Journalism

2006-11-26T01:47:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I found interesting things about advertising industry from “Mass Communication” book, by Stanley Baran. I have read arguments about specific complaints against adv and arguments for adv industry.
Specific Complaints:
Advertising is intrusive
Advertising is deceptive
Advertising exploits children
Advertising is conducive to monopolies
Advertising demeans and corrupts culture

Defenders argue that:
Advertising supports our economic system without it new products could not be introduced and developments in others could not be announced. Competitive adv of new products and businesses powers the “engine” of our economy, fostering economic growth and creating jobs in many industries.
People use advertising to gather information before making buying decisions.
Advertising revenues make possible the “free” mass media we use not only for entertainment but for the maintenance of democracy.

2006-11-23T20:00:00.000-08:00

The difference between essay style and press-release style

The style of writing that most students are accustomed to is essay style. With that style, the writer moves slowly toward his main point. The first few sentences are introductory, setting the stage for the main point, which typically comes several paragraphs down from the first paragraph. After making his main point, the writer often offers additional material to prove that point-to bolster his argument. The typical essay also has a “conclusion paragraph” that sums up, or restates, what the writer has said.
In addition to having a distinctive style, an essay is an opinion piece: It does not just lay out the facts like a press release or news story. The writer offers her opinion-or even several opinions about an issue. She uses facts to support her opinion.
A press release has a much different style than an essay, rather than building slowly to the main point, a press release-like news story-makes that point in the first paragraph.
It then makes the second most important point in the third paragraph, the third most important point in the third paragraph, and so on.
Unlike an essay, which is an opinion piece, a press release simply presents facts.

Material was taken from News writing course

2006-11-16T22:52:00.000-08:00

I love listening to the radio, I listen it everywhere, when I drive my car, when I wash dish after supper, when I do my home works, I listen to the radio every time where I can do it.
So in this entry I have decided to write about my favorite source of media, it is RADIO.

Prehistory of radio
The roots of radio can be found in science and technology. Radio pioneers were more interested in the physics of sound and electrical waves than in mass communication. Toward the end of the 1800s, innovators throughout the world were experimenting with the possibility of a wireless telegraph and wireless telephony. In 1844 the American inventor Samuel Morse had introduced the telegraph, which made long distance communication a reality.

Early sound recording
The 1870s was the beginning of sound recording. In 1877 prolific inventor Thomas Edison patented his “talking machine”, a device for duplicating sound that used a hand-cranked grooved cylinder and a needle.

The coming of broadcasting
The idea of broadcasting, that is transmitting voices and music at great distances to large number of people predated the development of radio. Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone company had a subscription music service in major cities in the late 1800s, delivering music to homes and businesses by telephone wires.
The RCA (Radio Corporation of America) agreements showed that government had a keen interest in the development, operation and diffusion of radio. At first government interest focused on point-to-point communication. The formation of RCA had ensured that radio would be a commercial, profit-based system.

2006-11-15T20:43:00.000-08:00

I have received a lot of comments on my entry about “Future of the books”, but unfortunately they can’t be published because of technical problems. So I’ve decided to develop topic about books.

I have found different categories of books:
1. Book club editions (books sold by book clubs).
2. El-hi (books produced for elementary and high schools).
3. Higher education (books produced for colleges and universities)
4. Mail order books (advertised on TV and delivered by mail)
5. Mass market paperbacks
6. Professional books
7. Religious books
8. Standardized tests
9. Subscription reference books
10. Trade books and University press

Cultural value of the books:
Books are agents of social and cultural change
Books are an important cultural repository
Books are our windows on the past
Books are important sources of personal development
Books are sources of entertainment and escape
Books are mirrors of culture

2006-11-08T21:11:00.000-08:00

I would like to write about things which reporters should not to do in a news story.

1. Don’t make the first paragraph a background paragraph
The first paragraph of a news story needs to contain news- that is, the most important and timely information you want to share with readers.

2. Don’t include yourself in the news story
3. Don’t make judgments in a news story
4. Don’t use vague references when you can be specific
5. Don’t state the obvious
6. Avoid the sentence structure starting with “There is…” or “There are…”
7. Avoid using the passive voice

2006-11-05T20:40:00.000-08:00

While writing a report journalists should remember three things:

1. Accuracy
We are reporters have a lot of power, our reports can influence on some decisions. So we must get fact right.

