Community Correspondents
Hi folks, I've been impressed with many of your postings, but I also think people are either holding back, or saying things that are very PC...."under-covered...under served" and all that.
I was thinking about a few things I've spotted over the past 24-hours. Pappas Television has launched something they call "community coorespondents" at many of their television stations and within their news operaions. hey just added a few more stations to the project. Average folks can publish material, write scripts, do all the things that a 'journalist' would do...they say it's their effort at "citizen journalism." Do a little research on it. I'd be curious whether it's a worthwhile effort. Do you think something like this will engage people? WCAU locally has something simlar going. I believe the Cox stations have also started something.
Did any of you watch the Couric debut, or second night? I was struck by something Professor Harper found in his class and frankly something I've seen in mine...many of you don't watch TV or network news. True? What does that mean for news?
Back to the urban issues and the Philadelphia neighborhoods. I saw a statistic about the homicide rate about the same as last year, maybe a little lower. What the heck is going on? It's still high. And when you turn on the news, it's the violence in the neighborhoods that stands out. Is it my perception? I think this goes to a post...Carrie I think...where we seem to have this lousy self-image in the City? Ya'think?
BTW, on the Couric debut, I thought it was telling that one of the post on the CBS News web site was from a viewer who gave Couric heck for "wearing white after Labor Day." It's pretty bad when news is reduced to what someone wears. As a former news director, it was disheartening running a newsroom and rather than people applaud or pick on your jounalism, they would comment on the anchor's clothes or hair.
posted by Professor TP @ 1:18 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I would agree that say, 90% of my classmates do not watch the network news on a daily basis. My guess is there are two reasons for that...One, they simply don't care about the majority of current events. Secondly, they are busy.
I myself will not watch the evening news because if I am watching TV at that time, there are other things that I prefer to wacth. If I am watching tV around 11, I always turn on the news because there is nothing else that appeases me. I like the news, read the paper everyday, so I think I am a part of the minority in that field.
The sad thing is, I am immune to picking up the paper or turning on the news and seeing a story about another homicide in this city. It's sad. But that's just the way it has gotten. And I really don't know how it can be stopped. No matter what the city seems to do, it just does not seem like it is working. We're spending billions of dollars in a foreign country trying to rebuild it. How about we rebuild our own backyard!
I think like most people who have responded to these topics think in regards to citizen journalism. It's good to give people an opportunity to cover what typically is not covered, and some good and important issues may unearth due to it. But letting the common person do it may take away from the perception of professional journalists. In my opinion though, it's worth a shot. Some of our city's communities who are underexposed can benefit from this.
Having done a little research, I discovered that Pappas Telecasting Company is the largest private owner of TV companies in the U.S. and that recently, they've merged with
Phoenix's TV AZTECA to create a new network targeted toward the Hispanic communities. My partner and I covered the Hunting Park section of Philadelphia for our project, and it will be interesting to return to the neighborhood and ask the citizens if they've ever heard of Pappas or Azteca. Pappas's website boasts an audience of which 36% are said to be Hispanic, with the Hunting Park area being 45% Hispanic. Now, I think the community correspondents or 'citizen journalism' is a good idea, but I question preparation. Journalists have to be trained efficiently to do their job well, and citizens tend to be entirely opinionated and hardly objective. However, if a community became involved in citizen journalism, it would all depend on the type of neighborhood they live in. In some, people are afraid to walk down the street after dusk let alone write an article about community goings-on. Some communities could benefit while others could suffer. Classic catch 22.
I didn't have the chance to watch Katie Couric's broadcast but I do commend her for being the first female to anchor a nightly newscast and, although I would have given the job to ABC's Robin Roberts because of her elegance and journalistic knowhow, I think Couric's household-name status had CBS drooling over the audience that woman brings in. News stations are focused and, assisted by Nielsen, know what their ratings are and how to boost them. It was a very bold and smart move on CBS's part.
As a student journalist, of course I'm interested in keeping abreast of current events thanks to CNN and daily publications. I read everything I can, but mostly, I read magazines. I'm fascinated of how they can simultaneously entertain and inform with such style and class. I just don't get time to watch much TV and if it wasn't for TiVo I wouldn't watch at all unless my schedule permitted.
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