24 October 2011 - Lecture Week 13

Last but not least, week 13 lecture by Steve Molks. Molks is the owner, founder and runner of MolksTVTalks a website where he expresses opinion on televisions. MolksTVTalks website link: http://molkstvtalk.com/ MolksTVTalks review television extensively, from reviews, recaps and ratings.

Molks believe that television remains as an important part of people life and the only thing that changes is how people consume television. Another thing that he said was the importance of social media. Social media nowadays is also part of people culture. A good journalist should always now what is in the trend now and a good way to follow the trend is Twitter.

This concludes the last lecture, but this is not the end to this blog :) I will still post interesting things in my life (at least interesting for me). Anyway good night for now, it is 10 pm.Time to sleep, adios... By the way what's wrong with blogspot time system, it says 23:53...gee...

17 October 2011 - Lecture Week 12

Yay!! We have finally arrive in week 12, just 1 more to go. I really love this lecture because that was the first time I step into Schonell Theatre and also it was a very different lecture than before, we got a change of environment and it was watching a documentary which I totally love :) The documentary is title Page One: Inside New York Times. It was release in 2011.

Trailer on youtube:

Have you seen the trailer? It is awesome*skipping walk*. I'm damn tired of people asking why I study journalism and have I really considered my future before taking this major. They make such a light deal of journalism, saying journalism is dead, useless and pay little. Hello there people! Check out this trailer, journalism is alive and healthy, yeah it may got some bruises here and there but the center is alive and well!

This documentary is a very inspiring documentary about New York Times. There was this guy named David Carr who is a senior journalist in New York Times. He became the main narrator of the documentary. Many issues for journalism these days is presented. One of the issue is twitter and other social medias. Carr joked that a new guy who was a blogger before he came to NYTimes might be a robot created to replace him. The documentary also shows economic issue with ads profit decreases 30% and stuffs. They had to lay off 100 people. The economic downturn for NYTimes can also be attributed to the feeling of free news entitlement.


Another big challenge for New York Times was WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks put a video about Iraq War from anonymous source on youtube. What WikiLeaks done put journalism under pressure including NYTimes. People buzzed about WikiLeaks and WikiLeaks came under the spotlight in media. In the early minutes of the documentary, the new guy interviewed Julian Assange whether he is a journalist or an activist in which Assange replied that he prefers being an activist rather than a journalist because his goal is justice.


A good thing is that when someone in the documentary said that you can get all kind of soft news on online fast media but hard news such as war requires investigative journalism and nothing can replace it. One thing that remains a very encouraging message was the last quote, "Journalism is alive, well and feisty, especially, at the New York Times." Cheers people :)

10 October - Lecture Week 11

On week 10, I learned about Investigative Journalism. Yuck, bleh...I have been writing the same opening "on week X, I learned about..." I better think of a new one. Let's start again.

On 10 October 2011, for the 11th lecture, I learned about investigative journalism.

There are 4 purposes of investigative journalism:

1) Critical and thorough journalism

2) Custodians of conscience

3) Provide and protect people without voice

4) Becoming a watchdog toward government and public

There are three types of investigation method: 1) interviewing, 2) observing, and 3) analysing documents. Because of these methods to surveys and investigates facts, investigative journalism takes a huge amount of time and effort. On the other hand, online news, the biggest rival of investigative journalisms takes less amount of time, less amount of effort and thus, less amount of journalists. Another bleak future of journalism...

03 October - Lecture Week 10

It seemed that I took a long break yesterday, sorry I was caught up in a new Sims 3 Pets Limited Edition :) So now I have, once again, braced myself not to be distracted and focus on my assignments. Hix ToT I still have 3 lectures to go after this one...

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On week 10, I learned about news value. News value is the degree of prominence a media outlet gives to a
story, and the attention that is paid by an audience (i.e. how important is this news, what effects will it gives and why should the reader know about the issue). News values and newsworthiness have many factors:

1) Negativity = bad news/tragedy
2) Closeness to home = how relatable the audience is geographically
3) Recency = freshness
4) Currency = money value of a news (i.e. can it be a long shot series?)
5) Continuity = events that continue for a long period (i.e. war)
6) Uniqueness = how different/unique a story is
7) Simplicity = a simple true story that is more preferable than a confusing one
8) Personality = stories that centre around a particular person (i.e. celebrity stories)
9) Expectedness/predictability = does the event match public predictions?
10) Elite nations or people = news involving powerful nations/people, for example, politicians
11) Exclusivity = if a news person or media is the first or the only media that cover the story
12) Size = the bigger the impact, the better

Russel Peters

How come I had never known about this guy? I was strolling around in youtube and I found this guy's joke about Indian and he is freaking hilarious. I was laughing my ass off and my roommate shouts at me. Russell Peters is a Canadian Indian who makes fun of Indian, well not only Indian, he makes fun of everyone, English, Asian (he loves Asian :D), Jamaican, Jewish, Arabs, etc. He might seems racist but I have to admit it that he is funny and he makes fun of everyone so he is not a racist. His jokes are also gross sometimes, but his grossness is also funny. 

Check out the video below. He is telling you to beat your kids and also, look at that middle finger.

I wonder why this guy never comes to Australia, he will surely make a good laugh of Australian. There are other funny videos of him on youtube and if you have time, watch them.

19 September - Lecture Week 9

On week ninth, we learned about agenda setting. Agenda setting is the process of mass media presenting certain issues. There are two types of agenda setting theory:
1) First level: media inform public on what issue they should focus on
2) Second level: media suggest how public should to think with the issue

Agenda setting is about:

1) Media Gatekeeping: controlling the exposure of an issue towards public

2) Media Advocacy: promotion of a message for example dental health

3) Agenda Cutting: when issues are not represented in media

4) Agenda Surfing or 'bandwagon effect': when public opinion forms other opinions

5) The Diffusion of News: the process of communicating an issue to the public

6) Portrayal of an Issue: the way media portray an issue will influence public perception towards it

7) Media Dependence: the more dependent person towards the media, the more susceptible the person is.

One of an interesting point of the lecture is the media setting assumption that media filters and shapes reality. In one of my last posts was about a documentary I watched, FOXNews. One of a scene in it was that FOXNews announced the election result before the votes were fully counted. FOXNews 'shaped reality' and Bush became president. The power of media to shape reality is quiet true at some events but I hope that I will not become one of this failing journalists that filter and shape the reality.

12 September - Lecture Week 8

It seemed that I have taken my exam preparation week too lightly and have done nothing...I regret it so much, for the past two days I had been thinking that I should do something and ended up doing nothing. For today, I have braced myself and continue this blog :D There are still many other assignments to do though. Now, I am going to write about lecture week 8. Following last lecture, this lecture is about public media.

Public media is a media that serves public. Public media used to be funded by taxpayers but now it is more into profit. Australian public media is the ABC or Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Other examples of public media is British's BBC and Japan's NHK.

       

Public media should have public value. According to BBC public value consists of 'public service ethos', value for licence fee money, comparing 'public value' versus 'market impact' and public consultation. Public media also functions for nation building, national heritage, national identity and national conversations. Public media news style is serious, broadsheet style, importance over interest and considered. This results in view that public media is boring, of limited interest, poorly presented and out of touch.

There are two scary facts about public media: 1) they are deprived of fund, 2) they have many enemy. Because it is funded by government, the funding is often stunted as some may think that public media is a waste of tax. Because of the limited budget there are only small workers used in public media. Second, because public media is often seen by government as enemy because public media serves the public instead of government even though the funding is regulated by government. Worse of worst, the second fact contributes the most to the first fact :( Reading this is quiet a bleak future, isn't it?