Mefe Final project: video

DePauw Trap and Skeet

Mefe Final Project: soundslides

Chaos Scenario: an analysis of the situation at hand

We are headed in a world where regular TV networks are gone.   This is the idea from Bob Garfield’s book, Chaos Scenario.  In his book Garfield discusses the “chaos” that is media and explains why thinks the internet will eventually take over everything.  He uses the example of YouTube a lot, predicting that the worldwide phenomenon is not done changing the media landscape.  Garfield seemed to believe that the people who will really be crippled with the new media culture forming are the publishers and advertisers.  He goes on to explain that there will be little to no use for them once the “self-made” publishers and advertisers that are the consumers take over with the help of the internet.  After the discussions in class, I think I disagree with Garfield.

 Although things in our media culture are changing, certain aspects such as radio, the newspaper, and the TV stations/networks will not ever truly go away.  Together those three and the internet make up our whole media culture even though it seems the first three mentioned have taken a back sweet in favor of the internet.  If one of those went extinct than the internet, itself, becomes crippled.  The three older media platforms are major contributors of the internet’s content and losing one would cut off essentially a third of its content.  I agreed with Adrienne in class when she said that the publishers such as book publishers will not go away, but that their job will transform into something completely different.  I saw this book as an opponent of Amusing Ourselves To death, although not a true opposite, because he doesn’t necessarily disagree with Postman just takes it in another direction.

media fellows blog twelve

As fumbled through the New York Times this morning, trying to find an article to write about which was already late for last week, I realized the problem with the newspaper. It simply does not fit the mold of our world today. The world is constantly consuming information trying to maintain the rapid pace of modern life. Especially with all the technology we have now, there are too many things going on to sit down, read the paper, and actually get something out of it. Take myself for example, for the last 3 weeks I have been moving none stop, going from task to another, having no time to read the paper. I have found myself flipping through the paper at midnight to quickly find an article and come up with a way to spin its meaning. The funny thing is, every time I read an article I see the importance of the paper, and I still believe that the paper will be around for years to come; it is just impractical for my lifestyle. Take the article I picked out this week, “At 92, Prolific DVD Bootlegger is Soldiers’ Hero”. In it, it discusses how a man sent bootlegged copies of DVD’s to soldiers as a way to give back. The 92 year-old, Hyman Strachman, who is a veteran as well, simply did it to stay busy after the death of his wife as well as help the troops in any way he could. The article was an interesting read (granted the only one I read for last week) but it is the same thing: Great story, bad media platform in terms of readers. The Newspaper is becoming less important in world, becoming nothing more than a souvenir of what once was. The actual newspaper is barely important at all, where the way the newspaper gets the news is vitally important. The obstacle we face next is trying to save this way of journalism as the physical copy of the newspaper wears down.

 In regards to class, I enjoyed the class for the most part, but wished it had less to do with strictly multi-media journalism. We had great lectures, discussions, and speakers along with a great project to wrap things up.

media fellows blog eleven

In Friday’s issue of the New York Times, The front page revealed a story about a new search for a boy who went missing in 79. As I was reading this article I thought about the importance of news. News, no matter how big or small, is important to find the flaws or strengths in our communities at each level. Whether its television, radio, internet, or the newspaper whatever we read shapes our society and shapes us. Every major story is going to be on all the media platforms so even if I didn’t read it in the paper I would have heard about it one way or another. Take this story of the missing kid. This story highlights the ongoing problem of kidnapping. This story is major news because it can perhaps get people to take action. Through television, you would have gotten the news and thought it was awful but would have just seen it as an informative; entertainment blurb (entertainment as in makes you want to watch TV and learn more about it). The story would be forgotten about the very next day in most cases. Now let’s say you heard in through the newspaper. In the newspaper, you would see it the news for what it was but would have also seen the larger picture to it. The newspaper is written in the informative way that seems to be speaking right at you. In discussion of this week’s classes, I enjoyed the 3 speakers we had. The one who worked for Ellen was really interesting, especially since that is more of what I want to do, (more of the entertainment side that is) and there was a lot of great discussion. The second one about social media was rather long and at times boring but there were other times where he had interesting facts and cool diagrams. The one with Jon Coffin was great as well, although not always new information. I really liked the discussion about a school’s image using DePauw as an example.

Media Fellows Blog Ten

This week I read a rather amusing article in the New York Times entitled, “When Fists and Kicks Fly on the Subway, It’s Snackman to the rescue”. The article told the story of Charles Sonder, a 24 year-old architect, who decided to stand between two people fighting on the subway. Sonder stood right between the couple without saying a word, but he did manage to munch on some Pringles during this strange event. Why is this story in the paper you ask? Because another man named Eitan Noy got all of the day’s events and put the wacky video on Youtube where it got close to a million hits in about a week. I always find it fascinating to see what videos become viral because there seems to be no set criteria. Now this video is not iron-core news by any means but it again exemplifies the words of Alex Jones’ book, Losing the news, as well as Neil Postman’s book, Amusing ourselves to Death. The newspaper has to know conform a bit to the new age of entertainment and find things that will entertain the viewer. This ironically sends its viewers even closer to the internet further shifting the balance of power between the social mediums. This isn’t news worthy at all but the paper put it in there. Why? I will leave this question for debate but I urge the thought that maybe the paper shouldn’t put this kind of stories in the paper for the reason that it concedes to the audience that the internet can give more. After this week’s classes I learned a lot about public relations and the many roles it plays. We had some great discussions on how the most important task P.R. people have is limiting the amount of damage a situation can present. After Monday and Wednesday, we had a great panel of past alums who work in many different fields involving P.R. The thing I learned about most on that day was, surprisingly, how to market your product and advertise it create your target audience. It was another topic we discussed a lot throughout the week and I found it really interesting. After listening to the guy who had the pro-wrestling radio show I learned a lot on how I can improve my own show that I have with D3TV.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: analysis of a seemingly perfect prediction

In 1985 Neil Postman’s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, came out as a warning to what our society and culture could become with the emergence of new mediums like television and now the Internet, which wasn’t even a major part of discussion when Postman wrote this book. Postman’s main argument was that the changes in the mediums in which we obtain news and information causes changes in society more specifically changing society’s public discourse. Postman argues that the age of television has made our public discourse to become nonsense with no substance. He claims that television as created a new public discourse with an appetite for entertainment where everyone wants to be entertained, and that this entertainment is shaping the topics of conversation in all of American society (as well as other parts of the world). Postman also compares and contrasts the mediums of older days such as writing in the times of the revolution to what it is now and questions if people were more intellectual and more informed than people today. As we discussed in class, the theory that people were more intellectual back then is debatable. Although people may have been more literate and may have read more, there is an argument that people today are just as informed as back then they just have the option to not pay attention to it. There was also a point made in class, which I agree with, that the generation of teens today would focus more on the iron core news if it directly affected them like the days of the draft. In my opinion it is not as much the change of the medium like Postman states, even though I agree with what he is saying and think his predictions are spot on for even the future beyond the internet, as it is the need to be informed for the younger generations. I believe if something ever happens again like if there is a new draft, a war on our soil, or something directly affecting the public, people will take their eyes off the entertainment and focus on the major news at hand; recreating the public discourse Postman fears is dead. Until then enjoy this blog for your entertainment.