The Music Industry

For those of you who were actually in attendance for last wednesday's speaker, you know how good Ehren Ebbage was. It is incredible that someone as talented as that is not more famously known such as colby calai or however it's spelled. It definitely seems as though people are making music now just for the fame and the fortune, or at least that's what I got from the message. Now I know why I am not a huge fan of mainstream music. The popular artists aren't making their music so much for the love of the music itself, but instead they are doing it for the fame and the fortune, what many kids want today. I think the music most people listen to may be a lot better if people are making it themselves and playing it for the love of music, not money. Ehren was great, and I just might go buy a copy of his cd. No, not download the cd off limewire, but his actual physical compact disc to put into my compact disc player. Call me old school, but I don't care. People like him need the money to continue what they are doing. I know there are thousands of bands or artists out there, but some of them do have great music to share with us all. I think we need to start supporting those people, not the ones put out by the record companies that have unoriginal and separately written lyrics and music. People like Ehren are great at what they do and they are genuine. In music, that can be hard to find.

Are we screwed?

Steve Smith, a former editor for newspapers such as The Spokesman Review, came into class last week to discuss with us the current state and future of the newspaper journalist. I was very grateful to have him in class. I feel that was an opportunity that many people may never have in a journalism class. His speech, although quite interesting and enlightening, was extremely depressing for me. For most of the class period which he had to talk with us, he discussed how the current state of the newspaper industry is declining drastically and there is no end quite in sight just yet. The television news was following it and was not far behind. Newspapers are struggling to keep readers and maintain a profit and have been forced to lay off many good journalists because of budget cuts. He also said that the radio news business was almost completely dead by now. The fact that he was telling all of this to a group of many potential journalism degree recipients was quite overwhelming. The entire time I was thinking about what major I might be able to switch to and how soon I could get that done. The information and the way he portrayed this information was quite frightening. Thankfully, at the end of the class, he said to us that he was quite confident that we would all have great opportunities for jobs by the time we graduated. He said that the economy would bounce back as it always does and the bottom would be found for the newspaper industry. This was a little bit encouraging, but I was still left with uncertainty for my future in journalism. Will we all be able to get a job in journalism, or are we screwed?

People definitely need to be more wary of what the media these days are trying to do to us. They try to convince us of a certain opinion or that their product is the best out of everything available. But we can never be so sure. We need to learn to not fall for their traps no matter how subtle and misleading they can become. I have always noticed that advertisements can be a little ambiguous in the way the portray their information about their sales that they have going on. Things like up to 70 percent off are quite misleading. I always knew that maybe that meant that there were like two things that were 7o percent off and the rest of them were probably 20 percent off. Not until more recently have I realized that the news media is trying to do some of the same misleading things. When they talk about the candidates or some kind of new act they always say the negative and positive things that will sway the viewer towards their opinion. Whenever they don't like how the taxes are being raised, they say that it would make taxes higher. This is only compared to the other ideas that make taxes lower than the idea at hand. They also accuse politicians of ridiculous things that are no where near the truth. They take things out of context and so on. The point is, all of us need to be more on our toes when it comes to the information that we hear.

Election Day Coverage

On November fourth, as we all know, Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States. The news has been covering the election for the past 6 months and did not fail on the actual day of the election. I watched the coverage off and on for the entirety of the day. I made sure to see what states were key for each of the candidates to be victorious. Every one of the key channels, the coverage was pretty solid. Every second of the day was dedicated to the election. Even ESPN was running the electoral points for each candidate on the bottom of the screen. One thing I was troubled by were the varying scores from each channel. I would be watching one channel that said it was 207 to 96 in favor of Obama, and then I would switch the channel and see that it was 201 to 136 in favor of Obama. The basic point was that Obama was leading, yet it was still a little confusing. The thing that troubled and confused me the most was the time in which they called the states for either candidate. I would see a check mark in Obama's box for the state of Iowa, and at the bottom of the screen I would see that 11% of the votes had been counted. Now I wonder how in the world they can just call a state when so little of the votes were counted? In one instance, I saw that 0% were counted and they had already determined the winner. The election wasn't exactly close, but it was all a little ambiguous. In most cases they were correct in their projections, but I really think they should start waiting just a little longer to call the state for a candidate.

Tivo... or however you spell it

The world as we know it has become obsessed with a tiny little box underneath our televisions. Other than myself, I have come to realize that everyone owns a Tivo or DVR or something else of the sort. Apparently one cannot live without it. Who needs commercials anymore? Who actually goes out of their way to watch a program they want to? No one does that anymore. That is so last decade. Why watch commercials when television can now work around your schedule instead of the other way around. Yes, now everyone can watch the new episode of Gossip Girl two days after it airs. Heaven forbid that we miss our precious episodes of Gossip Girl! I remember the good old days when everyone would be forced to sit through the commercials and actually remember when a television show was going to be on. Now we just talk to our Tivo about it, and he fixes it all up for us. Forget the days of taping a show you wanted to watch. You can now have a library of television shows at your fingertip. This is all well and good, but how lazy and impatient are we getting? Yes, I hate commercials, but i tolerate them. Now we don't have to sit through two minutes of it all, we can just fast forward. It's quite pathetic when you really think about it. Our lives are so precious that we are not going to spend a couple minutes watching something that we don't want to watch. I can honestly say that I am doing just fine without a Tivo. I think I'll survive watching a few commercials or missing a show that I like.

bhutan

Well today we talked about something that in my opinion was quite depressing. I found out that every country in the world now has had the influence of television. Bhutan, the last country to receive it, has already had its culture and people manipulated by television although it only happened less than a decade ago. Sometimes I have wondered what it would be like to live without the influence of television and the media in my daily life. It seems now that that is quite impossible as there is nowhere in this world that I can go to and avoid television completely. Even this secluded country in the Himalayas now has children idolizing wrestling stars and cartoon characters. The elders have cut down on their time usually spent on prayers and their religion and have instead occupied that time with watching television. The only hope that I had for this small country was that their vast population of monks, who are very important to their daily life and culture, would avoid this device and live a television free lifestyle. I was sad to find out that even they have been sucked into TV's tractor beam. They are spending less and less time doing what they have done for thousands of years because of its influence. Although it is their right to chose whether or not they can have the influence of this device, I just wish that one part of the world could avoid the addictive thing known as TV.

Wow, scary

So in class yesterday (Monday), we had a little iclicker quiz right? The results were quite scary. My side lost 5 to 3 which was really disappointing but it was the questions that we all got wrong that was even worse. Everyone, and I mean everyone, knew where Barack Obama was a senator of. But our side couldn't even get 70 percent of us to remember where John McCain was from! We also didn't know who represented Oregon in the Senate and we didn't know who any of the Justices were. We didn't even know the Chief Justice! Now can all of this be blamed on the media? Not entirely, although one can make the case that much of it is due to the media. Television and the internet let's us all know who the American Idol judges are and who wins and what company made Fergie's dress for the MTV music video awards, but how much do they reveal about our government? I bet there are many people in this country that can name ever American Idol winner so far but doesn't even know what a Supreme Court Justice is. CNN and Fox News talk enough about the Presidential Candidates (apparently not enough about McCain's background) but they really fail to update us all on what is going on in the Supreme Court and the Senate (which is pretty much nothing, but still) and even in our own state's government. It may not be the most exciting news ever but I still think that the media should be held accountable to inform us of all of the news that affects us, not just the controversial ones. Let's be fair and say that the schools need to inform us of who the Justices are and what Congress is responsible for, but I'll admit I have already forgotten a lot of that. I think it is really up to the media to keep us up to date on everything that affects us in our government.