2. Clarity
While writing an article for newspaper we should use short sentences. Clearly answer to questions Who? Where? When? and How?

3. Style
“Good writers are artists. Good news writers are, too. They can entertain, inspire, anger and educate. News stories don’t have to follow the old, worn-out, inverted pyramid format”.

Also in this site http: //www.northernstar.info/nina/highschool/write.html I have found “Ten guidelines to clearer writing”

1. One idea per sentence.
2. Limits sentence length to 23-25 words.
3. S-V-O: Subject-Verb-Object.
4. Use strong verbs and an active voice.
5. Reduce difficult words to their simplest terms.
6. Don’t back into a sentence.
7. Don’t use more than three numbers in any one sentence.
8. Use no more than three prepositional phrases per sentence.
9. Choose the precise word.
10. KISS (keep it simple, stupid).

2006-11-02T01:10:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to my Bloglines list of feeds

2006-11-01T23:46:00.000-08:00

In this entry I would like to write about Public Relations. Because first of all it’s my future occupation and the second reason is that I have found interesting things from history of PR, because I have done a presentation about PR in media and society class and I would like to share with information.

First of all let’s define Public Relations. Unfortunately there is no universally accepted definition of PR, because it can be a lot of things. For an example publicity, media relations, public affairs and promotion. But there are two elements, which appear in all definitions of PR, they are management and communication. So we can say that PR is management functions, which uses two-way communication in order to mesh interests of organization or a person with interests and needs of various publics with which that organization must communicate.

The history of Public Relations field can be divided into four stages:

1. Early Public Relations
2. The propaganda-publicity stage
3. Early Two-way communication
4. Advanced two-way communication

In Early PR people used communication to inform people, to build an image and to influence people’s opinion.

Public Relation in the Propaganda-Publicity stage was only one-way, from organization to public.

But this situation has changed in Early Two-way communication, public relation professionals start talking to people and in return listening to them when they talked back. In 1947 Public Relations Society of America was created.

In Advanced two-way communication Public Relations start employing research, advertising and promotion.

2006-10-26T21:26:00.000-07:00

ESSAY

21st centaury is a centaury of technologies and information. There are a lot of technologies such as computer, audio, video, photo technologies, and also digital technologies and people can’t imagine their life without these things. There is no doubt that all of these things have made an impact on definite aspect of people’s life. Journalism is one area in which information technology has influenced the way in which people work and nature of that work. In my point of view, new information technologies give journalists a lot of opportunities to do their job properly. As Brian Trench says there are several ways in which information technologies affected how journalists’ do their job. For example ‘Direct input’ by reporters and from external agencies, into the editorial system; Transmission of journalists’ copy from remote location into the editorial system; On-screen page make-up; Electronic scanning and on-screen editing of photographs and graphics; Development of in-house electronic libraries; Access to electronic information sources; Electronic publishing of specialized publications and some existing publications. Nowadays technology offers journalists to accomplish these activities more efficiently. Use of digital telephone lines offers high-speed transformation of texts, photos, and computer programs from one side of globe to another. Combination of cellular telephones and laptop computers allows offering reportage direct from the place of news events, almost anywhere in the world. And there are a lot of other technologies, which can help journalists to save their time.
Another example for influencing of technologies can be that online journalism has appeared (production and distribution of news via the Internet). As Steve Outing says, news organizations start to using some sorts of citizen journalism, which includes blogging, annotative reporting, open source journalism and different other things. For example writing comments, writing additional material to the article can change a content of original article and make it better. Another type of journalism, which is changing reporting, is open source journalism. According to article “First Monday” “open source journalism is software source codes openly available so that experts and regular user will find and correct glitches and modify the original code to their own benefit. Applies to news stories-making them available for corrections before publication”. Of course that is good that mistakes can be corrected before wide publication, but there is also minus. I think every journalist has his own style of reporting and writing, every time when his articles are available to users and they can correct it, they change the style of writing, so individuality of reporting is also changed. Many news sites have blogging. News organizations choose best blogging and then publish it on their news sites, but before publishing they should double check all facts. But there is another question about objectivity of bloggers and can we consider blogging as a source of news? Newsroom citizen “transparency” blogs can be useful for improving work of news organizations, because on that blog people can criticize editors and their work. Development of new information technologies such as digital computer, offers photographers graphically improve news photo. For an example in 1999 at the wedding photo of Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones the mood of Prince William was graphically improved because he didn’t look sufficiently happy. That example shows that photographers can change the reality and journalists can deceive their audience. That is a bad effect of technology. In conclusion I would like to say that of course information technologies give journalists a lot of advantageous, help to save time and cost saving, but in spite of that things we shouldn’t forget about codes of ethics and try not to abuse opportunities provided by technology. As Maurice Sweeney, Irish journalist said, new technology makes good journalist better and bad journalist worse.

