Fire Avert Post Idea

I have put all of my creative juices together to present the following idea for a Fire Avert post! I really feel that most people who engage, and are most likely to buy, are women and men age 35 and up. I feel Peter’s friends are most of the fans who have liked the Facebook page. I started thinking about what people who were 35 and up, concerned with family and friends and aging parents, would be concerned about. I wanted to come up with a post about Alzheimer’s, but one that was heavily geared towards family, and one which had a hopeful tone. My grandpa has Alzheimers, and I used my experiences with him to think of what what appeal to my grandma and the rest of my family. This is a picture of my grandpa with my baby cousin. I thought it would be perfect to target the parents of children and the sons and daughter of those who are aging.

Aging isn’t as bad as people say. Wrinkles can be beautiful, grandkids can be perfect. Help your aging parents maintain their spunk, youth, excitement and independence. #fireavert

I felt that this is a non-promotional way to reach out to the right audience and target demographics.

Thanks!
Kaylee

Fire Avert Post Idea

I have put all of my creative juices together to present the following idea for a Fire Avert post! I really feel that most people who engage, and are most likely to buy, are women and men age 35 and up. I feel Peter’s friends are most of the fans who have liked the Facebook page. I started thinking about what people who were 35 and up, concerned with family and friends and aging parents, would be concerned about. I wanted to come up with a post about Alzheimer’s, but one that was heavily geared towards family, and one which had a hopeful tone. My grandpa has Alzheimers, and I used my experiences with him to think of what what appeal to my grandma and the rest of my family. This is a picture of my grandpa with my baby cousin. I thought it would be perfect to target the parents of children and the sons and daughter of those who are aging.

Aging isn’t as bad as people say. Wrinkles can be beautiful, grandkids can be perfect. Help your aging parents maintain their spunk, youth, excitement and independence. #fireavert

I felt that this is a non-promotional way to reach out to the right audience and target demographics.

Thanks!
Kaylee

A Journalist? Take Two

Throughout this course, I’ve been impressed and surprised with the massive amount of material covered on what a journalist is. Honestly, I had no idea that this occupation was as complex and complicated as it turned out to be. I thought a journalist was someone who wrote news and had a journalism degree in his/her hand. I’ve learned, however, that being a journalist is a lot more than this.

Something I’ve learned is that a truly good journalist is one who cares. One who cares about the people that he/she is writing for, the sole identity gained from being a journalist, and more than anything, one who cares about always doing the right thing. It seems that in journalism, there are a lot of ways to be dishonest.  One not so obvious example of this is not telling the whole story by excluding crucial details that make a story complete. The possibilities to cheat integrity just a little bit are absolutely endless. I believe that journalism is caring enough to tell what you believe is accurate and fair truth.

Another thing I learned in this course was that being a journalist requires courage. You must make courageous decisions to publish something or not. (A strong example of this would be the printing of the Pentagon Papers.) In fact, sometimes you must have courage to even go up and talk to someone who you want to learn about. Joe Franklin, a long-time reporter, said the following: “Back when I first started, I thought intelligence was the most important attribute a reporter could have. I have since changed my mind. You do have to be intelligent, but the big thing is courage. Courage to open your mind and let the whole damned confusing world in. Courage to always be the ignorant one, on somebody else’s turf. Courage to stand corrected. Courage to take criticism. Courage to grow with your experiences. Courage to accept what you don’t understand. Most of all, courage to see what is there and not what you want to think is there.” (Read more at http://www.courses.vcu.edu/ENG-jeh/BeginningReporting/Introduction/succeed.htm.)

This goes along with the next piece of journalism that I learned this semester: being willing to ask the right questions for the right reasons, and being extremely curious about everything. I like the idea that journalists are people that just like to get involved in things that they deem important. To me, this is a crucial aspect of journalism, truly the essence of it, which I had never thought of before. The idea of just being a curious person, and wanting to know everything first. I didn’t realize that this was a big part of journalism, but learning this definitely rang true for me, as I really love to be the first to know a piece of exciting news.The website http://www.thewhocarestrust.org.uk/pages/journalist.html said the following statement about journalists: “Being a journalist gives you an excuse to get involved with things for no other reason than that they are interesting. And when you see that your articles have made a positive difference to someone’s life, it can be a special feeling.”

Another thing I learned from this class is that to be a journalist, you don’t need a degree. Especially after our discussion on how everyone can be involved in journalism, I took it to heart that being a truly good journalist is something that a degree doesn’t allow or withhold. Citizen journalism may even be the future. The following statement mirrors my beliefs on journalism exactly:  “It is important for us to note that journalism is one of the worlds oldest professions and it is based on this knowledge that everyone can pick a pen and paper and write anything and some speak into a microphone without due recourse to the law however since society does not exist in isolation, there is the need for ethics and principles to guide what we
do but not to curb what the journalist does.” (http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/artikel.php?ID=209065)

I love this. What pride is in the occupation of journalism.

