Complaining About Political Campaining

In 2012 the election between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama was, like most other elections, full of campaign ads bashing the opposing candidate. The campaign ads that were not sponsored by the candidates I felt are the hardest to stomach as an open minded individual. The ads seem to try and strike fear by suggesting that if a particular candidate is elected than it will come with certain repercussions. The message is usually (sometimes not) centered around a fact of statistic or excerpt from a speech and twisting that into digs at the candidate.

These ads don't educate people on the ideologies of the candidates and their plans for the economy and society as a whole, but instead plant a seed into minds of viewers to make them afraid, hate, or distrust the candidate. Citizens should be informed voters when arriving at the polls, not filling in the boxes in spite of a certain person. Advertisers want to push certain buttons that will enrage you into striking down the opposition with your vote. Shouldn't we vote logically and not with our emotions?

In reality, these ad campaigns do exactly what they set out to do; persuade voters to lean a certain way because they are afraid to live in a society where a particular candidate is running the show. It may seem moral to avoid ads that defame the other candidate, but in a race to be the leader in the free world, you wouldn't win a campaign without these advertisements. It's turned into an arms race at this point; make more and better negative advertisements about the other side so that you turn out on top. Plus, the candidates can't always control what these interest groups do to express their views.

Internet Cookies & Why I Am Hungry.

I've known about cookies for as long as I can remember using the internet unsupervised. Not because I was up to anything, but because I remember reading that you should clear them sometimes for faster internet speed. This led to my own personal investigation of what cookies were. Searching through all the cookies I realized every site I had visited left something like that of a "crumb" behind.

Cookies give companies information about what sites you visit, and that in turn affects the advertisements you see on your Facebook news feed or banner ads. They serve a legitimate purpose, but does that make it okay? I don't think most people know that every site they go to is leaving behind a trail on their computer. But I'm sure people realize (at least I hope) that everything they do on the internet isn't private. The apathy towards cookies may just come from the age of technology we live in. Most people might not care that big brother is watching because they aren't doing anything wrong. Some don't mind to waive the privacy of their computer because those ads for the new style of North Faces affected their purchase!

I could completely understand if some found it unethical for these companies to be filling our cookie jar with things that they didn't ask for, but I myself just don't care. I clear the dang things out whenever I get done browsing most of the time anyways. My computer life really isn't that interesting to need ultimate privacy.

WKU News Stories & Public Relations

The most recent news stories on the WKU online newsrooms deal with students, which isn't a big surprise for a newspaper that mostly wants to attract student readers. These stories would be considered soft news since they don't represent an ultimate importance standing. Although they are interesting to read and peak student interests, they don't make a huge impact on information in our daily lives.

Some of their news stories do end up in Bowling Green newspaper. I think they make it to the newspaper because they're stories that are better told by people who are students and have a hand in the student body here. It builds a healthy relationship between our school and the community we reside in. People who don't attend the school can still be interested in whats going on here and the education WKU provides.

It's not cutting edge news, but it is still reliable and good information for people to have access to.

Big Fish Take Little Fish [iParticipate 10]

American Recording Company, LLC. is located in Louisville, KY and has been in service for 10 years with 5 employees. It produces artists and bands such as Daniel Jones, Heart of Kings, and Red on Tap. From the pictures of the studio, it looks like they specialize in full bands, but also pander to solo artist. They take the recordings and transfer the mastered version of it over the internet.

The variety of artists and groups suggest that they produce music for the general listener. They don't pigeon-hole their clients into a certain genre. The tag LLC suggests it is not independent, but a limited liability company apart of a organization.

The problem with small labels is that they don't have the clout to attract these up and comers, because they're already being scoped out by the larger and more established labels. The music industry might be one of the most competitive industries and even some artists that have huge followings cannot get a record label cosign.

Sports Illustrated's Images

I looked up a Sports Illustrated magazine and scanned over the images. The photos in it made up about 40% of the overall issue, while words/print made up 60%. The images were decently diverse in terms of race (although certain sports seemed pigeon-holed on certain races). The pictures were either of a athlete or a sports fan, there wasn't much in between besides maybe a coach or stadium picture.

