vote.
So, after a long night of Halloween festivities, I trekked down to the Secretary of State's office to find out how to vote early. The place was packed and there were several small, loud children dressed as bumblebees and witches wandering the room. Not exactly the environment you want to be in when you're already feeling a bit under the weather.
After waiting for an hour and a half, I was told that all I had to do was go to the City Clerk's office and cast an early ballot. After kicking myself for waiting so long only to be told there was a much simpler option, I headed over to City Hall.
Voting early definitely doesn't have the same allure as voting on election day. I cast the same ballot and still got an "I Voted" sticker, but it lacked the feeling of solidarity that comes with standing in a line of tens of other voters who have made the effort to participate in democracy.
Also, Michigan was such a blowout that I'm pretty sure the poll workers didn't bother to process the absentee ballots.
But then again, I did get to witness history. I guess I can deal with a less-than-amazing first voting experience.

Barack to the Future

“The next time they give you all that civic bullshit about voting, keep in mind that Hitler was elected in a full, free democratic election”

-Geore Carlin

So I went and voted the other day, a fine fall morning. I heard on the news that earlier in the day the polling places were packed, but by the time I got to the polling place there were few lines. However, I also noticed that all of the people that worked at the polling booth looked about the same age as my grandmother, and were working incredibly slowly. That is, if the lines had been longer, which they were earlier in the day, before I got there at ten, then there would have been an extraordinarily long line due to the slowness of the workers.
Then my grandmother, who drove me to the voting place, left me there. Yes, she didn't see me in the parking lot or outside of any of the voting booths (I was still voting), and decided to leave. I did not understand the logic, but I did call her phone and she picked me up in short order. i think I would have been far angrier except it was a nice day, and there's a good chance my grandmother is going senile.
I was working all day on various other projects, so I did not get the chance to view much of the election coverage. However, I did see one thing on Fox News that I feel sums up my feelings about both the network and my views on the media. They were in Philadelphia at the back of a long line, and one of the reporters said that the people could be waiting for an hour and a half. Many of the people turned around in anger, some mouthing obscenities. I laughed and thought of the old people.

Barracking On Since '08

I think that I have come down enough from my victory high and this emotional process that has been going on for the past 30 hours, enough to compile some lucid thoughts about yesterday and today. I personally had no wait at my polling place. I got there around 8:30 am (after the pre-work rush) and was voter number 191, which is around 100 more people votes than all day in local elections. I promptly came home and applied my temporary tattoo to my wrist that features a head shot of Obama. At my bowling league last night some man wanted to turn on election results, and some woman was freaking out and demanding the Red Wings be put on. The humor in the irony that everyone else wanted to watch election coverage, but that this one loose canon wanted to watch hockey and therefore that remained on, did little to console my rage at general political ignorance. (p.s. the Red Wings weren't on). She shouted at the man that he "probably voted for that idiot Obama, too" which lucky for her I didn't hear. Fortunately, most people I know voted, in fact I only heard of three all day that didn't. Subsequently, those people are dead to me. I cannot even fathom how someone would just not have voted yesterday. I believe that it is far better to vote against what I personally believe in, than to not vote at all. Overall, I was pleased with the informed voters in my life. What was most surprising yesterday was how soon the results were announced. I was in it for the long haul last night, and was shocked at the unevenness of the electoral votes. What I was also surprised about it that I felt bad for John and Cindy (not that 1950's replica of an educated woman, Palin). I thought that his speech was sincere and consoling and realized that if he had been elected, I would have been substantially more happy than I have been these miserable eight years. Obama's speech was second to none, however. It was magnificent. He did not gloat or become overly emotional. He was solid and I hope instilled others with as much faith and confidence in him as I have. I teared up while listening to it and automatically feel much safer and have hope for the future. I feel like we will now be using our powers for good instead of evil. To not end on too sentimental of a note, I'd like to say that Barack is our first bi-racial president. He's black and white. Get it right. I realize the importance of this moment and sincerely hope that his election does more to unify. This is in response to a comment I heard yesterday that "once Barack is elected, the first thing I'm going to do is punch a white person," said by some southern black person. Let's not go there. I hope this wasn't supposed to be unbiased.

Talking Heads

Election day had finally rolled around, but for me, it wasn't something I had to gear up for, because I had voted a couple weeks ago, so my contribution to the election was taken care of. However, having that free time allowed me to take in all of the different coverage the news networks were whipping up all day. And after watching for hours all day, up until Obama's final speech in Chicago, the one consistency I noticed between all the channels was a tendency to lean towards the grandiose. 

Admittedly, this was an incredibly important day in American history, but some of the things networks were pushing, and how frequently they were mentioning them began getting under my skin. From the obvious to Obama's race, which I can't count how many times I heard, to Palin's glaring status as a female in line for the Vice Presidency. Other more subtle things were what really bothered me though. It wasn't as if on a day such as this, we needed to trumpet the qualities of America anymore then already had been done, especially if you're reaching for things that may not even be true.

I heard Tom Brokaw, one of America's most beloved newscasters say that America had "invented" democracy. Seconds later he mumbled that we had 'kinda maybe a little sorta' borrowed the idea from Britain. Immediately after that he followed his statement by saying that "America was the first country to have representation with one vote for one person." The co-host for the show, who was off the camera at the time was heard saying "Well....eventually," in reference to our history of prohibiting minorities and women from voting, ironically two groups explicitly represented by candidates in this election.

Is it really necessary on a proud day like this to try and butter up the populous with grandiose statements that aren't even wholly true? There is plenty to cover in regards to America's rich history that is triumphant AND true. I just wish people would try harder sometimes.

Determined to Vote

Unfortunately, such an exciting day didn’t start off so well for me. I had been sick all weekend and it carried over into this week. I was unable to attend classes today, and only made it to work for a few hours.
After work, around 2:30, I made my way to Burcham Hills on Burcham Dr. in East Lansing. I originally planned on voting absentee, but having never had that experience before I wanted to make sure everything went smoothly. I decided to register at my apartment here in E. Lansing. It took me a while to find the location. In my mind, I was worried about how long I would have to stand in line. At one point, I felt I was too ill to stand in a line for hours. But I sucked it up, and said that this was a history making day, so I had no choice.
When I arrived, I saw that there weren’t as many cars there as I was expecting. This made me hope that I wouldn’t have to wait in line for the expected hours I had heard about. And my hopes were fulfilled. There weren’t that many people there, and there was a mix of young, middle aged, and older people there to cast their votes.
When I came in, there was one man in particular who was talking extremely loud. I am not even sure what he was talking about, but whatever it was, he thought it was extremely funny. I ignored him and moved on to my line where it was explained to me how to vote and what exactly to do.
I made sure I read everything carefully, and didn’t vote for people or proposals for Lansing that I am not familiar with since I am not from here. I figured it was better for me not to vote, than to just guess vote for people and things I had no information on.
All in all, my experience went well. I was able to get in and out in a matter of about 20 minutes. And though I wasn’t able to make it to my night class, I was able to take some meds, crawl in bed, take a nap, and watch the election unfold.
History was made!