Focus: Lecture - Investigative Journalism

Another deep look at a very interesting topic of journalism - investigative journalism. Investigative journalism has a very crucial role to the news industry, because it acts as a medium to discover truth, to discover things people wouldn't normally know or see. We get to see the facts and opinions inside a certain topic or story, and we can identity lapses between media. One thing to point out though is that investigative journalism is distinctive from police investigation.

Bruce introduced us 5 "IN"s of investigative journalism:

• Intelligent: something that is well thought out, and how it fits into sinister things
• Informed: journalist is briefed on the facts, otherwise it will be missing out the story
• Intuitive: having a fresh mind
• Inside (intimate): something like a real story behind average media coverage, and sometimes getting into people's lives
• Invest: being an investigative journalist, you have to invest yourself into there, the whole scope, but still need to draw the line between good and bad moral values

Investigative journalism is a deep subject, and there are quite a few deeper meanings behind this name.

• Critical/Thorough: Journalists have to be an active participant of the investigation, the key idea of this is to have active intervention to a topic, and put in substantial effort to it
• Custodians of conscience: The investigation has to meet up to the society's moral view and give exposure to something bad, and let the public to observe and examine the issue
• To provide a voice for people without them: Public interest is the main objective and we need to give power for the powerless, and voice for the voiceless
• Watchdog/4th branch of the government: Looking at the doings of a government and ensure free flows of information that is needed for a democracy, the role of a function of democracy is important to interrogate judiciary, executive and legislature

An investigative journalist has to be like a "shoe leather", and standing back to see the big picture of the whole issue, and most importantly, take nothing for granted. Be always sceptical and do not believe in everything you see.

John Pilger, an Australian investigative journalist has a very nice sum-up for it: "It's not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and myths that surround it."

Interestingly, investigative journalism not only exist in the past as well, but they have done tremendously great deed to the society. It's like a trailblazers that leads us to the modern method of investigative journalism.

Several men throughout the history, like Edward Smith Hall, W.T. Stead, Bob Woodward, and surprisingly, Julian Assange has given breakthroughs towards the society. It is not like they have completely change the course of history, but major adjustments to the society like law change for the Age of Consent are made because of investigative journalism. And they helped uncovered some never-before seen and known facts and truth about the world, like what Wikileaks does to uncover the inner workings of governments.

Nowadays, we tend to do investigative journalism in a much more subtle, localised way. ABC's Australian Story is a prime example of this, the programme leads the audience to the daily lives of a normal person, and give us insights about something we might have overlooked.

However, we aren't always exactly sure about what we investigate. But there's an old journalism saying, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." That means we have to check all the facts, assume absolutely nothing, and of course, don't trust whistleblowers as they might be misleading and sometimes, crazy even.

So, with all these knowledge we just learnt, how about something practical that we can apply to our jobs? There are several methods that are mentioned in the lecture, on different types of investigation interaction. Some of them are holding at a high moral standards, but some are just the opposite:

• Interview
• Observation
• Analysing documents
• Briefings
• Leaks
• Trespass
• Theft

However, with the advent of technology recently, we seemed to take Wikipedia and Google for granted. Easy, convenient access to information we need. However, this is of course not the case prior to their existence. Again, this goes back to the "not taking anything for granted".

So, what are the threats investigative journalism is facing?

One of them is being Online News. Because there are less money involved in the online news business, that means news companies may not be able to employ a lot of journalists, making less news and having less time, resulting in a lesser investigative journalism.

The other thing we fear is the "Public Relationship" field. PR is all about bonding the public with the clients and in this case, government or corporations. They provide selective facts just to give the public a persuasive image of themselves, putting all truths behind the bars. This is exactly the opposite we journalists would like to see. If PR continues to grow, we would result in a shrinkage of quality journalism. No exposure, dodging questions, massaging "talent", and cleaning up stories leave us no way to intervene and investigate. They are literally our "cause of death" in quality journalism.

But will the future of social media and paywall save us from all these nasty things? Probably, as I've said this several times before in the lecture blog entries, the audience is the most important part because if they prefer crap news and crap investigations, we can't help but falling into the culprit of horrible journalism. But if our audience wanted to be a well-informed, critical, and open-minded bunch of scholars, they can change the whole story.

D.

Focus: Lecture - News Values

It's a pity that I've missed the lecture due to some personal clish-clashes, but here it is!

What is "News Values"? What are the underlying factor that makes news, valuable? In this theory-oriented lecture, you'll be able to find it out.

In journalism studies, there are 4 categories to define News Values:

1. Impact
2. Audience Identification
3. Pragmatics
4. Source Influence

In short, News Values is "the degree of prominence a media outlet gives to a story, and the attention that is paid by an audience". So if a story is without any value, people will not care about it, and media outlets like newspaper will not use up a page to report it. Simple!

News are like a surprise present for readers every day because it gives us an impact on what happened during the day, and with their information we get to know everything around us.

But people are sometimes selfish, they wouldn't care about anything unless it is related to them. To make a news piece valuable, it has to locate its audience, to get them interested about what's happening in the world.

To make a story valuable, the ethics and practice on how to report it also makes it valuable or not. A journalist has to write in complete facticity, also not to mention about their ways of investigating the story, which could determine the outcome of it.

Public relations has a hateful relationship with journalism because of its influence to the neutrality of journalism. PR is done with controlling the facts and truth behind a client whereas journalism is practiced with true and factual reporting. For a journalist, it is very hard to get over the PR people to get the truth behind all the spinning stunts.

News Values are held differently across the globe, in which values are different between news services and cultures. However, there is a simple definitive value that we all use commonly:

Most newsworthy information will be put in the front

Important details are followed immediately

...finally, general information are put at the end

To put in perspective, it's like an up-side-down triangle, where the most eye-catching topics will be put forward, and leave in information by the end of a story, allowing audience to do their own follow up.

There are a few examples in the lecture which perfectly depicts how this works:

"If it bleeds, it leads!"

Simply meaning if something relates to death, injuries and crime, the story will instantly become "newsworthy"

"If it's local, it leads!"

For Brisbane, if a story is about local affairs like Footie, flooding, ongoing case of Daniel Morcombe and duck race fund-raising for cancer research, they all go straight onto the front page.

But how does an organisation/institution shape their own distinctive News Value? To be honest, this "sense of news value" is the first quality of editors because they determine how the news are reported and published, as told by Harold Evans, who worked as the editor of the Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981. And they have the job to filter anything unwanted and give out anything that is newsworthy.

