2/3 of this chapter, I found boring. They talked about market researches, and finding formulas that would attract audience either by the "naked" strategy or "good guitar-playing skills." There are so many variables in human life that for market researchers to simplify this would leave out other possibilities.
Near the end of the chapter, I thought to myself, rather than focus on "numbers" why not focus on the "people." and guess what, after I turned to the next page, people not numbers were finally mentioned...remembering journalism's first loyalty to its citizens not their money and "connecting with the community."
Chapter 9 not only illustrated the disproportion between numbers and people, but the chapter itself is disproportionate, as I mentioned above, 2/3 atleast talked about numbers, the last 4 pages finally pointed out people as subjects not objects.
Posted by Michael Diezmos at October 11, 2005 10:34 PMAs much as I could agree that chapter 9 was not completely riveting, I still think that it was truly informative. On page 164, of Chapter 9, it says "Journalism is our modern cartography. It created a map for citizens to navigate society. That is the utility and its economic reason for understanding."
To be honest Mike, I really think that this chapter was one of the most influential, because it does talk about the people as SUBJECTS. They are the demographic, and as objective as we must be, I really feel that they have a side to, and that is why we must keep the news proportionate and comprehensive.
Keeping an audience interested, is another insightful idea that I found in Chapter 9. In the section "Pressure to Hype" I think that finding approaches to keeping your audience engaged, while still being true to the "journalists' ways" is really difficult, yet really crucial to journalism.
I'm not disagreeing with you saying that this chapter wasn't completely engaging, but this was one of those chapters that had to be read, and something had to be gained out of it. As you can see, I personally gained more than one thing.
Posted by: Jason Pugh at October 12, 2005 10:28 AM