Radio gets gate jumped

The new millennium is definitely the age of citizen journalism and free speech. Instead of relying on the big names of the media, individuals are taking charge and broadcasting their own ideas. In the age of information and technology, people are equipped with more tools to share their ideas with the world. Bloggers don’t wait to be published in the newspaper, Youtube fans don’t wait to be aired on T.V., and now podcasters are doing their own radio shows.

Podcasting is a relatively new creation. The technology was there, but podcasting did not surface until 2004 when the Apple IPod became popular and songs were sent to users’ music players via the internet. This came to be known as “podcasting,” a combination of “IPod” and “broadcasting.” A person can subscribe to a certain podcaster (such as ITunes) and receive audio files when the podcaster provides them. Podcasts come in an RSS feed that are read by a podcatcher, a computer program that translates podcasts into accessible MP3 audio formats. One website simplified the process: in order to create a podcast you must create an audio file, “add the audio file to an RSS 2.0 feed,” and then “tell the world about your podcast.”

Podcasting has expanded since the first IPod. Innovators realized that podcasting could do more than allow music lovers to download songs. Podcasts could distribute information and allow people to broadcast their opinions to the world. Today, there’s a podcast for just about everything from celebrity interviews to information about diabetes. Common podcasts include informational content, audio instruction manuals, news stories and commentaries, talk shows, and storytelling for children and the vision impaired. Many podcasts cater to a certain group of people such as vegetarians who tune in to hear the latest recipes, religious groups who want to learn more about their faith, or baseball fans who want information about all their favorite players.

Anyone can podcast. Big news names such as MSNBC and ABC have their own professional news podcasts, but you can also listen to high school freshmen debating which Family Guy episode was the funniest of all time. Podcasts not only let people listen to a variety of subjects, they let computer users listen to a variety of people. This lets people who don’t have the “radio voice” be able to share their opinions with the everyone. Podcasting does a lot for citizen journalism and free speech because anyone can broadcast their actual voice to anyone who’ll listen.

Although broadcast radio is the medium being gate jumped by this new technology, podcasts can never replace the convenience of the radio. Podcasts can be played on portable MP3 players, but since they need to be downloaded first, radio is still the choice medium for music and talk radio anywhere anytime. People are still going to listen to the radio on their way home from work. Podcasts can be beneficial to the radio industry. When a particular podcaster gains popularity online, radio stations can gain listeners by putting that particular individual on the air. So, although news websites are causing newspapers to fall, podcasts and the radio can exist peacefully.

Graphic designer for hire

Here's something that caught my interest:

-- The Harrison (AR) Daily Times seeks a page designer who has exceptional graphic skills and artistic flare, and can work with the news and ad staffs to create pages that set a high standard; must know Quark and PhotoShop, while background with InDesign and NewsEdit Pro is a big plus. Work samples and resume to Carol Lawson, Box 40, Harris, AR 72603-0040 or e-mail for more information to carol@commpub.com.
(3/30)

The job is for the Harrison Daily Times, located in Harrison, Arkansas. It is owned by Neighborhood Newspapers also known as Community Publishers, which owns several small town newspapers in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri.

The job interested me because it was looking for a graphic designer with "artistic flare." Creativity is one of my qualities that I value most. The ad also grabbed my attention because they were looking for designers who were familiar in Photoshop and QuarkExpress, which are the two programs I'm most comfortable with. They also looked for a background with InDesign which is the program I used when I was on yearbook staff in high school.

The thing I can do at Lindenwood to prepare myself for a career in graphic design is to take as many design courses as I can and familiarize myself with InDesign and NewsEdit Pro. The best way to get a job as a designer is to learn as many programs as possible because that will make my resume more appealing to possible employers.

Come up with new tricks

Generation Y makes up a significant percentage of spending power in the United States. We spend up to $150 billion per year as a group. It is understandable that this number is so high. Gen Y is the largest generation since the Baby Boomers, and since the majority of us are still financially supported by our parents (either partially or entirely,) we have a lot of disposable income. Since we have such an impact on the economy, we are the main target for almost every company out there.