Used materials:

1. Steve, Outing (2005) “The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism”, Poynter Online, June 13. Available at: http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=83126

2. Mark, Deuze “ Online Journalism: Modelling the First Genereation of News Media on the World Wide Web”. First Monday peer-reviewed journal on the Internet. Available at: http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_10/deuze/

2006-10-04T21:59:00.000-07:00

Here is my entry to comments on soys entry about "Top 10 reasons why nobody reads your blogger". That is really interesting.

2006-10-03T00:16:00.000-07:00

Following journalism codes of ethics

For the last two weeks I have been doing a research about following journalism codes of ethics in Almaty city. I should get answers to such questions as what kind of problems journalists facing, do they accept money for writing an article, do they feel pressure from government and how businesses influence on journalists’ reporting. I have interviewed journalists, businessmen and got information from chief editors of newspapers such as “Экспресс-К” and “Континент”.
One of the issues of journalism ethics is objectivity. Opinion of Adilhan Nusupov, chief editor of “Экспресс-К” newspaper about objectivity of their newspaper: “Yes, we are journalists and we are hired staff, sometimes we are dependent from interests of groups. This is minus. Sometimes we are not enough objective, our newspaper tries to be in the middle, but everything is relatively”. “As that time when we start to write things which everyone likes, we stop to be journalists. At that time we start to work in show business” said Frank Miller. Unfortunately media organizations which belong to government and private, both of them participate in show business. It seems to be that all media organizations try to be objective but they do it not always. While doing a research I haven’t touched a topic about journalist’s salary, but it was interesting to know is it true that journalists accept money for writing an article. The great wealth of the owners, the fact that ownership of the media is concentrated in a few huge corporate hands and the fact that media corporations, like other corporations, exist only to make a profit. Newspapers makes money from advertising, it is their primary source of income. Newspapers are driven by business. I talked to businessmen, who opened his hotel in spring and paid 200$ to journalists for writing an article about that event. He said that almost everywhere you could pay money and next day an article would be ready, but everywhere prices are different, somewhere prices are higher and somewhere are cheaper. It depends on circulation of newspaper, popularity of newspaper and sometimes journalists just have high opinion about themselves, so they demand more money. Journalists don’t want to admit that they accept money; they say that everything is PR article. But that is a fact that they don’t refuse from giving money to them. The reason of accepting money can be low salary. Nowadays narrow specialist, who mastered in one branch very well is more valuable than universal, who understand everything, but not deeply. A lot of journalists consciously specialize on finance market, the reason of that this branch is most concentrated on money sources. If you learn everything in sphere of finance, you’ll get more salary than your colleagues who cover social, culture and sport topics. In our country there are a lot of “social”, “sport” and “culture” journalists and the problem is that we have a shortage of analytic-journalists who is a high qualified person, who writes about president, government, parliament and different organs and journalists specialized on economics. For developing analytical journalism in Kazakhstan journalists should do a research works, but owners of media organizations are not interested in expensive journalism research. They try to compensate cost of production of newspaper with advertisement and PR materials. They can publish an exclusive material, but only that one which can attract attention of advertisers or attention of whole audience.
In order to consider a country democratic one, its media has to fulfill two functions. The first one is to report the news fairly, completely and without bias and the second function is to be a “watchdog” for the public against abuses of power. Nowadays media market in Kazakhstan is developing in difficult conditions. From one side our country needs high qualified journalists, who work by best western standards and from another side monopolization and use of mass media as a political resource put journalists into definite frame. So two sides contradict each other and it breaks development of mass media. Journalists become to be propagandists and mass media stops to be a source of information and comments. For example representatives of Kazakhstan opposition can not aloud journalists from government media organizations and those who not support opposition present in their event. There are a lot of problems which journalists facing, but everything can be solved. The only factor is time and really good journalists.

