Lance Kay

This semester I have learned a lot in this class that I can take with me the rest of my life, even though I am not pursuing a career in journalism. The main skill I learned in this class is to have good punctuation and making sure everything is in the AP style format. These skills I have developed go beyond journalism and can be translated to other jobs and day to day life. With these skills I have developed, I can set myself apart from the pack of people that don’t use good punctuation or AP. This class has been very helpful for me and I am glad I have a better knowledge of the media and everything that goes along with it.

After scanning all 3 of these sources I found an article over the highly controversial. Johnny Manziel and other SEC football players were put in a study where they examined how much money is spent on SEC football players. After conducting the survey they found that SEC football players make $60000 more than other players in there perspective confrences. This just shows how the SEC in particular gives their star players more money for their school just because they play football. They also did the same study on normal college students and found that the university average for non-football playing college students only get around $16000 from there perspective school. This brings up the argument whether or not college football players are already compensated enough and shouldn’t have any more money given to them by the school or other sources. The article also brings up the fact that so many college football players get arrested and that convicts don’t deserve compensation. You can say the same thing about professional athletes as well though because the arrest rate in the NFL is just as high as college football if not higher. No matter what side you are on this is a very controversial issue and has even caught the attention of European continent.

Me and my partner are researching scandals in college football. The two biggest topics we will be focusing on will be the oklahoma state football scandal and the Johnny Football autograph scandal. Both of these were big time news and represents just a small percentage of what corruption has been going on in the sport. Teams across the nation continue to pay athletes and give them incentives even though it is against NCAA rules. Most teams defend their actions by saying every school does it and you have to follow suit if you want to be competitive. Along with examining these two scandals, we will also be evaluating whether the NCAA is in the right for making these rules regarding compensation of athletes and steps that could be taken to not totally eliminate the rule but to go to an Olympic Standard. This standard would make it to where schools can’t pay the athletes but the individual athlete can go out on their own to get sponsors and make money. Universities and the NCAA make millions of dollars off top athletes in revenue from ticket sales to jersey sales. It’s our goal to expose the NCAA, universities, and athletes to determine who is right in all of this and to see if there is some sort of middle ground that can be attained.

The business I would start would be called Lance’s Guns & Ammo and it would be located deep in the heart of Texas down in Austin. In order to run a successful gun store in the most liberal part of Texas, we will need a great public relations strategy in order to succeed. The strategy my company would take would be to show people the safety benefits of having guns and how criminals should not be the only ones with fire-power and that people need guns to protect them and their families. I will build a family oriented image around my gun store and will specialize in selling small hand guns so people can conceal them in public.

My press release would be about how we are making guns small enough to fit in women’s purses so they can protect themselves when they are walking the streets alone at night. I would send all the traditional media outlets to this event but would focus mainly on papers and magazines that women read so they can hear about having a gun for protection.

We would not need that strong of a social media presence in order to succeed but we would probably need a strong online presence to do so. We need to make all our weapons and beliefs to be published on the internet so people could come in and see what gun they want and how we want them to have it for protection. We can also start up a blog on our website where people can go to post success stories about how having a gun protected/saved their lives.

To promote my business we would have a protect your right to bear arms day, where we would give discounts on pistols that are generally bought by families for protection and have people come out and sign a huge banner that says they support the right to bear arms. Also we would have a gun safety demonstration going on during this day to make our company image look even better.

If the main paper in Austin wrote an article about how my company is protecting families by arming them, then I believe this would help make my business even more successful. In order to get the editor to write a story about this I would make a power point presentation showing the benefits of carrying a gun and how it makes families safer.

One last way I would use PR to promote my business is to donate some guns to the local police in order to show potential customers that I really do support protection for citizens by giving the protectors weapons.

All in all I believe my company would be successful because I know how to use PR to work in my favor and would drive in more clients than other competitors in the area.

