Final Post

Well since my first term at the UO has concluded, which means i am now finished with the J201 course, this will be my final post. Throughout the year in J201 there i have been presented with a plethora of information about the media, the messages media sends, and everything one could imagine pretaining to the media. I would have to say that their are two components of the course that stuck with me the most, and that i know realize during my everyday life. The first would be the power of the media. The media is everywhere, almost to the point that it is unavoidable. Everywhere you look there are signs of media, even in scholary places like classrooms. I notice media advertisements more than ever after taking this class and now see the effect it can have when being shoved in your face daily. the second thing that stuck with me most is the power of convergence. For example this weekend i was watching the finale to the Ultimate Fighter, which is a program put on by UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) a professional MMA(mixed martial arts) league. I was watching one of the fighters Kimbo slice attempt to fight one of the all time greats of UFC in his UFC debut. It then occured to me that Kimbo Slice would be a nobody if not for youtube.com. Kimbo Slice became publically known and followed because of his great succes on youtube.com. Kimbo would accept street fights from anyone, anywhere. Through his power on youtube.com he got to attend the Ultimate Fighter show, get trained by some of the best mma trainers in the world, and then got a contract to fight in the most competive mma league in the world. This was all made possible thanks to youtube.com. What i have learned in j201 will stick with me through my years and has forever opened my eyes to the vast power and capablility of the media.

Disney

to whom it may concern, after watching the various videos regarding disney and its effect on the young children of today, i feel that all the thoughts are quite acurate. Disney prevays messages that do not correalate to real life situations and make kids think that the world operates in much different ways than in reality. disney also sends out images that are sexist and racist which will lead kids to believe that these ideals are acceptable in every day life. disney sends the wrong messages to young girls about what they are expected to do later in life and how they are supposed to present themselves. disney makes it seem that all women are meant to grow up to be beautiful little princesses that cook clean and do everything their husbands want. also, in many of their movies they portray racist ideals. for example in dumbo, the black crows are meant to represent african americans in society, and in the movie they are lazy and stand around doing nothing. i feel that this is extremely inappropriate and a horrible influence to children who have not been able to create their own ideas on society.

david cohen

To whom it may concern.. this week im going to talk about my reactions to the video chat our class had with david cohen. after the discussion i was intrigued about the idea of spot.com and all that it had to offer. i really liked the idea that it is a professional webpage but can be written on by anyone who has something to say. this opens up a lot of oppurtunities for aspiring journalist, they can practice writting in on a webpage viewed by many, as well as get critiqued or noticed for the writting they are doing. i really enjoyed the conversation with him and thought that his website was an example of how the internet is really helping younger people get involved with their passions much easier than they would be able to years ago.

To whom it may concern, this week I am going to be talking about the music industry and the effect technology has had on it. In class this week we were lucky enough to have a local artist come speak to us about his career and how the internet has enabled him to be able to flourish easily from his home in Eugene Oregon. I think that due to the Internet the music industry has been able to blossom in ways that it could have never came close to before the Internet. Now a days because of the Internet artist can put up samples, hit songs, or even full length CDs or mix tapes on the Internet for the public to download free of charge. Artist also have many fan pages, facebooks, MySpace’s, and blogs that enable them to have a more personal connection with their fans. Because of the internet it has also enabled music listeners to find other artist that they otherwise would not know of. Another aspect of technology that has changed the way of the music is iTunes.
iTunes has enabled music lovers to easily access and sample music from their favorite artist as well recommending other artist that are similar to those that the listener likes. This acts as advertisement for these artist and they do not even have to pay for it.

is google making us dumber?

To whom it may concern, today i am going to converse about an article i recently read, called "Is Google making us stupid?". In this article the writer Nicholas Carr talks about how he has felt he mind changing. He feels that his attention span is significantlly lower and he blames this on the internet and more specifically Google. I feel that he is correct in this sense because google has created a medium that is so easy for us to obtain any information we want. With google we can obtain a plethora of information in mere minutes, even seconds. because of this, people have become lazier and more prone to just googling questions rather than using their brain and trying to figure out their questions. Because of this our brains have adapted to being able to obtain information without having to put much effort into it. Even though i feel that google is making us dumber, it is my favorite medium of media. it is my home page to when i open up the internet and i have a toolbar for it for easy access when on other sites. Even though it has handicaped our society, it is one of the greates tools created by mankind. It has created a medium that is vastly used and can quickly supply anyone with any information that wish to obtain. what do you think about google?

