Welcome to JCOM 1500: Start Here!

Welcome to JCOM 1500: Intro to Mass Comm

Get started here...

Dear JCOM 1500 Students:

Welcome to the online edition of JCOM 1500—Introduction to Mass Communication, offered by the Department of Journalism & Communication at Utah State University. This is only the second time this class has been offered online, so it will be a learning experience for all of us. Please bear with me and, as always, when confused, ASK!

To make sure that everyone receives these instructions, they are being sent as an email to your USU Aggiemail account, as well as being posted here. If you are reading this on email, please click here now and finish reading this on the blog: Welcome to JCOM 1500.

As discussed in the syllabus, this is the same as the standard face-to-face Intro to Mass Comm class, but with some important differences. For one thing, because it is an online class, it requires considerable self-discipline and responsibility on the part of students. You HAVE to keep up with readings and assignments.

Before we get into all that, however, you all need to read these files carefully. There will be a GRADED QUIZ this week! on the syllabus and these opening instructions, because it’s essential that everyone understand how the system will work.

Most of your work will be done using materials posted on our own dedicated blog, Intro to Mass Comm. Some work (weekly quizzes, for example) also will be required on the JCOM 1500 site on USU’s Blackboard, which provides links to all course requirements and assignments, but most of our time will be spent on the blog for readings, links and discussions. It’s simpler this way.

If you look at the JCOM 1500 Index, which appears on the upper right-hand side of the blogsite, you can click on links and will be teleported to the complete listing of course materials and week-by-week assignments. Investigate this.

Assignment: The first requirement is to read the first five files in the blog index to get up to speed.
1. Welcome to JCOM 1500 Start here! (nice work—you’re already reading it!)
2. Syllabus
3. Info on the Online JCOM Minor
4. Dear Students: LISTEN UP! (Some good start-of-term advice.)
5. Please also visit Blackboard and make sure you can navigate our course there. These two links —Blackboard Tech and Blackboard Tools—give you information on using Blackboard. Please explore the various Blackboard tabs.

In case you're curious, here’s some background information about the instructor—me.

Please familiarize yourself with all this material by the end of Week 1. There will be a quiz!

Finally, once you’ve gotten yourself acclimated, click on Week 1 in the Index for the first week’s assignments.

A note about email and communicating: This is an online class, so nearly all communication with be on the blog and via email for individual questions. For questions, please use my USU address—ted.pease@usu.edu (not the Blackboard email). Every time you email me, please put JCOM 1500 in the subject line so your message isn’t misplaced.

OK?
.
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff

Week 1

Week 1
(Aug. 30)

• Email Professor Pease at ted.pease@usu.edu, using your preferred email address (the one you check most regularly), to say that you’re in the class and THRILLED to be here. Any questions, let me know.

• Read Syllabus and related Welcome files on the blog. Get acquainted with the Blackboard site.

• Read Professor Pease’s column, The Dumbing of America. And view Stephen Colbert’s discussion of the role of college in your life at this URL.

• Order the text online (Folkerts, Lacy & Larabee, The Media in Your Life) at this URL. Start looking through the online text. It’s pretty cool. Order the text IMMEDIATELY so you'll have access to it no later than the end of this week. If you have trouble getting it, let Professor Pease know ASAP.

• Expect a quiz on the syllabus and the introductory materials via email on Thursday. Due Sunday, Sept. 5, midnight.

• Who Are You? Please click on the comment link below and write something about yourself in the little box. Pease will start. Everyone should do a little bio, and then we’ll have thumbnail bios of everyone in the class. As part of your self-introduction/bio, you may include the link to your own blog/website, if you like. If you’d like to include a photo of yourself, email me a jpg and I'll post it. You may post your comment either using your gmail or aggiemail account name, or as “anonymous,” but please ID yourself every time you leave a comment on the blog.

JCOM 1500 Syllabus (F2010)

Syllabus
JCOM 1500—Introduction to Mass Communication
(The Online Edition)

Professor Ted Pease
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Fall 2010

Office: 310B Animal Science (JCOM main office) (435-797-3293)
Email: Ted.Pease@usu.edu
Website: Intro to Mass Comm
Today’s WORD on Journalism: An added FREE bonus to joining this class—
daily email snippets of wisdom on the press, writing, and whatnot.
Click here for the WORDblog to see what you get.

