012

Group Work

One of my least favorite things I have had to do in school is group work. I am aware that I will have to deal with people all my life, no matter what I do, and working together is difficult, if not impossible, to avoid completely.

I am a social butterfly most of the time and get along with most people so my aversion to group work is not due to any asocial tendencies, as I have none. It is more due to the difficulty of being able to pick times to meet with people that will be convenient, and also due to the fact that many times, I end up in a group with a person or people who are not willing to do their share of the work. I always go into my group willing to do my share of the work and expecting others to be willing to do theirs, but it does not always play out that smoothly. Almost every group I have been in has had an unfair division of work and more than once -- make that, many times -- I have had to pick up other peoples' slack.

A dilemma arises when your grade is in danger. Do you leave the work that is not yours for the other person to do even if you are unsure if they will do it? Or do you take on the extra responsibility, knowing it is unfair to you, to save your grade and your group's grade? Frankly, I would rather just have an entire assignment to myself. It is far easier for one person to do a project that need not be divided.

011

Finals

Through reading my classmates' blogs, I have come to realize that I no longer need to adhere to the prompts in the textbook as ideas for my entries. So for my remaining blog posts, I will write about what I feel inspired to write about.

As the spring semester at Manhattanville draws to a close, final exams are upon us. Everyone feels the pressure and there is no better barometer to use than the library to judge just how anxious students are about their exams. The library is never as close to being full to capacity as it is the second-to-last and last weeks of school.

Midterms do not have as much of a cumulative effect on library attendance for any given week because midterms are administered over a span of about three weeks in the middle of the semester as classes go on normally. Most of the midterm exams and presentation and paper due dates happen in the week of classes before Columbus Day weekend, but it depends upon the professor and the class.

Finals week is more of a production. Classes end the week before finals week, which is devoted to the exams. It causes a library which sometimes seems completely empty to turn crowded. Where I can usually have my pick of computers, it is now almost impossible to find one that is unoccupied. The sometimes almost-empty cafe is now mobbed with study groups and the quiet room is heavily dotted with students slumped over tables and desks, frantically highlighting in textbooks or scribbling on note cards.

As a commuter, I mostly study at home but I definitely feel the pressure of finals week. We are all at Manhattanville for the main purpose of becoming educated, and we might as well get good grades.

010

Do you use the Web to find specific material or just to surf and see what's there?

Usually when I sit down at my computer, I have some idea of what I want to do on the Web. If I am using the Web for school, I will most likely want to find specific material for research purposes, e-mail a professor or something along those lines.

If I am using the web for my own amusement, I still have some idea as to what sites I will visit. I have signed up for a few social networking sites, as have nearly all people in my generation who have computer access, so I check those when I go online just for the sake of going online. I will also check my e-mail and if any news stories interest me, I will click on the link and briefly scan the article. I also love to shop online and I get e-mails from many different websites where I shop alerting me of sales and special deals. I sometimes buy things on eBay and this summer, I wish to learn how to sell things on eBay as well. The Internet is a great tool for keeping in touch with the people in my life and I do this through the aforementioned social networking sites (such as Facebook) and e-mail.

However, I have occasionally clicked around, surfing the web at times. It is very easy to start out by clicking on one link and ten minutes later, you will be on a completely different site and not be able to remember where you started or how you got there. After I have done this in the past, I have felt guilty for wasting my valuable time, so I try to stay on course with what I wish to do online when I sit down at my computer.

009

The concept of objectivity is a controversial one in the field of journalism. Why do you think it causes so much controversy?

Journalists are human and humans have opinions, which are sometimes hard to hide. Many news publications strive to be objective in their reporting, but each reporter or journalist has their own subjective view of people, events, and so forth.

As many people who do not live under rocks know, certain news corporations have reputations for "leaning" to one end of the political spectrum or another, instead of staying neutral and reporting events as they happen without any further interpretations or biases. For example, FOX Broadcasting Company is known to be politically right-leaning (conservative) in their presentation of news.

Being that it is difficult for people, including well-trained journalists, to completely hide the points of view of themselves or those they work for, opinions will be formed by the viewers about the network and the reporters. Controversy is then caused because the news is supposed to be objective, but it is almost impossible for people to be objective about anything. Perhaps one day it shall be realize that complete objectivity may be an unrealistic goal?

Still, trying for objectivity in the news has been a tradition since the dawn of mass media and old habits die hard. As long as reporters still have opinions and readers and viewers of the mass media still expect their news to be served to them objectively, there will be controversy and angst surrounding this concept. That is likely the reason why people gravitate towards news networks that hold similar beliefs as they do, and why those news networks exist and thrive in the first place.

008

What are the advantages and disadvantages of writing a letter as opposed to making a telephone call when you want to make personal contact with someone?

There are many advantages and disadvantages that come along with opting to write a letter to someone instead of calling them on the telephone. One of the major advantages of writing a letter is that the person has more time to look at what you have written and will be better able to "digest" it before getting back to you.