This week I am going to speak about my thoughts on Teens blogging about fashion. Before writing this blog, I read an article about this topic. This article can be found @ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/technology/14youth.html?_r=1
After reading this article I think that it is extremely cool that there are online magazines about fashion run completely by persons from the age 18 to 24. I personally think that this is a good thing for the fashion industry because many of them target people in this age group. By having these online blogs, it allows fashion companies to see what their target market thinks about their products. Not only is it beneficial to the fashion companies themselves, these online blogs create an attractive alternative to having to subscribe to other magazines and I am sure is more appealing and fun to read for the young people reading them. As well as it being beneficial to those people reading them, it allows young adults who are interested in the fashion industry to get an early start at their career as well as potentially being recognized by larger fashion firms and maybe getting a job from them. I feel that these online blogs are overall beneficial to our
society and the fashion industry as a whole, what do you think???

To whom it may concern, this week I am going to talk about audience fragmentation and if it has killed superstardom. To those who do not know, audience fragmentation is the separation of audiences into smaller groups due to multiple media outlets. I do not feel that this has killed superstardom at all, in a way it has increased superstardom. Because of the plethora of media sources, people who would not normally get national or even international recognition are becoming vastly well known and adored. For example youtube.com has created many temporary superstars that are get international recognition for the home videos that they have created. I do feel though that because of audience fragmentation, the period they are superstars for has been decreased immensely. Using youtube.com as an example, every week there is a new youtube.com star and sometimes every day there are new stars. These stars rarely ever make a lasting impression on society unless they frequently up load new videos. I do feel that audience fragmentation is eroding societies shared experiences. I remember when I was younger and a big star would be coming out with a new film, everyone would be excited and enthralled to go see it. Now people are less interested in seeing these films per say, because there are so many other sources of entertainment, a lot of which have no costs. Along with the film industry, because of the abundance of television channels, few people watch the same program all the time and share the experience. This has created a separation in our society as a whole because now people would rather be with people that are interested in the same things that they are, rather than everyone getting together and watching whatever is being provided. I do not feel that this is a completely negative effect of audience fragmentation because I personally love the freedom and choice of being able to watch what I want, when I want. Convergence has also lead to separation of society. Before DVR and the internet if you wanted to watch a program, you had to be watching at the exact time it was being broadcasted at, many of times forcing you to watch it other people who want to watch the program.

To whom it may concern, this blog I will converse about the difference between mainstream and alternative coverage of the same event. The first event I looked into is the current election in Afghanistan, where Hamid Karzai won the election two months ago due to fraud. The first report I heard about this event was from fsrn.org, free speech radio news. In this report the report was given by a woman who was stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan. Their were interviews with local Afghani student and an Afghani government official, who spoke in Arabic. In these interviews I was exposed to their personal views, which seemed to be speaking for the general public. I would say that around half of the report was based on the facts of the campaign and the other half on the opinions of the Afghanis. I then read this story as reported by a journalist for the associated press. This article covered mostly what the American governments actions and thoughts were about this “fraud” election. At no point did it talk about what how the Afghani people felt about there being another election. Rather it talked about the actions that America would have to take for there to be another election. The next story I read was about Obama’s new plan on how to handle the ongoing civil war, genocide, and human rights abuses in Sudan. I read this article on democracynow.org. It was not a long story and just explained how Obama and the White House have devised a new plan and then had a quotation from Hilary Clinton explaining vaguely there general plan. Afterwards I searched the internet for a mainstream coverage of this news and could not find one. This is rather appalling to me because for my senior project I did a research paper on the Genocide in Sudan and feel very strongly that America should intervene and that this topic should be more covered in the media. The fact that no mainstream news reported anything about this, but almost every mainstream news medium reported about the “balloon boy” depicts on what the media wants the American population to focus on. And I find this sickening. The last story I was interested in was the story overtaking our news today and was surprised to find a story about “Balloon Boy” on an alternative media website. I found a short clip about it on alternet.org. It was a clip showing how the media is covering this story so heavily while they are not talking about any of the current problems going on in our country such as the recession and wild fires. I looked to almost every mainstream news website and even on the television and not one of them brought up the fact that there is other more important news going on. Instead they all showed repeated clips of balloon boy and talked about “what his parents were thinking”. This shows how alternative media is far more respectable than mainstream media. I could only find one website, alternative, that covered the story of balloon boy and it had my exact same thoughts about it. While this was happening I was watching a lady on CNN repeat the same thing in different ways about the “atrocity” of balloon boy and the effect on the parents children, I sit here and wonder, “what about the atrocities effecting everyone?”

