Net Neutrality & Online Journalism

It is clear that the internet is today's printing press. However, around the time when the printing press was invented there was a little something that was a part of our democracy called "Freedom of Press". According to wikipedia, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_press) freedom of press is defined as the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials. Without Net Neutrality, someone on the other end, whether it be the government or internet provider, will control what sites people can visit on their computers.




When it comes to this, online journalism will be limited. Not everything will be seen or heard. If this happens whoever controlling the internet would be breaking the freedom of press law. Simply, there would be no freedom of speech on the internet. The people who control the viewings of websites will have the ability to just pick and choose to their likings/preferences as to who the people should hear from. They might say "Oh, I don't like this journalist -----, take him out of the mix and just let them view ------'s journalism". It don't make sense. That is basically breaking the freedom of press and speech law. Net Neutrality can make for some serious lawsuits and consequences, I feel.







As we have seen because of the slow death of newspapers and the growth of online journalism, having net neutrality is what made it that way. The internet opens the doors to so many different topics, opinion, reports etc... Because of Net Neutrality more and more different forms of journalism have been taken place. The best thing about it is that it let's everyone's voice be heard if they choose so through many forms of communication (video, writing, sounds). You can access everything easily because it is open. There is no such thing as an internet that is bias towards one thing or another. It hasn't been since the beginning of computers and it should stay that way especially now. The future of journalism is going to be all about the internet. It has shown statistically that people prefer the internet over newspapers these days. It has been proven in a news article from Breitbart in 2008 (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081224183017.jxmbrdyb) that 40 percent of Americans prefer their news in an online form as opposed to only 35 percent who said they prefer it in newspaper form (the number of people for the internet news has probably gone up since 2008) Now, without net neutality (in newspaper neutrality) it's like your taking someone's newspaper away even though it's still being printed. Why would you do that? Because journalism is growing on the internet it is important that we maintain Net Neutrality.







These days our country should realize that we need all the news, marketing ideas, etc.. that we can get to better ourselves in this tough economy. If they notice how many people are relying on the internet now for it's source of journalism, why would you even attempt to cut it down? The FCC should continue to keep the door open for new and innovative forms of technology regarding journalism. Freedom of the Press should not stop online, not at a time like this when it's only growing.

The 5 W's & 1 H

The main difference between a newspaper and an article written by an online journalist is that the article never really ends, it never finishes. It is always updated. It seems like once the article you wrote is posted online, its like you sold your work because people can be linked to it, comment it, discussed, broken up, etc... It's like a piece of art. No one likes there art to be rewened. Online journalism can be considered an art form because it shows creativity. But what if the audience wants to assist a journalist in keeping this art alive by participating and being an active audience? To do that an audience, like some jouralists, should be asking the questions regarding when,where,why, what, who and how. When it comes to Who, we should be asking ourselves who should we tell about this article. People feel like they want to be involved with an issue when it is presented and they want to inform others. Who should they inform? Possibly a community interest group or someone that cares about this issue. This is where social networking can come in handy because you can spread the word by a few clicks of a few buttons. What, should be brought up when we want to know what sources did the journalist use to get this information. A lot of journalists these days don't provide concrete evidence as to where they got there information from. I think something that the consumer should start doing more often is commenting or emailing the journalist and asking them to provide direct links to the sites were he got the information from. Right away when I think of where, I think of where the story is exactly taking place. The best way to do this and some journalists did it when the brushfires spread in California was to use google maps. Even though it questions the privacy of people, I think it is a useful tool for anything and the California wildfires was a perfect example of something to use it for. The LA Times today still does stuff like this. Check this out. http://projects.latimes.com/homicide/blog/page/1/. When it comes to remembering dates and things of that nature you must ask when. When you read something about an event or festival and you want to remember it because you no you won't be seeing this article again what can you do? The journalists should make news calenders where you can post events up that you want to attend and they can send texts, emails or whatever to remind you of it. The last w is why. Why should you care promote this issue? The journalist in this situation needs to stress the reasons good enough to the audience of why the should care and inform others. Perhaps an example would be making a connection with the oil spill and the affect its going to have on the average americans wallet. Or what I thought was a cool example on BBC about they have a calculator that tells you how a new budget affects you (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/business/budget_calc/html/budget_calculator.stm). That might grab a lot of peoples' attention. The reader in a situation like this can only relate it to the next person and basically promote the journalist by saying "You know this guy is good, the articles he writes about really relate to us and our daily lives" or something along those lines. I think when it comes to how, it basically surrounds the 5 w's and you ask yourself how can I help or make a difference. The internet has a lot of directions and steps to doing something about almost every issue. Once you answer the last 5 questions gather up your audience and participate to make a change.