Newsworthiness is an interesting topic that's mentioned in the lecture. It's included more than 12 kinds of News Values and each of those are associated with what kind of stories in nature they are. They include, but not limited to: negativity, closeness to home, recency, currency, continuity, uniqueness, and so on. Some news pieces can be in more than one news value, that means they are not mutually exclusive. The additivity, the complementarity, and the exclusion of a story also benefit itself into something newsworthy, and these are hypothesised by Galtung & Ruge. (hmm, researches are always done in a "partner" arrangement)

However, this is not universal, as other scholars have also hypothesised in another method in which news values are differently categorised. For example, Goldings & Elliot's News Values. But in general, they can be summarised as follows:

1. The power elite
2. Celebrity
3. Entertainment
4. Surprise
5. Bad news
6. Good news
7. Magnitude
8. Relevance
9. Follow-up
10. Newspaper agenda

So, what are the threats of News Values? In short, three main points:

• the bad, lazy and incompetent journalism;
• PR influence and the ensuing tabloidisation;
• and hyper-commercialisation.

These are the threats that makes news values not valuable anymore, in which people nowadays don't want to watch TV news, read newspapers and listen to radio because they think these journalist bastards are just reporting crap every day: they don't dig into the fundamental problems in the society, they don't inform us about concerns, they no longer provide an appropriate outlet to educate people on a certain issue.

But we can all change this by selectively choose our own trustworthy news outlets and be a sensible and well-informed reader. Even if the world has only one true, honest news company, we will follow them whether they may go.

D.

Focus: Telling Factual Stories

Graham Pamping - The Blind Busker

People rushed and walked through Queen Street Mall, seemingly having their own destination to go to, and people are having such fun on meeting friends at this special place. Shops are all open and crowded with shoppers, for the people who can afford, and window shoppers, who can only look and desire.

There are a lot of things happening in the Queen Street Mall. There are so much to look for. Sometimes we would see people singing on the street while playing guitars, people playing magic tricks, people playing soccer ball tricks, and the crowds would stop by and have a look at them, give them applause, and some might even give them money in return. Even though, people tend to walk past from something so piddling, yet so significant. The presence of buskers has given the Mall much more vibrance, much more character, and become much more symbolic. But imagine, you could only hear them, but not to see them, while being one part of this.

The admiring fact about busking is that people who do this do not care about fame, they do not care about how people see them. They just want to have a go, experience the thrills and drops on performing on the street.

Graham Pamping, he is the one who plays saxophone on the street, and he doesn't care about fame, he doesn't care about how people see them. And most of all, he can only hear the sounds of everything happening in Queen Street Mall, and he could not see it - He is blind.

I have the honour to have a chat with him earlier. He shared a little bit about his past and beliefs that he strongly believes in.

Every day, he brings his saxophone and his chair with him, placing them in between the jewellery shop and the bubble tea stall. Then, he sits down, opens his saxophone case and starts to play his tunes.

I have been standing at the corridor next to the jewellery shop as I observe his performance, one song to the other: every time as he finishes a song, he puts his hand into the saxophone case, seek if anyone has thrown in any money. After a while of patting and tapping, he goes back to his saxophone, and plays another song.

As he stopped for a short break, I stepped forward and asked if he would like to have a chat. He accepted so I sat down with him, and have a little talk about him and his story of being a busker.

He has a great history of playing music: he played saxophone for 56 years and he was self-taught, without anyone's help and he used to play in clubs with bands, like those trios we see in movies.

He has a good life. He worked for people on building houses, farms, barns and shops, and he even built his own home all by himself. He had a son, and a wife, living happily in Sunshine Coast.

But things changed as he's lost his only, 18-year-old son, and separated with his wife. Sunshine Coast is the place where he was born, but he suffered depression for a long time after all these trembling memories. Not long after, he lost his eyesight, and he couldn't work anymore. 

He has lost everything in his life - his only son and his wife. Now that he had lost his eyesight, it would be unimaginable for anyone not to think of suicide. But he thought, "I don't want to waste my life just to pity myself, and I want to make the most of my life." So he spent a long time thinking what he could do, what he could try to make way to get out of this... and he moved to Brisbane and started busking.

"I've never busked before," he said. "I didn't know what it's like so I thought I should give it go and see how it would guide me to." Busking seemed to be the only way out he could think of. No one would employ him because of his disability, age, and most of all, the ability to compete with other younger people in the workforce.

He told me that the thing about busking here on Queen Street Mall is that, you have to have a warrant for busking, and without that, you will be fined for $500 for being dishonest. "As for that warrant, it let me to perform here 24/7 and I can even play here at the eighth day of the week." He joked.

The courage of performing in front of no audience is no longer a valid thing to discuss. He told me, "People tend to think buskers are daredevils but I could say I'm not. I played saxophone for 56 years and I don't see why I can't perform in front of the public. I've been playing here in Queen Street Mall for 24 years now and I don't really have anything bad happened on me. No one's going to bash me away for a wrong note and people can just walk away, whether they like it or not."

"People don't realise the full potential of themselves because they haven't even tried," he told me. "Everything is all about doing it yourself. I've built my own home, I've built other people's home, I've dealt with depression on my own without counsellors. Everyone can listen to you but they couldn't help you. The only person that can help yourself if your own."

Being a younger generation, I realised people don't used to work on their own house project anymore, they don't know how to fix their cars and home appliances. I asked him what are his views of youngsters nowadays are reluctant to try anything, as if being protected by a form of "bubble". He answered, "Kids these days should try everything you want to try but too afraid of stepping out the first step. The main thing about that is because they fear, they fear because they don't know if they're going to fail or succeed."

His opinion about fear has led to another topic - religion. He asked me, "What if I asked you to go over to the roof over the building across the street, and I tell you to jump, what will you tell me?" Of course, I replied "no" to him because I don't want to die. "But what really makes you don't want to jump off?" I said because I'm afraid I'm going to be hurt or something, if death is not the concern. It is reasonable that people do not want to get hurt. No matter if it is physically or emotionally. So he finally revealed his answer. "Fear," he said. "Because you are afraid if you are going to hurt yourself. I can say if you jump off and you'll be perfectly fine and walk away afterwards. But no. You are just afraid of the unknown, the uncertainty. The fear that makes you to turn away from yourself."

"Because people are afraid, they started to believe there is an unknown that causes all the disasters on the earth. They fear God, they fear the one with power, and they indoctrinate children with those concept that makes them afraid to take responsibility, risk and determination."

