ECONOMIC RELIEF MAY BE RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER.
CONGRESS WANTS TO PASS A NEW STIMULUS PACKAGE TO HELP FIX A CRISIS THAT DOESN'T SEEM TO BE ENDING ANYTIME SOON.
THE HEAD OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE, BEN BERNANKE, IMPLORED CONGRESS TO PASS A NEW STIMULUS PACKAGE TO HELP THE NATION'S FLOUNDERING ECONOMY.
(sound bite/video from Burnanke's address to the House Budget Committee):
"With the economy likely to be weak for several quarters, and with some risk of a protracted slowdown, consideration of a fiscal package by the Congress at this juncture seems appropriate."
A STIMULUS PACKAGE MIGHT LOOK LIKE THE ONE FROM LAST FEBRUARY WHEN PEOPLE RECEIVED TAX REBATE CHECKS UP TO $1,200. LEADING DEMOCRATS AGREE. HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI HAD THIS TO SAY:
(sound bite/video from Pelosi):
"I call on President Bush and congressional Republicans to once again heed Chairman Bernanke's advice and as they did in January, work with Democrats in Congress to enact a targeted, timely and fiscally responsible economic recovery and job creation package."
BERNANKE HOPES THAT A STIMULUS PACKAGE WILL HELP CALM FEARS OF BOTH BANKS AND CONSUMERS. FIVE OF WALL STREET'S BIGGEST FIRMS FOLDED THIS YEAR AND 15 BANKS HAVE CLOSED.
(visual: Wall Street, exteriors of bank buildings and pedestrians)
THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT ANNOUNCED IT WOULD GIVE $250 BILLION TO U.S. BANKS TO REBUILD RESERVES AND ENCOURAGE THEM TO GIVE OUT LOANS.
(video: Henry Paulson, any tape, no sound)
A RECENT POLL FROM AP/YAHOO! CLAIMS THAT ONE OUT OF THREE AMERICANS WORRY ABOUT LOSING THEIR JOBS. HALF FEAR THAT THEY WON'T BE ABLE TO PAY THEIR CREDIT CARDS AND MORTGAGES ON TIME. LEADERS HOPE THAT A NEW STIMULUS PACKAGE WILL HELP CALM THESE FEARS.
ADRIENNE SAIA, NEWS TEAM BOULDER.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Comparing Crime: Boulder and Philadelphia
The crime rates between a large city on the eastern seaboard and a small town nestled in the Rocky Mountains present a striking numerical evaluation.
In 2006, Philadelphia recorded 406 murders within a population of 1,448,394 people. That is a rate of 2.8%.
Conversely, the city of Boulder, Colo. only experienced 1 murder in 2006 among their population of 102,659. The murder rate here ranks much higher at 9.4%.
Although Philadelphia experiences more instances of violent crime, it actually has a lower rate due to its high population.
In Boulder, despite being a relatively safe city, one crime drastically raises the crime rate.
This small case study proves that statistics can be misleading. Statistics should always be examined with prejudice and in the context of other statistics, such as population.
---
Resources:
U.S. Census Bureau
City of Boulder - Police Crime Statistics
City of Philadelphia - Police Crime Statistics
In 2006, Philadelphia recorded 406 murders within a population of 1,448,394 people. That is a rate of 2.8%.
Conversely, the city of Boulder, Colo. only experienced 1 murder in 2006 among their population of 102,659. The murder rate here ranks much higher at 9.4%.
Although Philadelphia experiences more instances of violent crime, it actually has a lower rate due to its high population.
In Boulder, despite being a relatively safe city, one crime drastically raises the crime rate.
This small case study proves that statistics can be misleading. Statistics should always be examined with prejudice and in the context of other statistics, such as population.