The Decision (Lebron James)

In one hour we saw one of the most hyped and produced hour long sports shows in the history of sports. "The Decision" was an hour long show that aired in July and it was Lebron James ending his free agency and deciding which team he was going to go to next year. The advertising and the hype for his decision was so high that they had to make a television show. Really? I think that Lebron has let his ego get the best of him when it comes to this. That's just my opinion. I could have cared less where he went to. But I am not here to discuss Lebron James himself in this blog. I am going to speak about how the journalists made this whole thing out to be for really the last month. Lately, the only thing that sports journalists' have been concentrating on has been Lebron, Lebron, and Lebron...It seems like every time you put on ESPN that is all they speak about. Lebron this, Lebron that. It seems like they only gave dedicated time to something like the World Cup only when there was a game on. I understand that it's a dead time for sports but honestly find something else! For the two days prior to the decision, they basically had news reporters sleeping by his house and around the city of Cleveland speculating not reporting news. This was the first thing that I found to be wrong with this whole situation. Everything was speculated. You don't report news by speculating. If thats what they call news reporting, my seven year old cousin could probably do that. I even could have made something up that would have sold to the people. Don't keep us up to date on speculations. Only inform us of the facts. Then comes the show. He don't make his decision until a half hour into it. OK, fine. After he makes his decision it was like everybody in America wanted to and still does want to kill this guy unless you were a Miami resident. Journalists barely stood in Miami were they were making him out to be the good guy. Instead of standing in Miami, they went right into the heart of Cleveland (I give them credit for that) and just got footage of this guy being made out to be a villian. People were freaking out loittering the city, burning his jersey, etc.. Eugene Robinson had a good quote in his article in the Washington Post. "Why is everybody hating on Lebron? I mean, is this a free country? Or did a couple of important amendments to the Constitution get repealed while nobody was looking?" (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/07/lebron_james_and_the_american.html) I thought it was funny because it really is alot of negativity this guy is taking for making a normal move. The journalists are making him out to be the worst guy on the planet. One example out of the many is the article written by Mark Kriegel from Fox Sports and it was titled "Lebron's New Reality: He's the Villian Now". (http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/lebron-james-the-villain-now-mark-kriegel-070910) In this article he basically broke down all of the negative things about him leaving and how this was all about him being hubris, arrogant. By journalists' bringing him out to be this "bad guy" it is going to cause a lot of problems and for Lebron, the uncomfortable of traveling to away games. This is what journalists' do and this is what I am trying to state in this blog. Journalists go out to the worst places possible and show all the worst things our country has to offer and they do it by basically copying the emotions showed at the scene so they can sell there story more. At the end of the day the victims and the person who made the action (whether right or wrong) is made out to be bad people or just a place were negativity flows at a constant rate. Why don't journalists' look at the postives of situations like this. He's moving on to a team where he could possibly win a championship and it can be good for the league. No journalist in the last month has seemed to have brought that up. It's all about what the fans of Cleveland are doing in the aftermath of this. Journalists need to bring out more postive things in the news. They bring out the negative things to make us scared and make us more cautious in the hopes that we invest in a bunch of things that we really don't need and it's all just to assist in keeping the money flowing in our country. Journalism at the end of the day is just another word for promoting.