He is an atheist, and like most atheists, he was one whose family brings him to Sunday School and pray for the lord Jesus Christ. "I was once very religious until the day I lost my eyesight." He told me in a cautious tone. "I mean, why did God take away my sight? I didn't do anything to hurt him, I prayed every now and then and I don't understand why he had taken me eyesight. I have done good deeds in order to save myself from hell and yet the God was somehow pissed and simply took away my eyesight. That's unfair. And that doesn't make sense."

"I asked myself, 'Does it really make sense that God has blessed you and saved you?'," He continued. "I don't think so. I think it just utter bull**** and I don't even care about it anymore after I lost my eyesight. I believe religion is just something that's manifested by humans' instinct of fear, the fear of unknown is just toxic. Religious people always debate about how Science is flawed and such, and you know what? Religion is the same, but with more bull****. They create meaningless hatred and fear that is not supposed to be happened."

He believes changing from being a faithful shepherd of God, into a logical and sensible thinker is a good way to change his attitude upon life. "Now I help blind kids how to read Braille, how to use a computer because I use computer to communicate as well. Not because I want to go to heaven, but because I just want to help them to lead their own better lives."

But still, he came across with Mormons every now and then, and they always shove him some flyers to read. "I'd say, bugger off. I don't believe in God. But if they just put down a note without me knowing, I'll find my mate and read it for me, and if I know it's about all those religious crap, I'll just throw it away. Simple."

But he has an opinion about others who helped blind people as well. "Sighted people will never able to teach blind people as good as blind people does, because they simply can't put themselves into our shoes and walk for a mile."

He was helped by many people as he works his way onto the bus back home, and curiously it's mostly Asian. He said the cane is just like his eyes, as well as his hands. People tend to grab him on his arm and leaving a blank space between his "eyes" to the world through the cane. It's like covering eyes with two hands. "That doesn't help anything at all, to be honest," He shook his head. "I sometimes thought, 'why don't you just leave me the f*** alone and let me get onto the bus myself?' But I can't, because this is not nice and people are just being nice to me. So I could only say, 'thanks a lot for helping.' But honestly I don't think I need anyone to help me. I am fine with myself."

After a good hour of talk, I have to leave him because if this goes on and on, he simply couldn't make money out of this, could he?

Just to wrap up, it was just a delightful moment to have conversation to a complete stranger and yet I can know about their past and story in such detail. It was also an exciting thing for me to do alone because this is the first (informal?) interview I did with others in my life. But I think I had to work a way to ask questions in a more indirect but effective ways because I always have this fear on offending somebody, that's no good for an interview where you want the interviewee to give you their details.

D.

Focus: Lecture - Agenda Settings

In the previous weeks we had seen a lot of fancy stuffs on the surface in the world of news and Journalism, but in this week's lecture, we are getting serious and deeper and over the next 3 or so lecture we're going to talk about journalism studies. But today, we're delighted to be introduced on the very backbones of news reporting and a little bit of politics. It's called agenda setting.

Agenda setting, to say it in a few words, is something that is like a theory, but it's also obvious to everyone. It's usually set by news companies and corporations that deliver news to the public audience.

Did you know that our social life has the power to construct a complete different reality on top of its own? It's called Social Construction of Reality. Everyone's perception towards the reality is different, and we are usually influenced by the communication between people and the common language that we use every day. So in short, social life constructs the world as we see it and it mediates us to along on how to come to know and understand the world.

On the other hand, the media has provided a big step on fabricating the known world to us and we wonder... What does journalism has to do with these?

Well, before that, we have to understand that there are 4 different kinds of agenda:

1. Public agenda
2. Policy agenda
3. Corporate agenda
4. Media agenda

Each of them help contribute to the reality and getting the world to work in order. As per this course, we are going to focus on agendas that are important to journalists.

Usually, the more important an issue is, the media will report it in more coverage about it, therefore giving us an impression of priority. Of course, not every incident around the world can be simply reported on a 30-minute news bulletin, so as a journalist, we have to select a couple of news that is noteworthy to the public, and the selection they picked forms a "media reality", and combining with the reality as we've known since we are born, this comes down into the public media.

The big scope of Public Media

By doing this, we have the knowledge about certain things of a certain issue. Also, by doing this, mass media not only merely reflects the reality, but also helps shape and filter it, concentrate it into something we can digest every day.

Let's talk about a little bit of history. The whole idea of agenda comes from the 20s where a man called Harold Lasswell, believes that the mass media injects direct influence into the audience. But consider in that period, the only available sources of mass media are newspapers, radio, films and posters. It's pretty true by that time. But this doesn't stop there, Walter Lippmann in 1922 says that:

"the mass media creates images of events in our minds".

Fascinating. The important part of this quote is "image". Image gives us a big deal of impression about how reality portrays: not only how it works, but also how it represents inside our heads, something we remember dearly on a particular event like 9/11 attack. Also, the use of propaganda:

[...] "helps shape the images in the minds of human beings in support of an enterprise, idea or group. Propaganda can be used to substitute one social pattern or another."

He advised that even with all the critical thinking that helps us from truly judging things using the images in our head, the basis of it is to liquidate judgments, regain an innocent eye, disentangle feelings be curious and open-hearted. Such an influential man. And that means basically, we should not be gullible on things around us because we need to think, analyse and assess the world around us. Simply believing in the reality people shaped is not necessarily useful to our lives.

Well, for what it's worth, what does agenda setting do? What is its purpose?

There are two main levels for agenda setting. One's being the "what" for the public to focus on in the coverage, and the other being "how" for the public to think about the attributes of issues.

To simply highlight them, their purpose is to transfer important news from the new media to the public, to transfer important news for both the issue and other objects such as political figures, and to set the agenda for issue in other media.

Noam Chomsky has once said the real mass media is to simply diverting people from knowing everything, and get them to do something else. This concerns to the facts of media gatekeeping, in which the media controls the exposure of an issue and what is to be revealed next.

Also, the media also has to do something to advocate on a particular issue like promoting "ban smoking" and "AIDS prevention". They provide messages to the public to encourage them to educate themselves.

Being a constant source for audiences, the news agenda has to do cuts on particular topics to leave space for "new" news to come out. That's called agenda cutting. The truth of the world is not represented quite clearly in front of the public (not all the time), and people might be thinking the reality is not as bad as it sounds.

