Investigative Journalism

Assume Nothing. Question Everything. - James Patterson

The final lecture, week 12's Investigative Journalism, was interesting; primarily because of two of journalism's purposes:

-To provide a voice for those without one and to hold the powerful to account.
-The Fourth Estate, the Fourth Branch of Government, and "Watchdog".

Basically, conveying power to the powerless, and a voice to the voiceless. This is exactly what is compulsory in, and what I enjoy in, journalism: to watch the newspapers be the voice of the actual public, those with a true opinion, unlike the many papers today that are not opinionated, but judgmental. Journalism can act as the fulcrum between the people and the government, flowing information between the two.


More still, another topic touched on the lecture was extremely comforting: trailblazing, and amazingly enough LOCAL investigative journalism. Even though we live in Australia, land of the young and freely disinterested and exciting only for those who've come across the sea, news can exist at anytime, anywhere. Even here, there is always a story waiting to be told.

The methods of finding a story in investigative journalism

As always though, the integrity of journalism and it's limitless opportunities for stories can be crushed. The mind-numbing propaganda 'fact'-based stories can distort the truth more than anything, even Photoshop. These attempts at truths, while mostly guesstimates at reality, are entertaining, which I presume is the only reason remotely intelligent people would buy it.

And as always, journalism can be revived. At the end of the lecture, an article showed YouTube (easily the world's largest video sharing site) was considering creating a service dedicated to investigative journalism. The last slide, thankfully enough, showed that it had.

Thanks for the reading.
Charlie Morris

JOUR1111 Annotated Bibliography

Excluding the academic text, the story I chose to cover is the event of the teenager Madeleine Pulver’s ordeal with a collar bomb strapped to her neck.

Academic text
Withnall, J., Harris, R. (1998) Principles for further education in professional communication: Continuing education or postgraduate degrees? Research Online, Asia Pacific Media Educator, Issue No. 5
Janice Withnall and Rebecca Harris, associated (further information not given) with the University of Western Sydney and the University of Technology, Sydney (respectively) explored ‘what journalists and public relations practitioners looked for when pursuing a higher degree’ in their study, to further research the proper education development of professional communication. Their study researched/designed a professional communication postgraduate program composed of learner-centred curriculum. The article mainly focused on this research; that communication in journalism and public relations should be taught on a higher and more professional level. The article believed that journalism was statistically an under-educated career, and that practitioners should have more professional educations/qualifications:
‘We would argue, in the context of the continuing education options for journalism and public relations, that practitioners need not only advanced level skills such as those that come from knowledge and practice, but also a deeper understanding of a range of issues that comes from the study of facts, truths and principles.’ (Postgraduate Education, para 6. Lines 1-6)
The content, while out-dated (published in 1998), was mainly credible in its statements, referencing where appropriate and outlining factors in order to contextualise their colloquy. A few sections were stated without foundation or sources, such as journalism and public relations being treated inappropriately in educational circles, but apart from that the article was accurate and precise.


Budd, H., Cuneo, C., Morri, M. (06/08/2011) The latest developments in the Madeleine Pulver collar bomb hoax case, The Daily Telegraph.

Henry Budd, Clementine Cuneo, and Mark Morri bring their best to this printed article by the Daily Telegraph. This story examines the aftermath of the now famous Mosman schoolgirl Madeleine Pulver’s harrowing experience with an extortionist and a collar bomb, as well as how the Pulver family is coping with the stress. The article outlined the most recent events that transpired for the family, and explained the events of the day that unfolded following the incident, using a timeline of the progress on the arrest of the alleged extortioner. In terms of the medium, the deliverance is excellent. No direct opinion is shown, and appears to be well written and thought out, an antonym of churnalism or yellow journalism. As much of the family was interviewed, as no other newspaper reported interviews with anyone else intimately involved, and included recent news of how the then-alleged suspect Paul Peters was identified and arrested. This is in contrast to The Daily Beast’s David Leser, who, while an experienced journalist that accurately told the event, regularly dramatised the situation with emotional writing (‘…Pulver sat terrified and transfixed in her family home’…‘You would never expect it to happen in real life in Australia’).


Leser, D. (04/08/2011) Australia’s Collar-Bomb Hoax, The Daily Beast, retrieved from http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/04/madeleine-pulver-transfixed-for-10-hours-in-australia-collar-bomb-hoax.html

David Leser, multi-award winning journalist and writer for many major Australian newspapers as well as the online Daily Beast, gives his report on the Pulver collar-bomb story. The story was older than the Daily Telegraph’s article, and any possible suspect’s names hadn’t been confirmed or named yet at the time of publication, so Leser was unable to comment on the arrest of Paul Peters. While the grammar is slightly inconsistent, the story is well written and credible, giving opinions of both the family and the personnel involved with the case (i.e. the police, prime minister). The angle of the story strongly shows opinion in its sympathy with the Pulver family, specifically the schoolgirl Madeleine, and her experience with the ordeal. This story is similar to Simon Bouda’s (next paragraph) in that it is only written by one person, i.e. only one person’s consultation/opinion has been written on the matter. This article was written on the Daily Beast, a reporting and opinionated website, so it differed from the Daily Telegraph (a conservative paper) in its emotional take on the case.