---
Resources:
U.S. Census Bureau
City of Boulder - Police Crime Statistics
City of Philadelphia - Police Crime Statistics
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Rich, pg 117 exercise
Adrienne Saia Isaac
Newsgathering I
September 24, 2008
Rich, page 117
a) She felt bad about missing the school board meeting, but her editor fired her regardless of her excuse.
b) We will join together in prayer for the students who died in the shooting and we will fly the flags at half-staff.
c) It is all right if you miss class for a job interview. You can make up the test tomorrow.
d) We will divide the workload among three students.
e) The St. Joseph Board of Commissioners plans to submit a proposal for a bond issue to pay for road improvements. They hope that the election committee will reach a consensus to put issue on the ballot.
f) Each of the applicants will have a chance to discuss their strengths and weaknesses with the personnel director.
g) Based on your writing skills, it looks like you could be a good journalist.
h) Each of the students will receive a plaque with their diplomas at graduation.
i) She was embarrassed that she had fewer than five answers correct on the quiz.
j) After the boss read the report he gave it to Jim and me to rewrite. He said that it is due back by Monday.
Newsgathering I
September 24, 2008
Rich, page 117
a) She felt bad about missing the school board meeting, but her editor fired her regardless of her excuse.
b) We will join together in prayer for the students who died in the shooting and we will fly the flags at half-staff.
c) It is all right if you miss class for a job interview. You can make up the test tomorrow.
d) We will divide the workload among three students.
e) The St. Joseph Board of Commissioners plans to submit a proposal for a bond issue to pay for road improvements. They hope that the election committee will reach a consensus to put issue on the ballot.
f) Each of the applicants will have a chance to discuss their strengths and weaknesses with the personnel director.
g) Based on your writing skills, it looks like you could be a good journalist.
h) Each of the students will receive a plaque with their diplomas at graduation.
i) She was embarrassed that she had fewer than five answers correct on the quiz.
j) After the boss read the report he gave it to Jim and me to rewrite. He said that it is due back by Monday.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
The Page 42 Assignment - REDUX
Study Shows Right-handed People Live Longer
The hand you write with might determine how long you are going to live.
A study released in today's New England Journal of Medicine suggests that right-handed people are more likely to outlive their left-handed counterparts.
Diane Halpern, psychology professor at California State University at San Bernadino, studied the death certificates and dominant hands of 987 residents of Southern California. She and her colleagues determined that left-handed people were six times more likely to die from accidents than right-handed people.
"The results are striking in their magnitude," Halpern said. She found that right-handed women outlive left-handed women by six years. Right-handed males tend to outlive left-handed males by 11 years.
Halpern offers a practical reason for the frequency of accidental deaths among left-handed people. "Almost all engingeering is geared to the right hand and left foot," Halpern said. She adds that, "there are many, many old left-handed people" and that her study "should not, of course, be used to predict the life span of any individual."
The hand you write with might determine how long you are going to live.
A study released in today's New England Journal of Medicine suggests that right-handed people are more likely to outlive their left-handed counterparts.
Diane Halpern, psychology professor at California State University at San Bernadino, studied the death certificates and dominant hands of 987 residents of Southern California. She and her colleagues determined that left-handed people were six times more likely to die from accidents than right-handed people.
"The results are striking in their magnitude," Halpern said. She found that right-handed women outlive left-handed women by six years. Right-handed males tend to outlive left-handed males by 11 years.
Halpern offers a practical reason for the frequency of accidental deaths among left-handed people. "Almost all engingeering is geared to the right hand and left foot," Halpern said. She adds that, "there are many, many old left-handed people" and that her study "should not, of course, be used to predict the life span of any individual."
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Left-handed People are Weirdos and this is the Best Headline Ever
For this "blog," we were to complete the assignment on page 42 in Rich's book Writing and Reporting News. The following article is based on information given to us and is in no way meant to represent any factual news story. In the words of Norm McDonald on SNL - "And here's the fake news...":
Focus sentence: Right-handed people live longer than left-handed people.
Suggestion for visual: Bar graph with male left-handed people, female left-handed people, male right-handed people, and female right-handed on the horizontal axis. Ages in ascending increments would run up the vertical axis from zero. This is the easiest way to show the results of the study, minimizing variables and providing an easy-to-read chart.
