Mark Willes Speaks at BYU (Response to Extra Credit)

This past Thursday I was privileged to attend a presentation by Mark Willes, CEO of Deseret Magazine Corporation.  The most important thing I took from Mark Willes presentation was one of the first things he said, “You can be taught from on high.”  By this he meant that we, as the audience, must listen to the spirit and be taught in that way.  We will not learn from his words, but from the spirit.  If we all were to get something different from Willes presentation, then in his eyes he would be successful. 

It was quite scary the numbers he presented, that newspapers had not lost money until 2008, when nearly all newspapers began losing money.  This is a scary statistic because to this day, the newspaper industry is still in the negative income.  How is it possible that a small Mormon-based newspaper still exists in this dying profession? It is because it is written to a specific niche, but also because of the morals that Deseret Industries are dedicated to following.  Editors will work for absolutely no pay, just because they believe in the mission statement of Deseret.  Which is: “Trusted voice of light and knowledge reaching hundreds of millions of people worldwide.” This is reached by the following steps: align actions, pursue excellence, champion virtues, improve lives, work together, invest personally.

            Even though it really scared me that journalism is being overridden by the internet, Willes left us students with a message of hope.  He believes in BYU and the students that go here.  As a University, we have an advantage over others going into broadcasting and print journalism because we are willing to follow a different path than the average person.  It is this special twist of our mindset that will help us to bring something different to the table.  This twist is necessary for success, because without something new, we will die with the rest of them. 

The Profession

Group 5 did a good job presenting about the Priesthood of journalists.  I learned new things that I had never before heard of, like the “hegemony” theory (http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/marxism/terms/hegemony.html) and the “news work” theory.  I did not agree, however with their statement that journalism should be completely unemotional.  The real world is full of emotion; it would be unrealistic to take it out. It is the best stories that bring out emotion in people.

I liked the debate that we had in class about confidentiality of sources.  I can definitely see both sides of the issue, but I think that anonymous sources should not be used in a newspaper.  The word “anonymous” leaves too many doors open to questioning the truth and validity of the facts.  This questioning can only be a downward spiral of distrust towards the journalists.  Sometimes it is better to just make a clear-cut decision to avoid sticky situations. 

One thing that really surprised me is that journalists are supposed to write to the level of a 9^th to 10^th grade reading level.  This surprised me because it seems like they write above that level, or maybe it’s just that the information in newspaper would be way over a sophomores’ head.  Below is a link to the reading standards for grades 9 and 10, just for clarification http://www.nusd.k12.ca.us/Nusd/english-ninth.html

A full response to the article...

This summer, my family stopped paying for cable and basically boycotted television.  My younger siblings learned how to use Netflix and my family got all its news from the internet.  Life was really good. I mean, at first it kind of stunk not being able to turn on the tv and watch my favorite shows, but I got used to it and stop caring so much.

I wouldn’t say my dad is a nerd, but he is pretty good with computers, pretty smart, and wants to know everything about everything. I think he just got fed up not only with the high prices of cable, but also how so much of the news never applied to him. Sure, he would learn about everything that was going on, but nothing that interested him. He’d much rather be playing tennis in the backyard than watching something he doesn’t care about.

For me, I’ve never really paid attention to the news so much until last year when we had to read the New York Times every day for my media writing class. At first I really enjoyed reading it but then it got old really fast because I felt like the exact same crisis was being written about just in a different tone or by someone else. After a while it felt forced.

With my experience now I prefer getting my news from the internet and from social media sites because I get to choose what I look at based on what interests me.  I also feel like the internet doesn’t have to be as professional as the newspaper or television news so it’s a lot more enjoyable to read and not as boring. It also contains links, pictures, and videos that keep me entertained.

Whatever happens with news in the future I look forward to it and am sure that I will adapt. 

Journalism IS Loyalty, or it Should be.

