History class, meet journalism class

I just finished my term paper for my history class on East-Central Europe. Because our professor suggested we write about something that interested us, I chose to write about the alternative media in opposition to the Soviet-controlled media in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Here's a little summary about what I wrote:

Poland's Solidarity movement in the 1980s promoted freedoms, including free speech, and journalists wrote for a brief period without censorship. Journalists encouraged discussion by inviting people to talk in journals' offices.

Many of the journalists in Hungary during the 1956 uprising were not willing to write against the Soviet Union with their names attached to their ideas, but one man named Miklos Gimes founded the paper, Hungarian Freedom, edited the illegal paper Oktober Huszonhatodika, and founded the Hungarian Democratic Independent Movement. He was arrested that year and executed in 1958.

The Literarni noviny offered people a way to write against the Soviets during Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. Media executives stepped down and party officials were too preoccupied to fill those positions with journalists in the Communist Party who they trusted, so journalists self-managed themselves for a while. When they were forbidden to write about something, they wrote an article about how and why they were censored.

Eastern Europe had to fight for the fundamental right of freedom of speech that is written into our Bill of Rights. They wrote the facts when the Soviets wanted the journalists to act as public relations people. I think it's about time more people realized how difficult it was for journalists only a few decades ago in Eastern Europe when journalists were supposed to represent an ideology rather than the people.

Another videogame magazine gone

Yesterday I saw a tweet from Game Politics come into my feed about the magazine GamePro. It turns out the magazine is now dead, and not even the website is going to be continued.

I almost laughed when I saw the first comment on Game Politics's article:

"To be fair, I found GamePro to be heavily biased to a point where it seems like the reviews were bought and paid for."

 Well-known videogame blogs such as Kotaku, Destructoid, and 1Up are still going strong from what it looks like. To me, it appears that people trust these independent teams of bloggers writing about videogames than magazine writers at videogame publications. And while that does sadden me as someone who would like to go into working for a videogame magazine (I love pretty layouts of magazines and websites often don't have that), it makes me even more interested in working at a high-profile videogame blog.

My homecoming

As I made the trip back home for Thanksgiving break, my dad enlightened me on what I've missed in Frederick county while I've been gone. Turns out the County Commissioners are doing whatever they want with little regard of how their changes negatively affect our city and county.

The best part is that my parents apparently participated in a protest.

Our city newspaper, like many other newspapers have all sizes, had to let people go. There are fewer people covering these kinds of events beyond the general "He said, she said" reporting. A part of this is a criticism of that paper and a part of it is just the way small town news reporting has become.

I don't know of any bloggers in my hometown that go to these meetings and openly criticize the County Commissioners. I'd certainly like to see a non-traditional journalist challenge my county government, and considering I'm away half of the year, I'm not exactly open for that job.

Drudge fudges facts

When I first went to The Drudge Report, I wanted to gouge my eyes out from the shoddy design. Then I wanted to bang my head against the wall when I saw what Drudge linked to. Now I think I want to gag after reading Drudge's "accurate" original reporting.

In 1999, Drudge claimed to have a world exclusive story about a woman's claim that her child was Bill Clinton's son. Sure, there are sources in his article. Drudge has a loyal readership, people who would willingly believe whatever he writes.

He's one man with no journalism training who links to articles he wants other people to read. In that way, he kind of sounds like a blogger. However, bloggers provide links to sources, proving that what they're reporting is factual.

A timeline shows that Drudge was really pushing this story. I know I recently said that having opinions and biases is a good thing, but I don't believe Drudge is the type of person who can fairly report something while acknowledging that he has a certain political leaning.

Proposed bills against copyright infringement will only hurt innocent sites

Congress is looking into two bills, The Protect IP Act and the Stop Online Privacy Act, that have good intentions behind them, but could bring about significant harm to websites.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the bill and said it

• Gives the Department of Justice authority to go after a foreign Internet site that the DOJ alleges infringe U.S. property rights. The DOJ can get a court order requiring ISPs to prevent access to the infringing sites, and require payment processors (like credit card companies) and online advertising networks from doing business with such sites; and
• Empower owners of copyrights (and other rights), such as movie studios, to bring actions against any “Internet sites dedicated to infringement,” whether in the U.S. or overseas, and get a court order to stop payment processors (like credit card companies) or online advertising from doing business with such sites.

