Journal Four

After having my interest in the Wall Street Occupation sparked in class, I've been closely following as many different articles and sources about the incident as I possibly can. Oddly enough, one of the best sources for coverage of the occupation isn't even a national newspaper; The Guardian has been supplying almost a new article every day since the protesting really got intense. One of the latest articles is about officer Anthony Bologna and the investigation he faces after videos were released of him questionably pepper-spraying some of the protestors.

This specific article, by Robert Mackey and Karen McVeigh, makes good use of sources to provide as accurate and unbiased of a view as they possibly can. The authors spoke to one of the protestors that was sprayed, as well as the head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, to make sense of the news. However, the person that created the news - the cop in question - as well as the NYPD have not been interviewed. This doesn't seem to be from a lack of effort - many of the articles I have read on the subject seem to say that the NYPD has declined to comment on any of the situations.

What really struck me about this article was the use of video support as an additional source. The article is broken up by two videos, which the authors briefly analyze. These videos show two different perspectives of the incident, and the reader can really gain a sense of what happened from the visuals. Overall, I thought this coverage of the incident was admirable, as it paid a lot of attention to the sources to build the article.

The Baltimore Sun disappointed me this week. An article about loose potbelly pigs finally being captured headlined the website. However, it wasn't so much the subject of the news that had wishing for more, but the lack of sources in the article. While I understand that pigs can't really be interviewed, and therefore the "person" creating the news is eliminated as a source, the journalist only spoke to animal control. After reading the article, I am unsure of where the pigs came from (maybe a farmer is missing two pigs? house pets gone awry?), and I'm unsure what kind of effect the pigs had on a larger scale. There was no source to really make sense of the news for me, and the very brief article was severely underwhelming.

Article One

Beginning on Friday, September 23, service on the G train between the Court Sq. stop and the Bedford-Nostrand stop was suspended by the MTA due to construction, affecting many of the commuters and businesses that live off of the G line.

Starting at midnight on Friday, service on the G train was suspended between the two stops, and is not expected to resume until five AM on Monday morning.

The exact nature of the construction could not be released for security reasons, according to an MTA official. The G train has been down twice within the past week, between different stops, affecting both the Brooklyn and Queens bound routes.

Landon Peer, a nineteen-year-old jazz student at the New School, lives off the Classon stop of the G train and had to face the tough facts of commuting this weekend.

“I had to take the bus, which is very frustrating because they don’t run very regularly,” said Peer. Peer spent the better part of two hours journeying home after a party Friday night. “The MTA did a good job of scheduling the construction on a weekend, as to not mess up the work week, but some of us have places to go on the weekends.” In addition to having to find a new route, Peer struggled with the short notice. Peer said, “The MTA posted the notice on Friday afternoon, so really I had no idea until then that I may have to change my plans this weekend.”

A local restaurant owner off of the Nassau Avenue stop, who would prefer to remain anonymous, was pleased to find out that the G train was down in his direction. “Being close to Williamsburg, I feel that I already lose diners to the restaurants on Bedford Avenue. When the G train is down, more people stay in the community, rather than venturing into Manhattan. More people staying means more diners eating,” he said on Saturday evening.

The G train is notorious for its service, and an online search proves such. On Urban Dictionary, a contributor based definition website, the G train was defined as “annoying, unreliable, and/or weak and a waste of time”, by member “Jobu”. However, the wait is not the only impact of the G train on the community.

Joseph Heathcott, Associate Professor of Urban Studies at the New School, made sense of the effects of a subway line closed for construction. “Disruptions and closures of subway lines have a significant impact on both the local communities along the route and the region as a whole,” Heathcott wrote in an email correspondence. “Short term disruptions can be absorbed economically without too much difficulty, but long term closures or re-routings can cause a ripple effect of economic problems (not to mention hardship and inconvenience to commuters).”

The G train is scheduled to resume service between the Court Sq. and Bedford Nostrand stops early Monday morning. No further construction is currently posted for the G line.

Journal Three

The first article I found interested me most not because of the content, but because of how much I gained from the comments. After having such a negative outlook on comments being enabled on online articles, this article proved me wrong in that respect. The article is titled "Chinua Achebe forces 50 Cent to rename movie", and it was written by Sean Michaels for The Guardian. The article itself is very interesting, as I had no idea that 50 Cent is, basically, producing an entire movie. I also remember reading "Things Fall Apart" by Achebe in high school, and agreeing that 50 Cent should have to alter the title of his movie to be different than the very influential book. The comments in this article actually provided more information for me than the article.

