Semester one of 2010 has all but drawn to an end (exams never seem to pose a stressful threat at this stage) and I am now scratching my head at the thought of no more sleep ins, attempts at study and relatively relaxed, coffee-filled days on campus looking at boys and talking shit with friends. until at least August. Instead, my life will revolve around an endless amount of customers demanding their lattes asap, with a double shot please, on skinny milk if you've got it! while chasing and saving dollars to fund the next chapter of my life.
What will make that effort worth it are the endless mazes of streets, alleys, cafes, shops and more that await me in Buenos Aires. To get me excited for my travels, and to feed my love for street art, I've been checking out a bunch of blogs and websites - I started with this site, del artista Julian Pablo Manzelli.
I stumbled across more fun things - this is funny - 10 tattoo cliches to avoid, which I found at a time when my long-standing 'I'll-never-get-a-tattoo' attitude changed of its own accord, as I came across ideas I would indeed have inked on me fo life.
How to catch a bus in Buenos Aires - matador universe is my new favourite place to hang out online and dished out this gem, which will surely come in handy for me.
From the matadorverse, I have come across yes, there is such thing as a stupid question whose author is fabulous - a woman living in Buenos Aires with a biting sense of humour, basically doing something I may aspire to!
The first image is an example of vomito attack's street art, in Buenos Aires. The second image is by German based art-duo, Herakut, whose style is blowing my mind (thanks to Lucy, who showed me their stuff while we were sharing art last night. Social media is great for more than 'h hru, gt, hbu?', who'da thunk it?)
Excited by the prospect of having time on my hands to enjoy more of the world that exists away and out of text books before getting out into the big bad world, the rest of my life is starting now!
..I interviewed the rain and he said that sun was truly an asshole.
This article is
the basis of my second journal entry of the day and my favourite so far because I got to bemoan the state of media/politics in a way that is probably more constructive than any other rant I've had on the matter. Sorry, blog-o-sphere, you are being spammed with my opinions and you will enjoy it! Or at the very least, I will provoke some thought amongst the few readers notquitelois has.
The principle of verification in journalism, and the notion of transparency are fundamental to the integrity of the industry. Straight up, that is my belief but whether or not in reality this is true is definitely debateable.
The news industry’s primary function is to report to the people information that is newsworthy – events or moments that have the capacity to affect the populace whether because of the timeliness, relevance, human edge or whatever other news value of the issue. So when that function becomes hard to do because other interests – ratings, namely, because ratings mean revenue - the integrity of news is undermined.
When ‘analysts’ and ‘contributors’ are in fact neither of those things, the idea of ‘verification’ falls to the wayside and the word ‘fabrication’ comes to mind. This ties in with the notion of transparency – viewers may believe they are getting the finance report from someone in the know (because they’re standing in front of a giant CBA logo) but they’re really getting a biased version of the days stock and so neither verification nor transparency are being used here.
I feel I may overstep the word limit on this slightly because though I almost fell into journalism as a way of utilising my love for words and the double major in English I did in college while making use of the UAI I didn’t try to achieve (it wasn’t very high), I have come to recognise it as a powerful industry contributing to society in ways I’d previously not imagined.
This reading stirred a few things in me. Firstly, the relationship between media and politics has indeed become very complex and I have felt isolated in my view that Australian politics are more about he-said, she-said than actual policy because no one else in positions of authority to assert this did so. Rosenstiel and Kovach talk about the ‘horse race bias’ in reporting political campaigns in the US and this idea reflects the cynicism I feel with regard to political reporting here in Australia. What I have been taught about morals and ethics in reporting appears at odds with the reality of the industry and this reading strengthened my feelings of disillusion with the state of political media as I thought about verification and transparency in journalism.
This quote from the reading perhaps best summarises why I feel this way: “The press covers what the candidate does that day. The polls measure the political impact of that behavior. The media then analyze whether the latest campaign performance is helping in the polls. And that in turn influences the candidate’s behavior.”
To speak from experience, I can say frankly that being told each week whether K. Rudd is more popular than Tony Abbott doesn’t mean anything to me. More than anything it reflects the percentage of Australians who were offended by Abbott’s budgie smugglers (a downright disgusting misuse of media time across Australia that continues to this day, and one I fear to include as it may serve only to perpetuate the stunt’s efficacy in bringing Abbott press) and had at their fingertips the opportunity to lodge their approval (or not) of the action as they perused ninemsn or news.com instead of doing any work (maybe I imagine too harshly what happens in public service offices but from what I’ve heard from those in such positions that is actually the norm).
To make a point I’ve been trying to sharpen for the last two and a half years, the relationship between media and politics has become far too interdependent and that is shaping both the state of politics and media. That talking heads on stations like Sky News here are being labelled ‘analysts’ when really they are representatives of particular corporate interest reflects something ominous. The cycle Rosenstiel and Kovach describe further reflects this, but what isn’t said is that the time spent devising the shape of politicians’ media figures is time not spend on writing policy. The Abbott/Rudd popularity race has long annoyed me because I always wonder – “Surely Tony Abbott has more to do and say as Opposition leader with relation to Liberal policy than to merely discredit another of Rudd’s policies/actions, even it will sell tomorrow’s paper and draw viewers to TV bulletins..”
Being told ‘not to believe everything you see on the news’ goes against what I have learned of reporting – you have to verify your facts, you have to balance your story and, while you’re in university, report without bias. Unless asked not to by your talent, you have to identify your sources, but in any event the credibility of talent is enormously important because otherwise it's not news!
