Racisim isn't dead...

Clips from advertising in recent years that prove racism isn't dead after all.

Com 390 final thoughts

Examples:
Smoking ads 10-15 years ago as opposed to now--banned in a variety of ways now. Does the change in the advertising methods change peoples attitudes. Used to be chic and cool and viewed as a status symbol
Alcohol ads...still very prevelent
Does advertising have any effect one way or another on getting people to pick up addictive substances
Pot and other drugs--no advertising for these products, yet still prevelent in society

Does advertising merely act as a reinforcer? Yes Does it have the capability to change attitudes over time? Yes...maybe. Ex) Dolce and Gabbana ads
I think advertising has the capability to sencitize or desensitize people to things. Gay relationships, cigarettes, alcohol

"Advertising in general has a pretty conservative effect on peoples beliefs." If this is true, explain smoking attitudes now versus 15 years ago? The entire campaign, not just the ads make it effective or not.

Assignment for Friday. Be thinking and looking for really successful ad campaigns that have really changed people's attitudes.

209 final thoughts

Hard news vs soft news
Write about people

Advertising: an apocolyptic EVIL

Link to banned Dolce and Gabanna watch ad
D&G Time - Spot Dolce e Gabbana (gay version) 2007

Link to Illegal Ads: Banned section--LOTS to talk about here!!!
http://www.illegaladvertising.com/index.php?vermouth=categories&id=5

Link to Dove Evolution/Campaign for Real Beauty video
dove evolution

Damn...I've got a lot to do

Rocky Mountain News review (Friday Feb 27)

• After 149 years 311 days the RMN closed on February 27, 2009

Interview with amie (Sunday Feb 22)

article on Doc's worst mistake

What does the way Porochista Khakpour played with dolls tell you about the differences between Middle Eastern and American cultures? What does it tell you about American consumer culture?How do dolls help girls model adult behavior? Compare the baby dolls Khakpour had in Iran with the Barbies she played with later.

Wednesday March 4th Community article

How, specifically, does advertising affect/influence media content? Use some specific examples from Kilbourne's book

Definition of a feature story

• Read all the definitions and discussions of what a feature story is in Tim Harrower's "Inside Reporting," pages _____ and _____. Discuss some of them -- in other words, tell what you like about them and what you don't. Come to your own 25-words-or-less definition of a feature story. Length: 500 words.

International Club event

• Use a "Jell-O lede" -- i.e. one that starts with a little anecdote or some color writing, seques into the nut graf(s) and goes on with detail from there.

COMM 390: Paper No. 1 due March 23
Write a 1,000- to 1,200-word documented essay in response to the following question. It is due Monday, March 23, the day after spring break. Please list your rererences at the end of the paper and cite them by page number in the text, but try to write in the style of an article in a quality magazine like The New Yorker or New York Review of Books instead of a college term paper. In other words, do not bore your reader! I will post further tips, hints and suggestions to the blog. In "Ads, Fads, & Consumer Culture," Arthur Asa Berger says Americans "become too caught up in consuming things as a means of validating themselves and proving their worth" (40) He adds:
In consumer cultures, all too often people don't think about what they have but only concern themselves with what they don't have. And is, in part, because advertising constantly reminds them of what they don't have. Needs are finite but desires are infinite, and thus, as soon as our needs have been taken care of, we become obsessed with what we don't have but want. Or more precisely, one might suggest, with what advertising tells us we should want.Well, that's one way of looking at the world. On the other hand, in their book "Integrated Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Communications," Kenneth Clow and Donald Baack describe a consumer's buying decision as a process of: (1) recognizing a need; (2) evaluating different ways of meeting that need; and (3) choosing one of them based on rational ("cognitive") and emotional ("affective") attitudes shaped by the consumer's value system. Clow and Baack say:
By appealing to basic values, marketers hope to convince prospective customers that the company's products can help them achieve a desirable outcome. At the same time, creatives [ad copywriters] know marketing communications are considerably more effective in changing a person's attitude about a product than they are in changing a consumer's value structure. (68)Values listed by Clow and Baack are a comfortable life, equality, excitement, freedom, a fun and exciting life, happiness, inner peace, mature love, personal accomplishment, pleasure, salvation, security, self-fulfillment, self-respect, a sense of belonging, social acceptance and wisdom.At the end of his discussion of demographics, Berger poses a question:
The primary goal of advertising and marketing, of course, is to shape our behavior; advertising agencies can be looked at as hired guns, whose main job is to destroy consumer resistance and shape consumer desire and action -- whether it be to sell cigarettes, beer, politicians, or, lately, prescription medicines. And in some cases, it is to sell socially positive messages. There is little question that the information advertisers have about consumer motivation and the minds of consumers is a source of power. Is this power used ethically and for constructive purposes? That is the question. (135)It's a good question, and not one that has easy answers. If you pressed him, Berger might tend to come down on one side of it. Clow and Baack might come down on the other. How would you answer it? In their quest to sell products, do advertisers manipulate their audiences in ways that are harmful? Do they help create attitudes in society that are harmful? Or do they appeal to the best and the worst in us alike? How can marketers and advertisers maintain their own values and ethical standards as they craft messages designed to appeal to others' thoughts, emotions and values?

