Ana Colores Palmer
04/21/09
The case of Larry Matthews is a good example of an ethical dilemma in the media and the limits of freedom of speech. While he was researching child pornography on the Internet, he sent and received images of child porn and one of these images was sent to an undercover FBI officer. The reporter was arrested. Unfortunately his defense was very weak because he had no notes, story drafts or evidence of interviews. So the question here is if this case was fair. Yes, because of the fact that he did not have evidence that he was working on a story makes it suspicious. And the other question that it raises is why he did not started with the experts and from there, try to go around and find information with out the necessity of exchanging child porn. There are other ways to do this.
Also didn’t he know that covering certain topics need some legal advice? A lot of news organizations have to be advised by lawyers. And ethically speaking, is it OK to break the law to get a news story? This is a tough question to ask as a journalist.
This of course could affect the job of a reporter in the future because it places limits on the way a reporter can gather information and gives more liberty to the government to restrict freedom of speech. This is the struggle between people’s rights and protecting the public, but let’s remember that the job of a journalist is to also be resourceful and find ways to tell the story.
There is a difference between pornography and child porn. Pornography is legal, but child pornography is not. Usually pornography is produced with the consent of the party that is going to be taped or photographed. This person is an adult making choices, but a child is innocent and does not have the maturity to make that type of decision about his or her body. Mentally and physically it is not that strong to oppose to the demands of an adult to use him o her for this purposes. This is why the production of this material is illegal.
What was before a way of social communication now has become a conduit for mass communication, especially for delivering the news. News organizations are delivering “twitter content.”
They add the headline and a link to the news piece from their website. Some news organizations such as CNN and NPR have three types of twitter; one for news updates, another one for breaking news and a third one for co
mmentary or blogs.
Besides CNN and NPR, news organizations such as The New York Times, Fox News, and the L.A Times are using this form of communication to deliver the news. If you go to the Twitters of these organizations, they post different headlines or lead with different news.
It would not be a surprise if this form of social network makes news organizations web pages outdated. With twitter people can update their tweets from their phone, which if we think about it in the context of news, mobile journalist can update and deliver breaking news instantly and since the nature of breaking news is “developments will come later; we will keep you posted,” this fits the twitter format of posting 130 characters.
Also this is a good fit for the way people now consume the news. They want fast and to the point. And since pretty soon a lot of things will be mobile such as having everything in our phone, people will get the news faster; they will post comments and post pictures instantly. So twitter looks very promising.
Ana Colores Palmer
03/31/2009
Media storm Unintended Consequences
With this story media storm uses still pictures, narration and music back ground. They did not have pictures of the actual rapes(thanks God) but the expression of the victims was enough to tell the story. In some parts,they also use some video. The narration that translate the women stories uses woman voices that have an accent which brings the viewer closer and it makes it more realistic. This story almost make cry so that means it did its job to convey or tell a story. The pictures are simple but combine with the sound and video elements help to tell the story. They first presented the women and their stories and at the end they put the children as the end consequence or result of this genocide. What is very interesting is that the story is tell from the point of view of these women and no third person is in the picture. This makes it more powerful.
Ana Colores Palmer
03/10/2009
Media storm: The Malboro Marine
Point of view
This multimedia story is written or tell from the point of view of a Marine who fought in Falluga Iraq and came back home.
Dramatic Question
How to deal with the guilt and torment of killing a human being in a combat situation. It was a duty.
Emotional Content
The marine shares his emotions, fears, and torments after coming back from combat. His emotional appeal allow us to at least try to sympathize with him.
The gift of your Voice:
the melancholic tone of the marine’s voice sets the tone and says it all.
Soundtrack
Melancholic piano, soft. It says this is sad.
Economy:
The images and the track most of the time match or fit perfect. I like when the sound of a zippo is close and at the same time the shoot closes. Sometimes the images said it all and provide background to the track
Pacing:
Slow and Melancholic
Ana Colores Palmer
03/05/09
BJ Lewis
BJ Lewis is a reporter for the Denton Record Chronicle. He took the job last year. Before coming to Denton, he was the education reporter in a newspaper in Victoria Texas. He graduated from Louisiana Tech. In Addition to covering the county government, he also produces video for the paper’s website. He likes the writing and the more traditional approach to the news, but he says it is important to learn the new multimedia skills because the times are changing and so the way news is done.