However, the bill reaches too far and attempts to bypass court orders. Instead of waiting for a judge to rule whether a website is infringing on copyright, websites will be immediately blacklisted when they are suspected. More details by Brian Dengler of Street Fight Mag are here.

Professors have written against the proposed bill, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation made a list of popular and important sites that could be blacklisted under the overarching power of SOPA. Their list includes:

• Etsy
• Flickr
• Vimeo

These sites are about people sharing art they've created. While copyright infringement is still an important issue, can't these politicians think of anything better to do than "Let's just give power to others to shut down websites at will and put off dealing with the core issue"?

Pick at the things you love

Or hate. But I think it's more interesting when people expose flaws in something they love.

Journalism cannot truly be objective. Beginner journalism classes tell student journalists that they must be objective. I've heard it come before things I find more important, such as holding yourself accountable for what you write and minimizing harm. Both freshman and sophomore years, professors told us students in class that we had to be objective. Sometimes I wonder if they want us to be soulless reporters, merely regurgitating "news."

I'm never going to be objective. I am extremely opinionated. I have certain biases, and I'd rather they be in plain view. Someone could most likely figure out my political orientation (or at the very least figure out which side of the spectrum I'm on), my favorite types of videogames, my favorite book series, and a handful of my values just by reading a few things I've written on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or blogs. Will that haunt me in the future? Possibly, but I'd rather be honest to myself and accountable to my values.

Halfway through my sophomore year on winter break, I visited my English teacher from high school. As always, we got into a discussion about politics and journalism. We were discussing objectivity when she said, "Let's say you're assigned to interview Dennis Kucinich. How would you question him compared to a different politician?"

(Here's a hint: I adore him.)

At the time, I was convinced if I were to cover something or someone I loved, I would inherently slant the story. I still believe I would possess that inherent bias, but I think I'd be more likely to critique someone or something I love. Journalism doesn't need blind followers of an idea or a person, but it does need critical thinkers who are motivated to do research. And, most of the time, that motivation stems from being in love with something.

For example, Mayhill Fowler, a citizen journalist for Huffington Post's Off the Bus, was the one who broke the story about Obama's offhand comment about small-town Americans. Fowler was also an Obama supporter. Fowler debated whether she would write the story because she didn't want to hurt Obama's campaign, but in the name of good journalism, she thankfully published it. (Look at me slanting this blog post!)

Fowler even openly reported she was an Obama supporter. Other supporters attacked her for publishing the article. I don't think they realized she was doing journalism--not PR.

It's okay to have opinions. If you don't stand something, you'll fall for anything.

New media expose people's true colors

With Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and who knows what else, readers can get more acquainted with the minds behind the content they're reading. Whether that prompts a reader to continue reading or let it go, I still think it's a good thing that we're able to better know writers and editors. Most of the time it's to support them.

And then, now and then, someone slips.

McKinley Noble, a staff editor at GamePro, made a slip-up yesterday in a tweet. It says:

What does rape have to do with the #TombRaider reboot? Buy the 1st GamePro Quarterly & solve the mystery on page 49.

It turns out that he thought the voice acting was bad.

I like GamePro, and I don't think Noble is an awful guy. I was certainly outraged when I saw his initial tweet, and I--along with several others (both men and women)--demanded an explanation over Twitter. But I do know that his reputation has fallen in my mind. He may be a good editor, but I do not agree with the way he trivializes and jokes to try to make it seem like the rest of us are wrong for not being able to take a joke.

The storm he got last night has faded from the Internet now. I believe this is because videogame magazines are, generally, not read as frequently as other sources for general news. If this guy was a journalist for something like the New York Times or the Washington Post, I'm sure he'd get more than just a stern talking to.

