Investigative Journalism Reflection

When I tell people that I study journalism, they immediately think that my plan is to become a hard-hitter, dive straight in, investigative journalist who 'breaks' the stories. I'm not planning becoming anything close to that, those people actually care about stuff and things. I don't want to be on the front lines with a microphone; I respect those who do though. From what I've learned, investigative journalists have to be passionate and determined to be a good at their job.

The amazing and talented Bruce Redman imparted the 'in's of an investigative journalist. These are, in order of most important to most useful: intelligent, informed, intuitive, inside and invest. Isn't that a handy tool for remembering what investigative journalism is all about? I think so at least. Now let's run through them.

Intelligent - Be intelligent?
Informed - Research what you're writing about. You have to know your topic inside and out.
Intuitive - Foresight is important, in both journalism and in general.
Inside - Either this means that you have to put yourself into the centre of the story to get first hand information and a personal knowledge of what is going on, or stay healthy.
Invest - Investigative journalism requires commitment. Don't just do the journalism, be the journalism.

Obviously investigative journalism is more thorough and significant than those paramount stories about Summer's latest fashion trends. In the world of investigation, documents are combed, facts are checked and more than one person is asked questions. Investigate journalists scrutinise and expose, rather than simply relay readily available information. Information is out there, albeit some hidden, and it's their job to get it into the public conscious.

I didn't retain any other information from the lecture. 90% was dedicated to examples of good and bad investigative journalism. I remember that Wikileaks and the Watergate scandal were mentioned. It was an interesting lecture none the less.

Ethics Reflection

The lecture on ethics was a few weeks ago, but I'm going to try and reflect on it as best as I can from memory; It was a pretty interesting lecture after all.

I wasn't prepared for how far the guest lecturer attempted find the root of morality. It didn't focus on training us to maintain a clear and unbiased perspective at all times. In the end, I listened to a lecture on whether morality is an external or internal creation.

There were some pretty big words thrown around that, even if I could remember them, I'm not going to use this blog post. I'm not going to try and articulate and explain something that I'm still trying to figure out myself. I might write about it at a later date if I do manage to figure it all out.

However, I will 'reflect' on the lecture by adding a few general sentences on the topic of ethics so I can get an acceptable grade.

In my long and challenging years as a middle class Caucasian Australian, I've noticed that some groups of people live by sets of principles that seem universal and logical. All the while, there are others who live by conflicting principles who still consider themselves to be righteous and good. Every human being is able to justify their actions, and those who choose not to suffer in regret.

Public Media Reflection

I've always had a soft spot for public media. When I sit down in my living room, which is hardly ever, it's usually the ABC or SBS that shines from my magic moving pictures box. I actually relate to their programming, while commercial isolate me and other groups in society by solely catering to a specific demographic. I find that public media is engaging, informative and unbiased. It has it's utterly boring and confusing moments, but overall it manages to keep me coming back.

Public media normally has a charter or agenda that becomes a guide for everything the company does, from brainstorming original content to releasing it to the public. It's place within society is to offer content that major media networks won't.

Overall, they have a commitment to serving the public; they attempt to inform, educate and engage citizens while still entertaining. They're not required to not be commercially funded, however they usually are funded from taxpayer's dollars. I believe this is because funding from anywhere but the government could possibly lead to biased content. Even then, public media still has to keep politically neutral in order to maintain its credibility.

I watch and listen to public media for a variety of reasons: I specifically watch ABC for shows like Spicks and Specks, the Gruen Transfer, At The Movies, and international television shows; SBS for documentaries, foreign film and occasionally a large international sporting event; and I listen to Triple J for new and independent music.

I believe that public media is essential to Australian society. It's nature and purpose gives way to social inclusion. It caters for every demographic and manages to represent both domestic and international culture respectfully. Public media entertains and informs with limited funds and resources. It also has to be original in both it's content and publishing to stay ahead of commercial media.

Sound Reflection

It's six in the morning. Two days ago I walked into Woolworths and found that Mother was on sale. I've been up all night watching Supernatural and I don't plan on actually sleeping for the next twelve hours either so I thought I would try catching up on some blog posts.

The sound lecture was surprisingly interesting. The lecture wasn't actually a 'lecture'. It was a downloadable mp3 file of two interviews cut together one after the other. The people who were interviewed seemed to be radio personalities who use the medium of sound every day. I'm pretty sure the hosts were interviewed for the purpose of teaching journalism students about how 'sound' relates to journalism. I've never actively thought about just how distinct the medium of sound is compared to forms of media such as television and print.

Some of things I learned seems obvious when pointed out. For instance, radio is an intimate form of media. You're only using your sense of hearing so you have to focus on what's being said. You can't rely on other senses to to understand and process what is being said.

Overall, the lecture was engaging and made me think about journalism in relation to sound.

Photography Reflection

It's time for another one of these reflective posts. I actually have fun doing these because I can practise writing. You don't probably think it's that interesting, but I have to do it. The photography lecture was pretty straight forward; we learned about the history of photography, digital capture and upload, digital manipulation and some of the basic tips for capturing a good photo. This lecture actually made me think about how I am going to approach photography as a journalist.

In case you haven't noticed, I don't include photos of how journalism relates to me in my blog posts. I'm a hypocrite, because like everyone else, I expect all online news to include photos. I like articles to have at least one relevant photo to the written content. I believe that images give readers context for what they're reading. Most of the photos in the articles I read are screenshots from video games.

I don't include images in my posts mostly because I find it hard to find images that best suit this blog. At this stage, my approach to journalism is browsing reddit while in my underwear. However, that's not the only reason I don't take and upload photos.

Even though I can write a few decent paragraphs, I'm not used to photojournalism. I don't have the technology to take photos that are relevant to what I write about. I plan to invest in a smartphone with a better camera than my current one and a screen recording program for capturing online content.

If I'm going to become a journalist in any sense, I'm going to have to commit to photography to connect readers to my content. I think that if I produce my own images for articles, it would add more personality to what I write. Of course, for some writing projects I won't be able to produce photos. However, I will include relevant images when able. I'm going to write real articles soon instead of just reflecting on what I learn doing lectures.

I'm not going to be a world class photojournalist, nor do I want to become one. For this blog, I will probably be taking screenshots or linking movie trailers. However, I should be able to snap a few photos with my iPhone when the time arises.

Reflection on Text

Our third lecture for Introduction to Journalism and Communication covered text in the field of journalism. Sky or Skye, one of those two names, guest lectured on the topic. She spent fifty minutes educating all of us about such things as 'the inverted pyramid', 'hypertext', text within digital platforms and just how fundamentally essential it is to the journalism industry with the rise of social media. But you already know that don't you? You're reading this just to see how other people in your course are handling their blogs. I don't need to explain to you something that you can just go and watch on Blackboard. So I'm going to give you my opinion on the lecture and text as it relates to journalism.

It's pretty apparent just how important text is to communication. It's unavoidable in journalism. I don't think I can add any more to what was covered in the lecture. Now I'm forced to write a blog post reflecting on the incredibly ambiguous idea of 'text'. I'm supposed to reflect on these lectures about what I learnt. I didn't learn that much though.

Sky (or Skye) just gave me new terminology for the ideas I already had. You would think that using important information in the headline to catch the reader's eye would be a straightforward concept.Most of the lecture slides were just examples of news stories with Sky (or Skye) explaining just how much effort is put into headlines, captions, straps, leads, excerpts and other attention grabbing combinations of text. The latter half of the lecture was just a lesson on blogging and getting your posts into the search engines. For someone who has little experiencing writing and reading content online, this lecture would have been helpful. However, I took very little away from our third week lecture.