Bouda, S. (16/08/2011) US police make collar bomb arrest, Channel Nine,
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/video.aspx or http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8285952/man-arrested-in-us-over-collar-bomb-hoax

Channel Nine covered the Madeleine Pulver case in this video by speaking to Simon Bouda, a reporter with more than 12 years of experience in crime reporting, thus giving the Nine network credibility in its source. However, while Simon gave accurate and reliable information, the actual video was poorly done. Despite information being received and reported on the same morning, giving the night report plenty of time to modify its presentation, the visual clips were only of Madeleine Pulver doing mundane activities, which would be acceptable if there was clips of other relevant clips to the case (e.g. parents, detectives from the scene), or wasn’t looped continuously for almost three minutes with almost no breaks. It seemed at the end as if they were trying to stretch the story longer than they should have, by recapping the story at 7.00pm, only 2 minutes after the story started. Simon also was never at the scene, instead reporting from the Chicago airport, an hour away from Louisville, Kentucky (where the suspect was arrested). Finally, Simon was the only person spoken to, narrowing the variety and accuracy of the case as it was given from only one individual. This is unlike the Daily Telegraph’s story, which was written by three separate journalists, giving it a greater overall credibility.

Agenda Setting

Agenda Setting. To quickly sum it up, it's when the media comes across a piece (or a few pieces) of reality. The media then thinks: What do I want to be the most prominent of these? What do I want people to think of as the most important?

This is made even more understandable by the following picture:

See Bottom Right section

Basically, the mass media " 'injects' direct influence into the audience." (Harold Lasswell)

A brilliant use of this happened in Germany. Unfortunately, it happened to be pre-/during WWII, and was utilised by Hitler, who also collaborated with Leni Riefenstahl to create a propaganda film.

'...people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.' -The U.S. Office of Strategic Services on describing Hitler's psychological profile.

Logically, any agenda that a newspaper gives must have a reason. So, yellow journalism papers would obviously print out the wackiness of Justin Bieber's haircut, but neglect to regard the thousands of dying people from cancer, or Greece's possible exit from their current currency. The reverse would be true as well: The Times would print first-page information about the trial of the Bosnian Butcher Ratko Mladic (If you don't know what he's done, look it up (not appropriate for this blog)), but couldn't give a damn whether or not Justin is feeling emasculated by his girlfriend.

However, many news companies focus on events that apply to all of them: Casey Heynes is a good example, his story shared by the trash and class of journalism alike.

So, to reiterate: Agenda Setting = What the media puts forward with the intention of creating their perception of reality and placing it on the viewer/reader, for better or worse.

A small look at one of the largest creations

So, I was aimlessly procrastinating, and somehow ended up on a site that did nothing that show amazing pictures. Most of it was just mindless drivel, but one piece caught my eye.

It was called Son Doong Cave, and so far it's the largest cave in existence.

National Geographic

The cave, located in Vietnam, averages 80-by-80 metres, making it slightly large enough to house a town. This is also helped by the fact that when it was explored three years ago, explorers trekked over 41/2 kilometres through it before being blocked by floodwater. The only reason this behemoth of a cave wasn't explored by the locals inhabiting the land was because they were terrified by the whistling sound wind made as it travelled through the caverns.

More National Geographic

Andy Eavis, president of the IUS (International Union of Speleology), stated that the cave 

'is so large it may not actually be beaten. It's three times the size of Wembley Stadium...'

I've travelled to many, many countries over my life.

None of them can compare to the colossus that Son Doong Cave is. The sheer size dwarfs anything I've ever seen or heard of, even Deer Cave, the now second-largest cave in the world (while 22 metres wider, it's a puny 1.6 kilometres long). Seeing something so big, something that encompasses so much space it defines the very word 'big', makes you feel very, very small.

Yep, National Geographic

Seeing this was helpful. It helps take you outside what you're normally used to, and makes you realise how much there is you're missing out on, while nudging thoughts that have sat dormant at the back of your head.

So, enjoy the photos. And look around. See how much space there is.

Lecture 9: News Values

So what makes a story a story, and what makes a story news?