Required Text:
• Folkerts, Jean, Stephen Lacy & Ann Larabee. The Media in Your Life: An Introduction to Mass Communication (4th edition) Purchase the online interactive version by going to this URL and following the directions. $62.45.
• Additional assigned readings and resources on the blog

Preamble: Wise Guys

No Schools, Sir!

“I thank God we have no free schools or printing,
and I hope that we shall not have these for a hundred years.
For learning has brought disobediences and heresy and sects into the
world; and printing has divulged them and libels against the
government. God keep us from both.”

—Sir William Berkeley, Governor, Virginia Colony, 1671

The Power of Words

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect.
If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the
world a little.”

—Tom Stoppard, playwright, 1967

Who’s in Charge Here?

“Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.”

—Allen Ginsberg, poet, 1973

Radiance, or Disturbance?

“I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world,
and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our
vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of
the general peace, or a saving radiance in the sky.
We shall stand or fall by television—of that I am quite sure.”

—E.B. White, author, 1938

• • • • •

Course Objectives

JCOM 1500 is designed to provide a historical, social, technological, economic, philosophical and political context of the development of American mass media and their changing role in society. Ever since Ooog the Caveman first grunted at his cavemate about the weather or the mastodon herd, human communication has been one (at least) of the skills that has distinguished humans from other creatures.

That’s significant in itself, but even more significant was Ooog’s effort not only to tell his stories, but to record them somehow so that others could remember them when he wasn’t around. So he drew pictographs on the walls of his cave recording Tuesday’s great antelope hunt, or poor old Furd getting stamped by that mammoth last week.

It’s not really that big a leap from scratching Furd’s unfortunate demise on the cave wall, to staring into the flicking light of a computer screen and typing emoticons on your Facebook page, is it?

In this class we will consider that question, as drawings of woolly mammoths were translated into letters that could be combined to tell the story of Furd’s death. And then the letters were molded into clay or metal blocks that could moved around to make different words that symbolize different things or ideas. And then instead of telling stories and remembering them as oral history, human stories could be
recorded in print and saved. That meant that humans had to learn to read the print so they could understand the stories. And then besides books there were newspapers and radio and telegraph and television and computers and—who knows?—little nano-chips in our breakfast cereal to give us the weather and Glenn Beck and LA Laker highlights internally….?

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The intersection of ideas and human desire to express and record and tell them may be the single most important trait we possess. And the ways we have devised to do that—and the economic, political, cultural, philosophical trouble that has often caused—well, that’s a great story.

So . . .

• We’ll tell some of the stories and think about the forces that have shaped mass media content and their impacts on societies.
• We’ll think about how mass media messages work, both on us individually as mass communication consumers, and on important social institutions.
• We’ll examine the rights and responsibilities of mass communication in a free, engaged and participatory democratic system.
• And we’ll think a little about our own rights and responsibilities in a mass-mediated culture. Who’s to blame for a bad “story”? Ooog and his cave drawings? Furd, who stepped under an elephant? Or the rest of the clan who came later and reinterpreted (or perhaps misinterpreted) Ooog’s stories for themselves?

How We’ll Do It

This is an Internet course (which is actually a pretty cool way to talk and think about media), so we will be doing all of this stuff from Ooog to the nano-chip online. There will be assigned readings from both the text and other sources. You will be expected to keep up with the week-by-week entries on the blog, which are subject to change! Besides readings, we’ll draw from other material—movies about the mass media, YouTube, Today’s WORD on Journalism and other stuff that will emailed to you or posted on the blog.

The first task, if you haven’t already done it, is to go directly to the class blog and read the first four entries, which I think are pretty self-explanatory (yes, it DOES say that there will be a quiz on the syllabus and other opening material…). Make sure you get into Blackboard if you don’t know it already and review its features. We will be using Blackboard for quizzes and exams, and you will want to know what the Gradebook looks like.

Assignments and Grading
(Subject to change)

Because this is basically a reading course, and because we’ll never actually see each other (although you are gonna LOVE “Teddy TV” on Blackboard!—more on that later), evaluation is based on testing plus one writing project, with final grades computed from what percentage of the total 550 possible points you earn.