A journalist is someone who cares enough to tell the absolute truth, who is curious enough to ask questions that matter, and to practice good journalism, degree or not.

The Journalist As Celebrity

            Reading the book chapter on “The Journalist as Celebrity” stuck out, especially in the demonstration of obsessions with celebrities that it talked about. The book reads: “Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety.”

            For my blog this week, I decided to explore the difference between celebrity-worship and hero-worship, in order to more fully persuade all men and women, no matter their occupation, to strive to be a hero and not a celebrity.

            On http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hero, a hero is defined as a person  “of distinguished courage or ability, admired for hisbrave deeds and noble qualities.” A celebrity is “a famous or well-known person.” Notice: there is nothing about noble qualities in a celebrity. Being a celebrity is merely being well known.

            To contrast these two ideals, that is, the celebrity versus the hero, here is a prominent example.

            Britney Spears. (Need I say any more?) Here is a celebrity. Indeed, we may be hard pressed to find an America who hasn’t at least heard of her. But when we examine her actions, there isn’t too much that we could classify as noble. Maybe some acts are in fact the opposite of noble. (Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/BRITNEYSPEARS.)

            And then we have what to me are real heroes. The site http://realheroesamongus.net/ finds ordinary people who have done extraordinary, heroic, and indeed noble things. For instance, we have the inspirational story of Nancy Davis: “When Nancy Davis was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she decided to do everything in her power to research and fight her devastating disease. In 1993 she began the Race to Erase MS event, an annual fundraising gala to raise money and help find a cure for multiple sclerosis.”

            Perhaps in whatever occupation we decide, whether it be journalism or really anything else, I hope that we can achieve heroism, even if our heroic actions go unnoticed, over being a celebrity, which really only means people know your name. And as a journalist, I hope we can look for the heroes all around us, and not get too caught up in the big names that make up celebrities.

Storytelling

                The question of how, as journalists, we can make news fun while still giving people what they need stood out to me as a controversial and difficult challenge. The tension between the two seems obvious. People want to read stories that are entertaining, fun, and fascinating. But with all the problems around us, it is crucial that we have a well-informed and educated public. Absolutely crucial. And I feel that it is the responsibility of journalists largely to make sure that people are reading the news and being informed. To get people to read the news, I feel that we need to sometimes mix the hard news with the storytelling, just like we talked about in class.

                As I thought of ways to do this, the first thing that came to my mind was the subject of news called “small town pastoralism” that we talked about a few weeks ago. This value of news is the idea that we want to get back to our roots; that we want to hear about the small countryside and the farmer who is struggling.

              I opened a New York Times Wednesday and immediately found an article that mirrored this small town pastoralism. It was about girls from a small town in Idaho that stay natural and refuse to fake tan. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/us/melanoma-leads-idaho-to-consider-limit-on-tanning-salons.html.)

                To me, these articles connect what we need to hear with what we like to hear. By connecting a larger idea, in this case the idea of fake tanning, to a person from a small town that we can connect with, a story is formed. A story that we want to read as consumers. Thus, the “story” aspect brought on by small town pastoralism pulls people in. And in addition to this, people then learn about a subject and become better informed in that.

                 Another way that I thought we could mix together is through simply storytelling whatever news story it is. The website http://www.storynet-advocacy.org/news/Psychology%20Today%201-16-2011.shtml it says that “Stories are authentic human experiences. Stories leap frog the technology and bring us to the core of experience, as any good storyteller (transmedia or otherwise) knows. Our brains still respond to content by looking for the story to make sense out of the experience. No matter what the technology, the meaning starts in the brain. There are several psychological reasons why stories are so powerful. Stories have always been a primal form of communication. Stories are about collaboration and connection. Stories are how we think. They are how we make meaning of life.”

               No matter what article we are writing, especially if it is one that we can’t make a small town pastoralism story, we should keep in mind our audience and connect with them through telling the story of the news.

               I think that this can be hard when trying to be unbiased. Often, when we think of storytelling, we think of taking an angle on something. But in news, it is very possibly to make your story interesting with still being objective. (Find many storytelling tips to still remain unbiased at http://www.newsdesigns.com/industry-news/innovations-industry-news/15-free-tools-for-better-online-storytelling/.) 

