Forty Years Later: Is Race Still in Vogue?

Martin Luther King's speech on racism was almost 40 years ago. The journalism world seemed to get better about the racism issue and being respectful. Although, recently Vogue magazine put a scowling black basketball star, LeBron James, was put on the cover along with a happy white supermodel, Gisele Bundchen. Does this show that Vogue was trying to make the black race seem less civilized than the white race? That is the question. The journalism world is very indecisive when it comes to the race issue and whether they truly want to talk about it. There are the journalists that talk rationally about the racism issues, but then there are the ones that use racism to make their stories more interesting like on the recent Vogue cover.

Journalism could be the world's pathway to a less racially motivated culture. If journalism spoke of every race in the same way, instead of seeming to take sides just because of a person's race, the people that read those stories could be affected by this change. If the people's media, who they look to to know what is going on in their world, showed respect, then the people may start to change their own views. I feel that this needs to be enforced. Every race needs to be treated equally by every journalist. It would obviously be hard to accomplish, but regulations need to be put into motion to start helping with this issue.

If you would like to read more, here is the link to the article:

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=58&aid=140909

Wooden Leadership

Now that it is coming up on Final Four time in college basketball, John Wooden, a legendary UCLA coach comes to mind. The amazing ESPN multimedia presentation "Forever Coach" showed the leadership that Wooden brought to his team. Wooden also uses a personal website to talk about his views on leadership and how your life can be affected by being a passionate leader. Through these different medias, this prominent figure shows the world how to gain success from becoming a great leader.

Now it is easy for everyone, not just prominent figures, to voice their opinions and thoughts on any subject. Without the many medias of the present, it would be much more difficult to reach the large groups of people that can be now. Blogs are especially an interactive way for everyday people to show how they feel about the subjects of the world. I am so excited to live in this world of many medias and cannot wait for the many technologies that will improve medias even more in the future.

If you would like to read more, here is the link to the article:

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=34&aid=140570

Multimedia: An Adolescent, but No Longer an Orphan

Journalism is evolving yet again with multimedia journalism online. Instead of the lack of multimedia journalism has had in the past, which made journalism an "orphan" in a sense, journalism is in its "adolescent" stage of learning how to improve through multimedia. Journalism is bringing videos, photos, and audio to take their profession to the next level. These styles are being used online very often. The National Press Photographers Association awards made comments about the entries in the online categories that they reviewed this past year.

Here is some of their positive and negative criticism:

- Media has made many improvements by incorporating more multimedia then in the past.
- The audio that is used in storytelling, when used correctly, can make a huge difference in the story's meaning. News organizations are using audio slideshows to tell more adequate stories.
- Do not let the user become confused because they cannot run the program being used.
- Do not use so much multimedia that it is hard for the user to understand the story line.
- There is to much going on in many of the stories that are barely hanging together by the common subject.
- The biggest criticism was to be cautious of "Too much!"

The journalism world is being taken to the next level throughout these multimedia innovations. I am very pleased that journalism is going in the direction of adding new technology of the times. I feel that journalism must grow along with everything else in the world in order to keep up with the competition. There will always be one journalist that uses the new multimedia. Therefore, every journalist must do this in order to keep the future public's attention.

If you would like to read more, here is the link to the article:

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=140573