There is firstly and obviously, impact. Hearing about severe,world-changing events, such as 9-11 or the death of Michael Jackson, creates a huge impact everywhere.
Secondly, there is identifying with the audience. No-one in Australia cares whether or not Uzbekistan's newest politician will become mayor, so no-one will bother to buy that story. No corporate business cares whether or not Katy Perry and Russell Brand will recover from their shock divorce, just as no teenage girl cares whether the stock interest will rise or fall for Apple.
There is also pragmatics: dealing with ethics, the facticity of information, for everyday, 24/7 news.
Lastly, there is source influence. This was best summed up by Julia Hobsbawm, a public relations executive:


‘Journalism loves to hate PR … whether for spinning, controlling access,
approving copy, or protecting clients at the expense of the truth. Yet
journalism has never needed public relations more, and PR has never
done a better job for the media.’

The lecture noted two main focuses on news values:
If it bleeds, it leads!
And if it's local, it leads!
Definitely true. an example of both was Daniel Morcombe, a sad story that happened to the local population.

When running a newspaper, the Editor's job has to have a defining quality, one which some determine to be the most important: A good sense of news values. News happens everywhere, and journalists frequently have to rely on their instincts in choosing the relevance of a story. If the editor doesn't know what to choose, they might as well be blindfolded. Relevance is extremely important. They must be the funnel that directs the correct news to their newspaper.

But, as we know, some stories are absolutely irrelevant to absolutely anything. Soap opera, movie, or reality TV stars get loads of attention from papers, despite doing nothing at all. The commercialisation of them gets money for the papers, which I find similar to eating sugar: it may taste great the first few times, but it will destroy you from the inside.

Finally, it appears there is large debating over the term of the word newsworthy. What makes a story? What does the audience think is newsworthy today? What will they think is newsworthy tomorrow? The future of journalism depends on those questions.

-Charlie Morris

Factual Story

Everybody has a phobia. Mine? It was unfortunately placed in the exact right spot that I had to travel.

When I was little, my school co-hosted mini-triathlons for all the primary students. This intensely gruelling, 2km long course was at the hotel I lived in. It consisted of swimming across a lagoon to reach a miniature island, where contestants then rode a bike around the entire island before tagging their friend to run around half of it. Now, while the contest was open for any single person to do, everybody could team up and take it on in groups of 2-3. And every single boy desperately wanted to win that blue ribbon, including me. At one particular triathlon, when I was around 10-11, I was in a group of 2, and was both the swimmer and the runner for our group. There just happened to be one small problem with me and triathlons…
Due to being one of the best swimmers in the grade, every time I worked with any team (we usually signed up as a group of 3 for a greater chance of winning), I was almost always placed in the swimming section. The problem, however, was that despite loving swimming, and despite being desperately eager to win that blue ribbon, I was absolutely, undoubtedly, undeniably terrified of the lagoon I had to swim across. Each year, I almost begged my father to let me swap places with the others, despite both of them usually being useless at swimming. As my dad managed the hotel, regularly checked the safety of it, and almost never found anything wrong with the lagoon, he was indifferent to my pleas. He also didn’t realise several things. Firstly, I had a phobia of being in open water, and I thought the lagoon was extremely dirty from its green/brown colour. Dirty water is extremely hard to see through, and at that age I trusted things that I could see. Murky water only held unknown things that a 10 year olds imagination would warp and twist to become much worse than they could be. Finally, what parents didn’t realise was that when you tell a child something even remotely scary, such as one man getting stung by a stingray, another stung by a stonefish, and two others seeing a barracuda (all in the same lagoon), they tend to remember it for a very long time. Especially after watching Finding Nemo.

So there I was, a few minutes before the race started, even then still trying to change places.  The only reason I was even there was because the only thing I wanted more than staying out of the water was to make my father proud of me, to overcome my fear of open water, and to not disappoint my teammates.
When the whistle blew, I sprinted in and swam as fast as I could, so that I could reach the end and get straight out of that damn water. As I jumped into the murky, dark lagoon, terror instantly seized me. The lagoon was a green/brown colour, with lots of weeds in the bottom. Feeling any of them touch my legs didn’t help, thinking each time it was a certain fish or stingray nibbling my feet. While feeling them made me swim frantically faster, it also reduced my style, in effect slowing me down, which only made me more frantic. Even though several other kids swam beside, behind, and in front of me, I was convinced that something would grab me from the dark depths and pull me under, and I’d be lost among the throng of swimmers until it was too late. Or even worse, the barracuda would appear straight out of the murky water and attack me.  It didn’t matter how unlikely any of these events were, I believed that if it was possible, it was going to happen. While I swam, one piece of weed actually managed to latch onto me. Even though it was flimsy and I broke through it in a second, it terrified me enough to actually freeze in the middle of the lagoon for a second. Luckily, my dad and I had managed to plan this out, although not without my reluctance. Dad was waiting at the end of the swim for me, to yell support when I felt too scared. When he saw me stop swimming halfway through, he started encouraging me from the finish line to keep going. While it was embarrassing, it worked, and I started swimming again. I forced myself to accept that while what could happen was possible, it was extremely unlikely. Closing my eyes also helped.
Finally, exhausted, I landed on the sand at the other side of the lagoon. I almost leaped out of the water when I realised I was at the end.