This weeks media outlet I analyzed was NPR. This a very famous news source that has articles and audio clips you can listen to in order to learn about the news. I chose to analyze the Saturday weekend edition for this source and the date is November 2, 2013.

When you get to the website you see it’s set up like every other outlet we have looked at with the main news story on the first page and a bunch of options on top to chose what type of news topic you want to look at. Some topics that are on this website are news, arts & life, and music.

The top story on the weekend edition was about Paramount Records and African American music. This story was about a furniture company that recorded all the top African American blues and jazz performers in the 1920’s. Sadly the label folded 15 years later, even with an all star cast of musicians. Another article I looked at was about a competition on the U.S.S. Lincoln to write there 272 words on the Gettysburg address. The last article I looked at was about how polio in Syria may be more deadly than the three year war they have been fighting.

I believe the audience for this outlet are adults that are well cultured. This isn’t a traditional media outlet and has a lot of stories I would not find interesting myself. After a first look I would have to say people over 30 would be the majority of the population that scans this news source and it definitely doesn’t appeal to me.

When going through these websites I learned a lot about what is legal and what isn’t when you are putting a picture, video, or music on your blog. Some 0f the things I have learned are as follows: It doesn’t matter if you link back to the source and list the photographer’s name, if the picture is not full-sized (only thumbnail size is okay), if you did it innocently, if your site is non-commercial and you made no money from the use of the photo, if you didn’t claim the photo was yours, if you’ve added commentary in addition to having the pic in the post, if the picture is embedded and not saved on your server, if you have a disclaimer on your site or if you immediately take down a pic if someone sends you a DMCA notice (you do have to take it down, but it doesn’t absolve you..)

Some things you can do to avoid this are: If you’ve been using images without approval from the internet on your blogs, know that you are probably violating copyright and could be sued for it. Search for photos that are approved for use. Take your own photos and share the love. Use sites like Pinterest and Tumblr with caution. Assume that something is copyrighted until proven otherwise. Spread the word to your fellow bloggers.

My theme for my images is doctors.

This is okay to use because it’s from a website that gives out free pictures.

This one is also okay to use because it’s from a free website.

This one is also okay to use because it’s from a free website.

This a link to a free music website.

http://www.epitonic.com/#/artists/asap-rocky/

This week the news outlet I am evaluating is the Dallas Morning News. Being from Dallas I am very used to seeing and very occasionally reading this paper. My parents, on the other hand, read this paper every day and talk about things they read in it. From listening to their conversations I feel like I could be an expert on a lot of issues they talk about in this paper. The date of the paper I evaluated was October 26, 2013.

When I got to the Dallas Morning News website I found, just like every other news outlet we have evaluated, the website was set up the same way. It had the top story on the first page and a bunch of other stories that are important as well. At the top you can go up and select a category on the topic you want to read about. The types of topics I saw were news, opinion, business and a bunch of other news related topics.

The top story on the website was about a girl that has a hard time believing that good things last due to the abuse she experienced when she was little. To cope with this depressed feeling she has, the girl in the article turns to food to make her feel better. The article says that when food is not around she gets nervous and always has a pack of poptarts in her drawer next to her bed. Another story I looked at on this website was about Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux being interested in the head coaching job with the Detroit Tigers. The final story I looked at was about Jerry Jones saying in an interview he was more nervous about Reggie Bush playing the Cowboys this sunday then mega-star Calvin Johnson on the Lions.

The audience for this paper is for anybody 18 and up in the Dallas area even though most people that read this paper are in the work force. This media outlet appealed to me just as much as any other big cities media outlet could due to the fact that I don’t particularly like reading the paper.

This week we turn to the Washington Post to learn more about the Watergate Scandal and Bob Woodward before we hear him speak next week. I thought this article was really interesting and especially how it incorporated Facebook in the article.

