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Reaction 04/12

After reading this article about resilience it really made me sit back and think about the very first sentence and question they asked, “Does early hardship in life keep children from becoming successful adults?”. It made me start to  think back to my own life growing up, being a child of a single parent for a majority of my life there were times when stuff was stretched a little too close for comfort. But I honestly believe that those challenging times  molded me into the respectable young man I am today. I see the kids I’ve known for years, growing up with them, that have always been able to get whatever they want at any time and I'm shocked to see not only their  level of maturity being severly low for their age but i also notice and think to myself that they aren’t ready for the real world as adults. For example look at a majority of children of  modern, well now actor/ actress, usually you’ll see them skating around LA blowing through thousands of dollars that they did not earn. Who wants that in their children? Yes it must be so nice and lavish for them to be able to not have to work and do whatever they please, but when i see that i don’t see a real person basically. To me the hardships that you run into in life are what mold you and make you a well respected  person, the people who have been at the bottom and taken each day as a step towards being successful to the point of legitimate success for them those are the real people in the world, not the ones that have been handed everything on a silver platter.

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Reaction 04/05

Right off the bat I want to say this is article published by Buzzfeed is amazing for a company that publishes news, and stories, to write their honest Editorial Standards And Ethics Guide. For them to say right at the beginning their “intent with this document is to provide context and support for staffers in BuzzFeed’s three distinct editorial divisions — News, Buzz, and Life — in making smart, responsible, and ethical choices as we tell the most honest, troublemaking, revelatory, heartwarming, gripping, and entertaining stories we can”(Page 1). This is such a mature and honest step for them and I love it. But this post is about my conception on the difference of what’s legal and what’s ethical. This is a huge importance especially for anywhere that, tells stories, and news, and for anyone who reads or listens to it. When the article talked about graphic content such as violence, nudity, and profanity I immediately thought about the legality/ ethical principles of it. What Buzzfeed does in a circumstance where they have an image that demonstrates one of these they do post them. Now this can be a huge ethical problem for some, but what Buzzfeed does is it covered the image in a way that gives the viewer the opinion weather they would like to view said image by clicking on it, or not. This gives the people who are reading the article their ethical opinion on whether they want to view graphic content or not, but also gives the readers all the sources tied with the story. The article also talked about allegations, they go on to say that a “legal counsel should review stories with serious or potentially damaging allegations in them” and how “writers are also encouraged to send a “no surprises” letter to subjects of investigative reports prior to publication, giving them time to comment” (Page 5). Once I was done reading this I instantly thought about other news outlets and if they follow the same, or similar, guidelines. The fact that they take action to talk to a legal counsel if they have a story that may have allegations towards a person or company is very smart in my opinion. This ensures that what they are producing speaks the truth but also ensures they aren’t crossing any lines with the person they are talking about. I also love that they take the time before publishing a article, involving a allegation, they send a “no surprise letter”. I like this because of its purpose it gives the person or company no surprise as to what they are stating about them and also lets them comment on the article, so not only are you getting the reasoning for the allegation made, but you are also getting the opposing view of the opposite party which is so important in any newsworthy story.

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Reaction 03/08

After reading the Principles of Trustworthy Media Creation I sat down and really thought thoroughly as to which of these principles is the most important to me. After thinking about it the most important principle for me would have to be number three, Be Fair and Civil. The reason why this one stuck as the most important for me is because of my own personal views. With everything that’s going now everyone has their own opinion and views, which is totally fair, but with different peoples views and opinions you have to be open to hear and understand other people and what they think about the certain subjects, even though they may not be the same as your own. People need to be able to put their views to the side for a moment and hear what other people think because everyone has their own opinion, and you can’t change that, but you can listen and try to understand even though you think differently.

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Reaction 03/26

In the Msnbc video Jim VandeHei spoke on Monday's 1BigThing, in his talk he spoke about  Facebook's favorability, to the people, taking a “massive plunge”(Vandehei). I personally think Mr. Vandehei did a great job explaining Facebook’s favorability data differences from Oct. 2017 to now. The screen viewed the data clearly but Mr Vandehei explained the changes and why its happening from the people’s view point. As he was explaining the extreme drop in public’s interest from just 5 month ago was eye opening, but you can really see it there has been a mass exodus from amount of people and also the changes in favorability in other companies for facebook too. Social media is changing but I can’t tell if it’s for the better or not. Numbers are a big deal for this story. Possibly the only important thing to it if you think about it. Facebook's favorability, to both the people and companies, who like it and are willing to put their money towards it are dramatically falling. This is causing a hard time for Facebook financially and could cause it to disappear from the social media giants.

Video:

http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe-first-look/watch/facebook-favorability-takes-big-plunge-polls-1194924099838

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Reaction 03/05

Immediately when I read number one, be skeptical, I knew which principle was the most important to me from this article. The reason for this is because this day and age makes me. Not only do we have to understand both sides of a situation (The Two-Sides Fallacy) to truly and morally make a decision to a situation. But with social media and accounts constantly trying to produce news worthy stories with clickbait labeled titles that could be real or fake without you, the audience, knowing which it is. But the bottom line, as consumers of news/ data on both social media based and credible sources platforms I always try to make sure that what i'm reading is both one-hundred percent true and has both sides. This ensures that the consumer of this information will get nothing but the truth and the whole truth and will have all sides of the story so they can make a true moral decision.

