Where I Stand: An Outline of My Presentation

As the deadline comes closer, I'm beginning to put together an outline of my presentation. Since the Media topic is so broad, it is important that I manage my ideas so that the presentation makes sense.

The first thing I am going to talk about a summary of the topic.
-What is the Media
-Why the media is important
-What the problem is
-Some more..

I'm going to talk about the history of the media
-Starting with newspapers
-Talk about where/When/why began
-historic figures
-etc.

Why the internet is overcoming newspapers
-what it has over newspapers/what it has that outlasts the newspaper
-why people want the internet
-Stats

Why Newspapers Are Crumbling
-Its problems
-Stats of number of papers still around, sales decreases
-What they have that internet does not
-Why they are less effective

Do we still need newspapers?
-What we need from the paper
~such as local news
-talk about some job loss, although it is not the main point
-is the loss for the better?

Future
-My theory of the future
-Others theory of the future
-What form I think the news will be in

At some point:
-Mention the quote from my wiki page: It's a good quote that summarizes the future of the internet/newspaper

Show my video
-Video contains
~input from other people.... all ages
~snippets of Youtube videos, quotes from all different professionals
~Not very long
~contains the song "Breakdown" by Jack Johnson

Presentation Preparation
-Type a similar to this one with my actual facts- much more detailed and in depth
-Finish the Video
-Research the history of the paper, have started but haven't had the opportunity to get more in depth
-a main thing I want to do is to get the local peoples input
-6 sources of news (saved on my digg account)

Goal:
To get an A!

"Creative Destruction": Seeing it from a Different Point of View

As I continue to do this project, I'm still trying to find the most useful information. My topic is so broad and I often get confused about what I'm actually going to be talking about. I'm still trying to find my topic title and I'm trying to narrow down exactly what I'll be presenting to the class. As I was using digg.com, a web tool I'll be using for my project, I came across an article called "Why It's Okay For Newspapers To Die." The title jumped out at me because all you see are articles about what newspapers are doing to save themselves. Not only does this article give a different perspective, but the comments on the article are also really helpful.

In the article written by Sonia Arison, I immediately noticed the caption under the heading because it narrowed down the article in a few sentences. It simply stated:

"The transition that's taking place in the news publishing industry -- from print to online -- is a healthy step in technology-driven evolution, though there will undoubtedly be some short-term pain. The loss of print newspapers is akin to the loss of the horse and buggy. The Internet offers the potential for broader and deeper news reporting."

I liked how it related the transition to the loss of horse carriages. Yes, it was a big change, but it was definitly for the better. There is some "short term pain," like the loss of jobs for the newspapers. Personally, my theory is that you will always need someone to write the news.

As I stated in the title of my blog, the author mentions this process by calling it "Creative Destruction." Creative Destruction is known as "the process by which a new technology or structure replaces the old and builds a new infrastructure." The author of the article believes that a situation like this won't go down without a fight, relating it to the government bailing out automobiles. Some say that people are panicing to the thought of not having the news in print anymore, and others are praising the fact that the news is getting out faster.

There is more to the article, but I feel like the comments on the article were much more important. One commenter made an interesting point saying that newspapers aren't the problem but journalism itself. The commenter stated that too many forms of journalism are being created and it is getting confusing for people choosing their college major. One commenter mentioned that they are just going to miss holding the hard copy with a cup of coffee in the morning. People are also saying that the quality of journalism is going down becuase the importance of the media is how fast you get it out, not the quality of the writing.

I highly recommend reading the comments on that article because they have really good points. I like to hear normal peoples point of view on the issue. This article gave me new ideas for my research paper and I'm definitley going to refer to those comments for more ideas.

Picture cited: http://dculibrary.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/newspapers4.jpg

Final Project: Where to Begin?

It's the start of December and we were given our final project for the class. A few months ago, we chose a topic and have done multiple projects on it. I chose the topic of Media because I am personally interested in what goes on to get the news out and how it is recieved. The media is such an important topic because of its changes and evolution. As time goes on, people have more options than just the newspaper, which is beginnning to be a problem for the newspapers. The internet has made getting the news fater and easier. People are opening up their laptops for the latest news, whereas the newspaper is publishing news that is already sometimes already known. At first I didn't know where to begin on this project because the topic is so broad, but now I think I am on my way.


I started off really confused and didn't know where to begin. We were told that we needed to use 3 tools that we haven't used before to collect and present information. I spent quite a few days on go2web20.net, which is a website that has hundreds of online tools to choose from. It allows you to narrow down your search by clicking on different topics. I started by clicking the "To-Do" button because I wanted to find sites that would help manage my time. I would post due dates and post updates on what I'm doing. I found a website called diary.com, which allows you to do all the things I just mentioned. A cool thing about Diary is that Mr. Miller can accept my request and view my page and recieve the updates. This website is where I am storing some of my ideas, but I'm also using Google Documents. It doesn't count as one of my tools, but I think it is a really good way to use an "online version" of Microsoft Word.

One of my main ways of presenting my information is a video. I personally like making movies so I decided to do something that I enjoy. On Window's Movie Maker, I am going to edit a video of the Changing Media using clips of people I interview and pictures. I am also going to use people's YouTube videos and chop them up and insert them into my video. I've seen people do it but never knew how. I then found a tool from go2web2o.net called Online Video Converter. This tool will take the youtube video and convert it to the form you need to edit. It will save on my computer and be easily accessed. This tool allows me to get opinions from people online who I have never met before.

I am not totally set on my final tool but I think it may be digg.com. Digg.com is a social bookmarking site that you can join and view articles of people who like the same things as you. The other day I was experimenting digg.com and found great articles on the newspapers dying out. I will use digg.com as a tool to collect information and easily save URLs.

I hope to get this project done and manage my time. I don't mind presentations and this is much better than doing a research paper. I'm actually excited to make a movie because it is something I like to do on my own time. I'm unsure of using Digg, but if I am using a different tool, I hope to find it soon.

Picture: from Photobucket by spotus