Summation for Journalism as a Conversation

As I look back on the past three and a half months of going to class each Wednesday night, I feel as if I have learned a lot. We have covered topics such as anonymous comments, talk radio, letters to the editor, Youtube videos, and our own personal projects and all have been pretty interesting. We have learned about things that I had never heard of such as Yelp or Digg or Readit. I feel I have become more aware of things on the Internet, and feel I have developed an understanding of using the Internet and how large the Internet actually is.

Photo Submission

For the Final project I chose to submit a photo to Pictory to the theme Take Me Out To The Ball Game. I went to the Red Sox game on Tuesday and took some pictures. I really liked the theme from Pictory and felt that my photo fit in to what they were trying to do. My picture is still under review by the editor but I hope that they will accept my photo. Here is the photo.

Fenway Park April 12

Photo by Nathan Luippold

Early season baseball at Fenway Park. Red Sox vs. Rays in a pitching battle between Jon Lester and David Price. In which the Rays won 3-2. Sending the Red Sox to 2-9 on the young season and sending the Fenway Faithful home with another loss.


The Pictory theme I feel fits my picture well. Even though the theme does not close until June 1st I hope my photo makes the cut. 

Can you DIGG it

The assignment for Digg.com was interesting to me, when I first started using Digg I was almost instantly turned off. 

YELP!!!!

Yelp.com was a place that I had never visited prior to this assignment. I found Yelp to be pretty cool, and a useful tool. I checked out many local spots in my hometown and wrote about a couple. One is a restaurant that I visit often when in Greenfield called Taylor's Tavern I wrote a review about them here it is Taylor's Tavern on yelp and I wrote another one about my hometown country club that I have been a member at here in Greenfield here it is Country Club of Greenfield. I found Yelp to be a really useful tool, I checked out bars in Amherst, places to eat in the area, and basically any place that I wanted to visit. Yelp allows the user to get an idea of what a restaurant is like even before going there. It is pretty amazing how many different sites out there have a different idea for social networking. I liked yelp and will use it again in the future.

Praise of Scribes in Modern Times

When Shirky introduces the Praise of Scribes subchapter on page 66, I think he is relating this to the Internet in modern times. He talks about how the invention of movable type did away with the “professional scribe” and made reading and writing more accessible to people all over the world. I think this directly correlates with the Internet and how the Internet plays a role in today’s society. I think Shirky is trying to show his point that throughout time inventions have done away with certain things and made things more accessible to a wider population of people.

Viral Video

When the question was asked to find a Youtube video that just went viral, the UCLA students rant immediately came to mind. The content is definitely not compelling but it is one of those videos you have to view. When Alexandera Wallace posted her rant on Asian people in the library on Youtube, her Internet video blew up. Her racist rant and terribly inconsiderate words toward Japan’s earthquake and tsunami victims lead to her video to spread across the nation in just hours. I found the video on Barstoolsports.com just about four hours after the video was posted and by the end of the day nearly everyone that I know had seen the video.

Japan Devastation Through Flickr

Flickr is a very interesting website that I had never visited before this assignment. While looking around Flickr it became very apparent that the site has many positives.

Anonymity

Anonymous posts are still a very relevant topic on the Internet as shown with this assignment. With Christopher "Moot" Poole's talk on the subject a couple weeks ago at the SXSW conference. On the subject of anonymous comments I tend to disagree with Poole. I still tend to believe that people are more true to who they are when their name is attached to their comment. Poole was quoted as saying "“Anonymity is authenticity, It allows you to share in a completely unvarnished, unfiltered, raw way.” With this quote he has a point, I believe in a persons ability to leave a comment with anonymity but for me I rather visit a website where comments are left with a person backing them up. I believe that when a person sticks by there comments a better conversation stimulates and you have an overall more informing experience.

Call To WEEI

For the assignment to call into a talk radio show I chose to call into WEEI. I am an avid listener of all shows on WEEI and really enjoy and appreciate sports talk radio. I really like the new Big Show and it generally carries over to Planet Mikey which I also enjoy. I was listening last Wednesday the day of Randy Moss' comments on how he would love to be a Patriot again and I found this to be the perfect opportunity.

Wikipedia

The Wikipedia assignment for this week was different. I had never posted on Wikipedia before and actually had no idea how to do it. After I quickly signed up for an account on the Wikipedia website it was really quick to post something on an existing page. 

The portrayal of people who call in to talk radio

In Talk Radio by Eric Bogosian there is a dumbed down sense of people who call into the radio station and the show "Night Talk" with Barry Champlain.

