Final Assignment

I enrolled in Journalism 101 because I harbored a fledgling interest in majoring in the field. I wanted to take this course to fully explore my options should I proceed with that ambition. Coming in, people told me that I was reasonably talented writer and public speaker, so I wanted to pay particular attention to broadcast fields like radio and television. Those chapters were indeed interesting, but other sections caught my eye as well. I've always had a great appreciation for film and literature, so the prospect of working in the movie industry or writing books is one that has my attention. Additionally, I spend a great deal of time on the Internet; even more so this semester while maintaining two blogs. In this generation where everything is converging into cyberspace, I feel like it would be smart to study some kind of web-journalism at the very least as a supplement to whatever discipline I choose.

As enticing as many of these chapters were, they also spoke of change, and the guest speakers who came into class also talked about how different there professions were now in contrast to how they were when they first started. Books are moving out of print, movies are digitizing everything from production to distribution format, radio is transitioning to satellite, and informative journalism is finding it harder and harder to survive without the web. I have certain misgiving about entering an industry like mass communication where so many structures are in flux. P.J. O'Rourke says that journalism is dead. Why then would I want to study it at all? Clearly it is only dead as we know it, but that unknown is what keeps my fledgling interest from learning how to fly.

I think if I decide to continue on a path through J-School, I will probably stick with my gut and declare for the Broadcast sequence. However, I will be paying constant attention to what is changing and what I need to learn to adapt to that change. I feel that will be the only way any of us can make it in the long run.

Assignent 6

Absence of Malice follows Miami journalist Megan Carter as she chronicles the story of a suspected murderer, Michael Gallagher. After a federal prosecutor leaves Gallagher's file on her desk (intentionally), Carter is compelled to report the story that Gallagher is being investigated for murder. Gallagher is shocked when the story is published and goes to the office of his accuser to attempt to make her reveal her source. When she refuses, he is forced to devise an alternate method of clearing his name. He manipulates both Carter, by getting emotionally involved with her, and the District Attorney, by bribing him to call off the investigation. Carter continues to dig into the case, so far that she humiliates a woman into committing suicide. The climax of the film sees all of the players in the court house where they discover Gallagher has manipulated them all.

This film covers a number of issues involving the ethics of journalism. First, Carter should not have looked at the file left on her desk, even if it was left there intentionally. The information she would have obtained there was not given freely and should not have been published. Second, Carter was wrong to publish the story on Gallagher without even consulting him directly. She made no prior attempt to contact him or bear witness to his character before publishing. Third, Teresa's story should not have been published against her wishes. The fact that Carter went against what Teresa asked caused her to commit suicide. Fourth, a reporter cannot become so obsessed with a story that they publish things that are not news. Several times, Carter published without the whole story. Finally, Carter never should have gotten involved with Gallagher. It is simply not professional to become emotionally involved with a source and the subject of your investigative journalism.

The Death of Journalism According to P.J. O'Rourke

The topic for P.J. O'Rourke's lecture tonight was "The Government vs. The Citizenry: Which is Worse?" After a lengthy introduction by the dean of the Journalism School, he got up to the podium and said, "Actually, I'm not gonna talk about that." He explained that he thought that was a pretty self-explanatory topic, and being at a journalism school, he elected to talk about journalism instead.

O'Rourke immediately informed the audience of some news that was probably not a big shock to them, given the setting: "The Internet is killing Journalism." The free content nature of cyberspace is ruining what was once a business. Journalists are now content-providers, and people don't pay for content. He says that when it comes down to it, journalism is about communicating, which is something the Internet excels at. He lists three reasons to communicate: to inform, to educate, to entertain. Journalists no longer get to inform people about what happened because they already know after surfing the Internet. The Internet also entertains much better than any journalist could, so the only thing that is left for them is to explain why. The problem there is that today's journalists are not good at explaining and generally refrain from doing so altogether.

The truth, according to O'Rourke is that journalism died long before the advent of the Internet. He's been in the business long enough that he remembers what it is was like to be a "paid rubberneck," a "licensed busybody." News reporters used to be told where to go, figure out what happened there, and then come back and tell people what happened. Journalism died when people stopped being reporters and started becoming professionals. O'Rourke blames the movie All the President's Men for dramatizing coverage of one of the most incompetent attempts at conspiracy ever conceived and thus inspiring a generation of young, idealistic college students to go to journalism school. This was a group of people who wanted to "speak truth to power" and become famous so that Robert Redford would play them in a movie too.

