Assessment Item One - Personal Media Use and Production Diary

10 DAY MEDIA DIARY TABLE/S

 

                                     

Note: 1 Text Message = 1 Minute

10-DAY MEDIA DIARY GRAPH - All Mediums

Data broken down...

Computer

Television

Phone

Print

Radio

SUMMARY

It is safe to say that, in a lot of cardinal ways, media defines our 21st Century existence. It is indeed the language of globalisation, providing us with an extraordinary capacity to truly be an international citizen. Media offers an interactive platform for almost anything - whether it be to communicate, to teach, to learn, to entertain, to share, to produce, to consume, to publish, to test, or to simply enjoy. It is boundless, transformative, accessible and seemingly integral to common daily life - the extent of its essentiality, only growing. Thus, I, as a fully-fledged media buff and 21st Century journalism student, will attempt to understand media's impact on me personally through a detailed analysis of its usage and production. Rising to the challenge, I have recorded, comprehensively, my media usage over a 10-day period and will summarise and analyse the results, paying specific attention to my journalistic media intake. 

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The largest medium that I found myself employing in the 10-day period was the computer, specifically its Internet capability. I was not at all surprised that the Internet skyrocketed to the top of my overall media usage, encompassing social networking, entertainment and academic consumption. It also proved itself to be my go-to medium for news intake. The prevalence of journalistic articles on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and references to stories in blogs, made it easy for me to get a quick fix. Twitter, more so than Facebook, was quite heavily news-orientated. Having never been a "tweeter" prior to this course, like 70.8% of my peers as discovered in the peer survey (shown in Figure 1 below), I was initially a little unsure as to what it entailed, and looked at it in quite a perfunctory manner. However, attempting to overcome my anti-Twitter mindset in the seventh day of my media recording, I embraced the networking site, which has now become one of my main news outlets. I have found myself able to easily read the latest stories through 'following' Twitter pages for newspapers and magazines. Facebook, blogs and more recently Twitter comprise my online newsfeed, supplying me with quick and simple summaries of the news more so than hard-hitting, dense journalism. 

Figure One: Number of Twitter accounts before JOUR1111 (Peer Survey)

The Internet was also the sole enabler of my personal media production. This production evidenced itself in the form of Facebook statuses, my sharing of links to YouTube videos and other pages, and most obviously, this blog. I had never considered myself an active ‘producer’ of media, but it seems I am!

Another interesting realisation was that I never have only one page open on the computer. My screen is forever filled with multiple Internet tabs, word documents, powerpoints, videos, and applications - my well-versed fingers flicking between them with quicksilver certainty. I think that rather simply and effectively captures the ease at which my generation handles media multi-tasking – our personal growth happening harmoniously alongside media's rampant development.

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My record of print, phone and television usage proved to be quite similarly ranked below that of the computer. This result unearths a slight inaccuracy in the test. In order to equate a text message with all other figures of duration, I made 1 text message equal 1 minute. This, however, is a generalisation, and I believe my phone usage would have, scarily enough, been higher than this had I accurately recorded the individual time spent sending and reading each text message.

As a true 21^st Century child, my iPhone is like my right arm. It is a lot like having a laptop in my pocket, with the additional ability of call and text – constantly allowing me access to a variety of media sources. This is both an example of my continuous exposure to media, and of just how heavy my reliance is. In the peer survey it was shown that 77.3% of us have Internet enabled smartphones (as seen in Figure 2 below), hinting at the fact that I am not alone. Applications are shown to be the most used element of my phone. This is mostly because of one specific application called “whatsapp” – a free instant messaging facility between all smartphones that is used in conjunction with text and call as my main methods of communication.

Figure Two: 'Smartphone' possession (Peer Survey)

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From a purely journalistic perspective, I interact with ‘the news’ primarily through the Internet, followed at a lesser degree by television news programs (which seemed to be the favourite of my peers as shown in Figure 3 below) and the seemingly ancient invention of the newspaper. Whichever source, my news exposure is categorically interest-based. The ‘searchability’ of news on the Internet, coupled with the emergence of Web 3.0, which employs the methods of hyperlocalisation and ‘news my way’, makes reading the news a pleasurable and highly engaging experience – my personal interests dictating the stories I am fed. Similarly, my watching of the news on television and reading of the it in newspapers is shamefully half-hearted, that is unless there’s a segment, a story or a photograph that particularly captures my attention. I have therefore found that my exposure is almost completely to 'soft news', where human interest stories are privileged. 