News comes out so suddenly at times where people tend to freak out, one example is when the US President Barack Obama announces the death of Osama Bin Ladin, and the whole world screams out their throats and celebrate on the streets. But look at the time and day when the news is announced. It's on the weekends, and it's at night where everyone is chilling at their homes and places. The decision is made through the diffusion of news, it takes care of when, where and how which an important event is communicated to the public.

An issue can be multifaceted and can be portrayed as several different perspectives, the way how media's portrayal of an issue will often influence the public on how they perceive the message. It can be portrayed in a good side, but it can also be in a bad side. For instance, people's perception towards Indigenous Australians are not constantly in a same form, as some might see them as druggies and thugs, while other sees them as hard-working learners that want to make a change for their communities.

With all these theories going on in the agenda, it does not necessarily represented perfectly in real life as some media consumers might not be as well-informed as others, and some has biased standpoints as others. Also, for those who has made up their minds of standing in which part of the opinion-conitnuum, the news reports will do minimal effect on them.

However, with the recent changes in the news and journalism industry, take 24-hour news cycle for example, the news agenda will not be constant all the time - it changes depending on different situations. It has done a great deal for daily newsreader because not only they can follow the news in real-time, they do not need to make a big sacrifice on changing their stances as a news develops. Politically speaking, the change of agenda setting has the use of pulling pollies into different parts of a chess table, in which the media agenda will manipulate them into doing different roles and having different opinions, help politicians to decide what is important in the community. It definitely affect what they would say and promise during their campaign, and that, in short, the media agenda somehow sets the "agenda" for the campaign.

With such a deep influence to the public as well as different classes of people in the society, agenda setting has undoubtedly creates a whole new dimension of the world where everything is filtered and diluted into a rather unrealistic point-of-view towards the world. Seems like the news has done quite a change to human minds as well. Great lecture!

D.

Focus: Lecture - Public Media

To contrast with last week's lecture about commercial media, we looked at the complete opposite of it, and it's called public media.

But first, in honour of my city, let's take a look at the public media in Hong Kong.

Back in Hong Kong, the only public media organisation I know of is Radio Television Hong Kong, or RTHK in short. They have produced so much interesting contents and feature for the viewers and listeners alike. Not only that, they also help produce education TV programmes with the Education Bureau for primary school students and they used to put them on-air every weekdays. However, they now distribute them online instead of broadcasting on television. RTHK also produce and broadcast programmes and meetings happening in the Legislative Council Building, the place where politicians debate about many issues in the Hong Kong society.

So. What is public media? According to the lecture, it is a media that aims to serve and engage a public, and they support public and the progress of democracy. Every public media should have a public value, a so-called 'public service ethos'. The productions of public media should also of value of public's fee that has given to them, in the case of Australia, it would be taxpayer's money. Not only that, in order to provide high standard content, they have to listen to the public audience as well: they need consultation that is opened to public. They receive fundings mostly from government through taxpayers' money.

The key mechanism of public media is mostly news and current affair (a.k.a. CAFF). The styles on reporting news are mostly serious and very precise, and they tend to not trying to attract audience since they see importance and unbiased standpoint as top priority. Their news are very considered, breaking news usually need to be verified and checked before publishing. However, not everything about public media is news and things happening every day. The programmes they produced can be very entertaining and useful as well. Such as comedies, education, history, entertainment, and everyday life topics (e.g. cooking shows and etiquette). In some countries, they also have the duty to spread propaganda.

Putting side by side with the commercial broadcasting media in Australia, there are 2 main public media organisations in this continent. ABC and SBS. They both broadcast on radios, televisions and online. ABC is the nation's first public broadcasting network. They provide very highs standard news bulletin and discussions, as well as different kinds of contents for audience from toddlers (Giggle and Hoot) to old fellas (Antique Roadshow), while SBS is a multicultural branch that passes intercultural harmony and understanding between each other. They also broadcast foreign news programme from other places in the world, such as Italy and Russia.

Opening shops help generate revenue
to produce high quality content

Sometimes, public media organisations have more than one source of fundings. They would commercialise and sell programmes in DVD and merchandises through their shops. Not only that would help ease the operation of public media, it also provides more resources for them to produce more high quality contents as well.

I think even though commercial media has all the resources and money to create or purchase exciting and audience-driven shows, the inner value is still missing and in my opinion, they are not as honest as public media. Moreover, public media provide news and truth of current affairs that is unbiased, complete and sincere, I believe people should watch and listen more from them, other than watching stuffs that sometimes propagate on one-side's opinion and standpoint. Being a well-informed audience is important and applying their knowledge in everyday life is crucial for developing critical thinking and skills. It seemed like public media is not as boring as other people say at all!

D.

Focus: How low is your balcony railing?

If you've read the news, you would've known there has been several deaths that happened around the balcony area, including the one that happened at my apartment building. So last night, I went to my balcony and took a look at the concrete balustrade of my unit. I measured the height of it and it was surprising low. It measured around 1.5 metres and seemed like I can climb easily over it. Well, I am not really tall, but if a guest who is very tall came by my place, I would certainly advise him/her not to get too close to the edge.

Balconies are quite high from the ground.

In light of this, I've spent some time investigating about how high should a fence like this should be, and the potential hazard of not following the guidelines given by the authorities.

According to my research, there are currently no requirements of legal heights for balcony railings and barriers. Besides of that, there appeared to be also no successful court case that suggest a legal height should be set by authorities. However, some suggestions by others say that the height of a balustrade or barrier should not be less than 1 metre above the floor the barrier is sitting on, or more than 4 metres where a person is able to fall through an open window.

Seeing how loose the government is controlling the last barrier of life, the balustrade of my apartment seemed to suit the suggestions of a potential hazardous balcony for people.

I live in here.

As I mentioned before, the balustrade of my apartment unit was 1.5 metres high and it's made with concrete. No round corners or railings. But that's only the case for lower-level compartments: the ground and the first level to be exact. After these 2 levels however, the barriers are built with glass with metal frames on it. With the handrail sticking together with the glass fence underneath, it is quite a horrible scene for people who are afraid of height to go out and have some drinks with friends. Plus the handrail, as I look at it from the outside, it was round, polished and smooth. Compared to what I have at my unit, which is rough, rigid and squared. I believe from what I've heard from the police that night, the person was fell onto the ground from the 2nd floor. And since there are 2 sides of the building: the front side has a platform at ground floor, and the backdoor side ends at the lower ground level. I would assume the fall would be fatal for the person who fell from the back side the the building, which if counted from the lower ground level, it's at least 15 metres high.

