Extra, Extra! Read All About...Anything

I can't say that I have ever been overwhelmed by the amount of news sources out there, or by the number of reading materials available to me as a consumer, but it seems as if this class may be changing that. On a recent trip to Barnes & Noble, I paid much more attention to the magazine racks than ever before. Upon noticing the vast amount of publications available at any given time, I began wondering about the idea of newsworthiness, and whether it even matters in a time where anything and everything has its own monthly magazine.

We may live in a digital age, but a quick glance at the B&N magazine racks is enough to make anyone question the reason for Google. These newsstands contain a plethora of information on any subject, all divided under convenient little subheads such as "Sports," "Music," or "Men's Interest". It seems as if these magazines can answer any question, whether the reader is craving the latest interview with his or her favorite celebrity or wondering about the easiest options for do-it-yourself Halloween costume. And what's more, they attract readers with promises of improvements both real and abstract -- ranging from how to get "Bigger Biceps Now!" (Men's Health) or the opportunity to "Find Your True Calling!" (O: The Oprah Magazine).

Additionally, these publications are not driven solely by journalists. Several independent literary magazines populated the stands, featuring user-submitted prose and poetry. Magazines focused on cooking and entertaining included recipes and party-planning tips from readers sprinkled throughout their stories. And publications about popular television shows (yes, shows ranging from Supernatural to Dora the Explorer are each subject of their own magazine) have sizable sections of fan-submitted art, stories, and letters.

In William A. Gamson's article News as a Social Construction, he argues that sources play a large role in determining the newsworthiness of an event, stating that "we can best understand the importance or newsworthiness of a happening as the outcome of a process in which sources sometimes compete in fostering or retarding the amount of media attention. It is not an objective property of events that the media merely reflect with varying degrees of accuracy" (Gamson 22). But after observing the number of magazines at any given Barnes & Noble, does this competition of sources even exist anymore? With the amount of user-submitted material that appears in each issue, it seems as if anyone can get his or her ideas into print.

This question gets even more complicated when moving beyond the newsstand and into the World Wide Web, where anyone can weigh in on the topics of their choosing. The amount of competition that Gamson claims is the driving force behind determining what’s newsworthy is deteriorating. So what does this say about newsworthiness? Does our ability to pick up a magazine on almost any topic or virtually contribute our thoughts on current events render the very idea of "newsworthiness" meaningless?

Works Cited:
Gamson, William A. "News as a Social Construction". What's News. New York: The Free Press, 1984.

High School Audiences

While home for October Break I picked up a copy of my high school's newspaper The Spoke, which I worked on for all four years of my high school career. Much of what we have discussed so far in this class has led me to examine my time as a member of the Spoke staff in a different light.

During my first year on The Spoke the paper operated much like any high school publication, primarily featuring stories about what was happening in the school community. But after an investigative report about a gambling ring within my school was published in the winter of my sophomore year, the focus of the paper quickly shifted from reflecting everyday life in the halls of Conestoga High School to prominently featuring stories on broad, controversial topics. Over the next two years, The Spoke covered everything from the lives of LGBTQ students at Conestoga to an increase in teenage pregnancy at the school to a controversy over the criminal activity of school employees.

After browsing through my copy of the October 2011 issue of The Spoke it seems like not much as changed, with the lead story of this issue focusing on the struggles of teenagers dealing with depression. After seeing that the focus of The Spoke has remained unchanged in my time away from Conestoga, and having now taken the first half of this class, I began to wonder about the reasoning behind the shift in The Spoke's lead stories.

After spending a good portion of class time discussing Deciding What's News, I began to think about the process behind news selection in smaller news organizations, particularly those of high schools, colleges and small communities. It would seem to me that these media outlets select their stories based on the overall composition of their population; they know the essential values and ideals of their community and select their news around that. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that the main audience for The Spoke is the students and families of Conestoga High School, so perhaps that's why I find it odd that this paper has chosen to use itself as a forum for debating heavy issues rather than informing the community about occurrences within the school. High school newspapers typically focus on stories about the spring musical and the championship soccer team that will inform readers about what is happening within their own community, rather than trying to localize topics that affect a larger population.

I also found the excerpt from The Death and Life of American Journalism to be an interesting read in tandem with the questions that I'm asking, because The Spoke's shift towards more investigative stories and in-depth reports seems to be teaching students about a method of journalism that is rapidly becoming more difficult to produce. McChesney and Nichols note in their chapter The Crisis in Journalism that "investigative journalism was first on the endangered species list [because] it cost a great deal and required patience and experienced journalists to be done properly" (24). As print journalism continues to evolve for a 21st-century audience, the need for deeply comprehensive journalistic studies is lessening. So I'm confused as to why The Spoke has chosen to favor this type of reporting over others, when its primary goals should be to (1) inform the community about news from within the high school and (2) educate students about the operations of current news media organizations.