So why doesn't this generation of journalists explain the why when reporting news? O'Rourke says its because they don't have time. It's because a bunch of lofty moral standards take the place of why. He cites the coverage of the 2008-2009 financial crisis as one of the biggest examples of this failure. "Not only did the coverage of the financial crisis fail to provide explication, it sucked explication from our heads. I understood the whole thing even less after reading the Wall Street Journal," says O'Rourke. Coverage of the bailout and the health care reform bill was equally uninformative. He points out that the bill is 1190 pages long and that nobody, not the congressmen, not the president, and certainly not the people who are supposed to be covering it, have actually read it.

O'Rourke's solution is for all journalists to stop and look at the current events they are covering and think about how they actually need to explain them. He admits that if journalists move toward explication as their method of coverage, they may be required to be more objective. O'Rourke doesn't think this is a bad thing as long as journalists are honest and admit to their opinions instead of lying and trying to cover it up with a bunch of lofty, moral principles.

I found a lot of truth in what O'Rourke had to say. I'm someone who rarely watches the news because I don't feel like I get a lot out of it. I see the issues that are being covered, and they certainly sound important (sometimes), but I'm not given any explanation of why that is the case. I also payed close attention when he was talking about where journalism is going to go from here. He essentially admitted that he had no idea what we were going to do in this age, or rather that he had no idea how we would make a living off of the trade. Should I decide to continue pursuing a major in journalism, I am going to make sure I know exactly what I want to do and how I will be successful doing it.

Assignment 6

I can think of a number of reasons why everyone's consciousness should be digitized and uploaded to the Internet, the most important of which is the lack of pollen. The rest all have to do with the fact that the Internet provides us with nearly everything we need other than food. My daily bandwidth usage is evidence enough of that. This being Easter weekend, I haven't been on the Internet nearly as much as I usually am, so I'll just try to describe a typical day's worth of surfing.

The first thing I do every day is check my e-mail. I have an account for school that I check via Mozilla Thunderbird first, and then I go on Gmail to see if I have any addition mail. These days most of my mail comes through school, but some people and sites still have my original account. If either of my brothers are on Gchat, I might say hi to them, but I'm generally not in the mood to converse first thing after waking up. My next stop is Facebook to see whatever there is to see. I've been pretty true to my original intentions for joining Facebook. I only use it to keep in touch with people that go to other schools or as a sort of social calender. I don't spend hours at a time pouring over the news feed looking for new photo albums to go through. That typically doesn't take up a lot of my time. From there I go to Cracked.com. Cracked is a humor e-zine that posts articles on a daily basis. The contributors will make fun of everything that they can from History to Science, celebrities to criminals. The humor there appeals to me, so I generally read a few articles at the start of each day.

The morning is the only time I really have a set routine for surfing. Everything else depends on what I need to be doing. My Spanish course is entirely online, so I have virtual class once a week and do activities in on online textbook. Two of my classes require me to blog, so I have to work on updating both of those on any given day. I use search engines, Wikipedia, and other tools to get research done or to find facts. All of my classes have some kind of course homepage on Blackboard or elsewhere that I check frequently to double check that I'm doing the right assignment.

While I'm trying to be productive, I also suffer from what I call Internet Induced ADD. In the middle of writing a paragraph I will lose focus and be drawn to some random video on YouTube. Perhaps a friend sent me the link on Skype and I needed to check it out as a mental break. Then that video leads me to another, and another. Soon, I've spent half an hour watching Star Wars kid videos when I meant to take a five minute break. Other times the Wikipedia article I'm reading links to another subject that's far more interesting and I take a long Wiki Walk instead of getting research done. Another site that I've been getting lost in a lot recently is TVTropes.org, an encyclopedia of plot devices and works that use them. As someone who is addicted to fiction, I'm incredibly susceptible to a time-sink like that.

That's a typical day's worth of surfing for me. The Internet is a great place, though people with no sense of direction need to beware because it's very easy to wind up somewhere you never intended to be or worse. I don't actually think it would be a good idea to live on the Internet alone, but still... there's no pollen there. That Yellow Haze is killing me.

Assignment 5

Jasme' Kelly started her artistic career in a time when "chicks were not playing guitar." Living in Spencer Dormitory at the University of North Carolina in the '90s, she was like many other college students: not always motivated enough to go to class. She told herself that she had to learn something every day, even if she failed to attend courses. One of the things she learned was how to play the guitar. Another thing was that she could write songs. When she wasn't active in student government or working on her communications major, Kelly spent time under the trees on the quad playing guitar and writing songs. People frequently asked her to come to events and play.