Religion and Journalism

                The topic of journalism and religion was especially interesting to me due to the explosion of articles on Mormonism because of Mitt Romney. (See one such example at http://www.irr.org/mit/Mitt-Romneys-Mormonism.html.) For the last few months, I’ve seen such articles and immediately found myself shying away. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I don’t want to see what’s most important to me be mocked. Maybe because I don’t want people to look at me and immediately identify me with being a Mormon. I’ve always wanted to be seen as an individual who is good because I want to be, not because my religion tells me to or because my parents ground me if I stay out past curfew. I think I fit under the category of the journalist that will “ignore it until it pounces at them.” (http://www.religionwriters.com/tools-resources/reporting-on-religion-a-primer-on-journalisms-best-beat.)

                I realized throughout the discussion, however, that it’s a rather proud thing of me to do to shy away from such articles. They’re essential. They’re one of the biggest blessings we enjoy as a result of the First Amendment. One line kept sticking out to me from the discussion in class from the book: “Religion is the most important topic out there. It matters to nearly everyone, even to atheists and agnostics. It affects nearly everything—from how we raise and educate kids, to how we make and spend our money, to how we run corporations, communities, and even countries.”

              My religion is the center of my life. Up to this point with this specific discussion, I thought of journalists exploring religion as generally biased and out to make one group look bad or another look good. I think many journalists do this. But also, there are many journalists that understand what I have grasped this last week, that rather than making religion something that needs to be biased, we as journalists should look at it as something that shapes who each of us are, and therefore as an absolutely necessary part of basically any story or angle.

             “Religion can enrich your stories by explaining people’s motivations and providing details that can transform run-of-the-mill reports into surprising or provocative narratives. Religion shapes people’s actions and reactions in very private and very public ways across the range of news and features. Without it, you’re often not getting the whole story.”  ((http://www.religionwriters.com/tools-resources/reporting-on-religion-a-primer-on-journalisms-best-beat) If we could each gain this practical perspective and be a reporter who genuinely explores religion as an essential part to our world, what wonderful stories and insights we could have.

             I love the story of Barry Bearak. (Read more about him at http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/b/barry_bearak/index.html.) Here is a man who understands the delicate way that journalism and religion mix. Bearak proved through his famous article about Catholics that personal beliefs can be overcome. Rather than beat down another religion, perhaps that can even give insight and a new perspective. 

Journalism as a Public Forum

                This week’s discussion on journalism as a public forum caught my attention because of the quote in the book that stated that this subject was “second only to telling the truth.” Second only to telling the truth? That’s pretty big!

                The argument that “talk is cheap” especially stood out to me. One thing discussed was how recently, people have wanted to contribute their voices on the internet. After doing some research, I found this phenomenon to be especially true. On the website http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22, Facebook states the following: We had 845 million monthly active users at the end of December 2011. Approximately 80% of our monthly active users are outside the U.S. and Canada. We had 483 million daily active users on average in December 2011.  We had more than 425 million monthly active users who used Facebook mobile products in December 2011. Facebook is available in more than 70 languages.

                If that doesn’t scream popularity, I don’t know what will! Facebook is a worldwide program that is all about interaction. People seem to be slowly moving away from hard news to interactive, fun, and fast paced forms of media. This is supported by the interesting article found at http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/five-key-reasons-why-newspapers-are-failing, which explores the reasons that newspapers are failing worldwide.

                Another part of the discussion that stood out to me was the controversy on if blogs can be reliable, and if it’s right to give one side of your opinion.

                The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/billofrights#amendmenti)

                Perhaps in the search for what journalism is, we tend to look past this. People can say what they want. This is truly the greatest part of living in this amazing country. Blog, twitter, or a hard article—people can say what they want.

                However, we’ve all seen blogs that are slanted. It’s our duty as citizens to filter and recognize what is opinion and what is fact. We should look at blogs as a source of opinion, unless backed up by hard facts. Our job as journalists and citizens is to use active distinctions as well as protect the freedom of speech that seems in today’s world to be threatened more and more often. 

Compassionate Listening

                A statement made by Joe Hight from the book “The Mind of a Journalist” kept reoccurring to me as we discussed ethics in journalism in class: “Gosh, I wish journalists would realize that the First Amendment provides journalists with many rights, but it does not give us the right to trample on the lives of innocent people. Idealistically, that’s what I got into journalism for in the first place: to help the innocent, not harm them.” (Follow Joe Hight on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/JoeHight.)

                All the aspects of journalism with ethics are important, from credibility to diversity in the newsroom to ethics in politics. The aspect that most impressed me, as well as surprised me, was the ethical side of protecting the innocent.

