Fairness, Quoting, and Quality

Portfolio #4:

It is amazing how fast this semester has went, but I have learned more about news writing, than I ever knew before. All of my blog entries were submitted early, promoted discussion and interaction, and sparked some in-class discussion.

I always wanted to know The Power of Law and Privacy and I discovered that news reporters must be careful when publishing public names. If a person tells the reporter that they want to remain confidental, then they must abide by there wishes. I assume that everyone understands that the paper contains a negative bias and this is because of how the reporters personality and opinion gets incorporated into the article. I told my class to Use Some Positive Judgement in order to make the paper have a more positive angle. Many studies, listed in my article, have shown that negative news gets more attention than positive news. Why? One reason is because of how people like to know what negative things have occurred and why they have. Most people do not always want to read about positive news because there is nothing to talk about then.

During most of this semester, I have learned about the structure of articles and how they are composed. I actually never thought about how reporters use slideshows, multi-media, and pictures in their articles. When understanding What the Great Recession Has Done, I began to think that slide shows are important for the reader to quickly see what is going on. Most readers, in the United States, enjoy watching videos or slide shows because they can understand the information in a quicker way. This usually can be contributed to how the American society is fast paced and wants to get things completed fast. In addition, to slide shows, Dr. Jerz introduced the class to multi-media and interactive films. The example that was given to us was about garbage and recycling and I thought it was A Current Event With An Educational Twist. Since my future withholds a lot of teaching time, I found this interactive site to be very beneficial and news worthy. Recycling is an important part of the world and by teaching it to younger generations, then it may change the perspection of our future students. One downfall to this site was that the videos had a lot of "fluff" in them which resulted in a longer film. Some basic editing could enhance the film, but it was enjoyable.

Another very popular news site that we were introduced to was called Wired, but my first impression was that The Children Are All Linked Together. The Wired news site is a great place to get a lot of information quickly without going to several sites. There are many pictures, links, and writing on the homepage. It is a very creative and busy site for viewers. In addition, to Wired, we were introduced to Harvards newspaper site and I, personally, found it to be more professional than anything. The entire site made me think about Professionalism Without the User-Friendly Quality. One reason for this king of mindset is that the site seemed more basic and professional, than being a site full of pictures, links, and videos. I believe that Harvard wants to maintain their status as being a top university and they do not want to look like modern sites.

Furthermore, the Cavailer Daily made me think about only Color, Caption, and Conception. This news site quickly introduces the viewer to three top stories with pictures (color), short captions (caption), and a lot of links (conception). The entire news writing class seemed divided among which site was more popular, but it seemed that many people enjoyed the Harvard paper and the print edition of the Cavailar Daily. Many students thought that the website had too much going on and was too busy whereas the Harvard site made the reader feel like they were reading a typical newspaper.

My last two blogs of the class involved Haiman and his book about newswriting. The readings made me think about Freedom, Fairness, and Futility, but made me wonder If Freedom Is Free or Free by Chance. These two blog entries of mine discuss how the news seems more bias than they used to be and is this contributed to our society and how much information is available on the internet? The main concern among most of my comments was that the news is bias and un-fair when it comes to politics and elections. I believe that most people know which paper is conservative and which is liberal and this is on reason for the unfairness.

All of the previous entries sparked discussion and a lot of it online and in-class. Josie Rush's entry entitled Diversity- What's the Difference? can be considered one of my comment grandes. This entry was about how the newspaper staff does not usually have a diverse staff and this adds to a lot of the unfairness in the industry. As for the media aspect of the news industry, Jenn Prez wrote about how Interactive Content Draws You In and how the "Tonight Show" has changed over the past several years or even decades. My comment prompted questions about interactivity and slide shows. Kaitlin Monier wrote about A Maestro's Hair which shows how slide shows can teach history and success while also being a news article. In addition, Wendy Scott published What a Waste in relation to the recycables and garbage site. She is interested in starting a recycling center on campus in order to reduce the amount of paper that is wasted each year. This site is only a start for her and hopefully the campus community will help her achieve her goal.

As for Harvard, Josie wrote Ivy League Material? without a positive assurance to whether it was or not. On the other hand, Angela thought that This is ok...I give it a C+ which prompted seven comments from my discussion. This is one example of a comment informative because of how it continues a great discussion and asks questions. Next, Josie said that the Cavailer Daily was A Solid Meh and Angela gave This Website a Solid B. Most of these entries that were listed were consisted link gracious, informative, and grande because of how much discussion they prompted.

Another addition to all of these comments being successful was my thoughtful reflections. They included The Well-Rounded View, An Interactive News Article, Human Duties: A Curiosity to Earth, and Color vs. Coverage. All of these reflections were extra aspects to the blogging community, but they helped spark discussion which gave students a good feeling with a pat on the back.

Finally, after meeting all of the requirements for each of my portfolios, I feel that I have contributed and learned a great amount of knowledge with news writing. My wildcard entry includes Freedom, Fairness, and Futility. This entry discusses how the paper industry has become more unfair over the years and my classmates had a similar reaction. After five comments over three days, the discussion became developed with links to other blog entries.

I would like to finish by saying thank you to all of my classmates who helped make my blogging become successful and worthy of comments. This is my last blog portfolio for my college career since I will be student teaching in the near future. Thanks to everyone and please feel free to refer back to my blogs in the future for academic information and references.

My previous blog portfolios include News Reporting, Bias, and Sensitivity, A Well-Rounded View on a News Reporter's Life, and A Journalistic View on Life.

Click here for the course web page devoted to the News Writing class.

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Derek Tickle published on November 21, 2009 7:22 PM.

Is Freedom Free or Free by Chance was the previous entry in this blog.

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