What I've learned from JOUR1111?

JOUR1111 opened a door for me to the world of journalism.
Things that I've learnt is immensely useful for me! I love how Dr. Bruce Redman made this course informative yet relax.

I like how this course is structured introducing the basic elements of what a journalist should know.
What is news to the importance of text, how does a picture tells a thousand words, the difference between commercial and public media, what they do and the roles they are playing in the society, how a journalist's ethics affects the world, what is agenda settings and what it do to influence the world, and lastly, investigative journalism.

Can't believe it has been one semester. I still remember the first time I walked into the class without seeing any familiar faces. As I'm majoring in Finance, I always take courses that I have friends taking as well. But in JOUR1111, I walked in and left without knowing any new friends.
Setting up a blog for assignment is a new things for me! Unlike assignments in other courses where you'll have to print a hard copy, analyze situation and case studies, this course offer me something that I always do like blogging and tweeting!

Although I did not know any new friends in the class, but I 'know' some new people via their blogs & tweets! Of all the blogs, some of them are really up-to-date and they talk about issues that they concern! I really enjoy reading it.

Besides knowing more about journalism, I know more about what I want to do in my future and fear less about it.

Thank you Dr. Bruce Redman and my tutor Marie for this amazing course!!

Here's a photo of me cycling around the city under the wonderful CityCycle program and it only cost me $2 a day! Cycled around New Farm, city and Botanic Garden with my best friend and brother. The weather was lovely.

Lecture 12 Last Lecture

To be frank, I did not like the last lecture by having a guest lecture. I was hoping Dr Bruce Redman to tell us more about journalism and stories about it as a wrap up! 

I like Steve 'Molks' Molkington because he is a professional blogger that runs his own site www.molkstvtalk.com/ and talks about TV show. I'm really amazed by his courage of changing his pathway from an undergraduate degree in chemistry. 


In short, he talks about how he use the social media platform effectively to spread his ideas and opinions.

Lecture 9 News Value

If it bleeds, it leads!


What's the value of the news that you are reporting and who will be concerned?

There are few definition of news value
1. IMPACT on readers
2. AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION what's happening in the area of culture - feels ownership of the story
3. PRAGMATIC ethics, facticity, practice/practical current affairs, and the 24/7 news
4. SOURCE INFLUENCE

There are few ways to decide the newsworthiness.
Firstly, the 12+ factors by Galtung and Ruge - Negativity, Closeness to home, Recency, Currency, Uniqueness, Simplicity, Personality, Expectedness (predictability), Elite Nations, Exclusivity and Size.

From O'Neil and Harcup, the Power Elite, Celebrity, Entertainment, Surprise, Bad news, Good news, Magnitude, Follow-up, Relevance, Newspaper agenda.

Also the Murray Masterson "Big 6" Significance, Proximity, Conflict, Human interest, Novelty and Prominence.

Coincidentally, two news that happened in my home country, Malaysia on late April proved that. Both issues 'bleed' but the news value wasn't different to Malaysian.
The first one is the abduction of a Dutch national boy Nayati in a supposed-to-be-safe residential area at 27th of April. Normally news like this will grab the headline for days even though there are more interesting news in politics. But, a national event happened on 28th of April beat the kidnapping news and this issue was so important that it was topic on every local media for weeks. Any follow-up about that event is reported in details and I could feel the impact on the nations based on all the activities on social network. That is the BERSIH3.0 rally. This event is organized by 3 main opposition parties and the purpose of this rally is to demand clean and fair election. All the Malaysians united regardless races and all came out to show their unsatisfactory to the Election Commission of Malaysia. The rally was held in Kuala Lumpur and other major cities in the country. Besides that, Malaysian around the world also organized rallies in the city they stay such as USA, Australia, Canada, UK, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, China, India, Russia, South Africa and many more. They all came out to show their support ant their heart for Malaysia.
The news value of BERSIH3.0 is the biggest of all and most concerned among all the news.
People felt related and close to the news as it matters the destiny of future Malaysia.
Although Nayati's news is suppose to be a big social news, but it didn't stays on the first page one day after that because the value is not big enough. However, his news were mentioned everyday until the day he returned to his family safe and sound.
What I want to say is, even though both news are societal and important, but journalist will delivers what their readers want to know. After all, news value is socially constructed.