Post #2: The Newspaper

to whom it may concern,
this week i am going to talk about my thoughts on the newspaper and its future. I am personally an everyday reader of the newspaper (when i was in san diego) but now that i am studious, and broke, college student i find it hard to make time in my day to read the newspaper. i try and read it online but i absolutely hate reading lengthy articles online. this brings me to my next topic...whether or not i feel that newspaper (print version) will survive. I personally think that the printed version of newspapers will survive. i understand this may be a little bias because of my extreme dislike for online news, but i feel that there are many others out there that feel the same way. A classmate of ours commented that one of the main reasons the perfer printed news vs online news is how many more articles one will see and be enticed by when looking for the article they want to read vs just searching for the news you want and then closing the search engine. i feel that the printed version of a newspaper brings greater knowledge to people for this reason. the one thing i can say that makes me displeased about the newspaper, the san diego union tribune in particular, is the extremely low literacy level and plethora of grammatical errors. this is one of the main reasons i convined my parents to also subscribe to the new york times. i personally hope that newspapers will survive for the eniterty of my life, but i do get worried with the amount of technological innovation and advancements happening in our world today. so for now, i will cherish my printed newspaper and try and read it as much as possible!

My First Blog

To whom it may concern,
My name is Cameron Schwartz and this is my first time blogging. This blog will cover topics that I feel are important pertaining to the media, my journalism class, and other blogs on the internet. As well as this being my first blog, this is also the first time i have read online blogs. Previously i have never been interseted in blogs, and i would say this is because i generally like to formulate my own opinion on topics and when do i search for outside opinions i am more prone to refer to a source that is more concrete than a blog persay. This may be ignorant, (there may be very reliable bloggers on the internet) but because of my lack of interest in blogs, i have never been able to find them. Most of the blogs i have came across in my time are those of celeberites (which i care very little for), or those of common folk, who for some odd reason think there are others interested in what they do on a day to day basis. (whereas i am not). Since enrolling in Journalism 201 at the uo, i have paid far more attention the world of blogging than ever before, and i do stand corrected, there are some very interesting blogs on the internet. I have not diggen very deep into the realm of blogging, but rather just briefly read one that was recommended to us by our teacher. This blog is by Henry Jenkins, an american media scholar and professor at USC. I have found that his blog is very interesting and true to many of my beliefs. In particular, his blog entry titled "Is Facebook a Gated Community?: An Interview With S. Craig Watkins (Part Two)" caught my attention. While reading this entry i was reminded of an instance that was relative with his ideas on, Facebook being associated with a "gated community" vs Myspace being associated with "slums". Before leaving for college, i was conversing with a good friend of mine that now attends the University of California, Santa Barbara. We got to the subject of room mates, and i can specifcally remember her saying that her room mate was so "ghetto" and only had a myspace. She then went on to tell me about how her top friends on her myspace had names such as "cRuNkPlaya, Cop Dat Deuce, MiZZ FABuLUST" and so on. When she brought this up i made no correlation with the idea that, myspace is more "ghetto" i just figured her friends where of a more urban setting. After reading Henry Jenkins' blog, and seeing S. Craig Watkins ideals on the difference between myspace and facebook. I myself can not come to a conclusion on why this social seperation has occured other than... On Facebook, one must be connected to a social network, and most teens join their high school or colleges network. Where as on myspace there are no sub networks. So i think that possible because in the so called "ghetto" (lack of better word) not as many teens attend high school or college, so they choose to join myspace. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this social seperation that is occuring? Until Next time....