I didn't know exactly which unit the person was in during that night, but I couldn't believe that someone would fall off as easy as that. I reckon the smooth polished railings might be one of the causes.

According to the news article that updated with more detailed information about the incidents happened at Riverfire night, this person lost his balance, fell from his back and plunged three storeys into his death. Such a tragic death that could have been avoided.

Since there are currently no regulations regarding to the legal heights of the barriers at balconies, I believe residents who own a house or apartment unit should take note of the safety issues, especially with recent trend of high-rising apartments.

People who are living in the house, especially children, would easily fall for victim as they may get their head, arms or legs caught in the space between balustrade openings. The gaps between openings are also a cause that leads to falling, as children can fit in them very easily.

For adults, I believe they should always be aware of how high it is from the balcony and the ground. Make sure you beware of that because one would do something foolish if they don't have a sense on how close they are from the balcony's edge and for example, the planking death incident happened earlier when the craze is heating on around Australia. This has to be the stupidest way to die for people who would do foolish things on balconies which ended up to their deaths. Parents should also look after children as they would run around and do anything if no one stops them. Make sure they always stay away from the edge of the balcony, or if it's better, don't allow them to enter the balcony area.

Also, I don't recommend people to drink in front of the balcony, as the alcohol will influence your sense of balance and awareness, that would defeat all the safety measures aforementioned.

As always, keep yourself alert with any dangers, no matter you are outside our at your home. Hazards are potentially everywhere. Be smart and don't be fooled or over-relying on safety measures because even though they're there in your disposal, you might not even have a chance to utilise it since you are not aware of the common sense of protecting yourself from all sort of dangers.

Sources:
Riverfire plunges [Courier Mail]
Planking death [Brisbane Times]
Balcony, Balustrades and railings safety for children [The Children's Hospital at Westmead, NSW]
Australian Standard Building Law (Warning: large PDF)



D.

Focus: Personal Media use and Production Diary (Assignment #1)

An interesting experiment has commenced 2 weeks ago as I tried to find a specific pattern for my media usage. Well, media usage differs from person to person, and I noticed many people has suggested that Facebook is one of the item that we should included. However, since I'm not always ON Facebook, I prefer taking it as a part of my Internet browsing usage. Also, I have categorised them into several sectors: Multimedia (YouTube, videos, music, Podcast, Internet browsing), Circulation (TV and newspaper), and Creation. (Blog, photographs)

I'll highlight a few things that I found interesting in my usage traits.

TV vs Internet browsing

Looking at my table I have filled in for the past 2 weeks, I don't really see much of a surprise for me. I've always been spending tremendous time on Internet since there aren't much to watch on TV unless it's Masterchefs, which usually I would watch while having my dinner. But since it's over now there is this lame Renovator show running, I probably would only watch 6:30 with George Negus and the 7PM Project at night, both are the favourite TV show at night. I don't even watch anything else so I can say the TV's purpose was either watch cartoons or news.

Music vs Video

I'm a music collector, so during web browsing I tend to listening to my music as well, but in some occasion, I'll stop the music when I have to concentrate writing my blog and typing news entries. Video is another sector I really love, because I usually watch movies on my laptop since I don't have a DVD player around, and YouTube videos are always my breakfast TV of choice. Watching YouTuber's new video is the best thing to do to start your day! During weekends when I have more time, I'd watch even more YouTube videos before I get to my first meal of the day, depending on what time I usually wake up.

A funny thing is, as I put it onto a line chart, I found myself having quite a similar trends in the middle of the chart as you can see. Maybe as I watch more video that day means that I would listen to more music?

Internet browsing vs Newspaper

Ha ha ha. I am just proving a point here that I have never picked up a single issue of newspaper for the past 14 days. Well, I don't have a habit on paying $1.5 every day just to feed my consuming needs because I don't really like the feel of the newspaper. After you finish your paper, your hands get dirty and you have to wash it. Unlike Internet version of newspaper, like Courier Mail, Brisbane Times, The Australians, they all have their own website for me to visit. And Mum! Clean hands! They've got all the main news covered there, although you'd have to pay for some some premium content. So I found newspaper is not doing anything for me.

Media creation

I have my own blog but I usually only post once in a few while, because that blog was meant for me to spit out my thoughts about something I am mad at. But the journalism blog that I started out since the 2nd week of uni, I found myself posting almost every day, since I want to treat it as my ground to polish my writing skills. I would spend sometimes over an hour on some articles like Focus and Donny Recommends section. Well, all and all, it's an interesting thing for me to devote in, and I love it so far.

For other kinds of media creation, I take photographs. Quite a lot. But strangely I found myself taking less after I got in uni, but that doesn't hurt me as I only get out in some weekends and take things that I love to see it framed as a picture.

Wrap-up

Detailed chart of my usage in the past 14 days. Click to enlarge!

So there you go! Even though I have to log my media usages, I didn't change my habits in order to make the chart look 'beautiful' or fabricated. I just do my normal routine, and as I finish, I log that in as I go. Again, this is a very interesting experiment I've worked on. I hope I could see how other classmates did theirs and perhaps I'll do a personal reflection on that!



D.

Focus: Planting a bomb or a blossom at your kid's wellbeing and development?

I thought I'd like to share a little story about myself. Looking back, I've always been a nice kid, if not, I am often described by my parent's friends as a polite, patient and well-taught kid. But sometimes in my childhood, I must have done something so mischievous, so raunchy, something that would instantly startled my mother's temper. I remembered some, and most of them didn't end well for me. But looking back now, I don't hate my mum, I just felt I was angry and sad but I didn't really put much blame to my mother.

I know some of my friends, whose mother had never beat them up or using physical violence like sticks hitting and smack on the bum, which I found it is impossible. By impossible, I mean sometimes for a parent, if you do nothing to show your authority to your child, they will not listen to you and years gone by, the child will become more disobedient and rebellious, trying to battle against the upper level of dominance. Showing authority by smacking and punishment is needed for a child's development in my opinion. But as I looked at them, they are perfectly fine and nice, not like those baddies and vandal fiends roaring at you across the street at night.

But at the same time, some parents did offer strict rules and regulations at home and outside home where children has to abide with them or else they will have a serious consequence. Again, children turned out to be nice citizens, but some children are as hard as a rock. No matter how you push them to the east, they will drag themselves toward the west. A saying in Chinese described this very nicely: 'Good advice may sound harsh to the ears' Whenever children have to listen to their parent's constant scolding, they tend to dislike it. Moreover, if you tried to force them to behave in something they refuse to, they will directly turn against you.