At first, I was in such agreement that 50 Cent should have to change the title; there's a special place in my heart for both literature and Achebe's book, and not so for film. However, from the comments I gained the information that there is no copyright on titles, which I had not known before and which was not mentioned in the article. For the most part, the commentary was knowledgeable and even included cited information. One commenter mentioned and cited a Guardian article written earlier in the week, discussing the lack of copyright and how authors are running out of titles that haven't already been used. Another commenter mentioned other places where the phrase "things fall apart" has appeared, informing me that maybe Achebe wasn't so original when he created the title.

Of course, there were the discouraging comments - comments dissing 50 Cent based on his looks, with slight racial leanings. It's unfortunate that the comments that are so intelligent are followed by ones of much lesser intellectual value.

After discussing the deterioration of top-tier news, and the influence of the Associated Press, I stumbled across a perfectly frustrating example of this on my own local news site. The article is titled "Seemingly drunk Swedish moose found stuck in a tree" and it's from the AP. The first thing that frustrated me about this post is that it was on the front page of the WBOC site. Really, Delmarva? Is this what counts as front page news? First, it has absolutely no effect on anyone - at least, anyone in Delmarva. If anything, it's a cute and kitschy story that should be featured elsewhere. Perhaps there was nothing more serious, more first page worthy. However, I find that hard to believe, with as many issues as Delaware alone has. I feel that this may be an example of the financial difficulties that have fallen on local news sources. It could be that WBOC simply does not have the money to pay reporters to go out and dig up news, to do research into more pressing issues. This could be why they chose to use such a silly "filler" story. I was just entirely frustrated by this short, stupid article, and the fact that it involves people halfway across the world. Quite honestly, it shouldn't have even been news outside of the small town in Sweden where it happened. This article only shows the lack of resources lower-tier papers now have.

Journal Two

The Huffington Post has proved to be one of my favorite resources for news on the internet. I feel that, for the most part, the Huff Post manages a good balance between news and opinion. However, I recently read an article that was somewhat frustrating in its subtle insertion of opinion over fact.

David Bromwich, a Professor of Literature at Yale, wrote an article entitled "What 9/11 Makes Us Forget"on the Saturday before September 11. The article is tricky - there are a lot of books quoted, people quoted and factual information interspersed with very bold claims and accusations. The quotes Bromwich chooses to use in the article are largely one-sided and contribute mostly to the point he is trying to make. There are whole paragraphs dedicated solely to Bromwich's ideas about September 11, 2001 and the "disgusting" politics involved. I think that this may be an opinion piece, however it is categorized under "Politics News", and can be found on the front page of the site along with other news stories. This caused confusion and I could only assume that this was meant to be a news piece as well as an opinion piece. This piece is so strongly biased and strongly opinionated that, although I may agree with some of the things it is saying, I cannot take it to be good journalism.

An article that I really enjoyed reading based on its "truthiness" is by John Dorschner for the Miami Herald, titled, "Undocumented Immigrant and federal fugitive costs taxpayers $350,000 at Miami-Dade hospitals". The first thing that struck me about this article was the fact that the author chose not to use the term "Illegal Immigrant". Using such a term would have immediately had negative connotations and readers would have immediately had a certain idea about the subject of the article. I feel that Dorschner tried to handle the article in as unbiased a way as he possibly could. Throughout the article, Dorschner handles his subject, who is illegal and a criminal, by fact, in a very fair and unbiased way. He presents all the facts, using quotes from outside sources to present a story. He doesn't only use quotes from one source, or sources leaning entirely in one direction, but uses multiple different views to help strengthen the news. He even uses the subject's wife in his article which, although may lean towards one side, presents a view opposite to those expressed by the people the criminal took advantage of. Two sides of the story are shown, and all opinions are supported by quotes and factual information, making this a reliable and dependable source of news for me.

In my weeks of following different sources for news, I've found that the most dependable sources, and the ones I go back to most often, are the sources that cover all the bases and use facts and varied quotes to back up any claims. The sources that promote a general "truthiness" and a certain fairness are the ones I find to be most respectable in journalistic endeavors. I will not stop reading pieces that are more opinionated or biased, however I will take them with a grain of salt and understand the differences between honest and dishonest journalism.