Figure Three: Most popular news source (Peer Survey)

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By recording my media use and production over a period of 10 days I was made startlingly aware of my absolute reliance on it in almost all facets of my daily life. This realisation, however, has ceased to change my ways. As I write this, I have seven Internet pages, two word documents, a PDF and iTunes open, textbooks and newspapers sprawled across the table, the television’s reflection dancing in the window to my left and my phone next to me buzzing melodiously. 

The Shot That Nearly Killed Me: War Photographers

This special report was featured in The Guardian newspaper on Saturday June 18, 2011. It tells the horrifically disturbing and impossibly admirable stories of brave war photographers who risk their lives to document these atrocities and inform the world.

Adam Ferguson, Afghanistan, 2009

Adam Ferguson: 'As a photographer, you feel helpless. Around you are medics, security personnel, people doing good work. It can be agonisingly painful to think that all you're doing is taking pictures.' Photograph: Adam Ferguson/VII Network

I was one of the first on the scene. The Afghan security forces normally shut down a suicide bombing like this pretty quickly. I was able to get to the epicentre of the explosion. It was carnage, there were bodies, flames were coming out of the buildings. I remember feeling very scared because there was still popping and hissing and small explosions, and the building was collapsing. It was still very fresh and there was a risk of another bomb. It was one of those situations where you have to put fear aside and focus on the job at hand: to watch the situation and document it.

This woman was escorted out of the building and round this devastated street corner. It epitomised the whole mood – this older woman caught in the middle of this ridiculous, tragic event. I wish I could have found out how her life unravelled, but as soon as the scene was locked down, I ran back to the office to file.

As a photographer, you feel helpless. Around you are medics, security personnel, people doing good work. It can be agonisingly painful to think that all you're doing is taking pictures.

When I won a World Press award for this photograph, I felt sad. People were congratulating me and there was a celebration over this intense tragedy that I had captured. I reconciled it by deciding that more people see a story when a photographer's work is decorated.

Alvaro Ybarra Zavala, Congo, November 2008

Alvaro Ybarra Zavala: 'Years after i took this picture, every time I see it I feel scared again.' Photograph: Alvaro Ybarra Zavala/Getty

The situation was very tense – people were drunk and aggressive. I was with two other photographers most of the time, but at this moment I went back to the road alone. I saw three soldiers smoking, playing with their guns, and felt safe – I don't know why. Then I saw a man with a knife in his mouth, coming out of the bush – he was holding up a hand like a trophy. The soldiers started laughing and firing in the air. I didn't think about it and began shooting. He walked directly at me. People surrounded us, celebrating. I thought, "Don't do anything crazy, just act like you're part of this crazy party."

When I got to the hotel, I showed the other photographers. They said, "Do you realise you could have been killed?" Only then did it hit me how dangerous it had been. Years after I took this picture, every time I see it I feel scared again.

I really hate this shot. It's the worst face of humankind. I always ask myself, "Why do I do this job?' And the answer is: I want to show the best and worst face of humankind. Every time you go to a conflict, you see the worst. We need to see what we do to be able to show future generations the mistakes we make. The guy with the knife in his mouth is a human being like the rest of us. What's important is that we show what human beings are capable of. The day I don't do that with my photography is the day I'll give up and open a restaurant.

Greg Marinovich, Soweto, 1990

Greg Marinovich: ' "No pictures," someone yelled. I told them I'd stop shooting if they stopped killing him. They didn't.' Photograph: Greg Marinovich/Storytaxi.com

I was deep in Soweto when I saw a man being attacked by ANC combatants. The month before, I'd seen a guy beaten to death – my first experience of real violence – and hadn't shaken the feeling of guilt that I had done nothing to stop it. "No pictures," someone yelled. I told them I'd stop shooting if they stopped killing him. They didn't. As the man was set on fire, he began to run. I was framing my next shot when a bare-chested man came into view and swung a machete into his blazing skull. I tried not to smell the burning flesh and shot a few more pictures, but I was losing it and aware that the crowd could turn on me at any time. The victim was moaning in a low, dreadful voice as I left. I got in my car and, once I turned the corner, began to scream. 