Works Cited
McChesney, Robert W. and Nichols, John. "The Crisis in Journalism". The Death and Life of American Journalism. New York: Nation Books, 2010.

U.N. Report: Netflix Changes its DVD Rental Plan

When I logged onto the NPR website today, my eye was split between two stories when I first arrived on their homepage. The first was just a headline, “U.N. Report: Detainees Tortured in Afghanistan,” while the other, “Netflix Scuttles Its ‘Qwikster’ DVD Rental Plan,” attracted me because of a photograph. These two stories are quite different in about every way imaginable, and yet they seem to be equally featured on the homepage. I began to wonder why this is, and found myself asking questions about the differences between “hard” news and “soft” news.

First, I began by wondering how such a distinction arose in the first place, so I turned to Herbert J. Gans’ Deciding What’s News and his analysis of the different types of activities that appear in news stories. He notes that the three most prevalent activities featured in the news are (a) government disagreements and conflicts, (b) government decisions, proposals, and ceremonies, and (c) government personnel changes (16). I believe that this dominance of the government in the news helped feed the formation of hard news; we believe that stories about the government are important and necessary for shaping a politically-savvy country, and therefore make sure they are a frequent fixture in the news.

But if we can attribute the presence of hard news to the country’s desire to stay informed about politics, then how do we explain soft news? In trying to understand the reason for lighter news stories, such as “Netflix Scuttles Its ‘Qwikster’ DVD Rental Plan,” my thoughts turned to the fourth hour of The Today Show that I mentioned in my first post: is it possible that soft news is around simply to entertain and provide a reprieve from the heavier stories of the day?

This may be too simple an explanation, but I believe there is some truth to it. After all, unlike the policies set forth by the government, there is nothing about the latest Hollywood movie or a change in Netflix services that will greatly affect our daily lives or make us better citizens. But audiences still gobble these types of stories up, perhaps looking for a reprieve from the more intense news stories of the day.

There is undoubtedly a great deal that I don’t know about the evolution of the press in America and the development of hard and soft news. But I think that combining Gans’ analysis of activities in the news with my own experience as a consumer has helped me begin to understand the reasoning behind NPR’s homepage. While they’re trying to do their journalistic duty by providing readers with important stories about world affairs, they’re also aware that audiences enjoy to read lighter stories that may be more applicable to their daily lives.

Works Cited
Gans, Herbert J. Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time. 25th Anniversary Edition. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2004.

Correction: Steve Jobs Dies at 56

Just one day after Apple announced its new iPhone 4S and iOS 5 (to widespread criticism, as I mentioned in an earlier journal entry), they had another announcement that brought great disappointment to followers and supporters of their products. Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple, Inc., passed way at age 56.



News of Jobs’ death spread fast, in part because he was an icon of American technology. The homepage to The New York Times online (pictured above) featured a larger-than-average headline and photograph of Jobs, which linked to an article that detailed the ways Jobs “led a cultural transformation in the way music, movies and mobile communications were experienced in the digital age”.

When I went to access this Times article again a few days later, I noticed several corrections that were printed at the bottom of the page. Though all of them seemed relatively minor—one was correcting a misprinted date, while another provided the correct location of Jobs’ high school—they did inspire me to think about the differences between corrections in print and online journalism and the way new media is changing the journalism process.

There has been a lot of discussion in recent years about the Internet and how it’s changing the way that people get their news. But based on the ease with which The New York Times was able to correct its article about Steve Jobs, it is also changing the way that news is produced. Where journalists and news organizations once had to print their corrections to previous stories in their most recent issue, they are now able to implement the change right into the article, with nothing more than a little note at the bottom admitting their mistake. In fact, I could have easily missed the correction notices had I not chosen to scroll further down the page.

While there’s nothing wrong with The New York Times (or any publication) going back and correcting its articles, I was uneasy about how easily and smoothly these changes could be implemented. I think that this speaks to the increased responsibilities of both producers and consumer in the age of Internet journalism: readers should make the effort to determine whether a story they are reading has been corrected, while news organizations should make an corrections and alterations easily known to the consumer. Because the Internet has made it so difficult to determine between fact and fiction, online news needs to be approached with caution by people from both parties.