One main difference between the Baby Boomers and Gen Y is the amount of advertising we grew up with. Since preschool we have watched commercials on every channel telling us to buy things. We fell for the false promises in grade school, but those years of experience have made us more media savvy than previous generations. Some of us even took classes in high school to learn the major components of advertising. This has produced a generation that is more mistrustful of the ads on T.V. We no longer care about celebrity endorsements, flashy commercials, or other old tricks. This is causing a bit of a panic in some major companies such as Nike, Pepsi, and Levi’s Jeans who are loosing a lot of their younger customers. All of them are currently adjusting their sales methods to reconnect with their target audience.

Gen Y is plugged into the internet. Most of us spend our free time chatting online or exploring each other’s pages on Facebook. Companies that wish to connect with teens need to log in as well. Flashy pop-up ads, however, will not get our attention. Pop-up blockers make sure we don’t have too look at them, and those that do seep through will only be greeted with a scowl or an eye-roll before being closed. Get a domain name and hire some web designers. Gen Y likes a company with a good website and one that accepts feedback from its customers is even better. It shows us that the company is more interested in customer satisfaction; not just making money.

Gen Y has a heart. Studies show that teens are more likely to buy products if the company donates some of the proceeds to a charitable cause. A study from 2000 found that 91% of teens valued companies and products that supported a good cause, and 89% of them would switch to brands associated with a good cause. The recent popularity of Green products shows that today’s teens are still enthusiastic about making the world a better place.

Getting support from Gen Y requires more than a T.V. ad. Waiting for us to come buy your product is not the road to take anymore. If you want our attention, you have to come to us. Go to malls, skate parks, concerts, and college campuses and use contests and promotions to get attention. A lot of companies are even using “street teams” to gain Gen Y loyalty. “Street teams” are young employees who to go popular teen hang-outs to promote products, and get feedback on what is popular and what teens want in a product.

T.V. commercials aren’t dead yet. Teens will still pay attention to certain ads. Serious commercials that use celebrities or cool images to promote their products are ignored. Gen Y responds to humor and parodies. Sprite and Arizona Jeans actually parody the traditional serious or gimmicky ads in some of their commercials which has actually boosted sales from Gen Y customers. Commercials that make us laugh stick with us. We’ll even watch an hour’s worth of funny ads on TBS’s annual World’s Funniest Commercials.



Gen Y may be harder to reach with our general distrust of major companies, but we’re still reachable. We know all the old tricks of the ad agencies, but trying some new methods is sure to get our attention.

A World of Pirates

Put the word “free” in front of anything and we’re interested. CDs and DVDs can be expensive, but it doesn’t take much effort to get the same quality for free. The word for this is “pirating.” Like the pirate crews of the 17th century, modern pirates steal precious, very valuable treasure, but instead of stealing spices from the East India Trading Company, modern pirates are searching for movies and music on the internet.

Music

Music pirating has been around a little longer than movie pirating. Music pirates of the 80’s were a bit more innocent than the ones today. Teenagers held microphones up to radios to record songs to a cassette tape and friends would often share cassettes using the same method. The low quality was good for personal use, but was not something that could be sold to the masses. Today, internet pirates can download thousands of songs from an illegal provider who either gives them away for free, or sells them for a lower price. The number of music pirates is rapidly increasing. Studies show that 95% of teens illegally download music from the internet, and only 1 in 20 music downloads is legally paid for.

The numbers are even higher in China. Music pirating is so prominent that many major stores sell pirated CDs. Since pirates sell their CDs at a lower price, 95% of all music sales in China are from pirated music (which is why Chinese musicians make much less money than American artists.)

There are several ways that the music industry and the federal government are trying to put a stop to this pirating. One way is by putting out advertising against it. Obviously it takes more than a commercial to deter the masses (youtube is full of spoofs) which is why the government is increasing the penalty for pirating. Suspicious downloads can be monitored and illegal downloaders are being faced with heavy fines. If one is caught, he or she can end up paying a fine of $5,000, or $750 per song. That $1 download on iTunes is starting to look pretty good. But since only a small percentage of pirates are caught, illegal downloads continue to be a problem.

Movies

The number of illegal movie downloads is just as high as that of music. More than 25 million Americans have illegally downloaded a full length movie. One way to understand this trend is to analyze the way people view the issue. One study shows that while 78% of the people surveyed thought that stealing a DVD from a store was a “serious offense,” only 40% of them thought that downloading the same movie from the internet was also a crime. Perhaps the mentality is: the greater the risk of being caught, the more serious the crime. If this were the case, would robbing a convenience store two blocks away from a police station be worse than robbing one two miles from one?

Many people believe that since the movie business is so rich, it doesn’t matter if it loses a little money from an illegal download. Researchers call this the “Robin Hood Effect.” People fail to realize the combined effect movie pirating has on the industry. $1.49 billion is lost in output, $903 million is lost in earnings, and 22,986 jobs are lost (MPAA). Hollywood producers aren’t the only ones benefiting from movie sales after all. With the economy the way it is today, those 22,986 jobs would be very beneficial.

Peer Pressure

In my opinion, movie and music pirating is so wide spread not because it’s cheap, but because it’s cool. High school and college students talk about downloading new music and movies in daily conversation. In fact during dinner this evening some of my friends were discussing movies they wanted to download. I have also had friends trying to get me to download movies, “You don’t have to pay money to see it, Christine, look: this site will let you watch it for free.” When did paying for media become uncool? Just like with alcohol and cigarettes, peer pressure can have a powerful effect. The percentage of music and movie pirates would not be as high if people didn’t promote it. So if you regularly download music and movies illegally, I’m not asking you to stop because you probably wouldn’t listen to me anyway. All I ask is that you stop encouraging your friends to do the same. One less pirate can mean one more job for a legal movie distributor.

One of us

Flip open a magazine. What do you see? Flawless skin, perfectly toned bodies, perfect cleavage, perfect teeth, perfect hair, perfect everything. Right? Now look in the mirror and look at your family members and friends. Now what do you see? Flat chests, flabby stomachs, dark circles under the eyes, and lines everywhere. We all think the same thing: Why can’t I look like the stars in the magazine. So we buy gallons of concealer and foundation, pay money for Botox injections, or sulk on the couch with a paper bag over our head. I’ve got a newsflash for you: You are wasting your time and money! I’m not being insensitive saying that you’re so ugly you can never reach model standards; I am saying that there are no model standards because models look just like us. Models know how to hide who they really are. They have the power to hide wrinkles, lines, dark circles, pimples, and flab, and make their boobs, eyes, and butts bigger all at the same time. But they aren’t magicians; Photoshop is.

Generation Y knows the power of Photoshop. Most millennials own the program and dabble with it to add effects to their favorite pictures, but most forget that Photoshop is the most important tool to the ad and magazine industries. We continue to see the flawless bodies as a reality. Many people who do photo touch-ups claim that their method only enhances the natural beauty that a person possesses. As an avid Photoshopper myself, I see this declaration to be false. Changing the color tone of the photo and adjusting the brightness and the contrast are ways to bring out the natural beauty of the picture, as well as the person in it. Erasing wrinkles, lengthening eyelashes, and shrinking waist-lines are not bringing out the natural beauty of the photo or the person. Such extreme alterations, in my opinion, cause the image to cease being a photograph, and transform it into a computer generated piece of artwork. It is based on a real person, but it is no longer a photographic depiction of one.

Look at the picture below.

It is a Photoshopped picture of a woman, a computer generated piece of artwork. We know that no real person looks like this. The image is altered. We should think the same things when we see a photo such as this:

If you still don’t believe that most models have the same “imperfections” that we do, check out this website: http://www.glennferon.com/portfolio1/index.html . Click on any of these ad models and mouse over his or her picture to see who he or she really is. I guarantee some of them will make you feel a lot better about yourself.

Sickened by society’s deception of beauty yet? If none of this has upset you yet, maybe this will:
You’re never too young for a touch-up. Apparently children face a standard of beauty as well. With mobs of pageant moms training their tiny tots to be the future Miss America, many of them are turning to photo touch-up specialist to get their daughters noticed. Slathering their three-year-olds with make-up just isn’t cutting it anymore. Check out this website for a pageant photo touch-up company. (Mouse over the pictures to see the real children vs. the perfect pageant girls.) http://www.thephotoenhancer.com/example1.htm

As a future graphic designer, I know that I will most likely be forced to do such hideous alterations. In an effort to avoid this, I don’t plan on becoming a designer for any major ad companies or fashion magazines. I understand the impact such modified images has on people, especially women. For those of you suffering from low self esteem, remember: models are one of us, only they feel the need to hide behind a mask.