Assignment from March 5: Choose a community you know, and compare its Claritas Corp. demographic profile to your impression of the community. Post your comments to your blog -- you can use my profile of the county seat in my home county in East Tennessee as a model, if you want to.

Assignment for Monday

International Club lunch event: Monday, April 6, 2009.
Things to remember:

• Be careful when quoting international students who's first language is not English. Do not make them sound stupid in print.
• If using direct quotes from writing, it is better to use direct quotes ex) Joanna Beth Tweedy's book.
• Compromise: give the flavor of the language by listening for the lack of contractions in sentences and use that sort of grammer in your feature. This gives some of the flavor of the speech without being tacky
• Make sure to write down the scenery of the event so that you can incoporate it into your story later.
• Use other senses as well and write down what you experience. Smells and tastes (food), sounds (music or other stimulus). These components will also help to shape and color your story.

Copywriting

In order to successfully copyright a work you must first understand what copyrighting is. Copyrighting is establishing legal ownership of your work. It is used to protect your work from being copied by others and give you legal authority to "copy" or mass produce your work. However, not all uses of copyrighted material constitutes infringement. This means that though your tangible work is protected, your thoughts and ideas and facts are never proteceted by copyright. The Fair Use Docterine explains this further. Copyrighting is predominately used for written literary, dramatic, poetic, choreographic, architectural, cinematic and musical pieces and can be obtained for published or unpublished works. The 1976 Copyright Act discusses this further.

Securing copyright is not as difficult as you may think and although copyright is actually secured automatically when a work is created, it can be advantageous to officially register for legal purposes. So why bother?

The steps to obtaining copyright are fairly simple. First you must register to establish public record for your copyright claim by filling out the application form, Next, you must submit a filing fee and finally, you must send a copy of the work intended for copyright to the Library of Congress. Sounds pretty easy huh? So easy, in fact, that there are many websites set up to walk you right through it!

For additional information or a complete list of copyrighted work please refer to this link.

Why is feminism a four letter word?

Feminists allowed their enemies to control them because even though they had a common goal, they could not deal with their own differences and inequalities regarding race, class, antisemitism and sexual orientation. While they were being critisized from outside, they were self destructing internally, because although they shared a common goal, their differences outweighed their similarities and the drivers of the movement just could not answer all these voices.

Although equal rights for women have come a long way since the 70's, things are still far from equal. Women still make, on average, 18% less than their male counterparts, and the glass ceiling still very much exists (just look at Hillary Clinton). The stereotypical hardcore businesswomen that helped drive the feminist movement in the 70's still exist and thrive today, but they are few and far between.

The elements of Libel

What is libel?

1) Falsity-an untruth
2) Defamation-discrediting an individual or organization, harmful to public image
3) Publication-statements must be published
4) Indentification-plaintiff must be able to prove that the defamitory publication was about them

Arthur Berger's main points in the book

What is he trying to get across
The United States is a consumer driven society and therefore advertising is especially important and lucrative in this society.
"Most advertising works, whatever the development process, just because all advertising works"...
"Is the power of advertising and marketing used ethically and for socially constructive purposes."

Notes: tags and attribution

-everything you didn't see with your own two eyes you attribute.

ex) if you discover news about a break in at a location by viewing police records you muct attribute the source.

ex) if you see someone stumbling around seemingly drunk you cannot say "they were drunk," but you can say "they appeared to be intoxicated."



-In general, write about what you see but do not draw your own conclusions

Peter Ellertsen-something learned by having made a mistake

What’s the dumbest thing you have ever done? “I don’t do dumb stuff.” Cause I’m perfect.

Worst thing I ever did..I was writing a story about the county clerk in Anderson County Tenn. He had been charged with official corruption. The states atty presented the evid. To GJ. GJ returned what is known as a no true bill… When written I left out a word…NO.
Were you fired? No
Were you heavily reprimanded? Didn’t have to be…I saw it before everyone else

I convicted the poor SOB of something he wasn’t found guilty of.
What kind of trouble did you get in? I didn’t really. I felt bad enough. They couldn’t make me feel any worse.

How old were you? Early twenties.

Where did you work? Oak Ridger. Daily paper in Tenn.