It seems though that to get ahead, or a job, your ability to advance the interests of the company is more important than any of those things and from the get-go, the integrity of the industry is forgotten as wanna-be reporters forsake the integral fundamentals of their craft to get their foot in any door.
When it rains, it sometimes also pours.
Being that I am catching up on a lot of journal readings and responses, I thought I would spam the blog-o-sphere with my thoughts on the range of issues pervasive to journalism today.
This article, by veteran Chris Masters inspired the following. I feel like I've said some of it before but maybe that's because some of the issues are deserving of a lot of hot air, though I wouldn't shy away from being told it's merely because I am a repetitive sort.
Chris Masters’ discussion of the media environment in which he developed as a journalist was certainly an eye-opening read. While much of the course content of the last year in particular, but obviously the preceding two as well, has been focused on ensuring we are equipped as journalists of tomorrow with the necessary skills to vacillate between key mediums of journalism, I had never really seen the industry as it is now as constantly evolving in response to a number of influences.
That his career spanned 43 years and was almost entirely at the ABC was impressive to me. Masters even acknowledged that that sort of longevity is almost unheard of today and I would bemoan that, if it weren’t for a knowledge of my own almost-ADD capacity to stick with one thing for a period of time. But in saying that, it impressed me for reasons far beyond an admiration of a personally lacking perseverant nature.
43 years in any career would be hard-going, but to stick with one that is subject to the ebb and flow of consumer popularity while maintaining a sense of dignity and pride in that work is certainly admirable. Certainly, too, it is almost as enviable as incredible that in his day, Masters’ could have become a foreign correspondent straight out of school.
Both those things seem to reflect an era less complicated by the multi-platform-digital-high-tech state of today. From a young age, I have been (almost) conditioned to believe that I will go through four (or is it five now?) career changes in my time. I don’t believe that sort of thing does much to help the lessening attention spans of my peers and the generations following us, but it is widely recognised that as a collective we lack the ability to endure much at all for longer than an ad-break.
In saying that, I am not deviating from the discussion but rather pulling together the strands of my experience to illuminate a point: the nature of journalism is changing to reflect this. The option of being print OR broadcast journalists no longer exists because we (as a generation) can do it all. We can do it all at once, too. Heck, we can do it all at once from one device if we have the access to the technology!
So Masters’ experience comes from a time when putting in hours, days and weeks for a story was paramount to success, but is of some value to those of us who can achieve recognition for the most banal of banalities in an instant – before losing it in the next. We achieve recognition for a status update on facebook, or a tweet, or a youtube video, or a blog entry, which are just as swiftly buried by a torrent of newer, more up-to-the-micro-second tweet/video/blog/status update.
So the old quality over quantity adage applicable to Masters’ generation has given way to quantity trumping quality to keep up to date (or seriously, up-to-second, which is SO important – you couldn’t be still ‘lol’-ing at Kate’s hoax party when the hits of the next Trent-from-Punchy video on youtube are already beginning to dwindle), and the nature of broadcast journalism reflects that. Radio journalists like Latika Bourke tweet during Question Time, not only to share the more amusing he-said-she-said’s of QT but to plug her news bulletins or stories. In the process, she is exposing not only herself to a wider audience but the nature of broadcast journalism today: you have to straddle a variety of mediums to engage with an audience, who are tweeting from their iPhone while listening to a podcast while filming the next minute-of-fame youtube video who lack the time it takes to tie up their shoelaces but who can and are doing a million other things simultaneously. Masters’ experience is valuable to those of us about to be churned out into the multi-platform-digi-journo industry though – imagine the strength and viability of broadcast journalism if those of us who could do it all, could do it with style, dignity and loyalty?
So in the time it's been since I last posted, an entire lifetime has passed by me. Or so it feels.
This week is my last week of university in Canberra for 2010, have to enjoy it as much as I can because I have only just realised I will not be taking anymore classes with any of the folk I have come this far with. That thought makes me sad - with only a year and a half of my degree to go, I feel I have developed a rapport of sorts with many of my peers and in the very least have reached a level of familiarity with these people that I would almost call 'comfortable'..
Tangibly positive outcomes of this semester have been a number of distinctions, and one high distinction but sadly being caught up in the throes of life has meant keeping up to date with more than what's on today (or at stretch, tomorrow) has been difficult. The essay I wrote about in my last post scored a distinction though quite disappointingly my lecturer didn't enjoy Sublime or MF Doom as much as I did.
Because I'm staring down the barrel of two months off uni (more or less, may look into enrolling in a journalism class), I had dreams of scoring myself an industry-directed job but being that I will be in Buenos Aires in three months (no kidding, three months almost exactly, though I have yet to buy flights..) I think I need to think more about immediate employment. (note to self: update resume, stat!)
In any event, this is a link to the (few) articles I wrote this semester.
Check them out if you're interested in education, reasons for Canberra's lacklustre music scene or the open spaces program that makes Canberra so beautiful.
And, finally here is a collection of images thrown together in the space of 10 minutes for added illustrative value of this post to show what the last few weeks of my life have included (but were obviously not limited to!).
This is my face/favourite sweater & brooch.
This is my soon-to-be home town!
& I'm no sycophant - this house party featured a lot of punch, plus a band I've loved for a really long time and I was more than impressed with the quality of this image from my phone.
And finally, because in my downtime lately I've been oscillating between too much Aesop Rock and Daria, here are images of both. In love with Daria for a million reasons, for reasons of identification as well as an appreciation of the cynicism and almost always perfect social commentary that rounds the program out.
I would like to note also I am the proud owner of the above piece of merch so am mega excited to see Aes wearing the same hoodie that will be bringing me so much warmth this year.
