Media Creating Your Own Reality..

The Corporate Media of this generation has become more concerned about how much money they make, then the consumers who are making accounts with their company and, or store. We in the process are making them BILLIONAIRES! We contribute to social media and popular stores like; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Target, etc. everyday. Now there are some positives when it comes to using social media. Sharing photos with family & friends who are long distances away, interacting with people you don't see often, or even letting people know in your life what you're doing. But then there are some poor choices of social media.

People diarrhea all over social media! "He loves me, he loves me not", "we're friends, no we're not friends", "why are you guys, so mean to me?... Bitches", "They're not my friends, now they are." People run their mouths and they don't shut up; people loose their jobs sometimes because they run their mouths about an indecent at work or another co-worker, so head bosses think they can't trust that person who just diarrhea d all over their Facebook account about a situation.

These sites and apps have made us make this persona about ourselves that has us become one person on their site, and through text as well, and another with people. We can't do face to face with people we avoid people at school or in public, but on Facebook, "Oh! Love you sweetie!" It is bizarre to me and I think that these social sites/apps have contributed a lot of this bizarre-o behavior on these sites. They have given us an out when it come to doing life with others. I'm saying I am against Facebook, Twitter, etc. because I use them for purposes of school, extended family, church, etc. But I think these sites have done most of us good.

When we do spew these things these companies keep our data like Snapchat. They keep a copy of the photos we snap and the words we put with our photos.. that is a bit scary to me! I am a very private person in general, so unless I have known you since childhood, or your family, friend... you're not going to know anything about me. So, knowing that these social sites that yes, I do contribute too are taking these private details of my life and possibly are going to try to make a sale off it. It's scary and thinking about how more involved and advanced we are I think that we really need to educate our younger generation!

The elderly generation is not advancing, even some may own an iPhone they still read a newspaper. I saw an older the other day eating his lunch and reading his newspaper. They are fine with how they get their news. Now, we may still subscribe to a magazine like Vogue, People, etc. Which is entertainment news, but mostly our news comes from WCCO, channel 5, Kare 11, and the news channels broadcasted from those networks. We have news on the go too. With apps that we can download on our iPhones, iPads, tablets, etc.

Bottom line, why aren't okay with how we are getting news now? What do we have to keep looking to how much better we can get our news? People seem fine with how they get already today... people have a system that seems to work for them in how they get their news. Most importantly out of anything we need to know how to use our sources and sites for news and media properly because many do not know how, and that's a big problem.

News!

For the 10 Day News Source my news source(s) were E! News and TMZ. These two sources are celebrity gossip news sources, so 24/7, 24 hours a day all the news you get from these sources is about celebrity's like Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Garner, Lady Ga Ga, Lily Allen, Kelly Clarkson, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, The Kardashians, Kayne West, etc. Just to name a few popular celebs who are always in the pop culture news lately. 

I went back and forth each day between E! News and TMZ. Prior with this I was familiar with both E! and TMZ because I admit I am a movie go-er/ TV addict who oddly has my favorite celebs and it's fun for me to hear the news of what's going on in their life, in any in one day about them. Now, I will say the whole concept of people fantasizing about celebs and people hounding them for a picture of whatever is weird, but at the same time I get why people are so into these celebs. 

There are some big differences between these sources and when it comes to how they portray themselves on TV and the web. E! has been around for a long time and they have moved with the times when it comes to the look of their website and it's neat, professional, and very easy to get around on. Being owned by NBC they are able to be on the red carpets at: Golden Globes, Oscars, Emmy's, SAGS, etc. They are the #1 source it's said for celebrity news. They have an office of professionals that get the latest news and have "friends" or "buddies"; basically sources that are somehow webbed into Hollywood and can confirm or not about what is true and what's not, if there is a question at hand on something.

E! has it's own channel and a number of shows that air on the channel. Besides the show E! News they have Fabulist; all about the latest trends, Guiliana & Bill; reality show about E! anchor Guiliana and her husband Bill, Jessie & Eric; reality show about the country singer and football player, & Total Divas; reality show in the lives of WWE Divas. The very popular family Kardashians have multiple shows with E! There are many more shows that are and have been on E!, but it shows how popular E! is.

TMZ on the other hand... gosh, what do I say? It's just so... gross! I swear a 16 year old teenage boy made the website for him and his buddies to jag off and then some dumb person for Warner Bros. thought, "Hey! Lets buy this celeb website!" So, he and his buddies could jag off. 40% of all the celebrity news they have is about some sex scandal or a new sex tape that has just come out and they give these sketchy, "juicy" details. Some of the news they do is based on a true celeb event, but mainly their stuff they get is from directly the streets of Los Angeles.

