Jour1111 Lecture 4

Im not a radio person, probably never will be. ABC radio host Richard Fiedler describes the job of the radio presenter as a facilitator, an engager, someone who can really get into an on-air guest's mind and helps bring a story to life. His approach to journalism is one that allows guests to construct their own story from his questioning, he stresses the importance of asking questions that are open ended and can be answered in a way that give a story depth and meaning.

Personally I have never listened to Fiedlers show, radio simply doesn't sit well with me, though his method is one that appeals to me, it is simply a medium with which I cannot engage. I find myself put off by the loud jocks that push their stations sponsors, dont engage guests or discuss things that have no relevence. Disproportionate advertisement time also turns me off radio completely, a few times I have tried scanning for stations in my car, most stations are mid advertisement so i simply give up and switch to a CD.

Podcasts, this is a form of radio I can engagewith. Often unsponsored, plenty of topics are being covered constantly, no need to listen to the music that a station might push or the loud annoying jocks.
 
There isnt much else I can say, I listened to these interviews with a detached bemusement, perhaps picked up a few interviewing techniques but no passion for radio was ignited, nor any difference of opinion.

Jour1111 Lecture 3

On the way home from Ms. Doherty's lecture, I picked up a Sydney Morning Herald to check out the information pyramid; nearly every article had the same structure, important stuff → General info →Fluff. I wondered; If you remove the fluff part of the article would it withdraw some of the colour or positioning intended by the writer and help the reader to make a critical evaluation of the information present, based on his or her own reaon? Just a thought.

I never really intended to involve myself in print media but the option is becoming more and more enticing as the opportunity slips further and further away with the regressive state of newspaper business. The idea of pure text story is appealing to me as I'm a horrible photographer and video-maker-guy. However, the current employment opportunities seem grim at best and newspapers are crammed with so much fluff the chances of writing about the botanical gardens new flower installation seems fairly high. 

The visual advertisments on web papers and even print papers never really struck me, I often glaze over the pages until I find something worth reading, but again picking up the SMH it is apparent that your eye is drawn to the large colour banner at the top initially, though this very rarely influences the stories I view, most I simply skip.

The other appeasing element of newspaper journalism is its apparent freedom of expression, especially in democracies such as ours. The SMH gave the devious Mr Abbot quite a wrap about his parliamentary misbehaviour and an extract from The New York Times likened Mitt Romneys running partener Paul Ryan to the leader of a lynch mob. This assures me that expression is still generally free amongst print media (though Heir Murdoch likes a good spin in our Aussie papers).

I wonder if Julian Assange would be taking refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy if Wikileaks had have been a book......

Jour1111 Lecture 2

The first substantive lecture in Journ1111 gave an overview of the evolution and development of the web through its three manifestations as well as the various elements included in these stages. This makes me reflect on the first few sites that I browsed growing up. Perhaps the most vivid memory of Web 2.0 was the old neopets game or MSN messenger, sites built around wide social groups that facilitated a sort of social interaction through entertainment. Being someone who likes to keep an open eye of the outside world, the idea of hyperlocalisation gives me this sense of insular, uninteresting online culture with the emersion of Web 3.0 (semantic web). I feel it is very important to maintain a constant intake of news from around the world, especially in cases such as the Eurozone economic crash and largescale social and political movements such as the Arab spring. The world roils and seethes all over and grows to affect us no matter how far away we live. It's easy to lose sight of the grand picture, we're all a part of it, if we show ignorance in the face of plight, how will any problem ever get fixed? I believe the web has an important role to play in international socio-political affair and the reduction of news to a hyperlocal level would obstruct this role. Recently several online entities that I frequent have gone behind paywalls, a strategic move economically but I often understand paywalls as a promotion of exclusivity for those who can afford it; eventually creating an information gap as those on the higher end of the socio-economic scale are able to afford more news than those on the lower. I dont hate the internet, however I constantly see its influence and utility being abused, I.E. Kony 2012: Not a bad cause, however, the creators weren't honest about the recipients of their donations and their information (whether purosely so[in the case of the Ugandan Military]) was flawed and inaccurate.
 
The other concern raiseed in lecture 2 that resonated with me was the idea of news as just entertainment. My choice of news intake is the paper, unless I watch SBS news which is very rare. Commercial news however, makes me weep on the inside, its hysterical, pandering, oversimplified and trashy, the perfect example of entertainment news. My mother watches Seven news, so at times I have been obligated to view as well.
I remember sitting through about 15 minutes of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes breakup news; interviews, custody disputes, prenup arguments, the whole shabangabang! Then, a tiny little addition at the end of the main news headlines: "33 egyptian civilians kidnapped in Israel, Israeli govt. suspects Hamas...." then sports... not even a DoA on the poor Egyptians. I'm not sure who watches the world from such a perspective but I think Australia needs its own version of E.T. where wannabe journo's can dump all their crap about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes and let news networks be news networks. All the channels could take a share of the shows profits, depending on who covered which nosejob/breakup/african child adoption.

Media Use/Production Diary

The above table shows my media usage from Wednesday the 1st of August to Friday the 10th. As it is evident from a first glance, one can see that my current use of media is dominated by the music category, not the highest in my viewership but most consistently high. This stems from my personal inability to succeed at most activities without some sort of melody amusing my subconscious, allowing ideas and creativity to flow more freely. Later in the week, I attended a live performance in Fortitude Valley to which I attribute the large spike of six hours on Thursday the 9th. I was slightly dissapointed to find out that only 27% of my classmates enjoy live music, I would encourage this to be alot higher. On the other side of the music spectrum, the end in which I produce music rather than listen to it, the period shows rather disappointing results; only dusting off the Bass guitar for four and a half hours over ten days. Excusably, however, this neglect for the beloved bottom end comes as the instrument suffers a slight string shortage. Exempt from the audio section of my media analysis is radio, as I have neither the interest nor patience to find the channels that don't emulate the annoying shock jock/sound gag DJ's that so chill my spine, therefore this form of media is totally neglected by this user, who keeps his car full of Cd's.