2006-10-03T00:11:00.000-07:00

Future of the Books

Books are an important cultural repository, which contains national traditions, fairy tales, games and culture. Books have appeared many years ago, they still exist and will exist. But the question is what will happen with books in future, will they be popular. Nowadays people are very busy. It’s one of the reasons why reading books isn’t popular. Other reasons are laziness, unwillingness and some people just have not capability and opportunity to read. But in spite of this for many people books are wonderful sources of entertainment. As any entertainment it should have different ways of attracting reader’s attention. One of them is digital book. The only thing which you have to need is Internet connected computer and you can download any book. Another type of the books is audio book. You don’t waste your time on reading; you just listen to a person who reads the whole book for you. In our modern time when technologies are developing in a very fast temp and when people are too busy digital and audio books will become popular. But in my point of view advocates of reading paper books will not diminish in future. But tastes of readership can change. I think in future amount of those who reads blockbusters will increase. People will prefer to read “cool” books, which don’t make them to think seriously about important issues, because they want escape from their own difficulties and just relax. So in my opinion future of serious books is questionable. Books are published to make profit and that is why best sellers will have big demand. So other books will not be in a competitive condition.

2006-09-22T00:57:00.000-07:00

Here is my entry to comments which i have written for altynkiz blogg.

2006-09-11T22:33:00.000-07:00

The official media and Online journalism

The first electronic digital computer was invented during World War II in order to break secret code. The Internet is the product of the military’s desire to maintain U.S. defenses after nuclear attack. Decentralization was the key to allowing communication to continue no matter where attack occurred. The solution was a network of computer networks – the Internet.
Now Internet is accessible to millions of people, it is really difficult to accurately measure the number of its users. With developing of technologies and Internet, everything started to be easy accessible.

Online Journalism is defined as the reporting of facts produced and distributed via the Internet. There are three branches of online journalism: annotative reporting, open source journalism and hyper adaptive news sites. The way of presenting facts can be presented in different ways. The way of reporting can be affected by different kinds of interest as for example political, cultural, and economic and business interests. But online sources are less biased than official media.
Let’s look at the official media and news reporting.
Noam Chomsky :

“many of us feel instinctively the mass media is little more than a public
relations industry for the rich and powerful. Its function is to sell to the
public rather than to inform them. Looking at it this way creates a more
accurate picture of how the media work”

The interesting things that I have found out from Chomsky’s book that there are five filters through which raw news goes.
Filter 1: Money. Ownership of the media is concentrated in a few huge corporate hands and the fact that media corporations like other corporations exist only to make a profit.
Filter 2: Advertising as their main source of income.
Filter 3: Reliance on information provided by government, business and “experts”.
Filter 4: “Flak” as a means of disciplining the media.
Filter 5: “Anti communism” as a national religion and control mechanism.

2006-09-11T00:19:00.000-07:00

Analysis

The hottest topic, which caused a lot of debate and discussions this week at KIMEP University was letter written by five professors to President of Kazakhstan. The letter was published in a foreign media and from the side of fairness was not correct, because they showed only one side of the story and another side was hidden from the eyes of readers. But there was Kimep’s fault also, they ignored message from New York newspaper and didn’t respond to questions. Lets look at the letter from the issue of accuracy. Before writing some story, a journalist should exactly know what he is writing about and check sources. In the letter was said that almost all constructions are build by USKO company which belongs to Dr. Bang. But in fact only two constructions were building by USKO. The things which written in the letter are seems to be not objective, there is no exact facts, just authors opinions, a lot of emotional things and their complains. But at the same time people should not ignore the letter and to think on those words which were addressed to everyone. The open letter also was published in the local newspaper, which is “Respublika”. The newspaper was impartial; they showed both sides of story, they published a letter and also gave an opportunity to Dr. Bang to define the situation more precisely that is why it made an article more balanced. If look at this situation from the issue of truth, it is very difficult to say who is right and who is wrong, because everyone tells his own story. Was it ethical to write “all truth” about Kimep after leaving a university? It seems that authors would like to take revenge because they were offended by attitude of people who surrounded them. They are taught to Freedom of speech and they have expressed their opinions, they have a right to do it.