Response: "The Newspaper: A Worthy Competitor"

A Link to Carmen's Blog can be found here!

I thought that Carmen did an excellent job responding to what she learned in class. We share a lot of the same views, and we both originally thought we knew more than we did, it must be  a common thing!

In her blog she states,

Once again, I forget how much I was unaware of. Being in this class has taught me very much even though I’ve only been in it for a short period. It really puts things in perspective about how much I don’t know.

Which is true for a lot of people!

She also states

 Newspaper’s don’t necessarily compare to much of our modern technology but they do play a part in how we go about our daily lives

Which I happen to find very interesting. Personally, I never would've thought that something so old would still be around. It's really interesting the legacy that newspaper carries that keep it around.

Carmen worded her blog perfectly and it flows really nicely and even if you weren't a fan of newspapers, her blog would still be interesting to read just because of the language and format of it. She did a nice job overall, and it would be an interesting read for anyone.

Review & Jeopardy

Today was a very fun, educational and competitive class. Overall, I had a lot of fun and I also learned a lot. The thing about playing Jeopardy is that what a lot of people don't really take away from it is the knowledge learned. I don't mean what you learn from it - that's important, sure, but the signifigant knowledge is learning what you need to study.

We played Jeopardy today and I am very appreciative of what I learned - learned I need to study. There were some things on there that I feel like I've never even heard of, the 7 Yardsticks of Journalism especially. I have to give a lot of credit to Mr. Miller because no matter if someone got the answer right or wrong, if someone seemed confused about it, he would explain the answer. This was a really good way to have class involvement in reviewing the material he taught us this far. 

After Jeopardy, we had a small discussion about the things that could be on the test. I was really appreciative of Mr. Miller telling us things that will definitely be on the test, and reviewing them with us. We talked about Gutenburg, and that's definitely going to be a question on thest. 

Overall, what I've learned in Journalism thus far has been really interesting, and I'm excited to see what the future holds for this year, and years to come. 

News Media Critique: WLKY

WLKY has decided to post and emphasize a child's church baptism where he is so excited, he baptizes himself. While this is definitely an interesting and funny story, it breaks several elements/yardsticks of journalism. 

For starters, WLKY has decided to post the story on the front page of their home/main page. When you go to their site, it is one of the first stories you will see. Not only do they have it on the front page of their website, it also is grouped together with news. All of the stories next to it would be considered newsworthy information, which is the next point.

This story breaks the Element of Journalism known as "Keeping the Important Interesting". It seems that WLKY has reversed this element and made the interesting important by emphasizing it on their front page. While other local news organizations have the story on their site as well, WLKY is the only ones that have it on their front page. The other local news stations have the story well tucked away into their populist sections.

This story also breaks a yardstick - "Newsworthiness". As I said, it is a very entertaining story, however, that does not mean that it is newsworthy. In fact, there were many other stories that held a lot more newsworthiness than this one did, and they were lower on the page/harder to find. They attempted to make this story news when it definitely was not.

In conclusion, WLKY should focus on newsworthy things and make those more important than entertaining things. While this was a nice minute of fame for the family, and even the church, it had little to no effect on anyone else and definitely shouldn't have taken the place of more important news articles.

The Mixed Days

I would call a day like today "Mixed", simply due to the nature of what occurred. We started off by taking the current events quiz, and then we had a nice discussion about current events. We then took a test on print journalism, and reviewed what we had learned from last class and even extended that knowledge. After that, we did something pretty interesting and fun - describing and presenting the world without print.

We started off by discussing recent current events. We talked about the Trump/Hillary Forum. It was my understanding that the overall class opinion on the forum was that the in-depth questions asked did not warrant enough time to answer them. We went on to talk about the Oil Pipeline, Education, and the iPhone 7.

I really was intrigued by a class discussion we had. We described what the world would be like without print. Until today, I had no idea how big of an effect print had (and still has) in the world. We spoke about how if print didn't exist, there wouldn't be schools, and the majority of the students in the class would be working on a farm. There would be widespread tyranny due to the fact that royalty would be the only literate ones, and since books are powerful, they could influence the world to their beliefs.

We then broke into groups to present "The world without print". It was really interesting seeing the way everyone interpreted and described how the world would look if print wasn't around.

All in all, it was a pretty chill Friday, other than the quizzes of course, but even then - it was a nice day. We talked about current events, and even learned the importance of something that many people take for granted.  

Response: History of the Printing Press

Kyra's Blog can be found by clicking here!

I decided to check out Kyra's blog and came across an interesting response to a class discussion that she posted. I thought that she included lots of information and detail that provided a sound explanation of the history of the printing press.

In her post, she states

"At first, I thought that learning about the history of print would be something I would never need nor would it be something I use.

Which is the same opinion I had, until the lecture came around. I realized the connection the world has to print, but I didn't realize it until then - which happens to be what she goes on to say.

" As we continued our discussion I realized that many aspects of everyday journalism came from or were used in the innovation of print.

Overall, I had a lot of connections the Kyra's views, and I was very happy to read about the history of the printing press. She did an excellent job describing the printing press and a great job describing her views about it - and the lecture.

Newspapers and Magazines

Today in class we learned a lot, and by a lot, I mean a lot about newspapers and magazines. How they came to be, what it involves, and why it's still around today.

I really like the history aspect to the recent lectures. The majority of the things we are learning relate to history in very obvious ways. I've always enjoyed history, and so being able to talk about Colonial America and the impact that's had on the newspaper industry is incredible. 

I really like the idea of setting a timeline and then going through the major events in that timeline, but I feel like we should've spent more time emphasizing some of the stuff on the timeline - not because it was too fast, but because it was really interesting. The timeline helped me understand how the newspaper achieved a high peak back in the 1850s-1950s, and then how and why it lost popularity.

We learned about Zenger who, in court, established that truth is the defense against all defamation. This really made the newspaper industry boom, and there wasn't much that Britain could do about it. 

If someone were to ask me why the newspaper was still around, I wouldn't have known until today when we talked about it being affordable - at least compared to other mediums. It's portable, and you can carry it easily, and it's tradition, people like to read the newspaper because that's how they get their day started. That's only a few, but it's really neat as to why the newspaper is still around

We didn't talk too much about magazines, but I did learn that magazines are really important, and were really important to the culture in Colonial America - so important that congress allowed magazines to be shipped for a penny a pound!

Overall, today's lecture was really interesting, and I enjoyed the history component of it. While a bit overwhelming, I'm really intrigued by the formation and the process of newspapers and magazines - something I had never really considered before.

Printing Through History

Today in class we had a really educational lecture. We're starting a new "series", I guess you could say. It's all about different forms of media, and how they've improved and changed over time. We started the series by discussing print journalism. We made a timeline of how print has occurred through the years, and how it effected the world around us. We learned about how printing goes as far back as 3500 B.C,, and it was really interesting overall.

As we created the timeline, Mr. Miller took us back through history and described the way that printing has developed through the centuries. I never knew how far back printing went, but now I can appreciate the complexity that they had to go through back then, and I am definitely more appreciative of the technology we had today. 

Printing had a huge effect on Journalism, it basically created it! Without print, journalism wouldn't have been existent for the time being. We talked about Martin Luther and how print journalism affected the protestant reformation and I found that really interesting. We've all heard the story, but a lot of us didn't know the big effect that the new printing technology (metal printing press) had on the world. Not only did it lead the protestant reformation, but increased book production which increased literacy, but it also spread ideas of revolution and helped us document history!

This was definitely a very interesting and educational lecture, and I'm definitely glad I was there to hear it!