05.00 Reporter's Notebook

I think writing is one of the most important mediums of thought to ever be. You can express thoughts and feelings and put it out in the world for other to see and comprehend. Written word is important because you can edit it and really get your real thoughts out. When speaking your words can get changed or you can lose thoughts that could've made your story more clear or greater. You can also analyze things further when you have time to sit down and really understand what the article is trying to express to its audience. Writing impartially can be difficult but is possible. As a reporter, your job is to report, right in the title. If you litter your story with your opinions and biases then it no longer becomes a report, rather a rant. Humans automatically but their bias into everything, but holding it back for the greater good is not impossible.

Daily vs. Weekly Newspapers

 There are many news reports featured in newspapers but there is a difference between the newspapers. These are categorized as daily and weekly newspapers. The daily newspaper is published every day of the week. The weekly newspaper doesn’t come until the end of every week. The weekly newspaper contains a lot of features since it can’t provide immediate news. These usually don’t come until the end of the week. It contains news for several days unlike the daily newspapers. It expands the news instead of breaking it. They consist of city growth, places to visit, etc. It usually tells about what has happened the past week and/or what is going to happen the upcoming week. A daily newspaper is a published and is printed every day. These usually consist of a news section, with either straight news reports opinion pages. Also, a sports section and an arts and entertainment guide. These were once the go-to source for what was going on in the world. These newspapers contain news from 1-2 day period. Weekly newspapers usually contain features, because daily newspapers usually have immediate news. The features can be explaining events, having reviews of restaurants and movies, and things happening in the community.

Sources:

1.     Plambeck, Joseph (26 April 2010). "Newspaper Circulation Falls Nearly 9%". The New York Times. 

2.     Werner Faulstich: "Grundwissen Medien", 4th ed.,ya UTB, 2000, ISBN 978-3-8252-8169-4, chapter 4 

What news means to me

Every single morning, people all over the world wake up to go grab their newspapers, turn on their TV’s, and log on to their computers to catch the morning news. And each night, families sit down in the living room together to watch 60 minutes or their nightly news. News has become an automatic task, something people do everyday because it has been done for years. News to me is what bonds people together. It keeps everyone in the loop, linked into each other. People want to know what their leaders have decided, what popular people have been doing, what good and evil has graced the earth. When people know what is going on around them, they are able to participate in intelligent conversations. News is the one thing that everyone has in common, the one thing that all people have a desire to know what will be recorded in history books, and how they’re apart of it. That is why news is so important to me, and why delivering news is the most important job of all, in my opinion. 

Journalism Today

 

1    1.)  Where do you get your news today? List the most common places.

I usually watch the news with my parents by watching 60 minutes and watching the 6:30 am news before I go to school. When I’m at school I usually have news alerts from the Huffington Post on my phone, so I know the news right when it happens. I also read the Florida Times-Union from time to time, usually on Sundays. Most of my friends that are interested in the news also have news alerts on their smart phones, and we have a school newspaper and TV channel that tells us some news each day.

2     2.)  Why do you choose to get your news from these places?

I like the Huffington Post because it has breaking news and opinion, which I admire. I get alerts on my phone because I use it for most of the the most likely place I will see it. I get my news from the places that are most convenient to me.

3.)  Has your methods of obtaining news changed at all over time? 

I used to not care about news, until I realized how important it was. It used to be that I really only heard about natural disasters and terrorist attacks from the information chain via my parents. Now I find out the news for myself, and sometimes even inform my parents before they know.

2    4.)  What do you think will come next for the news media?

I think that everything will turn electronic, no more newspapers or magazines. With everyone wanting to “go green” printing ink on paper may cease to exist and then be more electronic. I do think that that theory will take a very long time to come true, because people still yearn and crave for tangible print, like myself.

Thoughts On Early American Journalism

For my Florida Virtual School assignment, I had to make a blog with an entry describing what my thoughts and what I learned from the given passage on early American Journalism. It gave me a timeline from 1690 all the way to the mid-1800s. At first, it showed the first newspaper and it was captioned that the man who produced it was arrested for this act. Next it showed more early american newspapers published by Benjamin Franklin, which I think is the first great american journalist. But then I saw a photo of the Declaration of Independence, which was printed in newspapers and spread across the colonies. I thought that it was great that people in the new country could see all the things that they represented and stood for. Instead of about 16 men gathering in a room and deciding what they wanted, it was distributed for everyone to see. The country was built on freedom and standing as one, and that is what publishing this sacred document in a newspaper allowed people to do. That is what journalism can do. It allows news and important items like the Declaration of Independence to be spread near and far, for everyone to read and comprehend.
It was also shown to me the hardship for journalism. Before the printing press and penny press (Friedman, 2009) each newspaper had to be written by hand (Frasca, 1997). The passage given to me showed that people craved and needed news, and that it has been like that since the beginning of America. Sitting down and handwriting the same thing, over and over again, showed the dedication to news that some people were, and is why journalism survived when it was hard, and triumphs in present day America. This lesson showed me why journalism and news is so important, and why people demanded and demand it.
So what if it was written in the Bill of Rights that there was freedom of the press? People could be arrested for what they write and publish for other people to see. Perhaps the government would try to cover up embarrassing things like losing a battle or wall street crashing. News could be withhold from the masses, not letting people know what is going on around them. If the press was not protected under law, america would have fallen already.

Sources:
1. Barbara Friedman. "The Penny Press: The Origins of the Modern News Media, 1833-1861. " Rev. of: title_of_work_reviewed_in_italics, clarifying_information. Journalism History 31.1 (2005): 56-56. Research Library Core, ProQuest. Web. 14. June. 2013
2. Ralph Frasca, "Benjamin Franklin's Journalism," Fides et Historia (1997) 29#1 pp 60-72.