1. Quizzes: Weekly quizzes on readings/news events (100 pts)
2. BlogTalk: Blog comments on readings (30 pts)
3. Movie Project: Critical essay on a film about the mass media. (90 pts)
4. Exam 1 covering weeks 1-5 (90 pts)
5. Exam 2 covering weeks 6-10 (90 pts)
6. Final Exam (Comprehensive) (150 pts)
Total possible points = 550 pts

Point Spread
A = 511.5-550 pts (93-100%)
A- = 495-511.5 pts (90-93%)
B+ = 478.5-495 pts (87-90%)
B = 456.5-478.5 pts (83-87%)
B- = 440-456.5 (80-83%)
C+ = 423.5-440 pts (77-80%)
C = 401.5-423.5 pts (73-77%)
C- = 385-401.5 pts (70-73%)
D+ = 368.5-385 pts (67-70%)

Graded Assignments Explained:
• Quizzes: Weekly quizzes (more or less) on the readings (may also incorporate previous material for context). Multiple-choice and True-False questions. Quizzes will be available on a specific day/time and must be completed by a specific day/time or no credit. More on how this works to come.
• BlogTalk: You will be encouraged to comment on readings and other course material on the blog, after particular articles or news events, for example. I will expect everyone to make substantive comments at least 10 times during the semester. More details to follow.
• Movie Project: I will offer you a short list of movies that deal with mass media. You will select one, view at your convenience, and write a 750- to 1,000-word essay that critically evaluates the mass media institution(s) in the film in the context of social, individual, philosophical and other criteria we will discuss. Details to follow.
• Exams: All three exams will be Blackboard-based multiple-choice, true-false/short-answer tests. Exam 1 will be available on Blackboard the week of Oct. 4, and will cover the first third of the semester; Exam 2 (Nov. 8) will cover the second third; and the Final Exam will be comprehensive and available on Blackboard Dec. 10, the last day of classes, and due sometime the next week.
• Other grading issues: The instructor takes no prisoners when it comes to writing, grammar, spelling, mechanics, etc., in email messages, blog posts or papers. Fair warning. Also obvious in a journalism class: DEADLINES ARE ABSOLUTE. That’s why they’re called deadlines. In the real world, missing deadlines means you get fired; in this class, missing deadline means zero for the assignment.
Blackboard quizzes and exams are set up so that if you don’t complete them by the posted deadline, they won’t be accepted.

Housekeeping Details

Some cautions, instructions and threats. Ask anyone; Pease is an irascible old poop and can be testy at times.


Academic Honesty: The University expects students and faculty alike to maintain the highest standards of academic honesty (for a complete definition, see University Catalogue or the Code of Policies and Procedures for Students at Utah State University, Article V, Section 3). The policy states:

“[C]heating, falsification or plagiarism can result in warning, grade reduction, probation, suspension, expulsion, payment of damages, withholding of transcripts, withholding of degrees, removal a class, performance of community service, referral to appropriate counseling” or other penalties as the university judiciary may deem appropriate.

Because public trust and personal credibility are essential to journalists and other professional communicators, I adhere to the JCOM department’s zero-tolerance policy regarding academic dishonesty: Failure for the class and removal from the JCOM major. As per the USU Student Code, any documented form of academic dishonesty—including plagiarism or other cheating on quizzes and exams—will result in an automatic F in the course and a report to the dean of the college and the USU vice president for student services. If you have questions about what’s acceptable work under strict codes of academic honesty, see the USU Code of Policies and Procedures for Students, or consult your professor. Any suspicious work may be submitted to a web database. For guidance on plagiarism and how to avoid it, see this website.

Decorum: It’s a funny thing about email and other online communication—people often type things that they would NEVER say in a face-to-face setting. So please read your emails out loud to yourselves (this also will help with typos and stoopid language) and count to 10 before sending or posting. We’re all in this together. That means that we will need each other in order to succeed. And that means that everyone is expected to treat everyone else with fairness, courtesy and honesty. Central to the subject matter in this course is the willingness to examine our own beliefs and how we arrived at them, and to acknowledge that others may see the world differently. So I hope we all will be able to express and consider opinions collegially, in the spirit of open inquiry. Let us agree to disagree, if necessary, and to accommodate contrarian viewpoints and differing perspectives. Disruptive or abusive behavior will not be tolerated.