On the other hand, a disadvantage of choosing to write a letter over calling them on the phone is that you have to wait for their reply. When talking on the phone, you get a better idea of how the person on the other line feels about what you are saying; you get more of an immediate reaction from them.

However, the downsides of writing a letter instead of making a telephone call should not completely stop anyone from writing letters. Letters look professional and generally organize thoughts better than the average phone call. People should be careful, though, when preparing a lettr because as James Glen Stovall (author of Writing for the Mass Media) says: "The well-written letter is impressive and appreciated by the receiver. The poorly written letter can establish negative feelings on the part of the receiver that are difficult to overcome." So one should proceed with caution when starting to write a letter. There is a thin line between sounding like you are trying to be too professional and not sounding professional enough. When one tries too hard, they can risk sounding patronizing but when one is too laid back in their attitude when writing a letter, they can risk sounding like they are not taking it seriously enough. Through making a telephone call instead, someone can gauge their own tone as words leave their mouth.

007

Some people say that loading time - the time it takes for a site to appear fully on a computer screen - is critical to a site's retaining visitors. Others argue that loading time is not nearly as critical as some believe. What do you think? How patient are you in letting sites load onto your computer?

I believe that a site's loading time is a critical factor in regards to the retention or loss of visitors. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, people have quickly become accustomed to not having to wait as long for the average website to load on their computer screen. Wireless Internet has replaced dial-up and sped up the average time it takes to do virtually anything on the world wide web.

These changes have had largely positive results, but they have also made many people impatient. These people, admittedly including myself, do not particularly enjoy waiting a full minute for a website to load onto a computer screen. However, if the site is really great and useful, people will tend to use those qualities to justify the wait.

Firstly, though, people need to see what is on the site in order for them to determine whether or not they think the loading time is worth it. I know that if I am forced to wait for a website to load, I will go off and do other things and forget that I have the website loading and then I will lose interest in it. This is not something I would want to know visitors of my website were doing!

Alas, we are presented with a chicken-or-egg dilemma, so I think that the safe way to retain visitors is for a site to have as quick a loading time as possible so that people immediately know that they like the site and would like to return.

006

The author says that a direct quote "should be the exact words of the speaker." Can you think of any circumstances in which this would not be true?

A circumstance under which a direct quote may not have to be the exact words of the speaker is one in which the speaker is not eloquent or uses bad grammar. For the purpose of uniformity in an article, the writer should use good grammar in the parts of the article that they write themselves and if the speaker uses anything less than good grammar, they should clean it up so that it matches the rest of the article.

When the exact words of the speaker are confusing, excessive, or sound unintellgent, their language should be "cleaned up" by the writer of the article, but the "gist" of what the speaker says should stay the same. A writer should strive to make sure the message the speaker is trying to convey gets across to the reader as the speaker had originally intended, even if that means not using the speaker's exact words if they sound unintelligent and interrupt the flow of the journalistic piece. Also, if the speaker has used coarse language that might offend readers or if the speaker has used jargon that many readers may not understand, it might benefit the writer to rephrase what they have said in a way that the readers might be able to better digest.

If I were to rephrase this rule, I would say that it is important for a direct quote to convey the exact meaning of what a speaker has said. Using the exact words of the speaker in a direct quote would be ideal, but not at the cost of the quality of a piece.

005

Some critics argue that newspapers should abandon the inverted pyramid news story structure. They say that television and radio deliver news much faster than newspapers; therefore, newspapers should not be as concerned with getting information to readers quickly as with getting more complete and accurate information. What do you think?

I do not think that the inverted pyramid news story structure should be abandoned by newspapers. The inverted pyramid news story structure provides a way for readers of the mass media (mainly newspapers), to get the most important information across in the first few sentences that they read.

Why deprive the newspapers and other printed mass media of this way of getting information across to readers as fast as they feel they need the information they are seeking?  If the inverted pyramid news story structure was completely done away with, there would be many frustrated newspaper readers, scanning an article for the most important facts.

Different structures have their places and those places are in other types of news stories. Feature stories can use a non-inverted pyramid structure freely, and they often do. Most feature stories are not pieces that a reader approaches with an urgent need to know the most important details right off the bat; they are more likely to sit back and read the story as they would a novel, at a leisurely pace.

In fact, through learning about writing for the media this year I have come to consider the inverted pyramid news story the backbone of newspapers. Without it, information would be hidden and the people who want to obtain certain facts would have to search for them. If this were the case, newspapers would be much less popular and not serve the purpose they were intended to serve. The inverted pyramid news story structure is, in fact, the last thing that should be abandoned by the newspapers.

004

Why is it important for a journalist to get information from more than one source?

It is important for a journalist to get information from more than one source because there is more than one side to every story. Journalists need to strive to not show bias and to present an objective opinion. In most cases, the greater the variety of sources a journalist uses, the less biased their piece will come across to their audience.