He says it is not good to just shove the content put in the print version. Other media outlets are already adopting other measures, and the Denton Record Chronicle has to go in the multimedia direction to stay competitive.
Right now the economy is affecting the newsrooms. He says last week some one had to be let go. He says in times like this it is important to know more than just writing. He says is important to have a multimedia skills set to ideally shoot video take pictures record audio, and give more to the content of a story. He did not have any classes for multimedia. He says he envies the position some students are now because they are learning about multimedia. For BJ was different, he had to learn by trial and error.
Right now, because the multimedia idea for the news is new, BJ says the work dynamics are not well defined. It is more informal because a story can have or cannot have video, and the editors do not give specifications how they want the video. They just trust him to go and get it.
Only two people shoot video at Denton RC: he and the education reporter. He says he is trying to get other reporters to get the skills, but he says some people are put off by it because they think this is not for them and prefer to stay with the skills they have now. He hopes the paper brings workshops to start training the reporters. This would be beneficial because reporters would be able to bring more content.
BJ thinks knowing about multimedia is important for this generation of reporters because these skills would make the difference between getting and keeping a job in this industry.
Ana Colores Palmer
03/03/09
Crowd sourcing
Dallas School District wants to end bus evaluation drills
The article talks about why some Dallas area school districts are supporting a legislation that frees the school districts from the mandatory state bus evaluation drills. Currently, the bus evaluation drills has to be performed twice a year. The Texas Legislature approved it in 2007. Six of the bills proposed require a one drill a year instead of two. Five others would repeal the mandatory drills altogether. Some school districts that do not use school buses argued that this drills are a huge unreasonable cost. Others complain that this mandatory drills make the district lose valuable class time and local control. But
Senator John Carona, who added a provision requiring the evaluation drills, still believes the evaluation drills are not excessive, but the senator is filing legislation to require the drills just once a year.
Crowd sourcing:
1- Look at the comments the readers made about the article. if something is interesting contact the person who made the comment.
2. Have a section in the article where it localize it to the Denton community. This will encourage readers to summit comments supported with links to other information or documents they have about the specific subject.
3. Ask people ask people in another section if they would like to summit information about the alternative evacuation plan Highland park has for its district.
4. Twitter
The article talks about Texas homeowners are the ones who pay the highest insurance rates in the nation. The article refers to a study from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. It was released on Monday and it showed that the average premium in Texas for the common homeowner policy was $1,409 a year compared to the nation wide average of $804.
Historically, Texas has been the most expensive state for home insurance because of the unpredictable weather such as hurricanes, hailstorms and tornados. Mark Hanna of the Insurance Council of Texas said the study from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners mislead to a false impression of insurance rates in Texas. He said that a in study by the Texas Department of Insurance would place Texas third behind Florida and Louisiana. He also said the insurance department’s claims that rates actually dropped 0.7 percent in 2006 rather than the 2.7 percent the insurance commissioners’ study said.
Crowd sourcing:
1-Twitter
2- Ask people to summit their experience with this issue.
3-Ask people what are other problems that could potentially develop if this situation still going on.
Citigroup would lower payments
Citigroup Inc. said it would lower mortgage payments for some homeowners to an average of $500 a month for three months. This would be part of a new program to help unemployed people. Qualified unemployed homeowners could get assistance from Citigroup under the Homeowner Unemployment Assist program. The program include those that are 60 days or more past due on their mortgages or in foreclosure and can pay the reduce amount. Homeowners must have a first mortgage loan that is owed and serviced by CitiMortgage Inc. and comply with government sponsored enterprise limits. The house must be the homeowner primary residence. The company predicts thousands of homeowners may be eligible got the program. People who participate in the program and still without jobs after three months will have their mortgages handled individually according to their situation to come up with the best payment option.
Crowd sourcing :
1- Ask people to summit their situation with their mortgage.
2- Post a poll asking people if they believe this could help them. What ever they answer ask them to elaborate why?
