Last lecture - STEVE MOLK.

I'm not going to write anything about this lecture. I will sum it up by a note I have stuck on my wall, which should evaluate how effective it was. 

This semester has been a pleasure. Thankyou to everyone in JOUR1111, my gorgeous tutor Carmel and my fantastic lecturer Bruce. I had a blast! x

Lecture #12 Investigative journalism

Our very last learning lecture was all about investigative journalism. I don't really know what to say about it.. I'm kind of in a rush at the moment because I was calm all day thinking i'd finished my lecture posts. Then now, with half an hour left, I realised I wasn't. Clever Sala!

We talked about all of the IN's of investigative journalism:
INvestigative journalism
INtelligent - you have to know what you are doing
INformed - you have to know what to look for
INtuitive - you have to be able to rely on your gut feeling
INside - you have to get the inside info!
INvest - you have to be prepared to put something, part of yourself, into your journalism.

I did find the term 'shoe leather journalism' interesting!

But yeah, I truly did find it really really interesting I'm just stressing like crazy and I can't remember a thing right now.

I SAW LADY GAGA

So last night (Wednesday the 13th June) I saw the most phenomenal performance of my life. I SAW LADY GAGA.

alskdvbalsdbvailsdblaskbvlaisdbfliasvbaslkbslu!!!!!!!!

I appreciate this is a journalism blog but I really feel like that was appropriate.

So, I don't really know how to put this but it may/may not have been the greatest thing ever. I loved Lady Gaga before I saw her, so I don't know what this feeling I have now is. Infatuation, probably. She is just so perfect, words cannot even describe.

Things that are perfect about Lady Gaga:
1. Her ass. God dammit, that thing is just so fine. You know when normal women walk in underwear and their bum jiggles a bit? Even professional athletes have a bit of wobble up in there. But not Gaga. Her derriere is solid, and round, and perfect. Two globes of precision.

2. Her style. I appreciate that some of her choices have been a little ~odd~ (that Kermit outfit..), but for the most part she really has her finger on the fashion pulse. I think a lot of Jay-Jay's clad young ladies could learn a lot from her.

 

Viktor & Rolf Mustard Pant suit

I tried adding more photos of her awesome street style but blogger is a bitch to format with so I gave up. 

3. Her MESSAGE. Holy christ, everyone should listen to this woman preach. She is all about acceptance, believing in yourself, pride, being comfortable in your own skin, tolerance, love! Coming from a background which contained a lot of bullying, she speaks right from the heart when she talks about how important it is to love who you are, and love others for who they are. I can't even express how much I love this. She's so kind

4. She is a phenomenal dancer. I suppose this ties in with the toned glutes but damn, that girl has rhythm. And being able to belt out Marry the Night while she headbangs, jumps and twirls is a talent on the next level. I don't know how she does it. Motivation for the rest of us to get off our asses and do something. 

5. Her freakin' music, of course! Despite her hectic schedule, she still manages to pump out some mind-blowing tunes. Her lyrics are always a delight, and her intricate mind creates music which is 100% joyful to listen to. Her acoustic versions are also great, giving her a chance to showcase her brilliant voice which (unlike many artists) is in no way autotuned. 

I could go on forever, she is amazing. Truly an inspirational woman to anyone who chooses to take the time and listen. So yeah, I saw her live and it was the greatest thing ever. 

Also, the support act was absolutely shitty. I have never seen anything worse in my life. But that is irrelevant, because Lady Gaga was perfect. 

The Magic Flute

Recently Mozart's classic fairytale The Magic Flute premiered at the Lyric Theatre, directed by Julie Taymore - the director of Disney's The Lion King. I don't know if you are familiar with the story or not, but I took this from the QPAC website:

Tamino is a noble prince on a quest. He discovers strange lands, inhabited by wondrous creatures - scary women, wise children and even a bird man - but that is not what he is looking for. Will Tamino finally discover the truth? And will he find true love? 

.... So basically Tamino sets off on this epic quest to save the Princess Pamina with his trusty mate Papageno who is the bird man. Along the way he comes across some spirit children, a brotherhood, an evil queen (Pamina's mother), and three women who I didn't really understand.

But aside from this - IT ACTUALLY BLEW MY MIND. I'm not even being paid by  Opera Australia to say this (not like they would, how many people actually read this blog haha). So I might not have understood the plot as well as I would have liked, but this production boasted the most phenomenal visuals I have ever encountered. The set design was a versatile engineering masterpiece, which transforrmed seamlessly into countless different settings. The great thing about it was the postmodern element of it not trying to replicate where they were, just using a simple shape or something to represent it.

The other thing was the costumes and make up. I don't even have words, so absolutely fantastic. The Chorus wore these fantastic geometric gowns with diamond shaped headdresses alluding to a nuns veil. The protagonists all wore carefully constructed costumes which accurately represented both the shown side of the character as well as their inner traits.

There was a tenuous mix of Asian, Ancient Egyptian and Western influences in the costuming, makeup and set design, which came through well. The use of silk and yellow fabrics as well as kimono shaped garments alluded to Asia, while tall headwear, the use of staffs and hieroglyphic-like symbols was reminiscent of the numerous times I've done projects on Ancient Egypt.

