Week 13 Lecture

This week's lecture included a guest speaker. This speaker reinforced Dr Redman's opinion that 'we are the journalist'. Steve Molks originally did a degree in chemistry, but changed career paths a few years ago and became a journalist. Now he is one of the country's most prominent entertainment bloggers, blogging about television, which is something of a passion for him. He spoke about how to control 'your brand' and how to make it work for you. Your brand can even help you get a job.

Steve referred to our JOUR1111 blogs as a portfolio. Our blogs show that we have writing experience and are up to date with technology. He spoke about how blogging is relatively young mainstream media, however it can really take you places and can even turn into a career. 

Steve used blogger Mammamia as a prime example. Mammamia just wrote about issues and things she is interested in. Her writing attracted readers, and Mammamia went from being a mother to a professional blogger.

Although Dr Redman has been saying the same thing about blogging all semester, hearing about Steve's real life experience and other blogging successes made me realise how important blogging, and my JOUR1111 blog, is. 

Visit Steve's blog here.

Visit Mammamia's blog here.

Week 12 Lecture

This week's lecture was about investigative journalism. I strongly agreed with the opening quote by investigative journalist Ross Coulthart...

"Isn't all journalism meant to involve questioning investigation of facts and opinions presented to us?"

For me, all journalism is investigative. Journalism is an investigation of events, people, issues and places.

Dr Redman outlined the four "in's" of investigative journalism:

• Intelligent
• Informed
• Intuitive
• Inside

Then he discussed the purpose of investigative journalism:

1. Critical and thorough journalism - the journalist is actively seeking out the story
2. Custodians of conscience - exposure
3. Giving a voice to the voiceless - an element of justice
4. Fourth estate / fourth branch of government / watchdog - those without power are represented, free flow of information, journalists make accountable public personalities

The main message I gathered from the lecture was 'ASSUME NOTHING'. Dr Redman stressed the importance of always checking your facts.

Investigative journalism is something that really interests me. Being able to uncover huge scandals and become a figure of social justice is something I aspire to do.

Week 11 Lecture

This week's lecture was about agenda setting, which sounded all dark and mysterious. I was intrigued. Agenda setting is sort of like the media's secret power that the public has no idea about. Agenda setting is defined as basically how much attention and life span the media gives a certain story in order to make it seem of more or less importance. 

The two basic assumptions of agenda setting are:

• The mass media do not merely reflect and report reality, they filter and shape it.
• Media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues.

These two assumptions are what lead me to believe hat agenda setting the media's 'secret power'. The fact the media can decide to focus on what they deem to be important is a little unsettling.

Also discussed by Dr Redman in the lecture were the two levels of agenda setting:

• First Level Media Agenda Setting Theory - where the media can suggest what they think the public should focus on in media coverage
• Second Level Media Agenda Setting Theory - where the media suggests how people should think about an issue.

There is also the Agenda Setting "Family":

1. Media Gatekeeping - the exposure of an issue
2. Media Advocacy - promotion of a message through the media
3. Agenda Cutting - where truth or reality is not represented
4. Agenda Surfing - the media follows the crowds and trends
5. The Diffusion of News - the process through which an important event is communicated to the public
6. Portrayal of an Issue - the way an issue is portrayed to influence it's public perception
7. Media Dependence - people who are more dependent on the media are more susceptible to agenda setting

The Agenda Setting theory has both it's strengths and weaknesses. Strengths include explanatory power, predictive power and organising power. Weaknesses are people may be skeptical and not ideal for the theory, strong minded people weaken the effects of agenda setting, and news cannot always be concealed.

Dr Redman used the Climate Change as an example of agenda setting. The media plays climate change and global warming up to be a huge issue. Therefore people are more conscious of the problem and are worried about it. Although, it has been speculated that global warming and climate change are natural.

This lecture made me more conscious of agenda setting, and in future I will try to be more aware of bias when viewing news.

 

Week 9 Lecture

To be perfectly honest, I was not at all excited for this lecture. Having previously studied news values in both school and in a uni course I did in grade 11, I didn't want to hear about them for the millionth time. However this lecture put a new spin on news values for me, Dr Bruce Redman explained them differently and more succinctly than my previous teachers.

News values are pretty crucial for every journalist to know. You want to write a story that you know the audience will be interested in and actually want to read. News values can vary between media outlets, but the best list (in my opinion) was included in the lecture:

• Negativity
• Proximity
• Recency
• Currency
• Continuity
• Uniqueness
• Simplicity
• Personality
• Predictability
• Elite nations or people
• Exclusivity
• Size

There were many more different types of news values mentioned during the lecture. It was quite overwhelming to comprehend how many things you should take into account when writing a story to make sure yours is the most interesting to readers. 

Week 8 Lecture

This idea of this lecture was pretty straightforward for me; what is good or bad in journalism? What is ethical or unethical? What I didn't know about were the ethical theories:

• Deontology
• Consequentialism (aka Teleology)
• Virtue 

Deontology is the rules, principles and duties of a journalist. These rules define what is an ethical or unethical story and the correct means of getting the story. Codes of journalism such as MEAA code, PRIA code, AFA code and ANNA code fall under deontology.

Consequentialism is getting the best story no matter the means or breaches of ethics.

Virtue is the "goodness" of journalism, and the good habits. These habits refer to courage, justice, temperance and prudence.

This lecture was pretty reassuring for me, as I have always assumed that journalists are always consequentialists. Knowing that there is actually a set of rules that dictates the fairness of journalism helps me to aspire to be a good journalist; an ethical journalist.