Response to Mattie Townson: Movies

I read Mattie's post here about movies, and she made some good points in her reaction to the lecture.. I was also confused when Mr. Miller said movies are just many pictures played together at a very fast speed, but after thinking about it for a while, it made sense to me. Knowing this information makes the technology involved in making movies a lot more transparent, and I feel like I know a lot more about movies now. It's interesting to think about how there's a certain speed when your eye can't detect many pictures being played together, that is a concept that I've never considered. Mattie's reaction to movies is very relatable, and I agree with all the points she's made.

Response to Wave 3 News 10/11

On October 11, Wave 3 News ran a story about how shots might have been fired at a festival in New Albany, but it might have just been a firework. This story is highly unnecessary, especially because nothing was confirmed. They don't even know if shots really were fired. Something that might have happened is not newsworthy, and it's not a good story. Even if shots really were fired, it still wouldn't be a very important story, because it doesn't have a long lasting impact on people. Wave 3 wasted an opportunity to share important news, so that they could share a story on something that might have not even happened. That is not good journalism, and it doesn't adhere to the yardstick of newsworthiness.

Response to Wave 3 10/13

On October 13, Wave 3 news ran a story on their show about a hiker who feel ill on the trail and was later rescued. The story discussed How the woman felt stomach pains and was unable to continue hiking. A search party was sent out, and after a while they found her. While this story may be interesting to some people, it's not really important. People don't need to know that a woman was rescued from a hiking trail, only to be found later. The slot that Wave 3 used to run this story could have been used to run a story that would educate the public about an important issue, instead of just trying to fill the show. This story is not newsworthy because it hardly affects anyone, and it affects no one for an extended period of time.

Television

Television has really risen to popularity in the past century. It's become a popular form of mass media, but it seems like television is following the same pattern that other mass medias such as radio have followed, and it's fading out of popularity. The concept of the way things fade away and out of popularity is interesting to me. I know about it in theory, because I've heard about how radio lost its popularity, and how "video killed the radio star", but I've never experienced it happen to something that I've used in my life. Now, with television, I'm starting to notice how subtle it is when something becomes less popular. You slowly stop watching things on the TV, and little by little you start using the internet to watch shows more. Soon enough, people will stop watching things on the TV and just switch to the internet. I can see this happening with the TV right now, but if things follow the same pattern, then that means that the internet is next for fading out of popularity. That is something that's really weird to think about, because I can't imagine not using the internet anymore.

Movies

Movies have been very big for a very long time. What's amazing to me is how much movies have advanced in the time they've been around. Movies have gone from being silent moving pictures in black and white to colorful pictures with stereo, and even the ability to be in 3D. Movies have advanced a lot technologically in the last century, and movies today are very, very different from movies back when movies were first starting out, which is interesting to me because they changed so much in such a short period of time. What interested me the most, however was how movie theaters went about adopting the new technologies. It seemed to me that if there was new technology available, then all the movie theaters would be jumping to get it and improve the way they showed movies. I was surprised to learn that that's not the case, and when new technology such as sound or color was invented, it took a while to catch on. I never knew that just because a technology existed to make something better, that didn't mean it was going to be used.

Recording Technology

Music is a really big part of life everybody's lives today, wether they realize it or not. Going through your regular routine, you probably hear music multiple times throughout the day. It's hard for me to imagine a life where music wasn't as widespread as it is now, but before recording technology such as the phonograph, music wasn't a very big part of many people's lives. I never knew how much being able to record music changed things. The ability to record music is always something I've taken for granted, and I've never really appreciated how much it changed music and the way people communicate through music. Before you were able to record songs, music was just a form of group communication. Now it's mass communication. It's not often that you see something make that jump, and that makes recording technology all the more interesting to me. It's been very important in making music more commonplace, changing music into a form of mass communication, and allowing artists to have deeper meaning in their songs. I never realized how much that one piece of technology changed music.

Radio

While we were learning about radios, we learned that they were used as point to point communication for a while, and that was something that stood out to me. Radios were used, but they weren't being used to their full potential. As we talked about later in the lecture, radios became immensely popular, reaching huge audiences. It's strange to think that something can go from being used to talk to one person to talking to millions. This makes me wonder, how different would our world be if radios had never been treated as mass communication? If people had just continued using radios as walkie talkies, and nobody had realized that you could reach mass audiences with this technology, what would our world look like today? It's also interesting to me that people were using radio that way for years. If it was possible for people to look past the full potential of the radio, then maybe there's technology today that is being misused, or it isn't being used to its full potential.

