Podcasting

I had absolutely no idea of what podcasting was. When I started to research about it, at first I did not understand very much. As I kept on searching, I was able to get the concept better. I finally found out that podcasting is online audio content. This audio content is delivered via an RSS feed, and the podcasts can be played in ipods or mp3 players. Also, people can listen to them through their computers. This word, podcasting, comes from joining Apple´s ipod and broadcasting. What I understand is that podcasting is like radio programming, only that now you can decide when, where and what to listen to.

This was originated in 2004, but it has grown a lot in the past years. There is a variety of programming that people can be entertained with. Podcasts not only entertain the audience but also inform it. Podcasting is used for education, news, public services, health, politics, music, and a lot of other fields. I found two different websites dedicated to podcasting. On them, you can search for one you would be interested in. You only have to put a keyword or something more specific, and you will find a great variety of podcasts on that subject. One of the sites is called Podcast Alley and the other one is Podfeed. Something that I found very common in Podcasting, is storytelling for children. I remember that when I was little I had the Lion King story in a tape and it also came with the book. I am glad that thanks to Podcasting, it can become easier for children to still enjoy the magic of listening to stories and feeling the moments.

I also found that Podcasting is to radio, what blogs are to newspapers. I mean this in a good way. A lot of people have had the opportunity to begin a successful career as journalists by having a blog. In that same way, Podcasting can be done by anyone who has the right software and a microphone. This programming can reach a worldwide audience, giving the person who made it, an opportunity to be heard and recognized. Some of them can even become great radio personalities. But the interesting thing is that now, a lot of podcasts come from recognized media companies that want to expand and maintain their audiences.

Podcasts have not only grown a lot since their creation, but are going to keep on growing even more. As every other media, radio is now finding a way to adapt to what the audience wants. Of course, it has differences and maybe for some people Podcasting might have a lot of disadvantages. In these days people download or storage everything in their cell phones. They don’t even need radio as much because even in their cars they can listen to their own music in the ipod. I think that if radio wants to not only be safe but also keep growing, it has to adapt to the advances of technology, like a lot of them are doing. In that way, everything we will get from Podcasting is going to be good consequences.

Wanted Job

I am interested in advertising, but when I saw one internship in public relations, it caught my attention immediately. The internship is offered by WBBM-TV, Chicago. The T.V station is owned by CBS. I found it interesting because it offers the opportunity to work with the public affairs and communications directors. It offers the chance to help them directly to shape internal and external images of the station, with station-sponsored events, screening public service announcements, preparing promotional materials and hosting station tours. This internship does not seem like one of those where you only pass coffee or organize papers. It has a lot of interesting aspects and tasks that could help me in various ways. I would get some experience communications, public relations, and even advertising.

Being a student at Lindenwood, offers me some great opportunities to prepare not only for this internship, but also for my future career. I could start by trying to collaborate with the Student Activities, that would be a good place to apply advertising and communications concepts and techniques. I could also get involved with the theater or with the newspaper. The classes I have taken have been very good, I feel that I have learned a lot from them. So another thing I could do is keep studying and taking good classes that can prepare me for my career. I think that if I could take an internship in Chicago, I would definately like it to be that one.

Marketing to Generation Y

It seems to be that Generation Y is giving headaches to everyone. Businesses are afraid of going down if they don’t get to Gen Y market fast. But the problem is that it is not so easy to get to them anymore. They are not like the past generations, they don’t respond to the same marketing and advertising strategies. In fact, Generation Y is not responding to any of the usual marketing strategies, and companies are trying to come up with new ideas. That is why they are desperately trying to understand this new market that, due to its great size, is and will be responsible during a few years, of a business success or failure.

Marketers have come to understand certain facts about Generation Y, and they are helping companies to create new marketing ideas. Among the things that they know are: Generation Yers don’t watch television as much, they don’t like reading at all, and they enjoy community life a lot. These are the three most important facts about Gen Y that companies have to understand to begin creating new strategies to reach this market. As Gen Yers have been greatly exposed to new and fast technology, one of the main things they look for is fast service. They also want cheap prices, good quality and most important, they want to have an experience.

One very important characteristic of Generation Y is that they pay a lot of attention to real things. They don’t like being lied to or being manipulated. If a company tries to lie or manipulate them, the company could never be taken serious again, because Gen Yers want to be taken serious and respected. As mentioned before, Generation Y enjoys community life, especially enjoy time with friends a lot. Thanks to social network places, this generation is a lot more in contact with friends, and they spend a lot of time together. Companies should give importance to this fact because they should try to get to Gen Y by marketing to specific groups. As I read on one article, mass marketing doesn’t work anymore for this generation, companies have to separate and determine specific groups and try to get to them individually.