In life after college, Kelly has made her way around the music industry. She spent time in New Jersey working with Wyclef Jean, but walked away from a record deal with only an LP so that she could show her accomplishment. Kelly has traveled around the country touring with various groups as an opener. Most recently, she has been playing at a Cajun themed restaurant in North Carolina, catering displaced victims of Hurricane Katrina. She will be touring again later this year.

Kelly gives advice willingly to anyone interested in the music business. She points out that not all musicians are entertainers. Some of them are in it for more than just money. Kelly also emphasizes the importance of playing to your image. The audience is only bound to the music as long as they are hearing what they want to see. Finally, she stresses the necessity to know each of the players in the music industry and how they affect artists.

Assignment 4

I am not a fan of talk radio or radio shows. Pod casts and the like do not hold my attention in the least. I find that listening to interviews without being able to see the subjects or the interviewer allows me to be easily distracted. That being said, I was surprised to find Dick Gordon's show, "The Story" capable of maintaining my interest.

I chose to listen to a broadcast telling the story of an undercover police officer and a career waitress. The first story featured Gordon interviewing April Leatherwood, a Memphis law enforcer who went undercover as a junkie for a year. She spoke of breaking contact with everyone she knew, transforming into a dirty drug consumer, and accepting the new life she had to live for that year. While it was this story that caught my eye, Leatherwood did not provide an exceptionally interesting interview. I was easily distracted by the fact that she used the phrase "y'know" more than twice every sentence. Her anecdotes weren't that exciting. It is almost like she was too good at playing the role to make it exciting to retell. Gordon did his best to ask questions that would provoke some kind of harrowing tale from Leatherwood's year undercover, but she failed to talk about anything that I would consider memorable.

Ironically, I found Sammi DeAngelis' story about her forty year career as a waitress much more interesting than the life of an undercover cop. DeAngelis sounds exactly like the kind of waitress you would find in any typical sitcom diner. She seems to fit the caricature perfectly. While it might not sound like a waitress could provide a good interview, Gordon asked questions about aspects of the job that the rest of us would not generally think about such as getting into the business, relationships with cooks and other players in the kitchen, and the wear and tear the job leaves on people. DeAngelis' personality showed throughout the interview, and just from her account and her discussion of her job, I can tell she would be the kind of waitress I would want at a diner. She also talked to Gordon about the impact the down economy has had on the diner business, and that allows listeners to empathize greatly with what DeAngelis and others are going through. Overall, it is Gordon's ability to provide context and ask thought-provoking questions that draws an audience for his show.

Assignment 3

I'm the kind of person who has a hard time picking favorites. When it comes to movie, I generally tell people that my favorite is The Shawshank Redemption, however I feel as though a lot of people are likely to pick that for this assignment. Another movie that I rank as one of my favorites is Kill Bill: Vol. 1. I'm a big fan of Quentin Tarentino's work because he maintains styles and influences for each film he directs while making each a unique and entertaining experience.

The story begins with a group of assassins walking into a wedding chapel and killing everyone within, or so they think. The pregnant bride survives, although she is in a coma that will last her the next four years. When she wakes up, the baby is gone, and she immediately begins planning her revenge. She knows who her would be murderers were because at one point she was one of them, a skilled member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. The Bride, played by Uma Thurman, makes a list of all five members that serves as the order in which she plans to kill them. As with many of Tarentino's films, Kill Bill has a non-linear plot, so the opening scene shows The Bride taking down the second name on her list. Then it moves to the wedding massacre and her awakening before flying out to Japan to acquire the world's finest katana. The movie ends with The Bride storming a yakuza stronghold and assassinating the first name on her list. By the conclusion, very little is known of the titular character, Bill, other than that he is the head of the DVAS and that he is the father of The Bride's baby. The end is a total cliffhanger, which ensures that people will see Vol. 2.

Kill Bill was produced on a budget of $30 million, which is cheap by today's standards. Domestic box office sales more than doubled production costs at around $70 million, and worldwide it sold over $180 million in ticket sales. The fact that Tarentino is so successful with such a small budget is testament to his movie making skill. One thing that I particularly enjoy about this movie is the soundtrack. All of the music is chosen perfectly for each scene, and really seems like it was written to accompany it. I really appreciate Tarentino's love of Ennio Morricone's work because he fills his movies to the brim with music from old Westerns. I'm also a fan of the fusion of Spaghetti Western and Samurai movie action. It makes for fight scenes riddled with electricity and emotion. I also admire the director's dark sense of humor, as well as the fact that he makes a point to cameo in all of his movies. Tarentino can be seen dancing at the front of the crowd in the House of Blue Leaves extended shot. The sum of this brilliant directing creates one of my favorite movies of all time.