What kind of response came from the mistake? It made it out to the street…we ran a big correction the next day. I had to write the correction. Maybe the hardest hing I’ve ever written.

What did you learn? That’s a tough one…maybe that you should never think your so good or get so busy that you don’t look over your stuff to make sure you didn’t do something really really dumb.

Not since 1991. That’s when I left the newspaper business. You always make mistakes and you keep learningfrom them. Usually if you correct it right away…people will let you screw up once.

I left in 91 to work for the state treasurer. Did public relations for a couple of years and then began teaching. I still make mistakes and I still go back and try to fix them

Instructor in journalism at SCI

Courthouse reporter at Oak Ridger

NUT GRAF: main point,

Assignment for 209 (2/20/09)

750-1000 word story due Monday
Interview a classmate
Write a profile of the classmate using an incident in their life that caused them to learn something from really screwing up...learned something good from having messed up or experienced something bad
Get background information
-Name
-Age
-Current Work
-Where they are from
Ask evergreen questions to find out more about their personality

How to Interview effectively

1) Ask questions that start with "what" or 'why." These questions often promote more dialogue from the speaker rather than answers consisting of simple "yes" and "no."
2) Ask for examples
3) Coax the interviewee by prompting them to continue with words like "and..."
4) Get people to open up with evergreen questions. These questions help you to understand your speaker on a deeper level and can help you to add a unique perspective to your story
5) Don't be afraid to slow the speaker down and take them back over things they have already said
6) Always stay neutral

7 not so deady sins--What makes something newsworthy?

Impact
Timeliness
Prominence
Proximity
Conflict
Weirdness
Currency

Which came first, demographics or pop culture?

Demographics are the categories used to group people for marketing purposes. Demographics can include, but are not limited to; age, generation, race, religion, economic status, marital status, child rearing status, education, and location. These factors are very important to advertising. Ad/marketing researchers use these categories to try to increase the success of their advertisements by concentrating their efforts on a very specific group of people. Where ads are placed and what stations they run on is not accidental. Advertisers attempt to place their ads in a place where their target audience will be most exposed to them. The ads are designed to impact this specific primary audience. As an overall rule, most ads are constructed to appeal to the lower to middle upper class because they represent the purchasing power of the majority of the products that are being marketed, however this large group is broken down into sub categories as mentioned above for the purpose of specific target marketing.

I feel that the American idea of demographics significantly affects pop culture, or more accurately, they affect one another. It is a question of "which came first..." and more often than not, there is no correct answer. It stands to reason that they influence each other and feed off one another in a cyclical and symbiotic sort of relationship.

A recipe for a well crafted news story: Stab with a metal stick and burn at the stake

A recipe is often considered cheat sheet, or inside scoop on preparing a dish and its crafter usually assumes that it will turn out better than average because of the guidelines (or recipe) used to complete the project. The same can be said for news writing and Pete Ellertsen has the inside track on the perfect mixture for writing a news story…and he calls it the shish-kebab.
“News writing is about reproducing the rhythm off common speech. In other words, you write like you talk…if you don’t people aren’t gonna read it. When you write for the public you are writing for people who don’t have to read your stuff so if you don’t write with your reader in mind you will inevitably lose them. People aren’t dumb, but they are busy and they really need to have things laid out for them so that they are easily digestible.”
Although he is now a tenured instructor in the Arts at Benedictine University in Springfield, IL, Ellertsen’s first job out of high school was for a small daily paper in a little town in Tennessee called Oak Ridge. The town’s major industry was a nuclear power plant. The people who lived in Oak Ridge ranged from researchers and developers with PhD’s, to coal miners who may not have completed the 8th grade. “It’s tough to write for a vast difference in educational levels…It is possible, but you have to use small words, short sentences and explain things relentlessly.” This is why, Ellertsen explains, it is so important to write like you talk.
Ellertsen also stressed the importance of taking notes when interviewing someone for a news story. The quotes really are the meat of the story so the whole point to note taking while interviewing is to give yourself enough information to recreate the quotations later. “In school I was going for facts and important concepts. In the newspaper business I was taking notes for exact words.” When I finished a story I would look back over the story and try to figure out what the main points were in the quotes. Then, once I had that, I would look back through my notes to find three or so more quotes and weave them in the same way.” Ellertsen also stressed the importance of explaining every quote and using transitional elements to move from one point to another. Well it all certainly seems simple enough; quote, explanation, transition…steak, onion, green pepper….
“In the end, it all kind of came together like the meat and the vegetables in a shish-kebab.”

Obama takes a stand on feminism by taking it all off...