There was also an extremely clever use of puppeteering and interaction with the stagehand-like figures. This well thought out crafting resulted in floaty polar bears that towered over the characters, flying spirit children, a giant serpent slithering about the stage, and larger-than-life, flirty, ballet dancing birds.

Credit must also be paid to the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, who never fail to disappoint anyway. They performed Mozart the way it ought to be, giving an absolutely spellbinding sound to the entire production.

Also we got dinner at the bistro beforehand and I got the wrong meal. Just saying.

Lecture #11

Or Lecture #10, depending on how pedantic you are. It’s not like it really matters. We missed a week because of a public holiday. I hope I’m not confusing you too much. Gosh settle down it’s not a big deal, stop freaking out about it.  Please calm yourself.

Thanks.

So in this lecture we talked about Agenda Setting – how the media constructs reality. Agenda setting originated from around 1968 during the Chapel Hill campaign in which there was a survey of undecided voters.

Basically, there are four basic agendas which are all pretty self-explanatory.

·         The Public Agenda

·         The Policy Agenda

·         The Corporate Agenda

·         The Media Agenda

All of these agendas, while for the most part remain separated, are interrelated and can’t really function without each other.

There are also 2 basic assumptions about agenda setting, and they are:

1.       Mass media do not simply reflect reality, they filter and shape it AND

2.       Media concentration leads the public to place higher importance on something.

So basically,

The more coverage an issue receives, the more important it is to people.

The main thing we covered, however, was the Agenda Setting Family, which consists of:

MEDIA GATEKEEPING

This is how individuals control the flow of information through a channel, and has a lot to do with exposure and what is revealed.

MEDIA ADVOCACY

The purposive promotion of a message

AGENDA CUTTING

If something is given less time in the media, it’s given less importance. The example used was that the AIDS epidemic in Africa took a backseat in the news to Justin Bieber’s new haircut due to the fact that the epidemic simply isn’t given as much time in the news spotlight.

AGENDA SURFING/BANDWAGON EFFECT

This element of the family mainly relates to following the trends in the media, and public opinion influencing others.

DIFFUSION OF NEWS

Who decides how, where and when news is released? This is the process through which an event is communicated to the public.

PORTRAYAL OF AN ISSUE

The way an issue is portrayed will influence the public perception. For example, the way that aboriginal issues are portrayed in Australian media heavily mould the way many citizens approach the matter.

MEDIA DEPENDENCE

In this day and age, more and more people are becoming increasingly dependent on the media and technology. Therefore, the more dependent people are on media, the more susceptible to agenda setting.

Finally, we looked over the strengths and weaknesses of Agenda Setting Theory, which were all pretty basic and for the most part were common sense.

Strengths	Weaknesses
Explanatory power	Public may not be the ideal audience
Predictive power	The effect is weakened on steadfast minds
Organising power	Can’t create or conceal problems
Can be proven false	New media is weakening agenda setting
Scientific facts/research

Lecture #9

LECTURE NINE – NEWS VALUES.

Ah, so we meet again inverted pyramid of journalism. I didn’t really understand you the first time, but I feel like we’ve bonded and connected a little more over this lecture. How nice.

So what exactly are news values? As I understand it, it’s the amount of importance and prominence a news network gives to a story. Due to this, news values have to vary over difference news services, countries and cultures. For example, some news networks pride themselves on covering local news, whereas others are well known for their coverage of international affairs.

From the lecture, I got that the four primary news values are identified as being impact, audience identification, pragmatics, and source influence – I feel like they’re all pretty self-explanatory if you have a basic grasp of English.

We also discussed the fact that the line between PR and journalism is slowly blurring, as well as spending a long time looking at both the 12+ factors of newswothiness and the 3 hypotheses of newsworthiness.

I'm out. 

Lecture #8

Our eighth (I just realised how odd the word eighth is to spell..) lecture was on ethics. Now, 8 is up there in my favourite numbers so I was hoping this would be a good lecture. My other favourites are 36 and 52 and well, that’s just ridiculous. I’m not going to 52 weeks of lectures just to find out about that one.

I know you’re anxious to find out whether I liked the lecture or not, which is a little silly because I know you know the answer. I loved it! Who doesn’t love a bit of controversy? The age-old puzzle of what is good or bad, right or wrong, ethical or unethical? And on top of that, the difficulty of distinguishing between the bad, the wrong and the just plain tacky.

One thing we covered in depth which I was interested by was the three ethical theories. I’ve never heard of anything really like that in ethics, so touching on each of them really had me hooked. As we went through them, they began to make sense and even more so when we looked at examples.

Out of Deontology, Consequentialism and Virtue, I think the one that I liked the most was Virtue ethics, simply because it made the most sense and I related to it most. Virtue ethics come down to the fact that goodness and happiness will come from good habits of character which is essentially every motivational sticky note I have around my room condensed into one sentence.

Deontology boiled down to being an attitude that by following all of the rules, you will be doing the right thing. Which we all know isn’t true, but all ethics codes are fundamentally deontological really. Consequentialism was basically obtaining the right or good outcome of a situation regardless of how you get there – you know; the end may justify the means, greatest good for greatest number etc.

I think, though, ethics in journalism boils down to one primary point. Treat others as you would like to be treated, and things should go well.