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Posts tagged with jesusalvarez

The press and the Sago mine disaster

Posted by: | November 13, 2012 | No Comment |

41 hours after an explosion in a coal mine in Sago, West Virginia that trapped 13 miners, the nation woke up relieved to see headlines reporting 12 of the 13 miners alive. Headlines in newspapers like USA Today screamed that twelve miners had beaten the odds.  However, joy and happiness turned into grief and anger as […]

under: Comm 455
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The poll that changed polling

Posted by: | November 6, 2012 | No Comment |

Does anyone remember Alf Landon?  No, right.  In 1936, Landon was predicted by the Literary Digest, a respected magazine at the time,  to win in a landslide over incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Literary Digest had predicted correctly the last five elections, but this one mistake would change the landscape of exit polling for years […]

under: Comm 455
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Should journalists have opinions?

Posted by: | October 30, 2012 | No Comment |

The journalism world is a strange one. Nowadays, news organizations have created new “social media guidelines” that prevent journalists from stating anything that expresses an opinion on something. Why do we pretend that journalists are impartial robots without opinions? Octavia Nasr, former CNN Senior Editor of Middle East Affairs, was fired after she tweeted this: […]

under: Comm 455
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One for the books

Posted by: | October 23, 2012 | No Comment |

With the upcoming presidential election, I thought it would be great to talk about the rarely told story of the Chicago Daily Tribune’s most famous headline, DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN. On election night of the 1948 presidential race, radio reports confidently predicted a victory for Republican challenger, Thomas E. Dewey, over incumbent President Harry S. Truman , […]

under: Comm 455
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Early congressional reporting

Posted by: | October 16, 2012 | No Comment |

There is so much entertainment in watching live coverage of the House and Senate debates, but even more intriguing is how congressional reporting was during the late 1790s and early 1800s. In order to get accurate information from Congress in the early years, one could sit in the chamber and view the proceedings or get […]

under: Comm 455
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The other day I read an article on CNN about the Fars News Agency in Iran publishing a story that a Gallup poll found that rural white Americans prefer Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over President Barack Obama. The source of the story–The Onion, a news satire organization known for creating outlandish stories and presenting them as real news. […]

under: Comm 455
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Blogging and its importance

Posted by: | October 2, 2012 | No Comment |

It is amazing how quickly blogs became a primary means of communication for individuals online.   In the 1990s, however, most people regarded Web pages as things to read and not a place to publish or post.  The growth of the Internet has allowed blogs to become a competitor to newspapers and other traditional mainstream sources […]

under: Comm 455
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The Evening Journal and upcoming war

Posted by: | September 25, 2012 | No Comment |

I enjoyed the history of the Albany Evening Journal, solely because of its transformation from a party newspaper to a proponent for the Civil War.   Thurlow Weed started the production of the “Albany Evening Journal” in New York as a medium to promote the Anti-Masonic Party, the first single-issue “third” party in the United States, […]

under: Comm 455
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An “opinion” towards revolution

Posted by: | September 18, 2012 | No Comment |

Published as a pamphlet in January 1776, Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” has been recognized as one of the greatest “opinion pieces” of all time. After being dismissed in England for his written opinions, Paine emigrated to the colonies where he became a journalist, editing and contributing articles to the Pennsylvania Magazine, but his greatest work was yet […]

under: Comm 455
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Get it right the first time! That is what Jon Stewart of The Daily Show practically meant when he emphasized the huge blunder that CNN and Fox News had committed when they wrongly reported on the Supreme Court ruling of the Affordable Healthcare Act.  Thanks to electronic news these days, it is easy for mistakes like […]

under: Comm 455
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