1500 Quiz1 FIXT

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WEEK1 Quiz—Dr. Ted’s “answers”
JCOM 1500 Intro to Mass Comm Online (JCOM 1500) 9/6/10 Quiz1—The Syllabus

Here are my responses to these items. It wasn’t a real quiz, of course—just a way for me to see if you found and read all that opening stuff. Here are my thoughts on these issues, subject to your responses, too, if you feel so moved.

1. There are quotes from real people throughout the Smarts syllabus, including the four that lead it. Pick one of the quotes from anywhere in the syllabus that you particularly like, and that you can relate to your idea of why being “media smart” is important. (two pithy sentences +/-).

Dr. Ted writes: How to choose from among my children? I love them all. Each of these quotes has an important back-story. For example, “Question Authority” is a protest button and bumpersticker from the 1960s. Today, an engaged and alert citizen always should question authority and take everything with a large grain of salt (like when Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann or Joe Biden starts spouting!). So if I’m feeling rebellious or ticked off, I’ll pick “Question Authority.” But you note that I have Tom Stoppard as part of my email signature: “Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you can get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” Stoppard does a lot with this statement: care must be taken with words and language; as a writer and reader I appreciate this. And the thought that mere words can nudge the world—make a difference—is a powerful concept. I like so many quotes from Stoppard’s to Ginzberg controlling the culture, to the thousands of others I’ve collected over 15 years of Today’s WORD on Journalism. I also like Sir William Berkleley, because he ridiculously condemns both education and free thinking in one swoop. But E.B. White is one of my particular heroes. His quote about television, from the first time he saw it demonstrated in New York in 1938, was prescient, I think. Can you imagine worrying in such circumstances about how “messages, distant and concocted” would affect how people interacted with each other, and wondering if TV would be a “saving radiance” or a “disturbance of the general peace.” Smart man. And that’s exactly the kind of issues we examine in this class—how technological changes in media changed and affected the larger society.

2. What is a pictograph? And why might we think of Dr. Ted’s “Ooog the caveman” as the first journalist? What did he do that was revolutionary and different from other cavepeople sitting around the mastodon BBQ, grunting?

Dr. Ted writes: Some of you didn’t really think through this little fiction about Ooog and Furd and the pictographs. (These images are actually petroglyphs. There’s a difference, but both are rock drawings.) Ooog reported on the latest mastodon hunt news by scratching his version of events on the cave wall for others to read. It was revolutionary in terms of storytelling, because all previous storytelling was oral—grunts and whacks on the head. It was journalism because Ooog was selecting the news he thought important, and recorded events for posterity. The invention of cave drawings was a major deal, because instead of grunting to other cavemen face to face, stories now could be told to multiple people over long periods of time—the first form of “mass communication,” maybe. That’s why I say that Ooog and other cavemen who recorded their stories on cave walls were different from other oral storytellers. Their stories lived on and many more people read them. In fact, down south of Moab there’s a wall of pictographs about 50 feet square called “Newspaper Rock,” so-called because it records the stories of Anasazi life and hunts.


3. Before we even start, how do you think of your own mass media use? Do you use mass media a lot? What kind? What do you use it for, mostly?

Dr. Ted writes: There’s obviously no “correct” answer to this question. But here’s something to think about: The “Information Age” is a time when there is more knowledge available to us than has ever been true. But are we (are you?) better informed than our parents were? The question of how we use mass media is important, because are we using the information available to us for something useful‹to be better informed about our participatory democracy, for example—or are we “amusing ourselves to death” (the title of a book about media by Neil Postman)? A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that young people (through high school) use electronic gadgets—cell phones, computers, TV, video games—7-1/2 hours a day!!!? So are those kids getting information? news you can use?

4. Some of you already have commented on the opening column (Under “Dear Students—Listen Up!” in the blog index), “Advice for a New Semester.” What’s your response to this advice? Be specific.

Dr. Ted writes: A number of you wrote that you wished you’d had this advice when you started college, which is a good reaction, I think.

5. While we’re at it, what do you think of Dr. Ted’s column about students, “The Dumbing of America”? Were you insulted? If students are “disengaged,” how can we professors re-engage them?

Dr. Ted writes: I really do want to know how to engage you better. It’s harder (for me, anyway) to do online than in person, but this is a continuing question for me, so don’t be shy.

6. Have you ordered the Folkerts/Lacy/Larabee text online? Every have either a hard copy book or the online one? What do you think about it so far?

7. This week you were plunged into Today’s WORD on Journalism, and received five of the daily emails. You can see them all here. Do you like any of these? Which and why?

Dr. Ted writes: Back-story: The WORD was concocted (“conceived” is, I think, altogether too grand) in 1995 or so as a way to get my students to pay attention to their email. Strange as it may sound, email was then a new and unpleasant disturbance of the general peace, and many students did not then spend 16 hours a day online. As a professor hoping to get and keep their attention while also instructing them, my object was that the WORD would give them something to think about before class, and which might go on their quizzes. I think it’s fair to say that this strategy was a dismal failure. Most of my students continue to ignore their daily WORDs and gaily accept point reductions on their quizzes for not knowing the day's wordish wisdom from philosophers ranging from Soren Kierkegaard to Brian Williams to Lisa Simpson. But I’m not too worried about that. The WORD has become rather frighteningly popular with non-students—grown-ups, mostly, who actually ask to be afflicted or who send email addresses of unsuspecting friends/colleagues/parents/bosses, so that they might be victimized as well. The same WORD that litters your inbox every morning is at that exact same moment tormenting people you’ve heard of (like Tom Brokaw and Orrin Hatch), and a bunch of college professors, writers, journalists and civilians on five continents (we once had a subscriber on Antarctica, but I haven’t heard from him for a while). About 1,800 subscribers now, mostly volunteers. More get the WORD on the website, and many more unsuspecting victims were forwarded the daily spam by “friends.” As if that weren't bad enough, now the WORD has its own FB page, and the Truly Deluded dig into the WORD’s archives, which feature billions of Old Words in a mind-numbing and impenetrable cornucopia. So that’s big news.

8. Speaking of fascinating humans, anything interesting in Dr. Ted’s bio? Dr. Ted writes: Nope.

9. Where did Dr. Ted earn his bachelor’s degree? In what?

Dr. Ted writes: I’m a recovering English major from UNew Hampshire (1978), but also I hold a Master of Mixology degree from the Boston School of Bartending (1975).

10. You should have watched (and maybe shared with your friends and other lumps of clay) the Stephen Colbert video on the Week1 list. So who is funnier—Professor Pease or Stephen Colbert? Why?

Dr. Ted writes: It’s a trick question. Clearly, me, because I hold your academic fate in my cyberhands. And if you believe that we need to talk...