This is Assignment #2
for JOUR1111 at the University of Queensland. In my inimitable brilliance, I
successfully lost the whole assignment so I have simply started it again and
resubmitted it. I will, no doubt, lose some marks for this, but so long as
nobody’s allowed to flog me or anything I think I’ll be okay.
Lecture: New News - 04/03/2012
This week’s lecture was a basic introduction to some of the
elements we’ll be dealing with as aspiring journalists, including the
differences between old forms of media and the newer, web-based paradigms.
I was a little disheartened to hear the standard forms of
news media that I’ve grown up with are now referred to as “Old Media.” I find
this disheartening – not because that changes my views on media and news
production but because this means that, despite my best efforts, this means I’m
getting old. I remember, vividly, watching Schwarzkopf marching American
soldiers into Iraq nearly 20 years ago, and the first time I saw a newspaper
headline about the Australian fire-ant incursion (“Deadly Ants Invade”).
However, it is clear that I am part of that transitional
generation who understand, and actively use, online media. As such, the
breakdown of “Web Iterations” given in the lecture make sense to me, almost
instinctively, simply by virtue of more than a decade’s exposure to the medium.
I was a young internet user in the mid-90’s, which means I
saw, first-hand, the days when the internet was primarily made up of
advertising-related content. I was present as the cost of producing web-content
decreased and the internet became a haven for every bizarre fantasy and
off-colour joke one could imagine, and I was there to see the transition from non-participation
to producer-users and the emergence of social media. Hell, I remember when
using the internet meant not answering the phone.
The “Web 3.0” phase is the one that is most interesting to
me now, as it allows for further exploration via “hyper-localisation” and
grants a certain level of control over what you, as the consumer, actually want
to see. It does come with the additional annoyance of “targeted advertising”,
and the militant libertarian in me objects to the gathering of personal information
for that purpose, but the specified content delivery is, to my mind, a
beneficial development as it allows people to find the news that might appeal
to them without the need to disseminate the information.
I, personally, enjoy reading broadly and disseminating
information for myself, but that’s because I’m a nerd and an insomniac, and I
don’t own an Xbox. I wish I could provide a better, grander reason for reading
all the obscure news-sites that I do, but I think that would end up being a
lie.
Lecture: Text – 11/03/2012
This lecture, if I’m completely honest, felt a little like
further background on topics I’m reasonably familiar with. That is not to imply
that I didn’t learn anything new, however the basic tenets of text journalism are
something I’m relatively au fait
with. The lecturer, Ms Skye Doherty, was excellent. I just don’t know how much
new information I learned in this hour.
The segment on “SEO packs” and the ability to get your work
recognised by the wider public with regards to key-words and refined searches
was very helpful as targeting my writing to a specific audience is one of the
concepts I’ve struggled with thus far. Furthermore, the idea of RSS feeds is
something I definitely have to give more thought to in order to enhance and
expand my potential readership.
What I did find most interesting was the section regarding
alternative forms of news-information. Most particularly, the demonstration of
the online economic-strategy game, Cutthroat Capitalism, caught my attention. The
game puts you in the role of a Somali pirate captain, and your task is to
capture a sea-faring vessel with a decent cargo and hold the crew for ransom,
which you are required to negotiate by way of threats, coercion or selective
co-operation. I haven’t refined my interests enough to properly consider a
method like this for my own work, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t spent the
rest of the evening playing the game. In fact, I’ve lost hours to that game
over the last few weeks. I’m no good at it, though. Apparently, negotiators don’t
love it when you kill all your hostages. They don’t tend to pay a ransom after
that.
Bollocks.
Lecture: Pictures – 19/03/2012
I failed to attend this lecture, because I’m a doofus, so I
have reconstructed it as best I can from the recording found on the Blackboard
website.
I came into this course knowing that photojournalism was
likely to become an integral part of my work, and as such I am currently doing
the COMU1999 Introduction to Visual Communication course. The disciplines are slightly
different, but there is enough cross-over between the elements taught in that
class and the applied art of photojournalism that this lecture felt like a bridging
lesson between them.