TMZ has it's own one hour show on FOX 9 here in Minnesota and also in MN has a radio show on mytalk 107.1. TMZ is a much smaller brand name then E! and in the past has been well criticized and has had some legal problems. The TMZ show different, the small staff gets together and discusses with their boss who always has a marker and coffee thermos in hand about the day's list of event in the lives of celebs. They show camera footage if they have it on a story and basically just sarcastically crack jokes at the celebrity's expense.

With all of this said, I these two sources were not the only ones I saw in one day. Yes, I focused on these two sources, but I was able to catch the 5 o'clock news on WCCO and then E! News at 6 o'clock. Then every so often TMZ at 9 o'clock. I would not recommend people to only focus on these sources because they focus on celebrity's not on the weather, or important news that is happening in Minnesota. The news that changes and impacts your life for now here in MN.

Design!

    I don't consider myself to be a good page design or anything like that. With that said, as much of a lack of confidence I had with designing and feeling like what I had done was good, I had so much just fooling around on InDesign and using different tools; learning a few new things that I didn't know this past year using InDesign. Working on Hoofprint has taught me alot about design and how to be better designer.

    When it comes to the technical side of design with font, shapes, size, blocks, color etc. I somewhat space out, but I feel like I have a good grasp on design. I do think design is important when it comes to your page because you want to look at your page and look at it for what...ever? But you want your page to flow, you want the elements to all flow together on the page and have the consumer be able to move down, across your page.

     With design you can make things bold and pop that catch someone's attention. What you may or may not bold, highlight, or extenuate may or may not a person's view on topic. What I have come to learn with learning more on design is that very same thing; what type of font, what you bold, what kind of pictures you include in the blog, and how you use the space on you page, all can determine how someone perceives or thinks of something. You can pull someone to into something or a person can look at the page and flip to the next one because they are not interested in the page and what is has on it.

  

Good Story... Pastor Scott

For this blog I interview my churchs' senior Pastor, Pastor Scott McLauhglin. I have known him for 4 years, my mom works at our church as director of youth ministries, so since then I have been able to get to known him... in depth. I find his story with his faith relateable. He brings some pretty hard points to the table and I think some are answered and others you have to trust.

"I was blessed to grow up in a very Christian family. My parents involved in church and Billy Graham Association, neighborhood Bible Studies. Always praying at the door with my mom before leaving to school. Prayer at the supper table before meals, confirmation, I was an acolyte. Back in the day they had them when they had more retractile services, acolytes would light the candles and you would have acolyte sticks. So, when I was an acolyte which meant you wore these robes and sometimes you would get in trouble for goofing off, but on the chancel on the radeys platform they had a bench where the Pastor would sit there, or Pastors would sit there and, so would acolytes.  That was cool for a young person, to be getting that kind of a privilege. I had a piano teacher and she was always interested in missions and so we would spend a good part of my half hour lesson talking about missions."

Some people may think because people have faith, or are in a religion that restricts them from doing childish, stupid things as a kid, but the truth is... NO IT DOSEN'T!! Pastor Scott shares some silly things he and his buddies did growing up and what his own personal struggles were as a kid growing up.

"Halloween was big for doing a lot of things I am ashamed of, kids going out and feeling our liberty to teepee houses. I proposed marriage in first grade, the teacher went out of the room and I did something I would get in trouble for, so this girl was going to tell, so I said, “Promise not to tell, I’ll marry you.” She moved in third grade so I didn’t have to marry her!"

"I had to take speech class, I didn’t pronounce my r’s and s’s right and that was kind of embarrassing because they took me out of class for that too. So, everyone kind of knew what was going on; felt very self-conscious about that. Reading was my favorite subject. They had a, Great Books, it was called and they just encouraged students to read so called "classics" and so we were able to get out of class with other children that would get together and talk to others about the book you were reading, so that was fun. I liked english... I liked everything in school.”

More down the line Scott went to seminary school and well, he can tell the rest of the story.

“I did a biology majored first. I remember I was standing outside a class, biology class on bottomy and just listening to the instructor teach. I wasn’t even in that class and it just struck me ‘Am I really that interested to get a major in biology?’ I guess I wasn’t; I decided it was just too much work."

"It was seminary in Chicago, the big issue for me was suffering, what’s know as the Odyssey. How can you justify God when there is all this evil in the world? Is there a God? Could there be a God without the evil going on in the world? For me it was a kind of philosophical thing for me. I read a book called ‘After Auschwitz’ written by a Jewish scholar basically dealing with the whole thing of human history. So, I wasn’t an atheist I was just like, 'I have to figure this out. I have too many questions.' The answers that I got didn’t satisfy me and so I did do a lot of searching and questioning and not saying there is a God, not saying there isn’t a God I just need to figure this out for myself. So, I did a lot of reading, ton of reading."

