PBS

I remember watching shows like Sesame Street, Wishbone and Reading Rainbow on PBS when I was younger. They were my favorite shows and I was always so upset when they did those telethons to raise money. They seemed like the lasted forever and always interrupted my favorite shows. Plus, the people on tv would always use things like stuffed animals of Cookie Monster and Big Bird to try to get the kids to guilt their parents into donating. I also remember that my mother HATED PBS's annual fundraising attempts. (I think it's because it turned me into a whiney brat for a few days).

Over winter break I was watching one of my little cousins and she turned Sesame Street on. It instantly made me feel really old because I didn't recognize it at all. It has changed so much in the 15 or so years since I watched it. I don't think it changed for the better, either. I remember the Sesame Street of my childhood being much more educational than what my cousin was watching. This definitely is a problem for PBS.

As stated in the article, their shows are not high quality television by any stretch of the imagination. I don't watch PBS- ever. I did watch one of their Frontline documentaries for a class once, but I watched it online. I also wouldn't have watched it if it wasn't assigned. PBS really needs to get rid of all of the ridiculous programming that they have to get a larger viewership.

America's broadband problems...

I will openly admit that I don't understand a lot of the technological jargon used in the debate over internet speed and net neutrality. I knew that the U.S. was way behind on broadband speed, but I had no idea that it was this bad. It's embarrassing how far behind the U.S. is.

Even more frustrating, however, is that Ithaca College has the worst internet system of any college I've ever been to. (When I visit high school friends at other colleges I'm amazed at how fast their internet is.). Students pay a lot to go to IC, and the free internet that is provided isn't even able to load a Youtube video in a reasonable amount of time. How is that supposed to foster good research skills?

I really hope that Obama doesn't focus just on health care (which I admit is very very important) and does have time and support to dedicate to broadband speed and net neutrality. They're both really important issues that need to be addressed to increase the United States' ability to compete on a global scale.

Bill Clinton's "love child"

When I read Drudge's coverage of President Bill Clinton's "love child," I had trouble understanding how he got away with such bad journalism.

My favorite part is:

"Could Bobbie Ann Williams and her sister be blackmailing the President of the United States with outrageous and false claims of sex for money and the pregnancy that resulted?

What becomes immediately obvious to the viewer watching the videotaped confession is that this is clearly not gossip, rumor or anonymous charges being maliciously directed at a politician.

Bobbie Ann Williams does not hide her face in shadow when she names Bill Clinton as the father of her son.

And there is something sad and lonely about the woman's story the way she tells it."

So basically, he's analyzing video footage that he doesn't provide his reader with. Perpetuating untruths isn't a great way to get your name out there in a positive way.

For example, USC's Annenberg School of Communication (fun fact: it was my top choice for college. I got in but they're really bad at giving out financial aid), posted a time line of this whole fabricated story. Since when do tabloids inspire actual legitimate news outlets to run with a story? My roommates and I are addicted to supermarket tabloids (they're our guilty pleasure). I just read a story about how reality "star" Kourtney Kardashian is leaving her boyfriend/ baby's father. Does that make it newsworthy, important or true? No. This was clearly a larger scale issue when a tabloid had way too much influence on "real" journalism to the point that some mainstream media outlets lowered themselves to tabloidism.

My take on the Fowler incidents...

I should probably start this blog by revealing my biases. I love the Clintons. I supported Hillary in the election (not only voted for her but made calls and campaigned for her too). I love both of the Clintons, but even I will agree that there are things about them that are probably not entirely legitimate.

With that being said, learning about the second Fowler incident really got me upset. I probably would have forgiven her if this was the only journalistic indiscretion that she's had. However, if you add this incident with the Obama one, and I really start to question her integrity. She had 2 possible (depending on who you talk to) breaches of journalistic integrity during one election cycle. Both of these had major impacts on the election.

I think the reason that this upsets me more is that I feel like Hillary was really judged way too much on what Bill said. The smartest things haven't always come out of Michelle Obama's mouth but the media didn't focus on it as much as they did whenever Bill said something dumb (which I will admit, he does need to shut up more). The thing with politicians is that a lot of the time when a controversial quote comes up, their general message is acceptable, the way they word it is not. The media needs to focus more on the message and less on the wording.

