Essay 3

1. In an effort to engage more people in following the news, papers and broadcast stations have turned to citizen journalism efforts, which includes a range of activities from having audience members send in weather photos and comment on stories online to having “expert” readers do some of the reporting legwork on a story (several Gannett papers do this) or letting reader suggestions guide much of the news coverage. Among the trends in news that are aimed at drawing readers, which are adding to the public good? And are there trends that may be harmful to the news industry or the concept of an informed public? And why??

Reviewing the history of more than one hundred years, the media development has passed through different periods and different formats, from the earliest newspaper to radio, to television and then to the current internet. However, whatever format by which the medium displayed for the public, how to attract a large number of readers or audiences is always a thought-provoking problem for the medium operators. For the newspapers, the director’s main focus is the circulation, while for the televisions, the key point is the audience rate. Nowadays, the clicking rate becomes the first consideration for the operators of the websites, a mushrooming format of media which has already became an inseparable part of our life. In an effort to engage more people in following the news, papers and broadcast stations have turned to citizen journalism efforts, which includes a range of activities from having audience members send in weather photos and comment on stories online to having “expert” readers do some of the reporting legwork on a story (several Gannett papers do this) or letting reader suggestions guide much of the news coverage. This is the main stream for the medium development now, with the advancement of technology, more and more readers and audiences involved themselves into the reporting work. Some people contend this interactive way will definitely generate big influences on attracting more readers and audiences. However, there are also people hold the opinion that the involving of readers and audiences into the reporting work will damage the basic values of journalism like fairness, justice, reality,…since journalism should not be guided by the audience. In my opinion, such interactive ways are the vantages for both the audiences or readers and the medium themselves.

For most print medium, like the magazines and newspapers, the most traditional way to get reactions from the readers is the criticism wrought by people from various areas, usually the experts or authorities. This is the prototype for the participations of readers into the reporting work. But such reactions are limited, since the limitations of boardtype and the publishing period. The emerging of the internet breaks the space and time limitations, the group of reactors are expanded tremendously. No matter whom you are, professors, layers, engineers, even general civilians have the freedom to express their own opinions on different journalistic events anytime and anywhere, what you need is just a computer which is online. The voices come from different social classes can be reflected. The combination of newspaper and internet promotes the liberty of speech in our society. Based on this consideration, there are some people contend that the participation of readers into reporting work damages the basic values of journalism in terms of authenticity, fairness, objectivity and so on. They contend that since the educational level of readers are quite different, some of the criticisms even demonstrated to be wrong and cannot reflect the authority. If such criticism guides the reporting work, definitely, the authenticity, the fairness will be influenced. However, I contend the criticism cannot damage the basic values of journalism, on the opposite side, it can improve them. We should remember that the truth gets more obvious with more intense debate. No matter the opinions are right or wrong, scientific or unscientific, they represents the whole aspects of the journalistic events. Just because of the conflict of these opinions, the final decision will be much reasonable and scientific as the whole aspects have been taken into consideration.

Take the Casey Anthony trial as an example. The Florida Court eventually judged Cathy Anthony, who was accused of killing her two years old daughter to be innocent and released her with freedom. From the beginning of this case, the medium placed high attentions on reporting this story. Also, there are a large number of readers participated in the reporting work. They expressed their own opinions through different ways on news papers and on the internet, from the member of jury to the general citizen. Innocent or guilty, justice or injustice, we hear almost every kind of voice. After the intense debate on this issue, the final decision became more obvious. There is no direct evidence to prove that Cathy has the suspicion of killing her daughter. In consideration of the jurisdiction and social morality, Cathy eventually retrieved freedom.

Some people contend that the interactivities between the audience and television station is limited. The format of reaction just limits on the hot-lines and sending short messages. However, the combination of television and internet improved this situation, the number of reactors are expanded tremendously. The function of the interactivity I have already analyzed above. Here I want to emphasize another important issue: we need to take good advantages of the combination of television and internet, especially for the talking shows which can reflect the main stream in our society now.