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Reaction 02/13

In this reading of telling the story it brought me through “the process of not only finding information on the internet but also getting it right” (  ). But also taught me a lot about making smart searches to get reliable sources, such as the “about us” or “about” link to “learn who runs the site and what their goals are” (  ). But what interested me and got me truly interested/ thinking was when it talked about databases and how much has changed since their beginning to what we have now in the modern era. Being born in ninety-eight I never had to go through the, what seemed like, agonizing pain that someone wanting to do research would have to go through before databases/internet. The reading depicted “doing research for a story was a laborious process that involved a trip to the newspaper, magazine or television station library, or morgue, to sift through hundreds or even thousands of tattered, yellow clipings”(  ). It also went on to explain the fact of human error and the possibility of documents being lost, and just reading that right there annoys me if I was in need of research back then. But luckily now with new technology and ability to catalog anything and everything onto the internet/databases we can insure that documents will be easily found without them disappearing.  As a college student in the modern era with databases it gives you a heads up doing countless research papers. And what the reading talked about the accessibility internet/databases gives you and how it made “it easier than ever to do good background work on a story. Your ability to search online databases is limited only by your skill with search techniques and your access to the databases you need(  ). It had me moved truthfully. In this modern ear we aren’t held back by not having the data, the research, the numbers only by our ability to do it. Wow. There was one part of this reading that I understand why, and how it helps, but am also weirded out by when it said that “for years, government agencies have maintained large databases of information as a means of managing the public’s business. These cover almost every conceivable service that government offers, from airplane registration and maintenance records to census data to local court records. They are maintained not only by the federal and state governments but also by even the smallest of city and county agencies” (  ). Again I understand why this is a useful tool put in place for data collection reasoning, but I also think it's odd as one of the public thats business is being cataloged all over. Another part of the reading I was interested in was when it talked about journalists and how they ”always have had to differentiate carefully between fact and fiction on the internet. Lately, however, they have also assumed the task of curating citizen contributions, particularly when citizens are the first to break the news (  ). As someone who is not in a journalist position but in the rather the citizen position this tells me that journalist want to know what the people have to say on a topic or event. It ensures that we aren't being fed false words, it allows people’s voice can be heard.

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Reaction 2/06

Before reading this chapter I never really thought how in depth it really is to properly interview someone. This chapter gave the reader a set of topics that I would say are the keys to interviewing. It also gave examples from writers and journalists that gives real world examples of skills you should have in your own interviews. In this reading there were two parts that I really didn't think about until now. It talked a lot about how important it is to build a “reasonable degree of trust” in your interviews, and how this will create a better more positive interviewing environment. It also subjected when going into an interview to be pre-ready with a set of thought out questions so it “relieves you the need to be mentally searching for the next question”. After this reading if I do go out and do an interview i’ll know how to be more prepared now.

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Reaction 1/25

In the reading Is Google making us stupid? by Nicholas Carr there where a lot of mind bending and deep thinking facts that caused me, the reader, to think deeper into my own life as someone who is very connected in this heavily technological time. Reading his words opened my eyes to the possible effects and changes all the technology is having on the human population on a global scale. The first thing that caught my attention was when Carr stated that “the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” (Carr). After reading this I sat back from the text, the screen, and really thought about it, and I one-hundred percent agree with Carr. I find myself doing the same thing throughout my everyday life, even right now as I type this reaction I feel myself looking and finding reasons to get off topic even for a second. The second part of Carr’s article that I found interesting but also scary ,and again connected with flawlessly with, was when he talk about a man named “Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,”. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it” ( Carr). This is really made me upset to read. As helpful as technology has been and will better the human race it's also damaging us. I’m positive if you showed 100 people what Bruce said and asked them how they felt after all of them, absolutely all of them, would relate to the fact that we are reprogramming our brains, like Bruce depicted, to take in short bursts of a ton of different things throughout the day in return making us hate and discourage taking the time to actually read something longer than a text. And Lastly the third part I found interesting, and also can tie into the second is when Carr talked about another man named “James Olds, a professor of neuroscience  says that even the adult mind “is very plastic.” Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. “The brain,” according to Olds, “has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions” (Carr). If this fact that James says is true this means the second fact I enjoyed is even more true. The human brain is ever changing, its malleable, what this means for us is the fact that we train our brains to function the way we want. But technology right now is affecting our brains function in making us scan short passages in turn being lazier then have the patience and focus for anything like sitting and reading a whole article non-stop for example. The very last thing I found interesting is when Carr said “just tripping from link to link to link” (Carr). Because this phrase perfectly titles the fact that the way humans take in information and our focus level in this era, and how its not good.