It seemed like the editors were only interested in actions shots, which wasn't totally surprising. Even a story that featured the off-court life of an NBA player didn't have images of him out in public or dressed in clothes besides his uniform. It seemed kind of unrealistic; like the player only wore his "work clothes" when lounging around the house. I understand the concept though; people don't watch sports to find out what LeBron James watches on TV. They want to see him yam the ball over a defender.

I think Sports Illustrated does a proficient job of connecting target audiences and their content. There's no doubt that sports audiences aren't that difficult to please, and whatever they've been doing is working. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Time Warner INC & Friends.

According to Columbia Journalism Review, Time Warner INC. has six categorized holdings. (HBO, Turner Broadcasting System, Warner Bros Entertainment,  Time INC, Time Warner Investment Groups, and Time Warner Global Media Group.) I didn't realize how many things they own that I didn't even know they owned.

Some of their subsidiaries work together, such as Adult Swim and Cartoon Network. They both appear on the same channel, but Adult Swim comes on later at night. The only independent subsidiary I saw was Time Warner Global Media Group. It seemed that Turner Broadcasting System or Time INC had the most extensive synergy with a multitude of divisions. And the most extensive division was Cartoon Network.

I think synergy provides more/effective resources to deliver entertainment and news. Working together means that these subsidiaries can help out other subsidiaries if they need additional capital. Then the ones who aren't doing as well can trend upwards to the ones who are and increase profits for the company as a whole.  

Another Generations Take on News Networks

For this post, I interviewed my mother (who lives in Florida) and my aunt (who lives in Kansas).

I started with my mother first and asked which TV news channels she preferred. She told me that she used to watch Bill O'Reilly a lot, until he became too mainstream and "started to become an asshole." Then I asked what she prefers to watch now. My mother informed me that she mostly watches the local news for Cape Coral, Florida, but from time-to-time she will catch segments on CNN if they are discussing something interesting.

My Aunt was my next target. Her preference was The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. She liked these programs because she enjoyed comedy with her news reports and said ", I am mostly interested in their views because they are my views too." She said she originally watched MSNBC, but felt that regular news is too depressing.

Both my aunt and mother said that growing up everyone sat down and watched the news. The family would sit in the living room after dinner and keep up with world events.

I think it says something to these networks like Fox News and MSNBC that even older generations tend to move away from networks that lean too far in one political direction. Although, The Daily Show and Colbert Report are not free their moderate liberal views, I feel like the comedic effect explains their views better. You know, in a satirical sort of way. This also speaks volumes among TV versus print media. It's hard to relay comedy through a newspaper, so these periodicals have to stay strictly  business. I can tell you first-hand that when I lived with my mother she only read local stories, the funnies section, and the obituaries (for some weird reason).

Two Very Different Magazines, One Similarity.

To compare ads in magazines, I grabbed two random magazines in our apartment's living room. I grabbed an edition of GameInformer (GI) and Eastbay (EB). One is a magazine about video games and the latter is a magazine that sells sporting equipment and apparel.

Both magazines were scarce with advertising, which made it feel like a more rich read. The advertising it did have was mostly relevant to the content. GI had ads for upcoming games and EB had ads with sports athletes, such as Eddie Lacy, previewing the sportswear they promote. GI did have one Progressive advertisement that felt out of place. EB lacked editorial content, aside from the pictures of professional sports athletes. The other magazine, was full of stories from game developers, pictures from gameplay, and rankings of video games.

In the situation of these two magazines, I would say that the content influences the advertisements. These are two magazines that can stick to their guns and people who purchase them know exactly what they want out of them; and they get it. I find it very professional to keep out the clutter of non-related advertisements. It keeps a nice smooth flow to the reading. I might have just gotten lucky and picked up two magazines that are pretty static, but it seemed pretty balanced overall.