As is known to us, the number of the audience for the television is inherently big compared to the print medium, since the requirements for the audience of television is relatively lower, people in different ages and different educational background can accept the opinions transmitted by the television. In this regard, the television plays an important role on shaping the public opinions. Especially the shows which are presided by the celebrities or involved the celebrities, the celebrity effect itself can be considered as a better interactivity between the program and the audience, their figures on the television will attract more sight and attention, this is the original advantage. While the combination of the television and the internet expanded this advantage, since the website provided the audience a better platform to express their own opinions and to contact their admired idols. Thus the effect of the combination of the television and internet is of great significance on keeping a better balance among different social classes. In general, with the guide of the celebrities or authorities, more public opinions and social values will be led to a promising direction because of the celebrity effect and the wide participation of the audience.

Mike Wallace, a very famous talking show anchor, he and his program witnessed the tremendous progress of the development of the American society during the past 38 years. Still today, his show CBS’ 60minutes attracts a large number of audience around the world. The guests of this show usually were the elites or prominent celebrities worked in various areas, they talked about the current top topics in our society, criticized the government policies and discussed the current international situation. He and his guest always stood in front of the advanced social ideas, and guided a large number of audiences to recon on our current social issues. The celebrity effect of his show generates a big influence on shaping the social values, while the opening of the website of this show brought this program into a new period. With the participations from various social classes, all opinions are reflected and all voices are expressed, this platform gave the general civilians more opportunities to communicate the influential celebrities. Such interactivities provide a deep understanding of the journalistic events for the audience, while for the television, combined with the internet, their audience rate got much higher compared to the print medium. In addition, because of this celebrity effect, we need to make better use of it, more health and positive opinions should be propagated.

I have been working in this company for about three months. My director always told me that as the media workers, we hold a special mission in our shoulder. We need to take this responsibility. In our television, we also have some famous shows which are anchored by celebrities. We know how big influences our program will generate on our society, thus every time we decide the topic and invite the guest, we will do lots of research work, and make sure that our program can reflect the most recent social value in our society and help to lead the public a deep and positive perspective.

All in all, the participation of the audience into reporting work is better choice for both medium and audience. For the audience, they can keep up with what happens in our current society, while for the medium, they can get a much higher circulation, audience rate or clicking rate. Combined with internet, I am sure that the future of the print and broadcast medium will be much promising.

Wrok Journal 6

This week, the burden for us was relatively lower than before. On Monday, our crew held a meeting to summarize the editing work we did during the past week, we settled lots of technical problems. Our director told us we would combine the completed documentary we edited into a serial and air them circularly from next week.

On Tuesday, our crew reported a very important event—the centennial celebration of People’s Republic of China (Tai Wan). We used three cameras in different angles to record the whole process of this activity. I still remembered the point out director told us last time, several cameras worked at the same time, we should not stop anyone of them except for changing tapes or batteries. This time the editing work for us was much easier to complete. We also did a very important interview with the ambassador of Tai Wan, ambassador Yuan Jian Sheng flied to LA from WashingtonD.C to participate this significant historical event, and expressed his own opinion about the bilateral relationship between Tai Wan and America.

On Wednesday, our crew continued to record our own program: The top topics. The guests were the chairman of Emigrant committee of Tai Wan. Today’s topic was the cultural communication between Tai Wan and America, there would be a delegate which was composed of ballet dancers visit Tai Wan on October, this show explained the concrete details of this activity, like the destination, the schedule of performance.

Thursday and Friday, we still kept working on the editing process of our documentary. Our main focus was to find the appropriate music which can match the ambience of the documentary we did. 

Work Journal 5

This week, we met a lot of troubles, in terms of technology, copyright issues. But we overcame them eventually and continued to step forward.

On Monday, we held a meeting to adjust our schedule, as our director will go abroad on the middle of July.  I continued on my editing work of the Chinese documentary. My second work was almost done. From that documentary, I realized that my interest of television production was focused on the cultural program like the documentary of museum, I possessed the ability to write out the script which could reflect the history and culture effectively and lyrically.