After the swim, I was only too glad to run. We won the triathlon thanks to our work, and it never felt better to receive that blue ribbon. However, despite competing in and winning many triathlons, many years after the event, I never overcame my fear of that lagoon. While I loved every part of Vanuatu, and the hotel in it, that lagoon always felt wrong. No matter how many times I jumped in, or how many times I swam in it, I never enjoyed it and never tolerated it. Every time, at every event, I would just jump in, swim as fast as I possibly could (definitely not out of training), and finish. I’ve overcome much in my life, but the lagoon still stands out as what I feared most back then. But I would like to return to Vanuatu so I can see if I can finally beat it, as I don't have a fear of open water anymore.

A thank you to Bill Watterson.

For those of you who don't know.
Bill Watterson was the creator and and artist of the immensely popular Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, that ran from 1985 to December 31st, 1995. When I was young-didn't think I'd say that for a while- okay, 'younger', I was obsessed with Calvin's antics and vivid imagination. Seeing hundreds of artists miserably fail at capturing a kids perspective of the universe was pretty depressing. I desperately wanted something that was funny, and actually possible to relate to. Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, I devoured these comics and more, but they never gave me the satisfaction of both good comedy and the relatability of thinking: that's exactly what I'd do!
Enter Calvin and Hobbes.
Seeing an almost insanely creative and explosively active kid with a tiger as his best friend was pretty much a dream come true. Watching him do everything we kids ever wanted to do was refreshing...

and, for Gods sake: he had a tiger as his best friend. What beats that?
The main part I admired about Calvin, though, is that Bill captured his antics perfectly. Simple and innocent enough theories for a child to believe, smart enough for them to act on, and yet so creative and vivid only a kid could dream it up. One of the best examples I found was the Transmogrifier, a personal favourite strip section that Calvin created.

Another favourite strip was his boyish instincts that allowed him to grab some of the (to the average boy/teen) most awesome things together and combine them, such as these:

Again, a perfect perspective. Every boy always starts their dream scenarios: It either starts with a calm, unsuspecting populace right before they're plunged into roaring danger!... or even better, it starts off with extreme danger and tries to add as much excitement as possible in the short time span allowed.
The last part of Bill I loved him for is Calvin's philosophy. His outlook on life was almost identical to my own at the time, and in the moments when I felt alone, seeing that someone else was there that thought the way I do, regardless of how real they were, was comforting.
This is what I love Bill Watterson for. He seemingly effortlessly captures the life of a six year old's perspective on life and channels it straight into comedy. So thank you Bill, for your creativity. Thank you for your enthusiasm. And finally, thank you for not doing what so many have done before: squeezing the potential for a project so much that what's left isn't even recognisable by the end.

Recently, I found out that I wasn't the only one grateful to Bill. Some fans decided to make a short film, saying that they missed his work. The link is below, and it's good: do any of you remember Calvin's snowmen?

Thanks for reading. And again, thanks to Bill for the boost.

The Public Media

-No commercials. No mercy!

Anchorman

Public Media:
'Media whose mission is to serve or engage a public.'
Public media is a boon. The ABC and SBS are both brilliant networks, that show and create inventive and, thank you God, ORIGINAL shows. The Chasers, Wilfred, The Gruen Transfer, Angry Boys: all these shows are/were creative shows that had a great following.
I noticed that unlike Seven, Nine and Ten, the public media networks showed great tenacity by sticking with the 'simple, not stupid' method. Their shows were easy to follow, yet clever, and also funny, but didn't have to shove the punchline in your face (I'm looking at you, Channel Seven), as well as finally not referring to the most pathetic methods: Preying on the weakest of human needs. The Biggest Loser and Neighbours, stand proud.
Moving on before I start insanely rambling about television programs,
Public media faces challenges: To be independent.
This can be problematic: being held in common by the people is in my belief risky, as no matter how intelligent any individual is, society as a whole is an idiot. Having to be held in legislation by the government is also risky. The Chaser's are proof of that. And the most annoyingly (and important) one: Bias/Agenda.

Regarding the future of public media, there has been discussion for a 'public media 2.0'. I disagree with aspects of this, as I am currently completely satisfied with our current programs (give or take a few Jonathan Holmes. Actually, just take). That would take time and words though, far too many for this post. So,
Good night and enjoy some music (courtesy of a previous blog post by Faye Rentoule)
Thank you,
Charlie Morris.

Turkeys among eagles

There have been many, reasonable phobias:

Arachnophobia: Fear of spiders.
Perfectly normal, something with eight elongated legs that spins some kind of liquid solid out of it's rear end is reason enough alone to fear them.

Acrophobia: Fear of Heights
When you look over the edge, with only a guardrail (sometimes) to protect you, it's hard not to feel a sensation of vertigo. One step, one trip, and everything ends.

