Posts

More than Just the Lightbulb (class response)

Yes, Thomas Edison invented more than just the lightbulb. Many people only know him for his revolutionary invention of the Incandescent Lightbulb but little do most people know that he has 1,093 patents. Some inventions you probably have never heard of are the Phonogram, Kinetoscope, and the Tasimeter. In the music section of our mass media unit, Mr. Miller talked about the Phonograph. When he first brought it up, I had no clue that Thomas Edison had more creations. I later learned that the Phonograph was a machine that could record and play back sound. In the beginning, sound was scratched onto paper tape cylinders by a needle. The paper tape didn't last long because the quality deteriorated quickly. Then, metal cylinders were used because they lasted longer than the pervious model. Mr. Miller also touched on the fact that Thomas Edison had many inventions but the majority of them were not created by him. Edison owned labs and hired people to work in them. When the workers came u

Is no International Stories a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? (News Response)

While glancing over all of my local TV news logs I noticed that the Wave 3 newscast has never had any international stories. This puzzled me because there is always political drama going on in the world, I didn't know whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. I looked at the other TV station data and noticed that they didn't really broadcast international stories either, so Wave 3 wasn't alone in this pattern. After thinking about it, I realized that since they are all local TV stations they shouldn't feel the need feature international stories. By not featuring international stories they can spend time on important local stories and not leave them in the dust. Therefore, local TV stations are doing the right thing by focusing the majority of their time on local and some national stories, in order the best benefit the viewer.

sports over everything else (responding to classmate)

Wisal and I are both in the Wave 3 group for our media critique project, but she is online news reporter and I watch the newscast. While reading her blog post I noticed similar patterns between the Wave 3 website and the nightly newscast. This being that they make the important less interesting and spend less time on those stories. For example, Wave 3 spends on average about 6-7 minutes of their broadcast talking about sports. That's a wopping 1/3 of their show when you calculate in commercials for that 30 minute time period.  Wisal also noticed that there were a lot of sports articles on the website, and she felt like they could have cut back on the sports and include more important, pressing issues. I say the same about their newscast. Another example would be that they write/broadcast many stories that are purely for entertainment and not necessarily an event that all of the viewers HAD to know about. Instead they could spend this time elaborating more on stories and going mor

A New Opportunity (class response)

On Monday, October 29th during second period, both of the freshman j+c classes gathered together in Mr. Miller's room to talk about the past 72 hours of Hell. We had an open discussion about the Kroger and Synagogue shootings. Many students contributed to the conversation and offered a variety of viewpoints of why these tragic things are happening and what steps we think can be done to prevent this issue from occurring in the future. I really appreciated the fact the Mr. Miller and Mrs. Palmer took time out of their lesson plan to create a time for us to really process what had happened. In the past when big, scary events happened in the world my teachers wouldn't spend a lot of time talking about it. It was the first time that I have been a part of a big conversation like this with other students my age. I believe that this discussion helped many people understand and cope with the shooting, especially for me because I was affected by both, as a jewish resident in Louisville,

Response to Marjorie Mays: Class Comment - Movie Theater Immersion

Recently I read Marjorie's blog post about movie theater food being an immersive experience and I completely agree with her. My class did not talk about movie foods so, reading her blog was an interesting point I never thought about. She makes a good point about not having access to a variety of snacks at home, you are limited. Households usually don't have those junky foods. While at the movies any type of candy is at your disposal for a price and you can purchase mouth watering, buttery popcorn that just isn't the same as the microwave popcorn you can make at home.  Image a movie theater with no snacks or drinks available. It would feel abnormal because we are used to having those things around while watching a movie. Therefore, I agree with Marjorie's post. To read Marjorie's full post: http://marjoriesfirstblog.blogspot.com/2018/10/class-comment-movie-theater-immersion.html    

A More than Rough Week (News Response)

This past week has been scary to say the least. Multiple pipe bombs were sent to prominant democrattic leaders, two were shot and killed a Louisville Kroger, and 11 were shot and killed at a synogogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Two of these events really hit home for me. One being the Kroger shooting because I live in Louisville and it's frightening to realize that this happened in my sweet hometown. The other horrific event that affected me was the synagogue shooting because I am Jewish and to think that someone hates what I stand for and believe in is also frightening, especially to a 14 year old. While watching the news Sunday night, the majority of the newscast focused on the two shootings which were very important to me. Wave 3 did a good, thorough job of reporting the facts from both stories but they need to include more of the reaction of the people, like what we as a community are doing to work toward eliminating this issue. Wave 3 has the "what" down but they

So Many Magazines (class response)

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I recently went out to get the mail from my mailbox and noticed there were several different magazines about completely different topics inside. This got me thinking about our class discussion about the rise and fall of magazines. Magazines were the first national media and the first to use photojournalism. They tried to reach a broad audience to sell more product. In the beginning of the 1800s magazines were very popular but that slowly started to change. After the invention of the TV, magazines were forced to demassify because of declining interest. They began targeting specific audiences which is why we have Food&Wine (cooking), People (celebrity), and Gold Digest (sports). Ever wonder why you don't see any of these topics combined into one magazine? Demassification is why. In class I really enjoyed learning about magazines because like most of what we have covered in journalism, everything can be seen in the real world. This aspect of the class is why I find it interesting.