9 posts tagged “news”

This morning, my grandmother talked to me about what she heard on the news in regards to Michael Jackson's death--the supposed "new" information that has come up in regards to his drug use or what have you. I seriously have a bone to pick with these news shows about the issue of "newsworthiness." If you read my blog, I'm pretty sure that you know that I am a journalist major (and if you haven't read it before, now you know). There are several factors, twelve to be exact, that are looked at when considering ideas for articles or news segments:

• timeliness
• proximity
• exceptional quality
• possible future impact
• prominence
• conflict
• he number of people involved or affected
• consequence
• human interest
• pathos
• shock value
• titillation component

Not all of these factors have to be met, but a majority of these should be evident in the idea, otherwise it is not newsworthy. Now, I do not doubt that a good news story can still be churned out about MJ. It's not a fresh story, per se, since his death occurred about amonth ago. However, he was a prominent figure, and his death was shocking. Because the circumstance of his death is relatively mysterious (toxicology reports have not came in yet, so there is only speculation), plays a factor in the public's interest in the story. Pathos is at play because many fans were saddened by the loss of such an icon. There is possible future impact with the federal investigations in to the allocation of drugs by doctors like the one Michael had. With these things in mind, there is no doubt that a news story about MJ can still be newsworthy.

However, I have a problem about the stories that are being released. NOTHING NEW IS BEING SAID. It's not news when you report the same shit over and over again. It's not news when you simply report speculation, and even those speculations aren't new. News is supposed to be about the facts, but instead every fricking news channel is becoming Entertainment Tonight. Nothing new can be contributed to the discussion UNTIL the toxicology results come back, so why are we still hearing stories about MJ's apparent drug addiction that "possibly" lead to his death? And more importantly, why are we constantly hearing the same speculation stories over and over and over and over again? It's not newswothy when it has already been reported!
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I would like to say, that I am a fan of Michael Jackson. I have been listening to his music since I was in my mom's uterus, and was saddened that he had died. I don't mind the news coverage of his death and the circumstance behind it, but I do mind when it's no longer GOOD coverage. The news media has milked the substance out of the story, and until the toxicology results are released, there is nothing really of substance that news outlets can report on.

Bottom line, journalists: LET IT GO! Just let it go for a while until something new comes up, THAT IS LEGITIMATE! 

Well, I'm sitting around the computer lab waiting around for a source for my sidebar story. I think I just need one more person, but since I can't interview comm majors I don't know too many people to talk to. I contacted everyone I could think of in hope they could either be interviewed today or know of some people that I could interview.

This evening is going to be hectic. It takes a while to crank out stories, and this time I'll be cranking out two. My professor approved of the ideas, so that's out of the way. I don't think I'll have too much of a hard time. I'll just have to stay focused. I could stall a bit on Friday to squeeze one more interview. Takes 10 points away (it's an 100 pt. assignment) if I don't have enough sources, so I'm not too bad off. However, I do like to get as many points as I possibly can.

In the mean time, I was thinking about creating a news blog...the only thing is I don't really know what to do it on. I should do one since more and more journalists are blogging. I thought about having a site that was dedicating to bringing important, underexposed stories to the forefront. It'll be a project that I'll start in the summer, but I need to figure out what I want to do for it. Any ideas?

For the past ten minutes I've been trying to make up a parody for this song expressing how I'm beginning to detest going to class, but I have failed miserably so I will not share what I came up with. This post will be boring as hell to read, but if you're curious about what I have to do for classes this week, please feel free to read on.

My classes are driving me insane!!!!!! I think I'm just tired, but I feel as if I'm overwhelmed with stuff to do for classes. For reporting for mass media, we have to do a personality story. The story memos that I turned in today were not for a personality story because I didn't know that's what my professor wanted. So I have to pretty much send him another story memo! I'm really happy that we only have four stories to do for this class because I have a much longer time to get a story done than if I was doing this for my school's newspaper. So cranking out another story memo doesn't throw a wrench in my plans of getting the story done early. Tomorrow evening I'm going to have a chat with a guy who is in a club called Good Deeds for Trees. I'm hoping I can get something on him, because I really don't feel like doing anything else. I think it would be good because he's actually making an effort to improve the environment. The dude seems really passionate about what he does so maybe he'll be really interesting to interview.

I also have a query letter to write and I need to write out a résumé for the same class. The query letter is a letter that you send to a publication telling the focus of your story, why it would be good for the publication to print it, why you are qualified for writing the story, and pleading with them that they except your work. I have no idea what I want to write about, but I do have an idea of who I want to write it for: Bitch Magazine. It's a feminist magazine that I heard about a long time ago on some morning talk show...it was probably over the summer, not that it really matters when I heard about them. I checked out some of their stuff, and it's pretty good. I now just need to figure out what would be a good topic for me to write about for them. And this is due Friday, so I have a few days to mull over this. The topic can change over time in the query letter since the actual story is due at the end of term, so I'm not too worried about this. However it would be nice to have a good idea so over term I could write it out before it's due.