"I had kind of a spiritual experience of experiencing Christ in the room with me and the presence of Christ. I just knew that he was present and I knew he was real, so I got down on my knees and rededicated my life. It’s hard to explain, but it was a grey February afternoon and I came to my apartment and it was Friday, so I was able to take off early from work that day took a nap in my chair. I woke up and there was a light presence and... I just knew."

Scott told me breifly how he went back seminary a while after rededicating his life.

"I think Catherine said, because she knew, in sense I had a call even as a boy to be a missionary, or something. So she suggested, 'Why don’t you take some evening classes at seminary.' In doing that it really I heard again the call to go back into seminary to finish what I started, but I never dreamed I would be back because I had a job, good job, but I didn’t like it. It was business and I hated business, but you know, God gave me favor. Looking back God gave me favor and kept me from getting into all kinds of things. Bottom line God was faithful when I was faithful, so you look back and you see his hand and his province, so he was stirring me and giving me confidence in my whole speech thing because part was standing in front of people from time to time, so God called me out of my insecurities."

Pastor Scott reflects on his first church, a Three Point Perish church, and also reflects on himself, being a Pastor. How well has he done, does he think he has failed in anyway?

"It was a Three Point Perish, so three congregations. I had internships and all that, but that was my first ordained church. Before that I was a helping out at churches in Pasadena and California. It was good, good way to cut my teeth you know, it was demanding physically speaking, and emotionally speaking, and spiritually. You have to go to three Council meetings because you have three congregations and all that, but it was a good to way to wear all hats. I was Youth Pastor, Pasto for everything and sometimes when you get called to like a... if I went to a church like North Heights, where me and Catherine were members there, they put you with one job, and you would do only that job.

"As a Pastor you always feel, I think it’s common, but you feel inadequate, for the calling. That’s probably good in a way because then you're not self-reliant; I think that’s one way to keep us humble and dependent upon the Lord for that. The minute you get proud of something... whatever you may call it your success is not really your success at all as the world defines it, you know 'To God be the glory'. You know glorifying yourself is a huge danger in this line of work. I think I’ve always tried to be open to new things, so I think that’s something I’m happy about, so yeah just being open to new ideas, things. The church has changed a lot during my generation and even this current generation. Some of them good, some of them bad"

Choice: Is it good or bad???

We are an advanced generation that keeps moving forward. We don't settle for something that is nice because we want something that is beautiful- the best! Which is exactly what has happened journalism today. Blessed with the option to only read what we want to read and nothing more is a choice, we make it.

We don't seem to look back when it comes to news because we have so much going on right now, here and now that who wants to take the time to look back on the better times? (my opinion) Now is the better times and we are striving for the all time "American Dream". America is a nation constantly moving, moving, moving. So, we need a reliable source to get our news, but we also like to pick up once in awhile that new issue of Vogue, People, Life, Time, etc.

I think we need choices because without choice we would be robots. Doing the same thing day in and out, and we would be totally bored with ourselves. Now social media and sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, they don't always give us choice. They give us what we want, we they think we want. It is as if they want us in a little bubble.

Now, when choice comes into an equation I think peoples' minds get blown up because we really don't know how to make a decision on a choice we have. Think bout it... they other day my sister, Ella (4), she asked me for something to drink and I led her to the fridge and said, "You can have juice, water, milk: soy or cow, or have some of momma's ice tea." It took her 5 minutes to make up her mind, then when I was pouring her the drink she changed it! Ella changed her mind like 5 times- I got frustrated.

Keeping on topic cause we could go into a whole other topic there, but that is choice making from a 4 1/2 year old's level. Think of what choice we have to make today as teenagers: Should I get the soy latte, or the mocha? Should I go to the concert, or stay home and do my homework? Adults who work at high corporate banks-that's tough. Choice is all around us and we can't defeat it, we can only base or choice by who we are as human beings and by our... values, morals.

Making bad choices I think usually results in the consumer. Again, 'should I go to that concert tonight or stay home and do homework?' Answer: CONCERT!!! Or 'I could go to work today, but I can have that girl take my shift...won't go to work today.' We can make up all these answers because they are rarely any consequences to our choices, or decisions. So, we think 'I can skip work again and it won't be problem.' 'I can skip school another time and it won't matter and another time.' Because usually we can get away with our choices, maybe sometimes we have to take the fault for our choices, but we get the illusion that our choices don't effect us.

As a society though, they have. I think that we have become closed minded. We only believe what we want to believe and not be challenged for it, but the minute someone challenges our views, beliefs; our guard is up and we get angry. Customizing sites I think has been a big reason for that. People now are only getting sites, friends, and recommended pages that are most likely in the perspective that they believe.

Magazines give you alot to look at when reading; numerous photos, stories that are in depth, and deep. Newspapers are fresh news that have real content that is recent, while magazines are old when we get them; probably a month old news. But magazines have real stories they are long and very descriptive- they give a more deeper look at the person of the story. In writing stories that are under 140 characters or less I think would be easy because that is how we usually talk to eachother; 140 characters or less. So, I think we are moving with where 'technology journalism' is going.

