Media Critique on Fox News

Two articles about European migrant crisis were published today. Both articles focus of the recent news that many migrants are pouring into Croatia to escape the violence in their homeland. The first article, from Fox News, was very informative, but failed to meet one of Ten Elements of Journalism that the other article, from CNN, did meet. The Fox News article did not make the important interesting.

The article from Fox, entitled "Thousands of refugees rush into Croatia to find new route to Western Europe", was filled with informative facts that really explained the crisis in Croatia. However, when it is compared it to the article from CNN, it was clearly missing something. 

The difference between the two articles was the way they were explained. The superior article entitled "Migrant Crisis: Thousands overwhelm Croatia" from CNN used very intriguing phrases that really grabbed your attention and described the situation much better. For example, the CNN article says, "Women were wailing and police tried to help children as masses of people pushed their way out of the holding area set up for processing," this is just one example of this article using extreme details and vivid adjectives to grab your attention.

The Fox News article had no details of a first person account, only facts about what happened. In this article, two paragraphs start with phrases such as "Authorities said," or "Croatian police said," rather than explaining the horror that the migrants were facing. Fox should have written about first person accounts of the crisis, in order to make the article more interesting. 

Another way that the Fox article failed to meet this element of journalism, was failure to use visual aids. Visual aids such as videos or pictures incorporated with the article really help make it an interesting piece of news. While the CNN article used many pictures and a video, the Fox article used one picture at the beginning of their short article. If Fox had used more visual aids, it may have made their article more interesting and may have brought them closer to meeting this specific element of journalism.

Under the element "Make the Important Interesting", it says, "Part of the journalist's responsibility is providing information in such a way people will be inclined to listen." Overall, this article written by Fox News failed to do so. Therefore, it does not meet all ten elements of journalism.

Read both articles here:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/09/17/thousands-migrants-rush-into-croatia-in-new-route-to-western-europe/

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/17/world/europe-migrant-crisis/index.html 

Response to Binary models lecture

Everyday I listen to music while I do my schoolwork. What I never thought about was how I can listen to music and still really focus on my task. During the lecture on binary models I learned about hot and cool mediums. Music is a cool medium. This means that you don't have to fully engage with it when listening to it. Other things, like books are hot mediums, meaning you have to give it your full attention.

Another binary model is information and entertainment. Information's job is to tell us things while entertainment is not meant to inform. But one thing that is happening is those two are combining and forming infotainment. One example of infotainment is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It is meant to inform you about the current events, but also entertain you. This is due to conglomeration. When one company owns a bunch of smaller companies, it's called conglomeration. This is leading to the merging of this binary model. This can be related to my life because my parents watch NBC news shows, which has no entertainment factor, but also shows like the Colbert Report that have the comedy incooperated into the news.

Commincation lecture response

Communication is something we do everyday. Whether it's talking, texting, or giving someone a high five, we are communicating with people all around us all of the time. Prior to the lecture on communication, I never really thought about the different ways we communcate. It turns out there are three types of communication. Individual, between two people. Group communication would be a small group of people like a family meeting or sermon. The last and the biggest form of communication is mass communication. This is the type of communication that has the potential to reach a mass audience.

I never understood how much mass communication our generation uses. Every tweet we post, every video game we play is mass communication. I knew my Instagram was a private account, but after the lecture I learned that my pictures could become mass communication. People could screenshot and share with others, giving it the potential to reach a mass audience. I thought this lecture was very interesting.

Response to Wesley's Post

Recently, I read Wesley's repsonse to the magazine lecture. She talked about how people don't really read magazines anymore and that people just watch TV or read on their phones. I disagree with that. I think people do read magazines still, but just not as much. Magazines remain around for a long time, I think, because it's not all current events that you must read that day. Magazines don't come out daily, so the articles in them can be kept around and read at different times.

For example, some magazines have recipes or articles on how to get fit. You don't necessarily have to read that right away and then throw it away. Also, you could share the magazine with your friends. That is one thing that Mr. Miller mentioned when talking about magazines and newspapers. There is not just one copy per person. It's usually several people per copy. So you could subscribe to a magazine and then give it to your neighbors to read, which is what my neighbors do.  So, magazines may be less popular, but people still definitely read them. They have many advantages over electronic articles and Internet magazines.

Read Wesley's blog at http://wesizzle.blogspot.com/2015/09/magazines.html?m=1

Conglomeration Response

One of our lectures in class was on conglomeration. I had never heard of that word until Mr. Miller taught it to us in class. Conglomeration is when a whole bunch of things are brought together, when one giant company owns and controls others. For example, Disney is a giant company. But I never knew that it owned so many smaller companies. The main ones that I can think of is ABC Family and Marvel Entertainment. But, there are many more companies that Disney controls.

Conglomeration can be a good thing and a bad thing. The company gets more money, which for them is a good thing, and we as the consumers get more pop culture. I love pop culture so I think conglomeration is great. We get the same things over and over. For people like me, who enjoy pop culture conglomeration is a good thing. But there are some negative things that come along with it.

A negative effect for the company and the consumer would be decreased quality. For the consumers that don't like seeing the same thing over and over again, a negative effect would be less diverse content.

Overall, conglomeration could be seen as a good thing or a bad thing. I see it as both, good and bad. I like that the consumers get more pop culture, but it also allows one company to dominate the media industry leading to less diverse content.

Response to Cora's Blog

In Cora's blog she talked about how she never really thought about the communicating we do on a regular basis. I agree! Before the class lecture, I had really no idea how radios worked. But now I can listen to the radio and understand how I am doing so.

Another thing is, I never thought about how things I post on social media has the potential to become mass communication. I never  understood that anything you put on the internet could become mass communication. But it can, because people can share it with their friends and they could keep sharing it.

Read Cora's blog at http://corajournalism1.blogspot.com/

History Of Newspapers Lecture Response

On Tuesday we talked about the history of newspapers. We learned that the oldest newspaper was in Belgium, and it was printed weekly, but is no longer printed. Before that, there was a monthly broad sheet in Venice, which was basically a large piece of paper posted somewhere where people got their information. One thing that I found very interesting was that there is a newspaper in Sweden that started in 1645 and still exists today.

Since innovations in printing have come a long way, the newspaper business has evolved. Since it used to take a long time to print things, newspaper-type things like the broad sheets in Venice only came out about once a month. Now, with our modern technology, we can print things daily. Inventions like the telegraph have also helped newspapers become more efficient. Telegraphs allowed information to travel quickly, so that articles could be written about far away events almost as soon as they happened.

Newspapers have come a long way. Everyday a newspaper gets delivered to my house, and is shared with all of my family members. There are many sections throughout the paper, making it enjoyable to most members of my family. That's one thing that sets newspapers apart. They are shared between many people.

I thought it was interesting to learn that newspaper articles used to be more literary. They used to be much more detailed and story-like. The reason they became shorter and less literary was because the telegraph was an expensive way to share information, so you had to shorten your stories.

This lecture was very interesting because I did not know anything about how and when newspapers started. It's fascinating to learn how much this facet of journalism has evolved.