"Transparency is the new Objectivity"

Jay Rosen was the one who said that in 2009 and he was the one who inspired this post.

Last year, I was told that objectivity is the end goal for every journalist because if you cannot be objective, then you cannot properly present a story.

When did objectivity turn into "Here's Side A. Here's Side B. Now, argue!" which is the kind of stuff you can see on any large broadcast news station today. Fox is not so fair and balanced, CNN should not be the most trusted name in news, and MSNBC claims it leans forward rather than left or right.

I have my biases. I am extremely left-wing (I'm so far left that I'm waving at the mainstream lefties from miles away--even they think I'm too far left). I have my own set of values. There are some things that I deem unimportant and there are some things that I readily research on my own. I will report on differently because I am my own person with my own ideals.

That doesn't mean I can't fairly report on things I like or dislike. In fact, that make me more likely to go uncover something an objectively apathetic journalist might miss. The stereotypical objective reporter misses the larger point of stories because he's too busy moving on to the next story without any sense of attachment to the last one. Arianna Huffington was the one who said, "Mainstream media suffer from attention deficit disorder. New media suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder."

Objectivity sounds more like knowingly lying to your readers. If you can't be objective, don't pretend to be. Acknowledge your biases and keep them out of the story, but allow them to spur you on.

Being a successful blogger

I'm not always an organized person. I fluctuate between keeping a tidy room with organized areas for my homework and ignoring a messy room with folders somewhere along the foot of my bed. At the beginning of the year, I establish a certain time for me to do my homework and I refuse to do anything pertaining to "my time" until my work for the day is finished.

And yet I've got a growing list of things to do each day.

I don't often keep myself tied to a strict schedule. Sometimes that's great (it leaves me flexible), and sometimes it's awful (homework is occasionally done at the last minute and in a sloppy manner). I believe this describes me as a blogger. I'm open to suggestions, but I always don't do anything with the suggestions. I try to be insightful, but my posts aren't always regular.

When William Jacobson, blogger and founder of Legal Insurrection, visited our Independent Media class, the most important thing I took from it was this: Bring something new to your blog everyday. If you don't give people a reason to come back and see what you want to say, you need to make frequent--but well-thought--posts.

This has not always been easy for me. I keep another blog for fun, something I find to be important for bloggers who want to find a way to think and write about a subject everyday. For me, it's video games--the reviews, previews, news, rumors, and discussions of gaming culture. I try to balance posting to that blog as well as posting to this blog (you know, since this is for a class), but things often don't work out as planned. There are times when I honestly can't think of anything to write about. And when I do write something, I often ramble (like I'm doing here right now!).

I guess my point is--to be a successful blogger, you have to commit to it. You don't need to quit your day job to do it, but you do need to cut into some of your personal time to maintain your blog. To do that, you need to set aside time to post daily, study your subject, and interact with your readers. I only hope that I can improve on all three of those things.

Don't Lock Out Bloggers

In my hometown, the local newspaper covers fewer and fewer government meetings because their staff has shrunk dramatically. This is a nationwide trend. And it's exactly where bloggers should come in.

In 2008, a blogger was excluded from an executive session because they said he wasn't a true member of the media. Their proposed policy on who qualified as a member of the news media included:

• Regular reporting on the Lake Oswego City Council

• Multiple personnel with defined roles

• Registration with the state Corporation Division

• Reporting "conducted continuously (at least weekly) and permanently"

• Publications or broadcasts that include "at least 25 percent news content"

• Media representatives would be allowed to attend executive sessions if they provide evidence that includes "proof satisfactory to the City Council that the person is gathering news," along with a press badge, a recently published news article with their byline or an editor's note on letterhead.

he me. In Frederick, MD, board discussions over education, taxes, policies, etc. were open to the public. Each weekly Board of Education member was open to every resident, and I even attended one with several classmates to protest a decision they had made. I was in a high school journalism class -- and that definitely wouldn't cut it under Oregon's proposed policy -- but I lived there and had every right to say what was on my mind.