On Tuesday, one of my coworkers met the problem of copyright issue. He wanted to use one piece of music which he thought was quite ideal, but he could not contact the composer timely. He wrought several e-mails to the composer, there was no response. Our director told him it was better for him to abandon this choice, but he did not. Unfortunately, after he completed all the works and be ready to air his work on our channel, the composer gave him the response that he could use only part of them. After a tough negotiation, the composer agreed our request of using his music as the background music.

On Wednesday, our editing work continued normally, most of my coworkers had the rough cut of their documentary almost done.

On Tuesday, we came out of the office to shoot images of another destination—South Coast Plaza, a very famous luxury shopping center in LA. We spent almost a whole day the shot different parts of this plaza. My director told me, this was really a challenging job since we must make sure that all our images has no clear demonstration of the customer’s face to avoid the privacy violation prosecution. From that moment, I got the notion that no matter which public area you were shooting, without the permission from the person you intend to include in your image, the only thing you could do was keep a long distance and let his face looked very vague, or just shoot his or her back.

On Friday, we continued our editing work.

Essay 2

Media scholars have written about the effects that entertainment programming can have on people – from encouraging imitative behavior (social learning theory) to creating the perception that the world can be a pretty scary place (cultivation theory). What about the news media? Looking at news coverage and the definitions of news, what effects does journalism have on individuals and on society? What does news coverage say about the United States? And what does it say about the rest of the world

From the naissance of the earliest newspaper till now, the history of media development has already passed almost a hundred years. During the past century, the format of media has changed and evolved continually, from the earliest newspaper to radio, to television and then to the current internet. However, whatever the format by which the media displayed for the public, the function of it never faded in our society. Nowadays, the function of it gets even more important with the booming of internet techniques. Web television, blogs, twitter and countless websites have penetrated into almost every corner of our life, and become an inseparable part of our life. From the news like the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the military actions operated by NOTA on Libya to the weather report and the daily price of gasoline. To get them, what you do is just opening the television or clicking the mouse. Then you will be overwhelmed by the information ocean. Television and other medias have became part of the process by which people learn society’s values and come to understand what society expects from them. They enable us to communicate with each other by helping us to overcome the barriers of time and space. It is widely acknowledged that the basic functions of media are: Inform, Surveillance, Service the economic system, Hold society together, Entertain, Act as a Community forum, Set up the agenda, Service the political system. For this article, I want to focus on two of them: Entertain and Hold our society together.

Television and radio broadcasting provides us with a big variety of programs and news every day. All these news and programs release us from the heavy burden after work. That is the benefit we get from them. To get a higher circulation or audience rating, except for the general programs and news they do, the negative news, even the scandals of stars or political officers usually become the favor for media. In this regard, it is understandable that the information like the divorce or extramarital affairs of Hollywood stars, the drugs abuse of some sports stars is always full of the screen or newspapers. However, have you asked what did we really get from these news？ Next, I will use one example to analyze what we really get from them.

On May 9, 2011, Arnold Schwarzenegger and His wife Maria Shriver shocked the world by announcing their separation in a joint statement. This happened after Arnold acknowledged his extramarital affair with his housekeeper mistress and cultivated an illegitimate son. This new became the top line on the media sonly. Arnold was also put in the teeth of the storm. A fierce debate on this issue emerged on the internet. The public was disappointed by Arnold’s disloyalty, and sympathized Maria’s situation. In my opinion, for the public, they should stay in calm and analyze this event comprehensively.

For Arnold Schwarzenegger himself, it could not be denied that he was the false maker. But remember every one had the right to make mistakes, and every one also had the right to correct his or her mistakes. The public’s reaction on this issue could do nothing but place high pressures on him and his family. To some extent, this event should be considered as Arnold’s domestic issue or even privacy. Of course, some people considered that the audience or the media bestowed the stars like Arnold reputation and social status, and they should have the right to know or comment on their behaviors, even privacy. However, stars or other celebrities had already done something to compensate for their reputation and social status. They provided us a variety of excellent television shows, films, music, other kinds of arts works or exciting athletic contests. Some of them even set good examples in promoting the public welfare careers. They were also commoners like us, they had their privacy, and they had their own time and space which needs the public’s respect. In addition, had you took Maria, the mistress and her son’s feeling into consideration?  Did we want the 10 years old boy to live in the shadow of his father’s scandal for the remaining of his life? Thus, for such news, it means a tremendous pressure on the star’s career, which might generate very big influences on their family life. According to one investigation, in South Korea, about one to five suicide cases of stars happened every year. The reason for the suicide was they cannot bear the pressures of scandals from the public.