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Reaction 1/23

In the article Attached to Technology and Paying a Price by Matt Richtel a best selling author and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times in San Francisco I was really pulled into what his message was, as he was talking about scientist’s research on multitasking and how humans are probably the worst at it, to new research on how the human brain is ever changing and developing, and lastly how this constant need and want for technology is actually affecting us negatively. These three main parts grabbed my attention because I felt a connection to my personal life and could relate to journalism without noticing before. As a twenty year old college student I am surrounded by technology and the want and need to have countless tabs with music, youtube, etc. I find myself getting off topic quickly by seeing a notification for social media, or a text from a friend, and when Matt said that there are scientists talking about multitasking and how “juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information...These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored” (Richtel). I noticed I was one of the victims to this constant bombardment of information. And when you think of it as a journalist's standpoint, if they had this big story on the president's dog having kittens, this need for technology in this era helps as a platform to deliver the news and information people want and will constantly be checking and seeing. Matt also stated some new research from Utah about multitasking, a skill we all claim to have, he said “preliminary research shows some people can more easily juggle multiple information streams. These “supertaskers” represent less than 3 percent of the population, according to scientists at the University of Utah (Richtel). This means that journalism with the aid of social media and technology always giving us constant information it gives journalists the power to sway and pull viewers into their stories. The last thing that caught my eye was a story about a boy named Connor and how it related to me fully, it said “ Connor’s troubles started late last year. He could not focus on homework. No wonder, perhaps. On his bedroom desk sit two monitors, one with his music collection, one with Facebook and Reddit, a social site with news links that he and his father love. His iPhone availed him to relentless texting with his girlfriend (Richtel). After reading just this paragraph I looked around my own surroundings i noticed the endless tabs on dual monitors, to the phone facing up open to social media, to the homework i’m trying to complete right now. In this day and age we are always ready for journalism and the aspect of gaining knowledge is all around us.  

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Reaction 1/18

Journalism can be in a variety of forms such as audio, visual, sometimes tastes and smells. You can say that graphic design, my major, is a strong part of journalism giving the audience a visual form of gaining information. Both journalism and graphic design can make a voice for the people. When reading these two articles I felt the want and need to express and vocalize ones voice like the three journalist and students in these readings.  When Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron delivered a commencement for a graduate school for journalism and stated  “mind filled with questions is essential to doing our jobs. We can never have too many. We can only have too few” (Baron). It made me reread it because when I read just this sentence again I thought of my job as a citizen that has question and has a voice that should be heard through journalism, media, etc. Another point that caught my attention as one of the people in the “public” was when Martin said “Our job is to give the public the information it needs and deserves to know. The voters make their choice, weighing everything according to their judgment. And I wouldn’t want it any other way” (Baron). It gave me the sense that there are reporters that want to tell the public, the people, what they need and want to hear, whether it’s local or global everyone deserves to be heard and listened to. In the second article Who, what, when, where, why, and how by CJR (Columbia Journalism Review) It asked people “what is journalism for? And these two sections from two people had the strongest effect on me. The first piece by Monica Almeida had strong empowering  words about journalism “it is about using words with a purpose. Sometimes that purpose is to give people better information so they can make better choices, sometimes it is to provoke a change in a specific situation, or to defend fundamental liberties, or to stand up for someone or something. Sometimes it is also a matter of not following the agenda set by the powerful, but of telling the stories of people affected by that agenda” (Monica). The reason this one caught my eye was because this message about journalism tells me there are people that share the same need and want for a problem to be heard about and talked about and justified with correct reasoning. The second piece by Michelle Chavez is a big eye opener about change in journalisms past to its present. The writer wanted you to think back and try to “remember the days when we relied on the newsboy to give us the latest happenings in town by tossing a tightly rolled bundle of newsprint on our doorstep? I don’t. The newsboy has long since traded in his bike for a mobile device. People today share news updates through social media, forwarding information from a news source or from a friend. News outlets have gone from being the sole providers of content to asking citizens to contribute information that journalists will process and forward back out.” (Michelle). As technology grew a new form and style of journalism grew and that was in the media gig. Now in modern times If anything has to be talked about it’s somewhere on social media. It’s because tech and media are a crucial aspect in the modern era unlike previous times. These people have a strong expressive voice that not only as a citizen that deserves to hear what is happening around me but as a graphic designer that has the tools to also vocalize a voice not through audible but visually impacted me and made me really think about my power as a citizen and designer I can use.

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Intro. on me

My name is Jonathan Leggett, but I go as Jon, and at the time of me writing this i’m 20 years old. To describe myself you first need to know my vibe. I would describe myself as is a chill, laid back, go with the flow kind of guy that plans his day as it goes but is also determined to perfect any project when faced with one. In my free time I enjoy doing a multitude of different styles of art, such as music, graphic, drawing,  photography, etc.. I use art as a way to express my creativity and make a voice for myself. Another major interest to me is the automotive scene. I love working on my car’s  maintenance/ mechanical features as well as modifying the exterior. I see my car as an image of myself so when my car looks, sounds, feels good it makes me feel good. That’s about it, thats me in a nutshell, not to hard to understand as a person I believe at least.