Comm455/History of Journalism

(Picture Credit to The Arlington Cardinal)

The 99%, occupying Liberty Plaza outside of Wall Street in protest of an unfair, and unstable economy.

They quite determinedly will not leave until they are appeased. But how can Wall Street appease them? By principle it seems that a bribe wouldn’t work. The protesters are calling to repeal the status of a corporation as a person. They even went so far in their protest as to elect a dog to be their leader. The protesters claim that Shelby the border collie is more of a being than a corporation.

Do the 99% plan to camp out for an entire session of Congress though? While the protests have reached a large amount of American cities, and gained the attention of the national and international media, the staying power of the camping protests has to be called into question. While these protesters have a fire in their hearts, the money in their pockets is beginning to dry out. More than one city has expelled occupiers over claims of looting, threats and property damage.

The amount of time that would be required for Congress to properly repeal the nearly 100 year old law giving corporations the status as citizens. The law was originally enacted to keep down trusts in the early 1800’s. The amount of law that would need to be changed and enacted to both repeal “corporate personhood” as it has been titled, and to provide for a stable economic future without it would be a staggering amount even if the American Legislature could agree on every tenet of the bill in the first draft. Are the “Occupiers” ready for a long winter in New York?

The nation has shown its support and sympathy for the demands of these activists. All eyes are on them, and many have asked them what, exactly, it is that they want. While they cite a goal, many have no idea what to do to get to that goal. Even I can see their point and would like to see them achieve a measure of success. The main point I try to make is that one should not offer to repair a roof, and then leave their ladder at home.

There are many reasons to live-tweet. There could be a guest speaker in class or a panel that you are listening to. Beat reporters also live-tweet from sporting events.

But can live-tweeting be used for entertainment?

Andy Boyle was just a regular customer at a Burger King in Boston, Massachusetts when he overhead a couple that was sitting at a different table. Since the couple seemed to be having a not-so-private discussion, Boyle reacted in a way that is not surprising in this age of new media. He tweeted it. Sentence-by-sentence, picture-by-picture and even added some videos.

Boyle’s 3,269 followers were treated to a night of hilarity. His followers were buzzing about it. Today, I heard about it through someone that I follow on Twitter. Then, I found Rhiannon Coppin who Storified the whole ordeal. The event was cleverly titled “The Restaurant of Broken Dreams.” For the next five minutes of my life, I read, lived and was immersed in this couple’s fight. It was almost as if I was in the room too.

Have we entered a world where live-tweeting is the new play-by-play? Have we come to a time when you we can only hear about important events through Twitter?

The advent of Twitter, and the ultrafast word of mouth effect that it lends to our lives, has already changed the way that we view the world and the news forever. Some of the most important stories in modern times have broken, not on the AP Wires, but as simple tweets that gain popularity like snowballs. The rapidity with which a story can be distributed is completely mindblowing. A person can essentially read the goings on of the world with a well organized and diverse tweetdeck.

This cyber newspaper, however, is missing something that its woodpulp counterpart could never have survived without; a corrections and withdrawals section. In this world of fast breaking news, we used to rely on our newspapers to keep us current in the world. Our emerging counter habit is to use the internet; specifically twitter and facebook, now complete with their own news delivery services. A newspaper, though slower than the internet, still publishes enough mistakes to keep a constant corrections section. Twitter and Facebook do not stock these features, which are proven even more essential with the increasing rapidity of news distribution.

The ever vibrating web of influence on the internet has the ability to spray a bullshit story out of proportion before its author has time to think their words though. In the midst of delicate economic times a stock market can be affected by even the most frivolous of news stories; in other words the fodder of tweets and statuses. Though the idea of a renegade tweet crashing the indexes is certainly far fetched, the tools are there and the world is unpredictable. Twitter helped totter a government, if Facebook was a country it would be the world’s 3rd most populous, and Wikileaks appears more often than one would think in the annals of the Justice Department.

To compare these social networking sites to informative sites such as wikipedia, IMDb, or mainstream informative News sites is to compare apples to Microsofts. Wikipedia, and other sites employ full staffs of people each year to ensure their credibility and shield them from any type of legal action. Facebook, and other social networking sites employ no such staffs and never would in good conscience, to control a profile in any way would be very contrary to the social focus of the site.

