A New Beginning

I can't believe it has been so long since I've written. I need to write more and I will write more. So, tomorrow is my 24th birthday and I figured it would be a wonderful time to reflect on my past. So, as of today I absolutely hate my job with a passion. I sit in an office, pretending that I'm using my Journalism degree by communication through e-mail to really ignorant people in the health insurance industry that are rude and completely ungrateful. I'm stuck. It's like, I want to think outside of the box, but how does one think outside of the box when I'm stuck in a CUBE all day long? And may I vent. I HATE SPREADSHEETS. I didn't go to an amazing journalism school to decode spreadsheets that people make just to make your life hell.

I want a job with purpose. Not a job that is tedious. Where I do the same things over and over again until my mind is numb.... or worse, throbbing. I want to do what I went to school to DO! I want to make people aware of events and things happening around them! I want to help people who can't help themselves. I want to have a grad degree, or a doctorate! I want to be a NURSE and a freelance journalist.

I want... I want... I want..
BUT HOW DO I GET THERE?

This is a post for my class blog that I did last semester. I want, and need, to make some  changes. I definitely have some new opinions about citizen journalism.

"Citizen Journalism: The Future of Journalism?

Journalism has had its share of ups and downs, all revolving around the idea that journalism, especially print journalism, has an uncertain future. Media convergence has become an increasingly important topic surrounding the future of journalism, and more media outlets have been asking their reporters to do more then just report. Most are now required to report, edit and take their own photos. One trend journalists have begun to use more often to deal with this added responsibility is “Citizen,” or “Community” Journalism.

When did citizen journalism become popular? According to one CNN report, The Sept. 11 attacks were an excellent example of citizen journalism. People took videos and pictures on their cell phones while the buildings were under attack and sent their coverage to national news networks. Hurricane Katrina was also widely covered by citizen journalists. Now CNN has its own site for citizen journalists, iReport. MSNBC also has a “virtual assignment desk,” so the public can help cover certain issues.

Other citizen Journalism sites include: iBrattleboro, Your Hub, Backfence and locally, Bluffton Today, in Bluffton, S.C.

Citizen Journalism’s intent as defined by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis in their report We Media: How Audiences are shaping the Future of news and Information, is to “provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires."

But, is citizen journalism reliable? If journalism is supposed follow an unbiased principle, or as close as it can get to that, could citizen journalism, coverage by people who might not have had any formal training in journalism, be thorough, reliable and unbiased?

While browsing other blogs I came across a question that Mitch Joel asks, and that I also ask myself. Is witnessing the same as being a journalist?

Maybe citizen journalism is popular because it isn’t about being unbiased, but that everyday people are providing raw, critical information that some reporters might not have been able to get. I don’t think there is a correct answer to this question, but is definitely something to think about while citizen journalism becomes more popular. Is this the future of journalism?"

With the decline of newspaper circulation, and more reliance on sites like Twitter for news, it's apparently that citizen journalism is increasing and increasing fast! For me it is a little shocking that citizen journalism is actually pretty reliable. I hate that I doubted it's accuracy.  When the news hits, the citizens are sometimes there before us, and therefore they can provide us with the first bit of information. Take for example  the U.S. Airways crash. Janis Krums posted the first photo of the crash via Twitter. To me, that's amazing! It's wonderful for journalism, because it's all about information, right? And citizen journalists have the same legal obligations as "working" journalists. Whether your tweet is news or just opinion, you can face legal trouble. Celebrity Courtney Love is the first person to be sued over a tweet. 

Women and Media

So, this is just a post that I did for my copy editing blog, that is very mediocre, but somewhat relative in society:

Will the media ever be perfect? Of course not. There is nothing perfect in this world, but someone always has something to complain about. With this in mind, I wanted to know exactly what type of negative effects the media might have on its audience. While searching around this topic, I came across a book called “Selling Anxiety: How The News Media Scare Women,” By Caryl Rivers. So, do the media really scare women? According to Rivers, a Boston University journalism professor and journalist, the answer is yes. Her claim is that women, specifically working women, are portrayed negatively in the news media. Her list of “trend stories” about women is surprising. Some of the stories she lists include:  

•  Women who get too much education can’t get a man
  
•  Women who get too much education and become infertile
  
•  Women who love their jobs so much they spend most of their time there, neglecting their children
  
•  (White) women who get murdered
  
•   Scary women who get power
  
•   Women (all of them) whose brains suit them only for emotion
  

Those are just a few of the ones she lists. This is an extreme feminist view on the news media. To be honest, I’ve never read a news article that’s come close to portraying women like that. I’m sure some do exist. Since I couldn’t read this entire book, I can’t comment too much about it, but it made me think about women and media. And, there are some sites specifically geared toward women in the media including, Women in Media and News.

More recently, there were questions about Sarah Palin’s media coverage and whether it was more negative or positive. According a study by Journalism.org, 38.8% of Sarah Palin’s coverage was negative. But was that the media’s fault or Palin’s fault? A lot of people, republican and democrat, can admit Palin was misinformed about a lot of things. Honestly, more negative versus positive coverage might just mean that there was more negative things to say.

