Presentation-Journalism/Advertising
From MediaStudies
Critical Studies Presenters:
Whitney
William Tran
Chris Gomes
Contents |
Discussion
This section will discuss the current state of journalism. Why are newspapers in decline? What impact do online news and bloggers have? What is the profile of the typical news consumer today?
Besides these questions, we hope everyone is willing to speak about their own experiences since our generation has witnessed the transition.
"I just wrote another post about this, but if anything Journalism is flourishing like crazy in the age of technology and in the rise of the internet. Now, anyone can be a journalist, If you see something interesting, go online and write a little report about it, or maybe a blog entry.
What does this do? Not only does it increase the amount of information on the internet, but also, it allows everyone to participate in generating material for mass audiences.
Aside from the accessibility quotient, the decline of newspapers and hard print is actually a lot better for the environment as well, large press companies need to get on the digital bandwagon and drop their paper copies off at the door. This is the new age of technology, and if these business do not want to fall in the cracks of the stone age, they are going to have to keep up with the times."
-Michelle Aspis
Assignment
You can read either article. Both are similar. The first has a slightly historical lens while the second is more related to advertising revenue.
The Huffington Post is mentioned in the readings. Feel free to look around and be familiar with the style, graphics, layout etc. [3]
Further Reading
Here are some additional readings if you are interested in how journalism has evolved historically:
The Power of the Press: The Birth of American Political Reporting, Thomas C. Leonard
Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers, Michael Schudson
The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcolm
Post Class Forum
Will: I felt today's discussion was very productive and like to thank everyone for their participation. It is difficult to say if today's journalism is better or worse, but what is clear is that there has been a clear shift in how our society produces and consumes news as well as how the news has changed. I believe a main idea in the discussion is how these differences are actually very blurred. For example, it is suggested that online news suffers from a lack of depth/engagement. Studies show that reading online is similar to scanning. However, at the same time, the fact that online news constantly updates and people are checking in every few minutes suggests an active individual very much engaged while online. All these added tidbits received from these updates can eventually become something with depth.
I would just like to expand on the notion of the power of the image in relation on the viewer. In class we briefly touched upon the role of images in the media and how they contribute to the viewer's interest in purchasing and/or reading a journalistic medium. "Increasingly, we are a nation of watchers rather than discriminating readers, of instant believers rather than reflective, visually aware critics" (Barry, Ann Marie Seward, Visual Intelligence: Perception, Images, and Manipulation in Visual Communication, p. 2). As a result, the combination of both the visual image and the headline, for example in a magazine or the front page of a newspaper, carries significant sway as to how the individual perceives the content of an article. Most often, the pictures and headlines slightly relate to the main topic or argument in the written piece. As we are continually bombarded by information and images, it is important to take a step back and consider the entire picture--what is true, what is false, what doesn't make sense, etc.
-Payton
Steve: Yeah, great discussion. Somebody started to say something about the decline in viewer attention span, and I wish we'd had time to explore that further. I think it's worth noting that in contemporary film, the average shot length is two or three seconds -- maybe 1/4 what it was two generations ago. Coupled with the shift from fully articulated news pieces to sound bytes and bulletins flashing across the screen, we encounter a likely correlation between increasingly fractured dissemination and increasingly restless consumers. Of course, whether we're becoming an ADD society because of the media we're ingesting or we gravitate toward the blurb because we're culturally impatient is another tricky chicken-or-egg question.
Olivia: I just wanted to thank all of the facilitators for a job well done. Our discussion has been in my mind since Wednesday. Something I have though quite a bit about are "news" programs like The Daily Show, and even Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live. I feel as though for some people, shows like these replace real news, which is quite problematic. Then again, they might have just as much spin as stories on our nightly news. I just thought I would throw that out there as some food for thought. What do you think? Are shows like these an appropriate news source?
Nancy: Guys that was such an awesome class. I'm dying to find an extra NY Times so I can actually read it, and not be some new consumed person we talked about in class. But seriouslly. after watching the debate on Thursday, and then the media coverage about it afterwards - it was very interesting to see how everything we talked about occured in such a sick cycle- over reporting was definatly a major accesory to the debate also, it was interesting to see the media magnets that covered reactions - ET Insider was really involved in seeing debate responses, which is interesting because that's a Hollywood new program - is America trying to advertise the up-comming election so much that it needs to use Moviestar news-coverage to bleed into politcal news coverage? Is that the only way it can get public attention?
I recently met with Scott Meldrum, who is a digital strategist in the advertising industry, and he touched upon the topic of print media vs. digital media. Whether or not we came to an agreement in class concerning whether or not print is going to "die," Scott believes that print is instead going to change. For example, let's say you receive a letter in the mail that has a disc inside. When received you'll open the mail, insert the disc into your computer, and then interact with the media. So in other words, print will instead transform to meet the technological needs of the user in relation to this new media-savvy era.
-Payton
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Nancy Planitzer
Olivia Sajjadieh
Payton Watkins
Irene Choe
Caitlin Daley
Devin Rapson
Samantha Sias
Steve Mears
Courtney Peterson
Mara Freedman
Rebecca Nachison
Jaime Swarthout
William Colling
Nikki Morin
Susana Lopez