A New Low in Scams

“Hello, I have a lot of money, but need some American money to get into the country. Please give me your credit card number and I will give you half of my money. Thank you, and God Bless.”

That’s one e-mail that’s getting deleted. It’s true, not all scammers are geniuses. Some e-mails you receive might as well have a flashing “This is a scam” sticker. But, unfortunately, scammers are upping their game and finding new and craftier ways to get what they want: your money.

People have been stealing from other people since the dawn of time. Pick-pockets slipped into coin purses at the Coliseum, Jesse James hijacked trains to steal from the wealthy passengers, and banks have experienced hold ups since they first opened. Theft is not a modern concept. Modern technology, however, has made theft much easier than it used to be. Thieves once needed agility and weapons to steal whatever money a person had on them and the chances of getting caught were fairly high. Now, a crafty thief, using a false identity, can steal thousands of dollars from a stranger without ever leaving their home, making their chances of getting caught slim to none.

There are many strategies scammers use: fake companies falsely hiring, emails pretending to be a bank or other well known company, and yes, e-mails pretending to be a wealthy foreigner willing to give up millions of dollars for a credit card number. But just recently, scammers have broken away from e-mails and have logged on to Facebook as their newest source of income.

Read Write Web, reports that scammers are sending false notifications to Facebook users claiming they violated the terms of service and are having their page investigated. When the user clicks on the link, they are redirected to a page which requires them to fill out personal information to save their profile.

Why Facebook? It seems pretty obvious. Typical Facebook users are either in high school or college. This age group is focused on socializing and making friends. Facebook is a major social connection for many teens and young adults. Not only are these new Facebook scammers preying on younger more naïve minds, they’re also preying on social butterflies who would do anything to save their Facebook page if they thought it was going to be erased.

While Facebook is working hard to ensure such scams are erased from its site, this incident should stand as a reminder that nothing online is completely trust-worthy and personal info like credit card information should be heavily guarded. These Facebook scammers may have been thwarted, but they will be back in some other form. As more people surf the web, new thieves join the thousands of scammers already logged on.

Money > News?

The newspaper is dying. That fact is evident. We might assume that this recent trend is due to a growing interest in the World Wide Web. We would be correct in this assumption. Younger generations prefer to get their news from websites such as Google or Yahoo than run to the nearest vending machine for a newspaper. But I learned that this is not the only cause for the paper’s demise.

I was fortunate to attend a lecture from news journalist Bob Wigginton at my last Survey of Professional Media class. Wigginton explained recent trends that have contributed to the downfall of our oldest news source as well as how this unfortunate fate will effect the future of journalism as well as the world.

The internet is indeed a reason for a fall in newspaper sales, but it is not the only knife in journalism’s back. Another reason for a decline in newspaper journalism is actually the corporate take-over of news companies. Large corporations are not selling newspapers to keep the masses informed. The CEOs are only interested in one thing: $ $ $. If they don’t reach their sell goal, they panic, believing they have lost thousands of dollars. “They’re not really loosing money,” Wigginton explained, “They just aren’t making as much as they wanted to.”

When he said this, I couldn’t help thinking about my father’s former boss. My dad works as a carpenter. He is one of the best in St. Louis, and I'm not saying this because he is my father. His talent and attention to detail has been admired and acknowledged by employers and clients for many years. Unfortunately, one of his employers was more interested in making money than building good houses. When my dad took time out of his workday to make sure a door was hung perfectly or that the wood grain on the crown molding matched the chair rail, he would be scolded for "causing the company to loose money." My dad was "wasting time" and "time is money." His employer believed money was more important than quality. This philosophy caused his houses to have crooked doors and poor wiring. His construction company is currently struggling to stay in business.

This same situation is occurring in newspaper companies. In their quest to make more money, greedy executives are laying off thousands of journalists. This is causing a decrease in the quality of the hard news stories which further promotes the decrease in sales. So, don't always blame the internet for the fall of the newspaper; blame greed.