Different styles of parenting will not determine how a child will turn out to be in their adulthood, and there is no consistence about which method of child-raising is the best one.

So I realised not every family is using the same method of child-raising, although there are several similarities in concept, every parent do it differently. But things can sometime go off and some parents are often seeking shortcut to resolve their children's bad behaviour.

Is it acceptable for mums to do this to their kids? Let's decide.

Here is a perfect example of a mother telling her boy to not to shoplift. She used a radical measure to counter this problem - by putting him on the street while he's wearing a badge written, 'Do not trust me. I will steal from you as I am a THIEF.'

The thing I found in the article was even though the mother has took him for a tour to the detention centre, a walk in the police station showing him cells and cuffs to hint the consequence of stealing, in order to educate his 10-year-old son to not stealing things from shops, he still performed shoplifting. Well, for a mother dealing with such a troublesome young boy, it must have been frustrating.

Now that she noticed everything she's done was held to be ineffective, she decided to use the concept of 'humiliation' as a punishment for his son's wrongdoing. However, this act has stirred up a heated debate regarding whether his mother's act is doing mare harm than good to his son, as the media reported this incident in the news.

I am not certain about others, but I understand her mother's intention is to use this method to let his son to reflect on his acts of shoplifting. Plus nowadays, children are having much more protection and looking after than the past generations have ever had, making the society believe that other than suggestion or encouragement, every other punishment methods should be banned from using on children, that gives children an overwhelming idea that their parents will not smack them, ground them, or even raise their voice at them.

Giving so much protection and attention from the society, I believe children of a certain age will understand no matter how raunchy they misbehave, they won't be suffering from consequences. This has to be changed and rationalised because if more children are like that, the significance and the influence of parents will be diminished. Saying that this kid will be a criminal and suffer from traumatic mental shift is a bit far-fetched, but I think the society shouldn't criticise this mother's act of tough love. I think she will know and capable to make decision on what best it will be for her son.

Source

D.

Focus: Lecture - Ethics, Codes and Conduct

On this week's lecture, we took a look at how codes and ethics work in the journalism industry. Recently, the industry is criticised as one of the most prominent press in UK, News of the World, was exposed with phone hacking scandals. People questioned their morality and their codes of conduct, whether they have ever respect other's privacy and try to be in a honest news industry. However, they failed to do it.

Now, back to the lecture. Our guest speaker Dr. John Harrison showed us a couple of advertisements including printed form and TV ads. Then he asked us about how ethical or unethical one advertisement seemed to us. Of course, different students has their different views, and so did I. While I found some of the ads are funny, they tend to do it in a rather poor or, may I say, inferior way. The creators of the advertisements like to catch our attention by using shocking content and suggestive material. But of course, not every advertisement is shown in prime time or 'kiddie time' where children watches TV after school or before school. So, there is an existence of the regulation board. Their work is to categorise each advertisement into their suitable on-air window. For printed posters and billboards, they don't have much control over them as everyone who travel past them will look at them. So there is a ethical question that ponders us. How can we tell everything from:

Good and bad?

Ethical or Unethical?

Right from Wrong?

Right, so in the lecture, John introduced 3 main ethical theories to us, which are 'Deontology', 'Consequentialism', and 'Virtue ethics'. And I am fairly intrigued by how consequentialism works.

Consequentialism is all about getting the right outcome, no matter how we did it, and by any means the outcome is the most important thing we should take care of, and 'the greatest good for the greatest number'. Believing how News of the World has followed these rules so closely, they've done something so shocking in a dishonouring and demeaning way, leading to their closure. So, should we just do what we want and don't care about the consequences? A good question to think of.

p.s.: I think John is using a bit too much BLOCK LETTER AND I FOUND IT A BIT CONFUSING TO FOLLOW!!



D.

Focus: Lecture - Telling facts with Sounds

Unlike other lectures we've had in the previous weeks, this one was put online so we can go back home and listen to it whenever we want. It's so flexible for us but I kind of missed the "lecture" feeling where all students are gathering in the room and listen to the speaker. I reckon it's more fun that way.

So anyway, this week we're learning about telling factual stories with sound. Sound, as everyone knows, happened to be on TV, on radio, and now in podcasts. But to be precise this time we will going to learn only pure soundwaves - Radio and podcasts.

Radio itself is a completely different media to TV, where TV is usually where viewers sit on the couch and swtiching channels to see if anything interesting is on, it's more like the content comes to you across the distance. While radio is more like you're driving, you're having tea or something, you'll listen to the radio. You multitask while you're listening.

The important thing about this is to you have to make listeners feel included in the conversation, not just simply talk without anything getting the involved.

Radio shows often have interviews with special people, and as a host you have to be genuinely interested about the guest. Before starting the show, you've got to research and find out something about that person and let him know what to expect in the show, so he/she can be more relaxed and will trust you during the recording/live.

Radio shows has to be interesting, and it needs to encourage people to participate in the show. For example, ask questions on the show, and make it simple so you'll have a faster response from callers. But being a host, you must be standing in different viewpoints depending on your audience. Sometimes you've got to switch your opinion because your viewpoint does not always reflect the ones from the audience. So it's important to remember that.

As a host, your voice and pronunciation affects a lot of people so it is crucial for you to have a correct lingo to use. Or else listeners would feel the show was kind of alienating them.

There are so much to cover in this 2 radio segments and I just couldn't have learnt more from it. Minding you that radio is not dying, it's thriving and it is gradually shifting into a new form of audio - Podcasts. People would subscribe to them if they're interested on it, and radio shows are exactly where it comes from. So in the meaning time both platforms are blending in each other, it will be a fantastical media source for busy people and housewives.



D.

Focus: Baby Einsteins DVD doesn't work at all?

I'm a young man, and young people should do something like partying, having fun, hanging out with mates, while I'm reading articles related to parenting. That is kind of odd I believe. But I am so interested that every time I stumble upon an article about kids and their well-beings, I'll instantly read through it bit by bit, unlike other articles which I usually skim through and see if it worths my time to read it. Maybe I'm just having such a potential to be a good father, or am I not?