While we all would like to assume that our friend’s tweet is the true and credible story, and that what we say really only affects what we want it to, the reality is that when the world becomes connected to the degree that we have come to, that we may all bear some part of the risk of the snowball effect.

Is Google trying to own the internet? We can draw great parallels from today to the past.

Before the bringing of written communication to the plains of Southern Africa, the Zulu tribe had already developed an organized system to get the news out to its people. The chief employed criers who reported each morning to his tent for their assignments, their instructions, and where they were to go. In this way, the chief of the tribe controlled the news by controlling how his people were exposed to it, and how much of it they were exposed to.

In this age of complete freedom of the press, and with the advent of free markets, we would like to think that this manner of subtle press control was over. We all know that anyone can say anything on the internet, and have become aware of volumes and volumes of knowledge and spin that we could not have found otherwise in our entire lives.

What happens, however, when we are all being given our internet by one “Chief”? This future reality is not as far off as one might think. As you read this weblog, the company Google is laying fiber optic line in Kansas City to start providing internet at unheard of speeds for monetary nothing. While this provides huge opportuities for the internet revolution to meet people that have never experienced it, there is an inherent conflict of interest in accepting your hardware from the same company that makes your software.

Since distribution was owned by the monarch, they could decide what they wanted the general public to see. This idea goes back to the Edict of Worms, and farther to the Forums of the Roman Empire, and the Agoras of Ancient Greece. Governments have long sought to control what you see. In the modern world, we generally accept that any message can make it to us through some medium; especially the internet.

Tisha Thompson is a new addition to the NBC Washington news team. Her role is very specific.

Thompson has joined the station to bolster the channel’s investigative news department. The Iteam is a new feature of NBC’s newscast that allows viewers and citizens of the Washington, D.C area to report issues of scandal and corruption that they see happening around them. This segment is run strictly by whether or not they receive any tips.

The stories the Iteam is producing are exposing regular citizens that make mistakes. Subjects of these stories will have done something to bring notorious attention to themselves.

These stories are an example of how a media outlet such as a news station can use its influence and popularity to better the community. By exposing things like tax evasion and corruption activities, the Iteam is giving the public a responsibility. The Iteam doesn’t protect the subjects of these stories; they call out their full name to allow the public to do what the wish.

For example, in the first story the Iteam produced, they reported on a Washington, D.C. resident who owes over $17 million in back-taxes. The story doesn’t hide where the citizen lives, what his full name is or exactly how much he owes. The way these stories are designed, they are to make the viewer mad. To bring awareness to the fact that there are people in your own community that are doing terrible things and you may not even know it!!

Investigative journalism has a history at NBC Washington. Thompson’s mother, Lea Thompson was an investigative reporter for the station for nearly twenty years. With the family tradition alive, Tisha Thompson feels at home at her new station. Thompson has won several awards for her reporting. Being a native of Washington, D.C., she is exposing her own neighbor’s wrong-doing.

Samantha Brown is just your modern day travel renaissance woman. She does it all.

via travelchannel.com

Samantha Brown hosts quite a few shows on the  Travel Channel: Great Hotels, Passport to Europe, Passport to Latin America,Girl Meets Hawaii, Great Vacation Homes, Great Cruises, Great Weekends, Passport to China and the latest, Samantha Brown’s Asia as well some others including specials.

As an avid viewer and fan of Brown, I’ve watched many episodes of all her shows. What makes her so watchable and the shows so enjoyable is the fact that Samantha Brown is the viewer. While she is indeed a seasoned traveler at this point, Brown had no professional experience when starting and saw and looked for the same things a tourist would–pointing out ways to save money, places to go that a tourist wouldn’t know about, easy and inexpensive ways to travel and great dining tips.

