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....