Poor Representation of Foreign People in Movies

The latest movies I have watched are: Jack Reacher, 22 Jump Street, and Wolverine. These are not my favorite movies, per se, but are the last three I have viewed at the cinema. Each had instances where foreign characters were portrayed as evil. Wolverine was set over in Japan and had the main characters love interest as Japanese, but at the same time made her seem very exotic. 22 Jump Street in the opening sequences made it look as if the Mexican Cartel was providing the US with drugs, comically of course. Jack Reacher had a man of Eastern European decent made out to be the biggest big/shady-business bad guy of all time.

These movies in particular don't exactly exacerbate the stigmatism the movie industry places on foreign countries. There are many examples where foreign (men in particular) are always up to know good. In Rocky you have the Russians; Avatar it's the people from Earth, and even in television shows like House of Cards where the Chinese are trying to make a free floating currency.

I don't think it's fair we feed into this idea of patriotism where if you're not American than you are second class. Then we tend to in movies make foreign women (even American women) into sex icons. It's not uncommon for the Russian female spy to be dressed in a tight black leather outfit. Is that really how the movie industry perceives other countries? That they're either up to no good or are extremely attractive AND up to no good?

I've only watched a handful of foreign films and I've never seem them portray Americans with this sort of slight. It seems if they wanted to fight fire with fire they could show  a bunch of overweight Americans at a burger joint.

Does Owensboro's Radio Stations Serve the Public Well?

Owensboro has many radio stations, but the top three that most people have playing are:

WSTO 96.1: Top 40 Hits / Owned by South Central Communications

WBKR 92.5: Country / Owned by Townsquare Media

WCJZ 105.7: Classic Rock / Owned by Cromwell Radio Group

The top two being the most played by age groups of 35 and under. Hot 96 (WSTO) sometimes is criticized for overplaying songs and making them exhausting to the ears shortly after their prime. WBKR plays only one genre of music, but people who aren't looking to hear any other types are completely comfortable with this set-up. WCJZ 105.7 gives a sort of nostalgic value to listeners who turn the up the volume when Queen or Phil Collins gets a spin. If I had to say anything was missing, it would probably be a talk show radio on the FM channel. There's not much worldly event value, besides the occasional morning show on WSTO poking fun at comedic events happening in the US. Also it could use a hip-hop exclusive station to better serve rap/ lyrical goers, such as myself.

There is an obvious diversity in radio ownership, but I feel like they might not be hitting all the demographics they could be. I know a plethora of people who would love to have a hip-hop station. It seems like they're saying that our Western Kentucky younger residents only care to hear Country or whatever is popular at the moment. I understand that it is a conservative state that may be too uptight to hear "gangster tune" (insert sarcasm), but I feel like a large portion of us are being under-served.

This has lead a large portion of people to move away from radio and instead play Pandora or Spotify. In my case I'd tune into Childish Gambino radio on Pandora, than be dragged through a repeat Avicii song. Whenever I ride with my friends in their vehicles, I hardly ever hear them play the radio, unless their phone is dead or forgot their Aux cord. Even then there has been occasions where we would rather ride and talk then turn on a radio station that doesn't appeal to us.

So if Owensboro doesn't get a hip-hop station, "imma start a riot, imma start a riot." Ha. A 2 Chainz reference... No? Okay.

Do Newspapers Have Their Foot in the Grave?

'The Messenger Inquirer' is the newspaper for Owensboro, Kentucky, my hometown. I really only read it for the sports updates from the local high schools and to see where my favorite professional teams were in the standings. It provided information from upcoming events in the town and local road closings and openings. It always seemed that the paper was missing something though. There wasn't really anything drawing me in other than the article every now and then on the Quarterback for the Kentucky Wildcats and what to expect from him in the upcoming game. Our town would seem like a bore to a visitor wondering what was going on in our small knitted community. Occasionally they would mess up somebody's name was misspelled, which was comical, yet frustrating.

The advertisements inside consisted mostly of ads for local businesses and services. A coupon was placed here and there for Kohls or local restaurants having deals. Lots of folks are subscribed to the paper though, because people still enjoyed knowing what was going on in our town. Older people in our town were more in tune with it then the younger crowd. My parents preferred the physical copy over the internet version and I only knew a couple of people who actually read it online.