Disclaimer: The instructor has no desire to offend anyone’s personal or cultural beliefs, and he apologizes in advance if he does so inadvertently. But students should be aware that journalism (and advanced education) often deals with issues and content that some may find disagreeable—from profanity and offensive attitudes, to perspectives that may make you uncomfortable. But that’s the business of examining society and engaging in a free society. It’s critically important. Please do tell me if you have problems with any of the material, and we will try to accommodate if possible.

Finally, any rumors that you may have heard that Professor Pease is a heartless, obdurate, irritable, demanding, tough, pugnacious, unpleasant SOB probably falls short (and wide) of the truth. The fact is that I will press you hard this semester to develop the critical thinking and knowledge required for success in the information age. But if you're having a problem—with this class or anything else—please feel free to call or email me, or for those of you on-campus, come find me in my office, for a talk, a coke, career advice, a crying towel or whatever.

SCHEDULE

The advantage to online courses is that you can do the work as your schedule permits, and in your pajamas if you want. In fact, Professor Pease may be in his jammies even now (an unhappy image!). But you do have to complete the assignments when they are due.

The weekly assignments will be posted on the blog—both readings in the text and links to other assigned materials.

JCOM 1500 (online edition)—Intro to Mass Comm
Schedule Spring 2010 (subject to change)

NOTE: Here’s a start on our assignment schedule, which will change as we go along. I’ll notify you of additions and changes via email and on the weekly schedule on the blog, so check the blog carefully each week.

WEEK 1 Aug. 30
• Email Professor Pease at ted.pease@usu.edu, using your preferred email address (the one you check more regularly) to say that you’re in the class and THRILLED! to be here. Any questions, let me know.
• Read Syllabus and related Welcome to JCOM 1500 files on the blog closely. Get acquainted with Blackboard.
• Read Professor Pease’s column, “The Dumbing of America,” and view
Stephen Colbert’s video on the role of a college education in your
life.
• Order the text (Folkerts, Lacy & Larabee: The Media in Your Life) online at this URL. Start looking through the online text. It’s pretty cool.
• Expect a quiz on syllabus and opening materials via on Thursday. Due Saturday midnight.
• Go to Week 1 on the blog and introduce yourself in the “comments” box: WHo are you? where are from? What do you want to be when you grow up (I want to be a firetruck)? Something interesting/peculiar/crazy/fascinating about yourself (when I was 19, I dropped out of college and rode a bicycle from Seattle to Atlanta. Really.)

WEEK 2 Oct. 4
• Read Folkerts Ch. 1 “We the People.”
• More to come
• Quiz

WEEK 3 Oct. 11
• Read Folkerts Ch. 10 “Journalism: Information & Society”
• Blog: View Billy Joel’s video on history through iconic images.
• More to come
• Quiz

WEEK 4 Oct. 18
• Read Folkerts Review pp. 18-21 “Use & Functions of Media in the
Marketplace,” and p. 393 through “Ideology” on p. 414
• Blog: Read “Mass Communication Theories”
• More to come
• Quiz

WEEK 5 Oct. 25
• Read Folkerts Ch. 2 “Books” and Ch. 3 “Newspapers”
• Blog: Readings to come
• Exam #1 will be available Saturday (Oct. 30). Due Monday (Nov. 1)

WEEK 6 Nov. 1

MORE TO COME!!!
Future assignments to be announced and posted on the weekly links on the class blog. IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to check the blog early & often.

Week 5

Week 5
(Sept. 27)

• Read Folkerts: Ch. 2 “Books” and Ch. 3 “Newspapers”
• Blog: Readings to come
• Blogtalk: Weekly comment on the readings, the WORD, or events about the mass media or the press.
• Exam #1 will be available Saturday (Oct. 2) and due Monday (Oct. 4).

