JOUR1111 Annotated Bibliography Assignment

Ward, Ian (2003). An Australian PR State? In R.M. Petelin (Ed.), Australian Journal of Communication Vol 30 (1) (pp. 25-42). University of Queensland: School of English, Media Studies and Art History

Ian Ward discussed Australian Government’s use of journalists and PR to “promote policy and to outmanoeuvre their opponents.” He established early in the document that this utilisation of media is a common practice amongst all levels of government in multiple countries, however the focus is on Australian Federal Parliament. Australian government have been consistently using press secretaries and similar employees since 1918. Originally their work was orientated around press releases and political speeches, but they are now also routinely used for handling journalist enquiries, plan doorstops and other media events, and monitoring media coverage. He does not just describe them as this, however. Ward goes on to state that these media advisors also put on the spin to particular policy arguments and positions, as well as releasing information with the aim to influence the media and then the public on certain issues, citing the Howard Government’s stance on “illegal immigrants” (e.g.: Operation Relex situation, which, while it was greatly exaggerated, was highly effective in influencing public opinion on the issue). Ward concludes by stating that the state plays a crucial role as a dominant source of information and imagery, however we know little able the operation of the PR state and as a result there is a gap in our understanding of political communication in Australia. Ward uses a number of sources in his text, which support his argument about the extensive reach and influence the government has as a PR state, and how little we really know about it.

Taylor, Lenore (2012). The powerful spin of Abbott’s wrecking ball, Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/the-powerful-spin-of-abbotts-wrecking-ball-20120518-1yvlu.html

Taylor focuses on the current use of the media by the Gillard Government and the Opposition, where the Government is using it as a platform to express their woes and arguments, and the Opposition is using the media as a soap box to discredit the Government rather than voice their policies. Taylor defends the media from blame for the Government’s and the Opposition’s spin, saying it is in fact those parties who are publishing the spin, not the media outlets. Taylor then states that the unspun truth is more complicated, and to get to it you have to be familiar with the context of that particular policy or argument. While the Opposition wilfully exaggerates and misrepresents the impact some policies will have (e.g.: the Carbon Tax), casting them in an unsubstantiated negative light, the Government tries to mislead about the impacts as well, trying to distract the public with benefits that seemingly come from nowhere when really they’re a result of something less favourable (e.g.: tax breaks for families using funds from Carbon Pricing). Taylor concludes that while both parties are misrepresenting the same policies by manipulating the media, the ‘truth’ can be realised with further research, and is a lot less exciting than what Australian politics make it out to be. In this text, Taylor attempts to explain the spin tactics and their effect on the public, and manages to produce an unbiased text on how to get past the spin and find what the ‘truth’ of the matter is.

Tilley, Tom & Barrington, John (2012). Who Owns the Media? Hack, Triple J. Retrieved from: http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/stories/s3425216.htm

Tilley & Barrington speak about media ownership in Australia and the risks involved in allowing the “super rich” buying up media outlets and establishing influence on the media. They begin by talking about Lord Monkton’s visit to Australia early in 2012 and how during that trip he proposed that Australia’s super rich establish a TV channel similar to the US’s FOX News, featuring controversial, right-wing media personalities to push the views of those super rich while maintaining an appearance of balanced and fair journalism during their news features. They spoke with Julie Parsetti from University of Canberra’s School of Journalism, who said that “we must stand guard against that brand of news.” Also discussed were super rich people who already had a stake in Australian media, such as Rupert Murdoch and Gina Rinehardt, whose involvement may be cause for concern as their bottom lines are business, not fair and balanced journalism. Tilley and Barrington also look at the positive influence the super-rich have had on Australian media, citing Kerry Packer and his work on improving Channel Nine and introducing the respectable current affair show Sunday, and Graham Wood, a generous donator to The Greens, who established the free online news outlet The Global Mail. Both of them did so with the aim of increasing journalistic integrity in the Australian Media. While Tilley and Barrington cover concerns about the super-rich taking over the media and turning it into a conservative propaganda machine, they probably don’t do enough to say that the scenario is unlikely due to government restrictions on media ownership, and they don’t promote the valuable efforts some of Australia’s super-rich make to ensure the future and integrity of Australian media.

