Response 4: Magazines

From this class lecture I learned a lot about magazines I never would have learned due to how its becoming a dying media. It has been demassified, and moved to niche advertising. But it was once a great American pass time that all would read and converse about. It created serialized stories, personality profiles and so much more making it so important for our history. It set standards in our society for later media to follow. For example the personality profile, more commonly known as tabloids, these were the interesting stories about famous people one could read and gossip about. Or do another, serialized fiction, later setting the idea that books could be series. This little piece of history set so many paths for the rest of literature to later follow which made it an fascinating part of our history.

Response 2: SimmonsFile

On the blog simmonsfile.blogspot.com, the author, Mr. Thomas Simmons, has written a media critique which I would like to discuss. The case of Simmons critique is about Fox News covering the Freddie Grey story, which was in Simmons opinion "the article was satisfactory, and could use some minor improvements to make it better". Throughout Simmons entire criticism, he keeps a strong point of view and stays on topic, while making the entire article condensed so one could understand what he was criticizing, even though they hadn't read it. In my opinion, it was quite the critique and was well worth the read.

Response 1: NewsIsForCats

On the blog, http://newsisforcats.blogspot.com, Lauren Erdberger has written a post about conglomeration. In said article she uses brief and almost terse sentences, but I feel it gets the point well enough across that one who was not at the lecture Lauren is writing on, would get a slight understanding of what it's about. Lauren covers most of the main points of the lecture and uses informing descriptions, overall, I believe it was a good response to the lecture in a whole.

Response 3: Newspapers

To me, I've always thought of newspapers as an American concept, something about them just seemed so...well, American. Maybe the ads, or the faux stories, but it seemed like it would be something more, not just from America. Well I was half right on that, although there were news type papers in town squares long before it, Publick Occerences. It was the first of its kind to be (as close to) a newspaper like we have today. Which this kind of surprised me, due to how most "American" things, were just hybrids of other cultures. But that's why these Newspapers were important, they created this national American culture that we were somewhat lacking before, they unified us as, instead of separate colonies, the United States. Making them one of, if not, the most important national media to occur throughout our history in America.

Response 2: Plagiarism

I learned a lot more from this lecture then I thought I would at first. Everyone has a basic idea of what plagiarism is, but you rarely stop and think, huh is this plagiarism in your daily life. But now being a manual student, it is important for one to ask such questions. With manuals academic honor code, not only was the entire message of this lecture was extremely important, the lecture itself was very informative about the laws and rules behind plagiarism. I found it extremely helpful and knew that it would come in handy in future years if I ever decided to do anything...questionable, all I would have to do is consult with my notes and see if it was plagiarism or not. The most important thing that I found in this lecture though, was the section on PowerPoints and pictures in them, mainly because I was not entirely aware of the issues surrounding them. Overall it was very helpful to learn about.

Response 1: Gutenberg

In all of the this lecture the thing that I found most interesting, was that, like with a lot of history, what you learned in elementary school was not the entire story. Normally in an elementary/middle school lesson plan, we would glaze over the subject just saying, Gutenberg invented the printing press yadda yadda yadda and that would be it, we'd be done. But in this we learned that not only was he not the first to 'invent' the printing press, but he was also not the last. With similar concepts and ideas spreading across the centuries around the world, each new one improving on the last. The only thing that Gutenberg did, was make someone else's idea a heck of a lot more efficient. Which I understand made books a lot more affordable and in turn increasing literacy. But all in all, he gets a bit more credit than he deserves, there's a lot more to the printing press than just one persons innovation.

How Dare They?!?!...Do a Story on That I Mean

One of the most important elements of journalism is to only report on newsworthy things. Without it, the news wouldn't really be news, it would just be information. The difference being that instead of reporting on things that deserve our attention the majority of the air time would be taken up by things we don't need to know. Primarily because most of these things wouldn't affect our lives in a longstanding form, if at all. That is why we, as journalists, must try our hardest to keep true to this extremely important element of journalism.
However I have recently noticed that one of the main news reporting industries in the US has not kept true to this element. CNN quite recently chose to do a story on Ahmed Mohamed, a 14 year old, living in Irving, Texas whom was arrested for bringing a clock to school. The clock had been a science project he had made himself out of a pencil case. The teacher was not impressed but in fact believed she was being threatened due to this young ninth graders race and religion. Now this story may be shocking, entertaining or possibly upsetting, but that doesn't make it news. This story lacks almost all the criteria: this will most likely not affect you, (unless you are the boy, that teacher or possibly his parents) even if this story did affect you, it lacks the longevity to affect you long enough to make it newsworthy, and lastly it is barely significant, it might be worthy of a school newspaper, but certainly not a national news organization. You can find the article I've critiqued here.