Journalists Gaining a Stronger Reputation by Using Twitter

Jane Mayer (New Yorker)


The war in Iraq has ended!
8:30pm June 25, 2010


The BP Oil Spill in the Gulf is clean
5:30 am July 19, 2010




Picture yourself looking at something above. Now, can journalists gain a stronger reputation by tweeting reports? I happen to think they can. If they promote their twitter pages enough whether on the air or in a newspaper they can definitely succeed in something like this. When you promote it you got to encourage your audience that it is breaking news like- first to hear it, on the minute. I think the people who watch and read the news would be followers of these now, online journalists. If you are a follower and you have a cell phone you can get these messages right to your phone even faster than waiting for an article to get written about later on. The journalist can tweet what is going on and get into more details throughout the day on the issue that's at hand. Twitter also allows you to share photos and videos (twixxer). That would also be beneficial. With the way our digital culture is going I wouldn't be surprised to see more journalists becoming online journalists and twittering what is going on in the world. As a news consumer, if you like a particular journalist in a newspaper or whatever and the rest of the journalists are horrible you don't have to look through the whole newspaper for them. You can simply follow them on Twitter all day long. I think this will only create a stronger reputation for the journalist because


• They would be keeping up with the digital culture world which is changing constantly
• Inviting participation
• Perform their personal interviews
• You get 140 characters. That's more than enough to relay a message and a little detail- GETTING TO THE POINT
• When it comes to Q&A, quality assurance can be guaranteed
• Increases brand awareness
• You can attract a new audience. In a USA Today article ( http://content.usatoday.com/communities/socialmedia/post/2010/03/11-benefits-for-journalists-to-use-twitter/1) they say that in addition to those individuals who discover your personal brand via Twitter Search and re-tweets, there are users who stumble across your content on your media property via search (not via Twitter), RSS, shared links, etc. This is an opportunity to complement that feature with a Twitter widget, so that this audience can become aware of your Twitter presence.

Athletes Getting Paid Too Much

I'm sure a lot of us wake up in the morning before attending to our daily life duties thinking, "God I wish I could make fast, easy money. What can I realistically and legally do achieve that goal?" I'm sure if you ask one of our countries professional athletes that question they will all be quick enough to answer that question. They would probably say "Be good at sports!” Despite all of the issues that these people go through with constant media attention and no privacy and perceptions of images, we should not feel bad for these athletes. They get paid way too much money for us to even think of sympathizing for them. In this blog my argument is that professional athletes are making way too much money in a society where salaries and wages are traditionally based on the value of one's work. Why aren’t the people that are important to our society like the president, fire fighters or police officers making that money? Those are the people that are struggling in this tough economic time. They’re the ones that are coming home with the smallest checks just trying to support a family. The duties that are done by these people are of much more difficulty then an NBA player or another professional sport. The pro athletes are the ones that make millions and never have to worry about living on the streets and not supporting a family. What do they do? They entertain people. I never understood in general why entertainers get paid more than the jobs that are vital to our living. A good example is teaching. Teaching is one of the most economically important occupations because our future economy relies on the education of its youth, yet teachers are paid a whole lot less than the average professional athlete is. However, some may argue that while teachers only provide service to a single classroom, superstar athletes are entertaining fans all around the world, enticing people with a feeling of relaxation and excitement. Obviously, what these individuals must not be aware of is someone like the most important man in our nation, the president, who makes critical decisions that affect the entire world every day, only makes $400,000 a year. While President Obama is hard at work reviving the economy, the unproven rookie in the MLB or NFL is earning way over what he makes. Something that these athletes should do to gain respect in my opinion would be to show the world that they are positive role models. These famous players must grow up, and prove to America that they can be positive role models for kids on and off the field. I think they can get some kind breathing space when it comes to their salaries, but the people that do daily work to help our countries growth should be overpowered by any amount of talent. Finally, what really confuses me is how athletes get upset when they say that millions of dollars won't be able to support him and his family, and that they need more. Millions of dollars can put food on the table, give you a shelter and send your kids to college. Why do they need more? If they have a couple of million they will be fine as long as they don't blow it all in the first year. What gets me even more is how after holding out for weeks, and sometimes months, the owners give in and pay them what they don't deserve! An example is Jamarcus Russel, the number 1 overall pick in the 2007 NFL draft. He is on a six-year $68 million contract, with $31 million guaranteed. In other words, that means that despite currently being recognized as one of the biggest busts of all time, and even if he were to get injured tomorrow and never play again, he will still have $31 million in the bank. In any other job, if you don't perform to your expectations, you're fired. There is no guaranteed money. I happen to think that there is something wrong here. In conclusion the whole system that allows professional athletes to just run around in money is simply ridiculous, and it needs to stop. When I ask other people whether they think athletes are paid way too much money, most agree with me. Do you?