No iPhone 5?

Ever since its 2007 launch, the iPhone has been one of the hottest pieces of technology on the market. Its continuous updates have been the subject of fascination among cell phone users and technology pundits everywhere, and their most recent announcement of the iPhone 4S was long awaited within those circles. But that doesn't mean that everyone was satisfied with Apple's big announcement.

Because my iPhone 3G is desperately in need of a replacement, I was eager to find out what the features of this new iPhone would be. But when I first logged online following the reveal of the 4S, I was met with this article on Yahoo.com. With a headline that begins "No iPhone 5?," the article leads off with this:

"Apple, Inc. announced its new iPhone today -- a powerful updated model called the iPhone 4S, but a disappointment to investors and the tech world because it wasn't a completely-new iPhone 5 people had come to expect"

As the article continues, it does provide me with the information I was seeking: I found out about the new features this iPhone had to offer, when it would be available, and how much it would cost. But following that opening paragraph, the entire story was colored by the disappointment about the lack of an iPhone 5.

As I continued to do my research, it became clear that everyone was upset that the tag following this new iPhone was "4S" rather than "5". An article on CBSNews.com was titled "No iPhone 5: Apple Totally Blows its Moment," while another from USA Today notes that the "reaction to its debut was mixed, in part because it wasn't the iPhone 5 that was widely anticipated". Nearly every article that I read about the iPhone 4S made clear the public disappointment about the lack of an iPhone 5.

My experience with these iPhone articles made me think a lot about the different types of objectivity. In some ways, these articles could be considered objective because of the way they primarily concern themselves with factual accuracy: they provide readers with all of the necessary information about the release of the new iPhone and include quotes directly from the source—from Tim Cook and other Apple executives. But when looking at them with the “disinterestedness” meaning of objectivity in mind, it becomes easier to see the opinions and biases of the reporters slipping in. After all, any mention of the disappointment over the lack of an iPhone 5 in the headline or the first paragraph immediately primes the reader to approach the article in a certain way.

Now it’s certainly possible that these repeated mentions of disappointment are included to inform the reader just how upset iPhone users and technology fans really are, and that reporters are simply capitalizing on the most interesting part of this newest iPhone launch. I just take issue with the way this public disappointment was presented, and fear that its predominant inclusion in these articles helped spark further indignation among iPhone users new and old.

Works Cited
Graham, Jefferson. "Apple unveils iPhone 4S; but no iPhone 5". USA Today. 4 October 2011.

Effron, Lauren, Potter, Ned, and Weir, Bill. "No iPhone 5? New iPhone 4S Announced by Apple; Includes Voice Recognition, Faster Processor". ABC News Online. 4 October 2011.

Attracting an Audience 101: Framing

When looking for something to write about in my latest entry to this media journal, I noticed that a number of the top headlines feature stories about the death of top al-Qaeda figure Anwar al-Awlaki. I decided to explore this story further, looking at the way it was reported in three different publications: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and USA Today.

There were a number of similarities among all of these articles: all three could easily be accessed from the publication’s homepage (indicating its position as a top news story for the day), provided the basic facts about the death of Anwar al-Awlaki, and included multimedia (such as photos or video) that presented the reader with further information about the story. But while the articles from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times were relatively straightforward accounts of al-Awlaki’s death, the article in USA Today offered up a very different prospective. This article, titled “Killings boost Obama’s national security credentials,” quickly moves from informing the reader about the death of a member of al-Qaeda to analyzing the effects that this death will have on the public view of Obama as a leader of national security.

The differences between these articles can, in part, be attributed to framing. In her article “Getting Framed: The Media Shape Reality,” Charlotte Ryan explains that

“a news story results from multiple subjective decisions about whether and how to present happenings to media audiences. Newsmakers engage in a selection process, actively making sense out of an immense quantity of experience, selecting some points as critical, discarding or downplaying others” (54).

Because news stories pass through so many reporters and editors prior to their publication, it’s easy to understand how they can turn out in a variety of different ways.

It’s also possible that framing could occur in a publication’s attempt to stand out from the crowd. Though we like to think that the primary purpose of the press is to educate and inform the public, there’s no denying that journalism is a business. And because the ultimate goal of any newspaper is to make money, news organizations frame their stories in different ways to separate themselves from the competition. This becomes especially true when reporting on something such as the death of al-Qaeda personnel, as this type of event is sure to be spread throughout numerous news sources. USA Today decided to take a route that was different from other publications, perhaps reporting on the effects of this death in an attempt to make their story one worth reading.

