Thursday, February 26, 2015

Journalism in the Future

Journalism is never going to die. New journalism is constantly being produced, as long as we continue to share ideas with each other, we are using journalism.

To me, the spreading of any kind of information through any medium is journalism. This means that in order for journalism to end, the sharing of ideas would need to end, and almost all communication would need to end. That's not happening. What could happen though, is changing the format of our journalism, especially online.

A large portion of journalism consists of the news, focusing on events. News distributed through papers is falling while news distributed online is becoming more popular. Eventually online news will replace paper entirely.

The internet is generally seen as a place where people can connect, it can bring people together from all over the world. Paper newspapers provide no place for you to share your opinions or view other peoples opinions. If news is going to be all online, we should take advantage of the fact that people can so easily connect there.

The future news network we created, newsapp, encourages you to share your opinion and see others views too. I think that this journalism should include more that just articles about events. It should also feature opinion papers so that you can learn multiple viewpoints, and generally a more citizen based source of news, rather than only professional sources. Although citizen based journalism may make stories less reliable, it would also make stories more personal and more relevant.

I also think that it would be important to make sure the news was accessible to everyone, everyone should have a chance to know what's going on in the world. This is why newsapp is a free app and website. It is also written in an easy to understand way, for the general public. There is no use in producing stories that few people can understand or relate to.

Our technology never stops evolving, and it will bring journalism with it. As our lifestyles change, journalism will need to change too.

Monday, February 16, 2015

Oversexualizing Girls in Media

We are used to seeing scandalous pictures of woman in our every day lives. It doesn't surprise us when we see magazine covers of girls with skin showing, or womans clothing ads with a clear lack of, well, clothing.

The number of woman sexualized in media has been steadily growing. This idea is now so common that it's easy to forget that these images shouldn't be normal.

Looking at popular culture can help us see the values we have, and tv and movies are a big part of pop culture right now. In family films, 28.3% of woman are shown wearing sexy outfits, compared to 8% of men. Only 22% of prime time tv shows have a gender balanced cast.

Image result for sexualizing women in media
http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2011/08/12769.html
You may not have ever consciously realized this difference in the media before, but its easy to see when you are looking for it.

We now see images like this all the time, they don't seem very shocking to us, but when you sexualize men the way that we always sexualize woman, the difference becomes more obvious. Then it's easier to see how ridiculous these ads really are. Not only is the idea of sexualizing girls normal to us, the idea of sexualizing men in that way is very unnatural.

As this becomes more common, it's spreading more and we are starting to see even younger girls being sexualized.

http://www.ashleymilnetyte.com/ashleymilne-tyte/2013/07/

This normalizes further the idea that woman are only important for their looks and sex appeal. Showing young girls, or any girls in this way just furthers that negative mindset. Girls are growing up only wanting to be pretty and appealing, and our advertisements and media are doing nothing but encourage it.


http://www.inquisitr.com/326131/lana-del-rey-gq-shoot-criticized-as-sexist/
Objectification and oversexualiztion is becoming more common, it's important that we don't allow it to become normal, and that we give the right impression to young girls. 

Monday, February 9, 2015

Journalism and Kim K.

Chances are, you have seen Kim Kardashian's butt by now. Over 6.6 million people viewed the article containing her famous Break the Internet pictures within the first day of it being published, not counting views over social media. That's more people than live in the state of Minnesota, and most of them wouldn't have seen it if not for journalism.

Even if you haven't seen the specific pictures, you have probably heard about the event, either through social media or from friends. The pictures and information had to travel a long way to get from the original article to you, and the reason it was possible, was through journalism.

Journalism is traditionally thought of as being a reliable source, closely related to news, and very factual, but I think that journalism is much bigger than that. Journalism is a way to spread information of any kind, through any medium. Journalism can be news, but it can also be stories, feelings, and opinions.

This makes almost everything journalism. That means that when you tweet an opinion or story, or retweet something like it, you are spreading news, and contributing to journalism. Every person who tweeted #breaktheinternet was contributing to journalism, it doesn't matter what the content is, it matters that information is being spread. Everyone is a journalist, intentionally or not. Every time you tell a friend a story about your life, you are contributing to journalism. Journalism is much bigger than news.

News is a part of journalism but not the whole thing. I think of news is the type of source that the public generally expects to be true. News should have an aspect of legitimacy to it, while the only requirement for journalism is that information is being passed along.

Although journalism is more objective and less reliable than pure news, we still rely heavily on it. Imagine only being able to learn about events from news sources, you would likely never have heard about those Kardashian pictures, or about many other events and ideas that you now know of. No one went out and searched to find 'reliable sources' about the Break the Internet pictures, we saw them on social media.

No matter the relevancy of your words, you are constantly spreading ideas and contributing to the general knowledge of the public. Even if that knowledge is just about Kim Kardashian's Butt.