Capstone Essay

Print Media’s dying! Read all about it!

In 1993 President Clinton rumored to have parked his “Air Force One airplane parked on a busy runway at Los Angeles International Airport while he got a haircut by an expensive Beverly Hills coiffeur” (Loevy 3). Supposedly this errand “held up air traffic for roughly two hours” (Loevy 3). One can imagine the buzz and animosity that stormed throughout the country upon this stories release. After proof of this stories falsehood emerged, the media quickly swooped it under the rug to avoid having to admit to their mistake. Though mistakes like this happen often, the press has constantly evaded responsibility for not only lacking accuracy. This commotion resulted in the fall of President Clintons‘ approval ratings down to 36 percent. He was then labeled a “tax-and-spend liberal” (Loevy 3). This is one beautiful example of how the media transforms stories that often times ruins the reputation of whomever falls victim to their  falsehood.

At the end of the day, the press’s goal is to acquire currency. Whether they be true or not, the media pursues many stories as long as their audience, the people, takes an interest in what they are reporting. A great deal of news sources will feed the people dishonest news and even though we hate to hear it, going along with that lie is more profitable then revealing the truth. Having trustworthy news stations and reliable print news sources is a necessity. These sources have professionally trained journalist to uncover truths and find all the facts on what we need to know. They are honest sources, which have no room for alterations or exaggerations- unlike the sources such as blogs, personal websites, the opinionated articles that we rely on today. 

People pull information from a myriad of online sources that are subject to the creators manipulations. The problem is that people (mostly young people) are believing said lies. 

Believing is the first step in acceptance. Along with the boom of uneducated sources, these sources aren’t feeding the information we need to know. The majority of social news sources only feed people information about pop culture and celebrity gossip. News organizations are suffering due to company agenda’s, social media, and competition. I’ll be proposing a solution to this problem by evaluating precedent research and theories. 

Early every sunday morning the delivery man left each homeowner a fresh newspaper. Kids were accustomed to seeing their parents go through and check the newspaper for the latest breaking news, occasionally reading articles about local feats. At night after having a tiresome day at work, families would sit around the television and watch the news broadcasted from their local news stations. These things became traditions within our society. One can easily get caught up in the increase of our generations technology. Print journalism has shaped so much of our culture, because it was the main reliable channel through which the people could get find out serious issues (if you excuse gossip). While the overall public is enjoying digital news, we’re quickly loosing print media, and it seems as if we’ve already forgotten the vitality of it.

Media can be traced to B.C. ages. The first form of media was actually recitation. Recitation was when a solo and/ or group of speakers would recite scripted news to a large gathering of people. Later on in the late 1500’s the government of Venice began selling handwritten newspapers or “news-sheets”. It was priced at one gazette (Gazette: a small copper coin used as currency) which was fairly inexpensive in those times. Throughout the ages different cultures created their own ways to inform the public of current events and news.

One of the biggest contributors to our fast paced society has been the introduction of smart technology. Social media was founded upon the desire to interact with new people, to exchange information with others, and  to engage in personal content (examples: words, picture, videos). Three of the most prevalent social media sites that are also used for news sources are Google, Youtube, and Facebook. We Are all so accustomed to laptops and smart phones that it is hard to believe that all of this technology is so new. Regardless of their  ages, they have taken our society my storm. Internet site such as the three listed have played a critical role in turning our society into one revolving around technology. Knowing technology’s history opens our eyes to how it is influenced every industry.

The author of “Deadlines and Disruption: My Turbulent Path From Print to Digital” is Stephen Shepard. He was one the editor of Business week magazine, and had been for 20 years. Due to his long standing title and reputable abilities, it can be assumed that he was the driving force behind the magazines rise to prestigiousness. This book revolves on Shepard’s memory of both the height of print journalism and an examination of new influences on a well established industry.  He expresses his hypothesis on the evolution of journalism to be a transition into digital news. The advantage news outlets have in comparison to amateur news sources is their editorial value. The talent and value lies in editorial, skilled writing, and educated analysis sources. There also needs to be an increase in audience participation. Available sources for utilization that he points out are e-readers, smart phone application, web video, and multimedia. This book also addresses ideas for new funding, because when all’s said and done without the proper funding the industry will come to a screeching halt. Shepard influences young journalist to chase what stories bring in the most money vs. what stories are, in their opinion, most interesting. 

Shepard’s stress on the effect that journalist students can make in saving this industry refreshing. Young amateur journalist tend to get their ideas glazed over because of an inexperience in the field. Meanwhile, there is a booming amount budding journalist that are hungry for the stories vs. experienced reporters who have ran through more than they can count. Writing this book from his point of view was a brilliant move, because the reader then views him as a trusted source.

Most of our technology have not been around for much longer than a decade. As a nation that depends heavily on the access to worldwide news coverage, it’s been an undeniable shift in the vessel that said news travels through. We utilize our computers and smart phones as vessels to access a limitless global library, so for our computers to play such a prominent role in society it’s shocking that in 1972 the “first PC, Intel 8008” (Gifford 59), was sold to the public. Thank goodness for the development of faster more convienant computers, most users suffer when their page exceeds a thirty second loading period. Google became a major internet search engine in 1998.  To be a society driven by social media it is shocking that the first social network, Friendster, was launched in 2002. While Myspace was the first descendant of Friendster, the most popular social network right now is Facebook. Facebook was started before the others in 2004, and plays a prominent role in the development and sustainability of social network, especially it is news feed that majorly impacted news media. Newer networks such as Twitter were created in march 2006, Instagram was made in 2010.  

Google is a search engine that can be used to find information. This is used as a data storage house that people can use to access and find all of the information that has ever hit the web. It began as a project constructed by two Stanford University Ph.D. students, Larry Page and 

Sergey Brin. This project lead to a massive flow of revenue for both co-founders. Larry Page’s wealth is estimated to be $24.9 billion leaving him ranked #17 on Forbes 400 list of the richest americans. Meanwhile Sergey Brin’s wealth trails behind Page’s earning $24.4 billion and is ranked #16 on that list. The original plan was to create a search engine that would “rank websites according to how many other websites were linked to that site” (Scott 10). Before Google was even a thought, there were other search engines that would rank sites by how often the search term came up on a webpage. Google inc. was created in 1998, and success seemed almost overnight. By 2004 it is explosive popularity prompted the launch two new programs: Gmail and Google Earth. Gmail is a free web-based email service very similar to competitor email service Yahoo Mail; Google Earth is a globe of the world tracked by satellite imagery. 

Google pages tend to have a heavy flow of ad traffic, providing many opportunities for business’s to gain exposure. Although there are search engines competing with Google, “the company was able to soak up more than 65% of the market share for total searches performed on the internet...roughly 7 out of 10 people are using Google” (Scott 23) with Google being the 

preferred site, if a company pays to advertise a story or product on their pages it will be seen by a massive audience across the globe. Even if only a bundle of people see and take interest in the story, that minute population will still bring in a considerable flock in viewers which would lead to a story gaining fame.

In July of 2007, Facebook reached 30 million registered users making it number ones social network with an education focus. The founder Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook at the age of 23 while studying psychology at Harvard University. He already developed a number of social networking sites prior but Facebook was originally purpose to be away for Harvard

students to reach out and make friends with other students was to share express ideas and thoughts.after being launched in February 2004, it only took 24 hours 4200 Harvard students to sign up and after a month half of the undergraduate population created a profile. many companies have attempted to buy Facebook such as Yahoo and Google, however the company refuses to sell out. 

Facebook has a news feed which is a homepage that consist of our friends post and stories. It Is solely for entertainment and to update us on what's going on in our friends live, newsreaders self identify as a minority on Facebook, however there is an overwhelming popularity of people that get their news purposely from Facebook and use that new seat a survey breaking news and hot topics. It Is hard to say that Facebook is the cause of miscommunication within news stories, because in the end all Facebook does is organize the stories presented to us 

in favor of what the program assumes we like/may be interested in. Our friends and fellow bloggers are the people who debut and support the stories we will cross on the site.

Chasing behind Google and Facebook, Youtube is the third most visited site in the world. Which speaks volume for an adolescent site made only nine years ago. It averages at two billion views from around the globe every day. This infamous site was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim who envisioned Youtube as a home for video sharing. Within nine months it became an internet sensation “By November... Youtube users were sending 8 terabytes of data... Internet every day”(Woog 37) leading to Google purchasing the company for $1.65 billion in the fall of 2006. Shockingly views increased to 700 million per week. Today more video is uploaded to Youtube in 60 days than all three U.S. television networks have created in 60 years. Videos by terrorists, human rights groups and U.S. soldiers in Iraq are posted. Some are clips of incidents that have political consequences or document important trends, such as global warming, illegal immigration and corruption. Some videos reveal truths. Others spread propaganda and outright lies.

From time to time we all get curious about the lives of our favorite celebrities and/or we want to find out more about hollywood buzz. Yahoo! OMG! was created to satisfy that curiosity and has become a top go-to blog site for news and celebrity gossip. Crafted by Yahoo! New’s entertainment board in June 2007, this site has partnered with other big business 

media outlets such as X17 and Access Hollywood to use stories, resources, and advertising. In August of 2007 eight million readers a month registered.

Regardless of their lack of seniority these sites have gained millions of users and with the gained popularity of smartphones the access to these sites has massively increased leading to a boom of popularity. The increasing use of social media has led to major competetion with media news. Active bloggers have become so accustomed to live narrative, in which sites like twitter select interesting stories to feature on their sites. The stories put onto these sites are hardly ever reliable. It Is not organized and often times are heavily influenced by personal beliefs and opinions. However, depending on where your located, you may be the last place to recieve important news. So by having a source that feeds you hot topics and breaking news instantly, it is hard for reporters to not report the first story they heard so that they can be seen as the first with the scoop. 

In trying to do their job Eager journalists will sometimes emphasize or highlight gossip without first checking to validate their sources and the information of the reporting. This can be harmful because now the press is feeding unreliable information to the people, which can lead to the people being misinformed and stories being changed into how a news company feels will give them the highest ratings. One of the biggest effects that social media has had on news is for example how Facebook's newsfeed is entirely anyone's creation. Anyone can go out and say 

anything they want on this news feed and unfortunately there are people who accept that as news coverage. With social media only sharing or posting stories that are the most provocative and attention grabbing versus reporting on stories that are imperative for the people to know, people then tend to lose interest in stories that aren’t purely purposed for entertainment.

News media has tried to compensate in many ways. Reporters figured that if twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have such heavy influence on the population than maybe they should 

pull their news from those sources. The web helps embellish and modify the habits of journalism. The majority of people, especially younger people, prefer to get their news through bloggers and online articles, because of their an informal delivery as well as there being a lack of the restriction that big business news stations have to abide by. 

The press is notorious for over editing and hiding stories. Its theorized that they do this because whomever is sponsoring their station  limits what they can report to the public and holds the fact that they rely on this source for funds, as blackmail. So not only do news reporters have to compete with popular social media sites, but they also work under the pressure to get the best story before other contenders are able to report about it. This leaves the industry in a fiery hunger game like 

madness and when everyones constantly racing against one another, people tend to pay less attention to minute details, making major mistakes inevitable.

Hammering the last nail in good ole’ fashion print newspaper’s coffin, advertisers have dramatically increased their contribution towards the internet. As a result of this, many news companies have lost the majority of their investors, leaving them lacking support. The author, Robert Kuttner, of journal article the race, provided an intriguing status update on one the market value of the once beloved publishing company Minneapolis Star tribune. The tribune’s stock market value fell to a shocking $160 million, proving to be more useful sold. 

Along with the decrease in price value, print newspaper has a name for being harder to access, increasingly dull, and more expensive v. being free.  Contrary to its benefits, Kuttner hypothesized the discontinuance of newspapers unless the internet stops reaping the profit that arises from selling news.  He predicts that the trio of google, amazon, and select amateurs will slowly begin to dominate the field.It Is also a really profitable business plan. Big-money businesses are able to step in and fund America's media and they can pump whatever stories and opinions they want to and to this project that they now own. 

The press is not owned by citizens, it is owned by big names that have the cash to pump billions into this industry. But why would they even bother with news media industry? The reason why, is because our “media influences every other aspect of our society politics, religion, sports, foreign affairs, wars, and entertainment” (Kuttner 19). Therefore those of control the media control the country. All of these big businesses are fighting to lead the most popular news stations. Most of the news fed to us is only to sway the public into favoring a certain business, because if we favor said business we can give our money to said business therefore continuing on the cycle of giving these big corporate businesses the money that they will in turn use to satisfy their own agenda. 

Some such as author of The problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Emile McAnany, would say that another reason as to why we are not fed information all the time is because those people funding news media are wanting to “distract the people away from the right wing agenda” (McAnany 41). They Are able to not only profit but to thrive on keeping the people ignorantly in the dark and they do this so that the government can go and do whatever under the table practices that they please. They Are able to avoid public uprisings or opinions that may deter them away from their plans by keeping the general population in the dark about all thats really happening in our country. 

This is an undeniably massive or such a big problem there should be an equally big plan to solve it. The driving force behind this entire problem is money and competition. If we were able to find ways to fund the media without having to rely on the funds from big corporate businesses, that would be I feel the “biggest relief’ (Layton 6) for this issue. If the media was no longer able to be blackmailed then they wouldn't be able to be controlled or swayed by the power of money. No longer having to suffer under the pressures of funds, that would relieve a lot of the competition because then they will be able to report on a wide variety of stories that appeal to every different group versus having to report on stories that their sponsors have strictly directed them to pursue. Of course with the growing presence of social media money won't relieve people enjoying face booking and tweeting or Instagram, but people are relying on the sources as viable new 

sources because that is all that they feel like they have as a vessel for “true uncensored news” (Robert 32). By utilizing news stations as the reliable sources they should be and by taking the time to thoroughly pursue stories that the people may or may not want to hear but need 

to hear then that eliminates social media as a contender for competition. Also, slowing down the process of finding news and broadcasting stories will help people to not feel so “overwhelmed” (Kuttner 51) and will serve as a cool down for the rush of reporting. However, thats what would happen in an ideal utopia-like situation. The best way to deal with this problem is to start off small and from the beginning. 

Retracing our steps back to the root of the problem will help in for the generations. I feel that we need to target middle school children. “In such early stages of life your mind is still so malleable that developing early habits soon is more likely to make them stick” (Kuttner 27). We want everyone to take an interest in pursuing the truth above everything else that only serves purpose to make everyone aware of world they are living in. I'm going to create a classroom activity that cycles on throughout the year in which children will be assigned to go find an interesting story in their community to write at least a paragraph explaining it and then a paragraph reflecting and 

analyzing their reaction to it. This will serve to heighten their awareness and to increase the interest about things bigger than the life they lead.

With my product being an out-of-class assignment, getting young middle school-aged students to actually take doing my project seriously is really difficult for a me; I am a student as 

well and I have no authorized authority over them. Although I couldn't test my product in a setting such as I'd like, I had my brother ,Nigel try completing my news reporter assignment. Nigel is 12 years old and a 7th grader at Schimelpfenig middle school and to be blunt he’s a 

typical lazy pre-teen with a low interest in out of the classroom assignments (unless it involves sports or video games). At first he was willing to do it but was not willing as a favor to me, but I 

could tell that he didn’t originally plan to go above and beyond his means to get this assignment done. Which is understandable, being in school for eighth hours is exhausting enough without having to add anything else. However he did me the burden of taking on my project and went around his school trying to find things that he found either suspicious or scandalous. Nigel is a football player and spins a at least five hours a day every morning training with his devoted team for the upcoming season. Therefore with that being said Nigel really thought out things that he could make the program stronger and things that he thought was an interesting story to write about. 