Riley, Mark & Reason, Chris (2012). Craig Thomson using parliamentary privilege. Seven News National, Channel Seven. Retrieved from: http://au.news.yahoo.com/video/national/

Mark Riley covered how Craig Thomson, disgraced MP for Dobell, used parliamentary privilege to defend himself against the claims that have been made against him by the Health Services Union and Fair Work Australia, regarding his misuse of a HSU credit card. Riley lists the allegations against Thomson, but uses adjectives frequently in regards to these allegations to make Thomson look less credible. While Thomson’s credibility in his defence against the accusations is questionable, Riley makes no attempt to look at the situation objectively. Thomson did not answer the accusations as the media expected, but rather used that time in parliament and his parliamentary privilege to argue against the accusations so he could not be targeted for libel and other lawsuits because of the claims he made. Riley sourced multiple negative comments in regards to this action and the defence Thomson made, with Opposition Member Christopher Pyne and HSU Secretaries Marco Bolano and Kathy Jenkins dismissing Thomson’s claims. Reported Chris Reason also gathered public comments from Thomson’s electorate which were in similar vein. Both reporters make a point of showing how Thomson’s manipulation of the media has failed him, however it could have been done in a more objective manner.

Factual Storytelling Exercise: "Invisible Scars"

Gabrielle was pretty busy the day I caught up with her. My sister was preparing for a day out with a friend, and only has ten minutes to talk with me. While our meeting is brief, she has more time to do anything she wants than she may have had if not for the life-saving touch of a surgeon almost twenty years ago.

When my mother, Cassandra, found out she was pregnant for the second time, she was looking forward to the new addition to her family, as was her husband Ron. “I was having a quite normal pregnancy until I had my scan at 26 weeks gestation, which was a routine scan,” she said. “During the procedure, the radiologist stopped and said ‘Oh, I just need to go and get a doctor,’ and that’s when I thought maybe there’s something not right.”

The doctor came back and told her that she would need to see her GP as soon as possible to book a specialist, as her baby had a large cystic kidney which would require surgery.

“I started panicking… because I was nursing at that stage, coming from a medical background, I probably looked at it a bit differently to how other people would, knowing that there are a lot of things that we can do these days with surgical procedures.” Despite this, there was little Cassandra knew about the condition as it was extremely rare. She had to travel from the small desert city of Broken Hill to Adelaide, the nearest major city, to undergo a series of tests. In utero surgery was considered for the infant, but the multi-cystic kidney had stopped growing after several weeks, so further action would have to wait until the baby was delivered.

Gabrielle was delivered by natural birth at Queen Victoria Hospital in Adelaide before being transferred to Adelaide Women’s and Children’s Hospital for further care. “When she was newborn, [the right kidney] was taking up a lot of her abdominal cavity, so her belly was distended and distorted… Otherwise, she looked like a normal baby,” said Cassandra. Gabrielle’s odd-shaped abdomen was holding an adult-sized kidney, bursting with sacs of fluid. Any time she was laid down, the organ would push against her other insides, causing her stomach to reject its contents. The result was a baby that was lacking proper nutrition and was constantly dehydrated, and in constant distress.

The hospital left the surgery as long as they could, in the hope that the infant would be strong enough to tolerate the invasive procedure to remove her left kidney. Six weeks was the limit before she had to go into the operating theatre. “She had to fast before the surgery, of course, which she didn’t enjoy too much considering she was used to second hourly feeds; she had to be fed regularly in small amounts. She went to surgery and was in there for about three hours or so, and when she came out she was in a lot of pain,” Cassandra has to pause and tries to not get upset. “It was very distressing.”

Seeing her about to cry got me upset, so I tried to move on quickly. I asked her what my sister’s recovery was like.

“Very speedy… Her right kidney had started to function normally, and then started growing to compensate for the other kidney. She was a completely different child after the operation. She fed really well and began putting on weight… no problems since.”

Gabrielle told me she doesn’t really remember ever learning about her kidney and the story behind it. “Obviously they would have told me because I have a scar. You can hardly even see it now, you can only see where it begins, it's like a little dimple. I never really learned about it until a few years ago when Mum gave me some papers and said ‘That’s what happened,’ but all I ever knew is that my kidney was like a bunch of grapes.” Her insides are changed, but on the outside Gabrielle is like a regular 19-year-old: happy, beautiful and unburdened. Her scars are invisible.

“I guess to be careful with your organs, they are so valuable and you see so many people who have been in accidents or who have cancer who want these organs, so you should treat them the best you can so if you ever had to donate your organs people could use them.”