So this one that I just read (3-year-old article by the way) was about debating the effectiveness of purchasing Baby Einstein videos where they advertised it will help boosting your little pumpkin's intellect, prepare them for sooner education, or outsmart your neighbour's kid. Since it was so well-packaged into a suite of merchandise, guilty parents who feared they aren't doing enough for their baby flocked to stores and buy them, hoping that by listening to those music and watching those videos will make their baby smarter and maybe become an Einstein in the future,

Parents! Give me your money NOW!

Well this study showed us actually by plonking your infant children in front of these videos may do more harm than good to them! They said, when they put them in front of baby DVDs and videos, they learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos. Wow, shocker. Also this especially affect babies for those aged between 8 to 16 months old, where their language skills and verbalising abilities are starting to form. "The more videos they watched, the fewer words they knew," says Dr. Dimitri Christakis, who worked on this study with the research team at the University of Washington. "These babies scored about 10% lower on language skills than infants who had not watched these videos."

So apparently the more you let your little babies to watch these videos from TV screen, the less they will learn and the more parents paying these disks from their precious, invulnerable wallet, those companies who made all these counter-intuitive materials will earn all the profits from these poor parents, who just want their babies to be a little bit smarter and brighter. Reality is brutal.

So what should the parents do? Well, that's easy! You can just simply spend more time interacting with your little ones, play with them, talk to them, have some fun times and more importantly, stop drilling your babies little brain with those useless DVDs. They learn everything from you, copying your acts, your lingo, just do your best to be a good influence and example. Your grandfather turned out great even without television, let alone flash cards and stuff like these, right?

Source



D.

Focus: Let's log your media consumption/creation!

Hi all, as a requirement for this course's assessment, I have now begun recording my media usuage since Sunday (14th August) and as far as now, I have logged roughly 2 days and now I can see that I'm obviously spending a lot of time on the Internet as that was my (almost) only medium to get information from around the world, and the TV in the lounge room area isn't always turned on.

I have divided them into 3 sections: multimedia, circulation, and creation. I have to write blogs so that counts, and sometimes I will head out and take picture with my camera, and that also counts in the "creation" section. And for multimedia, it's everything, videos (notably from YouTube and Internet; TV shows and movies on my computer, oddly enough), music (songs that I own), Podcasts (I have multiple subscriptions on iTunes so this would be quite a large proportion for me), and general browsing/surfing the web (Facebook which I don't really dig into; reading news online; and many more text and pictures!!)

Let's see how much time will I spend on different kinds of media and how much percentage will each of them represents!



D.

Focus: 2011, a year without leaders?

There has been countless bad news in the year of 2011 and seemingly nation leaders are getting used to these kind of news. For example, debt crisis in the US, even though President Obama has boasted they are still a "triple-A nation" regarding the credit rating, this doesn't change the fact that now America has slid down to AA+ rating.

And for the most recent London riot, the leader of the United Kingdom again seemed to have done nothing to help reverse the economy and employment sectors just to getting UK back on track, thus the riot happened. Of course, there are the opportunist rioters who just deliberately destroying things, but deep within the society, some thing must have triggered the overall riot.

I'm not saying the government is to blame completely, what I meant is all of these things just doesn't come out of nowhere. And the governments of countries should work out solutions of their nation's instability. Leaders' focus is not just boosting GDP and such, but to fix some of our fundamental elements of the country as well. For a developed country, we are starting to have problems that no developing country would've thought could happen. For instance in Australia itself, we have to face the issue to the Malaysian Solution. People will come for refuge since their lives in the developing country simply cannot compare to ours, and because of that, we can't just put them aside and ignore the problem.

This article mentioned about issues span across the chaos around Libya and the phone hacking scandal in the UK, and criticising the judgements and decisions country leaders have made. Nonetheless, things would have been better if they had made the right decisions instead of regressing. And it concludes with the irony that while Libya, Yamen, all of these nations are struggle to demand democracy, the world leaders were simply found "rusting and blunt in our hands"

Source



D.

Focus: Lecture - Telling factual stories with pictures (Week 3)

I am a a big fan of photography, and I own a DSLR which I truly adore. I've learnt a lot about pictures and video editing in my past studies at TAFE, now that in today's class, Bruce has introduced us to the world of pictures in journalism.

The most immediate thing I found is, pictures are everywhere and basically they penetrates your magazines with all those glossy page of advertisements. Pictures, are around us. But how could something we take for granted will be as a part of journalism? Well, basically, the function of a picture is to document a moment or an object. No matter it is being used as billboards or news clip, they have the same purpose.

And throughout history from cave carvings to stained glasses in churches, they are all being used to learn about something, to be observed through our eyes. Since the advent of photography, more of these kind of pictures are blooming, especially for newspaper where in the past they were in plain text, and thanks to the invention of camera, they no longer needed to paint drawings themselves. They will get the picture with just a snap.

Powerful pictures can blew people's mind, like the famous Afghan Girl from Steve McCurry:

Afghan Girl

No one exactly knows when should he/she take a picture in the right moment, and this really depends on either that person's experience, and most of all, luck. If something doesn't happen at all, you won't even have a chance to take that picture.

In the 90s, as technology grows and develop as fast as a bullet train, there is photo-manipulation, edits. Sometimes these images has such an impact to the audience. But sometimes they distort our perspective to certain matters, one of them is self-esteem.

Bruce gave us an example of how ridiculous can a girl put on make-up, had her photo taken, put it into Photoshop, and turned out into a completely "optimised" and modified version of the girl.

From this...

To this...

It was an awe-inspiring lesson. Beside my past knowledge about photography, I think I've picked up a few tips from Bruce and hopefully I will be able to apply it to my photographic skills in the near future!



D.

Focus: Quality journalism?

I came across an article which has a series going on about quality journalism. This project is from the Crikey editors and they wanted to know how some of the most respected journalist think about "Journalism" and its meanings, and its value to them.

This week Leigh Sales from the ABC's 7:30 news report is featured. I read it word by word, and found that surprisingly, some of her reading habits, like reading Twitter feeds and watching breakfast shows on TV, are quite similar of us ordinary "news consumers".

She admits that there are news pieces which are not particularly outstanding, and good pieces tend to come out from all over the place, rather than coming from a consistent outlet. She said she follows individual reporters instead of specific organisations.

Then as I finish reading the article, there comes the comment thread. So as usual I read through some of them. What I discovered is that some people despised her view and her being one of the featured journalist in the series since some of her political views has made them angry about it. But to be honest, since I don't really understand politics and whatnot, seems like the people are still hating too much about a person. She's come here and contribute about her views on journalism, and didn't speak about her views towards politics and parties, at least as far as this article goes, so I think the commenters all have to settle down and objectively discuss about her ideas and thoughts, not by her political views, since this article is not about politics, but journalism, right?

