Radio lecture

Now I will start by saying, in my previous review of a lecture, I discussed about how I thought a little bit of the information just wasn't sticking with some of other students. But on this lecture, it was the complete opposite. Of all of the lectures this seemed the most interesting to our class, because we'll to be brief, it is quite interesting and not many people really know the history of radio. Which we can blame a lot on the fact that we've sort of forgotten about it as far as a society. I mean sure we still use it from time to time but only in the car while driving or...no yeah pretty much only in the car while driving. It was most fascinating to learn that a lot of the stereotypes about radio that were shown in movies set in the 50s and most periods were radios were true for the most part. With entire families gathering around them to listen to either music, a game, a news event, a show or so many other things, just like how we are now a days with the television. It's just very satisfying to learn that the media was being more realistic than anticipated. And aside from that a lot of the information was just very intriguing, and even comical at some points. Such as when they couldn't travel to an event that was too far away they would piggyback on someone's coverage that was there and just make sound effects in the booth. Or when during some of the war of the worlds broadcasts some of the people actually believed that we were being invaded by aliens. Something about that is just hilarious to me, it sounds like the plot of a three stooges or a Marx brothers episode. Overall I thought out of the entire six weeks this was the lecture I, and the majority of the class, enjoyed the most.

Movies lecture

Being a huge movie buff myself, I couldn't help but enjoy this lecture. The only thing was, at points in it, it felt like those who hadn't previously been fans of movies or of the history of movies, couldn't really relate to or even understand some of the information being given to them. At times it felt like I was watching a bouncy ball being thrown at Velcro and it being expected to stick. I must admit though a lot of people could understand and comprehend it, but it seemed like there was a higher number of those zoning out. But that could've just been because of the day, there are many factors to go into it. I felt it delved into a lot of interesting points in the history of movies, and found the conglomeration vs. the monopoly quite interesting because I had never really learned much about the business of movies before. And, this does go without saying but this was all my opinion and may have just been my perception being skewed by my love of movies. All in all I thought it went over a lot of information that was better than expected when talking about something that could take years to learn about in a 60 min lecture.

Livinginthefastlucy; WLKY response review

At the beginning of this it seems very informal, which I can respect, these are blogs, and blogs are whatever the blogger chooses to make it, but in my opinion a post should be a bit more formal when critiquing a news station. In this particular critique, by Lucy Calderon, she brings up that the majority of WLKYs stories have been about murders, then starts to say that this isn't necessarily bad and that people should be informed about such things. This is where I would have to disagree with Calderon. If the majority of their past stories are murders that is indeed a bad thing. Just plain murders by themselves that don't affect the public in any way shape or form aside from being a death, are not newsworthy. Calderon then goes on to talk about how there are a lot of killings in Louisville, which makes this serious, which is where again, I must disagree. There are lots of killings everywhere, we actually have a fairly low homocide rate compared to that of some other states. But aside from that the rest of Calderon's blog was pretty fantastic, I must say though, I disagree with this critique quite a bit. You can find this critique here.

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.