You're not just a journalist or a human being, you're a mixture of both, and to try to separate the two is complicated. I've often felt guilty about my pictures. I worked in SouthAfrica for years and was shot three times. The fourth and final injury, in Afghanistan in 1999, wasn't the worst, but I decided enough was enough. I was looking to settle. Nineteen months later, I met my wife.

Shaul Schwarz, Haiti, February 2004

Saul Schwarz: 'I had blood on me, brains. I was crying, shaking. I ran to the car horrified. I was a mess.' Photograph: Shaul Schwarz/Getty

Port au Prince was falling. It was riotous, with widespread looting. A group of us had gone to the port. The thugs with guns didn't want us there. We snapped from the waist, trying not to make it obvious. We decided to go over the wall. One thug offered me "protection". As we jumped the wall, I saw this boy, and was like, "This is what it's come to." It was my first digital assignment and I was amazed to be able to look at my shots. I did for a second; when I looked up, everyone had run off. It was just me and the thug. It was like a dog that smells fear. He began pushing and threatening me. Then I was surrounded. One of them hit me. I had a few dollar bills in my trousers, and put my hand there. They began tearing at me, fighting over the bills. I waited 30 seconds, started to walk away, then ran and scaled the fence. On the other side, I tried to breathe.

I began shooting one guy a metre away. He screamed and pulled a shotgun. I saw the barrel, then he shot the man next to me – I had blood on me, brains. I was crying, shaking. I ran to the car horrified; I was a mess. I love Haiti, but every time I pass the port, I carry some of that fear.

Mads Nissen, Libya, February 2011

Mads Nissen: 'Suddenly this guy jumped on the the tank. I'm not that interested in pictures of tanks burning – I'm interested in people. I had wanted to capture the sense of release that everyone had, and this became the shot.' Photograph: Mads Nissen/Berlingske/Panos Pictures

I got into Ajdabiya shortly after its fall. The rebels had just moved in and the locals were going crazy, shooting in the air. Bodies of pro-Gaddafi soldiers were lying around, beginning to stink as the sun got higher. The fire from the tank was incredibly strong and I was worried it might explode at any moment. Suddenly this guy jumped on to it. I'm not that interested in pictures of tanks burning – I'm interested in people. I had wanted to capture the sense of release that everyone had and suddenly this became the shot. I got as close as possible, within metres, and started shooting, counting to five in my head. Then I got out. I had seen corpses, torn apart, in the morgue and didn't want to end up like that. I took a chance – I had to; that was why I was there, to tell the story – but I made sure I wasn't too greedy.

Ron Haviv, Bosnia, 1992

Ron Haviv: 'I was shaking when I took the shot. None of them was looking at me, so I lifted my camera, just trying to get them in frame. When I put it down, they looked over. They didn't realise I'd taken photos.' Photograph: Ron Haviv/VII

These are the Serbian warlord Arkan's men. They've just executed these Muslim civilians – a butcher, his wife and sister-in-law; the start of what became known as ethnic cleansing.

I had taken a photograph of Arkan with a baby tiger, which he'd liked, and he'd agreed for me to travel with his troops to photograph his "mission". The soliders were yelling at me not to shoot, but I'd promised myself I'd come out of this with an image to prove what was happening.

I was shaking when I took this shot. None of them was looking at me so I lifted my camera, just trying to get them in frame. When I put it down, they looked over. They didn't realise I'd taken photos.

Later, Arkan caught me photographing another execution and said he'd process my film and keep the ones he didn't like. I'd hidden the film from earlier in the day in my pocket and figured that if I fought hard enough for the film in my camera, he wouldn't search me.

When the pictures were published not long after, Arkan said in an interview, "I look forward to the day I can drink his blood." He put me on a death list, and I spent the next eight years trying to avoid him. Eventually, these images were used to indict him at The Hague.

An interesting article

Column: The advertising Photoshop epidemic and you

Posted on20 February 2012.

By Sam Bouchat

Oregon Daily Emerald, U. Oregon via UWIRE

When the impossibly skinny get even skinnier, there’s really only one product to blame: Photoshop. But Photoshop doesn’t misguide people – people with Photoshop misguide people.

A new bill proposed in Arizona last week would require all airbrushed ads to come with disclaimers like “This photo has been altered by post-production techniques. Similar results may not be achieved.” The Arizona Republic reported that “the bill has little to no chance of success.”