The most recent issue of Ms. magazine has a picture of President Obama on the cover. Obama is ripping off his white collared shirt revealing a t-shirt underneath which says "this is what a real feminist looks like."
This ad says far more that just those words. I feel that the feminist magazine is using the political presteige of President Obama to help redefine their image. Feminists are generally thought of as angry lesbians who aren't ever happy about anything. This ad is meant to help change public opinion in that regard. The ad itself makes President Obama look cool and rebelious. He is ripping off his collared shirt and red tie as if to be getting rid of conservatism, which coinsides with femisist ideals.
Not only is Obama a man, which counters what we stereotypically think of as a femisit, but he is also 'the most important man in the nation.' Without coming out and saying it, the cover screams "if feminism is cool enough for the President it must certainly be cool enough for the rest of us."

Bye Bye Blago

The SJR says it all in the lede to their cover story of the Friday, January 30, 2009 newspaper. "He's gone" is all it said, but those two words said it all. It was what the entire state of Illinois had anxiously been waiting for; after being impeached over one month ago, Governer Rod Blagojevich was officially removed from office Thursday afternoon. A first in state history and the first time impeachment and susequent removal from office has happened in this country in over twenty years. Luitentent Governer Pat Quinn was sworn in only minutes after Blago's removal. The Illinois Senate's vote was unanimous...another first in state history.

A random sidebar: The restaurant where I am employed celebrated the event's of yesterday by running a martini special last night, "The Impeachmentini." Needless to say we ran out of martini glasses...stay classy Springfield.

The inverted pyramid...it's a triangle no matter how you look at it

The inverted pyramid is a way to discribe the basic structure of a news story. The most important information in a news story is at the beginning (or the top of the pyramid). This information generally pertains to "who," "what," "when," "why" and occasionally "where" and "how." The story then moves on to the body where the writer develops the information from the lede and gives details, facts and quotes to support the information in the lede. Conclusions are not always necessary in a news story. The basic news story is designed in this fashion so that the least useful and relevent information (toward the end of the story aka the bottom of the pyramid) can be cut out easily.

Stories written for magazines, such as Newsweek, are composed much more like standard essays using an introduction, main ideas and susequent development, and a conclusion format to structure the information. However, when writing for print media like Newsweek, the introduction is called a lede (just like in a news story) and the conclusion is called a kicker. These stories also include a billboard, or a brief announcement of the main points of the article which is located between the intro/lede and the main points or the story.

Two opportunities announced for SCIBU students

SCIBU has many clubs and organizations available for student involvement. Pete Davis, Editor and Chief of the SCIBU Newspaper, The Bulldog, announced today that the paper is looking for part time staff to work for the paper. There are many different components of the paper that may appeal to a diverse group of people, such as Sports writing, News writing, Entertainment, Opinion pieces, and also Photography and Web design and layout. P. Davis guaranteed that staffers never have to write about anything that they aren’t interested in and said he would be more than happy to have additional help on the staff. There are also internship opportunities available at the Bulldog, giving student the chance to write for the school paper in lieu of going to class. Students interested in learning more about working with The Bulldog can contact Pete in person MWF 1-3:00 in room L18 (Resource Center).
Katie Davis also discussed an exciting opportunity for SCIBU students. K. Davis is the Co-founder of the PR Club at the college and is looking for new members. The club’s first meeting is tonight at 5:15 in A104. PR Club plans to work with local non for profits and small businesses and assist them with their public relations endeavors. The Club hopes to help these businesses and organizations formulate the components of PR campaigns, plan events, create media contracts, create fliers, brochures, news releases, format newsletters and design web pages, as well as developing and updating social media outlets. PR Club will give students exposure to working in a PR firm, and give them networking, internship and scholarship opportunities. K. Davis can be reached at katie_davis@sci.edu for more information on PR Club.

I'll make a note of it...

209 Note taking:
Why take notes?
to help you remember the important stuff and review for tests
I. Taking notes in an interview:
-to remember all info for your story
-keywords are important to help you recreate the dialogue later
- don’t waste time with articles and prepositions etc.
-go back and recreate sentences same day…otherwise you might not be able to remember what your shorthand means
-Spelling:
Always make sure you have names spelled correctly, even if it means you have to ask them to spell it
-to get quotes
Exact words people use
“Substantially accurate re-creation of what was said”


Pete Davis-Editor and chief SCIBU Bulldog
Good way to learn to write
Never make you write about something you aren’t interested in
Sports
Entertainment
Opinion Columns
Photographers
Web?
Any way you think you can help Happy to have you
Intership possibilities- 3 credits, work in lou of going to class
Contact Pete:
Office-Resource Center MWF 1-3 L18

Amie Suter- Opinion Editor
Wants to know about student opinions-what do you love hate etc.
Contact Amie at bulldog_opinion@sci.edu