News Media Critique: "Miss America 2017: Miss Arkansas Savvy Shields"

     2 days ago on September 12th WHAS published a news story about the Miss America pageant for 2017. The story was written about winner Miss Arkansas Savvy Shields. She won the title with her jazz routine in the talent section of the pageant beating 51 other contestants. Shields blew the judges away with her answer to the question, "What do you see in your future?"  She came quickly with the answer "I would like to return to The University of Arkansas as a senior studying art. I want to hopefully work in a museum and teach at a collegiate level."

     All though it's an impressive win and entertaining story, it not definitely not news worthy. This story goes against numerous yardsticks of journalism including local relevance and news worthiness.  The article violates the local relevance because it was published to a local news website in Louisville but the story its self had nothing to do with Louisville or the people of Louisville. The winner of the pageant was Savvy Shields, more famously known as Moss Arkansas, she has no ties to Louisville, she is not from Louisville nor does she work/ attend school in Louisville.
   
       The story also violated the yardstick that says "make the important interesting." It violates this yardstick because instead of making the important interesting, they did the opposite and made the interesting important by publishing a story about the miss America pageant and winner, when really there was nothing exceptional or amazing enough about it to be made important. During the interview portion of the pageant Shields was asked questions to expand on her views about Americas political climate. Shields answered a question from the audience with the following answer, "Our country was founded on compromise, I really think we're in a state now where both parties seem to be yelling at each other. I hope by the end of the year, we're starting to reward politicians on compromising instead of just defending themselves." Although her answer was logical and impressive, that doesn't make it news worthy when there are other MAJOR problems that need to be discussed on these news stations.

(2/2) Response to a classmates blog entry

        I had the privilege of reading Maggie's blog entry this afternoon. The blog entry I read was about demassification. As I read her blog I noticed that she gave examples of mediums that could or have demassified, but she also gave her opinion on why she thought they would have to. I feel that she did an excellent job of clarifying why she made the statements she did as well as making sure her information was logical and understandable to the audience. If I had no idea what demassification was, I could read her blog and immediately understand what it is.

Maple-leaf-mag.blogspot.com

(1/2) Response to a classmates blog entry

        Today I read Neijla Zukic's blog entry about mass communication. Although I already knew what mass communication was, I feel that if I had no clue what mass communication was, I could've read her blog and gotten a good idea of what it is. She did an excellent job of explaining each step of mass communication and how they differ from one another. I agree with her statement that it was probably the easiest or clearest topic we have discussed, not that it is a simple idea, it just was taught well and was easy to retain.


thelifeofj1.blogspot.com

(4/4) Response to class discussion: Using different methods of journalism to convey information

       When most people think of journalism they think of broadcasting, newspapers, the internet and possibly the radio... at least that is what I used to think. Two times now Mr. Miller has shown my classmates and I that there are multiple methods commonly used to convey information in Journalism.  Mr. Miller had each group pick from a stack of index cards with various mediums of journalism written on them, He proceeded to give all of us a topic in which we were to take and present in the medium we selected. The mediums included iMac, oral presentation, note card presentation, iPad, the whiteboard and a poem.

       After everyone made their presentations Mr. Miller asked us all the question, "Why did I have you all do this?". I found myself and a few of my class mates staring clueless at the floor trying to think of logical reasons why we would do this. Moments later people began raising their hands to answer the question and the answer became clear, Mr. Miller had us do this assignment to show us that journalism can be published in a variety of different ways for a number of reasons.

        One reason that journalist publish their work in different ways is to trap the audiences attention but, it all depends on what the information is about. For example, the medium my group was given was a note card, we were to write down the necessary information in the space provided on the note card. After my group was done presenting, Mr. Miller faced me with the question, "why was your presentation so short?", I responded quickly with, "because it is a note card." My answer was easy but it was correct, with a note card your information should be short and to the point. If a news anchor were to give a long, wordy story many viewers would get bored and most likely stop paying attention. 

       This lesson really opened my eyes because I had no idea that journalism could be written in so many different ways such as a poem or even in a drawing. I feel that by Mr. Miller taking a class or two to show us these possibilities, it has opened our minds to a whole new view of writing. Now, instead of students thinking they could have only written a paper in an essay format, they now have multiple methods to turn to.  Also, in my perspective, writing is a lot more exciting because throughout my educational background I have been stuck in this mind set or "box" if you will, that caused me to think that writing wasn't good enough if it wasn't in essay format. Now when I think of good writing, my mind goes outside of that box and I think of so many more exciting and creative ways to write.  

(3/4) Response to class discussion: History of the Printing press

       The printing press and overall idea of printing began back in 3500 BC with the Mesopotamians and their stamps. Fast forward to the 10 century of the common era and now we have introduced the first moveable type press, invented by Bi Sheng. The moveable type press was the first print technology that let you create individual characters to put to paper. These individual characters were made of ivory or wood and slid into place where they were then pressed to what ever material was chosen. Although this invention was a hit, it still had downfalls. The materials that the characters were made of were fragile and broke easily... This lead to 1450 when Gutenberg invented a printing press with metal letters, his invention sky rocketed and became the  go-to printing method. As time went on this invention was innovated to today's many mediums of typing.
        During the 2 or so lectures that I have received over the evolution of printing I have absorbed countless information that ties into many previously learned aspects of journalism. Mr. Miller has taken a topic of origin and evolution and tied into a whole scenario that fits with the not only binary models and mass communication but also conglomeration, all of which were previously discussed in class. At first, I thought that learning about the history of print would be something I would never need nor would it be something I use. As we continued our discussion I realized that many aspects of everyday journalism came from or were used in the innovation of print.

(2/4) Response to class discussion: Demassification

      Yesterday in class we were given a lecture on demassification which is a medium responding to the loss of staff, audience, and advertisers by resorting to a niche audience. At the beginning of class when I saw the word demassification written on the board I had no idea what it could mean. I learned that demassification takes place when a company resorts to a smaller or niche audience for their production. Before demassification takes place certain things have to occur. First a company starts off trying to reach domination or reach the biggest audience possible. An example of this would be in the 20th century when magazines were extremely popular. The creators of the magazines had one intention and that intention was to create a national source of news/current events. They reached massive audiences but when the Television was introduced the companies lost audiences and advertisers. As this happened the magazine companies demassified to a niche audience. This lecture, in my perspective, was very insightful and really helped to clarify what demassification means and how it occurs.

(1/4) Response to class discussion: Mass Communication

        Recently in journalism our class has been discussing mass communication. Mass communication is a form of communication that reaches a major audience, travels through time and space, has the potential to reach a large audience, and the audience is not physically present to give feedback. Through out the three or so classes that we discussed this, Mr. Miller did a great job at providing the class with many different examples to help clarify any confusion about the topic we might have. Further we went on to discussing different forms of mass communication such as the Internet. The Internet is a form of mass communication because the audience or people receiving the information is not present. Also, the Internet is visual through smart phones, computers, tablets, and more which means that the information has to be moved through space to get to each device. I noticed during the lectures that at the beginning of class all of my classmates were engaged and participating, but as class continued I found myself as well as other classmates starting to twiddle their thumbs and some even began falling asleep.
         Although Mr. Miller is very insightful and well spoken during his lectures they seem to be unexciting. I'm aware that we as teenagers need to be focused and serious at times when we are learning something new, but when we are constantly bored in class we will not retain any information discussed. But as an overall statement I find that my knowledge about mass communication has grown.