Some Reading Responses and Beat Journals

Shyla Crawford

                                                                                                            Beat Journal   

                                                                                                            Week 8

 

            This week I decided to follow a cover story beat. Just what is it that makes a story important enough to make the front page of the paper? I looked at The Washington Post, New York Times, and The Oregonian. More times that not the front page of the paper contained some sort of story pertaining to politics. Even if nothing extremely relevant happened in the election still stories about Clinton, Obama, or McCain filled the front pages. I thought it was interesting that the election is having a constant impact on our news intake. It also made me wonder however if this is the case all the time, or if this is just happening because the time frame we are currently in is around election time. I also noticed that most of the time there was a front page story pertaining to the people the paper is reaching on a somewhat state or local level. This happens I assume in order to draw in the local readers and let them know that the issues happening around them are important and being covered by the news media. The third thing that I noticed is that there is almost always at least a small picture or scoreboard somewhere on the front page in order to get the sports reader to grab the paper and look into what happened in the wide world of sports last night. I thought the papers are doing a great job of covering a variety of things on the front page in order to reach different spectrums of people.

Shyla Crawford

                                                                                                Reading Responses    

                                                                                                Week 8

 

1)

            Romenesko this week pointed out a story about John McCain that ran in the New York Times and caused some scuff. The issue over anonymous quotes was brought up and immediately caught my interest. When a story is unproven and has unnamed sources no wonder it gets scrutinized. For a story on a presidential candidate, there needs to be cold hard facts. If those facts are there, what’s the problem with citing and sourcing them? There shouldn’t be a problem with it so do it. It just like in the case at North Western, suspicious quotes cause issues. Don’t make things up, print the truth, and give yourself some credibility. Just like Tom Rosenstiel said, “We’re not in an age of trust-me journalism.”.  Heck in this day and age we are in a world of prove-it journalism.

 

2)

            First story on Tuesday from Romenesko pulled me right in. It pertained to Clinton as being all talk and Obama as all walk. This wasn’t so much what got me curious, it was more to the fact that this judgment was coming from University of Washington students. UW was working to get in contact with presidential candidates; this made me wonder, what about Oregon State students? I haven’t heard anything about OSU students trying to get involved in the election and campaigns. There really hasn’t been a lot of campaigning going on around campus either. I was home a couple weeks ago and a man asked me what the campaign was looking like around campus, and the only thing I could even recall was a Ron Paul sign. Why aren’t students getting involved in the politics of elections? I don’t know if students are too busy, not informed, or just don’t care. Maybe if a candidate was to show some kind interest in OSU it would get more students involved, but then again maybe the candidates would call us back, just like Clintons case at UW. But then again the candidates are visiting a lot of college campus around the nation, but how are they choosing which ones to go to? What is it about universities that makes them appealing to candidates to want to go campaign there, and why doesn’t OSU have it?

Shyla Crawford

                                                                                                            Beat Journal   

                                                                                                            Week 7

  

            I spent the week on www.washingtonpost.com looking into sports blogs and columns. I thought it was awesome that a lot of people were covering other issues in sports rather than just who won the game last night. Since sports journalism and broadcasting is my field of interest looking into these blogs and columns certainly opened my eyes. Watching ESPN, as I usually do, just isn’t cutting it. Sure, if you want to know who won the game last night you should check it out, but there are so many other issues inside the wonderful world of sports. For instance, all the steroid talk; we hear something about it hear and there, but there are sports journalist out there covering these issues in depth. As someone wanting to go into this field, I feel like these are the kind of thing we need to know about. We need to be looking into all kinds of sports, from fishing or NASCAR, to soccer and football. It really is something to think about, when you tell someone that you want to go into sports journalist, what kind of sports do you want to cover? Maybe it’s just basketball and baseball or other really fan based sports, but you had better be able to know what kind of fish is on the end of the line when ESPN sends you to cover a fishing tournament.

            With all this talk of being a NMC student and having to be a jack of all trades, you better be ready to enter even into your specialty as one. A sport writer for instance needs to specialize in their sports writing, but be a jack of all trades when it comes to knowing and understanding sports from any different spectrum. Overall this jack of all trades idea it going to end up being the key in careers, no matter what we specialize in.