If I could do that as a 17-year-old with no media credentials, why not let in the bloggers? I don't even need to bring up the fact that the Oregonian blogger Mark Bunster was doing the public a service (as journalists do) by reporting on information most probably wouldn't obtain on their own. A part of that is apparently because Oregon doesn't enjoy letting residents attend sessions, but mostly because those meetings are dull, dry, and doze-worthy. The councilors should be happy anyone even wanted to listen to them talk.

Social Media are vital for independents

Social media have become an important part of journalism. Newspapers today are still struggling to figure out how to best engage its audience through Facebook and Twitter. (Protip: Please don't spam my feed with 10 links to stories all within a few minutes.)

But social media are important for businesses, and even more important for independent businesses. Little Independent is a Chicago-based online marketplace selling independently made items. Since its launch in June, it now features stores in Illinois, Indiana, Delaware, and Massachusetts.

Social media is an integral part because this online marketplace encourages communication among independent retailers.

Lesley Tweedie, the founder of Little Independent, spoke with the San Francisco Chronicle and said this:

"I was traveling out of state recently and had dinner with an independent retailer I connected with on Little Independent's page on Facebook. Although I had never met her in person, we had an instant connection as owners of small retail stores."

I think Little Independent has come about at a good time. Most people my age I know do most of their non-food shopping online (I am included in this). While there are brick and mortar stores, it will likely grow the most over the internet.

The Occupy Movement on Tumblr

When I'm not doing homework or playing video games, I'm generally on Tumblr. It's a (highly addicting) microblogging platform and growing social network. It's filled to the brim with gorgeous pictures and snarky comments, but I've also seen more about the Occupy movement on Tumblr than I have anywhere else.

The tumblr tag for Occupy Wall Street updates fairly frequently, which means people are always talking about it on tumblr. People post silly comics, their stories written on a large card, and serious discussions. People are bitter, and people are serious.

I would sooner trust the ordinary people blogging about their thoughts and experiences of Occupy Wall Street than the NYT (which completely changed its story about protestors being arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge on Oct. 1).

But why has Tumblr become the perfect place for people to discuss Occupy Wall Street? From my experiences, most people on the microblogging site are somewhere between 15 and 30 years old. Most are in college and going into debt, out of college and still in debt, or looking at colleges and already worrying about debt. Many supporters of the movement are young, and Tumblr is full of young tech-savvy people. Picture posts are an important part of Tumblr, which could be why so many posts in the past contained people writing their story and then writing "We are the 99%" at the end. People reblog the posts in solidarity, but they also then share their own stories.

I'm interested in seeing how this movement will grow on Tumblr. Will it be able to advance the movement, or will it be a place to vent about the 1%?

Animals + Humor = Profit

Back in '07, Businessweek did a piece on successful bloggers bringing in a nice amount of money each week, probably through advertisements based on the large number of hits they receive. My favorite of the week included I Can Has Cheezburger, which I actually stumbled on in 2007 with my sister when we saw our friends posting pictures of cats with bolded internet-speak phrases. Since then, we've loved all LOLCats. I haven't seen as many truly "laugh out loud" pictures as I did when the site was growing (some people think they're funny when they're really not), but I still chuckle at some pictures. But really, I just like looking at pictures of funny animals.

Which brings me to my next point. (Wait, are these really points? I think I'm just talking about how I like pictures of fuzzy animals. Or not fuzzy.) The silliest things can become hits. Two years ago in my Intro. to Mass Media class, we looked at F U, Penguin. It's just a guy putting cute animals in their place. This all started on blogger, but by some chance, it caught on and now the guy has a book.

And there's another that I discovered recently on tumblr: Animals Being Dicks.

However, for every goldmine, there have to be hundreds of flops. A lot of it is being lucky, especially with the sites I mentioned. Sometimes it's for fun, and then sometimes it catches on by accident and lets you quit your day job. Will I ever be that lucky? I doubt it. But at least there's a chance that maybe someone out there will like an inside joke I have with a friend.

Globalization and independent media

Globalization is a hot word for both people who are staunchly for it and for people who are staunchly against it.

