For Week #6: Blogging Chapter 11 (News) and Chapter 17 (Global Mass Media)

Chapter 11:

O> In class we are learning that the 21st century media culture is constantly changing and in order to be engaged in it you need to be a savvy electronic media buff. I enjoyed reading about the inverted pyramid which is a format for writing news i.e. press releases. This style has been in existence since the Civil War with the invention of the telegraph news coverage could be wired quickly. Using the inverted pyramid format correspondents would tell the most important information in the beginning of their story in the event that telegraph communication lines went down in the midst of transmitting stories. This format is still widely used today by journalists and from my understanding it is foundational in any media communications writing.

Q> I was struck by the following statement from the text. “Giant media companies, intent on improving profits, have cut back on newsroom staffs and labor intensive investigative reporting. The result is that more and more reporters are called upon to be generalists and are being denied time to build expertise on complex subject matter.” My question is would Brad Robertson of the BFP agree with this statement in terms of how he is running his own newspaper and what does that say about the information and news we are receiving? Is this what the target audience wants or are we creating news just for the sake of filling up space on the page? It would be interesting to consider what’s gained and what’s lost when journalists follow this format.

Chapter 17:

O> I found it interesting to read the section on news coverage in highly guarded countries like China. The idea of prior censorship that their government is reviewing messages on the Internet before they reach their targeted audiences is amazing that a government would go to such lengths to watch dog information that is intended for its citizens. (To think that technology from US companies helped to establish these watch dog efforts i.e. Cisco and firewalls.) I realize that through censorship governments are intercepting all information that is targeted to its citizens. As we think about this idea of surveillance that is prevalent as part of our 21st century media culture even though it might feel uncomfortable and foreign to us it has essentially been a part of some countries’ government censorship of information for many years.

Q> My question is as technology changes and we continue to explore information sharing on the Internet will foreign governments be able to stay ahead of intercepting incoming information that could be detrimental to their political ideals?

News Source:

Over the years, my most trusted news source has been NPR. I have enjoyed listening to Public Radio since the mid 90’s when I was living in Colorado. As we read in our text recently most journalists have some biases but I feel that NPR does a good job at staying as objective as possible for their coverage of news. In addition, in recent months I have begun reading news on the BBC News website. Their breadth of knowledge and coverage of specific news stories of foreign countries has given me the information I was seeking and more on related topics.