 

 

Shyla Crawford

                                                                                                            Reading Response

                                                                                                            Week 7

 

1)         Another Romenesko story on February 18^th was about the decline of newspaper jobs. It so frustrating to read stories like this that are pin-pointing the decline of journalism. Then again I look at it from another point of view and think that just because newspaper employment is declining doesn’t mean other media communication careers aren’t opening up. New media is this whole new world of unexplored places and even though it has a strong journalism base I think it’s imperative to look at how far the world of newspapers is expanding. We don’t only see our news paper in black and white print on the doorstep in the morning, we wake up and click, and there it is; the front page, streaming media, podcasts, broadcasts, everything you could want in the news is right there. We are dealing with a new era of people as well as a new era in technology and that is something the newsroom is going to have to adapt to. It’s happening slowly, but maybe it needs to pick up the pace, and with students like us graduating with the kind of training it takes to do so, I think now is the perfect opportunity for newsrooms to start doing some hiring.

  

2)         Tuesday there was a story in Romenesko that caught my eye about covering the whole story on Britney Spears. I covered entertainment media in a beat journal so I thought I’d check into this. Considering not covering the story because it’s invasive might be somewhat of a novel idea. Britney is sick and she needs space, and the way I see it, what really is it any concern of the whole nation? Why does everyone need to know what’s going on in Britney’s life. People have enough problems of their own maybe they should start worrying about them rather than Ms. Spears. It’s ridiculous that the paparazzi have taken the measure they have and completely invaded her life just for a cover story. Get a life! People that can’t function on a day to day basis without checking into Perez Hilton or E!, need to check their priorities and seriously get a life. This goes for reporters as well, is there really nothing more important going on in the world other than the fabulous life of Britney Spears?

 

Week Four Posts

            Shyla Crawford                Week 4                                                     Reading ResponseOptimism in a Time of Chaos and Change           Immediately the article had me excited, I was like, “wow,” what an amazing time to be a journalist, so many exciting things happening and the news room sounded as if it was more exciting than everything the newsroom was reporting on. The all of a sudden I was like wha-wha-wha, Debbie Downerish, to say the least. So many people losing their jobs in the news world, it was kind of depressing to hear, especially as someone who wants to have a future in this kind of stuff. But then again, I was wowed by the article. By the end I felt so encouraged to do my best, because it’s the best-of-the-best that is going to have these enormous opportunities that the changing media is going to present us with. As students of the media, we have to know the media inside and out; writing, reporting, blogging, cameras, technology, everything this chaotic world is throwing at us. But like the article says, if we can stay optimistic about the changes, we’ll be greeted with endless opportunities, and then all we have to do is take those opportunities and capitalize on them. By doing this, I think we can keep up with the changing media, all we have to do is stay aware of the direction the media is going and go with it.                                                                                                              Shyla Crawford                                                                                                            Week 4                                                                                                            Reading Response                                                Journalism 101 revelation: Ethics matter 

            I’m in complete agreement with the students in the journalism class this article is about. It is hard work, harder than it looks, and there are so many decisions to make when it comes what to report on, and after you decide that, there are thousands of decisions that follow. When it comes down to the ethics of journalism, I think that it’s important first, that you have some, and second that you practice them. There are always those paparazzi type magazines, and well, I’m not really sure how those journalists feel about their ethics, but as far as any other type of reporting, why would you want anyone to be falsely informed? The idea just seems ludicrous that anyone would report on something they haven’t taken the time to inform themselves on. The way I see it, you have to do your research, because what if what you’re reporting on is just scratching the surface, what if the true story is way under the surface? We need more young people today to start looking into what really goes into the news that they hear everyday and take into consideration where this information is coming from.

            Obviously the ending statement about salaries is saying a lot about the journalism profession. This raised the question in my mind, what makes PR work so much more important that journalism. Important, well maybe not important, but why is it that a public relationships career is so much higher paying than a journalism career? Think about it, without journalist, how would anyone ever be informed about what’s happening in the world around them? People need to re-look their perception of journalism and consider the fact that the things that happen everyday, and we find out about them, they came from a journalist, and we should be grateful that there are journalist out there willing to keep us informed, even if they aren’t as appreciated as they should be.

Shyla Crawford

Romenesko

Week 4

  

            Last Wednesday, Romenesko had a story about companies investing in online blogging. In my opinion it’s a great idea, especially for a company like the New York Times. Take our class, for example, we are all required to have a WordPress account, the blogging site the New York Times recently invested in. While at WordPress, which we often are, seeing as it’s a class requirement, I tend to venture out into the world of blogging, which I never used to do. I’m not going to lie, I never read the New York Times; I’m one of those college kids that people are trying to get to start immersing themselves in the news. I would never really look into anything in the New York Times if it wasn’t for people blogging about stories in the Times, which in turn has taken me to the New York Times website a time or two. The world of blogging is starting to take over it seems like, so why not invest? Maybe investing in a blog company, like WordPress, at this point in time is one of the best ways to get people interested and involved in what the greater news world has to offer.