Week 4

Week 4
(Sept. 20)

• Read Folkerts: Review pp. 18-21 in Ch. 1 “Use & Functions of Media in the Marketplace” and p. 393 through “Ideology” on p. 414.
• Blog: Read “Mass Communication Theories” at this URL.
• Blogtalk: Weekly comment on the readings, the WORD, or events about the mass media or the press.
• Quiz

Week 3

Week 3
(Sept. 13)

• Read Folkerts Ch. 10 “Journalism: Information & Society”
• Blog: View Billy Joel’s video on history through iconic images. This URL.
• Do the Pew Center’s News Quiz—How much do you know? After you’ve done the quiz, check your answers at the Pew site and look at how you did compared to others who have done it. Report your reactions in the comments box below.
• Blogtalk: Weekly comment on the readings, the WORD, or events about the mass media or the press.
• Quiz

Week 2

Week 2
(Sept. 6)

• Read Folkerts Ch. 1 “We the People”
• Read “Academe and the Delcine of the News Media,” from The Chronicle of Higher Education. Consider its points in the context of the Folkerts reading and the role of the press and free expression in our society.
• Read Dr. Ted’s rant in Wednesday’s Utah Statesman: “The Decline of the Inquiring Mind”
• Blogtalk: Weekly comment on the readings, the WORD, or events about the mass media or the press.
• Quiz: Has been emailed to everyone (9/9). Email Dr. Ted IMMEDIATELY if you haven't received it!

This is Lulu eight years ago when she was a baby. This week is her Dog Day.

Week 7

Week 7
(Oct. 11)

• Read Folkerts Ch. 7 “Television”
• In 1994, Ted Pease got a chance to interview the world’s greatest interviewer—CNN’s Larry King. It was scary. And fun. In this Q&A with “The Father of Talk-Show Democracy,” Larry King talked about his—and the mass media’s—changing and expanding role in political communication, particularly during presidential election years. During the 1992 presidential election, independent spoiler Ross Perot (who ultimately won nearly 20 percent of the vote and cost George W. Bush his reelection) made headlines when he announced his candidacy on “Larry King Live.” Two years later, when King talked to Pease, even more changes were in the works as politicians worked the media in ways that today we find normal. This interview with Larry King is a little dated, but his grasp of the mass media’s possibilities in the future political realm was prescient.
• More to come
• Blogtalk: Weekly comment on the readings, the WORD, or events about the mass media or the press.
• Quiz

Week 6

Week 6
(Oct. 4)

EVENT NOTE: For those of you on the Logan campus, please try to attend the Morris Media & Society Lecture on Tuesday, Oct. 5, noon-1:15 p.m. by Alicia C. Shepard, journalism, author (of a new book of Woodward & Bernstein) and the ombudsman for National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. Where and details to come.

This week we start to pick up after the first one-third of the semester, and step into examples of the press role in society. We've already looked at the chapter on newspapers in the text, but we’re not finished with that important example of the dominance of news media in the public marketplace. Although newspapers are declining in their influence in the Internet Age, the importance of verifiable information to an informed society is more vital than ever.

In fact, Dr. Ted would submit that the discord of public and political debate these days has a parallel in the fragmentation of the mass media system—which with the advent of the Internet (did Al Gore really invent it?) and the Web, social media, e-mail, blogging and more individual opportunity for participation is less “mass,” less “mediated,” and less “systematic.” What do you think?

In Washington, political partisanship and obstructionism have never been greater, say some political insiders in the press and government (some congressmen—all of whom are up for reelection next month—are so disgusted with gridlock in Washington that they aren't running). A similar fragmentation is apparent in the information system that educates and holds together informed citizens in a free and participatory society.

There was a time when more than 70 percent of all American households subscribed to at least one daily newspaper, and when about the same percentage of all adult Americans watched at least one of the three network evening newscasts—ABC, CBS or NBC. Today, too few of us subscribe to daily newspapers to make many of them financially viable, and even fewer Americans watch the TV news.

The irony of the information age is that, although there is more information at our fingertips than ever (literally, through our keyboards), we seem to be less well-informed today than ever (remember the Pew Center news quiz?). Although the global information system now is more small-d democratic than it once was, because individuals can find their own “news” of interest on the Web, we also see an accompanying loss of a sense of the American community or commonality of interest.