I think the articles would be more interesting if the stories weren't similar to other articles that you could easily access from more established news media like CNN or ESPN. The originality was lacking at best. It seemed like they almost copied word-for-word what articles on yahoo were saying about subject. They need more opinionated writers on subjects such as the Ray Rice case. I don't want to read regurgitated and hashed stories that were already dished out from other media sources. After I got my smartphone I would go to Bleacher Reports and only read The Messenger Inquirer when I was bored at work and needed to waste time.

After talking to a few friends and family about what they thought our newspaper they offered a few suggestions. My Aunt commented that they could use innovated stories about things like the iPhone 6 and apps/technology that will differ from the current models. Stories that shed light on where phones were heading and how we can adapt them into our lives more efficiently. Also, why we should or shouldn't choose to purchase this model compared to other phones.

For now i'm only interested in the scores for high school games. Maybe as new writers come in, the tone of the newspaper will change.

Books: The Father of Movies

1 The Hunger Games: Catching Fire*
2 Frozen**
3 Guardians of the Galaxy*
4 Gravity
5 Captain America: The Winter Soldier*
6 The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug*
7 The LEGO Movie
8 Transformers: Age of Extinction *
9 Maleficent*
10 X-Men: Days of Future Past*
11 Thor: The Dark World*
12 Dawn of the Planet of the Apes *
13 The Amazing Spider-Man 2*
14 Godzilla (2014)*
15 22 Jump Street
16 How to Train Your Dragon 2*
17 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)*
18 Divergent*
19 American Hustle*
20 Neighbors

*Notes movies based on books or comic books
**Notes movies eventually inspiring books.

Fifteen out of the top Twenty movies were based on books with the majority being based off comic books. I feel like this is the case because a lot of these comic book fans, or just fans of the comic book movies, have a huge cult following. I've never read a comic book before, but it is fun to read up on the backgrounds of these bad guys and find out tid-bits about Spider-man's abilities. Also, you'd hear talk of these books like 'The Hunger Games'  and you wanna see what all the craze is about. The only book on this list that I found had made a book afterwards was 'Frozen'.
I don't think only popular books are made into movies, but they probably have the better chance to make it to the box office. For a business like Fox or Sony, you'd figure a book with a great following will translate into dollars signs at the theater. When you have a favored book like 'The Hobbit' (Plus the Lord of the Rings trilogy by Peter Jackson prior) these Executives know they can fill the seats.
After the movie is made I'd say the book sales may increase due to the people who enjoy reading and want the story in it's full glory. I can't definitely say whether I think people are done with the story after they see the movie, but I can voice personally that I usually don't read the novel after I see it at the cinema. There are special cases for this for me like 'Fight Club' and 'Limitless'.
Therefore, I think that for the people who go out and buy the book to read, they must have really enjoyed the movie. Overall, I think movies overshadow books. It is much easier to view a 2-hour movie than read a book that might take you a week depending on your availability, focus, intrigue, and reading speed. Apparently 'American Hustle' and 'Divergent' were based on books, but i still won't be driving to the store and purchasing them.

12-hour Media Deprivatoin

I started my challenge of depriving myself of all media at 7 AM on a Wednesday morning. During classes I didn't really notice that media wasn't available for my use. As soon as I was done with classes for the day, it hit me. I never noticed how many times a day I check my twitter feed or probed Bleacher Report for the newest sports updates. I found myself feeling out of the loop. Television wasn't as tough to go without because I mostly watch sports and I could spare one day of games.

I had to find ways of filling my time when I arrived home and realized I had nothing to do. I opted to go for a jog, go run chores with my roommates girlfriend, and eventually took a nap. One of my roommates said at one point that, "I was acting hysterical." I was bored and singing aloud to occupy my time.

All media isn't necessarily bad, I just feel like maybe society gets a bit caught up in it. The era we live in is dependent on media and technology. Finding a balance between finding the newest cat picture on Facebook and enjoying the world that is happening right in front of you. Educating yourself on the events happening in the world on CNN isn't terrible at all. On the other hand, neither is having a conversations with your friends at Buffalo Wild Wings without having your face buried in your phone.

-As for me, I have 12 hours of twitter feed I need to catch up on.