Meeting and reaching the Gen Y market in concerts, sporting events or social networking sites is a good example of how marketers can divide them into smaller groups and try to reach them separately. That strategy has worked for a lot of current successful companies. To conclude I would have to say that definitely Gen Y is not an easy market. They value authenticity and want always a good experience from the product they get. What companies have to do is stop trying to understand this market with information that is out there and start asking them what they want. This generation appreciates truthfulness and would certainly like to know that everyone wants to know what they want. Companies have to not only analyze them, but understand and appreciate Generation Y´s view towards life. Maybe if they understand how Generation Y thinks it´s going to be easy to reach to them.

Music and Movie Pirating

Is there such a thing as buying music? That was my reaction when I was around twelve years old and I found out that downloading music from Ares was illegal. I didn’t even know that you had to buy music in the internet. I supposed that it was there for us to take. I refer to the music first because it was the one which came first. Downloading free music from the Internet has been a common issue since it started. At first, artists and record labels suffered a lot, but I think that now they have adapted and surrendered to it. Movie piracy on the other hand, is something relatively new. I don’t know if it is that I am already used to music piracy, but pirating movies seems a lot worst for me. When I googled this two terms, the first results were all related to them as being a crime, like trying to scare the person who looks for piracy since the beginning.

Music piracy began a long time ago, about 1999. The MP3 format was created to compress the songs and in that way be able to pass them along easier. Before music was pirated, artists made a lot of money from selling their records, and not only them, but all those involved in the business of making the records. Nowadays, artists make the most money from concerts and tours. That’s why movie piracy seems worse, because movies or actors don’t make concerts! They don’t have any other way of income. Movie piracy is being achieved with the help of this new format called MPEG. This file format is used for compressing and playing video. Movie piracy was more common outside the web (people selling it on streets), but now that the online power has grown, it is very common to find all movies on the internet too.It is obvious that most information that appears on the web is against pirating, but there is also some information saying it is good (music piracy good, movie piracy good).

I think that piracy is just something that has to happen and it can´t be avoided. As in everything in media, there are always going to be gate jumpers to the actual gate keepers, and we are going to have to deal with that. What we have to do is try to look at some positive side of this. For example, it is true that pirating takes a lot of money from the movie and music industry, but it is also true that that money is going to a different type of industry (as pirates have to buy equipment and pay for online services). I think that people from movie and music business have to be smart with all this. They should find ways of becoming their own pirates and make profit from that. For example, movie makers could create an own website where they can play movies for free and with the best quality, but they can take advantage of that by charging for advertisings. In that way a lot of people would go to that website and they would still make more money. As for music, they should try selling cds at a lower price. Maybe they will not get much per cd, but they will certainly sell a lot more and maybe gain more money.

Here are two videos about piracy:

No Wonder our Perception of Beauty is Distorted

Since I was a little kid, my mom always said that I trusted everyone too much. My older brother and cousins used to tell me all kinds of bad things like “the world is going to end this Friday,” and I would believe it. For that reason my mom always said “you cannot believe in what you see, hear, touch, smell or taste; you can only believe in what you see, hear, touch, smell and taste at the same time.” It has been a little difficult for me, because I tend to trust everything too much, but I have come to understand that phrase. Photo retouching is a very good example to realize that not even when you see something with your own eyes, is always the truth. When I typed “photo retouching” in the Google search box, I got a lot of results, most of them were websites of different people who make a living out of retouching photos. I guess that if there is so many people doing it, it’s because photo retouching is all over, and it is debated whether it´s good or bad.

When I brainstormed about photo retouching, I immediately thought about it in entertainment, magazines and models´ pictures, but then, after researching, I realized that it goes beyond that. Photo retouching is also used in news, documentaries and other informational sources. Sometimes, they want the news to seem a lot more interesting than what they really are. A good example of this is when Martha Stewart was released from prison. She appeared on the cover of Newsweek and her face was placed on a thinner woman's body to suggest that she had lost weight while being in jail. There have been other cases of altered information to make it more interesting (National Geographic case or O.J Simpson case). Definitely photo retouching is very harmful when used in real and very important information, because the audience is deceived by it, and information is not being truthful or fair. Now, let’s see what happens with photo retouching in entertainment.