The article:
Study Shows Right-handed People Live Longer
The hand you write with might determine how long you're going to live. A study released in today's New England Journal of Medicine suggests that right-handed people might outlive their left-handed counterparts.
Diane Halpern, psychology professor at California State University at San Bernadino, studied the death certificates and dominant hands of 987 in Southern California. She and her colleagues determined that left-handed people were six-times more likely to die from accidents that right-handed people.
"The results are striking in their magnitude," Halpern said. She also learned that right-handed women outlive left-handed women by six years. Right-handed males outlive left-handed males by 11 years. Halpern adds that "There are many, many old left-handed people" and that her study "should not, of course, be used to predict the life span of any individual."
Halpern suggested that individual health and fitness also influence life-span. She offers another practical reason for the frequency of accidents among left-handed people. "Almost all engineering is geared to the right hand and right foot," Halpern said. Halpern warns against trying to change the habits of left-handed children precisely as a result of the study. She adds, "some of my best friends are left-handed."
Monday, September 15, 2008
Power to the People
Rick posed a series of questions to us regarding the power of Weblogs and bloggers and their relationship to mainstream media. An example of my opinion can be found in an earlier post, HERE. In the interest of fully answering Rick's question (and, ahem, staying in mode with the title of this blog page), I'll expand on those ideas forthwith.
I dare say the Internet has the power in reporting the news. Bloggers aren't bound by the constraints of time and space, as are broadcasters. In some cases, we aren't bound by editors or people/agencies who pay our salaries either. That way, we're not like the LA Times bloggers who were restricted in their reporting about the Edwards affair - we're able (within the laws of libel) to write about whatever we damn well please and comment on news according to our beliefs. We gladly wear our bias on our collective sleeve, often eschewing the premise of objectivity altogether. People who follow us want salacious and opinionated writing; people have had enough of big media broadcasts, where stories are watered down and edited to the point of blandness. Consumers of news (and here I mean mostly educated and civically-active, on either end of the political spectrum) want first-hand reports that reek of legitimacy and not "old-guard" money and prestige. People want to trust someone who thinks like them - not a mass-produced, canned, and preservative-laden media who tells them what to think.
Bloggers are the spicy alternative to your boring old newscast.
As evidenced in the Rathergate scandal, bloggers enforce accuracy in mass media news. They examine mass media stories, mostly in accordance with their own political beliefs, questioning both legitimacy and objectivity from their own thinly veiled viewpoint. I do the same thing - I read a story from mainstream media and either agree or call "bullshit!" and write my own idea of what happened (either backed by facts or my own analysis). We, as bloggers, hold mass media accountable for what they are telling the American people. Bloggers draw ire because we criticize everything we hear without any claim to legitimacy in mass media (often one will hear "Who the hell is she to comment on this??). Therein lies the beauty in what bloggers do - we're just people with an opinion and an Internet connection (and, if you're reading good blogs, a propensity toward proper grammar and witty repoirte).
Bloggers pander to their own contingency of followers, both devotees and detractors alike, offering their own view of the story. We are the new watchdogs in an era of spin and cover-up. We're not the authority, but an alternative authority.
I dare say the Internet has the power in reporting the news. Bloggers aren't bound by the constraints of time and space, as are broadcasters. In some cases, we aren't bound by editors or people/agencies who pay our salaries either. That way, we're not like the LA Times bloggers who were restricted in their reporting about the Edwards affair - we're able (within the laws of libel) to write about whatever we damn well please and comment on news according to our beliefs. We gladly wear our bias on our collective sleeve, often eschewing the premise of objectivity altogether. People who follow us want salacious and opinionated writing; people have had enough of big media broadcasts, where stories are watered down and edited to the point of blandness. Consumers of news (and here I mean mostly educated and civically-active, on either end of the political spectrum) want first-hand reports that reek of legitimacy and not "old-guard" money and prestige. People want to trust someone who thinks like them - not a mass-produced, canned, and preservative-laden media who tells them what to think.
Bloggers are the spicy alternative to your boring old newscast.