Magazines

A little while ago, my class learned about magazines. One of the important points that we touched on was the innovations of the magazine. It was really interesting to me how many things the magazine changed, such as how magazines opened the door for photojournalism. Photos are such a big part of media today, so it's strange to imagine a world where there were hardly any. There are people who dedicate their careers to photojournalism, people who aspire to be photojournalists, even a Pulitzer prize for photojournalism, and none of that would have been possible without the magazine. I never really knew where photojournalism came from, I had assumed that it just kind of happened. Now that I know, it makes sense to me that magazines, were the pioneers of photojournalism in a way. Another innovation of the magazine that was interesting to me was how magazines were the first media to have a national audience. There are many things that come along with having a national audience that I never really thought of, such as national advertising, which helped smaller businesses take off. Magazines actually impacted the economy in ways that I didn't think would have happened.

NBC News Media Critique

Today, NBC News posted a video to their website under the U.S. News section called "Baby Bear Hangs Out In Hammock". It features a baby black bear jumping on a hammock and rolling around on it, before leaving. There's a minute and thirty seconds of this. That's one minute and thirty seconds someone could have used to be looking at actual, important news. While this video was cute, it definitely doesn't belong in U.S News section. While the video is in the U.S, it isn't even close to being news. It doesn't affect anyone's life in any way, and it doesn't educate anyone. It's just a feel good fluff piece done by NBC. This type of video belongs more on YouTube, or another entertainment sites, instead of a news website.  NBC violated the seventh element of journalism (make the important interesting), and the third yardstick of journalism (local relevance). Nobody needs to know that a baby bear was in a hammock today. NBC made the interesting important, when they really needed to make the important interesting. This is a common problem in news today, and oftentimes it keeps important news from being posted.

The video can be found here.

Responding to Where We Are Today: Books (Melissa Perello)

I read Melissa's post about how books and the printing press have changed the world, and I really agree with what she's saying. It's super interesting to me that the creator of the (more well known) printing press was just this regular guy who wanted to make some money. He wasn't a super genius or  someone who was set on saving the world, but he changed a lot of things anyway. Without the printing press and available books, we wouldn't be able to enjoy our technologies or even have them because we wouldn't be literate or advanced enough to have iPhones, most likely. It would totally change the way we live life today. I also agree that America has a good literacy rate, but it's not what it should be. Americans pride themselves on living in a land where education is available to everyone, but we still have kids who can't read or are struggling to learn, and not much is being done about that. Melissa made a lot of really good points in her post, and I agreed with them all.

Responding to Gutenburg's Contribution (Mattie Townson)

Mattie Townson's post about Gutenburg's Contribution brought up some very interesting points. She talked about a lot of things in the lecture that I thought were very intriguing too, such as how if the printing press hadn't been invented, none of us would be where we are today. That's a really weird concept for me to think about, that if one thing that was invented hundreds of years ago wasn't invented, I wouldn't be the same person I am today. She also said something that I thought was very interesting, which was "books are the root foundation to the media technology that we have today". I'd never thought of books that way, as being the root of everything that came after it, but it makes sense. Without books, there wouldn't be really be any of the modern technologies that we have today. Plus, without books, most people wouldn't be literate enough to use the technologies that we have today, either. I really agree with the points Mattie made on how the printing press stirred a bunch of historical movements and really changed the world.

Demassification

I really think demassification is a really interesting concept. I've grown up with a lot of diverse content in my life. There have always been hundreds of channels for me to watch, and hundreds of magazines to buy and read. The idea of there only being one or two T.V channels to watch or only one magazine out there is really weird. Everybody is so diverse in their interests and hobbies, so how could one media appeal to everybody? I think having more demassified content is a good thing. Instead of having a few things that hold your interest in a magazine, you can have a whole magazine devoted to your interest. For example, if you liked to cook, you can now by a cooking magazine instead of having a few pages about cooking in a magazine intended for everyone. I think instead of it being a last resort, some companies should start by appealing to a niche group. That way, even if it's a smaller group of people, you can have a loyal base of following your work. Not all content has to appeal to everyone. The way that media has expanded so much in only a short period of time makes me wonder how much thing are going to change in coming years. If we started with only one or two channels, and that turned to hundreds of other channels, how many could there be in twenty years? Maybe magazines are going to continue to get more and more specific, until there will be a magazine for each more and more specific niche group.