                John Hershey, a journalist for The New Yorker, wrote the story of six hibakusha after the nuclear bomb the United States dropped on Japan. It was said of Hershey that “here was a man who understood that compassionate listening honors the human heart and makes possible understanding of depth and breadth. Hersey’ s book, listed by New York University as the most important journalistic work of the 20th century, was said to be startling in its clarity, a straight-forward, unbiased account of what happened to six people in the moment of and in the aftermath of the bomb.” (See more at http://www.vikingdays.com/pub/values/JanetBlank-Libra080218.pdf.)

                I love that included in this example of great journalism was the aspect of “compassionate listening.” After all, this may be one of the least discussed but most important aspects of being ethical. Sometimes people need someone to listen and understand, even if you are a journalist. In fact, perhaps compassionate listening, especially of the underdog, is what makes true understanding of the entire situation possible.

                In the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics, an entire section is dedicated to “minimizing harm.” Some of the specifics include

— Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage. Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.
— Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.
— Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance.
— Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy.

(See more at http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp.)

                There are many crucial aspects to ethics in journalism. Perhaps one that we often forget in the midst of seemingly more important things is to treat people with compassion, sensitivity, and respect. 

Watchdog Journalism

This week’s discussion on watchdog journalism was very interesting to me, as it is a prominent reason I’d like to be a journalist. I especially enjoyed the section that compared government to entertainment. I realized how readily I would answer a question about entertainment, but how that slowed down a bit when it came to hard information. Point well made.

I especially appreciate Peter Dunne’s statement that watchdog journalism is not to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Often, when I’ve thought of watchdog journalism, I’ve seen it as an attack, at least in the ways that journalists often execute watchdog journalism. Much of the public also sees the current form of watchdog journalism as afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted, as seen through this clip. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6id-wnSgGQw) Gray Granthem, (Denzel Washington,) is a prominent journalist trying to uncover a government murder in the movie “The Pelican Brief.” One line that sticks out to me is at 11:27 minutes when the man at the door says, “When did you people ever respect anyone’s privacy?!” Although Granthem was a respectful person, because of the bad reputation that journalists have for afflicting people at times without feeling, this man wouldn’t let him in. It’s important to remember the point made in the book that being a good journalist, and thus a watchdog journalist doesn’t give us the right to go about our work annoyingly and without emotion or feeling for other people.

The website http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/ takes an interesting slant on watchdog journalism. This website takes the news and looks at it from different angles, asking questions that the news may not have asked. This consumer watchdog journalism is healthy and may even emerge as a new check on the news itself, as it keeps reporters and news corporations alike in check.

A part of the discussion that really rung true to me was the discussion about how watchdog journalism is slowly evolving into mere gossip, which I’ve also noticed in the news. One prominent example I’ve found of this can be viewed at the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bgGpSKjltk, where Brittany Spear’s life and marriages are explored.

Really? Since when did this become news? Well really, I don’t think it is.

I hope that as each of us aspire to be journalists, or even chase after different occupations, that we can hold close the values that watchdog journalism represents: old-fashioned honesty, good intent, courage and curiosity.

Past the Green Town Signs and the Last Traces of a Stoplight

My best friend lived far out of town. I’d drive out there—past the last building and the winery, past the green town signs and the last traces of a stoplight. I’d drive out, usually as the sun was creating a purple, pink, and orange sunset, through wheat fields and over a tiny bridge. We’d hit golf balls into these open fields, play baseball in the vast yard, and go on runs on the dirt road. It was quiet and peaceful. There was time to think. (See pictures of nature like this house and other moving photographs at http://my.nature.org/photography/.)

I agree that an important value that news holds dear is small town pastoralism. There’s nothing like the wide open fields, drinking a coke on a porch, and simple quietness. I think that in our daily lives, we’re used to noise everywhere and we’re used to going everywhere as fast as we can. We’ve been raised in a society based on instant-gratification. It’s no surprise that we love hearing stories of people from small towns. We need that be reminded of peace every once in a while.

I opened a New York Times Wednesday and immediately found an article that mirrored this small town pastoralism. It was about girls from a small town in Idaho that stay natural and refuse to fake tan. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/us/melanoma-leads-idaho-to-consider-limit-on-tanning-salons.html.) Many may ask why this is considered to be news, especially for a news corporation as prominent as the New York Times. After our discussion in class, this particular aspect that made up news shocked me more than any of the other aspects. It seemed obscure at first. But once it was brought to my attention, I began to notice something:

­­­­                I realized that many times, the first story in the “National” section of the New York Times everyday consisted of an article that demonstrated small town pastoralism. (See www.nytimes.com) Thus, the principle of small town patoralism as being a value in news (demonstrated in the book Elements of Journalism,) is supported by one of the largest and most successful newspaper companies in the nation.

There’s something irreplaceably valuable about a story that takes you back to that one memory you have of a sunset, a wheat field, a creek. I love that this is a value in news.