Rathergate: Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the blog

“If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.”

That sentence there marks the end of an era. An era of trust in Dan Rather and in 60 Minutes. People who had trusted Rather believed that as the voice of the news in 60 Minutes that they could just believe what he said as well researched truth. It only took one event to topple his credibility like a line of dominoes, or a house of cards, and that event was Rathergate.

It was September 8th, 2004, just weeks before the american federal election, and Dan Rather was doing a report on 60 Minutes about George Bush’s military history. He mentioned that he had files from a higher up in the organization and that they were genuine and had been evaluated by experts. These files portrayed Bush in a rather unflattering light. If they were in fact genuine as Rather had said, they would have been very harmful to Bush in the upcoming election. The report ran and people in America were shocked, but beliving. Who wouldn’t believe Mr Dan Rather? He was a trusted figure in the eyes of many. Why would the news lie? Who would go against believing the news?

Well, a group of Republican bloggers began to look at the supposed files saying that they could have just been mocked up in Microsoft Word. Bloggers, you say? Why, what is a blogger?

A blogger being a person who wrote online articles, but didn’t need to be published by a paper or news outlet. They were self publishing. They had mainly been online and helping eachother out and telling eachother stores. Blogger was not a word used in everyday homes. Up until this incident that is.

These bloggers helped to disprove some very damning, but actually very possiby fake evidence against the President of the United States. These independant Internet nerds working together actualy toppled the tower of news and made Dan Rather fall like Humpty Dumpty. He “resigned” just under a year later.

This incient was the turning point for blogs and bloggers. Some of them were all of a sudden taken very eriously. In the 4 years since, people are able to make a living out of blogging. They can sit at home in their underpants and just write about whatever they want, and as long as they have proof, they are valid purveryors of news. They aren’t journalists, but they are news providers. Blogging gave people everywhere a soapbox to stand on, which is something a lot of people needed to get their thoughts and ideas out there. Blogging is now everywhere, even in the classrooms of schools, as I am actualy writing this blog for a class assignment.

The future’s not set. There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves

Now, I know it is a little tacky to have 2 blog posts in a row named after Terminator quotes, but seriously, this time, it is relevant. I always loved this quote in the movies. When you watch other movies, like Romeo and Juliet, they talk about the future and fate as something predetermined. I like thinking that it is whatever we want to make of it.

This eases my mind a bit, as I usually feel the same way as the singer for Motion City Soundtrack, when he belts out the song “The Future Freaks Me Out”. I sometimes am scared of the future, especially of journalism. To know that the cold hard facts may one day be written by robots, as they will not be biased. They can just write the cold hard facts, from their cold hard hearts. But they will never be able to have an on screen presence like a human, or write with human interest in mind.

Ok, I have to move away from the topic of robots. But seriously, sometime it scares me to see all of the mediums condensing into one, and all of the convergence happening. Now I am glad that I get to dabble in all of the mediums and try them all, but with all of the jobs coming together, it also means less jobs. I am not scared of the way the trends are moving, but I am scared of getting a job in there.

I was up for an award for writing, so I guess my writing skills are improving. I love working with the TV stations and I love using my voice for the radio. I also have to say I love being able to blog and work on online journalism. I am glad that with the way journalism is evolving, I may be able to work back and forth and be a jack of all trades and a master of some.

I hope with the internet’s growing popularity that the jobs that are being cut back on in the other mediums can be made up for with that one. As I said, if the jobs keep getting less and less, I may have to work at the hospital the rest of my life, and not at a TV station as I would like.

I really think it all lies in the hands of this generation of journalists. As long as we keep doing a good job, there should be good jobs for us. People will always need to be informed. There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves

My CPU is a neural net processor, a learning computer

We have access to more information than at anytime in history. The question remains: How much information are humans able to process?