Agoraphobia: Fear of situations which are difficult to escape.
Stuck in a crowd or open space is scary when you're alone, which isn't helped when events like riots start.

...And there's there this.

Yes, this actually exists (Thank you Gary Larson).
While many phobia's are caused by traumatic events, such as gaining Selachophobia from a shark attack, I find this absolutely hilarious. Firstly: it's a duck. Terrifying things, aren't they? While the most traumatic event I've had relating to this is getting nipped by one as a child, it certainly wasn't enough to believe that that one duck would follow me, forever knowing my whereabouts, stalking me at every opportunity.
Is this related to Journalism? No. Is it hilarious? Yes.

And also, here's another phobia, courtesy of Larson. Real or fake?

-Luposlipaphobia: the fear of being pursued by timber wolves around a kitchen table while wearing socks on a newly waxed floor.

As promised, here's some music. Enjoy Kid Cudi/Aoki.

Six Weeks

Follow me! Top left corner if you're signed in.

Note: figured posting something entirely different was a bad idea. Just going to put music at the end from now on.

WEEK SIX.

COMMERCIAL MEDIA

INFOMERCIALS. So. Many. INFOMERCIALS. Extra, TV4ME, I really don't give a damn about your psychics and home shopping, and neither does 90% of the human population. You obviously know this. So why put it up?

Because:

Commercial Media is entirely profit driven, non-funded by the government (thank you merciful God), and most importantly, lives and dies by the hand of it's business success. 

There are three kinds, or forms, of commercial media:

• Subscription (Foxtel)
• Sponsored (Channel Nine)
• Subsidised (Government funded)

But what is the duty of the media? Summarised below, you'll see why (and coincidentally, also why yellow journalism tops my list of most hated things, topping Nicki Minaj and stepping on headphones)

"The ‘first duty [of the media] is to shun the 

temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the 

gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must 

see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what 

it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the 

mode of presentation must the unclouded face of 

truth suffer wrong. Comment is free, but facts are 

sacred." - C.P. Scott (Editor of the Guardian)

Recently, it appears more more often journalism turns to the dark side: quantity beats quality. The quantity of money made by crap, easily entertaining news beats the quality of good journalism.

Examples of crap, entertaining news would be:

Dumbing down the news

tabloidisation

desire to please

'Mickey Mouse' news

So what does the future hold for Commercial Media?

Hopefully, this.

The Global Mail.

Great, non-profit news entirely funded by those who prefer quality.

I hope you enjoyed this. Have some music.

Charlie Morris

The Media Journal.

Media Use Journal JOUR1111

The following graphs indicate my 10-day record of media usage.
(Note: the sizes of graphs are at the only available ones before they become too big for the blog)

Comparison

• Judging by these graphs, it’s implied that I use social networking and YouTube (both New Media devices) far more than any other media. Compared to the general survey group, it shows that while I, like most people, spend most of my time on social networks (approx. 92% of the general participants used most of their time networking), I spend far too much time watching videos (only approx. 37% watched streamed TV programs) and barely any time watching TV (only 3 hours’ worth of it over 10 days, unlike the majority which watched 1-2 hours’ worth of it every day).
• I also listened to an unusually high amount of radio (1-2 hours), much more than the majority 53.9% (<1 hour).
• It is interesting to note that I almost methodically, every day, without fail, log on firstly to Facebook and then onto my most-used news site (ninemsn.com.au), before moving on to anything else. I believe this is due to my desire to constantly stay updated about the latest happenings of the world, both in my life (Facebook) and in international events (online news). As these are free, update more and are faster than Old Media, I use them frequently.

Comparing new media to old media

As this graph shows,
• I am a hopeless user of current New Media, spending over 5 times the amount of minutes on New Media than Old Media.
• I believe this behaviour is firstly because I am a member of Gen Y, a generation that has been raised mostly on New Media: the Internet was starting to take off at around the time we were able to fully comprehend it. (see picture below)

• Secondly, as my entire social and academic work is on the computer (a member of New Media), I use New Media frequently because it is a part of the crucial aspects of my life (e.g. can’t write an assignment without a computer, I easily get distracted by what's on the computer).

CONCLUSION

Overall, with the information gathered I would say that I, as well as the general participants of the survey, am a slave to New Media, and use almost none of the Old Media that is currently available today in comparison. This indicates that while we are currently up to date with today’s current news due to its easy accessibility (Computers, smart/i-phones), we generally (not entirely) ignore Old Media methods of communications, as Online News (New Media) and Facebook constantly update with the current happenings of the world. I believe that while this is extremely helpful, giving us hyper-communication (Instant connection and conversation anywhere at any time), it also reduces our creativity and general knowledge. I click links on Ninemsn.com.au to visit the stories I want. Basically: a title seems interesting, I click it. But, if I read Old Media (i.e. Newspaper), I read stories I find relevant, then glance over at others that initially seem uninteresting but turn out to very beneficial/relative/interesting to my current life. This has not ever happened in my usage of New media, the closest being finding out of extremely uninteresting occurrences on Facebook.

