Blog Assignment #4 - Freedom of Speech in Journalism

Blog Assignment#4 – Freedom of Speech in Journalism

By: Kevin Bloder

This article is a study about today’s youth and video games. Over one thousand one hundred teenagers from the ages of 12 to 17 were surveyed for this study. It says that basically all teenagers play some sort of video game. The study claims that everyone experiences gaming differently. It says that video games create a lot of social interaction and potential for civic engagement. It states that most boys play lots of video games and girls in general play fewer. Everyone plays different games but the most popular are of racing, puzzle, sports, action and adventure games. The article said that teens learn to think about moral and ethical issues, and make decisions about community affairs just from playing video games. Teens who play more games are more likely to be better problem solvers and helpful of others. The main topic that the survey covered was how video games make teens become more civically engaged in the offline world.

The article relates to me because I play lots of video games. Most of the video games I play teach me to problem solve but I don’t get the chance to play with others often. Some video games like Star Wars for example, can have millions of different outcomes as to how the game ends. Every decision you make changes the outcome of the game so you win the game by making good decisions. Another example is NHL 2008 for my PS2. In the game you can actually be the GM for an NHL team. This has a lot of problem solving and organizing to that.

I agree with this article to a certain extent. The survey makes video games look something you should play because they are really good for you, but I don’t think they are that good for you. For the amount of time you spend playing video games, you could accomplish so much more doing something else. If you spent as much time playing a real guitar as you might spend playing Rock Band or Guitar Hero, you could be a pretty good guitarist. I think that the survey is correct that you become more civically engaged, but I think there are so many other productive things you could do with your time.

Blog Assignment #4 - Using and Evaluating a News 2.0 Tool

Blog Assignment #5 – Using and Evaluating a News 2.0 Tool

By: Kevin Bloder

Microsoft Publisher can be used for editing magazines, newspapers, posters of anything else similar to that. It’s used to create any sort of final product. You can edit it by using text boxes, inserting pictures, adding word art and making lines or shapes. You can organize things the way you want it.

I used Publisher for creating “The United Courier” at the start of the school year. After I figured out how to use it, it worked really well even though I didn’t do very well on my project. Publisher let me do create my newspaper the way I wanted it and it had many tools that I could use.

I think publisher was a useful tool for my Newspaper project and will be very good for my final project. Dakota and I are creating a magazine called the sound and publisher will be an excellent tool to use. The pros of this program are that it is more advanced, easy to use, has more tools, and has better tools. The cons were that it was slow to load and that it took me some time to figure out how to use it. It could have just been slow because of the laptops though.

Blog Assignment Number 4 - Kyle

Ahhhhhh, journalistic freedom. This can be a very touchy subject to some, but here goes my best attempt of summarizing my thoughts into a useful, concise, and well written article to educate the less informed.

In my opinion, journalists should have certain freedoms that others don't have, but they should be controlled and logical. They should have freedom to write what they want because its the editors job to decide what goes in a newspaper. If a journalist writes lies and the editor lets it in, it's his paper/other news source, thats going to look bad for his company. These freedoms shouldn't be unlimited, however. There are cases where journalists go extreme in violating privacy which is uncalled for. In summary, they have certain freedoms like freedom of speech but they have to keep it under control or they're looking for trouble.

In my opinion, the main responsibility of a journalist concerning freedom is follwing the Canadian Association of Journalists Statement of Principles. If they follow each of these rules carefully, they can be absolutely sure that they aren't abusing their freedom. Most journalists are sneaky, however, and abuse their freedoms in order to make a good story. There isn't really punishment for this, so it's going to continue.

Journalistic freedoms are constantly being violated. Journalists are always sticking cameras in the faces of people and asking them personal questions they may not want to answer. These people feel like they have no choice but to go along with it, which is unfair. I can't think of any specific examples of this, but I remember seeing it happening all the time.

In Canada, freedom of the press is very powerful. Journalists can print practically anything without getting in trouble. However, most don't tell lies because they want to write stuff that viewers want to hear about. They make their stories as interesting as they can without lying becuase they don't want a bad reputation, and their editor controls what goes in and what has to stay out. For the most part freedom of the press isn't a big issue because journalists follow it pretty well.

Well, theres most of my knowledge on the facts of journalistic freedoms. I hope you use this information for educational purposes only and to expand your overall knowledge.

blog assignments

Blog Assignment #1 – The Death of Newspapers

By: Kevin Bloder

I think newspapers are dying out because television and other electronic journalism are more popular. It is getting more difficult for newspapers to survive because people can just watch the news on T.V. or hear about stuff on Facebook, msn, twitter, etc. I think we should care if newspapers no longer exist because you wouldn’t see a lot of local on T.V. and newspapers do. The advantages of getting your news on the web are that it is free and you can get more information and hear about stuff as it is happening. The disadvantages are that the web bases its information on things that everyone cares about and newspapers will show things about local news that the web doesn’t. I won’t miss newspapers because I don’t read them very much. I think many others would will though because they have been reading them for years and depend on them for news.