For the public, on one hand, have you asked what do we really get from Arnold’s scandals? Do they generate significance on our daily life? The answer is definite: Nothing more than a burst of laughter. For most of the public, our daily life is not influenced by them. Those news are just the resource of our gossip after dinner, and such amusement we get is based on the stars’ sorrows. On the other hand, media usually serve as the promoter for the public’s mainstream ideas, what they published have a big influence on shaping the public’s opinion. For most of the young people, they are influenced a lot by the media, their immaturity and curiosity drives them to imitate the behaviors of their idols. We can image what they will be under the influence of such news like divorce, extramarital affairs even drug abuse and violence. Their values may be distorted under such ambience. Some of them even imitate the behaviors of the stars they admire, they indulge themselves in the amusement, they take drugs, they do not treat their marriage seriously. Thus, more social problems come to appear. Compared the economic profit and the social influence on our next generation, which one is more important?

Based on the above considerations, if the higher circulation or audience rate is at the expanse of the stars’ sorrows and the distortion of social values, then this investment is totally a failure. For the media, they should take the responsibility to shape a health public opinion. In order to achieve this goal, the shows and reporting work which can help the public to develop an optimistic, aggressive attitude should replace those pessimistic scandals.

Medias should take the neutral perspectives or angle in order to achieve the goal of a fair, democratic society, and hold the whole society even the whole world together. This is definitely right. For most medias, they always try to find a balancing point which can consider the profits concerning all social classes. Unfortunately, this is a challenging task, sometimes this is even an unrealistic anticipation. What should the media select if they cannot find such balancing point in the conflict between political or economic profit and the general civilians?

I want to take the news of the military actions the NOTA operated on Libya as an example. Even today, we still cannot get a clear pretext for this military action. No matter what kind of reasons, the peaceful and stable situation for Libya is our final goal. But, what we are doing now is not pointing to this direction. Every day, what we look on the reporting work was the fierce fighting scenes, the blast of explosives, the victory or failure of one party, the casualty of the conflict, the negotiation between different parties and so on. However, have you got more images of the civilians who are still live in the flames of the war? Do they have family members are killed or injured on the war? Do they have enough food or water? What should they do after losing family members or houses? I can guarantee that the images which show the scenes of fierce war and those political leaders are definitely more than the civilians who are still live in the war area. Why the war has no end? The answer is quite simple: even the civilian’s basic right to get a stable life cannot be achieved by the government, they even do not get enough attention by the public from the whole world. Why do not they select rebellion? Before their basic life has the guarantee, their profit can be protected effectively, their terrible life gets enough attention from the world. Then the war will be quite close to the end. Under such situation, what should the media do becomes clear for the public. If the media pay enough attention to reflect their life, their horrible life under the war to the whole world, then the tempo of the process to achieve peace may get accelerated. More humanitarian aid will be provided by different associations, more endeavors will be done by the political leaders to avoid more casualties.   

After analyzing the above situation, we can give answer to the question at the end of the seventh paragraph. If there is conflict between the political profit and civilian’s life, to get the crisis settled timely, the media should not serve as the promoter or publisher for the war but to work as the warrior to reflect the basic profit of the civilian. Only in this way can we achieve the goal of peace and democracy. To achieve this goal, we still have a long way to go.

From the moment that the media emerged, our society bestowed a special mission to this honorable career. It is every journalist’s accountability to realize this  goal: to hold our society together, to achieve democracy in every corner of the world.

Work Journal 4

On Monday, our crew continued our editing work. We held a meeting to settle the technical problems we met during the editing procedure. My director presented new software skills which can make special effects, motions. These skills definitely helped us a lot. But I am confused by one notion: how should we select if there was conflict between reality and aestheticism. Remember what we did was not journalism. My director told me we can select aestheticism, since documentary was like filming production. Sometimes, the audience placed their attention on how beautiful and gorgeous the images they were seeing. Of course, there was also one promise: that was all special effects made by you should be based on actual information and actual images.