Also, predictably, the more individuals a journalist interviews, the greater the pool of information from which the journalist is able to select what they wish to include in their piece. By interviewing only one source, a journalist has a very limited amount of information they can use. If, by any chance, a journalist is confused by what one source says, perhaps talking to another source can clarify it for the journalist.

No matter the number of sources a journalist has interviewed for a piece, it is crucial that all of the sources be trusted and reliable. The validity of a journalist often rests on the validity of the sources they have used, so using sources that people trust is something that every journalist should strive to do when interviewing for a piece.

A journalist's credibility is a very important aspect of their career and they should strive not to jeopardize it. If a journalist continually produces stories that sound very much one-sided, the journalist's credibility can consequently suffer along with their validity. Journalism is all about examining stories and that examination entails many different sides and angles, not just one narrow viewpoint. More sources are needed for a broader view of a journalist's subject.

003

One of the criticisms of the news media that many people make is that journalists emphasize "bad news" rather than "good news." What do you think people mean by that? Do you agree? Do the news values listed in this chapter mean that journalists are more likely to look for "bad news" than "good news"?

I am aware that I personally avoid watching the news on television because I feel as if most of the stories are "bad news", and I do not spend much time watching television so I think I would rather watch The Soup or The Office and laugh instead of constantly being paranoid about being the victim of a rape, murder, or identity theft. In my Theories of Communication class in Fall 2008, I learned that "heavy" television viewers (those who watch 5 or more hours per day) view the world as a less safe place than those who view less television. This phenomenon has been called "Mean World Syndrome". I strive to not be a victim of this syndrome and live somewhat in blissful ignorance. I know it sounds selfish, but if something does not affect me, I will not think much about it. The world is not always a nice place, but do we constantly need to be reminded of that fact? "Bad news" tends to attract the attention of more people than "good news". By "bad news", I mean stories of unfortunate events that are fatal or scarring (emotionally or otherwise). Many people like to be scared and are fascinated by tragedy, and the media humors them. Hearing a heartwarming story about a kitten being rescued from a high tree branch by firefighters is less engrossing than hearing a story about...something I don't even want to imagine. Even to me, the eternal optimist who chooses to hide from the big, bad news stories, the tragedies are more engrossing. It is easier to be compelled to Google more about a tragic event than a heartwarming story. I believe that the bizarre and unusual are news values that play a significant role in the selection of "bad news" by journalists.

002

The author makes a strong case for knowing the rules of grammar, but some people do not think that this knowledge is very important. They believe that you can write well without knowing these rules. What do you think?

I believe that knowing the rules of grammar, as well at utilizing them, can never be overrated. A good writer knows this, and strives to learn these golden rules by which to write. As a writer, especially in the professional sense, one needs to consider that if their writing is read by others, those people will develop a perception of them through reading what they have written. This perception will likely include opinions and estimations about the writer's amount and quality of education. Suppose someone is essentially a "good writer", meaning that writing comes easily to them and they consider it a strength, but do not think that they need to pay much attention to the rules of grammar. If the author of the book read something this person wrote, he would likely not be able to get past the grammatical errors and disregard for the rules he so highly regards. There is no harm in paying attention to grammar and learning how to better use it, but there very well may be harm in neglecting to do so. Grammar is also important because it is a major organizing component of writing. It is possible to have good ideas about which to write, but when one brings those ideas to paper, they must be organized in a coherent manner. Words should be used as they are meant to be used, and sentences should be structured in a way that makes sense. If these things are not done, the writing will consequently suffer because the reader will not digest it as well as if it had been grammatically correct.

001

As clearly and succinctly as possible, describe your academic background, future plans, and how this class fits in with these things.

I am a Communication Studies major, planning on a career in Public Relations, or a similar field that my major will help me achieve. Writing for the Media will help me learn how to write in a way that is professional, concise, and appropriate for mass publication. Apparently, the way I have written in many of the previous classes I have taken (such as Creative Writing), will not "fly" in the world of mass publication. Word count is an important element when writing for the mass media, as well as structure. I have already taken college courses in Journalism and Public Relations, and I believe both of them have helped me hone my writing skills and add an element of sophistication and professionalism. More words does not make a better article, and proper spelling and grammar are key. Writing for the mass media entails getting a message across to a broad audience, in an orderly fashion. I expect to learn how to do this, and add more skills to the collection that I have gathered from my other, similar college courses. When typing a resume for the viewing of potential employers, it is often helpful to mention courses you have taken that would be helpful in your desired job. I believe that mentioning this class would be an asset to me, letting potential employers know that I am capable of writing in this concise, professional, easy-to-digest way for mass audiences. I hope, as well, that this blog will help me adhere to word counts and guide me in writing the way I should, for the job I want. I have come to find that as well as dressing for the job one wants, one should be able to write for the job one wants.