Friday 7 December 2007

Self Generated-Children in Need

Children in Need amazingly raised up to £19,089,771 this year, which is better than 2004 when we raised just over £17 million.

Sir Terry Wogan and Ferne Cotton presented the show in November 2007, this was Wogan's 27th year of presenting Children in Need. Dedication? I think so.

On the night they had various events going on. There was singing, dancing, films, tv shows, etc. Kylie performed her new song, along with Spice Girls and Boyzone. They even had the boys from the bill, giving us a Rat Pack tribute.

Apart from the money raising, there was enjoyment and laughter that came with it too, which was amazing. Pudsey the bear was first shown on screen in 1985 when the show first appeared on televison. Joanna Ball who was from a town called Pudsey, orginally designed him and wanted some meaning into his name. Pudsey even has his own email address and his famour line of merchandise which has also helped with raising money. Everyone around the world is familiar with who Pudsey is. For nearly 20 years Pudsey has been with the Children in Need and he is the most loved and recognised faces which is associated with a charity.

Recently the BBC reported that all over the country schools were trying to help within the raising for Children in Need, a nearby college class, recently studying Media Production came into the limelight for the day and decided to dress up in costumes and try and raise some money for Children in Need. They went out and about the nearest town centre to their college and asked people for their donations and they raised over £258 for the charity. I spoke to one member of the group called Katie Marshall and she said, "we're all very proud of how much money has been raised, i wish we had gained a little bit more, but i'm happy and i'm sure the charity will be most grateful."

They all paid a pound to wear their own fancy dress, and that money went straight to the charity too and they all said "knowing that we've done a good thing, for people who really need us, I had a great night sleep."

Self Generated-Fulfilling your dream

Proving you love something so much and showing people you are dedicated, all this paid of for Laura Ashworth, from Falmouth.

Laura Ashworth, 19, who is from Falmouth spoke to me about her tough time through college and then finally making it to become a beautican for 'Clarins'.

Laura now works in Croydon, but recently moved from Falmouth to go for training in London. Laura went from what she described as "a mind numbing course at college", where she was studying for a Child Care diploma. Now she is out there in the 'real world' and has made it as a beautican.

Some people reading this may think, "why did she decided to have a career change which is completely different to what she was studying for?"

A lot of people do this, and true, it doesn't always work out for the best and for others it's the best discision.

Laura had an interview with Clarins, you had to be 18 for the job, so she was lucky to be old enough, they didn't hesitate to ask her back for another interview, even though she hadn't had any training. Now training in London, she knows alot more than she did.

When Clarins asked her to come in for an interview, Laura was so excited and couldn't wait. She said, "all my friends and family are behind me on this and are supporting me on however it turns out."

She had her first training session in Bond Street, London in Novemeber last year and in the New Year coming up she is hoping to boost more knowledge about the company and maybe work herself up higher within the company. After all, she was only training for the knowledge of the merchandise and for her selling techniques.

Even though Laura hadn't recently studied a Beautcian course at college and then moved on to doing this, she said, "I advise people to get into a course that will take them places for things they would definatly go back for. I wish I had done that so I could at least tell people how I gained my achievement."

If she could go back, she would, and go to college and get a diploma in health and beauty which propbably would've sent her on her way faster. In stead Laura was studying for a year and half...this isn't including the time it took her to eventually get the interview.

Laura finally said, "Listen to your head not your heart and think about what you want and get that goal!"

Thursday 6 December 2007

Guest Speaker-Kirsty Newton

We had another interesting guest speaker in our lecture today, Kirsty Newton, the editor of 'Cornwall Today'. She told us about all her experiences within the industry.
She gained a diploma in Journalism, which was in Preston. Kirsty said: "Don't turn your nose up at regional journalism, that would be my main advice."
As Kisrty was working from home mostly, she also mentioned that the money issues were fantasic, but also got lonely.
Kisrty worked for the Cornish lifestyle magazine. When she arrived at the magazine she said the page count increased by 40, up to 216 pages every issue and they were printing 16,000 copies a month.
Some articles were written mostly by the freelance journalists. They work from about 10p a word, therefore if they are producing a 2000 word article, they would get £200.
Kirsty also writes for 'Brides' in Cornwall, but dedicates herself more to the Cornwall Today.