“It should be a law [that you have to donate], I don’t understand why people are against it, it doesn’t make sense. What are you going to do with them once you have passed away? What, is your family going to keep them in a jar? There is no point, you could save more than ten lives with your organs. People can get your corneas, your lungs, your brain… Okay, maybe not your brain, but you get what I mean!”

We talked about the Australian Paired Kidney Exchange, a transplant option for patients with an incompatible living donor. I explained that if she ever needed a kidney transplant, but none of her family were compatible donors, one of us could still donate a kidney and swap it for one that was compatible, so two lives that would have otherwise ended could be saved.

“That’s a fantastic idea, why would you not help someone else that can help you? I’m a perfect example of how you can live without both kidneys, so I don’t understand why people aren’t donating them anyway. I don’t expect everyone to just go out and donate their kidneys, but if someone you knew needed a kidney you should offer yours straight away, because it’s obvious people can live without two.”

We don’t know if anyone in our family is a compatible donor for her, because we were told it could put unnecessary pressure and strain on our relationships, but with the Australian Paired Kidney Exchange, that problem doesn’t exist any longer. Gabrielle knows that we would all raise our hands to volunteer if she ever did need our help anyway.

“I really appreciate that people would give up their organs for me to survive. I guess that’s what you do for family.”

For information on how to become involved with the Australian Paired Kidney Exchange program, or to learn more about organ donation, visit www.donatelife.gov.au.

Lecture Seven: Public Media

The lecture this week started off with an absolute cracker of a quote from the former Managing Director of SBS, Nigel Milan, who said "the difference between commercial broadcasting and public broadcasting is the difference between consumers and citizens," which made me feel very self important for being of that opinion already. It pleased my inner snob greatly (I need to kill that facet off if I'm ever going to get anywhere in journalism, but it's been difficult. It's why I'm here). I love public media. I feel that it's as balanced as the media is going to get, and while it's still unbalanced, it's good enough.


The most significant public media body in Australia is undoubtedly the ABC network. It boasts multiple television channels as well as radio, which reaches every part of the country that can get a signal. There is also it's online presence in the form of websites which support the various channels and stations, as well as ABC News online, a text-based news outlet. It was born to be a shaper of the nation; it sure shaped me. I watched ABC as a child, mostly because it's all I had living in far Western New South Wales, and listened to Triple J and ABC Radio, because, well, once again I'm from the boondocks and commercial media was just to cool to bother with people living in dust-bowls in the late eighties and early nineties. Either that or it was utter rubbish. (I had a feeling this blog was going to get personal, I wasn't wrong.)


Back to my point, public media is meant to be accessible to the public, because it's funded by us and it's exclusively for us, not for advertisers, not for media barons, just the average citizen. Which is a problem in itself; how does a media outlet cater for 22 million people who are all different. Not just "she likes unicorns, but she likes dinosaurs with laser cannons" different, but culturally different. This country is almost entirely made up of immigrants or descendants of them, and we come from every language and culture, so to cater to an audience so broad while not compromising on anything would be a nightmare.


Because of this, ABC and SBS are not all that accessible to everyone. There are many demographics which are not catered to. While their programming is considered, educated and contains important information, it is also viewed as elitist, limited and out of touch. Both outlets have tried to combat this by dividing their energy into different channels, such as ABC's children orientated channels, youth programming (Good Game, Hungry Beast, Triple J), SBS's multiple channels with different languages, while still keeping serious 'broadsheet' material for the rest.


Fortunately this country is fairly easygoing with it's media, so we can have programming like this. Public media in other countries often serves the purpose of delivering propaganda to the masses. Public media in Australia is held in common, not by the government, so it is owned and influenced by the people and their wants, rather than the other way around.


There are many challenges that public media faces to stay relevant and still maintain it's original purpose of being a nation builder and educator. I'm confident, however, that it will continue to be a strong presence in Australia's media climate. It wouldn't hurt if it got more funding though.

Lecture Six: Commercial Media

Early in this lecture, an interesting point was made, that I suppose I always knew but never really wanted to acknowledge: "Advertisers are the real customers of commercial media, not the viewers."


Without advertisers, there would be no commercial media. Commercial media needs money to survive and fund itself, and subscribers alone would never achieve that. Because of this, commercial media is often, unfortunately, more about catering for what would sell advertising space, rather than educating, entertaining and informing the audience. While is important that the latter is achieved, without catering for the former, as I mentioned above, there would be no commercial media.