One more issue I'd like to point out is I personally thinks that nowadays news value are abit messed up and bias towards gossips. Don't you think so? People do not really care what charities or the positive effect of a politician but if he is involved in a sex scandal, I'm pretty sure the people will follow the news on daily basis.
As I said, what news and how it is reported is very important on shaping a society with good morality. Let's hope that one day it will find it's way back.

Lecture 8 Ethics

Guest lecture Dr John Harrison started the lecture to ask us decide whether it is ethical or unethical. He wants us to know how we measure the ethics from our point of view before telling us what ethics is.

As I always know ethics is plays a very significant role in journalism. A journalist with a heart for people, reporting the truth, revealing hidden facts and want to contribute something positive to the world can live the name JOURNALIST. 

If a journalist lost his ethics by reporting news to create chaos or misguide the public.
This lecture talked about ethics especially in the advertising.

Everyone's perspective on ethics is different, so how to the regulators measure what's good or bad? Ethical or unethical? Right or wrong? 

Ethical theories can help to identify all these. There are 3 paradigms of these theories. Dr John Harrison said every ethical theories fits into this three categories. 
This first framework is about rules, principals and duties. Deontology basically sets a guideline for people who practice journalism on what they can do and what they cannot do. By following it, you will do the right thing. For example, MEAA, PRIA, AFA, AANA CODE. Second, Consequentialism, is all about the root word - consequence. It did not concern on how you do it. As long as the outcome of the situation is correct and benefits the majority and what most people thinks is right, you are doing the ethical things. The greatest good for greatest number. Last but not least, Virtue. Unlike deontology which is sets externally by people, virtue is implicit value that derived out of human behaviour such as habits, moral value and characteristic. So if you think you are doing the wrong thing, you're unethical! 

He also talks about The mean. Courage is the mean between rashness and cowardiceJustice is the mean between the in-justice of overzealous and excessive law and the injustice of lawlessness.


As the guest lecture said, there will never be choosing the best framework. Each of them are equally important in journalism. 
Virtue ethics drives a journalist to reveal and report the ugly truth even though they may not follow the legal ways. As long as the consequences is the best for all, the news should be exposed. Deontology has to exist to control this profession so that people don't make up stories out of nothing.

Lecture 11 Investigative journalism

'Most good journalist is investigative journalist' Couldn't agree this statement more.
Bruce started the lecture by showing some quotes of what is investigate journlism by Rose Coulthart, Hugo de Burgh and Lord Northcliffe.

There are many ways to define investigate journalism
INtelligent
INformed know the facts, what's the story about and who's involved.
INtuitive rely on your guts
INside know what's going on from inside, get what you need to know form the participant, people trust you for revealing the truth
INvest it can be difficult that not only cost you money and time, also you mental health. There's uncertain risk. Make sure you have people to help you to hedge it.

Bruce then talked about the deeper definitions and purpose. Critical and thorough journalism where critical is the journalist is an active participant, the key idea is active intervention and the substantial effort the journalist make. Custodian of Conscience where exposure is the key idea. To provide a voice for those without one and hold the powerful to account social justice is the power to the powerless, the voice to the voiceless. Public interest is the key idea. For an example, KONY2012. Fourth estate/ fourth branch of government/ watchdog Fourth estate is when journalists represent the interests of those without power to balance the power of argument. Fourth branch of government is when journalists ensure free flows of information necessary for the functioning of democracy by interrogating the judiciary, executive and legislative. "Watchdog" is when journalists make accountable public personalities and institutions whose functions impact social and political life.