Blog Assignment #2 – Thinking about Journalistic Ethics

Ethics should be important to journalism because reporters need guidelines and rules to make sure they do things correctly. If journalists didn’t have ethics they wouldn’t do a very good job of reporting the news. Journalists should have rules that they must follow like the CAJ Statement of principles and ethical guidelines for example. Their reporting must be truthful, fair, and respectful. Journalists do not usually tell everything they know and that’s a big part of journalism. I think journalists should tell everything they know because it is their job to report the news and people may not know what is really going on if they didn’t report everything they knew. But that is just my opinion. They is nothing that says they have to tell everything they know. Journalists should tell all the important facts, the 5 w’s if necessary, and the things that people should be informed about. They should not have any sort of relationship between a reporter and their subject because if their subject is a friend they will try to make them look good even if they aren’t, and the opposite if the reporter doesn’t like them. Reporters should report the facts about their subject and not try to make them look good or bad because everyone will think differently about them.

Blog Assignment #3 – Ethics and Freedom of the Press

Journalists should have the freedom to report whatever they think is important to report as long as it is truthful because they can’t report everything that everyone wants but they can report what is most important. There should be some boundaries in journalism because there are expectations that a journalist must meet. A journalist must serve the public interest, act responsibly. Report truthfully and fairly if they want these freedoms. Reporters have spelt names wrong, reported untruthfully and been bias is their reporting. I think the press is free in Canada but not really free because there are things that they don’t report on that people should know. It’s more free in the community because you hear about everything. It isn’t as free in school because they can’t report on things that are inappropriate or disrespectful.

Aidan's blog #5

Using new 2.0 tools to help you out you can find them on the internet.
You can add things to the templates and work from there or start with your own construction.
You could even edit information that is fake and make it realistic. You could use flicker to get a got site of something and make good detail with the work you have.

Using and Evaluating a News 2.0 Tool - Kyle

I'm choosing to write an article on the editing program "Adobe Premier Elements." This is a very good program if you want to quickly put together a video. It has multiple methods of importing videos, so you can choose which way works best for you. This program really does make editing EASY. Theres different animations you can use, different transitions, ways to add text, still pictures, music, sound effects, and overall it's very easy to make a simple video look very nice.

I used this program a lot during my time in journalism. For the major volleyball assignment, I used it a couple times to put on videos to the blog. I also wrote the step by step manual on using this program, so I had lots of experience playing around with it. For the interview assignment, I must have used this ten times or more doing the same interview because of technical problems, but thats not this programs fault, it's because putting the video online was difficult. Overall I had tons of experience with this program and now I can edit videos easily whenever I want.

This tool will probably be useful for my major project, because we'll definatly have media that can be put in a video. This will be an effective program to use to put all our pictures and videos together in one video. The pros is how useful it is and how simple it is to use. There are tons of different effects and fonts and it's wonderful. There is just so much many minor details you can change to make your video look way better overall. There are some cons, however. It's a pain in the !@# to figure out how to render your video to your computer. Theres tons of different options and it's difficult to figure out which one you need. You may need trial and error, which involves lots of patience. Once you figure things out, you're good to go. It really is a very effective tool to make home videos look somewhat professional with just a little effort.

Freedom of Speech in Journalism - Kyle

This article is about how people think taking journalism in high school helps you in college. Studies found that students involved with journalism had higher grade point averages. Studies also found that students in their first year of college who were involved in journalism not only had higher grade point averages, but they also scored higher in their first english course. What this article is basically saying is how important journalism is because it prepares you for college and greatly increases your english skills, which I agree with.

This article relates to my own experience because I am in a journalism class right now. It's good to find out how important it is to be learning this stuff. It shows that I'll be better prepared for college and have better success in future english classes. I have noticed that I have to try extra hard in journalism and study more than I normally would in order to do well, which relates to this article. This extra work is surely preparing me for university where I'll have to try this hard in every single class in order to do well. Thats why this article relates to myself.

I agree with the article because it's statistics, it's probably true and it comes from a reliable source. All the people involved with the study are professionals which makes it believable. I also think it makes sense because of the types of things you learn about in journalism, and how it takes deeper thinking to get the correct answers. This helps prepare for future education down the road which is very important.