Rep. Katie Hobbs (R-Phoenix) introduced House Bill 2793 in order to address advertising that depicts people looking more idealistic than the product would be able to provide for a customer. Arizona is the first state to consider such legislation.

“We need to bring attention to these body-image issues, especially with young girls,” Hobbs told The Republic. “Girls need to know that they don’t have to look perfect.”

Many readers of articles concerning this legislation give negative feedback. The overall feeling is that the bill is a waste of time, and that politicians have bigger issues to deliberate over.

Another large consensus I was able to draw from the audience was that the legislation was unnecessary as Photoshopped models in advertisements is now common knowledge. Advertisers would be able to save time and ink by instead labeling those ads that weren’t Photoshopped.

But the same could be said for cigarettes – the fact that they can lead to lung cancer is common knowledge now in the U.S., but the law still requires cigarette advertisements to contain a disclaimer. Why should ads promoting impossible physical standards be any different?

But the question lies on more than how this would change a reader’s perception of an ad, but also how this would impinge on advertisers. Would it be a positive change, encouraging advertisers and product developers to work harder on their products in order to show truthful results in their advertisements? Or would this encroach unfairly on the artistic creativity of advertisers?

This bill will likely not pass further than simple speculation, but it still opens up the debates on the concept of truth in advertising versus freedom of interpretation.

However, I believe advertisers have a responsibility to portray truth just as much as a journalist. At the end of the day, advertisers answer to a client, but that reality should not put the advertiser’s integrity in jeopardy.

One can argue that any form of Photoshopping in an ad is a means of artistic expression — like art, it represents a window into an idealized fiction. But art is meant to inspire emotional introspection. Art doesn’t pretend to be reality. Ads sporting a 6-foot-4 woman with a 13-inch waist, with a product name sprawled across the page, illustrate an unattainable perfection presented as an attainable one.

The simple fact is, regardless of how well-known the practice of Photoshopping models to sell products is, it is also a lie. Sure, most people know it’s a lie, but that doesn’t make it any less of one.

The products that these pictures of physically manipulated men and women are selling cannot do what the models promise. No amount of Dolce & Gabbana clothing can make Madonna look 25. No, Adele did not lose 15 pounds for that Vogue photo shoot. And I don’t care if she has an inch-thick layer of Lancome coverup on her face; Julia Roberts’ face is not actually plastic.

I, for one, would like to see some form of this law pass in the U.S. It would be nice to see how advertisers (at least, those uncreative and cliches ones) deal with having their crutch pulled out from under them. Maybe then we would see more real art in advertising.

Power of Photojournalism

Power of Photojournalism - Winners of the 66th Pictures of the Year International and editors talk about photojournalism and their work. Winning photos are also presented. This is amazing, please watch!
Video courtesy of The Annenberg Space for Photography and Arclight Productions.

Lecture Four

Storytelling through pictures


"A picture has no meaning at all if it can't tell a story" (Eetu Sillanpää)


The fourth lecture focussed on factual storytelling with pictures, directly extending upon last week's 'text' theme to address the text's pictorial accompaniments. 


Picture stories are everywhere; in newspapers, magazines, movies, television, online, advertising, smartphones - they surround us. From Indigenous cave stories to digital photographs, the history of the picture is long and involved. The idea behind images has changed substantially throughout their history - from a tool for communication for the illiterate to a visual device purely for aesthetics. 


Pictures in journalism have evolved from painstaking line drawings in early newspapers and newsletters to the modern photograph or video, which can be uploaded online just as quickly as it can be shot. Along with speed has come quality, with images now so clear and realistic. And, alongside photography has come the process of editing. Photoshop and other digital manipulation programs have given a distorted perception of controversial subjects like body image and beauty. In the lecture we watched "Evolution", a video made by Dove that shows this shocking process:

Images are quite simple to use in online journalism. The editing process is eased by the use of online galleries where more than one picture can be used to help the storytelling process, unlike in print journalism where editors must spend endless hours finding that single perfect image to meet their tight space restrictions. 


So, what makes a good picture?
Fundamentally there are seven or eight elements that make a photo great - framing, focus, angle & point of view, exposure (light), timing, capturing "the moment", the rule of thirds, and secondarily the act of editing which applies more to moving pictures or video than still raw photography. Moving images also have the sound dimension to consider. 