One Tuesday, we reported the baseball game in Dodge Stadium. This story reporting taught me lots of valuable information.  The first one was: as a professional journalist, your shooting angle was your first consideration during the reporting work. You should select the most ideal place and the best angle to do interviews of the stars and their coach. Of course, sometimes, they were too busy to accept your interview, but you should not give up striving. The other thing I learned was the sound from the game scene was very important during the editing process. It could make the ambience more attractive, especially for the fans of that game.

On Wednesday, we made our talking show in the studio. Our Guest was a pianist name Chen Rui Bin. He was a very famous and influential piano player from Tai Wan. He held hundreds of performances around the world, ranges from The Golden Hall of Vienna to Broadway. His music accompanied many people on their growing process. He shared his Art Journey with the audience. From that show, I realized how important the anchor was during such shows, he or she should be at least a social man who possessed sophisticated communication skills, and knew how to adjust the ambience of the filming scene.

From Thursday to Friday, we continued our editing work of the documentary. What made us really happy was we completed one part of them, and the rough editing of the remaining was almost done.

Work Journal 3

This week, we still placed our main attention on the “Chinese Discovery” documentary, continued the shooting and editing work. What I learned most was the operation skill of the software named Sony vegas, which was similar to Final Cut Pro 7. We strode the first step on our editing work, the rough editing of our first documentary had almost done.

On Monday, except for doing the editing work, we also completed one story reporting. It was a press conference held by immigrants association of TaiWan, they announced the starting of preparing and registering procedure for the next global TaiWanese( a beauty contest). Actually, we were late when we arrived at the destination because of the terrible traffic situation. What we did was let the organizers reverted the press conference, let the participators repeated their words. Firstly, I wanted to remind my director that we violated the basic rule of journalism—actuality. But she told me we did not fake but to revert the reality. This was an acceptable way in journalism if the journalist missed the key points of the conference, but the promise was that the organizer agreed to help you to do that.

On Tuesday, we continued our editing work of the documentary. My work is writing the script for the documentary. You know, I have completed two scripts from the past week. My experience told me for the scripts of documentary, the scriptwriter must learn how to express your editing ideas lyrically. That mean you should select the esthetical words and sentences, and combined them with your emotion, only in this way could you attract the audience.

On Wednesday and Thursday, we continued our shooting work of the documentary. Our destination was Chinese and American Museum and the Asian Pacific Ocean Museum. This was really a challenging work for us. Since we need to combine the Chinese and American cultural elements together. During the shooting process, we were very careful in every step to avoid destroying the artifacts. I learned more new angles about the camera.

On Friday, what we did was recording a television program named New Sight. It was our famous and representative program which had a large amount of audience. This show was committed to demonstrating the communication between China Tai Wan and the US. From writing the script, inviting the guests, setting up the film scene, coordinating the details in the filming scene. I earned a basic experience about how to make a television show.

Essay 1

Think back on the interviews that you’ve done for news stories (for publication or for a class). Describe two – one that went especially well and one that went particularly badly. What did you do that made the interview go well/badly? For the interview that did not go well, what should you have done differently? For the interview that went well, what did you do to make that happen? What do seasoned journalists have to say about the art of interviewing, and how much of that is applicable to the interviewing situations that you typically find yourself in?

Journalism is a creative job. Journalists usually stand in the frontier of our society. They serve as the recorder for the history, the eyewitness for the current development. From the moment you take this career, you life has been endowed with a special definition. The word “accountability” becomes more sensitive in your life. How can we use this career to benefit the whole society should be a permanent problem for every journalist to reckon.

During the past month, I interviewed various persons who worked in different areas in my reporting work. Some of the interviews were very successful, while some of them were not quite ideal. As we know, interview was an inseparable part in reporting work, especially for the video stories. For the repowers, this was the most important stage to show your professional skills. While for interviewees, they wanted to use this opportunity to show their charisma and got the acknowledgement from the public. Every video reporter should keep this notion in mind. Now, I will use several examples to summarize the key points I got from the interviewing scene.