Works Cited
Ryan, Charlotte. "Getting Framed: The Media Shape Reality". Prime Time Activism. Boston: South End Press, 1991.

Knowns and Unknowns (with Brian Williams)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In his book Deciding What's News, Herbert J. Gans describes the different types of people that populate news stories, stating that the two most prominent types “could be well-known people, whom I call Knowns; or they could be Unknowns, ordinary people prototypical of the groups or aggregates that make up the nation” (8). I found this segment from Nightly News with Brian Williams interesting because it combines these two types of people, using “Known” Mark Zuckerberg as a launching pad for a story that focuses more heavily on several Unknowns.

Gans describes Knowns as “a combination of people […] assumed by journalists to be familiar names among the audience” (9). Because of this familiarity, they occupy a great deal of news coverage – anywhere between 70-85%, according to Gans. Unknowns, on the other hand, are “ordinary people [who] obtain about a fifth of the available time or space” (13) in the news. One of the things I found most interesting about this Nightly News segment was that its inclusion of Knowns was minimal—they were only represented briefly, at the beginning—but still apparent. Perhaps this is one reason why Gans argues that Knowns are so widely featured across the entire news spectrum: they make appearances in stories even when they don’t play a large role.

Before taking this class, I never would have questioned the existence of this segment or the role that Zuckerberg played in it. But after reading Gans and becoming more attuned to the lopsided tilt towards the use of Knowns in the news, I had to ask myself whether this story would have ever been produced and aired had the $100 million not come from Zuckerberg. And the answer that I keep coming up with is “no”.

Now, $100 million is certainly a lot of money, and any donation in that amount is bound to be the subject of a press report on some scale, somewhere. But had the money not come from Zuckerberg, a name recognizable to any tech-savvy American (and certainly to the millions who have Facebook accounts), I doubt that this story would have been featured on the Nightly News. The teachers and parents who were interviewed in this segment were featured because they were the recipients of Zuckerberg’s donation; in other terms, the Unknowns only made it into the news through the actions of a Known.

Gans believes that “the news ought to be about individuals rather than groups or social processes” (8), and, in this way, the Nightly News segment succeeds. But I know that I will now approach the news with a more diligent eye, questioning the roles that each source plays in a story and remaining conscious about the balance between Knowns and Unknowns in the stories presented to me.

Works Cited
Gans, Herbert J. Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time. 25th Anniversary Edition. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2004.

Why I Love Hoda and Kathie Lee

I love The Today Show. Specifically, I love the show’s fourth hour, hosted by Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford. I watch it nearly everyday when I’m home on breaks, and have occasionally used a television in the basement of my dorm to catch an episode or two while I’m here at Vassar.

Though I’m normally quite embarrassed to reveal my affinity for The Today Show’s fourth hour, I’ve recently begun to question whether that embarrassment is warranted. Yes, the show is more of a “news-magazine,” frequently featuring fluffy segments about the newest fall fashions or the best ideas for throwing a Memorial Day party. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a worthwhile source of information.

The 10am hour always opens with a segment titled “Today’s Talk,” in which Hoda and Kathie Lee share their opinions about whatever is making headlines that day. Sometimes those selected are more focused on popular culture – even I had to tune out in the weeks leading up to Kim Kardashian’s wedding, for their coverage was just too much – but at other times these women weigh in on some of the more serious issues in the news. And though their opinions aren’t always the most articulate or ones that I necessarily agree with, it is interesting to hear what they have to say about any variety of topics.

Additionally, I find great entertainment value in this segment of their show, regardless of what they’re discussing. It’s as much fun to listen to them discuss random statistics about dating as it is to hear them weigh in on Hurricane Irene and its effects on New York City. And I don’t think I should be ashamed for turning to this program for entertainment. While the survey we took at the beginning of this semester showed that only 4% of Vassar students regularly watch The Today Show (I was one of them), 36% regularly watch The Daily Show and 25% regularly watch The Colbert Report. It’s certainly true that the humor of The Today Show with Hoda and Kathie Lee may be less intelligent and less purposeful than that of Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, but that doesn’t mean I should be embarrassed for enjoying it.

Now, I’m well aware that watching The Today Show is no substitute for watching the evening news or picking up an issue of The New York Times. But sometimes it’s nice to get some news from a lighter source, to listen to the headlines while also listening to two women joke about the amount of wine they’re drinking at 10am. And if choosing the fourth hour of The Today Show as that lighter source is seen as less sophisticated than choosing The Colbert Report, I guess that’s just something I’ll have to deal with.