Is Talk Radio Journalism

For this week we were asked to view a few segments of certain radio talk shows from across the nation and decide if talk radio is a form of journalism.

Reaction to the John Ziegler Piece

John Ziegler talk radio show to me seems a little extreme, yes there are many people out there doing what he does, making strong statements to keep listeners attentive and wanting more.

Blog Assignment 2 For The Ziegler Story

As you read through the John Ziegler article and you get to the point where he in on the radio and tells the whole world or anyone who is listening that America is "better" than the Arab world you have to stop what your doing and go "what did he just say".

Biz Stone on NPR

I thought Biz Stone's interview on NPR's show "Fresh Air" was actually very interesting.

Twitter Love it or Hate It?

For this week's assignment we had to do some tweeting. Overall twitter to me, is really

Online Comments

For this week's assignment I chose to focus on three sports stories to comment on. Tiger Woods spitting, Rajon Rondo, trying to listen in on the Heat Sunday, and Albert Pujols not getting a new contract.

Letter to the Editor in the Daily Collegian

Check out my letter from class that was posted in the Daily Collegian on February 10th. It was posted along with a few other letters from students in our class. DailyCollegianLetterstotheEditor

Why I Wrote the Academically Adrift Letter to the Editor

I wrote this piece to the Daily Collegian for a couple of different reasons. First, It is an article about college students so I thought it would be relevant for all students at the University and most people I feel read the Daily Collegian here at Umass. Second, I wrote the article because I thought it was interesting and it involved my life.

Letter to the Editor: Academically Adrift

Dear Editor,

            A recent article has been floating around numerous periodicals, the Internet and radio stations, talking about how college students have become too “lazy”. The article is titled “A Lack of Rigor Leaves College Students Adrift”; the article cites a book called Academically Adrift, where a study

Why I Wrote About the NFL Lock Out

I wrote about the NFL lock out because, first, I am a major football fan and what the owners are doing is just shameful, and second, I thought many people would share the same opinion I did. I felt as if I were speaking for not only myself but for the fans as well. I wrote it to the Greenfield Recorder my hometown newspaper, and I thought it was relevant because they ran a rather large story on the front page of the sports section on the NFL lockout. It looks as if a lock out will most likely happen due to the greedy nature of sports owners these days. It is sad to see a sport reach an all time high and have sheer greed bring it crashing down. Fans like myself need to protest what is happening in the NFL because many fans like myself look forward to watching football every Sunday.

NFL Lock Out Letter to the Editor

As March 4^th approaches, it is becoming more evident that College Football may be the only football next September. March 4, 2011 will be the final day of the collective bargaining agreement between the NFL owner’s and the NFL Players Association, and if no deal is made by the fourth it is probable that there will be no football next year.

Wahl-Jorgensen Part 3

Chapter 4 of Journalists and the Public begins with talking about how editors like to publish letters that spark public debate. Editors are inclined to publish a letter from the public as long as it has relevance and is not a personal attack on anyone. The quote we chose to analyze was "editors see a policy of limited editorial intervention as the only way to ensure an open and honest debate about the varied issues that face citizens of a multicultural society. They are also eager to show that ethical aims of fairness, accuracy and balance underpin the letters pages. (Page 87).  I tend to agree with this quote on the basis that if an editor

Wahl-Jorgensen Part 2

The second Wahl-Jorgensen quote we chose to focus on, I could not agree more. The quote says "Making news became commercially viable through the selling of audiences to advertisers, instead of newspapers to partisan audiences…The new centrality of advertising income also meant that owners and editors were compelled to abandon controversial, partisan material from their reports, and instead aimed to please as many advertisers and consumers as they possible could by printing ostensibly “neutral” content and proclaiming their political independence. (Page 38). Newspapers and journalists have gone to producing news that is craved by one audience. Partisan news is a thing of the past. With large scale media outlets such as Fox or CNN going to a news coverage that slants to one side, it has become more clear that news outlets are selling their news to a certain audience and their advertisers. Just by watching different media outlets on television or picking up certain newspapers it has become very obvious that these periodicals are trying to please their advertisers. These media outlets are looking for ways to make money and by slanting to one side it is easier for them to make large amounts of money. 

Reaction to Wahl-Jorgensen

The first quote from the text has a few points I agree with and one that I do not. I agree with what the text is saying when it says "They (journalists) decide on the legitimate and valuable topics for the agenda based on the estimation of the public’s need to know" (18). I agree with this statement in the