Here is a video from her Great Weekends series

And another from her series Passport to Europe in Florence, Italy

The Travel Channel website has a great interactive site that allows visitors to view clips as well as other different features for their favorite shows. For Brown, you can look at some videos, episodes and travel guides, photos or even her own blog

Brown has been with the Travel Channel for nearly 12 years hosting the shows listed above. She is known for her bubbly and approachable personality which makes her so popular to viewers. She travels 230 days out of the year shooting for the Travel Channel for all of her various shows. Travel reporting isn’t just writing down your experiences in a beat up, leather bound notebook with old stamps and sepia toned photos lodged in between the pages. Travel reporting can cover anything about anyone’s travel, even around their own state. The beauty is that when someone travels, everything is to be discovered for the first time. Brown is just one example with a vessel to show all of her travels for viewers that can’t or want to travel to somewhere they have never been. And for 30 minutes we can join Brown as she explores the city of Florence and pretend we’re right there with her.

In 1937, an announcer for WLS Chicago — Herbert Morrison — was in Lakehurst, NJ to cover the arrival of the Hindenburg airship. It had just completed its first year of service and had successfully returned from Europe. American Airlines hired the Hindenburg to shuttle passengers from Lakehurst to Newark for connecting airplane flights. It was when they were trying to dock into its mooring tower that people began noticing gas was leaking. There was little time for reaction as the dirigible caught fire midair and exploded as it hit the ground.

Not only was this event significant as a huge disaster in our history, but it also served as the first time pre-recorded material was broadcast over a radio network. Morrison’s emotional description of the Hindenburg’s final moments was played and replayed over and over again. His recorded track was put to film to create newsreels that moved the catastrophe from people’s imaginations to actually being there while it happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d0zy_iwbDs The Hindenburg explosion with Herbert Morrison talking – from The Federalist Party

Watching the newsreel footage with the aural experience is much more effective. Try watching this next video with no sound. It’s horrible to watch, but it doesn’t stir the emotions that Morrison does through his experience.

Newsreel footage from the Hindenburg crash without sound – from AlbusPercyDumbledore

Even this next video — from a Universal Pictures newsreel — doesn’t bring about the same pathos to its audience because it lacks true emotion. There is music playing and a very professional announcer, but it sounds just like a movie. It doesn’t make the viewer feel like they are there, experiencing the explosion as it happens.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PfSn7szlBE Newsreel Footage from Universal Pictures – from LBfan0685

While the Hindenburg’s crash was a great catastrophe in our history, the death toll was surprisingly low. Of the 93 people aboard, only 35 people actually died — along with one person on the ground. Many jumped out or were pulled to safety in time. The newsreels of the time were somewhat inaccurate — over-emphasizing the death toll. Nothing can compare, however, to the strong emotional appeal Morrison makes through his recorded broadcast. Radio would never be the same, and it’s easy to see how powerful television would become in news making and news telling in the future.

How far is too far?

According to an article in the Atlantic, the CIA has admitted to using Twitter tweets and Facebook statuses to “glean insights into the collective moods of regions or groups abroad.” The intelligence agents, known as “vengeful librarians,” intend to scan the world of social media to monitor the opinions of people across the globe. According to the Associated Press, the “librarians” are tracking up to five million tweets a day from places like Pakistan, Egypt and China. To learn more, watch the video above.

Twitter  and social media in general has revolutionized we do just about everything.

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The Onion.

How is it so popular? I have never appealed to it, but maybe I’m just a weirdo who focuses on reality. A satirical newspaper is so unnecessary to me. We already have SNL poking fun, lets leave the news medium we love so much alone.

Maybe I’m just jealous.

This article on Yahoo! made me think why The Onion is even around. Something so close to libel is read probably just as much as The Washington Post, or The New York Times online sites.

I know there is no way to get rid of this fake news, but I will still keep wishing. Sure it can be entertaining, but a well written hard news story should be just as entertaining. Though that is not always the case. Anyway, humor should be left to the comic section of a respected area newspaper; not some stupid fake online source that basically just causes problems.

I’m surprised nobody has tried to get rid of The Onion. I do understand their rights, but they have caused plenty of confusion, even forcing investigations, according to the Yahoo! report.

Hopefully that’s enough to make someone try to shut it down, before it goes a little too far and causes some real damage.

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[View the story “Americas Pastime, but not the future” on Storify]