Sibley Day

When I heard about Sibley Day I sighted. Of course I wanted a free day from classes (at the moment I thought that was it, just a free day), but every time I get one I sleep almost all of it, and I had a lot of homework to do. So I decided to find out what exactly did Sibley Day offered, and when I did I discovered that it really offered some interesting events and topics. I said, I think this day is going to be perfect, I will not have the pressure of classes the whole day, but I’m still going to do something interesting and take advantage of the rest of the day to do homework.

I went to a session titled Preparing for a Successful Interview. The presenters were Dr. Ayers and two Principals from schools. I chose this activity because it was about teaching and education. I am studying advertising but I´ve always had a special interest on kids and teaching, so I thought it would be interesting to change subjects for one day. I liked the session very much. In it the principals would comment and give some information that is essential at the time of being in an interview for a teaching job. I liked how they explained the areas of interest about personal and professional experience they give importance to at the moment of getting to know someone.

One of the ladies was the principal of an Elementary school, and she talked a lot about team work, passion for kids and other aspects that made me conclude that in elementary school they look for someone who is more emotional than logical. On the other hand, the high school principal talked a lot about testing your knowledge at the moment of an interview, asking how your reaction to different situations, and referring not so much to a team work but to a good self performance, d other aspects that made me conclude that in high school they focus more on knowledge than on interaction skills or emotional side.

A way in which I can relate this to media is clear. In one part of the session they both talked about a type of learning style that was in vogue. They said “be sure to know about that because it is really common these days”. Then one of the principals said I don’t even know why that is, it is just being applied by everyone. I think that this reflects how even in education people are following and applying concepts that others do too, so that in that way they feel updated to what is going on right now.

Here is a video of teacher interview questions and how to answer them:

Journalism School of Everyday Life

This kind of journalism that involves the average citizens in the role of capturing and analyzing the news, and delivering them in their own words, has a long history in the United States. First of all we have to go back in time, when the news were only analyzed by professional people that had the prestige and capabilities to do that work correctly. Also, the audience of those times was very conservative and belonged to the final part of the “media chain” (they were the final part because they were the ones who received the information after it had gone through a process). They wanted their news coming from people who were experts in the media field, and could perform a good job at the time of analyzing news.

Thanks to the quick and great advance in technology, now everyone has a camera, laptop, internet and everything needed on their cell phones, so that they are capable of capturing any kind of information and transforming it into news. Besides, in this times the people want to express their point of view on everything that happens (this is the opposite of the silent generation), and they have the tools to do it at any time or moment they want to. Now thanks to all that, people are starting to create their own spaces to express the news adding their personal opinion, and this can be on the radio, internet, television etc.

"Doing citizen journalism right, means crafting a crew of correspondents who are typically excluded from or misrepresented by local television news: low-income women, minorities and youth, the very demographic and lifestyle groups who have little access to the media and that advertisers don't want," says Robert Huesca, an associate professor of communication at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. I totally agree on this because who is more capable of communicating the news than the same people who live were the action occurs, that can show us the real suffering and essence of what is a historical event.

While for some people citizen journalism is a blessing, for others is a curse, one of the biggest oppositions to this type of journalism is the newspaper New York Times. They say that the public journalism abandons the traditional objectivity of the news. In my opinion it is a good way of expressing your point of view in a healthy way, if you don’t offend anyone and say what you think about a fact, it’s correct, but if you begin to use the media for bad purposes, then it’s wrong to use it and the professional journalists have the right to protest against this kind of journalism. I can understand that what makes some journalists angry is that they spend a lot of time and effort preparing themselves for this job, trying to deliver the best they have to people, but then someone with no experience what so ever pretends to know how to report a news. I think we should establish some limits to citizen journalism as well as to professional journalism.

Here is a very interesting video explaining in a few words what citizen journalism is:

Thanks to Marshall McLuhan

“I may be wrong, but I’m never in doubt.” Those were the words of Proffesor Marshall McLuhan. The first thing that caught my attention from his original website were his quotes. You can get to know a character a lot just by reading or listening to words that came from his thoughts without planning them. There were a lot of quotes that helped me build a little bit of McLuhan´s character, but the one I put here is the one I think is the best example. By reading that quote I could notice that he was a very secure, strong man. A man who didn´t need anyone to tell him he was doing the right thing, he just had faith on what he was doing. Sometimes being so stubborn is not a good thing, but maybe that´s what led McLuhan to accomplish everything he did.