Fact: 7.2:1 the ratio of music listened to against music produced.

My Visual Media usage

The next form of media is the visual, one that conglomerates Television, Film, online Video and Video games. At right you can see all visual media divided into its elements. While others might prefer their news from television news, I prefer to creep through Youtube until devilishly late hours watching news items by The Young Turks, Al Jazeera or various other news channels. This outsourcing of information comes from a generational mistrust of evening news amongst my family, whom encourage independent journalism and maintain that many stories are much more intricate and complex than they are made to appear on television. Thus the twenty odd hours of television watched each week is a combination of sitcoms, drama, anime and other general entertainment. Whilst recording the data on television viewership I was surprised to find that I don't actually watch as much as I thought I did; oftentimes a day can slip by after just one episode of "Wilfred", though this is most likely attributed to increased social activity during the recorded period, however I am still viewing more TV that 77% of my classmates. Some weeks television might include very limited sports viewership such as Rugby Union, (a family occurrence in which a father and son yell into a phone at an absent umpire) however, recently I have been unable to watch games due to their broadcast being between 3-6am. Another formidable time-killer is my intense love of video games (A category that received a neat five hour bonus due a LAN party on the final day of recording). A quick escape from an intense day of University, a long battle with study or to simply kick back for 5 hours of Far Cry 2 with some old friends; Video games resonate with me as I see them as a method of escaping to a reality where the imagination is the limit of possibility, where possibilities are infinite and where you can run up buildings and throw helicopters into tanks. Lowest on the list of visual media is film, having only viewed two films in the past ten days. This is fairly normative as I often prefer the twenty minute format of television to long, often disengaging films, however this period has fostered a renewed trust in film after viewing The Dark Knight Rises on Friday and Empire of the Sun on Tuesday. As for visual production, there is little to be said; one sixteen second video of  Caligula's

The next Scorsese strikes again!

Horse, from the show in Fortitude Valley and a photo of the inside of my pocket (left) taken some hours later. I am not one who constantly records or captures holidays or events, instead I like to indulge myself in what is right in front of me, as there is a chance that it may never be so close again, and countless photographs couldn't possibly represent the sensory explosion of being completely enveloped in another culture or surrounded by rhythm and sound.

Finally, text media comprises the use of books, newspapers and online articles. Being fairly avid reader, these numbers come up fairly short of my expectation due to a lapse midweek in which I finished Mr. Wilde's Portrait of Dorian Grey and was charged with finding another classic to quench my thirst. In addition to Youtube, text media is my predominant means of gathering news and current affairs, with my preferred papers being the Courier Mail and the Australian (the best of a Murdoch situation) whilst various other international sources I view online (the New York Times, Al Jazeera, Huffington post). I prefer news in the form of text media as text advertisements are simply leaflets that don't require a sudden crazed hunt for the remote's mute button and can simply be passed over with a mindful eye. My Jour1111 cohort seems to be fairly differently minded as I am one of only 3.6% who receives most of their news from newspapers, and only 5.5% recieve news from Youtube. (Below right shows Journ1111 class' prefered news sources)
 My production of text media narrows down to university notes, general writing,(in which I have included my social media production) and songwriting. the former has seen me write for up about 7 hours, not that impressive for mid semester, however the other two categories were even more neglected: characterized by my lackluster attitude toward social media, the three posts on facebook and an email would never really excel me into the league of social media moguls. Suffering most was my production of personal literacy projects; on which one hour was spent in ten days. Perhaps over-socialisation (if such a phenomena exists) and an anti-motivational state of mind (still reeling from holidays) are to blame for such slack output.

So, thus ends the analysis of my media usage, set in a sporadic week of eventfulness and revelry. Hopefully this will prove helpful for reflection if I suddenly need to discover what I was doing whilst I should have been studying.

La Fine

Jour1111 Lecture 1

After the drudgery of the first week in first semester, my antipathy toward introductory classes had peaked and I was rather inclined not to attend any in the new semester, knowing them to be the same liturgy of glancing forward at cirriculum and the easily anticipted anti-plagiarism talks. However, dragging my bones to the lecture after buying textbooks, I was pleasantly surprised at the way Dr. Redman introduced the course material (usually obtained by skimming the course profile) and the engaging and entertaining way in which it was offered. Before the course had even properly begun I had begun to anticipate some of the later classes on Agenda Setting and Regulation & Ethics in Journalism. Dr. Redmans presented quotes from several acclaimed journalists and public figures aptly revealed the mindset behind becoming a journalist and making it in the world of journalism.

However, a great detraction from my enthusiasm came when it was revealed to me that I would be forced into contact with a personal enemy: Twitter. Since the beginning of the site, I havent seen the appeal, even after having used twitter and understanding the benefits a little better (yes this was written rather retroactively), I still dont. It seems to me that exposing myself to wider media might be handy, however, I've yet to see the great 'online social movement' implication that twitter supposedly holds. To me Twitter seems to be nothing more than another insular brain fart platform that is swamped with advertisements and as much information about what people had for lunch or which weirdo is on the bus as you can possibly take.

Lest my old man cynicism consume me I will end this brief reflection of an intro class on a positive note and state simply that I hold great expectations for this class and the coming topics.

Das Ende

Today I saw a cow

Yup, I saw a cow.