Bruce then introduced the trailblazers where these interesting people wrote something that exposed truth. What they have in common is they changed the world. They are Edward Hall Smith "The Sydney Monitor" (1826) , W.T. Stead and the Salvos "The Maiden of Tribute Modern Babylon" (1885) Bob Woodward and Carl Beinstein"Watergate" (1972-1974), Chris Masters, Phil Dickie, Shaun Hoyt "The Moonlight State", Julian Assange "Wikilieaks"

I'm a reader of TIMES magazine and I always love the stories published in there. Especially those about woman power in the middle east countries. Without these brave investigative journalist, I'll never know what's happening in there and no women from those countries dare to stand out and fight for their rights! These journalist speak for them, investigate the truth, risk their life of being killed by local authorities and lastly, open the door for the world to see what's inside.
That's why investigate journalism is very important to actually show the world what is happening.

Lecture 10 Agenda Setting

How the media construct the reality?

Agenda setting is social construction of reality. Reality exists but the way we come to know it, talk about it, understand it, is mediated through social life. 

Bruce also introduce 4 types of agenda that is interrelated :

Public agenda - what public think it is important

Policy agenda - what 'decision maker' think it is important

Corporate agenda - what business and big corporations think it is important

Media agenda - what media think it is important

Then he talked about the definition of agenda and the relationship between reality, media reality and public perception of reality. The concept of agenda settings comes from few people. In the 1920s, Harold Lasswell said that it is what the mass media' injects' direct influence into the audience. In 1922, Walter Lippman argued that people rely on the images in their minds in formulating judgement rather than critical thinking. And lastly, in 1968 Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw said the mass media set the agenda by emphasizing specific topics. One example is how Hitler used it to rise his power. The media has huge influence on the public. 

There's two levels of agenda setting theory.First level of agenda setting  theory talks about what the public should focus and the second level is about how people should think about an issue. 

I also learned about the agenda setting 'family', the strength and weakness of agenda settings.

Agenda settings plays an important role in politics. If some parties have control on certain media, they will get to decide which news to be published or which to ignored or belittle. Maybe they will focus on how good they are and talked about the flaws in opposition parties. It all depends on how ethical is the journalism sector in that particular country. If it is abused, it will hide the truth from the public and influence their ability to make the right choices. 

Assessment 4 : Annotated Bibliography

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

With the increasing choices of platform like social networks, blogs, private paper and online media, citizen journalism has becoming bigger in journalism than 20 years ago. Now everyone can be a journalist as long as they have a place to publish their words and unfettered access to internet. Public has now learn to get news and information from various form of media rather than newspaper itself. Instead of wait for the news to be published. This way of getting news is permeating everyone's life.  Acceptance level of aggressive thoughts and expressive comments are higher in the public. However, citizen journalism is different than public journalism. Although citizen journalism is based on public journalism principles, the participation levels are different. From profit maximization point of view, can these types of journalism do well from that. Apart from that, public journalism wasn't well accepted by career journalism at the beginning.
Here I pull out several articles of opinions from renowned journalist - Leslie Walker, Philip Meyer, Bonnie Bressers and last but not least, father of civic journalism, David Merritt.

Walker, L. (2004) On Local's Site, Everyone's a Journalist. The Washington Post. Retrieved from ttp://www.writersforliteracy.org/onlocalsites.pdf

The writer, Leslie Walker is an journalist specializes on multimedia news and digital media trends. She is also a Knight Visiting Professor in Digital Innovation at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism. She took an incident in Brattleboro, Vermont as an example of how fast news were spread before the reporters manage to collect, edit and print it on local newspaper. The availability of a local site - iBrattleboro.com whom claims to be Brattleboro's original and authentic citizen journalism news site allows people to publish news on the next second it happens. From this local site she then talked about how profitability it can be to the founder especially on advertising. She also mentioned there are many more companies out there planning to launch local citizen journalist site and only publish printed media fortnightly. It will be a good news for small or medium size business. As advertising on major newspapers are very costly, these tailored and localized site will cost lesser and have more significant effects as the readers are locals which fit their targeted market segment. Walker did mentioned a little about how these websites work. Besides few full-time employees that hired to screens submission and publish them, other reporters are all citizens. Founders are providing space to post journals or blogs so that readers or users can enjoy the freedom of journalism. Walker also talked about why demands of citizen journalism is expanding and why readers are shifting their preference from big newspaper to local ones. Lastly she concluded the article with iBrattleboro.com's founders comments about how the interest of citizen shifts all the time as observed about the trend on the website.