Journalistically, images have manifested themselves in the form of newsreels, propaganda films, 24/7 newscycles, mobile phones and social networking, as well as the basic mediums of print and online. 


Like the last lecture on text, my love of photography made this session extremely interesting. I love how one moment, one millisecond, can have such an enormous effect on a person, a community or the world. A picture tells a thousand words. The power of imagery is unequalled by any other medium.  


"If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, it's a good picture."

Some magnificent photojournalism

World Press Photo of the Year: 1994 
Rwanda - Hutu man mutilated by the Hutu 'Interhamwe' militia, who suspected him  of sympathising with the Tutsi rebels

Arirang Mass Games
Even during these games in North Korea, the ultimate expression of the state ideology, an individual can still sometimes stand out from the crowd and break free of the collective. If only just for a moment.

Shelter
Child takes shelter with his mother before cyclone hits in Bangladesh

New Years Eve, St Jacques, Perpignan 2006
A 5 year-old gypsy boy smoking with his father on New Years Eve

Aftermath of 2005 Earthquake in Balakot, Pakistan
From the photographer: "This image was taken about one month after the earthquake in Pakistan. People were still coming down from the mountains trying to find shelter and were suffering from trauma. Winter was on the way and the need for shelter was urgent. This father and child had been collecting food... People were still digging for their family members"

Trapped - November 7, 2008
The head of a male student, still alive, trapped under the debris is pictured at the scene of the church school that collapsed on the outskirts of Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince

Starving boy and a Missionary
Taken in the Karamoja district in Uganda in April of 1980. Won the World Press Photo Award for the same year

The Day the Earth Moved

A lone house in an overflowed river in Kesennuma, Japan on March 15, 2011

The Poppy Poison
Inside the bomb-blasted ruins of Kabul's old town, the morning crowd of heroin addicts huddle under woolen blankets to keep the cold out and noxious smoke in

Technology and Toys Can't Save You

"A group of researchers from the University of South Florida set out on a mission in 2002: to find out what people who hire journalists want to see in a potential employee and to assess how important convergence had become in journalism. The study surveyed hundreds of people involved in journalism to ask what types of skills were most critical in determining the success of a journalist.

The authors found that, even with technological options such as multimedia production, the respondents overwhelmingly chose good writing as the number one skill students needed if they hoped to get a job in the field. A quote from one editor demonstrated how extreme the need for good writing was: "I've worked in markets 170 to 20 and having training in multiple media will not help you get a job, but being a good writer will" (Huang et al., 2003)."

Convergent Journalism - An Introduction
Stephen Quinn & Vincent F. Filak

Lecture Three

Lecture three was taken by Ms. Skye Doherty. As an editor, digital producer and media consultant with more than 10 years' journalism experience, she has worked for media groups in Australia, South-East Asia and the UK. Her lecture centred around the idea of 'text'. She saw text, on the grounds of journalism, as story content, headlines, standfirst, captions, pull quotes, break-out boxes, links, emails, blogs, tweets, posts and updates from social networking sites such as Facebook, comments, forums, metadata, excerpts and tags.

Text is the skeleton of good journalism. As Skye said, "being able to control and craft the medium of text is vital in journalism and publishing". Basically, without text, journalism could not function. In fact, its fundamental importance to the field is only growing.

As we enter Web 3.0, where the internet is relied upon more and more, we see the 'searchability' of text to be the only way one can quickly navigate to the specific article they want to read. Thus, text in the form of links, keywords etc. are vital in the survival of online journalism.

Part of the power of text lies in the fact that it is fast, flexible, controllable, portable and searchable. It dominates.

Skye also covered some of the technicalities of journalistic writing. Introducing the idea of the 'inverted pyramid'. I first came across this particular model, however, in my reading of "Convergent Journalism" prior to this lecture. This is how they put it:

"For what seems like an interminable number of years, writes, editors, and educators have been sounding the death knell of the inverted pyramid. It's been called boring, among other things, and yet for some reason, trend after trend in journalism has been unable to unseat it. The immediacy-based approach to journalism that the Web requires seems to have resuscitated the inverted pyramid" (pg.43)

Basically, it visualises the age-old technique of putting the most important information towards the top of the written piece, and the least important towards the bottom. Keeping in mind that the least important is not unimportant.