Last time I was cleaning my room I was trying to make sure I put all of my old clothes in one bag, because I didn’t want to have to make 2 trips with 2 bags when I could try for just one. So I kept cramming clothes in and filling the bag to capacity. It got to the point where the bag couldn’t take it any more and just burst at the seems. What’s with the analogy right? Well, as humans, we can only really process so much information. Every hour of every day, something is happening somewhere. Someone is fighting a war, someone is dying, someone is inventing the next thing to change the world. But can we keep tabs on all of it? I don’t think so. I think we are only able to really process as much as we want to. We can only really process as much so that when we hear something new, what we were just thinking about sticks. If we just hear it all day, we may be processing it, but it won’t stick. It’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall. You can throw it all day, but only the good stuff is going to stick.

My blog title is a quote said by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2. Maybe he can keep up with news as it happens and remember it all. But as humans, we can’t all remember and process everything. I really think that yes, we can be hooked up to news machines all day telling us something new, but if we just keep being bombarded with the new stories, we won’t have time to think about the old ones. I think people should really just slow it down and try and process the news that is important to them, or their world. Maybe if more people played Brain Age or tried to make their brains able to process everything faster, they could, but I think it is a waste of time. Process what you can, because tomorrow is another day, there is only going to be more news, so take it one day at a time. 

What the heck is a morass?

“We know there is a vast morass of information out there that our audiences want us to try to make sense of. The danger consists in trying to leap above it, not by getting more dramatic or salient or verifiable facts, but by analyzing, speculating, predicting, interpreting – by drawing definitive conclusions while the bodies are still warm.” – Paul Knox, The Globe and Mail

Morass – Something that hinders, engulfs, or overwhelms. Ok. There we go. You learn something new every day. Anyways. The job of being a journalist seems almost daunting and scary to me sometimes. How can I excel in a job where it is really hard to get different news than someone else is getting? Thats where this quote comes in. I am a person who jumps to conclusions faster than almost everyone I know, which is something I am trying to get under control before I go into the field for this job. I can’t write a story based on assumptions. Sure, I would like to, but telling a story without any fact to back it up is the big no no for journalists. I can’t go on hearsay alone. As much as it would make for a good story, writing or reporting it without knowing all the facts can get us in trouble.

I remember just a few months ago where Howard Berger from The Fan 590 radio, reported that Sean Avery made comments about Jason Blake’s recovery from cancer. Berger reported that Avery had said something derogatory about Jason Blake without interviewing Blake or Avery. He took a story that could have been big news if it were true, and ran with it hoping it was true. This resulted in Berger getting in trouble with Avery and having to apologize on air on The Fan 590. This is something that could have been potentially destructive to Berger’s career. Luckily he apologized in time, and wasn’t affected too much by this event. But in the future for us students now, we might not be so lucky. We won’t have a track record like Berger’s was leading up to that event. Even with a track record though, don’t test the news. Reporting news that you are unsure of is just about as bad as gossiping. Might as well pack up our desks and apply at The National Enquirer and TMZ

While we should be trying to get scoops and exclusives, don’t run unless you know you have the ground underneath you to hold you up when you look down. Otherwise…

You put the load right on, right on me

Like Deja Vu All Over Again

I hate that saying. It really makes no sense. And I’m not going to lie, that’s also what I thought when Darryl told us we were having the librarian come tell us how to research using school resources again. As we had already heard from this librarian, I thought it was a bit redundant. However, after watching her presentation again, I am going to admit I was wrong.

The first time we watched it, it was just after 8 in the morning and my classmates and I were all pretty tired and disinterested, because we really didn’t care at the time. At least that’s how I felt. I was sleepy and I wasn’t planning on using much she was showing us, but I still tried to pay attention and I thought I had retained some of that knowledge. But when she came in today to show us how to do things again, I started to see a lot of things I had forgotten. I guess weight isn’t the only thing I haven’t been retaining much of lately.

I had forgotten a lot of the little tricks she had shown us, like using the dollar sign at the end of a term to search all words including those first letters, such as putting scien$ for scientist, science, etc. I had forgotten about using the word “and”, like how it narrowed down the search field, but maybe not in a good way. It was good for her to show us the ways to search more than one word but not exclusively.

