The Media and Me, Part 2

We were asked for our last post to write about how we have changed as media consumers since the beginning of the semester.

First of all, I'm more cautious about where I get my news. I've known for some time that network news stations each have their own bias, depending on which huge corporation owns them. But it wasn't until I did an exercise for my Media and Diversity class that it really sunk in how skewed network news can really be. Now I'm more likely to turn to BBC when I want to see what's going on in the world.

I've also become a more savvy online media consumer. After learning about Bloglines, I started subscribing to blogs I found interesting. I'm now up to 25 feeds, ranging from Dilbert to Wired. Wired in particular has been a great source of topics for my blog, as well as just a great place to get tech news. And I can't leave out YouTube. The lonelygirl15 story, plus its takeover by Google, has convinced me that this new media outlet will become/has become important to our society.

Overall, I'd say that learning about the media this semester has allowed me to look more critically at the media I consume, and find new ways to get the kind of media I'm interested in.

And for those of you that are wondering, this won't be my last last post, just the final one for MCOM 72.

Borat: a Success?

After seeing Borat last weekend, I was a little disappointed. Don't get me wrong: I thought it was very funny. But I just don't think that a lot of people will "get" the satirical humor of the movie.

For the record, Borat has it's good moments that I think were clearly poking fun at the right people. The rodeo scene and the part with the frat boys had me in stitches. This was partly because the bigoted people targeted deserved every bit of embarrassment they must now be feeling.

Yet even knowing the premise, there were parts of the movie that totally baffled me. Like, why the antique store owners? There was no obvious satire in this part of the movie, where Borat destroys over $400 worth of civil war memorabilia. The couple that owned the store seemed equally perplexed, and was not fairly compensated.

I also didn't see the necessity of interrupting someone's business conference by charging in naked for a wrestling match. Sure, it got some laughs, but you just wonder, why? Did Sacha Baron Cohen feel the need to be so outrageous just for the sake of shock value? Parts of Borat felt more like watching an episode of Jackass than anything else. The Internet Movie Database claims that the police were called on Cohen 91 times during the production of the film. Personally, I think the needless mayhem that Borat creates takes away from the more meaningful satire of the movie.

But then again, I still laughed.

An Open Letter to SJSU Curriculum Decision-Makers

(For a background in what's going on, read here, here, and here.)

To Whom it May Concern;

As this is my first semester as a journalism major at SJSU, I don't claim to know a great deal about the objectives of the J&MC program. Yet it seems to me that turning JOUR 163 into a software teaching class would be detrimental to the students, and the department as a whole. While it's true that commercial skills will benefit us in our field, I believe that it is more important for this class to focus on exploring new concepts of media so that we can keep up with the developments in the world of journalism.

Blogging is one such development. This semester, in Lilly Buchwitz's MCOM 72 class, I feel that I have grown immensely as a journalist by creating and maintaining this blog. I believe this is because the focus in class was on how to become a good blogger, not simply how to blog. Sure, a knowledge of how to use blogging tools such as Blogger would have helped me get started, but I'm glad we didn't waste time in class going over those kinds of details. In my experience, we learn best by doing things, not just by being taught about them.

From what I hear, the students in this semester's section of JOUR 163 have been given wonderful opportunities to explore "new media" and emerging forms of journalism, including blogging and podcasting. I believe this is key at a time when "old media" is on a downslide. Professors Steve Sloan and Cynthia McCune have done a revolutionary thing by bringing in top-notch guest speakers and encouraging their students to take part in the cutting edge of media. As SJSU alumni Robert Scoble said, "You can learn InDesign from a book." I'm willing to bet that what the students of JOUR 163 learned this semester was much more valuable that anything a textbook could provide. I hope that you will decide to keep the course curriculum as is.