Ana Colores PAlmer
02/24/2009
Story : Potential Re-vote
Yesterday the student organization Students for a Democratic Society had a table outside the union. The members of this organization were on a mission: to get 750 student signatures to present to the Student Government Association before March 13. SDC hopes to get a re-vote on the issue of charging students 7 dollars more per credit hour to build the new football stadium.
The members of this student organization asked students walking by if they would like to sign for this cause. Some students participated – others where not interested.
The vice president David Sindt was one of the petitioners. He says there where some problems with the procedures for the stadium vote. He says only 14-percent of the total student body voted and from that percentage a little more than half voted to get their consent for the construction of the stadium.
“In terms of raw numbers that’s something like seven-percent of the total student population. It’s what the university is basing their consent of the students to pay for it,” says Sindt
Sindt says there are better ways the university could have done the vote. For instance he says one way students could be more involved in a referendum vote is to include the referendum as a part of the university registration process.
Another of the petitioners, Andrew Teeter, says he is more concerned with the democratic process the university used for the referendum than with the actual building of the stadium. He says students told the organization that there was coercion in the voting booths. He says people running the booths tried to convince students who voted no to vote yes.
“So that’s not democratic,” says Teeter
The President of the Student Government Association Jeff Kline says the 14-percent student vote was actually the highest voter turn out we ever had in any election year at UNT. It is double that what he has ever seen.
“To say that is not enough is odd because it’s one of the best any university could do. It is impossible to get 100 percent in any election,” said Kline.
He says he spoke with the Students for a Democratic Society organization. He says the information that they are passing out is some lies, some of it is half true and some of it is true.
He says some of the lies he heard where that only 1500 students voted in the election. He says 5000 students voted in the election. He also heard that in the middle of election week the system crashed, and that only the yes votes where kept. He says there is no way to know who voted only how many students voted, and if SGA wanted to know who voted, the organization would have to go trough 20 different hoops to find out.
But the most important question remains. If Students for a Democratic Society bring all the signatures required, what is next? Well a process would be started to consider a re-vote and it works in this way:
The SGA president brings the signatures to the adviser. The adviser verifies all the names and all the ID numbers on it and all the number of signatures. Then, It will be given to the election board, which decides if it is valid. If the board decides is valid, then it is put on the ballot and students get to vote on it during the election from March 30 to April first.
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Ana Colores Palmer
02/17/2009
The 5 “I”
El Siglo de Torreon is the newspaper of my hometown, the City of Torreon. This news website was analyzed base on the criteria of the 5 “I’s”: Interactivity , Involvement, Immediacy, Integration, and In-Depth Opportunities.
El Siglo de Torreon offers its readers interactivity. The news website has a poll question, a box where readers can look for the latest news, see the most read article, look for the most voted poll and the most popular videos. In its news stories, the site allows readers to post comments related to the note. Each news story has icons for the readers to click and send emails to the newspaper, but not to a specific reporter.
In the case of involvement, El Siglo de Torreon does not have a lot of tools, but they do have a place where readers can send pictures and comments about something they would like to complain about . The pictures and comments are posted. This section is on the home page.
El Siglo de Torreon does not do a good job with immediacy mostly because the newspaper does not tell people a news story is happening “right now”. In December, there was a shooting in the city related to the drug cartels. This happened in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the city. The newspaper got the story online, but it did not tell the readers with big black or red letters this was happening. It took me several minutes to find the story. This could be in part from fear of the drugcartels, which have threatened the media in the city. At this hour (7:49 am) there is no updates or new stories. The news website got a new story (7:54 am).
El Siglo de Torreon is doing a good job with integration. This news organization produces its own multimedia content. Their reporters produce videos and photo galleries. These galleries just have some text, but no sound. The videos are not integrated in written stories, but the text does have pictures (at least one).
This news website does not offer much In-depth coverage. One of the problems, as mention before, is some lack of integration of video or sound in the written pieces. Another problem in the written articles is the absence of links in the stories. The news website does have a box with “related articles” on the right hand side, but it is more beneficial for the reader to find the link inside of the story. The reader can pause, click on the link and have access to background information right away instead of scrolling in that box to find the related story.
Ana Colores Palmer
02/03/2009
Observation story
It was Sunday afternoon. The weather was perfect: some how chilly, but still enjoyable. Stephen and I were going to Starbucks to do some work. Stephen had to do some programming, and I had to finish reading some chapters assigned by my professors.
We arrived at the Starbucks at the corner of Campbell Street and North Central expressway. We got out of the car. Sitting outside were several groups of people. One group had only Asian people. I could not tell if they where Chinese or Vietnamese, but they where speaking a foreign language. On the left side of the small patio were two women chatting and enjoying a hot drink. Stephen opened the entrance door of the coffee shop and immediately the Starbuck’s atmosphere hit my senses. I could smell that roasted coffee, hear that 1930’s jazz CD playing in the background and the people talking. The cookies, the breads and the cakes caught my eye. Then I heard her voice, “may I help you?” the Barista took our order of a tall drip black coffee and an unsweetened passion tea.
We sat down with our drinks and started doing our work. I could hear the sound of Stephen’s fingers touching the keyboard in his laptop while I was concentrating on reading chapter one in my Electronic News Gathering book. Then an older man sat in the table that was in front of us. He had ordered a sandwich and a big white coffee mug filled with steaming cappuccino. He was holding a book and was reading it while enjoying his drink and food. I was jealous. I wanted to be him for a moment. Just there reading a good book and enjoying the coffee, but instead I was reading a text book and drinking a cold flavorless drink to keep up with school and to follow by heart my fitness plan. I thought about the biography of Elizabeth the First, I was reading over the break. I wanted to be reading it, but I had some work to do, so I went back to my drink, my textbook and my reality.
Ana Colores Palmer
02/10/2009
Comparing Media
TV news web sites
The television website of Univision 23 is difficult website to navigate mostly because it does not organize its navigation support very well . It lacks some if the basic information such as about and contact us. The other basic information is hard to find because it is at the bottom and it is written with a small font. There stories are written in web format, but they just have links and a picture. Not a lot of videos. It is difficult to find information related to some story in the news cast. It looks like they have not converge the web page in order for people to find news.
The other television news web page KOCO 5 in Oklahoma it is better on navigation terms. Their basic information can be found at the end of the page. It is better organize it has an about and contact information. the contact information provides telephone number and address and also people can write an email in this same page of the contact information. The news stories are writing in web format. This page has more multimedia and links in every story. Some of those links take you right away to a story related to this story in order for the reader to have the background information to understand the story.
News Papers websites
The Alexandria Times newspaper website is very basic. It does have Basic information,but this page is not very inviting. It has the address and phone number, but not a link to their email. The only way people can find a link to the email is by scrolling down to contact us which should be with the about page or just all the contact information in the contact link. The news stories in this website are written in inverted pyramid style but there is not multimedia in the stories. Not even links with in the story. They have a small section of multimedia but in the home page and it is not updated.
This website does not provide some of the basic information in the home page. It does not have an about and contact us. The search engine works fine to find stories. The news articles do not have links with in the stories, but they do rely on multimedia such as video. Written in web styles, but some how long. Not to mush scrolling.
Ana Colores Palmer
02/11/09
News vs. Blogs
WFAA has the story of Sharla Butler, a 16-yea-old girl track and field athlete that suddenly died this month after suffering seizures. In the story, the reporter Joe Trahan uses storytelling techniques. The narration is written in third person. The story allows the viewer to concentrate on the central character, Sharla. The sound bites and video used help the viewer to imagine Sharla when she was alive. In contrast, Trahan’s blog focuses on the feelings he had when doing this story. The language changes from third person to first person. The story talks about the facts in this girl’s story, but the blog lets us discover more the perception of the reporter about this news piece. For example he writes in his blog, “the story we ran last night on Lancaster’s Sharla Butler is probably the most emotional I’ve ever covered.” This comment would never make it to air because reporters are only there to bring the story, not to give their opinions and feelings. The nice thing about the blog is that Trahan included a piece of information that was not on the news piece. He says Sharla was becoming a star. Her coach was expecting her to lower her time in the field this year in the 400 meters. Sometimes the blog is a good tool for readers that would like to know more about a story because reporters would give information that did not make it into the story due to time constrains.