Newspapers

I've always wondered how newspapers have survived so long. They're been around for centuries, and have managed to avoid fading out of popularity during that time. Now I know why: because no other technology (until now) has been able to offer the same things a newspaper can.

Things looked bad for the newspaper for a while when the radio became popular, but radio shows require a fixed amount of time and attention. Newspapers don't, so they had appeal to people who wanted to see the content they wanted to see on their own time. Newspapers are available to the masses, which wasn't true with radios at the time. Anyone walking down the street could buy a  newspaper. They were everywhere, and they were cheap so even lower class citizens could use them. Radios weren't portable like newspapers were, either. You couldn't pick up your radio and carry it to work with you if you didn't get to finish hearing the story you were listening to. So newspapers survived through the radio's popularity.

Now, with smartphones, I'm not sure newspapers are going to survive. Smartphones can offer basically everything newspapers can: they're easily portable, you can pick what you want to read, and you can share the content with your friends. The only thing newspapers have over smartphones at the moment is their availability and cheapness.  To get a good smartphone, you have to pay hundreds of dollars. Still, most of the population has one, and lots of newspapers have made online publications as a result. The only people reliably using newspapers are the older generations, which I didn't understand why until now. Newspapers are a tradition for them, they're what's been used most of the time to find news.

The future of newspapers is unclear to me. They've survived this long, and through lots of technological innovations that people thought would end them. I believe that the printed newspaper will lose ground in a few decades, and most publications will survive solely through online papers. But everyone thought the radio would be the end of newspapers, and they're still around, so who knows what will happen.

The Printing Press

It's probably true that I wouldn't be typing this post if the printing press didn't exist. In fact, there are a lot of things that would be different if the printing press didn't exist, such as books, religion, culture and education.

I always knew the printing press was an important invention. That was something I was taught in middle school. It made sense that the printing press was that important too, because it made spreading information easier. But I never realized how much impact the printing press has had. There are so many connections, and so many things that rely on having available information.

For example, the French Revolution wouldn't have been possible without the printing press. People who weren't rich enough to gain access to books or be literate were taken advantage of; they didn't know the truth, so they didn't know they were being lied to. Then the printing press came along, and with more available books, more people became literate, and more people realized just how unfair their society was. Then, after the French Revolution came the renaissance. This impacted art and culture around the world and has shaped a lot of art styles today. None of this would have been possible without the printing press.

Another example is how the printing press made lots of scientific innovations possible. Without the printing press, there was no way to share discoveries. That meant people couldn't build off of another innovation and make it better, or make a new discovery based on something someone else learned. All scientific knowledge came from the knowledge of the people in the area, which was limited, compared to the all the potential knowledge. But with the printing press, people could share their ideas and inventions across the world and scientific discovery took off. Without the printing press, our technology would be very behind, probably by hundreds of years.

These are they types of connections I never made about the printing press. Everything is really interconnected in ways I didn't realize, so the invention of one thing could spark the inventions of thousands of other technologies the way the printing press did. The effects of the printing press ripple out, so the end result isn't really there because of the printing press directly, it's there because of something else that wouldn't exist without the printing press. Still, the end result wouldn't have existed without the printing press. I learned a lot of new information about the printing press, and I hope we continue having lectures that expand my view on things I already knew.

Conglomerations: Good or Bad For the Consumer?

I think that having a few major conglomerations running most of the businesses is good for them, but bad for us as consumers. It's really beneficial for large companies to be able to own smaller companies and have lots of assets, but it really limits the content available for consumers. There are still many creative forces under the conglomerations, but they're controlled by a company that may have a specific agenda. Therefore, when a company under the conglomeration is creating something, they have to worry about pleasing their boss. Anything too controversial by the conglomeration's views won't be created. With only a few major companies controlling most of the smaller ones, it really limits views that would otherwise be presented if it was just independent companies producing content on its own.

Conglomerations are also bad for potential employees. If someone wants to work in advertising, there are less jobs available to them in a conglomeration than there would be if conglomerations didn't exist. If a company buys up several smaller companies, instead of each company having their own individual advertising department, there's just one company-wide advertising department. This keeps costs down for the conglomerations, because they have to hire less people, but for someone looking for a job it's a very bad thing. It means that there's not as many jobs total, and it's harder to get the existing jobs.

Basically, most of the benefits of having conglomerations are going to the people in the conglomeration.