Back when everyone read a daily newspaper, and at least 70 percent of us watched one of three evening newscasts, we all were on the same page, knew the same news, had the same things to talk about at work. Sure, a lot of the world went un-covered when our sources of information were so limited, but at least we all (your parents, maybe, but probably your grandparents) had the same information and the same community of concerns. Today, we each have our own access to news, which is enormously democratizing, but there are fewer central players in the news business that can process and make sense of all that flood of news for us: The credible gatekeepers, like The New York Times, are less dominant than they once were, and so we are left on our own to make sense of the world. Help! Where, in this brave new electronic world of information on-demand, can we get together to talk about issues of common interest? No wonder Washington is paralyzed.

• Read Folkerts, Ch. 6, “Radio”
• Read essay by Dennis & Pease on “Radio—The Forgotten Medium.” This is the introduction to a special issue of Media Studies Journal, of which Pease was editor; the material refers to chapters that were republished as a book by the same name. Even though some of the references in this introductory chapter are a bit dated now, the central premise remains true today: Radio, the sometimes forgotten stepchild of the mass media, is still quietly what many regard as the most enduring and pervasive of mass media. Despite computers, the Internet and new gizmos and gadgets (iPads?), radio is still a central part of people’s lives around the globe, and perhaps the most reliable and essential communications tool in times of emergency and catastrophe. When the power goes out, a radio can connect us to the world; when earthquakes strike Haiti or the Indonesian archipelago, stricken communities still come together over radio to share information and exchange new developments about the emergency and relief efforts. Radio, as Garrison Keillor says, is a wonderful friend in the dark of night.
• More to come
• Blogtalk: Weekly comment on the readings, the WORD, or events about the mass media or the press.
• Quiz

Steve Phillips said...

Radio is one thing that I think is timeless. If you have any type of imagination you can enjoy radio. I use it for everything from the latest music to sports casts. I actually had to give up my satellite dish last month and since baseball season has started I've had to rely on the radio for my games. I don't know what I'd do without it.

April 17, 2010 12:06 PM

James Bennett said...

To counter the nostalgia of Radio and its heritage I have found the convience of just downloading my faviorite Radio shows via Itunes and listening to them at my convience. Not only do I not have to worry about increasingly growing commericals but I have the ability to listen to such such at whichever time I can. So I say this with no disrespect towards radio rather a viewpoint of its growth and media availability

April 20, 2010 2:37 PM

Anonymous said...

(this is Lauren M). I can't say enough about radio and NPR in particular. I don't have a TV and radio is my entertainment. It goes on when I walk in the house after work and doesn't go off till I go to bed. If I am at home on the weekends it is on the majority of the time. Is it pledge drive time again??

April 22, 2010 4:22 PM

Cassie Gunnell said...

Radio! There is something to be said about hearing a voice and the opinion and not seeing the person behind the voice that I love. For some reason, I do get distracted with gestures and facial expressions as well as how the person may dress and that all goes into the impression I get walking away...Radio makes all those distractions go away and allows me to focus on the subject. I am an avid listener or Dr.LAura, Rush and KVNU, for local news...I love the convenience of having it in my car, because I am a soccer mom of 3 and I am constantly running three kids from one end of town to the other. If there is a freedom that I enjoy and wish to protect is that of free speech and expression on the radio especially. I rely more on the internet than the newspaper, more on radio than t.v. and I would really miss the talk radio and such. It is a tremendous influence and media source in my life!

April 23, 2010 5:41 PM

Week 10

Week 10
(Nov. 1)
This week, in preparation for your movie project, we’ll take a look at the expectations for a socially responsible press (and, by extension, other mass media), and examine some codes of ethics.
Please Read:
• The Hutchins Commission, which examines what truth means in society, and how to define a socially responsible press.
• Ethics: Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. These are the rules that journalists arrived at themselves, to govern how they do their job. The Public Relations Society of America has a code of ethics, too. Are you surprised?
• 9 Journalistic Principles: An expansion by some prominent journalists on what ethics mean on the job.
• Review for Exam 2: All materials from Weeks 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10 (Folkerts Chs. 4, 5, 6 & 7)

• COMING ATTRACTIONS: I’ll be sending you the second exam at the end of this week. Between now and then, go to the movie project and start thinking about what movie about journalism you want to analyze. You need to tell Dr. Ted what movie you want (and why?), and then focus on having this project done by Nov. 29.
• Blogtalk: Weekly comment on the readings, the WORD, or events about the mass media or the press.
• Exam 2

