Blog #3: Feature News Story and Hard News Story Compare and Contrast and Response of Chapter 2 (Abolition)

   
(Chapter 2)

After reading this chapter I realized how much Freedom of the Press and Abolition go hand to hand. Through journalism many editors has changed history. Elijah P. Lovejoy established his own newspaper in his state of Missouri called the St.Louis Observer and Alton Obersver. According to Lovejoy, " Just as Tom Paine had appealed to the human emotions to translate colonial opposition to the British into terms the average man and women could relate to, abolitionist editors used highly charged rhetoric to place the slavery debate on a plane that made sense to a critical mass of the American public." People were soon reading the newspaper more and transformed the most controversial issue into a bigger issue. With more and more readers there were more editors writing about slavery particularly William Lloyd Garrison. He bean publishing in Boston of 1831 "What emerged as the archetype of advocacy journalism in American History,The Liberator. He constantly debated pro slavery editors and with his voice against slavery more and more mainstream newspaper also joined in the crusade. It only started with 2,500 subscribers but then grew to a circulation of about 200,000. There were many other abolionists that soon follow. Through journalism it has convinced the opinion of many on slavery and through it The Thirteenth Amendment was passed by the constitution, abolishing slavery.

TBC..

Blog #2: Feature News Story Vs Hard News Story

22 children at the Sint-Lambertus School in Heverlee, Belgium along with six adults died where a bus crashed into the wall of a tunnel in Southern Switzerland. The children were on it's way back from a annual ski trip for the last year of elementary school. According to Ms, Emmers, who was volunteering at a community center, "The kids save up the money all by themselves for their last year, selling things, running bingo sessions and so on." It was a sad day.It's a featured news story because the writer added his opinion into the beginning of the article in order to catch the reader's attention. Not everyone would say that the children at the Stekske Elementary school would dream from first grade on about the annual ski trip to the Alps.

Worker who hid lottery win must share 38.5 million prize with five other co-workers.They all worked together for this highway construction company. The friends from New Jersey has pooled their money for lottery tickets for years. Five of them relied on a member of their group, Americo Lopez to buy the tickets. In November 2009, he bought a mega million ticket with that money and told no one but lottery officials. He quit his job after and told his friends that he needed foot surgery and they believed him. Several months later he told another man in a group that he won and the news spread on to the other members of the group. A jury in Union Country ordered Mr.Lopes to share the winnings with the five former co-workers. It's a hard news story because it emphasis on ancedotes, telling stories and describing episodes in Mr. Lopes life. It also has the most important information on top, characterized by the five W's, who, what, where, when and why. It's organized Ina different way to, you have more information tied together rather than a descending linear development of information.

Blog #1: Chapter 1 Response,"What is Journalism for?"

        The most surprising things I read was that only 42% of Americans read a daily newspaper the day before and only 3 out of 10 Americans can even name their congressmen over the last thirty years. I actually thought it would be less considering the current generation of Americans read less. They tend to other things instead. I agree with Lippman, one of the nation's most famous journalists that people know the world indirectly and perceive how the media portrays it to be. As Lippman said, "Citizens are like theatergoers who arrive in the middle of the third act and leave before the last curtain, staying just long enough to decide who is the hero and who is the villain. People aren't looking at the whole picture they just look at the problems and not the solution and the media has played a part in that. According to historian Mitchell Stephens, "People crave news out of basic instinct-what we call the Awareness Instinct. They need to know what is going on over the next hill, to be aware of events beyond their direct experience. Knowledge of the unknown gives them security; it allows them to plan and negotiate their lives." I agree with him, this is one of the main reasons why I would watch the news in the morning and at night. We need news to live our lives. to protect ourselves, bond with each other, and identify friends and enemies.

       When I first heard about this on the news that a U.S. marine killed 16 Afghan villagers, 9 of those being children I was stunned. At first I thought that the villagers did something but that wasn't the case. According to military officials he left his small combat outpost in Panjwai district early in the morning last Sunday, walked into two nearby villages and shot or stab 16 people. He has been deployed four times and had a exemplary record. He's been injured twice once one being on his head with traumatic brain injury and another incident where he lost part of his foot. Pentagon officials believes that it's a combination of stress, alcohol and domestic issues that made him snapped. He's also a father of two. This creates more tension between the United States and Afghanistan where peace talks have stalled between both presidents. I hope they get to the bottom of this and find out what truly went wrong otherwise it could get nasty real soon.