Then, after reading his biography, I realized that he wasnt such a stubborn and self commanded (from this I can also say that we can´t judge by the appearances). Even though since McLuhan was young he enjoyed talking and giving speeches because he thought this form better than writting, he had big goals with his studies. much of what McLuhan learned about media was from his proffesors. For it was one of the proffesors who encouraged McLuhan to study and analyze communications and advertising specifically. And so he did. Later he became a professor and a very important one. I found this video in which he is debating with another big personality and they are both called “two of the most remarkable men of this era.”

McLuhan was the creator of a lot of terms, books and concepts known and important for today´s media. He had a different vission of the media, messages and society. For example, he didn´t give any importance to the form of writting or saying something, but instead he worried more about how the message was being delivered. McLuhan was a great man with a lot of future vision too. I think he madde a big development in media and society, and maybe thanks to him I am here at Lindenwood willing to study Communications.

Here is a video of Fr. Patrick Peyton Interviews Marshall McLuhan

Beck: "I Will Never Say What I Don't Believe"

The article I chose to write about is Beck: “I Will Never Say What I Don’t Believe.” I chose this one because since I read the title of it I got very interested. We were just talking about free press and I thought that the article had to do with that too. So I opened it and started reading it. I don’t think I have seen Beck before, but the article does a good job describing his job and position. This person writes about Camila Herrera of Standford Advocate, spending an entire day with Glenn Beck to get a profile of the new Fox News host.

Glenn Beck used to work on CNN before he changed to Fox News, and he clearly stated that he felt much better now that he is the new host of FNC. The reason for that is that he feels “more at home at Fox News than he did on CNN.” That for me was really interesting because I have always thought that working on CNN, the greatest news channel in the world, had to be really awesome, but for the way in which Beck expressed about it, it didn’t seem like it. One of the things he said about the difference of the two places was that "Fox is where he can 'stick out,' where he can consistently tell 'the story of what I see in America, according to me.'" This issue is really important for media professionals because comments like that I think can help to understand better a network or the way of thinking of some people, and ease the study of television.

Being a news channel is really complicated, I think. You have to be aware of everything that’s happening and make the correct judgment of every situation. I thought that the bigger and greater the channel was, the better it delivered the news. But after reading this article, I could find out that maybe because of being so big, the judgment and truthiness of things start to go down. I think that Glenn Beck did well at speaking his feelings, because in that way we can also see some truth behind things. Now I know that probably CNN doesn’t let its employees to speak their mind, and I also know that maybe, as they manipulate comments, they can also manipulate the news. Glenn Beck said "I will never say what I don´t believe." I think that this phrase has something about Gen Y. We are always doing what we think it´s right, doesn´t matter who thinks what of it, but I think it is a good characteristic in a way, so let´s never lose it and apply it correctly.

Beck asks if Obama is the anti-christ:

Internation Student Interview

For this interview I could have picked another international student to ask about the media in his or her country, but I decided to talk about my own country because I think there is interesting information to talk about. Even though Ecuador is small, its media and entertainment are growing more each day. As we all know, The United States exports its media widely to other countries, and Ecuador is part of those countries that get it. Throughout this entry, I am going to respond questions about the current media in Ecuador, South America. I would like to emphasize on politics and media also, because right now it is a big deal over there and gives a lot to talk about.

First of all, it´s essential to know that everything you can see here in the United States, you can see down there if you have cable (even the cheapest one). We can even get ABC, NBC and CBS if we want to. Almost all the movies channels are from here and just a few are from other countries. So in that way, teenagers and young people are almost the same as here, off course they have certain difference in culture, but watch the same TV shows and movies, listen to the same music and dress the same clothes. With music it´s the same. I remember when I was a little girl and came on vacation to the U.S. I would listen to music and when I went back to Ecuador I would have to wait around 1 or 2 months for that same music to appear there, but not anymore. When I go back on vacation now, the exact same music plays in night clubs or bars. Again, off course we also listen to our music very much, the one which belongs to our culture (Salsa, Merengue and Reggaeton), but American music makes a big part of our culture too.

Now, on national TV channels, it is very common to see a show created in Ecuador, but with the idea of another show, probably an American one. So we have our own characters, but the idea is the same. Now a days Ecuador is paying more attention to TV industry, and therefore creating and producing its own shows. Typically comedy shows, or sitcoms are becoming very famous, even around surrounding countries. Something that people enjoy very much watching are those shows that criticize and talk about famous people’s lives.