As evidenced in the Rathergate scandal, bloggers enforce accuracy in mass media news. They examine mass media stories, mostly in accordance with their own political beliefs, questioning both legitimacy and objectivity from their own thinly veiled viewpoint. I do the same thing - I read a story from mainstream media and either agree or call "bullshit!" and write my own idea of what happened (either backed by facts or my own analysis). We, as bloggers, hold mass media accountable for what they are telling the American people. Bloggers draw ire because we criticize everything we hear without any claim to legitimacy in mass media (often one will hear "Who the hell is she to comment on this??). Therein lies the beauty in what bloggers do - we're just people with an opinion and an Internet connection (and, if you're reading good blogs, a propensity toward proper grammar and witty repoirte).
Bloggers pander to their own contingency of followers, both devotees and detractors alike, offering their own view of the story. We are the new watchdogs in an era of spin and cover-up. We're not the authority, but an alternative authority.
I'd Rather Be Accurate!
In September 2004, before the Presidential election of that year and before the 3rd anniversary of 9/11, CBS's "60 Minutes" news program ran a story claiming that they had obtained records proving that President George W. Bush had skated through his National Guard tenure. Dan Rather sat at the helm, providing gravitas to the damning news report. Disclosure of these documents seemed to legitimize the deepest thoughts of Democrats and liberals - this president lied, was a son of privilege, and didn't deserve to be in office.
However - when the broadcast was over, shit already started to fly.
Right-wing bloggers grabbed hold of the story and images of the documents and immediately refuted their authenticity. CBS and its esteemed anchor flew into the defensive, backing the accuracy of their report. This proved difficult, as the author of the documents was long dead and they only had one source who provided the documents and claimed them as real. Eventually, it could not be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the documents were real. Rather resigned his post in November 2004 under the shame of possible political slander. It no longer mattered if the documents (or the information contained therein) was indeed true - the story itself had been made illegitimate by hasty reporting and shoddy fact-checking. Now America would never know the truth.
So... where does this leave us as consumers of news? Well - it leaves us in a precarious position, as the need to question each and every story has been put front and center. We can't trust the mainstream media because the importance of ratings (and being "the first" to break a story) has superseded accuracy in reporting. We also need to be careful of the pundits who analyze the news for us. In the case of "Rathergate," the bloggers in question were members of the Republican Party or apparatchiks to Bush himself. Nary existed an unbiased source. Without absolute authority - the author of the documents, in this case, since their authenticity could not be proven by a third party - the argument would never be even and the public would never know the truth. The only truth remaining is that the public can't trust anything they hear and their fact-checking resources are as biased as the news stories themselves.
Bleak. I know.
As a voter... well... my opinions as a voter and participant in American political life would seem odd and depressing to some. I didn't vote for Bush in 2004 and even if he were the most capable member of the Texas Air National Guard, I still wouldn't have voted for him. It didn't take a newscast to persuade me that his views and my views stood at odds with each other. However, I'm not most Americans - I am generally skeptical of mass media and those in positions of power (Republican or Democrat). I wish everyone could be hyper-critical, but they're not. Some people, among the struggles (or nirvana!) of everyday life, choose not to question their perceived figures of authority. I question everything - always have and always will. It's the only power, as an American voter and citizen of the world, that I feel I have left: the ability to think for myself.
As a student of journalism (and of life), I realize that everything said or written be interpreted as an indictment or an untruth. It's important to be transparent and to closely examine all sides of an argument, if only to know how to address both admirers and detractors. It's also easier now to hide behind a computer, citing others and blogging my own opinion than it is to report "news." Being a commenter resolves one from claims of slander or libel and is protected by the First Amendment (if one believes that still exists). Rathergate proves that it's a dangerous time to report the news, if only because there are armies of people ready to pounce on a story deemed slanted or, worst of all, untrue. This happens with both left and right wingers, so no one is really safe (if you need an example, just look at the Internet claims of retarded baby Palin not being Miss Sarah's and actually belonging to her knocked-up daughter - that's the only reason her pregnancy was addressed by the Palin camp - because bloggers were supposing an even greater transgression that necessitated repudiation).