This means "exciting" television and news print. Commercial media needs to generate an audience, because without it there is no one to view or listen to their advertisers. To do this, they need to screen gems like "Dancing with the Stars", "A Current Affair", and "Breakfast", which tries to catch as many eyes and ears as they can, with broad interest generating themes (Dancing with the Stars: dancing for young people and women, celebrities for young people, skimpy dancing outfits for, well... anyone who isn't asexual; A Current Affair, always out for a salacious scandal; Breakfast, to cater for the half asleep, half awake worker bees getting ready in the morning who need something a bit light hearted to encourage them out the door and not back into bed to dwell on the depressing state of the world). Many programs also feature product placement during the show, not just in ad breaks, in the form of a soft drink being enjoyed by a lead character in a TV serial, an iPad or laptop being used by a news presenter or more blatantly, BODY TRIM PLUS INFOMERCIALS BEING YELLED AT US BY A MUSCLY GUY IN A TIGHT TEE-SHIRT! Would you like a H2O Steam Mop with that protein shake? Just stay tuned in, it will be right after the segment about the Kardashian sisters. Maybe the bit about the miserable state of the education or health systems too, but that's boring.


Commercial media is also often viewed as biased towards the opinions of whomever holds the most cash (to pay for all that advertising, of course). While this isn't always a fair assumption, it's obvious in some instances, such as the Fox News network in the USA, or various Australian newspapers. It can be debated that these platforms are catering for a specific audience, which will in turn engage them more and then help sell more advertising space, which can be tailored for said audience for maximum effect.


There are controls on the media as well, commercial and public, to help keep it in line. In Australia these laws are fairly strict, which is both fortunate and limiting. It helps to regulate and censor content, which means less *extreme* bias.


Ultimately, commercial media is just that: commercial. You need to take it for what it presents itself as, which is a presentation of information and entertainment, quality varying, to fill in the time between the next ad. It can be useful to you or not, but it is your choice to consume it.

Lecture Five: Sound

I do listen to the radio, but not as often as I'd like, especially after I had listened to this lecture, or rather, these very informative conversations conducted between Carmel and Richard, and Carmel and Steve. Richard and Steven are both presenters at ABC Radio, and have been working in the industry for some time. For Richard it happened accidentally and for Steve it was the result of a lot of effort and hard work, but both seem to enjoy their experience in radio equally.

Radio is a completely unique medium. It's intimate and personal, unlike television or newspapers where it is plain to see it's for a mass market. Even though radio is delivered with the intention of reaching many people, it can still feel like it's almost people talking to you, but inside your head. There are no visual distractions, only sound. This personalised feel to radio is on purpose; a radio presenter is always mindful that they're speaking for the listener, not just spouting out what they want in the hope it will appeal to the audience. The audience must always be in the forefront of their mind and the cause of their actions.

Radio continues to be delivered successfully, even though it has been much the same for decades. It's because it is a valuable source of information and entertainment for the time poor, and it can be easily integrated with other media externally, like Twitter, text messages, forums or podcasts.

Despite its universal appeal, speaking on radio can be difficult to master. Enunciated is critical, and if for a moment you are fake on radio, it's obvious. There isn't body language or other visuals to distract the listener, there is only your voice. You also need to keep control of the conversation, without smothering the other person in the studio. Allowing them to speak is important, because you can make a really emotional and subconscious connection with that speaker, however you still need to be mindful to steer them back on topic if they get distracted.

After listening to the lecture, my interest in the field of radio has risen. After all, I do like to talk. I just need to be mindful that if I ever was to be in radio, I'd be talking for an audience, not for me. 

Lecture Four: Picture Stories

While last week's lecture focused on text, this week we looked at how images can communicate a story. Only in modern history have we relied predominantly on text to communicate what we want, however before that images were the primary method of story telling. Reading was an exclusive skill, not something most of the population had access to. Images were displayed in the stained glass windows of churches to illustrate scenes from religious texts, cave paintings told folk tales and reliefs and carvings brought legends to life. More recently, photographs have become an important part of story telling, however it is usually in conjunction with text that it is most effective.

Photography is a very common medium in today's news stories. It's almost obligatory to include an image with an article. This is to do with the advent of digital photography and the internet; together, a photograph can be taken at an event, uploaded to an iPad soon after then immediately emailed using mobile internet to the newsroom, where text is added and the whole lot is posted on a news site, which can happen in minutes.