A very big issue in our society these days is the importance that both men and women give to external beauty. Mostly in women, it has developed a lot of low self esteem, insecurity and even depression. It is impressive to see how many girls struggle their entire lives to achieve perfection, something that is not even achievable. People ask themselves why is this happening, and it´s true that great part has to do with skinny models and artists that impose what is beautiful or ugly. But I think that photo retouching has a major part in this too. Sometimes models do have a good face or body, but it can never be perfect. What photo retouching does is making those imperfections disappear, so that now, those nice bodies look totally perfect. Girls try every possible way to be like them, but they don’t realize that almost in every case, it is a lie, and even though people know that photo retouching exists, they don’t realize it is everywhere.

I was amazed by the videos that I found about photo retouching, especially the ones made by Dove, to support their campaign about promoting real beauty in girls. I think that this campaign is really good and it has to be supported, because that is what we need. Someone who can let the audience realize the magnitude and power of photo retouching. I am including two excellent videos that depict the real effect of manipulating photos.

How Altruism and Advertising Could Change the World

I have to admit that when I saw the article´s title, immediately bad thoughts ran through my mind. Just reading the words “advertising” and “change the world” made me think something negative, but on the other hand, the word altruism made me even more interested in reading the article. What is making advertising and altruism to come together? After reading the first two sentences I was surprised. This article was really a lot more interesting and important than what I expected, and I really enjoyed reading it because it made me feel that not everything is only bad news. This article is about the new and great idea that has been developed by two very successful business people.

Marketing veteran Cindy Gallop and software developer Wendell Davis, are joining together to help the world be a better place. The idea that they have is to create a web site named IfWeRantheWorld.com, in which people can really help any cause they want to. As the article says, “Rather than raising awareness, the site is set up to convert intent into action, to get things done. As a side effect, it could reinvent advertising as a transparent interaction between corporations and individuals”. They think that even though there are a lot of “good doer networks”, they don’t work because people find them very boring, but this one, instead, is going to be an excellent one.

When people open the homepage, a Google like search box will appear, with the phrase “If I ran the world I would…”. Then after you search for something, comes a lot of information on what can you do for that cause, actual little tasks, and you can pass them to a friend, find people, complete your little task and put it on your created profile so that everyone can see what you are doing and get motivated. It also works as a social network, like facebook. Gallop and Davis are gaining money out of this because corporations will participate in the system for an anal fee. This will also help the corporations because for example if Coca Cola wants to target 18-25 year old people, they have to find the action platform that is most helped by this target and provide financial or employee support. In that way advertising and social networking are not just there doing what they usually do, but also supporting great causes.

I think that this is a great idea. If developed correctly, it can really make a difference in the world. For me it was very pleasing to read this article and realizing that there are people trying to make a difference and not worrying just about business and money. We all have to read this article because I think that we, as generation Y, are the inspiration for this idea. In a society that is greatly using the internet for everything, something like this had to be created. Let´s hope that their intentions and goals with this project are truly the ones they say, and if they are, that the project can come true as fast as possible.

Beth Kanter is a leader of the non profit organization and she talks about non profit involvement on line:

Journalism: An Insider´s Opinion

We talked about the newspapers and its situation in class, but after hearing to an insider´s opinion, the issue became even more serious to me. Bob Wigginton has 20 t0 25 years of experience as a journalist, enough to give an opinion on what has been happening to the newspaper industry and to journalists. What he said was very accurate and interesting because it made us engage more in the problem that newspapers are facing, making us realize that we are part of the problem, and that it does has to do with us. He seemed spontaneous and relaxed, which made me conclude even more that he really knew what he was talking about because he didn’t need a lot of information or extra preparation, he just talked supported by his experience in the field.

When he started the session he said “imagine your life without newspapers” and that really made me think. What if we get to a time when we don’t have a newspaper to look for serious news? A time when we could only go to web sites and choose what to believe and what not to believe? A time when anyone and everyone could be called a journalist and they wouldn’t need any kind of preparation for it? I think that no one wants that. Even though we sometimes criticize the newspaper industry because they let us know only what they want or manipulate the reader´s mind, they are still our first and most accurate source of information, and we have to protect it.

Bob Wigginton clearly stated that the main problem with the newspaper industry is that they are now being owned by people who know nothing about journalism and have no other interest than money. That’s why newspapers are in a crisis, they have fired a lot of journalists and other members that may not seem so important, but they are. Another cause that also contributes to the crisis is the rapid growth of internet and generation Y. Thanks to the internet some people (especially younger generations) no longer read newspapers but find information on the web. We live in a world that needs to hear what is going on in it, said Bob Wigginton, and it is true, so let’s do something about it and start giving journalists and newspapers the importance they deserve.

America´s Struggling Newspapers: