Critical Reflection WINOL term 3

Sam Ashton critical reflection

This term for WINOL, I was given the role of web editor, my duties would include:

·         Attending news meetings and arranging for written stories to be added to the site

·         Subbing written stories on the website for legal and grammar issues

·         Making the website more user friendly

·         Improving the Alexa ranking of the website by improving search engine optimisation (SEO)

·         Uploading features to the site

·         Ensuring that the site remained consistent in content

·         Uploading the main news bulletin in time for 5 o clock every Wednesday

·         Uploading Sportsweek

 this is something that I was not particularly comfortable with at first, not being particularly savvy in terms of web development and specialist programmes, I thought it would be something that I would struggle with somewhat. I took some time over summer researching Joomla, the content management system that we used and looking through some tutorials, but was still not very confident with it. I discussed this with Jason French, the web development editor for WINOL and we decided that a change in content management system would be the best way to move the website forward in our own way. We knew that WordPress was a popular content management system, and as it has a similar layout to Blogger, which is already used by all of the WINOL team for blogging, we thought it would be the easiest system for everyone to learn, and get used to. According to W3Techs, WordPress is used by 17.5% of all websites on the internet compared to Joomla’s 2.8% (as of November 2012).

Fortunately, I had Jason (who can only be described as a bit of a genius in web development) to take control of the switchover from Joomla to Wordpress, although unfortunately, this would take a couple of weeks to complete, something that we should have started on over summer, so that content could start to be added to coincide with the regular TV news bulletin. I took control of the Joomla system while Jason was working on the switchover so that content could still be uploaded in the meantime. In previous years, I’d felt as though the website, and text based stories had been somewhat an afterthought so I intended to ensure that we WINOL was known as a news website, as much as it was known for its weekly Television bulletin. If we had daily content on the site, it would attract more visitors, and therefore improve our Alexa ranking, which was somewhere around the 1.2 million mark globally at the start of term (this was after the summer break – 3 months of not being updated). We wanted to break comfortably into the top 1 million and consistently good content was the only way that we would achieve this.

For the first couple of weeks, we started to see immediate improvement in the look of the site, it was being updated with around 10 stories weekly, the only problem was that these were all coming on a Wednesday, people were simply reversioning their stories from the bulletin which was still an improvement, but it wasn’t going to help us move up significantly in viewers.

When the WordPress migration finally took place, I was able to delegate days to members of the news team that they would be in charge of finding stories to put up onto the website, I wrote up a web bible, instructing everyone how to put stories onto the site (http://winol.co.uk/2012/12/style-guidebible-update) and kept that updated as the site changed. I instructed people to save their stories as ‘pending review’ and subbed stories to ensure that they were legally safe and properly written.  We then finally started seeing daily updates to the website; it was starting to look like a live news website. One problem that we faced consistently throughout the term was quality of pictures. At first, all news stories had a thumbnail picture, but too often these were of ‘guilty buildings’ or dull mid-shots of people. Chris enforced a rule that all pictures had to be either a face, or an action shot, as these were the two most interesting type of picture. We decided to change the layout of the site, so that only the top story had a thumbnail picture. This made the site visually led, so our top story would usually be the one with the best picture. I also had to ensure that the news team added tags to all of their stories, this is another perk of WordPress that helps our stories to appear on search engines.

This term, for the first time, WINOL has had a rival. East London Lines are a student run news website based at Goldsmiths University in London. They’re similar to WINOL in that they are a local news network, but their web based content WAS considerably stronger than ours, and their video output considerably weaker. At the start of the term they were miles ahead of us in Alexa rankings, due to their constantly updated string of local news. They came second in the BJTC’s website of the year award, so we knew that we had to be better than them to be in with any chance of an award next year.  We started a student journalism league table on the site, so that we could track our own progress against that of East London Lines and other journalism courses across the UK, this was based on Alexa rankings. As of the 10^th of December WINOL has a UK Alexa ranking of 10,424 and a global ranking of 477,045. East London Lines had a UK rank of 24,950 and a global rank of 581,311. We managed to overtake them towards the end of term due to our consistently updated online news, our regular and reliable news bulletin on Wednesdays and a huge step forward in terms of features. This means that WINOL is well within the top 500,000 websites in the world, as Google estimates about 50 billion web pages in the world, that’s pretty good. Jason has really helped with this by removing iframes from the site, previously, there was no way to link to separate pages, as everything was under one iframe, but now every page has a separate web URL which allows search engine spiders to crawl through the site more effectively, making us easier to find.

Another aspect of WINOL that was hugely worked on this term was social networking, which was left in the control of Hannah. We finally set up a Facebook page which currently has 106 ‘likes’ and made sure that we updated that regularly. We also made better use of our Twitter account, I asked all of the news team to ensure that they tweeted regularly whilst working on stories for WINOL to make our twitter feed reflect the busy nature of the newsroom. Our Twitter currently has over 1000 followers, which has surely given us website hits.

I have tried to remain active in the newsroom aside from being web editor. In the first week, we hosted the BJTC awards, hosted by Alastair Stewart. I took on the role of managing editor which basically consisted of making sure that everybody was in the right place at the right time and knew exactly what they were doing, this included the rest of the production team, and all guests. I assigned members of my team to certain guests, Ben and Alex waited at reception for students and nominees, whilst Jason took care of Alastair Stewart. I arranged details with vice chancellor Joy Carter for her arrival. This all went as planned and general organisation was very good, the only problem being latecomers having to be refused entry once the event started. They were understandably upset, but unfortunately this was unavoidable. The event was a great success and a great way to advertise Winchester Journalism to other journalism students from around the country.

The following week I had the responsibility of taking the BJTC award footage and editing it into a package. Henry had helped me with the ordering of our shots, so I wrote a voice track for the piece. I decided that I needed to make Alastair Stewart the key focus of the news package, although we wanted to make something of the fact that we won awards, the real news story was having a celebrity presenting the awards for us. I wanted pictures of Alastair Stewart in his more familiar setting, presenting the news, so took some from Youtube, I was allowed to do this as it was only around 4 seconds and was helping us to tell a current news story (sort of), so counted as fair dealing, we showed the clip to a copyright expert and he said that it was safe, although we were slightly pushing our luck. I wanted a catchy opening so went with "from bongs to gongs" incorporating the big ben bong sound that is so well associated with ITV's ten o' clock news. I was fairly happy with this package, it was the leading story in the bulletin and the intro seemed to work really well. I also felt like I'd written to the pictures quite well throughout.

After this, I was asked to take on the role of headline writer for the bulletin. This was something that I particularly enjoyed and something that I would love to (somehow) get into one day. Some of my favourite headlines were “scabies gets under the skin of Winchester students” regarding a scabies outbreak, “polar beer” for a story about a beer being sent to the arctic, and “the beers on the bus go down in rounds” for a story about a bus that had been converted into a pub.  

I also arranged and filmed one of the terms most successful features. It was with a local man, named Edgar Feuchtwanger, who as a Jewish child growing up in Munich, lived on the same street as Adolf Hitler. I’d seen that the BBC had done a written article and a radio piece on him and realised that he lived in Winchester. I searched for him on Linkedin (a sort of ‘professional’ version of facebook) and sent him a message and fortunately he replied with his contact details. I told Lee, the features editor, and we arranged a time for the interview. It was a great interview, well framed and correctly coloured and by far the most interesting interviewee that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. We ran with the headline “I was Hitler’s neighbour” as that was probably our best quote. This feature has been measured by WordPress as the most popular on the website, and has brought us a lot of traffic. I sent a copy of the interview to Edgar and he got back to me with some feedback that he had received after sending it around, one of them coming from the Cambridge University alumni office saying “a very professional job indeed. A bright journalistic future awaits them.”

Features on the whole have improved hugely this year, there have been two competitions, which were both well received and gave us some traffic, and a confessional interview with Paul Blackburn, who was wrongly convicted, and spent 25 years in prison. We even have a dedicated fashion page and a review page, just showing the much needed depth that the features department finally has. The bulletin has remained consistent and been generally pretty good, as has Sportsweek. Both have given the website a constant midweek boost. Special projects also deserve a mention, the hosting of the BJTC awards and the US election special were both great ratings winners and were pulled off brilliantly. The election special even got us a mention on reputable journalism website journalism.co.uk.

After Christmas I will have to begin work on my FYP, the innocence project initially drew my attention, but I soon started losing interest, making me think that I probably shouldn’t choose it as a dissertation topic. I hope to be able to carry on my work as web editor as my FYP and continue to oversee the rise of winol.co.uk

Law update/revision: The stages of processing and reporting a crime

When reporting crime, it is important to be careful not to stray into territories where you may be in contempt of court, these are the stages that Journalists should think of when reporting crime.

Stage 1: A crime is reported, no one has been arrested, police are searching for the perpetrator(s) and witnesses. There is at this stage no restriction on what a journalist can report, (as long as it's true, of course)

Stage 2: Police make an arrest (or issue a warrant) The case is now active (even if charges have not yet been brought) Journalists are now at risk of prejudicing a future trial, so must be careful with reports. Should seek legal advice before publishing anything.

Stage 3: Police make charges, meaning that a court case is probable, you can now only report facts that you are certain will be uncontested. E.g the charges that will be faced, the fact that somebody has died (for example), the name of defendant and victim. Only solid facts, nothing that will give the jury any additional information before it's heard in court.

Stage 4: Magistrates Court hearing. Seven points, outlined in last blog post.

Stage 5: The trial, reporting only what is heard by the jury, not including things shouted from the public gallery.

Media Law update: 7 Points that MUST be included when reporting a court case.

These Seven points must be included in any court report, to ensure that your reporting is ACCURATE and FAIR. You must also ensure that it is FAST (published in the next available edition.)

• Name, age, address and occupation of defendant(s)
• Name of Court and Magistrates involved in case
• Name of Solicitors/barristers involved in case
• Charges faced by the defendant
• If bail has been granted/conditions of bail. 
• Date and place to where case is adjourned
• Whether or not legal aid has been granted

The Reynolds 10 point test: Law update

The Reynolds defence, is a ten point guideline set out by judge Lord Nichols during a court case in which Albert Reynolds, former Prime Minister of Ireland, accused the Times newspaper of libel.

The Times won the court case, under the judges recommendation that the public had the right to know the story that was published, and that the newspaper had done enough to ensure that their information was correct. 

Lord Nichols stated that courts should apply the following ten point test, to see if a press story passes the 'right to know test'.

This is now used as a vital tool for journalists to avoid legal action being taken against them.

1. The seriousness of the allegation
2. The nature of the subject matter, and whether or not it is in the public interest
3. The source of the information
4. The status of the information
5. The steps taken to verify this information
6. The urgency of the matter
7. Whether a comment was sought from the person being defamed
8. Whether or not the article gives an idea of the person being defamed's side of the story
9. The tone of the article
10. The circumstances and the timing of the publication

WINOL week 3

By week 3 we were finally ready to make the transition over to Wordpress. As a content management system, Wordpress is similar to Blogger, something that everybody in the class is familiar with due to the necessity of blogging throughout the course. This made it easy for everybody to upload their own written stories, meaning that all I would need to do is sub the stories, and make sure that the picture was suitable, before uploading.

We already had about 3 features waiting to be published somewhere, so we felt that we should try to make the most of these, our page layout consisted of a slider at the top of the page, sliding through our features, and the news stories, with fairly large pictures underneath. We were vaguely basing this style on The Daily Mail's 'Femail' features page. We finally had the scenario that we had needed for a long time, a set production plan that everything else had to follow, rather than planning our production around the content that we had available to us.

By the end of Wednesday, the new site was full of new stories, all with pictures and I was beginning to feel happy about the site as a whole. It was obviously important however, that the sight remained live throughout the week, and wasn't only updated with the bulletin on a Wednesday, we were hoping that from this point on, circulation on the site would start to increase, particularly as we now had a rival in eastlondonlines, whose alexa ranking was considerably higher than ours

Defamation overview.

Defamation is one of the most common causes for action to be taken against a journalist therefore it is important to be aware of it and well informed about it. When something is printed about somebody that may damage their reputation in the mind of right thinking members of society, this is defamation. It must be seen to lower peoples estimations of the person in question, it must be published to a third party and the person must be clearly identified.

Defamation can lead to people being shunned from society or avoided, it can discredit people in their trade or profession and it can expose people to ridicule and even hatred. We must look at these phrases to decide if somebody has been defamed.

Defamation is not necessarily bad . In many circumstances, defamation is in the public interest and needs to be reported. For example if a newspaper was to report that a public figure was sent to prison for murder, it would be damaging his reputation, however if it was true and can be proved, this is called justification. A journalist can still be sued if the story is true, this is why it is important to always have absolute empirical evidence for anything written. Privilege is another defence for journalists, if the news is in the interest of the public. This defence is slightly more risky however as it is often hard to define public interest. Defamation does not tend to be something that a journalist should worry about too much when reporting from court, in court, everybody has 'qualified privilege', the right to report what is said in court. AS LONG AS IT IS FAST, ACCURATE AND FAIR.  This also applies in parliament and in local council meetings.

If a Journalist was to defame somebody without justification, it is possible that they could correct it to appease the victim. They can include a correction in the newspaper stating that what they said was incorrect and often apologising. (This will be small, near the back of the newspaper and will rarely be seen.)

Purposefully saying something in order to damage a reputation or something that you know to be untrue is known as malice. This is illegal and should be avoided at all costs in journalism.

WINOL 2

After the success of 'from bongs to gongs' I was asked to take on the role of Headline writer for the bulletin, as well as my role of web editor. On the web side of things, I had decided, with Jason, my web development editor, that we should move away from 'Joomla' the content management system that we had previously been using for WINOL. We both found it hard to use, and hard to develop the website in the way that we wanted it to look. Wordpress seemed like the best option so Jason went bout redeveloping the site in Wordpress. In the meantime, I made sure that everybody was registered on Joomla and was able to put written stories on the site. In previous years I feel that everybody had seen written stories (and the website as a hole) as an afterthought to the bulletin. I wanted to change that so insisted that every bulletin sotry had a written story to go with it by 5pm on a Wednesday. This worked out well and for the first time in a long time, we had a busy, live looking site, as well as a bulletin.

In terms of headline writing, our top story was regarding the scabies outbreak at the University. I decided upon "scabies gets under the skin of Winchester students". We also had a story about the worlds coldest beer that was being sent to the arctic. I immediately wanted to go for 'polar beer', but it didn't fit the format of the headlines, so I had to "kill my babies" instead opting for " a warm welcome to the coolest beer in the south" thanks to a little help from Chris.

BJTC Awards + WINOL 1

The BJTC awards now seem like a distant memory, but my blogging has not been up to date this term, so I'll go through a recap of the day, and the role that I played. I took on the role of managing editor, slightly different from the web based role that would become familiar to me.  My role basically consisted of making sure that everybody was in the right place at the right time and knew exactly what they were doing, this included the rest of the production team, and all guests. I assigned members of my team to certain guests, Ben and Alex waited at reception for students and nominees, whilst Jason took care of Alastair Stewart. I arranged details with vice chancellor Joy Carter for her arrival. This all went as planned and general organisation was very good, the only problem being latecomers having to be refused entry once the event started. They were understandably upset, but unfortunately this was unavoidable. The event was a great success and a great way to advertise Winchester Journalism to other journalism students from around the country.

The following week was the first edition of WINOL, and I had the responsibility of taking the BJTC award footage and editing it into a package. Henry had helped me with the ordering of our shots, so I wrote a voice track for the piece. I decided that I needed to make Alastair Stewart the key focus on the news package, although we wanted to make something of the fact that we won awards, the real news story was having a celebrity presenting the awards for us. I wanted pictures of Alastair Stewart in his more familiar setting, presenting the news, so took some from Youtube, I was allowed to do this as it was only around 4 seconds, so counted as fair dealing, we showed the clip to a copyright expert and he said that it was safe, although we were slightly pushing our luck, because it was't being used for purpose of review, but it was, in a way being used to tell the news. I wanted a catchy opening so went with "from bongs to gongs" incorporating the big ben bong sound that is so well associated with ITV's ten o' clock news.

I was fairly happy with this package, it was the leading story in the bulletin and the intro seemed to work really well. I also felt like I'd written to the pictures quite well throughout. the main problem I faced was the sound quality. I had recorded my soundtrack using a gun-mic in an empty classroom, and  it didn't sound as good as it could have.

www.winol.co.uk

Law notes: prejudice and contempt

Prejudice and contempt

Contempt – criminal act of breaking rule

Prejudice- influencing the impartiality of the jury. Publishing info that could lead to unfairness at a later stage.

Understand the risk of prejudice!

Contested facts that will be prejudicial

Case becomes legally active when somebody is arrested/warrant given for arrest.

Detention without charge: police have 24 hours to question, senior officers can extend by 12hrs, magistrates can extend to 36 hrs, cannot exceed 96 hours, terror suspect limit 28 days.

Pre trial hearings: pre trial reports 7 points:

1.     names, age, addresses and occupations of defendants

2.     Summary of charges

3.     Name of court and magistrates names

4.     Names of solicitors/barristers present

5.     Date and place to where case is adjourned

6.     Bail arrangements

7.     Legal aid?

Categories of offence:

·      Indictable offence: 5+years (murder, robbery, rape)

·      Either-way: Can go to crown or magistrates court

·      Summary: Stays with magistrates (drunk and disorderly)

Magistrates power

·      6 months jail, fines up to £5000

·      Suspended sentence

·      Conditional discharge

·      Community orders, binding over

·      ASBO

Key stages of Trial in crown court

·      Jury sworn in

·      Prosecution opening

·      Key prosecution witnesses

·      Defence opening

·      Judge’s summing up

·      Jury sent out deliberation and verdict

·      Sentencing

Court reporting rules

·      FAST

·      ACCURATE

·      FAIR

·      Contemporaneous

·      No recording

Children and young people

·      Legally juvenile until 18

·      Under 18s get anonymity

·      Beware of accidental identification (Jigsaw identification)

The Bible (How to correctly put your written stories on the website)

Here is a basic step by step guide to uploading your written stories onto the new WordPress website.

1. Go to www.winchesterjournalism.co.uk/winol/wordpress/wp-login.php

2. Your username should be your first and last name, separated by a space, e.g Sam Ashton. Your password has been sent to you by Jason. It's been sent to the email that you registered to Joomla with, if you don't know this, ask me or Jason.

3.  Once logged in, you should realise that the layout is fairly similar to that of Blogger. On the left sidebar, select 'Posts - Add New'.  This is a pretty good place to write your story, but if you have written it elsewhere, paste it as Plain Text (option in the inventory above text box)

4. At the start of your story, you should write the date in bold, followed by a Full stop, and then your name and job role in italics followed by a colon. Like this:
  23/10/2012. By Sam Ashton, Web Editor: 

5. Make sure that your headline doesn't 'bust'. The style at the moment allows the headline to run over two lines, to ensure that you don't go over this, give your headlines a 35 character limit. Between 25 and 35 is usually a good length. Headlines should be in capitals,

6. The first sentence of your piece should summarise the story, and entice readers into reading more (much like the link to your story in the bulletin. After writing this first sentence, select the 'Insert More Tag' button from the inventory above your text box (this looks like two rectangles separated by a dotted line). After selecting this, a dotted line should appear underneath your introductory sentence.

7. With the format of the new site, pictures are extremely important. All written stories need a picture with them, ideally take these yourself, if this is not possible, take an appropriate screen-grab from your package, or find something using creative commons.

8. Before uploading your pictures, please make sure that they are 200x200. (Will take 2 minutes in Photoshop, fireworks etc.)

9. To upload the picture, select 'upload/insert' above the text box. Select your image and make sure that 'alignment' is set to left. The picture can sit next to your opening sentence.

10. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and select 'Set featured image' on the right hand side. Once again choose your picture, this is to create a thumbnail with your story on the homepage.

11. Also on the right hand side, make sure that the 'category' is set to 'news', and the 'format' to 'standard'. Feel free to add some tags.

12. Preview your piece, make sure it all looks right and reads well. Make sure that the status is set to 'pending review' so that it can be subbed. Then you can select publish.

That's how to upload a written news story, sorry if any of it seems obvious, just trying to make sure I've covered all bases. If you're unsure of anything, please ask me, and if I've forgotten anything, remind me.

Thanks!

Winol website changes etc.

After some discussion today with Chris and other members of the news/production team, it has been decided that we will be making some pretty major changes to the web side of Winol this year.

Firstly, I'm sure most of you will be very happy to hear that we are moving from Joomla to WordPress, and we will still be able to keep the winol.co.uk domain name. We're hoping that this will be easier to maintain and keep constantly up to date, like any news website should be. We are effectively starting fresh.

Winol will no longer be broadcast 'live at 5'. We often struggled to keep this deadline last year, and we can't ever afford to send the bulletin out late. From now on our viewers will be getting their 'news fix at 6' (until we can think of something a bit less awful.)

Social media will be a big part of Winol this year. Thankfully we have a role assigned to keeping on top of our social media and promotion, this is Hannah's job and she will be primarily in charge of the Winol Twitter and creating a Winol Facebook page. We will be trying to make sure that the Twitter ticker is always working and looking good.

Our main inspiration for the website will be the Daily Mail's 'Femail' section. Largely due to the big lead feature, surrounded by smaller features (which for us will be a mixture of features and news stories.) We will be able to make our page look busier than it does now, because we will have more news stories thanks to a bigger news team. Sport will have it's own dedicated homepage, probably with a similar look to the main site.

We discussed a 3 o' clock deadline for all written stories, I think this is realistic in 90% of situations, as most VT's will have been submitted much earlier in the day, then written stories can be online long before the bulletin. Written stories will, as always, need a still image with them.

Finally (I think), we will be trying to introduce HTML5 rather than flash, apparently this is generally better and more modern but not something that I am particularly confident with yet, so may be something that Jason will be primarily taking care of for the time being.

Let me know what you all think, give me more suggestions and tell me any problems that we haven't thought of.

THANKS!

The New Journalism. Seminar Paper.

The New Journalism

The new Journalism is an anthology of Journalism put together by Tom Wolfe in 1974. In it, Wolfe writes about a change in the style of the journalism that was being produced at the time. This style of Journalism changed the standard journalistic technique of ‘telling’ to ‘seeing’, describing the scene and allowing the readers to form an opinion based on the descriptions that they were being given. Journalists began to make themselves part of the action as opposed to staying in the peripheries of the story as narrators. This led to objective pieces of journalism being left behind, to be replaced by subjective, dialogue led pieces of writing, and literary devices not dissimilar to fictional novels by the likes of Charles Dickens. Dickens would be able to tell his reader a lot about the backgrounds and personalities of his characters using physical descriptions and traits alone.

Wolfe explains how the new journalism works using four points.

1.Scene by scene construction:

This requires the Journalist to actually experience events rather than just recounting them from other sources. It also involves more detail than a typical account of an event, really allowing the reader to fully understand everything that is occurring.

2. Dialogue in full:

Dialogue needs to be recorded as accurately as possible, to give the reader a full understanding of the character, this may include writing transcribing what somebody says phonetically if for example they have an accent, or a speech impediment. When reporting what other people are saying, the reader should be reading it in their voice, not in yours.

3. Use of the third person

Pretty self-explanatory, this really helps to give the feel of a story being told.

4. Status Details

Wolf describes the 'social autopsy' that should take place when describing somebody. A description should involve small details that say things about their place in society. For example, if a journalist were describing an encounter with David Cameron, they may mention the brand of socks that he wore, and find out how much those socks cost, as to potentially portray him as wealthy.

Hunter S. Thompson, author of fear and loathing in Las Vegas, is widely regarded as a founder of ‘gonzo journalism’, a key aspect of the new journalism. In Fear and Loathing, he details a trip to Las Vegas to cover the Mint 400 motor race, with a car full of mind altering drugs and alcohol. His writing focuses on his personal experiences exactly as he saw them when intoxicated, making himself the main character in the story. Wolfe mentions that doing this can be annoying for the reader, but by involving dialogue of other characters, it ensures that the story is still told fully. Thompson constantly uses dialogue to detail the conversations that he has had with others or overheard in his surroundings. Even through his drug addled fusion of fiction and reality, Thompson manages to convey a damning social commentary of Las Vegas and America as a whole at the end of the 1960s. 

Around the time of both Wolfe and Thompson’s writings, America was undergoing huge political and social upheaval. JFK’s was seen by many as a symbol of hope, and his assassination in 1963 highlighted the problems that America was facing. The Civil right movement was in full flow, racial tensions were high and the war in Vietnam was still being fought and seen by many as an unnecessary and unwinnable war. Muhammad Ali refused to go to war and is famously quoted for saying : “I ain't got no quarrel with the Vietcong.“ There was a general anti-establishment feel attitude around the country; this was buoyed by the student protest movement and the sexual revolution. In Journalism, objectivism from officials, particularly in government was starting to be questioned. The use of LSD was common and helped finding different ways to view things. Liberation and change were the 'geist' of the time These cultural characteristics of America are all clear in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, just through Hunter S. Thompson’s description of his experiences.

Today, the new journalism can be found everywhere. TV documentaries often use gonzo journalists such as Louis Theroux to look into the lives of controversial people or organisations; TV makes this form of journalism easier, as the desired message can easily be achieved through a series of cleverly selected shots. The new journalism is also seen in fly on the wall documentaries, where there is little to no narration, and the story is told entirely through the dialogue and pictures that are chosen by the editor. Newspaper articles on a daily basis feature aspects of the new journalism, celebrity interviews and human interest stories tend to rely on minimal exposition.

Revision Notes - The New Journalism and existentialism

The New Journalism

Everything in the world was changing, and journalism was reflecting this

Television was overtaking radio, seeing rather than telling,

Photo/magazine journalism was overtaking traditional newspapers – seeing rather than telling

This was clearly the trend. Popular journalism was having to become more subjective – possibly due to a divided world. People had to report things exactly as they saw them. Individuals actions became important. John McCine rolling stone magazine. Visual generally becoming more popular.

Freudian agenda, sexual liberation, women becoming more powerful, reflecting the zeitgeist.

Heidegger – existentialism. Just being was popular, past full of guilt – living for the moment. Camus- The outsider – telling things how they are and not getting dragged down by being human with feelings and all that nonsense. Living for the moment epitomised by Woodstock – sex drugs roick and roll – fear and loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S Thompson.

Nietzsche suggesting that rape and violence are not immoral, all just part of a big power struggle when all is set and done.

Journalists feeling the need to write copy that reflected the times.

LSD apparently introduced by the CIA to create an altered reality, what was clearly a difficult time for many people. People wanting to experience an different perception of themselves and of the world.

Breaking the rule of – never become the story

Counter culture – people experimenting with drugs and sex. – teen preggers – sticking it to the man

Dickens – realist fiction

Scene by scene construction

Dialogue in full

Third person

Status details – make things important – eg if talking about the pm showing him up to be posh, note the exact brand and price of the tie he is wearing, counter that with the person he is helping to open a youth centre. – Social Autopsy

HIPPIES

Blurring of objectivity and subjectivity

Realism

LGBT

The Verification principle in relation to Journalism.

Ayers verification principle suggests that anything that cannot be empirically or analytically verified should be discarded as nonsense. So anything that cannot be proved as a fact is essentially ‘the quacking of a duck’; absolutely meaningless. Journalism is the practice of turning information into money, if the information is not true, a journalist will not (or at least should not) make money. A journalist should always take the verification principle into account when printing statements of assertion, if they cannot be 100 per cent sure that it is factual, it should never be printed, so in that sense the verification principle is vital in relation to journalism. However, modern journalism reliues on more than facts. In any popular newspaper you will see opinion collumsn, essentially nonsense, according to Ayer anyway, but hugely popular with a modern audience. If you watch the news, a good quote will always be a comp0letely non factual statement filled with emotion.

Wittgenstein, in his tractatus argues that the world consists entirely and exclusively of facts. In a sense I suppose this is accurate, but in terms of journalism, for the sake of interesting copy at the very least, a little bit of emoting is necessary. The important thing is that journalists understand the difference between fact and opinion.

The Enlightenment, and its role in the development of the press.

The enlightenment gave birth to Journalism.  The invention of the printing press in the 1440s is regarded by many (including Einstein) as the most important in history. It meant that text could finally be mass produced. At first, this was inevitably used to print bibles during the protestant revolution. Martin Luthor wanted people to be able to read the bible in every language in the world. This gave further rise to Christianity. The printing press soon allowed early works of Journalism to make an appearance in the form of pamphleteers during the English civil war.

In 1702, the printing press printed The Daily Courant; the world’s first newspaper. This consisted of a single page with two columns, some way away from what we see in today’s newsagents.  This eventually gave rise to a host of ‘comment papers’ one of these ‘the spectator written by Joseph Addison became particularly popular with its wit, sarcasm and social commentary.  Travel journalism was popular, pamphlets were used for people to document journeys around the country, Cobbet’s Rural Rides was all about the countryside and the things that Cobbet had witnessed during his travels.

An important early piece of work was John Locke’s ‘essay concerning human understanding’. In it he puts across his ideas about empiricism, and the way in which humans pick up ideas; through sense experience. He also discusses the way in which we derive complex/abstract ideas through sense data. It’s in this essay that Locke coins the phrase ‘Tabula Rasa’ meaning blank slate to describe the human mind at birth.  The essay is one of the key sources of empiricism, which is an invaluable tool for journalists.  He refutes rationalist assertions in part one,  sets out his theory of ideas in part 2, discusses language in part 3 and talks about knowledge in part 4.  

The Yellow Press

Modern Journalism as we know it started in America in the 19^th century.  In the 1840s People from around the world were travelling to California, hoping to find gold in rich mines in what is now aptly known as ‘the Californian gold rush.  Life in Europe wasn’t much fun; poverty and war were causing people to seek a better life in the states.  The Irish were going through a pretty nasty famine, which encouraged a huge flux of migration to America.   

One of the early ‘gold miners’ was George Hearst, father of William Randolph Hearst. He allegedly won The San Francisco Examiner in a poker game and in 1887 passed it down to his son, William Randolph Hearst; one of the fathers of journalism as we know it today.  Before this time, newspapers were reasonably boring affairs, either used for political propaganda, or aimed at the upper classes and intellectuals. Hearst changed this, by removing large blocks of text, instead preferring large pictures, and attention grabbing headlines, the front page was everything to him. This gave him a larger, broader readership, including Americas newly acquired immigrants and people of a lower social standing allowing him to Purchase the New York Morning Journal.

The Morning Journal’s only real rival was The New York World, bought by Joseph Pulitzer in 1883, it regularly received a daily circulation of 1 million. There was a real circulation war between these two papers, who garnered the nickname, ‘the yellow press’ due to them both publishing the same cartoon ‘yellow kid’ for a year after a row regarding the ownership of it. Yellow press is still what we see in Newspapers today, with large catchy headlines, pictures and general sensationalism.

Tv is now beginning to kill of newspapers, circulation falling and falling, some don’t even make a profit anymore

1920s to present day.

Tabloid nation,

Baby boom – daily mirror taking the audience of those who didn’t have a tv and didn’t want to read a broadsheet.

Added Objectivity, before all too politically biased.

. News agenda also began to change around this time, crime and punishment always high on the agenda.

Romanticism and Rousseau.

At the end of the 18^th century, the enlightenment was starting to get a little bit dry. For a long time, art, music and literature were all largely influenced by Christianity, which had taken a real stronghold over Europe. There had been great leaps in learning discovery (thanks to the invention of the printing press) and people were just generally starting to ‘know’ more. Everyone was very empirical, clever and boring.

  The Romantic Movement changed this idea of needing to know stuff, largely thanks to Rousseau. He believed that humans should be content with nature. He stated, ‘man is born free but everywhere is in chains’.  He believed that man is a ‘noble savage’ meaning that we should live as in a state of nature. Civilisation is restricting us from living our lives as they should be lived. He believes that we should step back to nature and live like the animals that we technically are. He struggled with the notion of truth, and said that nature is the only real truth. Rousseau realised that completely reverting to nature was unrealistic for humans, but suggested a way that he believed we could benefit from civilisation in his book, ‘the social contract’.

Here he suggests that people as a whole or ‘the sovereign’ as he refers to the idea should act in a way that benefits ‘the sovereign’. People’s individual wills are selfish, but what he calls ‘the general will’ would be beneficial to all. He recommends only a limited government that could intervene with regards to the distribution of property, in a similar fashion to Locke’s ideas.

This led to the idea of Romantic Nationalism, nations governing from the bottom up, and that geography should define a nation’s identity. He saw that ‘nations’ should be made up of small communities, none too big to be able to walk in a day.