Word Count: 535.

'Never be afraid of silence, silence is very powerful.'

'Never be afraid of silence, silence is very powerful.'
A great quote, one that I believe is one of the most truthful ones out there. I also believe it should be applied to certain girls out there that have mouths like 7-11, but that's just me.
The last lecture happened to be audio. Annoying for some in that they have to rely solely on audio, great for others in that they don't have to attend a lecture. Personally, I was the latter in that I had to force myself to listen to audio for half an hour.
Regardless! The lecture was extremely interesting in that two incredibly smooth-voiced men gave generally good advice about pursuing stories and careers and radio/journalism. The first guest was Richard Findler, a radio host. Some of the most crucial parts that he talked about were:

• Radio is NOT like TV. TV is high impact in that it is entertaining, but it isn't easy to relate to. It generally comes through to you from a distance.

• Radio, on the other hand, tries its best to make YOU (the listener) feel like you're part of the conversation, and to keep you involved in it.

• Radio interviews are usually kept simplistic, like interviewing a celebrity: There would probably be about 7 minutes of total interviewing, excluding special cases (political debates, REALLY big celebrities on the show). 

• The key for making an interview entertaining is that the person is in a trustworthy, secure, safe interview. Act in an accusatory manner (much like political candidates do today) and the interviewee clams up or becomes defensive.

• What is important is that the viewer has to be genuinely interested to make it a story. 

• If someone's lying or fake, then we can smell it a mile away, it's much easier to lie on TV than on radio. (This I believe is due to TV changing how everything looks: The faces are different, the lighting is unnatural, and most of the words are at least half-scripted. On radio, there is only the voice, which is made more and more easy to hear, thus more easy to tell if they're fake/lying.)

(Not Richard Findler's exact words) You need a driving force, something energetic that makes you enthusiastic about working. Findler's force is (his words) that he wants to be useful, he wants to give his audience something, which gives him a sense of public service, and that's what keeps him energetic and happy, something that makes me energetic and happy because genuine honesty and reality seem to be fading more and more into the background these days.

Finally, due to the last post being much longer than necessary, I'll finish up now with a quick finisher and another interesting perk at the end for the longer readers.

Defining moments on radio: 

'Those moments when someone reveals something of themselves personally, and they've almost forgotten they've been on radio: that's been the magic moment.'

And now for the interesting video.

the final beginning: part 2

Week 2!
-Side note: This was made with a different format, just flexing this blogs boundaries.
Week 2 discussed several things:
Web Iterations
News under Web 3.0?
and 
the challenges of Online News.


Web Iterations
OLD MEDIA! 
Yes, good old traditional newspaper! Radio, Television! And (unfortunately if you read the previous post) magazines! They all portrayed mass communication. But: Is that actually it? Old Media = old communication methods? Not quite.
Old Media: 

"Media platforms that were essentially derived from an industrial paradigm. Created and developed in the late 19th and first half of the the 20th centuries, these platforms- newpapers, magazines, radio and television- are essentially instruments of mass communication targeting large aggregated audiences, albeit within their own specific markets."- Harrison

Next from Web Iterations: Versions of the web!

Web 1.0 - The Information Web

This is the current web, the one which we are all aware of and are hopelessly addicted to. It's full of content, and surrounded by ads! Ads, the only thing I can easily look at and see both a great source of happiness (the journalists still get paid!) and a frustrating, constantly annoying piece of crap that offers me things they are convinced I would need, but in actuality are just offers of time that I would rather spend eating an entire bicycle.

Web 2.0 - The Social Web

If you've read that and have no idea what it means, you need to get out more. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace (rest in peace) were/are all powerful social media sites, where people can instantly generate knowledge and opinions about anything, anywhere. I love the social web. Being able to complain or compliment anything at all at any time is a remarkable boon to mankind, as well as quickly using Wikipedia to double check any mistakes I've made.

It appears the word for users of the Social Web (2.0) is a Prod-user, a blend of producers and users. Produsage is used to generate money for the sites of web 2.0: 'users are almost always also able to be producers of content, and often necessarily so in the very act of using it.' (http://snurb.info/produsage)

Web 3.0 - The Semantic Web

Web 1.0 was the static flat web of hyperlinks and no interaction. Web 2.0 is an improvement: converting html into the fluid web we know today.