I enjoyed group 4’s presentation this past Tuesday on journalism and loyalty.  One random thing I liked about their presentation was how they designed their handout, making it horizontal on the paper rather than vertical like everything else we ever get to read at school.  It was a nice little “switch up”.  I liked how their presentation was clear-cut and to the point.  One thing I learned from their presentation that I had not really thought about before was that 70% of journalists hold the audience as their first loyalty, while 80% have their “core” principals around citizens.  If this is true, shouldn’t that 10% more be saying that their loyalty is to the audience first as well? It would only make sense.  Another interesting fact that we were actually quizzed on in class was that Adolph Ochs bought the New York Times in 1896. I had never heard of him before so I looked him up to learn more! Here is a link to his biography:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/ochs.html

The article (which is linked here) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/business/media/pew-media-study-shows-reliance-on-many-outlets.html connects very well with the groups’ topic.  The point of the article was proving that although much of the media is now being overtaken by national media corporations, local news stations and newspapers are still popular and successful.  They are succeeding in 11 topics like “local government updates, zoning news and crime reports” while national-level companies are more successful in breaking news, weather, and traffic.  Twitter and the social media are also in favor of local news and it was discussed in the article how news is locally spread by “word-of-mouth” or in other words “word-of-tweet”.  Below is a link to a YouTube clip of Katie Couric speaking to the creator of Twitter, Biz Stone about the rise of social media.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1AeOV1nll8

No such thing as Unbiased

Is it the job of a journalist to rake up all the nitty-gritty details to place someone in a certain light? Or is it their job to tell the simple truth?  In my opinion, there is no such thing as complete unbias.  Every single person on this planet has grown up with different circumstances, different experiences that shape their opinions and perspectives.  It is impossible to state a real “bird’s eye view” of a situation, no matter how controversial it may be.  On that note, journalism is an essential building block of society, without it we would not progress or evolve.  Like the group said, “Journalists hold a mirror up to society,” forcing citizens to look at one another and question if everything is morally straight.  Below is a link to a YouTube video called “Pakistani Truth News” I just thought the title was a bit ironic… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9NrFNggpd0

            I really liked how the presenting group brought the class into the discussion by asking questions to the class as a whole, and giving an incentive (Dove chocolates).  http://www.dovechocolate.com/  It was a clever and fun perspective of their project that added to their already well-researched and presented topic. 

            Below is a link to an article questioning whether or not journalists are really digging deep to find the truth in the world today.  I found it to be quite interesting and made me do a mental double-take in questioning the intentions of our journalists today. 
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/101937/Where-Are-Muckraking-Journalists-Today.aspx

News in the Future

I really enjoyed this past week's presentation on the future of news.  I especially liked how they used Prezi for their presentation, as it flowed really well and was visually pleasing.  Here is a link to Prezi: http://prezi.com/ for anyone that doesn't know what Prezi is, or how to create a Prezi presentation.

Everything is shifting to the web, even television and newspapers, and people are becoming skeptic about the existence of newspapers in the future, wondering if they will exist at all. I liked how the group presented a different aspect of this.  They explained how changes in demographics and general lifestyle and family habits are evolving, requiring a high demand for quick information.  News and journalists must start switching to internet connections in order to keep up with the world and the fast-paced mindset of society.  This is not necessarily a bad thing since news and its mediums have always been evolving.  It is just a continuation of the uphill evolution of media. I decided to research some more statistics of the current internet usage in America and also found some information on cell-phone service and text message numbers. I have included an article with some of those statistics.  Here's a link: http://mobithinking.com/mobile

I believe that the media and news stations will survive, as long as they strive to stay in connection with the world and the newest technology.  Without journalists, the world will become even more corrupt as we will have no one to bring us reliable information.

Converting to Comms 239

This blog is now going to be used for my Comms 239 class.  The name, “It’s all just a big time bomb” still fits because it applies to journalism in a sense that there is only so much time before a story is reported, and the information is out for the public to feast on.  If journalists aren’t responsible in getting the correct and factual information out, some one else will, and they won’t care whether or not it is the truth. 

            In reflection to last weeks’ class and the group presentation (September 6^th), I really liked how the group presented their chapter and gave the class a handout, which outlined the material.  I really appreciated that and used to it to take notes on!  One thing I would have suggested about their presentation was to more evenly divide the information that was presented between the group members.  It seemed that some of the members had bigger topics in comparison with other group members.  Other than that though, it was a well-presented topic with clear information.  For my link I decided to look up Walter Lippman since he was part of the chapter and I did not write down any information about him or his influence on journalism.  Below is a link to a biography I read about Lippman and his political/journalistic experiences. 

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlippmann.htm