Journal One

The first article I'd like to comment on is from the Baltimore Sun, the regional newspaper I will be following most closely all semester. It is titled, "Visitor estimates show flat summer season for Ocean City". This article sparked my interest because it is relevant to my life, as I live and work in Ocean City during the summer, and the amount of tourists directly affects my job. What I noticed after reading this very brief article was the lack of quotes. It provided the necessary information (amount of tourists on popular weekends, specific events) in a very concise manner. However, I feel that there could be a more personal side to the story, and that the lack of quotes or input from local business owners, etc. stripped away the important part of this story - the amount of visitors directly correlates with people's lives. The only quote mentioned was from Ocean City's communication manager, Donna Abbott, and I feel that her brief quote showed only one view on the decrease in crowds in Ocean City. This story also was not written in the inverted pyramid style, as it had a sort of limp lede, only touching on what was about to be said in the article. After reading this article, I searched for even more localized news to see if there were any other articles commenting on the tourism issue in Ocean City. The most related articles I could find from both the Ocean City Today and Ocean City Dispatch focused more on Hurricane Irene and the effects of the Hurricane rather than its effect on tourism.

The second article I chose to focus on came from The Guardian and is titled, "Plane from Pakistan to UK forced to land after bomb threat". It sparked my interest because of the very near ten-year anniversary of 9/11. I was surprised to see that the bomb threat involved planes from outside of the country, not traveling anywhere near the United States. Much like the first article I mentioned, this article was written very concisely, providing exact numbers and times for the emergency landing. This article really cemented the importance of facts for me - it seems that important news stories all require concise factual statements. What put me off about this article was the fact that it seemed to build suspense for something that may not be of any worry. Although I understand that information may not yet be available to the author, the journalist left out the fact that everyone was okay, and that no bomb was found. It seemed almost to be stirring a bit of a scare, with the chosen quotes and the information that was incorporated. I still had many questions after reading the article, and I feel that some of them could've definitely been answered but may have been chosen not to. While I understand the importance of being cautious and proactive with bomb threats, especially so close to the anniversary of something so momentous, I'm not sure if the journalist handled to story as well as they could. It seemed very much to have a negative air, rather than one of security.

Assigment One: due Sept. 7, 2011

Brooklyn, NY – On the evening of August 31, 2011, the skies over Greenpoint were lit up with lights from an unidentified flying object (UFO), witnessed by several residents of the neighborhood, who only later discovered the object to be a blimp, advertising DirecTV.

Several residents were seen walking down Meserole Avenue in the direction of the lights, pointing and causing some commotion on the usually quiet street. Miles away, the distance contributed to the confusion about what the object truly was. Concern was raised when the blimp, which had been hovering in one place for about ten minutes, began to move in a wide circle. It disappeared behind taller buildings before reappearing in full view over Meserole Avenue. The lights of the blimp, which had remained a solid white, began to strobe several colors – green, red, and blue – reminiscent of UFOs seen in science fiction and fantasy movies for years. Confusion was raised when commercial planes were seen taking off near the blimp, rising miles higher.

“It shouldn’t have been flying so low,” Dylan Demanski of 189 Meserole Avenue said of the blimp. “That’s what really confused me – other planes were flying by, going higher, and this thing just kept hovering, lower than anything else in the sky.”

Demanski said he questioned his neighbor about the blimp when he arrived home and found Demanski pointing at the sky. Demanski’s neighbor said that there had been some reports of strange activity in the skies over Greenpoint the previous weekend, during Hurricane Irene.

Only later was it discovered that the unidentified object was a blimp, through the most unusual means – Facebook. A photo was posted of Demanski looking towards the sky, taken by his roommate. The caption of the photo said, “UFO sighting in BK?” Within the hour, an unknown friend had commented on the photo saying, “IT WAS A BLIMP ADVERTISING DIRECT TV!” Through social media, the mystery of the flying object was solved – but not everyone was so pleased with the fact that the UFO was merely a commercial blimp.

“It’s been like my lifelong dream to see a UFO. It really has,” Demanski said in the aftermath of the sighting, admitting to being quite disappointed when he was told the unidentified flying object was only a blimp.

“It looked, at least from where we were standing, like it was a discus. It had strobing lights, so I didn’t really know what to think,” another Meserole Avenue resident, Mercedes Beach, said of the blimp.

Both spent at least an hour outside on Meserole Avenue, staring in awe at the sky and speculating on what it could possibly be. While their fantasies may have been dashed by the discovery that the mysterious lights were only those of a blimp, Demanski and Beach handled the news with a grain of salt.

“I knew it wasn’t really a UFO,” Beach admitted with a shrug. “That stuff is for Hollywood blockbusters, not for far out Brooklyn.”