Guest Speaker-Boyd Farrow

"Journalism is like doing a crossword", these were the first words of Boyd when he came to Falmouth to speak to our class.

Boyd didn't want to walk into a lecture hall with a room full of people staring at him, waiting for him to tell us about his life. So he was grateful when we contributed to the lecture, by asking him questions too and getting involved.

Boyd thinks people should be journalists because they love writing, not because they want to make a lot of money or be famous and writing things you are truely passionate about. Boyd worked for 'Screen International' which is a magazine for the film industry. After a couple of years, he rose up and then became the editor of the magazine.

Boyd describe himself as "self confessed grown-up-adolescent". He found it really exciting telling us about how he got to meet his film idols at film festivals. He met his idol Robert Di Nero. Boyd said he was 'painfully' shy and they didn't really speak to each other and he was getting a little scared.

He finally got bored of the film journalism and moved on to become a business journalist, now the deputy editor of European business. Being a freelance journalist, so working from wherever he may be works well for him, and as he sees the future within the journalism world to be poor, business will all soon be online so therefore all will be able to reach the more 'mobile' freelancers who are around and about.

I wonder when it'll change, and if we'll actually notice?

Critical Anaylsis on the history of journalism 1

In the lecture with Jason Whittaker, we looked at the introduction to the theories of political economy, the 'Habermas's theory of the public sphere and the notions of the forth estate and also ways in which to demonstrate the development of journalism during the 18th and 19th centuries.

We looked at different theories such as; Liberal, Marxist, Realist/Pragmatic (this was essentially an anarchy of self-interest in pursuit of resources) and Constructivist.

The Liberal approach to this was that the state is seen as separate from the body of the monarch itself and that power resides in a form of public consent. So therefore has to wait for approval first. The Labour theory was of value, and their work added some sort of surplus to some of the things that gave us the right to make them into our property and everyone knows that one main thing in life is to protect private property.

The Marxist approach to this was that it was all economic based and the key was to the ideological superstructures. This was for most of us and our fundamental resource, which was labour. However, we are alienated from the products by capitalism which was leading to class struggle, but the end resulted in the alienation became a commodity fetishism. This was therefore one example of 'false consciousness' and can be seen as the use of ideology as a social repression as well.

After looking at Jurgen Habermas and the Public Sphere, we found out that the publish date of the Public Sphere was about 1984. The notion of 'Offentlichkeit' got it's origins from the Greek ideas of what was of citizenship centred on the 'polis' and 'agora'. This was a combination of a private trad and a publice discussion, which began again in the 17th century. This was prior to the appearance of a publice sphere, and the ideas of private life had to gain some sort of currency.

When the merge of the publice sphere came about, the spread of the trade actually required a more accurate approach for some information. Therefore it was spread by gossip, word of mouth, you could heard it everywhere you went, for example; coffee house, taverns etc. This all became more formalised within time. The press emergeed, and that is when they took advantage of this 'hunger for information'.

With the development of the publice sphere, I believe that the initial stage was to concentrate on commerce. Also journals, for example; 'The Spectator', which moved into taste and fashion. As their confidence increased, the middle classes became more and more involved in politics that ever before. The Early growth of the public sphere was actually quite informative, the first nws sheet was printed in the 1640's during the Civil War, then came the Restoration which developed in 1660 and the Glorious Revolution. The Licensing act came about arounf 1662, the stationer's company was thn established in 1684, and finially the Licensing act lapses in 1695. This was because of the attempts to control the press within Britain, which was run alongside a period of relative liberty.