I spit out so much in this blog, so to over view. We are constantly moving forward there is no backwards for us as a generation who strives for the American Dream. Our news intake that we get everyday is becoming smaller, we only get the kinds of stories we read every day- it's only in our viewpoint. Choices are great, we're not robots let us think for ourselves because with all this striving we want to go somewhere, but we need to learn how to make better decisions. We need to learn from our past bad choices and as far as journalism in newspapers or magazines, under 140 character... well, lets say I think the newspaper will never die because again, it brings us solid, recent news, but we are going to want that Vogue issue of Rihanna already on stands because she is an icon to many women in today's world. Shorter news I think will be "in" soon because 140 characters or less is how we talk we to eachother all the time.

Future of Newspapers

In the articles I have read and seen and the presentations I have listened to, I have come to a conclusion that newspapers are coming to a slow end and "technology journalism" is so in! For the first time in class I am agreeing on something. I for the most part my self read newspaper websites off my phone, or magazine websites off my phone. My phone is the main thing I go to, to look at journalism. (In some small way that is a little scary & sad.)

I almost don't want the newspaper to go away because sometimes I do read it, and I feel so old school and vintage when I do- I like that feeling. Whenever someone reads the newspaper I think it is so fun because it is such a old age thing we think about. We now have apps, magazines, and magazine type of newspapers that we go to for news now and so with that I think in time, the real paper newspaper that you get on Sundays or every single, and read with your morning coffee will be gone. Reporting I think will be more personal though and straight to the point it seems people are not interested in the long and short of an article, they like, "here are the facts and here's what's happening" kind of a story.

During the preparation of this project I felt like I didn't have much to do, I wanted to go a little deeper in the idea, but nobody seemed that interested. The concept though I love because I love women, I am proud to be a women and I love talking to women and talking about women. We are very interesting creatures, but complicated too. Taylor in my group put the idea out for an all women's magazine, then I came up with the name; First-Wave Females.

Something I would differently in my group would be a little more in "their face" about what is going on because with feeling like I had nothing to or I wasn't making anything I felt a little lost in the process. I did help come up with ideas and such, typed them down for us, but nothing like creating the cover page. With the cover page I thought we could of done better and I know how to "work" InDesign, but I didn't want to start anything like drama.

I would defiantly use the idea of an all women's magazine or app again because I just love that idea, and again I love women and talking with and about women. In future or even now women would like this because in the world we live in today it's hard for us. We are put up as objects and things to many and in the workplace we are stilled paid less then men. So, the appeal for women is totally there.

What is Journalism Anyway?

    Journalism is hard to define, anyone can say that. When trying to think of what it is nowadays you have so many definitions spitting out at you that you are frazzled and you can't really find a clear answer. All I can do is write, read, and accept what I think is journalism. Sometimes that means not everybody is going to agree with my perspective and personal view on journalism.

    I used to think of journalists as those people from the early 1900's to the 1960's with the professional suit, the popular press hat, little notepad, short little pencil, with the cigarette in the mouth. In movies the journalists are always in groups shouting the same questions or different ones at the same time and if they don't get their answer, what do they do? They lie. They make a headline that has everyone buzzing in town and the character who has this made up story about them in the papers is furious and it all connects with the storyline- for the movie. (In many ways Hollywood has influenced how people think of journalism today.)

    Never though did I think journalism was all about just making up stories. Journalism can be informative, it can also be a story from the journalists perspective (I think). The general definition of journalism is the activity or profession of writing for newspapers, magazines, or broadcasting news on the radio or television. Most of the time though we are so critical of people's writing especially when we form an opinion, but Robert Niles on his website says that publishing your opinion on whatever it is you are, is an okay thing to do.

    On this What is Journalism? website that puts you right to sleep, it never mentions anything about an opinion only about news and feature stories, and the tools of journalism. If you think about it though, who wants to read a stale and bias story, but I may not always agree with the writer and I may get mad or frustrated with the writer even if we are not engaged in a conversation. So, it comes to now is forming your opinion journalism... can you?

    For so long we have been hearing that journalism has nothing to do with bias, but journalists do it anyway. Anywhere you read you read, you read some form of bias, but we need to be loyal in our writing. We have a duty to tell the truth, Loyalty+Unbias=journalism. It's hard though! Super hard to make unbias and telling the truth come together because if we don't agree with what we are writing then why are we writing it? We got assigned it, we couldn't think of anything else... the list of excuses goes on.

    Like I said before I can only accepted what I think is journalism. We are all going to have opinions on what journalism is, and we could have days and days of discussion on it because it's sadly one of those things in our world today that gets influenced by people. People can think the paparazzi are doing journalism by stalking celebrities when really it isn't, that's just annoying probably.