Week 8

Week 8
(Oct. 18)

The magazine market represents an early example of market fragmentation. Rather than omnibus, general-interest publications of “all the news that’s fit to print” like newspapers, most magazines were and are created to fit a specific, narrow need in the marketplace. Even in this age of electronic “publications,” go to any bookstore (if you can still find one!) or Google “magazine,” and you’ll find hundreds or thousands of special-interest magazines—from American Ferret Farmers and Archery Today to Footwear Daily to the National Russet Potato Journal to Yachting to Zebra Life. This was a print example of the fragmentation/segmentation of the reading audience, which continues today in even greater form on the Web.

So this week we take a look at the evolving role of magazines and specialized publications as part of the larger question of the mass media’s role in your—and our—life.

• Read Folkerts: Ch. 4 “Magazines”
• The State of Magazines, 2009. Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism
• Blog: Read Column: “Press Performance: A Revival Meeting for the Press” by Dr. Ted

• For Fun: Here’s some “convergence”—Stephen Colbert takes over Newsweek magazine for a week (2009). “Why I Took This Crummy Job." Colbert takes over Newsweek’s Letters section.

• Other stuff: Miniature Earth and Social Media Revolution (4 minutes)
• Blogtalk: Weekly comment on the readings, the WORD, or events about the mass media or the press.
• Quiz.

This is a fascinating guy. A professional iconoclast. Talk about a market niche!

Brann’s Newspaper Recipe: “Here is the recipe for making a ‘great daily’; let them who have stomachs for such work apply themselves: a scandal-in-high-life, first-page, double-leaded, screamer head; two or three columns of rocking chair speculation on matters political, Washington datelines; a few bogus or garbled interviews with prominent politicians; a suicide; a scandal-in-lowlife; a thrilling account of an impossible accident in Timbuctoo; report that a million Chinese have been drowned by an overflow of the Hwang-Ho; full and circumstantial report of a sensational divorce trial—not intended for Sunday-school reading; two-column account of a prize fight; a hanging, with all the ghastly details ‘worked up’; two columns of esoteric baseball lingo in which the doughty deeds of ‘Fatty,’ ‘Shorty,’ ‘Squatty,’ ‘Bow-Legged Bill’ and ‘Short-Stop Sam’ are painted in wonderful chiar-oscuro; account of the elopement of a society belle with a negro coachman; heavy editorial on the ‘Power of the Press’; more editorial inanity and offensive self-glorification; a pimping ‘personal’ column’ two columns of murdered men and English language; more toothsome scandal; market reports to mislead the country merchant; budget of foreign news—manufactured in New York; interesting case of ministerial crim. con.; advertisements of quack doctors, lost manhood restorers, syphilitic nostrums, preventative pills, and other things calculated to set the cheek of modesty aflame; local miscellany; police court reports and taffy in solid slugs. Jam to a mux and serve hot. Price, 5 cents. Now is the time to subscribe.”

—William Cowper Brann (1855-1898), the “American Carlyle,” editor of The Iconoclast,
briefly the country’s most controversial magazine, with a national circulation
of a quarter-million. An enraged reader shot and, er, “edited” Brann
on the streets of Waco, Texas, on April Fool's Day, 1898.

.

Week 9

Week 9
(Oct. 25)

This week, we look at the movies, not only from a pop culture perspective, but from the larger context of the role of the mass media in society in terms of how Hollywood supports, projects, protects, defends, shapes and contorts what and how we think.

If we think of American “icons,” figures like John Wayne or Marilyn Monroe come easily to mind. If we think of villains, who do you think of? Think of the “feminine ideal” (Doris Day? Barbarella?) or “the perfect man” (Edward the Vampire? Pierce Brosnan? Homer Simpson?) or “cute kids” (Lisa Simpson? The “Home Alone” kid? Annie?), and specific people and images leap into your consciousness. These are symbols that portray ideals—real or not . . . accurate or not . . . . even desirable or not—that pop culture has taught us to cherish and hold as icons.

This week, we’ll consider how Hollywood plays that role in the American (and global) psyche. The deeper consideration of this week’s readings, beyond the historical and social framework provided by Folkerts, concerns ethical concerns of how Hollywood controls us and our perceptions—and how Hollywood is itself controlled by social pressures.

