What I Learned

After doing this project, I learned so many new things. When I first started this project, I was very pro-newspaper and didn't really have a reason for it. I think I was pro-newspaper because I don't really like change. As I tried standing up for newspapers, I was unaware of the internet's capabilities.

The biggest learning point for me was realizing that we don't need the newspaper. Yes, many jobs would be lost, but is that really the point? I was so stuck on saving newspapers that I didn't even realize that the internet offered so much more.

I also learned that this whole issue's outcome is based on what the people do and what the people want. Some people want a paper in their hands and others want to browse the internet for news. The newspapers will still be around if people still by them or they will be gone if people choose to use the internet.

At first, I thought that newspapers were completely over... until I read an article about the history of the newspapers. I came across a section about how the newspaper can make alterations based on its competition. If newspapers survived radio and television, maybe they can survive the internet. The only thing is that the internet has many more features over those types of recieving media. The future of newspapers isn't a predictable as I thought it was.

I think this was a very long project (and a little painful the last few days) but it was on I topic I actually liked. I want to be a journalist, but if I can't, I will definitley go into english. I'm happy about the way I did my project and I hope the class learned something new from this topic.

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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

Hartford Courant: It's All About Plagiarism

To keep up with the changing media, I decided to find an article to write about that is relevant to the struggling newspaper industry. I immediately came across an article about the Hartford Courant. I had just saw a TV commercial from the Hartford Courant that was showing their "newly added sections" into the paper, so I assumed that they were trying to get more readers interested to keep the paper alive. When I clicked on the article, I could not believe what it was saying. The headline was "Hartford Courant sued by another paper for Plagiarism." This didn't make sense to me! I had just saw a commercial for the newspaper and thought they were making an effort to get their paper back on track.

My first instinct was "Wow, now that is embarrassing." I thought this because the Hartford Courant is the oldest newspaper in America. They've always been looked up to for basically starting print journalism. The Hartford Courant brought the news to where it is today. You'd think that such a prestigious paper would write their own articles and not rely on another newspaper's articles.

This whole issue began over the summer when locals were noticing similar articles in the Courant and in the Journal Inquirer. The Journal Inquirer is "Northern Connecticut's Hometown Paper" that competes with the Courant. The Courant also used articles from the Bristol Press, The New Britain Herald, Torrington Register-Citizen, and Waterbury Republican-American. The Journal Inquirer has posted on their website that they will be seeking damages, attorney's fees, and punitive damages.

I noticed a comment on that article from a guy named Lou. What he said made total sense to me and I would agree with it.

Lou wrote on Nov 19, 2009 11:55 AM:
"While I do like the Courant, they seem to be spiraling downward...between their dispute with Mr. Gombossy and this issue, the COurant is becoming almost Titanic like.

The newspaper plagiarizing other articles makes me not want to read their paper. They should write their own articles like other newspapers do. This is not the way you try to save your paper. Plagiarizing?! That's just dumb, it gives your paper a bad name. Whether they really plagiarized or not, it still makes me look down on them.

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Social Bookmarking: A Fast, Easy, and Growing Trend!

When I first started this project, I really didn't know what I was researching. The name "Social Bookmarking," is pretty self explanatory. I assumed "Social" means you can interact and comment with other people over the web. I assumed the Bookmarking part had to do with marking sites so you don't forget them. After viewing a few different articles on what it is, I understand why it is becoming popular.

Social Bookmarking is the practice of saving bookmarks to a public website and the ability to tag them with keywords. Basically, it is "bookmarking" a site publically, so it is easily accessed by anyone. Social Bookmarking is done on a social bookmarking site such as digg.com or delicious.com where you can save articles into your favorites on that site. For example, a professor at a university wants to show an article to his students. He saves it to his Digg account, where it can then be accessed from anywhere. If the professor had saved it to the bookmarks on his own computer, he would not have been able to access it from another computer. One of the main reasons why people social bookmark is because of the social aspect of it. On Digg.com, people can interact with other people based on the articles they've bookmarked. Therefore, you can talk to someone who likes reading the same things as you.

I personally don't social bookmark (..yet) and feel like it changing the way the internet is used. As the internet changes, more and more things are relating to "social." The internet is making things faster and easier, and its also allowing you to interact with people with similar interests. Social Bookmarking makes things saving URLs easy, while making it fun at the same time. Doing this research made me realize how much easier life is getting. It is getting to the point where we don't even need email anymore. Social Bookmarking can be very similar to Social Networking becuase you're instantly connecting with people from all over the world. After looking through multiple social bookmarking sites, Digg was definitley my favorite because it showed the "most popular" articles of the day. It knows this because people "digg" the articles they like. It shows what is popular right now. I like how social bookmarking is so instant and easy. It makes life a tad bit easier...

This google document is a presentation I did in class. If you want to find out more on social bookmarking, this powerpoint sums it up to make it easier to understand. It also shows (the very few) downsides to social bookmarking. My research page shows very detailed research on the topic and also has our cited sources.


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A 2-Day Layoff Spree by Time Inc.

As I was looking through my Google Reader, I came across a newly posted article on the New York Times' media blog called Media Decoder. Media Decoder was my original blog that I used to get research, and it continues to post things that are very relevant to my topic. I came across a post about Time Inc. issueing that they will be laying off 280 people. As I continued to scroll, I noticed a whole series of posts just relating to the layoffs. A blogger was continuously updating posts as she found new information.

On November 3, 2009, a Media Decoder blogger, Stephanie Clifford, posted an article about the job cuts. It didn't have definite statistics and was a very general post mentioning that the cuts were going to start at the Sports Illustrated. It did mention that 15-20 employees were laid off just that night, right around when she posted the blog. The post also mentioned that they were predicting more job cuts for the next day. Laying off all these people will save the incorporation over $100 million. At 10:13 am the next day, she posted a much longer blog mentioning why there will be so many job cuts. The blogger said there will be no magazines being cut and these job cuts will save the company millions of dollars. She followed this by saying that there was going to be a 10:30 conference call from Time Inc. giving more information. At 12:07 that day, Stephanie posted another blog updating people on the reasons for the cuts and how the magazine is doing with it's renevue. There were a few more continuous blogs about the job cuts because it was an ongoing issue throughout the day.

One of the points I'm making is that the same blogger posted blogs throughout the day to update people on the issue. In a newspaper, you wouldn't be able to hear the changes in the story because once it is in print, it can't be changed. Someone who reads the paper in the morning wouldn't know that there were changes or updates in the story.

I also decided to write about the 280 Time job cuts because it makes me nervous about the future. I hope to someday work for a magazine, and it never really crossed my mind that magazines were doing bad too. To me, 280 job cuts is too many, and it is a scary number. The economy and the vast internet makes me nervous about the future. The only reason why I'm not totally nervous because maybe the magazines will move to the internet. You will always need someone to write the news. This issue relates to my topic about the changing media, but it also relates to the economy and how it is affecting our lives.

Photo Credit: Time Magazine uploaded by zawmyonaing