Watergate was a huge scandal during Richard Nixon’s Presidency and ended up forcing him to resign. This article is mainly here to inform people about Watergate but hasn’t been updated in a while. All in the information in this article just lets people know what was going on at the time. The Facebook timeline helps us better understand where and when things happened during this scandal. It’s crazy to learn in these articles how little people trusted the U.S. during this scandal but really can we blame them. When you have corruption that high up in the government one can safely assume that the rest of the government is corrupted as a result.

This website and articles don’t only explain what happened during the scandal but talk about Bob Woodward and his partner and what they did to help break this scandal. Both of these men are shown to be great journalists that do whatever it takes to break the story and keep the U.S. informed. This should be a hero’s tail for all other journalists to strive to be like.

Overal I feel like I have learned way more about Watergate and Bob Woodward and feel like I am more prepared to hear him speak next Tuesday.

The story I chose to read was Tending to Muslims Hearts and Islam’s Future by Andrea Elliot. This article talks about a muslim Hitch (hopefully you have seen this movie so you can understand my analogy). This guy started this program where he allows a muslim man and woman to meet in front of him and get to know each other. He does this because in the Muslim religion two people of the opposite sex are not allowed to spend alone time together unless they are married. This has been a successful business for this man and has helped many people of the Islam faith find love and get married.

An example of a lead in this story is a contrast lead. He states that Christian singles and Jews both have ways to meet up and date but Muslims do not because of their rule that they aren’t allowed to be alone with a member of the opposite sex until they are married.

The nut graph in this story is as follows :“Christian singles have coffee hour. Young Jews have JDate. But many Muslims believe that it is forbidden for an unmarried man and woman to meet in private. In predominantly Muslim countries, the job of making introductions and even arranging marriages typically falls to a vast network of family and friends.” This is also where I found the contrast lead for this article. This is the nut graph because this explains the value of the story to the reader. It states why this article was written and what it is about.

There are descriptive graphs all over this story. One of the examples is: “The family lives in a spare, dimly lighted apartment two blocks from the mosque. Headscarves are piled over Pokémon cards. The gold-painted words “Allah is Great” are framed over a threadbare couch. In the next room, an “I {sheart} New York” bumper sticker is slapped on the wall.” This describes the persons apartment and how much of the Muslim faith is tied into the decoration of the apartment.

There are seven quotes throughout this story that help add to the credibility of the story.

In this story there were plenty boring but important parts. An example is the descriptive graph I stated above. This part is important to the reader because it lets you get to know a typical person of the Islam faith. However, it is really boring to read about all the stuff that they have in their apartment.

The ending of the story was very good and tied the whole story together well. In fact the whole story was written well and tied together effectively.

If I had to say I got anything out of the story I would have to say that received some information. I wasn’t very interested in reading this story but it is some very useful information to know if you were ever on a game show and they asked you a question about it. All kidding aside though, this story has a lot of information that some people could find useful and interesting. I just don’t find it interesting.

I liked how the story had a bunch of quotes which, for me, made it a really credible story. I like stories that have a backbone and allows the reader to really get different perspectives in the article. I did not like how long this story was though. This story could have been shrunk substantially and still had all the quotes and got all the information across.

The media source for I chose for this weeks assignment was the Los Angeles Times. This paper is more liberal than any newspaper I have read in Texas or any other southern state. I evaluated this paper on September 26, 2013. This newspaper is set up a lot like the Dallas Morning News with all the categories at the top and the main stories on the first page. The topics this paper covers is very broad containing politics, sports and so on and so forth.

The top story was about the Dodgers and Giants fans that get violent against each other. In this episode of this saga a Dodgers fan was stabbed to death by a Giants fan. The other articles I looked at involve Louis C.K. and how he doesn’t let his daughters use social media and the other was a television review about the new show on t.v. about the agents of SHIELD.

The audience for this outlet is any adult in all of Los Angeles and college students not so much. This outlet appeals to me a little because I love to read about Los Angeles sports but everything else sucks.