Source



D.

Focus: Lecture - First lecture!! (Week 1)

Oh, I should have mentioned about the first week's lecture before the 2nd one! But well, the first lecture was started before the blog so here it goes!

The first lecture by Bruce was fun as. Mainly because for a rookie like me who hadn't even started to understand the basics of journalism, I found all the ideas and thoughts are fresh and provoking. My expectations before I took the course was so great and now it's even getting greater!

Here's a very brief quote from Henry R. Luce, who was an influential publisher, said, "I became a journalist to come as possible to the heart of the world." And I thought, hey, that is so true. The spirit of journalism is to get into the very fabric of social life, and telling people about it in every accurate fact possible. Understanding every aspect of the world, on how people connect and create a new story.

But with the recent years, so much noise is around journalism making it become a side-job or if you will, a dirty job. Tabloids, sensationalism, and gossip stories are, in my opinions, polluting the whole ecosphere of journalism, and I understand without them, people might not be interested on reading something that is originally boring and tedious. But for me, journalism is a very high standard profession and people shouldn't take the job lightly. I believe after this lecture, and of course after this course, I might learn a few things and reflect this in my mind.

Overall, I think it is a very fascinating class for me and I'm so lucky to be in one part of it!



D.

Focus: Poor woman may be prosecuted for scaring away bats

This woman has the guts to scare away protected animals just to make them go away and stop them from pissing around her property. But sadly the police is on the bats' side and decided to punish this poor woman.

Lately, bats are closely discussed with the deadly Hendra virus which caused a dozen of horses dead or be put down. Scientists believe their urine, blood and birth discharges carries Hendra virus and thus, people are afraid of them. Besides, the bats are in flocks and according to Robyn Burgess, the woman who used air horn to shoo away the bats, she said the bats noise wakes them up as early as 4AM, and this colony of bats tend to discharge their urines around their property forcing them to renovate part of their house.

Other residents around the neighbourhood said they've been tormented by the bats for years and were fed up by that.

I think the problem itself wasn't the bats, since we couldn't really just catch them or hurt them without breaking the law. I think it's about the law, because we could do nothing to stop them from flying around over our heads, and I think the government should do something in order to control the population of the bats, so that we can prevent further spreading of the virus.

Again, we don't know about how many bats are carrying Hendra virus, and how many are not. So we still need more studies to support in what way we could settle the situation quickly without mass hysteria.

Source [Brisbane Times]



D.

Focus: Drivers, mostly parents, run their cars over their children

Today I came across this article about how common drivers run over children in places like driveways of their own homes, and surprisingly the driver-at-fault is usually their kid's father or mother.

Former Wallaby Brendan Cannon (inset) accidentally backed over his son Samuel in the driveway of his family home. (Image Credit: Brisbane Times)

According to the article, there are about 160 kids being ran over by cars in Queensland, which is quite a number. And besides that, as the vehicle getting larger in size, the fatality for the children also increases.

Some children as young as 2, since they are not tall enough, as parents backing off their vehicles at home they couldn't see anything behind, and there the vehicle went and ran over the child. It's very sad to see people's own children being bumped over. Brendan was very fortunate to see his son being recovered so well. "I really feel for the people who don't get that opportunity to have that second chance with a child." He said.

There are a lot of precautions can be made to avoid a tragedy to happen in families. In the article, the Dad was driving an 4WD, which is quite big and tall. But nevertheless it's not the vehicle's problem, but the constant alertness of a driver. Devices that can detect surrounding objects like infrared sensor can help drivers notice when something is on their way when backing up their vehicles. And also get out of the vehicle and walk all the way around to see if there's anything on the way before backing up. But most importantly, I think they have to make sure where their children exactly are, for example whether they're sitting in the car or wandering around the garage, before really start the engine. In that way, you'll be able to prevent such avoidable accidents.

So always be safe when you drive, and "Supervise, Separate and See" your children.

Source [Brisbane Times]

D.

Focus: Lecture - with Rodney Chester (Week 2)

"Focus" is a section where I will dive in and take a look about something interesting for me, and will share about my interesting point-of-view as well. Have a good read!

Indeed, every student has to learn something after a lecture, and this time on my Monday lecture we were very delighted that Rodney Chester from Courier Mail, shared his views and thoughts about "telling factual stories with text"

So he's mentioned about things recently that technology is slowly replacing the traditional publishing format, such as newspaper. The advancement of technology and social media like Twitter, Facebook are shifting the news headline from newspapers to the Interwebs. Which I do very agree, since for myself I haven't been reading any newspapers since high school where there were concession-priced subscriptions available for students. And I remembered the last time I bought a newspaper in Australia was during the January floods where my favourite newspaper Courier Mail was all sold out, and leaving me no choice but to buy that bulky "The Australian". No offence though!

Well, besides that, he talked about many things about how to write a news article, and one of the most interesting part for me is that he told us about writing features. Students pointed out the "Inverted pyramid" is also one of the most interesting point about the lecture, but I beg to differ and I thought "features writing" is something more interesting for me.

For example, if you are a features writer, you might not be touching headline news often. Instead, you'll be walking around the street, observe people and see what they're doing and walk forward and ask for a story.

Everyone on the street has their own story to tell, and I found that quite fascinating. In these days, people on the street move so quickly to a point they have started to ignore other's presence. It's kind of sad but it's also true in this modern society where everyone is minding their own business a bit too much.

And Rod has mentioned about you have to be a very good observer and storyteller. Also, how to attract audience into reading your stories bit by bit, how to make them intrigued by the stories. Oh, and a "voice" of yourself has to be established and also, one thing that Bruce has pointed out, once you've established your "voice", people will recognise you, and they will start to "follow" you like how they do it on Twitter, but in a manner of reading your editorials, your written stories about ordinary people on the street.

Well, I've got more things to share, but I'll cut it short and I found this lecture really helped me on understanding the fundamentals about text-based writing. This is not fantasy-novel writing like Twilight saga and crap like those, journalism is all about facts, unbiased viewpoint toward a story.

Oh, I've got so much more to learn!! But fret not, Rod shared his best tips to us:

• READ A LOT;
• WRITE A LOT, and;
• IF YOU'VE GOT SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT DON'T POST TO TWITTER.

Write on paper instead, and like us modern peeps, write on blogs!



D.