But what makes a good photograph? We looked at several examples, but the best were ones that communicated an emotion clearly, even with little context. The method used to capture the moment is almost irrelevant these days (many would argue the opposite, but that's another article); the photograph that won News Photo of the Year in 2009 was shot on an iPhone (which might not be that great of a shock, the iPhone's camera outclasses a lot of point-and-shoot cameras on the market). The reasoning behind the win would have been that they photograph was well framed and emotive, and clearly communicated a story without need for words.

Framing, focus, point of view and exposure all contribute to a good photograph. The key to a great photograph, however, would be "capturing the moment". That shot where grieving family members embrace, a girl is being caught by a fireman as she leaps from a burning building or the bursting of joy is displayed on a winner's face for that fleeting moment as victory is realised; these all make great photos.

If you want to get technical, you also should have a working knowledge of how to operate a SLR camera with manual controls, so that way you can have a precise grip on how the shot is taken, and not just when. It's all well and good to take a photo of a great moment, but if your exposure is too high or low, the focus is wrong or shutter speed is too slow, the image could change from perfection to a blurry blob of colour.

In summary, I feel very fortunate to have experience in photography and I hope that will work to my advantage when it comes to finding a job in this field of journalism. I just have to learn how to operate a camera without shaking it all over the place as well...

Lecture Three: What is Text?

Guest speaker Skye Doherty presented a lecture on text this week. I also learned what a 'stand-first' was, which is helpful. The lecture was all about text, and how we use it.


Ms Doherty spoke about text being fast, flexible, controllable, portable, and searchable. Text is truly an amazing innovation of mankind. Without it, communication would be immeasurably more difficult. I communicate to others mostly through text, and my future career will depend on it and my ability to manipulate it.


The Sun was offered as a prime example of text used effectively. The Sun's articles are delivered in a concise method, with the whole article often summarised succinctly in the first sentence which is often less than twenty words.


While text is often thought of as sentences and paragraphs, text can also be meaningful in other ways. As singular words, text can become metadata and tags, which are increasingly important in a world where most of our text is on the internet. Metadata and tags help us search through text to find precisely what we're after, so we can maximize the meaningful consumption of text, rather than general consumption in the hope that we may stumble across something we're interested in.


Key words used during a search for text are essential for including in the texts we write. This way people will be able to easily find and consume the text we create.


Less related to the lecture topic, Ms Doherty also mentioned ways that you can increase the significance of your text on the internet through search engine optimisation. Having a significant and relevant URL for your text instead of gibberish is important, as this will make it more visible in search engines. Also, if important websites link to your own, your ranking will increase on some search engines, making your web pages easier to find.


An interesting point that was covered in the lecture was methods to communicate news in methods other than text. An example shown was a 'news game' called Cutthroat Capitalism, which told the story of East African pirates and their methods of capturing significant ships to raise funds and continue the cycle. It was very simple, and was almost comical, but when you remembered that the options in the game are based on real examples, it kind of stressed the danger of those kind of situations. I thought it was an effective way to illustrate that story, and is definitely a useful tool in adding depth to an article.

Lecture Two: New News

Good news! The assessment date for this blog has been pushed back to April 20. I hope I get marked well, especially because I used Helvetica.

This lecture covered the different eras of technology that news has had to find it's place in. "Old Media" is the era of traditional media, spanning from the late 19th century to the 20th century, the era where newspapers were first created (although ti should be noted that this is not when news was first circulated by paper, that was thousands of years ago, go progressive Ancient Mediterranean culture!) and consumed on mass scale.

Then followed Web 1.0, the days where HTML ruled and textured tiled backgrounds were hideous. It was advertiser friendly and everyone was trying to get a webpage on the net, including newspapers, although their modern (and significantly more functional) iterations would not arrive until Web 2.0, the social web. With sites like Facebook and Twitter acting as mass communication platforms in a more personal manner, news spread faster than ever. Now we're approaching Web 3.0, the personal web, where users will be personally targeted based on their previous browsing habits and offered information most relevant to them. While the web seems to be getting more convenient for the average user, it may also be influencing media outlets to produce more 'entertaining' news stories.

"News as entertainment" is damaging the more traditional methods of presenting news, along with the sense of entitlement consumers feel about having access to news stories. At the lecture, we were informed that media outlets were having their income streams damaged by the need for online news; it's free and you can't intergrate classifieds into it (a large source of income for many newspapers). One solution is to charge users for exclusive content, however that can backfire and jeopardise the credibility of the media outlet. News Limited has taken this gamble, and it has been reasonably successful for them.