Now looking into the Forth Estate, and the struggle in which to gain it. In 1776, Thomas Paine decided to publish 'Common Sense' and then following a few years after that, due to the response of the French Revolution, Paine decided to publish 'The Rights of Man'. Then they were trying to radicalise the press as an alternative to the official sources. The economic sanctions were in their glory, for example: the stamp duty rose 266% between 1789 and 1815.

The progress of the radical press, there was a political repression which had a short-term benefit, but was therefore 'counterproductive' in the long-term. In 1843 the Libel Act actually reduced the effect of seditious libel, therefore authorities only relied of taxation and bonds. The radical press still continued to grow. They were a victim of their own success and it increased within circulation when it brought additional costs. In 1886, W.T Stead and the Pall Mall Gazette then decided to emerge wih the 'sensationalist journalism'. Therefore because they made this attention-grabbing it worked.

Wednesday 5 December 2007

Critical Anaylsis on technology in journalism

Karl Marx said "The windmill gives you society with the feudal lord: the steam mill, society with the industrial capitalist."
Technology and policy revolutions can often be portrayed as the same, but then again this isn't always so. They often change links to the radical fiscal and political changes. Back in 1980's there was decentralisation and the 1990's globalisation came about. This is called the Neophiliacs versus pessismists.
Johannes Gutenberg's printing press was developed in 1448 and in 1476 William Caxton introduced the press to England, these were the Mercurius Aulicus-1643, Publick Intelligencer-1655 and London Gazette-1702.
All the first metal printing presses were made in 1800, then in 1814 the Koenig steam press was introduced, which was the production of 1000 per hour instead of 250 per hour. So therefore quite popular.
Then cam along the social and commercial consequences, which included the industrialisation of the press itself and also other innovations then led to extensive capital costs such as: in 1860's the machine compositing, 1880's the enhamcement of the paper mills and then in 1886 the invention of linotype, which then increase literacy as print became more and more cheaper.
In the 1830's there was a development of the telegraph and different standards of communication. This was called 'the Victorian internet'. In 1844 there was the introduction to the great Morse code, therefore this enabled fast communication with extended European empires with the help of the establishment of news agencies in the mid 19th century. The agencies were Reuters and Havas.
The late 90's newspapers were embracing on the fact of the web coming into force. this was more successful than any other group at that time. This could then open up different sources of outside definers.
Reuters were established with the pre-dates within the web in 1851. By 1991, they then had 200,000 terminals with news-based information which was then worth just over $640 billion, this was strongly linked the financial markets. Gerald Long said: "If someone assassinates the Amercian president, it that general or market news?"
The information was an overload, and we may even be willing to pay for less news now but the early hype about the web...will it make everyone a publisher?
Then again, setting up a home page, doesn't always make us publishers. Some new technologies enable us to make us multi-skilled 'entrepreneurail journalists', this also reduces some to status of the date-inputters.
Transnational networks have created a few problems within the national regulators. There are companies that have contributed to the development of the cyberspace world.

Critical Anaylsis on international media

The Japanese media includes a various amount of tv and radio networks. This is as well as magazines and newspapers.

Where the networks were based, they established most television networks and based them upon the capital contributions. This was from the previous exisiting radio networks. It is important to understand about the capital commitment between the media, like the relationship between radio, television and newspaper networks.

The Japanese media is a prime example of how the media has evolved through societies structure. The smaller private companies within the five mainstream outlets usually produce more innovative texts as they aren't always influenced by the states. Because the state is risky as the company could lose out on any underhand deals, it means the free press does not censor what is therefore printed but anything that is printed is nagative. Therefore the japanese press is corrupt.

Around 70% of the country's terrain is very large now. They are transmitting television and radio signals around, this is proving to be a large challenge for them.
On the front page of the japanese papers, they will never show any articles on their politics, prime minister, or any state leaders. Where as, Britain always show this, to let readers know they are being let down. Their government regulations for broadcasting are complicated a very strict.

Because the Japanese believe in the 'hierarchical' system, which is between the inferior and the superior. Most day to day events. Now, this affects their public sphere, it works dramatically because not everyone is allowed to give views and opinions.

Japan does not believe in individualism.