But of course I have other coursework to do for the other classes I'm taking. For my core 250 class I have to write a reading response for Antigone. I read most of it, but I don't have time to read it all so I'll use those handy dandy Sparknotes to find out what happens in the end. Then we have to try to relate it to what we're learning in class about Plato and Aristotle. Luckily this is a one page, single-spaced response so I can bull shit my way though it. It doesn't have to be right, it just has to be turned in. We also have to write up a personal reflection, in which we are supposed to take a topic that is in the news and apply Plato's and Aristotle's ideas of metaphysics to it. I was hoping they would have posted up the prompt over the weekend so I could have written it out then, but the instructors decided to...well I shouldn't say ass around...well, I can because they could have wrote the prompt out last Friday and posted it up on blackboard. Again, it's a one pager so I think it won't be that hard to do. I'll probably wake up early tomorrow to get those done and out of the way because I just won't have time to do them any other day of the week.

For international relations, we received the questions we'll be quizzed on this Friday. I'm really glad that he (the professor) sends us these questions because that way we don't have to look around for the stuff in the book. It's a timed quiz too so it's good to have the information printed out. I hope he uses these questions in our exam too. I don't know if he does...I should check that out in the syllabus.

Lastly, for radio broadcasting I still have to figure out what I'm going to do. Thank goodness that I got to do the radio show last Saturday because I know know that the wireless internet we have on campus sucks ass! I wanted to play some songs from my imeem playlist. Although I was getting a really good signal, it took about 10 minutes for a song to load, and then sometimes it wouldn't load fully so we had to scramble to find another song to put in the CD deck so we wouldn't have a ton of dead air. On Wednesday, my group and I have to go on air for two hours, and I have a thirty minute segment at which I was supposed to present international hip-hop groups, but imeem isn't going to work. I might try using limewire...I don't know. I'll figure out something. But I'm thinking that instead of hip-hop, I'll do international pop and that way I don't have to worry so much about if there's cursing in it. I have to come up with something soon, though, because I need to write a script.

I just looked through all of this, and I realized that I spent almost an hour writing about coursework. I really can't believe I spent all of this time writing about coursework. I really need to do something other than sitting up in my house and doing fucking coursework.

I've been offered to do a multimedia project for the school newspaper. It's what I've been waiting on for a long time. It would be a story about the football team's mascot. I'd interview him, a few players, and fans and I'd get it all on camera. The thing is...it's tomorrow. I was just given notice of this today. Now, news normally takes a bit a preparation before we go to do the clip. Considering that I do help take care of my grandmother and my aunt really short notice does not work for me. It's a great opportunity, sure; however my mom is the one that has to transport me since I don't have a car, and I have no idea what I would ask these people. Give me something that I can do a little research on and give me a few days to get things together. If I did live on campus and wasn't helping in the care of others, I would jump at the chance to do it, but this isn't the reality. I need to know at least a couple of days in advance.

For the last few days all of the news shows have been covering this crap non-stop. I know it's newsworthy, but they don't have to friggin talk about it all of the damn time. Even AC360 has devoted three hours to this damn case. I like the wise cracks Anderson puts out, but it still doesn't make up for not having more of a variety of news these past few days.

F**k you O.J. and his minions!

The song I wish I had on my iPod shuffle at the moment: Konoyono Shirushi-BoA

(A bit of explanation of the title: I'm an agnostic-atheist so I was sort of being sarcastic)

Anyways, one of my stories will possibly be postponed. If that happens then that would be great. I can do the two online articles easily because they are just 300-500 words and I have enough sources for those. Really, if things work my way then I would have been assigned to just the original story that I suggested, so that's cool.

I don't know if I mentioned it, but my first story of the semester of the print edition of the news paper was on the front page (hell yeah!). So far, there have been no complaints, so that's good. So it's my fourth story to worthy of front page news.

Now I should get back to studying for my test tomorrow. Then I have to do my Spanish essay (eh!). I think I can come up with a way to make it easy for me to do.

This song is stuck in my head as I'm typing this

I may not have a job, but it sure as hell feels like it. This week I'm not just stuck with one story to write, but three articles to write for my school's newspaper. One is dues tomorrow, the other two is due Friday. On top of this I'm going to several meetings tonight for tips on online news writing and on Thursday I'm going to a lecture that will be extra credit for my American National politics class. Tonight I won't be coming home until 9ish and Thursday I won't be coming home until 10ish. It's insane! Last night I stayed on campus until 7ish because of our usual story conferences. All of my classes get out @ 1 p.m. which is when I feel like going home. I'm not doing three stories in one week for a very long time after this.

I must say, I'm fucking tired of hearing about O.J. Simpson! Last night, I came home and tuned into AC 360 (I <3 Anderson Cooper) and the whole hour was about this shit! No! No! No! I don't want to hear about O.J. anymore.