And We’ve all heard the classic debate about media setting a stereotype of the typical woman. Though I do believe a lot of the media do this (namely, magazines and advertisments) there are media organizations trying to change this view, and I’m talking all aspects of media, especially advertising. One example is Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign. A Dove press release that introduced the campaign said that “women strongly agree that ‘the media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty that most women can’t ever achieve.’” My problem with this is that some of the women in these ads are truly overweight, and being overweight is unhealthy. While, being extremely thin is not healthy either, saying that women who are overweight are “real” is still giving women the wrong idea. Are these ads trying to say that women who are healthy and naturally skinny shouldn’t be in ads because of women’s own insecurities?

So, will this debate ever end?

My article

Below is the article I wrote on the two winners of the Taylor-Tomlin award for investigative journalism. This version was published on the South Carolina Press Association's website.

The State reporters win USC investigative award

3/31/09

The Carolina Reporter

By Cheryl Matheson

John Monk and Sammy Fretwell, staff writers for The State newspaper, have won this year’s Taylor-Tomlin Award for their series, "DHEC Under Fire." The award is administered by the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

The veteran reporters wrote an eight-day package about troubles at the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

Each day they published a story about how DHEC's difficulties were affecting average citizens who depend on the agency to make sure their air and water are clean, and their health is protected. Each story was supported by sidebars, graphics and photos.

“This year’s award for the series ‘DHEC Under Fire,’ shows in a concrete way the critical role investigative reporting plays in developing an informed citizenry. As a newcomer to Columbia, this series quickly brought me up to speed about some of the critical issues facing our state,” said Dr. Carol Pardun, director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

To get the story, the reporters faced many difficulties. It took weeks to get answers to basic questions and even months to gain access to files that were needed. They were forced to submit all initial questions in writing. If follow-up questions were necessary, those also had to be submitted in writing.

In addition, the reporters were barred from a meeting of residential care providers about deaths and poor treatment at residential care homes. DHEC told the reporters it denied their request to attend because the media would make it uncomfortable for the providers to discuss the topic openly. The reporters showed up at the meeting anyway only to be denied entry a second time.

Judges for the Taylor-Tomlin award said the winning entry was a textbook case of how to do investigative reporting well and how to fit all the pieces together in an investigative project.

"Investigative journalism means using in-depth reporting to hold the government, businesses or others accountable for their actions,” said Sammy Fretwell.

“That's done by exposing issues the general public doesn't know about. It means hours of tedious work, sometimes without knowing where that work will lead you. You often must interview reluctant sources and review stacks of public records to find the truth,” Fretwell said.

In this specific piece, the issues were broad and complex in nature.

“There were often local, state and federal aspects, all intertwined. We had to master the ‘language’ of each topic before we could even talk intelligently about these topics and interview knowledgeable people,” said John Monk.

He said they dealt with numerous isolated and complex topics - from coal plants to mega-landfills to the Charleston port to coastal dune regulations to underground storage tanks to homes for the disabled.

In response to the series, the state legislature is now considering bills to put the governor in charge of DHEC, as well as banning mega-landfills. DHEC has said it would push for more authority to deny permits to companies with histories of polluting the environment.

"Be prepared to dig. Look under every rock you can find. Talk to every source you hear about. Chase down every lead that you can." Fretwell said.

The Taylor-Tomlin Award was named for and is given in collaboration with South Carolina businessmen Joe E. Taylor Jr. and Donald R. Tomlin Jr. The award recognizes enterprising, perceptive and beneficial reporting by journalists whose work is published in a South Carolina daily or weekly newspaper or wire service. The prize seeks to stimulate and honor the work of investigative journalists.

The two reporters spoke at the School of Journalism Awards Ceremony at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, March 31, at the Capstone Auditorium. The event is part of I-Comm Week, highlighting different aspects of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies, which starts Monday, March 30 and ends Friday, April 3.

The article was first published on the School of Journalism and Mass Communication's website, and then was published in The State. An online version can be found here.

The Future of Newspapers...

I am at the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications and this is the last month before I graduate. Journalism and I have had a rocky relationship; a love-hate relationship you can say. But with that in mind, even though I have periods of doubt about my future as a journalist, my passion for it can't be questioned. I love journalism and believe that it should prosper. It is a need for a society to be informed. The health of newspapers is at stake. It's all come so fast. In my freshman year of college, five years ago, I was told newspaper readership was down. "oh well," I thought to myself, "it's just a phase." I never thought that in my senior year, I would be contemplating the many ways I can do my part to help save newspapers from its impending doom. I can't believe what I seen already. The Seattle PI has already gone completely online, a sign of things to come. Not only am I graduating and going off on my own into the workforce of a country with an 8.5 perecent unemployment rate and a recession, but the industry I want to work for is going down the drain.

I'm in what the USC School of Journalism calls "Senior Semester," a time where about 10 to 15 print journalism students come together and work from 9 to 5 everyday and produce a newspaper, The Carolina Reporter. It's great! It's a working newsroom and has reintroduced my love for writing and reporting. In addition, it's given me the chance to learn multimedia tools like Quark, Illustrator, Audacity.. etc. Unfortunately, my job opportunites look bleak. I want to know what I can do.

Content isn't the reason for this drop in readership of tangible newspapers... so what is it? Why must we give up the art of newspapers for it to just go online, when online can be supplemental. Why can't we have both? These are the questions I keep rolling around in my mind. I don't know how to fix the problem, if I don't know the source of it.

There will be more rants later. If anyone has comments or ideas, let me know! I would love to hear everyone's imput!