However, if there's one thing globalization is good for, it's aiding independent media. With the rise of the internet, the world has started to become one global society and promote communication between countries.

South Africa, like many other African countries, struggles with authoritarian powers used against its people. The longer a ruler stays in power, the more likely he is to become a dictator.

However, independent media can resist that. If independent media are able to prosper, Africa's multi-party system can last."

But this can be applied to our two-party system as well. When either party becomes too strong, too weak, too unconcerned with its people, independent media turn to new movements. Independent media is all about change, and change for the better.

However, like economic troubles here, the independent media in South Africa have problems starting up. The person in power often postpones granting licenses or makes it too difficult and costly to use the printing press.

That's why we need to be aware of what's happening in other countries. We may not be able to help them, but we can encourage them to keep going. Their democracy can come about with the help of independent media.

When the news stops being the news

The Russian history lover in me needs to speak.

Journalism will never disappear. Someone will always need to give out the news because as much as people tell me that current events bore them, they still want to know basic things like, "Why is the red line on the D.C. metro always under maintenance?" and "Why was I-81 backed up for hours?"

And that stuff is important, too. But sometimes I think people try to avoid the news because they don't like politics and discussing politics can only bring you trouble (unless you're like me and enjoy that part).

But when I turn on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, or any national broadcast, I wonder how much people question what they hear. The news is supposed to be impartial, yet each of these stations has its own agenda. From Bill O'Reilly to Keith Olbermann (despite his move to Current TV), opinions are treated as news, and news is treated subjectively.

There's also each time politicians try to quell WikiLeaks, such as when Senator Lieberman got Amazon to drop the muckraking site.

In the well-known Fourteen Defining Characteristics of Fascism by Laurence W. Britt, one point centers on the media.

6. A controlled mass media. Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses.

And while learning about the dissident press, I was surprised to learn how many American communists were involved in the news, crying foul at the world. In a way, I shouldn't be surprised because I've always been enamored to a degree with communism.

However, many people aren't aware of how strictly the press was controlled within the Soviet Union. Not only did use Stalin use the propagandist Pravda to his advantage, he would purge anyone in the Communist Party who did not follow a line of Stalinist thinking. In one part of Slavenka Drakulic's book How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed--the majority of which takes place in Eastern Europe before the Soviet Union's collapse--Drakulic tells the reader about a journalist she knew who wrote a piece that did not go well with the Communist Party even though she was a member of the same party (all journalists had to be members of the Communist Party). She wasn't blacklisted, but everyone in her newsroom ignored her from then on.

Drakulic also describes a time when she had a chat with her censor. He wasn't there to tell her that she was writing anything that the Party didn't like; he just wanted to show her that they were always watching. After that, Drakulic didn't need a censor. She had enough self-concern that she was her own personal censor.

A controlled mass media doesn't point to strictly fascism nor strictly communism. It's not about whether the media are too far right or too far left. What people need to know is that a free press and a totalitarian government cannot coexist.

Independent media haven't really changed

Of course, there have been hundreds of years in changes to technology, changing how the alternative press delivers its news. However, its core values are still very much in tact, and the summary of the first part in Rodger Streitmatter's Voices of Revolution offers readers the primary reasons for a dissident press. They...

• speak on behalf of the oppressed
• face financial hardship
• receive neither sympathy nor support from the mainstream press
• have an open forum
• are active proponents of change
• have impact
• have timeless issues

Much of this reminded me of lambasted modern independent media, such as WikiLeaks, which is repeatedly attacked by the mainstream press even though they are doing a service to the world by providing information that politicians and large corporations would rather keep secret. And this is only one example; there are plenty of others.

Independent media are also forward-thinking. The feminist paper The Revolution, by Stanton and Anthony, covered many women's issues, but they covered one that is still controversial today: abortion.

The Revolution argued that "it was not moral degeneracy that led a woman to end an unwanted pregnancy...but sexual exploitation by the man who had impregnated her."