Check, double-check, and triple-check everything you print and broadcast. Play devil's advocate with yourself so you can address every argument against you. Be ready to defend your statements, but never pretend to be ironclad. Know your sources - and be prepared to take their pitfalls as your own. The reporter is the mouthpiece of the whistleblower, and reprinting or broadcasting their story (especially on a long-running national newscast) is legitimizing their word. No longer do people view news as unbiased - even if one is reporting a matter of public record - if an authority figure (especially one with as much money and influence as G. W. Bush) undergoes a character assassination. Someone is going to find a crack in your story and you had better be ready with the superglue when that time comes.
For further reading and to see where our reference articles for this piece were, click HERE.
However - when the broadcast was over, shit already started to fly.
Right-wing bloggers grabbed hold of the story and images of the documents and immediately refuted their authenticity. CBS and its esteemed anchor flew into the defensive, backing the accuracy of their report. This proved difficult, as the author of the documents was long dead and they only had one source who provided the documents and claimed them as real. Eventually, it could not be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the documents were real. Rather resigned his post in November 2004 under the shame of possible political slander. It no longer mattered if the documents (or the information contained therein) was indeed true - the story itself had been made illegitimate by hasty reporting and shoddy fact-checking. Now America would never know the truth.
So... where does this leave us as consumers of news? Well - it leaves us in a precarious position, as the need to question each and every story has been put front and center. We can't trust the mainstream media because the importance of ratings (and being "the first" to break a story) has superseded accuracy in reporting. We also need to be careful of the pundits who analyze the news for us. In the case of "Rathergate," the bloggers in question were members of the Republican Party or apparatchiks to Bush himself. Nary existed an unbiased source. Without absolute authority - the author of the documents, in this case, since their authenticity could not be proven by a third party - the argument would never be even and the public would never know the truth. The only truth remaining is that the public can't trust anything they hear and their fact-checking resources are as biased as the news stories themselves.
Bleak. I know.
As a voter... well... my opinions as a voter and participant in American political life would seem odd and depressing to some. I didn't vote for Bush in 2004 and even if he were the most capable member of the Texas Air National Guard, I still wouldn't have voted for him. It didn't take a newscast to persuade me that his views and my views stood at odds with each other. However, I'm not most Americans - I am generally skeptical of mass media and those in positions of power (Republican or Democrat). I wish everyone could be hyper-critical, but they're not. Some people, among the struggles (or nirvana!) of everyday life, choose not to question their perceived figures of authority. I question everything - always have and always will. It's the only power, as an American voter and citizen of the world, that I feel I have left: the ability to think for myself.
As a student of journalism (and of life), I realize that everything said or written be interpreted as an indictment or an untruth. It's important to be transparent and to closely examine all sides of an argument, if only to know how to address both admirers and detractors. It's also easier now to hide behind a computer, citing others and blogging my own opinion than it is to report "news." Being a commenter resolves one from claims of slander or libel and is protected by the First Amendment (if one believes that still exists). Rathergate proves that it's a dangerous time to report the news, if only because there are armies of people ready to pounce on a story deemed slanted or, worst of all, untrue. This happens with both left and right wingers, so no one is really safe (if you need an example, just look at the Internet claims of retarded baby Palin not being Miss Sarah's and actually belonging to her knocked-up daughter - that's the only reason her pregnancy was addressed by the Palin camp - because bloggers were supposing an even greater transgression that necessitated repudiation).
Check, double-check, and triple-check everything you print and broadcast. Play devil's advocate with yourself so you can address every argument against you. Be ready to defend your statements, but never pretend to be ironclad. Know your sources - and be prepared to take their pitfalls as your own. The reporter is the mouthpiece of the whistleblower, and reprinting or broadcasting their story (especially on a long-running national newscast) is legitimizing their word. No longer do people view news as unbiased - even if one is reporting a matter of public record - if an authority figure (especially one with as much money and influence as G. W. Bush) undergoes a character assassination. Someone is going to find a crack in your story and you had better be ready with the superglue when that time comes.
For further reading and to see where our reference articles for this piece were, click HERE.
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