One of the most successful stories we did was the reporting of the delegate of Press Department of Liao Ning province from China came to visit LA. Our director assigned us to do this story two days before the press conference, and time for us was relatively ample. What we did was striving best to find the background information about this activity. From websites, newspapers, we even contacted the organizer for this conference to get the first hand materials. From all the materials we gathered we knew there was a long-time cooperation history for LA and Liao Ning province in different areas. Both cities designated officers to visit each other annually. The purpose for this visiting was inaugurating for the Broadcast and Television week of Liao Ning Province in LA. Based on the information we gathered before the press conference, the interviewing work got much easier for us to do. After the press conference, we got the opportunity to interview the vice minister of Press Department of Liao Ning Province. He answered all our questions, in terms of the history of cooperation between LA and Liao Ning, their current and future endeavor to promote the cultural communication between the two cities. All the answers were quite concise and pertinent.

“Like a good boy scout, a journalist should prepare for an interview. On a basic level, this includes researching the interviewee and seeing what has been written about him or her already.” Wrought by Dana Liebelson (a journalist from International Center for Journalists. ) in “5 interview tips every journalist needs”.

Suppose we did not do the preparing work before the reporting. Problems might get much terrible for us. We might lost several journalistic details from the interview of the vice minister, like there would be another delegate from Liao Ning province visit LA in October. All in all, our preparing work laid a strong foundation for the success of this story. “To be prepared, the promise for a successful story reporting,” was the biggest point I got from this work.

The other story I wanted to mention was not an ideal one. It was story about the opening ceremony for Aims Academy, which provided after school programs for student in different ages. Even though we gathered enough information about this school, but the interviewing work still same a little bit tough for us. The interviewee was the education supervisor. From the beginning, she told us she felt nervous when stood in front of the camera. During the interviewing process, the words she said were very obsessing, what she emphasized was just focused on how well their school was. She repeated one sentence for several times. Sometimes the words she said were intermittently, like “ uh….uh.” Eventually we recited very little of her words as our interviewing work. Fortunately, we had another officers’ interview which could be used. On the way back, I reckoned on why we failed to do that interview. There was one word appeared in my brain: affinity. Suppose if I was a female reporter, then the situation might get much better. Since affinity was always the advantages for females. Female reporter usually did well on release the nervous ambience in the event scene. As a reporter, no matter male or female you were, you must learn to be patient, and learn how to relax your interviewee during the interview process.

Sarah Stuteville, a reporter who writes for The Common Language Project once wrought “sometimes interviewees are frustrating not because they’re trying to bust your chops but just don’t understand what you want from them.” After read that, I realized that why we did not get what we want was because the interviewee did not know what we really wanted. I reviewed the questions we asked, the first one was: “Can you tell us your feeling about the activity today.” Feeling, actually was too general, for seasoned journalists, you needed to learn to guide your interviewee by asking concrete questions. If I asked: Can you tell us a little bit about the classes opened in your school? Then the situation may get much better. The intermittent word “ uh….uh..” might disappear in our interview. Since in such area, the education supervisor was an “expert”.

Interview was an art which needed all journalists used their own experiences to grip the essence of it. Dana liebelson, a journalist works for International Center for Journalist figured out five basic tips for interview: Be prepared, Embrace the digital age, Play by the e-mail interviews, Don’t give up when the going gets tough, Review timely.

Sarah Stutevill who writes for The Common Language Project points out 13 Simple Journalist Techniques For Effective Interviews: #1 – Find a good location. #2 – Prepare Your Goals Ahead. #3 – Write down your questions. #4 – Work on your flow. #5 – Think about the medium. #6 – Bring a buddy. #7 – Avoid Obsessing. #8 – Be a little annoying. #9 – Be a little sneaky. #10 – Empower them. #11 – Work them up. #12 – Endure awkward silences. #13 – Ask for what you need.

Actually, it was just one month since my work started. I also knew my understanding about the interview arts was relatively superficial. I will use my experience to develop a more deep understanding about those principles and apply them into practice in the future.