Meyer, P ( September 1995). Public Journalism and the Problem of Objectivity. Based on a talk given to IRE conference on computer assisted reporting in Cleveland.

As an expertise in journalism quality, civic journalism and newspaper industry, Philip Meyer is a Knight Professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This article is based on a talk Meyer given to IRE conference. Meyer provided an insightful opinion of the impact of public journalism to career journalism. Started the talk by addressing the discomfort feel over the concept of public journalism. As the definition for public journalism wasn't clearly define on what it does and the theories behind it, Meyer pointed out the key elements public journalism should fit to be supported by career journalist. He suggested that public journalist can diversify the problems of information overload. As mentioned in Leslie Walker's post, public journalism proven to be able to draws in profit as the problem is highly concerned by newspaper agency. Two theories that has been tugging journalism are well explained and how public journalism should be performing on both theories. As we thought public journalism is much easier than career journalism, he pointed out in fact, it is very difficult and expensive. Quoting Senge's words he finely explained the three levels of abstraction to see the possibilities for shaping the future. As the proper goal of public journalism is to create a learning community, Meyer explained the importance for the public journalist to have the same objective and believing the same philosophy as investigate journalist. Meyer concluded the talk appealing his final stand and addressed his optimistic opinions that public journalism and investigate journalism are able to coexist and cherish one another.

Bressers, B. (2003). Civic journalism goes online. The Quill, 91(2), 25-25. http://search.proquest.com/docview/219778400?accountid=14723

The author is an assistant professor of journalism at the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Kansas State University. While civic journalism are beginning to spread, numbers of local interactive forums are set up. Bressers interviewed Chris Hardie, the local news editor of La Cross (Wis.) Tribune who recently set up an online interactive boards. He wanted to cover an issue that will be explosive, and he believed that organizing a space for local citizens to discuss and comment will make a better impact of this news to them. Hence, Hardie got grant from the Pew Center for Civic Journalism to  launched a website that is a combination of interactive message board. He also talked about his purpose of setting up and the positive effects on the society. Although this space is owned by the newspaper, users are allow to comment freely and raise up issues that is concerned by the locals. To the larger extent, Bressers also took the online edition of Capital Journal as an example and once again proven these sites not only increase the participation of public in these issues, they also brings out citizen that is actually committing and concerning about social issues. By providing a platform like this, people with opinions can express their thoughts without having to attend meetings. She concluded the article by quoting the executive director of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism saying the potential for civic journalism has a lot and it seems unlimited.

Merritt, D. (2009). Chapter 3 : What Citizen Journalism Can Learn from Public Journalism. In Public Journalism 2.0 : The Promise and Reality of a Citizen Engaged Press. Routledge. Retrieved May 24, 2012, from Ebook Library.

Davis Merritt, father of civic journalism who wrote the book Public Journalism and Public Life: Why Telling the News is Not Enough that solidify the theory of public journalism. Internet's Big Bang has brought journalism to a whole new level and became easier to access. Citizen journalism has emerged and he raised the question of how citizen journalism define it's philosophical base is still unanswered. In this chapter he mentioned Jay Rosen, another significant journalist that has helped to built the philosophy of civic journalism. "This was not something journalists could easily address from within. They were accustomed to covering the news, not rebuilding the logic on which the news was based" (Rosen, 1999, p.25). Merritt discussed how public journalism slowly evolved into citizen journalism with the vast advancement of internet. He also pointed out a threat of information maybe biased as it can be repackaged by people who isn't intellectually honest. While public journalism concerns about the viability of public life, citizen journalism may only concern about individual issues or specific interest. Barriers of citizen journalism like the fragmentation of internet, individualized problems and decentralized conversation and also effort needed to put in in order to reach cohesive theory and philosophy. At the end of the chapter, Merritt pointed out that newspaper companies may be shifting to new media (eg, Internet websites) from printed version but their ability to preserve the level of journalism they have traditionally provided is worth concerned. Although there is so many things citizen journalism can learn from public journalism, Merritt expressed his opinion about how both can help to improve journalism in a public and individual way.