Dear Musicians, it pays to connect with your audience

Radiohead came up with a pretty awesome way to sell their latest record, "In Rainbows." Before reading the article, I had heard of their brilliant idea before. It got me thinking, why don't more musicians do what Radiohead did?

I thought of an example of something similar. Before John Mayer released his latest cd, Battle Studies, in November, he turned his official website, run by his record label, into a blog so that he could share his recording and writing experience with his fans.

Before his cd was released, he gave us snippets of lyrics, videos and pictures from his process. He took us through how he decided the album art to why he put songs in the order that he did. It was really interesting.

While we still had to pay $13 for it when it came out, those who ordered it online from his website get a code to preorder tickets for his tour before anyone else. Another fun feature on his website is that he has every show professionally recorded, that way, when you get home you can download the tracks from his concert that you were just at (for free!).

He wrote:

Here's what Battle Studies is.
(Apologies for cellphone internet. Heavy media comes tomorrow...)

It's a house,
in a clandestine location,
that's being converted into a music studio.
No, not a music studio.
An entire music experience.
A living, breathing, ever-evolving organic space that contains every part of the record making process.
Everybody involved has left their comfort zone. Including myself.
I need to be disoriented again.

I'm going to share as much as I can with you throughout the entire process. Notes, lyrics, sounds, pictures, ideas, videos.

Tomorrow we look at some new guitars and I explain the approach in detail...

I hope you'll like it.

JM

Is a Journalism degree really worth it?

The following quote that we discussed in class today touched upon something I realized about a month into my freshman year at IC.

"The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say. He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master's in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that's the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter."

This is exactly why I realized that I needed to be a double major at IC (I declared my politics major sophomore year). I remember calling my parents during my Intro to Journalism class especially, complaining that any idiot could learn how to use an AP Style Book. It's unfortunate, but it's true. I didn't see much value in spending $45,000 a year to have a professor show me how to look up when to abbreviate words and when to write them out in their entirety. So many of my Park classes since then have done the same exact thing. Last semester in News Editing we had AP Style quizzes just like we did in Intro to Journalism, News Reporting and Writing 1 and News 2. It's become increasingly frustrating and, in my opinion, an insult to our intelligence as students. I think that journalism programs (or at least this one, since this is the only one I've ever been involved in) make journalism so mechanic that it makes it easy to lose your passion for it.

I think that for undergraduate journalism programs to remain relevant, they need to require their students to pick up a second major so that they're "experts" on something else. I know that Park makes all of its majors have a non-communications minor, so they're taking a step in the right direction. However, more needs to be done because anyone can write, it just matters what you write about and how you do it.

TPM

The story about Josh Marshall and TMP made me thing about what's "wrong" with mainstream journalism.

Like I've mentioned before, I no longer aspire to be a journalist (though, with this economy, who really knows what any college student will do after he or she graduates?). However, back in high school, I loved journalism. There was one thing that frustrated me though. My school paper's advisor always tried to talk us out of doing stories that were controversial. And, if we were allowed to do them, they had to be "fair and balanced, showing both sides equally." Well, sometimes, in the real world, some sides are blatantly wrong and don't deserve equal covered to defend themselves. This is definitely the case in TPM's attorney scandal.

I think that this is the key argument in the story about TPM is this paragraph:

"The Internet hasn't improved everything but it sure has done wonders for the cause of investigative reporting. Good muckraking, after all, is driven by the thing that is missing from so much of today's "fair and balanced" objective newspapers, and that is passion -- the passion of people who can reach more readers more quickly and more cheaply on the Web, the passion that is fueled by interaction with readers, and the passion of journalists or bloggers who want to work harder and faster because there are readers gobbling up their reporting as fast as they can dish it out."

CNN Politics

Today I watched CNN as I was getting ready for class. I noticed a few things-

1. There were penguins on set running around for absolutely no reason whatsoever. They were really cute, but they served no purpose.

2. CNN was advertising how it's the "channel to watch for politics." Then it said, "CNN Politics: Sponsored by Exxon Mobile." How can CNN even begin to pretend to be an unbiased media source when a major gas company is sponsoring it? I remembered that Professor Cohen mentioned in class that gas companies often sponsor ABC, CBS and NBC evening news. I know that for the media outlets it is a lucrative practice, but it so deeply compromises their ability to be unbiased in such an important aspect of American politics. This is so frustrating to me but I don't see it stopping anytime soon.