Thankfully, it doesn't look like any Fairfax papers are going behind the paywall (however I wouldn't mind paying for that). UQ also apparently has a good relationship with Brisbane Times, which is good news for me, because that will be stop number one when I graduate.

Another point covered in the lecture was that investigative journalism is expensive, which may be (and by 'may be' I mean 'most certainly is') the reason why it isn't done as often as it was. Which is a shame because there are a lot of corrupt people who could do with some laundry being aired on their behalf. This type of story needs to have all the information backed up by hard evidence, because they are libel lawsuit magnets. You need to have a strong resolve to complete a story like this, because they are difficult to compile. There are many options available to a journalist when they attempt to get to the truth, some of them are easy access, like Freedom of Information requests to the government; wading through all the other crap to find that truth, however, is difficult.

In summary, I am more enthusiastic about becoming a journalist than before. There will be frustrating obstacles, people will avoid me like the plague, I won't get paid nearly enough and I may get sued a bit, but I will educate someone, somewhere, and they will be better for it.

Lecture One

One of the first things the students in that dank basement lecture theatre in the Forgan Smith building in late February was that the philosophy of the course is "you are the journalist." It had already gotten off to a pleasing start for me, a Bachelor of Journalism student who was at university for the second time (after my 9 month stint at Griffith was terminated early, thanks to an unreasonable employer...).

The lecturer for the course is Dr Bruce Redman, a journalism veteran of 30 years, who is actually a pleasure to listen to. Some lecturers dribble on a bit, but at least his anecdotes were infrequent in appearance, and entertaining when they did appear. He recommended Tina Fey's Bossypants as a good read; I still have to get around to downloading that on iBooks...

The lecture covered the basics of the course, and also why it's beneficial, even if you don't intend to become a journalist (I want to become one, but I'm sure there were others in there for their own reasons). The part I found most interesting was the summary of challenges faced by modern journalism, such as changes in technology, public perception of journalists and PR people (we have News of the World to thank for contributing to the negative image of the profession), user generated content and citizen journalism, as well as the greatest blight of all (in my opinion), news as entertainment.

News is not meant to be entertaining, it's meant to inform and educate. If you want entertainment, read a novel. Or more appropriately, watch Today Tonight, that's fiction enough and it's in a digestible 30-minute chunk.

The lecture also covered our assessments, one of which was to blog the lectures. I've been a bit lazy and not written any until now (being week 5 of the semester), but I have taken thorough notes of each lecture, so I think I'll just post them up now.

Look out for the rest of the thrilling adventures of my lecture experience and other related ramblings. Yay.

Media Diary (Assignment One)

I tracked my media consumption for a period of ten days, and I found the results to reflect different behaviour from what I had expected. In recording my media consumption, I noted how much time was spent reading the news, watching news, watching general TV programming and time spent on the internet. I also listed time spent reading novels and playing video games, as I often learn things relevant to news and current affairs as well as learning new things from them.

Before beginning to record my media use, I had a firm idea of what I did with my time and what kind of media I used. I believed I did not spend too much time watching TV and surfing the internet, listened to the radio occasionally, played videogames infrequently, did not read novels and literature often enough and spent a lot of time reading news on my iPad. The results I saw at the end of the ten days, however, indicated that was not the case. I did not listen to music or the radio once in that period, spent far too much time playing Star Wars: The Old Republic on my computer, watching TV mindlessly, wasting time looking at 9Gag and didn’t spend a lot of time reading the news. I was pretty disappointed.

This graph can also be viewed this way:

How I consumed media:

I have an iPad (like 13.7% of JOUR111 students do) and I use it every day as an internet device and e-reader. I source my news from online newspapers like 67.8% of my cohort, and I am also in the 71.1% who get their news from the TV as well. I rely on online newspapers to inform me of what’s going on, and TV news often delivers the same story later in the evening or the next morning, which expands a little on what I’ve already learned.

While the above graph shows that I spend marginally more time watching the news than reading it, I don’t think it’s reflective of how many news items I consume through each platform. It takes me much less time to read a few articles than it does to watch a segment on The Project or Sunrise. Those television programs also don’t have a lot of news stories one after the other; it’s more a simplified summary of a news, information or human interest story over a few minutes with a lot of opinion in it, rather than a ‘balanced’ report in a newspaper article.

After looking at the results from this diary, I think to better my own skills in writing and journalism, I need to spend much more time consuming news online and should probably vary my news sources more, to understand stories from multiple angles.