Category Archives: Journalism

Mass murder: is the media to blame?

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We can’t make these events into history. Journalism is the first draft of history, so that is where we must start. Twenty dead children are of interest to everyone. Whether they are most important or not, can be debated (and depends, largely, on where they are from. I record here, despite the perhaps now-clichéd nature of the comment, 20 dead white kids are worth more than 20 dead black kids, and you won’t even hear about them if they’re actually from Africa. There were a number of outraged remarks to the tune of “What about Sudan?” And it could be replaced with so many places). Continue reading →

I didn’t even know he was ill

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Some of the first things that appear when you search “press criticism” are questions about whether it is dead or dying and whether or not Twitter is the culprit. I went looking for press criticism, because it was mentioned in our textbook, and I had no idea what it was. It turns out that press criticism is writing about journalism. When we’re talking about the presentation and content of Fox News or the New York Times, we’re engaging in press (or media) criticism. In fact, much of what we do here on these blogs is media criticism! Continue reading →

Greece posed for a complete meltdown.

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This is just a quick aside (I have all these blog posts planned, but I need to get this off my chest).

Most of you probably don’t know this, but I’m half-Greek. Greek enough that my grandmother lives in Athens, even though my mother was born in this country. I speak Greek and have visited my grandmother, in Greece, every summer since I was born.

What most of you are probably at least peripherally aware of is that Greece is currently facing some serious difficulties because of their economic woes. Continue reading →

Aggregation! Research! Context! Oh my! (Adventures at WMUA pt. 2)

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I’m still feeling proud of myself. Wednesday, at 5:30pm on WMUA, I read two stories that I had done some more significant research for. They weren’t proper reporting: I didn’t get any interviews, I didn’t find the lead and hunt it down. But I drew from multiple sources, and came to some good conclusions. I did some things that the places I first encountered the ideas didn’t do (not particularly complex additions, but that’s alright).
The first story was one about what the possible effects of climate change may have been on the creation of Hurricane Sandy. [Pro tip: don’t try and understand all of meteorology in an afternoon. It will not go well.] Continue reading →

Radio Reinventions (Adventures at WMUA pt 1)

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It turns out that I joined the WMUA news team just as big changes were beginning to get put in place. It just so happens that up until this year, the news you may have heard on WMUA was the journalistic equivalent of a chop shop. The stories were put together from bits and pieces of the New York Times, the Gazette, al-Jazeera… The attributions were fishy, and the licensing non-existent. It was, in short, Very Bad Journalistic Practice. Continue reading →