That’s why I also want you to think ahead about a movie that you’d like to analyze for its impact on U.S. (and global) culture. We’ll talk more about this next week, for a project that will be due sometime around Thanksgiving. This whole class is about the mass media’s role in our lives. So think about a film that affects how audiences “see” and understand their world in important ways (e.g., in wartime, about important social or political issues, etc.) and that also includes some element of the press or other mass media (for example, Citizen Kane, arguably the greatest film of all time, is about a newspaper tycoon who is crushed by political ambition). I’ll have a list of possible films for you to consider, but I’d like your ideas about important movies that changed the way audiences understood the world.

• Read Folkerts: Ch. 5 “The Movies”
• “Hollywood and Free Expression,” by Ted Pease (A chapter from a book on Hollywood, ethics and entertainment)
• “Remembering Hollywood’s Hays Code, 40 Years On,” by Bob Mondello (National Public Radio. Read the article and listen to the radio clip)
• For Fun: Here’s some more “convergence”—When the news does interviews, is it “news” or advertising or, as Jon Stewart suggests, “prostitution”? The Daily Show and “SynerJoe” This is mostly just fun, but what IS the “marketplace of ideas” these days?
• Blogtalk: Weekly comment on the readings, the WORD, or events about the mass media or the press.
• Quiz
.
A GREAT movie. Peter Finch in the greatest on-air meltdown ever, in Network.

Week 11

Week 11
(Nov. 8)
• Read Folkerts: Ch. 11 “Public Relations”
• Additional readings to come.
• Blogtalk: Weekly comment on the readings, the WORD, or events about the mass media or the press.
• Quiz

Week 12

.
Week 12
(Nov. 15)
• Read Folkerts: Ch. 13 “Ethics” and revisit the SPJ Code of Ethics and Journalistic Principles from the Week10 readings.
• Work on your Movie Project. If you haven’t sent Dr. Ted your selected movie with enough substantive reasoning for why you want to do that one for him to reply with comments/suggestions, (re)send that message. Everyone understanding what we’re doing? If not, ask. Remember: The question is what movie will you analyze and why?

• BTW, in the context of our conversations about convergence, new technology and the magazine business, check out this week's announced merger of the venerable Newsweek (which the Washington Post Co. recently sold for $1...) with the new online upstart aggregator The Daily Beast, under the editorship of feisty and a little whacko Tina Brown, founder of The Daily Beast (a reference to the day-to-day voraciousness of the news business) and formerly editor of The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and others. URL Interesting.
• Blogtalk: Weekly comment on the readings, the WORD, or events about the mass media or the press.
• Quiz

Week 13

.
Week 13
(Nov. 22)

Thanksgiving Week
• Read Folkerts: Ch. 12 “Advertising”
• Blogtalk: Weekly comment on the readings, the WORD, or events about the mass media or the press.
• Quiz

Week 14

.
Week 14
(Nov. 29)

• Read . . . . assignment to come
• Blogtalk: Weekly comment on the readings, the WORD, or events about the mass media or the press.
• Quiz

Week 15

.
Week 15
(Dec. 6)
• Read . . . . readings to come.
• Blogtalk: Weekly comment on the readings, the WORD, or events about the mass media or the press.
• Quiz

Finals Week

.
Week 16 • Final Exam Week
(Dec. 13)
That’s (almost) a wrap! Your final exam, which is a comprehensive exam similar to the first two, but covering all the material in the semester, will be available by Friday, Dec. 10 or sooner, and will be due Wednesday, Dec. 15 (or sooner!).

I will compile your semester grades by Dec. 12 (or sooner!) so that you’ll know where you stand, and to make sure that I have received and graded everything you think you submitted. Consult the syllabus for the relative weight of assignments and tests.

As I've said via a separate email, your course evaluations are available on the JCOM 1500 Blackboard site. Please take a little time to do these, because I welcome feedback so we can do a better job next time around.

It's been a pleasure “knowing” you. If you need any advising for the JCOM major, let me know via email. Have a great, safe and relatively sane holiday.

Dr. Ted
Professor of Interesting Stuff