My love of writing made this lecture very interesting for me. Knowing that words were, are, and will always be, the foundation stone of journalism is reassuring. Writing is not only vital in regards to print journalism, but is equally as important, if not more so, in the realm of online journalism.

Teaching and learning

"The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. [For] to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves - and the better the teacher, the better the student body."
- Warren Buffett

Lecture Two

The second lecture in JOUR1111 centred around the subject of "New News". It demonstrated how the field of journalism and reporting has developed from 'old media' such as newspapers and radio, to the internet where it has grown from being company focussed, to socially focussed, to individually focussed (Web 1.0 - Web 2.0 - Web 3.0).

The stage we are entering now is known as Web 3.0, where each individual is uniquely targeted and information is a mere click away. The specificity of information deliverance enables the idea of "news my way", where everything that is fed to the reader is customised to their interests. Creepy? Maybe. Effective? Definitely.

We also touched on the subject of subscription and paywalls, which brought forth the fact that, without funding through subscription, investigative journalism would die. Thus, the availability of information through the internet would lead to the death of a centuries old sect of journalism. It is strange to think that, that is possible.
However, I guess that is, like anything, a life cycle.
As one thing advances, another dies off.

Visual Life

Scott Schumann, widely known as 'The Sartorialist', is a street photographer whose work can easily be categorised as journalistic. With over 70, 000 readers of his blog a day, Schumann's simplistic yet powerful photographs are digested by the masses. His work directly affects the development of the areas of both fashion and photography, inspiring many who have followed in his footsteps.

This short documentary by Intel is a visually stunning piece of video journalism.

Lois Lane

The ultimate journalist.

Lecture One

If English writer William Hazlitt's, "first impressions are often the truest," is in fact accurate, then JOUR1111 - Introduction to Journalism and Communications is looking to be an excellent course.

The first journalism lecture, and coincidentally the very first lecture of my university life, was at once entertaining and intriguing. Dr. Bruce Redman's enthusiasm was contagious. After a little bit of sniffing around that evening, I discovered he's not only produced award winning documentaries and drama, and interviewed famous movie stars but was arrested filming outside the White House, and at 2:00am nonetheless, an experience he conveniently failed to mention... My sense of intrigue was heightened to say the least.

In this introductory lecture Bruce (or rather, our newly established 'person of interest') identified the current challenges of journalism, introduced himself and his faculty, talked broadly about the field of journalism and detailed the technicalities of lectures, tutorials, and assessment.

The flexibility of the course and the free reign we as students, as budding journalists in fact, appear to have is liberating. It seems as though I am able to customise the course, make it my own. I can write about what interests me, and what makes me tick. This blog, my creative outlet.

It seems the perfect place to both celebrate and refine my love of writing, film, news, fashion and photography.

The excitement begins...

Grunwald

"Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air."

- Henry Anatole Grunwald 

Smile

University

Just before I entered the hallowed halls of the University of Queensland as a 2012 first year, I read this quote by Anton Chekhov;

"University brings out all abilities, including incapability"

Not exactly the predictable words of wisdom I was yearning for...

Something like Benjamin Disraeli's "A University is a place of light, of liberty, and of learning" or Robert Goheen's "University is a wonderful opportunity to find out not just much more about the world, but much more about yourself, too" would have sufficed.

I guess in that lies the power of the unexpected. When you allow yourself to be surprised and, by pure chance, avoid being caught up in the mundane, predictable or cliche. That's what transforms something momentarily satisfying, into something lasting and memorable.

My previously 'grand' view of university, born from Disraeli and Goheen-like sentiment, was broken down by reality. Simple things like my utter inability to connect to the university's wireless network, the rarity of a carpark, and the essentiality of the UQ Nav iPhone application.

The reality is what grounds me.

"Journalism is the first rough draft of history"

Journalism, as defined by the ever-trusty Wikipedia, is 'the activity or profession of writing for newspapers or magazines, or of broadcasting news on radio or television'...

One might call this vague or constricting, I call it dated. 

Welcome to 2012. 

A world where old media is dying and the internet dominates. Where there are more people on facebook than there were on the planet 200 years ago. And where journalism is difficult, if not impossible, to define. 

So, it is here, on the grounds of this rather ambiguous and ever-changing field, that I begin my blog. 

Welcome!