Concerning politics, Ecuador is going through a difficult situation with the new government. This is supposed to be a leftist regime that sometimes doesn’t like what someone says, so they do anything to stop that person from saying it, that’s why freedom of press is being affected. A lot of journalists and even TV personalities are not happy with how the government is handling media. A few months ago, the state took control of two T.V stations, with the claim that they belonged to a large company which owned taxes. Eventually the chaos stopped and it seems things in the TV stations are still how they were before.

In this video, we can see how the Ecuador TV stations were seized by government

Keyword: Freedom of Press

What is freedom of press? Does everybody enjoy it? After doing some research about freedom of press I found very interesting information. First of all you should know that the term means constitutional protection towards media and published materials. By constitutional protection I mean that the government has the obligation to protect and respect what the media or a person wants to publish. I found out that it was in Sweden, 1766, where the first Freedom of the Press Act was introduced. Imagine how important was for someone to speak up his or her mind and communicate through media since 1766, that people thought it necessary to make an Act and protect someone´s opinion legally.

I also discovered that now a days the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) is an organization strongly dedicated to the promotion of freedom of the press as a basic human right. They created the World Press Freedom Day, which is on May 3. In this day the Organization honors all the journalists that have died or been imprisoned just for the cause of bringing daily news. Also the Organization informs the people of violations towards the right of freedom of press. The UNESCO makes all this efforts because not in every country that right is respected. The United States is a country where freedom of press is respected, but for example my country (Ecuador), is now in danger of losing that right.

Now I am going to write my own experience of what I have seen in my country regarding this subject. In Ecuador there has always been freedom of the press, but the regimes have been corrupt almost all the times, so in a lot of cases the freedom of press wasn’t respected at all. Last year, Ecuador chose a new president. This new president is a young man who gained the people by showing a spirit of change and honesty. I think he is trying to do some good things for the country, but he can´t tolerate someone speaking bad of him or his interests. Thanks to that, freedom of press is being limited every day more in my country. As Ecuador, there are many other countries where freedom of press is not taken serious or doesn’t even exist.

I think that there should be more people and more organizations that join together to fight for this right. It is so important that we live in a world where everyone´s opinion is valued and accepted. The media is the one who informs us and even if sometimes the information is manipulated or changed, we are the responsible ones of choosing what to believe and what not to. That’s why we should always know the two versions of a story, so that our opinion stays somewhere in between. Freedom of Press is a right that every country should enjoy, and we as young people should speak up for those who can and make a difference in the world, lets practice our right to freedom of press, and be thankful for having it.


Watch this interesting video about Press Freedom and its day!

Older Generations' Problem

Two years ago I saw this Colombian comedian who was talking about the different generations. He described with examples each one of them and made it very funny! That’s why I knew that my generation is called the Generation “Y”. I would have to say that the presentation and video we saw in class about the Millenials, and the comedian´s description said almost the same. For that reason I can be certain that everyone thinks the same about my Generation, it doesn’t matter in what part of the world are you. Now I am going to write my opinion about the idea that older people have about us.

First of all I would like to say that life has given me a lesson and reminded me who I am. When I was in my country I used to hate technology and people who spent all the day with it. I didn’t like complicated cell phones or spending time using the ipod when I could be talking to someone else. I used to say I would never have a blackberry (because that was the latest and most used phone in Ecuador), but when I came here things changed. I have a boyfriend in my country and to communicate with him I use my blackberry 24/7. Everyone always ask me why do I use it so much! I bought a computer, I have an ipod, I usually look at my Facebook and I practically live from technology. So, am I from generation “Y”? Oh yes I am!

The presentation that we saw in class I think was pretty accurate. I agree with a lot of characteristics that older people use to describe us. Some of those characteristics are: constant access to friends, information and entertainment (find out about Generation Y and it's music) in new media, lost touch for grammar and punctuation, short attention spans, etc. I think that my generation can identify 100% with those aspects. On the other hand, the video that we watched mentioned certain things that I don’t agree with. That man stated that our generation only takes yes for an answer, thinks only about themselves, think that they will always win and don’t take work serious. My opinion is that all these things are not real. I think that older people misinterpret the fact that generation “Y” values more lifestyle than positioning or money. That’s what makes everyone think that we are selfish or unserious to work.

To conclude, I think there is a big problem with older generations. What happens is that they are a little jealous of our generation because they always had to put their interests and dreams aside to accomplish certain things that were considered successful according to the society. They always sacrificed themselves to please others. That is why they criticize the Millenials so much. They should try to see the good things that we have and how those things bring a successful outcome in our lives. In that way they are going to accept us, know what we want and communicate better with us.


Check out this video about what people think of Generation Y!