Web 3.0 is the next step. "Web 3.0 takes all this a step further adding machine-readable meaning 

to the packets of information. It is thus known to the technically minded as the semantic web. Once it is manifest the semantic web will take us to within a gnat’s whisker of that utopia in which you have the exact change for a trip from Mornington Crescent to LAX via JFK. Before we get there though, there is the not-so-simple matter of enabling meaning within information sources. This concept brings us full circle to the early days of web design when every tool stressed the importance of meta tags." - David Bradley 2009

Now, what is a meta tag? A meta tag is a special HTML tag that provides information about a web page. They are unlike HTML tags in that meta tags do not affect how the page is displayed, providing information about it: who created this page? Do they update often? What's the content? what keywords represent the page's content? If it's sounding familiar, you're correct. Many search engines utilise this method, sending what's called 'spiders' out to gather documents, and an indexer to read these documents in order to help create meaningful results for every query.

Web 3.0 focuses on us: Individuals. But what would the effects have on Web 1.0? Or even 2.0?

The lecture helpfully pointed out a few possible futures:

-Hyperlocalisation! The ability to get any knowledge instantly from anywhere!

-Specific Content! That means the news YOU want to read! Advertising things YOU want!

-complete and utter ignorance and lack of general knowledge. Getting everything we want whenever we want by clicking a mouse is simply too easy. We need to expand and venture into unknown areas to have true knowledge. "If a pig loves it's stall the open door means nothing."

Entitlement

We, as human beings, as entitled to a lot, and are grateful for it. Apparently, the lecture believes that our Entitlement may just be the death of Journalism.

Newspapers made so much money before. All the advertising made them so powerful. But due to Web 1.0, a lot of deaths were caused. Ebay has apparently brutally killed the ad section in newspapers! Will we pay for something for what we believe we are rightfully entitled to have for free?

Yes apparently. Membership to online news, such as the Times, has its benefits: quality for money, simple as that. But many of us don't have a membership to the times and don't want to! Why? Because we believe we are entitled to have it. Many newspapers haven't made these 'paywalls', and maybe they won't. However, considering how many sites today will offer 'premium' services (Herald Sun), perhaps it's only a matter of time.

Charlie Morris.

-Also, as a final interesting information and thank you, here's an interesting note below, found easily and within seconds using our current web. Message or let me know if you want me to keep this up.

What is it? After every blog, I post something interesting (a thank you to readers), which can be anything. Let me know what you think!

The amazing feats of possibly the most powerful martial artist ever.

Bruce Lee (Simplified link below)

the final beginning

And here are the other two.

Week 1.
"I know of no human being who has a better time than an eager and energetic reporter." - H.L. Mencken, Journalist.
The first lecture, a great introduction to a vital question: What the heck do we do in this course?
What is Journalism and Communication?
According to Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, "Journalism is the first rough draft of history". An accurate quote, but it needs a little expansion. Enter Henry Anatole Grunwald:

"Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air."
What the two quotes agree on is that Journalism is first on the scene when it comes to history: It states immediately what it is seeing to get a truthful interpretation, and refines itself later.
Journalism faces some difficult obstacles ahead, with an unlikely enemy and ally being technology. Is it causing the death of newspapers? Is it also advancing Social media, thus allowing citizens to become journalists? Granted, this allows news to arrive faster, but also removes a lot of potential stories for journalists, in essence giving them less of a job. Worst of all, there is also the ugliest abomination to rear it's ugly head: Yellow journalism entertainment news. Even typing those words down makes me want to feel disgust: we see this offence to Journalism far too often, and what is also infuriating and frustrating to me is that 'stars' generate lots of publicity and attention from these. Behold, the most frequently used face in yellow journalism:

Yes, Kim Kardashian. the Krippling Kontroversial waste of space and also a knife in Journalism: Entertainment news.
Finishing off the lecture, which after explaining the threats to journalism gave lots of helpful information that has no place in this blog, they reminded us of one thing:

"You are the Journalist."

Charlie Morris.

The Late Newcomer

Well, as we were meant to post our old ones (and I lost mine with the last attempt at a blog due to an unfortunate altercation involving the last account), here's week 3's lecture.

WHAT IS TEXT?
Well, it appears text is:

• Fast!
• Flexible!
• Having Complete control!
• Portable!
• Searchable!
• Absolutely Dominating online!

Couldn't be more true for the last one, the web would have to be completely remade to get anywhere near as much popularity as it would with text, I literally can't see how you can create one without text.

And speaking of text, this brings me to the next picture, what I believe is a must-have when it comes to writing a news story. 

This is a modified version of *cough* today's lecture. The point it makes is simple: When creating a story, USE THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTS THE MOST FREQUENTLY. Then, use quotes, supporting details, i.e. in essence, don't say s*** unless you can show what supports it.
Finally, use the general background. This is in because it's necessary, to clear confusion and to get a better picture of what's happening.

An example of this was used in the lecture (see below):

British and Italian hostages murdered by captors in special forces rescue bid in Nigeria

A British hostage has been killed in a Special Forces operation to free him from al-Qaeda aligned kidnappers in Nigeria.

This follows the pyramid exactly: The opening statement shows what's the most important: Who is it, what's happened, where did it happen? The rest of the story goes on to give more details, giving the name (Chris McManus, when it happened, why it happened, and what happened after.

See here for the story.

But text can't be as simple as that one pyramid. Which is why the lecture continued!

Text is also:

• Story content
• headlines
• standfirst
• Captions
• Pull quotes
• Break-out boxes
• links

Any decent news-paper/website includes all of these The lecture showed an example, the website of The Australian: it showcased a headline over Unions mulling a levy to fight Abbott, Captions for each story, content for each boxed story before linking each one over to its own page on its own story.

And it appears we perceive text as even more important than photographs! Apparently we look at and register text before the picture! Is this true? I tested it out on family, and found that no, it wasn't. They immediately always saw the picture first. What did you see?

See the photo HERE. note: slightly strange, includes slight nudity.

Well, I thought it was a decent story.

Text is (of course) the majority of our social web, the Web 2.0: Emails we send, blogs we post, tweets we send, Facebook updates we create, comments we leave, all of these rely on text. Forums apply to this as well.

Our blogs appear to be exponentially expanding (what isn't lately on the Internet?). a 2010 edition of the Sate of the Blogosphere found that instead of a community, blogging is now becoming mainstream. The rate of blogging also increased, with more blogs this year than there were last year, as well as over half of them believing blogs will be the primary source of media in five years (3 years from now). Personally, I believe this to be an exaggeration, but the more you that read this, the more I'm proven wrong.

TechCrunch advertised a story in which a man seemingly sold his company for $1000 in at least 3 ways: on its website, on Twitter, and on Facebook, 3 highly effective means of mass communication.

Finally, text is: 

• Metadata
• Excerpts
• and Tags

The lecture recommended WordPress Excerpt for text such as this, which I trust to be well-informed due to having Excerpt in its title.

Thank you for your reading, I hope you enjoyed it.

'Illiterate men can contemplate in the lines of a picture what they cannot learn by means of the written word.' -Pope Gregory I

PICTURE STORIES.
In the Journalism's lecture of week 4, the topic of discussion was: pictures. It's widely attributed that Frederick Barnard once said: 'A picture is worth a thousand words.' This saying has proven itself countlessly, time and time again. Every picture we see, conveys meaning and understanding across in ways words never could, which is why almost every news-worthy story has to have one.

In the time before literacy and words were common, or even in existence, stories were told with pictures: the cave paintings in France, Plato's cave (see below), all conveyed from anything to everything, to fables to epics.
When the Christian faith began expanding and building, they could not reach people through words as the general population was illiterate. Therefore, they constructed some of the most beautiful artworks to convey their perception of God, some of which are still conveyed just as easily today as they were thousands of years ago.

Journalism owes much to the life of pictures. Photography today can easily capture moments in time and hold them there for the world to marvel at. But there has been some debate over the possible travesty/miracle: 
Photoshop. 
Yes, this is the change to photography: to artificially enhance beyond a natural effect. Photoshop has caused much controversy on its ability to change faces and bodies, from artistic expressions (see below) to 'glamorising' celebrities, creating impossible figures and faces (see below) 

An effect of Photoshop: no illustrious change to make Obama appear beautiful, bigger-than-life or better, just expression of the artist.

(Source: http://www.flashuser.net/photoshop/30-photoshop-tutorials-for-stunning-photo-effects.html)

 The controversy with 'Photoshop Effect': changing a dry, old singstar into a luxurious, eternally-youthful singstar.

(Source: http://likecool.com/Madonna_Before_and_After_photoshop--Pic--Gear.html)

This tool frustrates people of today: many can believe that this is an offense to photos: They are meant to capture the moments of life. Altering them would merely take this away. However, this will be discussed later. For now, in order to keep this blog short: moving on to Photo-Journalism.


What makes a great photo?

'Burst of Joy', 1974

Gustavo Cuevas of Spain captured this photo of the unfortunate matador   being gored by his first bull.

Today, photos are used all over the world, and are almost necessary for the story to be considered a story in journalism. Cameras are available to almost anyone at any time, thanks to the blending of cameras and phones. Social media utilised photo-journalism to further protests and causes, such as the Arab Spring Riots. News today uses videos and cameras more than ever before, which can be argued that it unfortunately, slowly pushes the 'old media' style of newspaper into the gutter. What is the future holding for old media? I'll leave you with that.
Have some stories.
-Charlie Morris

 

"A picture has no meaning at all if it can't tell a story." Eetu Silanpaa

And now for something completely different.

While I wait for the next JOUR1111 lecture, here's something not remotely related to the class, but for the sake of entertainment is possibly related to Japanese techno LED dancing:

Wrecking Orchestra's choreographed LED light-suit routine