The development of photography has fascinated me for years,
from its earliest applications, to Lumiere’s rudimentary motion-picture, to the
development of digital media and the alarming potential for manipulation (I have
seen pictures of Ita Buttrose performing lewd acts that I would like to believe
she never actually performed and – even if my belief is incorrect – I am fairly
certain she would not have photographed and kept).
Digital manipulation is a minor bug-bear of mine, as I have
grown up seeing the effect that digital airbrushing has had on body-image, as
well as having spent my formative years being forced to research photos and
their backgrounds to dispel myths and false reports. That brings to mind an
image I saw recently of a Zoroastrian funeral pit, called a dakhma, which had
been digitally manipulated to appear as though it was very deep and filled with
blood. The image was accompanied by a story; an urban legend about disappearing
corpses and noxious fumes that rendered experienced explorers incapacitated. A
brief search led me to the original, un-manipulated image, which showed the
dakhma as being mere feet deep with an otherwise bare dirt floor, instantly
dispelling the myth as bunkum.
There was also an example given in the lecture, of a less
mystical nature, regarding actress Sarah Jessica Parker’s hoove- I mean hands.
The “hands of death”, as they were referred to in the lecture, had been
digitally manipulated for a magazine cover to appear considerably younger and
more supple than they really are, giving the false impression that Ms Parker
has never been Skeletor’s horse.
Lecture: Commercial Media – 01/04/2012
This week’s lecture, which I was unfortunately unable to
stay for the duration of, covered the practice of “commercial media” and
discussed some of the key tenets of the form as compared to the world of public
media.
The thing that I took away from this lecture, primarily, is
the risk of bias associated with sponsored news media. We see the results of
commercial or political bias in news all the time, most particularly (and,
often, hilariously) from Americas FoxNews network; a news network that appears
to have long ago given up any pretence of fair and balanced reporting, despite
the network’s oft-parroted by-line, “Fair and Balanced”.
The conflict of interests of certain media representatives
has long been a concern of mine, as I have always resented the ease with which
news media can affect public opinion but rarely appears to bend to public
pressure. It seems like a lop-sided arrangement and carries with it an inherent
risk to our democratic process.
I feel very strongly about this issue, as part of the reason
I chose to study journalism was to engrain myself as part of the system of
checks and balances for our elected officials, and our major industries and
corporations. I strongly feel that it is the public’s responsibility to hold
our leaders accountable for their actions or lack thereof, and it is the
journalist’s role to bring that to people’s attention.
Lecture: Public Media – 15/04/2012
This lecture I found to be very interesting, as I have some
interest in working for public broadcasters like the ABC. I was particularly
interested in the concept of “public value” as I’ve never thought about, or
understood, how to quantify an idea so vague and broad.
The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) have provided a
definition which helps immensely in weighing up the purpose and execution of
public media, although the idea of “universality of appeal” is still a hard one
to quantify on its own. At least, that is, until you start to think about the
range of programming for public television broadcasters. The ABC, SBS and the
variety of content provided by the BBC all serve to cover an extremely wide
range of topics and potential audiences, but the commonality between all of
these networks is the delivery of news.
Public broadcasters are all required to provide unbiased
news reporting, ungoverned by any political or commercial interest. This
becomes difficult when a reporter’s job is to report negatively on the
political party in office at the time (ie. the organisation that pays the
salaries of the journalists).
This falls into my personal interest in seeing news media delivered
in an entirely impartial way, with no preferences implied. Opinion becomes the
factor at play there, and I feel that a journalist publishing their opinion is
acceptable to some degree, but transparency is required. I don’t mind when I
read personal opinion, but I object strongly to opinion being portrayed as
fact.
Ultimately, this lecture has given me a better idea of how
to approach my possible career, as public media is regarded as the last bastion
of true investigative journalism, and the style of journalism required – as well
as the rules about distancing oneself from vested interests – fit neatly within
my idea of serving as the system of checks and balances. This, I feel, is
in-keeping with one of the stronger elements of public media: the need to
engage with the democratic process. I see it as being about transparency.
However, I’m maybe not as clever as I think I am, so maybe I missed the point.
Karl Anderson
