My Thoughts...if anyone is listening

Web 2.0, is it Every Journalists Nightmare?

2006-09-21T15:42:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 is slowly starting to become the wave of the future. I think it is here to stay regardless of whether anyone likes it or not. I believe we need to understand it, before we knock it.
First and foremost, internet communication is a great tool in allowing the average joe to feel like they have a voice to communicate their thoughts and opinions. Many people, in this country in particular, feel as if they are just one of millions and what they have to say is insignificant or invalid.
Places such as Live Journal or MySpace are a place where the guy in Billings,Montana can rant on and on for as long as he chooses about how much he hates or likes the government, someone on TV or what he had for breakfast that morning. No one may care or ever read it, but he can still express his views. Wasn't that what this country was founded upon?
Lots of today's news organizations, probably CNN, Fox News and the New York Times feel threatened by this new found form of everybody's journalism. To these institutions, what they say is correct and they would prefer the common man to stay out of it.
Is everyone that spouts information online a journalist? I think so. That doesn't mean it's good or has merit, but it is still journalism. This country has been ripe with bad journalists for years and just because someone is not writing on what we deem a credible news organization, does not mean that they are any less qualified.
Take for instance the yellow journalism scandals of the late 1800's and early 1900's. Those were all publications, yet most of what they printed was junk. Anyone can see that problems of bad journalism appeared way before anyone even knew what a computer was.
Playing devil's advocate, I believe the only real downfall to allowing everyone to be a journalist is the unfortunate spread of lies or hate. This has increasingly become a problem in the last few years. There are individuals who run sites that spread information that is hateful and destructive. Naive people, who don't know better, read this sort of information and believe there is truth to it. It's that whole "I read it, so it must be true" mentality.
At least with some of the credible news organizations they do strive to put accurate information out there, even though they don't always succeed.
I think the best thing we can do with this new world of Web 2.0, is embrace it and educate. It is here to stay, whether we agree with it or not. I believe as journalists we need to strive harder for truths and seek to understand the public as a whole. Not just write for ourselves. Leave that to the web.
Competing with the web is a waste of energy. Copying a form that is already being used is uninspired and we will lose. Staying original will almost always separate you from your competition and allow you to come out on top.

Propaganda is not news

2006-08-20T18:29:00.000-07:00

I was walking around campus on Friday with nothing to do between classes and I noticed some people were handing out flyers in front of Hughes-Trigg. I see people doing this all the time, but I always like to check and see what it is that's being passed around. Usually it's just some advertisement for a club or activity on campus. No big deal. As I walked past, some guy handed me a few sheets of paper stapled together that looked like a bunch of different articles pasted together. Now, at the time, I had no idea what this handout was about, but I later got a better idea as to what these flyers were. I'm sitting there on the quad, flipping through this thing and something just doesn't look quite right. There are facts on the pages, some being quite sketchy by the way, and it's presented in some sort of news format. The more I read, I figure out that it's some sort of Conservative group on campus trying to get their message across. Let me just say that I think that it's great if they want to walk around passing out their ideas to the masses of students that will probably ignore it anyway. That being said, what bothered me was what I later learned. Now I don't no if the information I received is 100 percent accurate, but from what I did hear, these flyers that were being handed out are an attempt to upstart a new paper on campus that competes with the Daily Campus. If that's true, that's actually not a bad idea. Competition is usually necessary for organizations or businesses to stay on top of things. What I don't like is propaganda being presented as news. Too often today, many journalists present statements as facts, when they're just more opinions that are spun into sounding like factual information. Fox News, need I say more. I'm not trying to pick on the right, because this does happen on the left as well. Regardless of who is doing this, it needs to stop. I love hearing people's opinions, especially when they disagree with me, but they need to be in an appropriate place. All I'm saying, is that you can say whatever you want, just call it what it is. I'm sure some on campus feel that the DC occasionally leans to the left, but I say that if it bugs you that much, go and work for them. Despite my own personal beliefs on certain issues, I think having varying opinions is probably the central most important thing we can do as a society. Diversity is not a bad thing.

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2006-08-18T11:57:00.000-07:00

This is my first blog