As his search progressed he remembered his lingering suspicion about why the coaches were so strict about zero tolerance for the players missing any practice sessions. This seems practical, because it is important to instill the importance of punctuality in students. Even with that being the obvious assumption, he still found it difficult to believe that everything was all 

fine and dandy, especially knowing how ruthless the coaches can be when it comes to periods of time. Nigel realized that every now and then players seemed to disappear from practice and come back shortly afterwards although it was obvious that for whatever reason they didn’t need to be there. Normally if students vomit, they are excused to go home and take the day for rest. However, in football he had reported the coaches making the players vomit on the side 

of the field, swish water around their mouth, and continue running with everyone else. At times the coaches have felt that some players will only fake sick to get excused form exercise, whether or not their intuition was factual. In that case they’d make those players run extra laps to punish them for their foolery, which at times was wrongly assumed.  This project that I asked him to do for me really opened his eyes to the mystery around him that he didn't quite know how to expose. He started out by asking questions to the students that he saw attend practice even though they were concerningly ill. They confided in Nigel and told him that they only stuck it out in practice because of an intense fear for the wrath of the coaches punishments. Discovering these godawful practices within an organization he devotes most of his time to was shocking. What seemed worse than these atrocious acts, is that he’d been participating for a year and knew nothing about the abuse that came to students that fell out of line. In his essay he wrote about how upset he was after the realization that in this particular instance the school coaches didn't have the students 

overall health and happiness at heart. It Is understand that his revelation can be troublesome for these boys who still heavily dependent upon their coaches to be an example for them. 

Some naysayers may say that Nigel's’ four paragraphs didn't effect world change and of course the rules and brutality remain the same. Regardless, after digging up the truth and finding 

out about a problem within his community, Nigel then brought his information and concern to his schools guidance counselor. The assignment is a bridge to deeper understanding and concern 

about the present and future within our youth. This project forced him to learn about something and now he is going out of his way to arouse the change he wants to see. Others would say students would not have enough interest and would lose motivation to do such a project but I do feel that after this trial, my test subject proved to become very engaged. My solution has proven effective because now Nigel is able to increase his insight on the people around him and the situation that he surrounds himself in.

I see nothing but positive long term implications from my plan. This plan puts students in the position to take responsibility for their own knowledge at a young age. Because many people haven't gotten to learn about the world outside of themselves during their developmental stages we often times aren't cautious of the things happening around us. This leaves us in a state of ignorance and blindness that is absolutely a plan for the devastation. My solution is to rid this 

blindness. For example, the government gets away with keeping our society in the dark because not enough citizens feel passionately obligated to take the extra time to further dig deep into results of this project is that it takes away the option to get completely resolved in your own life. It forces young students to be aware as well as to take interest in the things that affect them.The implications of this plan are too give students who will develop into adults the skills to seek higher knowledge and higher understanding for not just the good of a school assignments but for the the progress of their present and future.

The most important lesson that studying this problem has taught me is that within ignorance and silence evil waits to prey. All of the newly developed distractions that we have such as Facebook, Youtube , or Google have provided us a way to be blissfully engaged in things that at the end of the day are really just distractions. There tends to be a stigma about big business corporations bullying aspects of our society, but we've allowed them to even get in that position of power. We, the people, gave them their power by purchasing their products and soliciting their ads. Regardless, within our strengths as a body of people we could take that control away from these money making corporations that will corrupt anything for the sake of the dollar bill. I believe implement  which one teach one motto because after experiencing the things that are crutch for our current generation it is our saving grace to be able to demonstrate and phase the next generation from making the same mistakes. Children are the future and 

sewing them but there's an option outside of what was been doing is crucial to seeing the change that would like.I see myself pursuing a career as a news anchor for national news company. So that is why this topic is so disturbing to me. I fell in love with news media reminiscing on how it used to be. My admiration for news media hasn't strayed however I do feel like the order to save jobs and to regain our national audience we need to make major changes in the industry, starting with no longer allowing our stations to be controlled or swayed with by the sponsorship of big money businesses. I truly don't believe that people have lost interest in live entertaining news media, my service learning was entertaining elderly citizens with current events and in doing so I got to see firsthand how is warranted and helpful live news was.the mission statement at Richland Community College is "Teaching, Learning, and Community building" which means that which one student are expected to not only learn but after acquiring knowledge using that to help shape the future and to pass that information along to those who don't No. When you know better you're able to do better and that is how we are going to build strong communities.

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