It's no surprise that this was considered a radical idea in the 1800s; to some, it's still radical today. Stanton and Anthony were activists who wanted to give voice to the voiceless. They wanted--and needed--to change the idea that "A woman is nobody. A wife is everything." The mainstream press attacked them, calling their paper "Amazonian." The mainstream media even personally attacked the women's character, calling them hermaphrodites because they defied social norms.

And yet, they did not let this bother them. They were giving a greater voice to a democracy that needed to be improved (by including women's voices) while the mainstream press were slow to realize that women had the same rights as men. Of course, the majority believes in equality today, but the modern mainstream press is still slow to recognize social and political problems today that everyone will recognize years from now.

"You Had to Be There"

Everyone says it when they explain something to someone who doesn't understand the situation or get a joke. "You had to be there," seems to be the excuse people fall back on.

"Being there" is important in journalism. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! prides herself on going to different parts of the world to give voices to the voiceless. In that case, being there is essential. After she was arrested at the RNC, Goodman told other reporters (after they lamented that they've never been arrested for doing their job) that the arrest happened because she was where the news was taking place. Journalists need to be in the action to find the people who aren't making the news.

However, as Arianna Huffington states, "The truth is, you don't have to "be there" to bear witness. And you can be there and fail to bear witness."

Goodman and the rest of Democracy Now! do a fantastic job at bearing witness when they do their reports. But not everyone has the ability to "be there" and report. Today bloggers can report on the news without leaving their house. They may not be there like the traditional journalists, but some provide additional insight on issues that the major news corporations deem unimportant.

But a journalist's job is also to collect information from eyewitnesses. And if 10,000 people are tweeting about a riot taking place in Iran, you better listen. You can safely assume that this information is valid--or at least valid enough to go ahead and start fact-checking. These people on twitter can be treated as "eyewitnesses." Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are all just tools capable of advancing journalism. If journalists can put these eyewitness accounts to use, they can discover information they wouldn't have been able to find otherwise. If it weren't for those people tweeting, we might not find out about half of the riots taking place around the world.

The tension between mainstream media and bloggers

This isn't exactly news to anyone. Bloggers have been around for a while, but they weren't recognized as an alternative news source until a few years ago.

Back in 2009, a 13-year-old sat among the "elite" fashion reporters at several fashion shows, effectively pissing them off.

At first glance, what can a 13-year-old with no journalism training, and most likely little writing experience, do better than seasoned reporters from Vogue or Vanity Fair? Obviously the latter can provide better, more in-depth coverage with proper critiques and analyses of fashion shows.

But when compared to the immediacy of an individual blogger, magazines become "old news."

As said in the New York Times,

Blogs are posting images and reviews of collections before the last model exits the runway, while magazine editors are still jockeying to feature those clothes in issues that will be published months later.

So, yes--it's understandable why those magazine editors feel threatened by the young blogger.

However, magazines could incorporate bloggers. I interned at Maryland Life Magazine over the summer where their blog was updated every one or two days by staff writers and guest writers, as well as interns such as myself. I understand that there's a greater competition in the fashion journalism industry than regional magazine industry, but if mainstream and citizen journalists work together, better reporting can become available.

Magazines should also strive to create timeless material, or at least have a few of their features be timeless. Bloggers can push magazine writers to think up better article ideas and ways to make their reporting more interesting.

The NYT, however, brought up a great point: The Federal Trade Commission now requires blogs to disclose in their reviews whether they received the product for free whereas magazines rarely disclose that information.

Whether reviewers consciously do this, many writers will write a positive review when receiving that product for free, as if they are somehow obligated to write a biased review because they didn't pay for it. While interning at Maryland Life, I wrote an article about a local entrepreneur who made her own candles and bath products. Had the article been a review, rather than a general interest and short feature, I most likely would have received samples for free. If I were a lone blogger with no revenue, of course I would want to get things for free--it's not like most bloggers are being paid for their work. Magazine writers work for a company, which can set aside money to pay for products to be reviewed. Why is it that bloggers have to disclose whether they got it for free when magazine writers do not have to do this?

If people in the mainstream media think they are above independent bloggers, then they should have no qualms about being held to the same guidelines.