 

            A story on Monday that I didn’t necessarily consider to be too relevant caught my eye and got me thinking. Sharyn Alfonsi, a reporter from CBS, was leaving CBS to start report for ABC. This made me start to think, what does ABC offer that CBS doesn’t? Realistically, Alfonsi must have somewhat of what we would consider to be seniority at CBS, so why give that up to report at ABC? Given, I don’t know what kind of benefits or salary either company offers, I’m still left with the question, why one over the other? Just like watching the news at night, what is it that makes a person turn to news on channel 2 rather than on channel 10? When starting to think about a career in journalism or broadcasting with a company, what should be we looking for as far as the “right” place for us to work in order for us to love our jobs? Questions came to me one after another on this subject, so while I’m sure Alfonsi has a good reason for choosing to leave CBS for ABC, what is our reason for choosing one news source over another; it’s something to think about, that’s for sure.

 

 

 

Shyla Crawford

Beat Journal 2

Sports Media

  

Every night for the past week, I have immersed myself in ESPN. Before I head to bed or between classes I turn it on to see what happening in sports. I’ve noticed several things constantly happening on ESPN. This week was a pretty exciting week in the world of sports and one thing I picked up on that was different than I see in other kinds of reporting is the repetitiveness. In most types of news, you get to hear the story or see news clips on the 5 o’clock news or if you miss it you can watch it again at 6:00 or 11:00. ESPN is a different story, if something exciting happened in the wide world of sports you get to see the clip at least 10 times in the same Sports Center airing. This was interesting to me because there is a numerous number of games played each day that they could take clips on or show things that wouldn’t typically be seen, but instead they like to show the same thing over and over. I think it’s important that if something happens it be shown and reported on, take for instance a shot Tiger Woods made earlier in the week, I saw the clip a few times the day it happened, and I continued to see it all week.

            It was also interesting to me to see who was reporting for ESPN. Since I want to work for them one day I watched the reporters and the analyst and tried to analyze them myself. As far as in the field goes, you tend to either have an attractive looking woman who has done her research or a past sports icon. The female reports always seemed to have known what they were talking about; I could tell they had done their research and become educated about the sport, team, or athlete they were reporting on. To be a face on Sports Center, it almost seemed like you had to play in the NFL at one point in your life, this may have been because the Super Bowl is coming up so there was a tremendous amount of coverage on the NFL, but even so, it seems like there weren’t many male broadcasters that weren’t involved in professional sports at one time in their life. It made me wonder, what about all these guys out there that are sports addicts and would love for a chance to be reporting for the number one sports network in the world. Will they ever have a chance if they’re not quite good enough to be a professional sports star? Do you have to be good and sports to be able to report on them? I find myself comparing the ESPN reporting world to the modeling world. Just like actors are taking over the modeling world, sports stars are taking over the broadcasting world.

 

I didn’t have to look very far to find the most interesting things in Romenesko this week. First I looked into a story about a Hollywood Foreign Press Association member which drew me back to the question that we ask ourselves over and over again. What is journalism? What it is to some people may be completely different than what it is to other people, and who is really there to tell someone what they are doing is simple entertainment journalism, when they may see is as a “prominent media outlet”. I think today this entertainment journalism is maybe one of the only kinds of media that is actually reaching and grabbing the attention of the people.

            A second story “We blog before we report; it should be the other way around” immediately captured my eye. I never really explored the world of blogging before NMC 301 so anything involving blogs these days has started to catch my attention. I was in complete concurrence with the idea that we blog before we report. The first thing I do when I hop on the computer is check my facebook, why is this? It’s exactly as this story tells us, it’s the fact that in today’s society we come first; it’s all about me, me, me. Even when we are covering stories somehow I think everyone is trying to figure out how the story they are covering is affecting them in one way or another.

            A third story involved whether Google will eventually own the New York Times. This raised the question, will Google eventually own everything? Seriously consider what Google has done to the World Wide Web. How many people have Google as their homepage or main search engine? It has to be toward the top as far as most webpage hits a day. In some ways, I think if you look at it, Google owns all of us already.

                                    Shyla Crawford

                                                                                                            Reading Response

                                                                                                            Week 2

                                                                                                            NMC301

   

            Romenesko, being brought to us through the Poynter Institute online brought up numerous interesting stories and topics this week. Several of the stories stuck out to me, especially the ones involving the media and the news. On Monday there was a story about a man that was in the media industry, as I like to call it, and at one point in his life he left the Baltimore Sun in order to teach a Journalism class. He commented about how he thought it was difficult for him to teach a subject that he was losing faith in. It was encouraging to me to hear that while teaching this class he regained the faith he once had and he salvaged this faith through the next generation of journalist. I am the next generation of journalist, and because someone sees faith in what my peers have to offer, it gives me a sense security in knowing that our generation will have something to offer to the world of journalism.

            Another Romenesko subject that caught my eye this week included a story about being busy and about how much is too much. It emphasized the idea that we need time to think. As a student I immediately related to the issue. Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed and have some much to do that I do it without even thinking about it just so it gets done. I think however that it’s extremely important to have to time to think and it’s important to make that time available.

            Back to the subject of journalism, I got to thinking a lot about what journalism really is. It is this one idea that encompasses numerous ideas, with news being the one idea that truly stands out. John Solomon left the Washington Post to go to the Washington Times in order to do “straight journalism.” But what is straight journalism? To Solomon, he said it would be “fair, balanced, and precise.” This concept is extremely appealing because it is what needs to happen to journalism, so many things these days are misrepresented and people are misquoted, and because of this, I think this idea of straight journalism needs to be looked at in every aspect of journalism, news, and the media.

     Shyla Crawford

                               Week 2

 Reading Response

 

Website:

 http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2007/narrative_overview_intro.asp?media=1

 

What is the media? There is a question that I, myself, along with numerous other NMC students have to ask ourselves everyday. With things changing the way they are it is hard to predict what kind of involvement we may have with the media in the years to come after graduation. The State of the Media 2007 report acknowledges that with all the changes that are happening, some of the changes to note involve the decline in popularity among media sources. Media icons however, have taken on the challenge and started to step up their game. The report identifies issues and challenges facing the media, as well as the economics, audiences, trends, and more. This is intriguing to a student like myself because not only do I have to learn how media developed and where it came from but I also have to stay up to date on changes in the media outlook and be aware of the new media looking me in the face everyday.

Shyla Crawford

                                                                                                            Week 3

                                                                                                            Reading Response

                                                                                                            NMC 301

http://www.massinc.org/index.php?id=652&pub_id=2188&bypass=1

   

This issue that has been raised about young people and the media is definitely an issue that we as media students should be looking into. If young people are not interested in the news and news media, then why are we trying to base our futures on media involvement? I completely agree, however, that young people are disconnected from what is happening around them; especially while compared to our older generation. In my opinion this comes from the advancement in technology, which instead of keeping us up on what is going on in the world it’s secluding us. Instead of spending our time reading newspapers or watching the news we are spending our time on myspace and facebook finding out what all our friends are doing, and maybe once in a while what is happening in the fabulous lives of celebrities. What can we do to get Generation Y and Generation Mosaic more involved? We have to figure out how to capture the attention away from social networks in order for people to acquire knowledge of important news issues. After doing this they can bring their new found education into their social networks which will enable them to be more diverse and informed in their day to day conversations. Now that we know what needs to be done to accomplish this, we have to figure out how it can be done.

                                                                                                            Shyla Crawford

                                                                                                            Week 2

                                                                                                            Reading Response

 

                                                                                                            Website:

http://www.naa.org/blog/FutureOfNewspapers/1/2007/11/Construct-Your-Communitys-InfoStructure.cfm

 

Within the article “Construct Your Community’s Info-Structure”, by Jan Schaffer, lies a new idea that has been brought to the media’s table. In the article Schaffer redefines the idea “news”, and I think it has significance because it once again we are being reminded of how things continue to change. We see it everyday and we must realize everything is changing and we have to take that into account when preparing for the lives we have ahead of us. The article describes how blogging and become websites that end up being news sources. These new news sources need to be dually noted, because who knows, maybe news from blogs is the news of the future. As NMC students, we have to be aware of what is “news” and it’s critical for us to keep up on the changes. I think Schaffer points out useful tips as far as what information is news worthy these days and how to pick and choose between what we may think is news and what the rest of the public wants to know. Not only does she tell us what we need to do in order to relay the news, but also who we need to help. She included a list of the people you need in order to start a news site that involves news from blogs. You may not realize it, but you need everyone from simple “can do-ers” to collaborators to analysts and more. The more I learn, the more and more involved I become in the whole fascinating world of what the media is and what it’s becoming.

Welcome to my NMC 301 Page. Here I will be posting reading responses and other things that I can transport to the NMC 301 class page!