I also hadn’t realized the extended list of resources we had at our fingertips. It was cool to see that you can search by magazine, or by newspaper, such as by Time or by The Spectator. It was also helpful to see that we can just simply check the stories we want and save them for later. I am realizing that maybe I shouldn’t always just rely on mainstream search engines, because as much as I have been told that before, it was the presentation today that really brought that idea home.

I am excited to use what I learned in being able to maybe find stories in different magazines and books for when I am working on a story of my own and maybe need to refer back to a report that was done before. Learning what I did makes that process much easier now. I will also use Clusty now when I am researching to help me narrow down my search, because it will help me cut down on time looking through all the search results. That extra time may just help me out one time with a story, you never know. Having tried to use some of the resources without knowing the tricks and how to enter the terms properly, I can honestly say that it was not easy and just made me want to Google it. But now I think knowing what I am doing is really going to help me with my stories because I will have much better sources of information than I used to, and it will look much more professional.

So while I won’t lie and say it was the most entertaining class, I will say I did learn some interesting things and I am glad I came to class.

Final Assignment Video Blog

I talked to someone in my life who knows more about life and how to live it than anyone else I know, as well as what movie I can put on depending on my mood. He talked about movies and reality, and how the 2 have managed to balance each other out in some people’s lives

Perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies

Today’s entry into my blog is a review of a great movie that I saw because I had never heard of, but someone told me I would love it. Suffice it to say, they were right. I am realizing more and more that some of the best movies that I’ve seen in recent times are just a modernization of a classic style: the film noir. The who-dunnit kind of movie where someone is trying to figure out how to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and there is always a twist, and more often than not, a beautiful girl. This is one of my favourite modern film noirs, although suffice it to say, I have a lot of favourites. But I can tell you more about those later.

Movie: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Yes, what an odd title for a film. It shares its name with numerous books and albums, most notably however is Pauline Kael’s second published book of film reviews. Her quote on why she chose the title is the name of this blog entry. Now however, enough about old reviews. On to a new one.

The movie stars Robert Downey Jr, an actor whom many of you may know more about his drug issues than about his acting pursuits. The other lead in this film is Val Kilmer, whom you either know as Jim Morrison, or the first Batman with nipples. Downey Jr plays Harry Lockhart, a man who has failed at almost everything he has attempted, including the robbery he and an accomplice are committing at the beginning of the film. When he and his partner in crime are shot leaving the scene of the crime, Harry has no choice but to make a run for it. To escape from the cops, he runs in to an open door, which happens to be a casting room where auditions are being held for a crime film. After faking his way through, he is snatched up, patched up, and flown out to Hollywood. Here he meets Gay Perry (Kilmer), a private eye whom the film studio wants Harry to shadow to prepare for the part he has landed. Their first day on the job together is regular private eye kind of stuff, just taking pictures of a couple. But that small case gets turned into a murder filled who-dunnit, where nothing goes as planned. Their investigation leads them all over L.A, and they meet some interesting people on the way, such as the gorgeous girl of the story, Harmony Lane (Michelle Monaghan). I can’t say much more about the plot without giving it away, but needless to say, there is no shortage of twists.

One of the things I love the most about this movie is it’s quick witted, sharp writing. It was written and directed by Shane Black, who wrote Lethal Weapon, The Monster Squad, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and many other action movies. It is his first time directing, but he doesn’t trip over his own two feet with this superb movie. He sticks with classic noir style and storytelling, including having the main character narating the movie.

The movie itself is split up into chapters, all of which are named after Raymond Chandler novels, which were some of the best noir style novels written back in the 30s and 40s. The pacing is great, the acting is superb, and the jokes will leave your sides actually hurting from laughing. So if you’re looking for a good film noir, or just wanna see some great acting, this is definitely a movie to check out.

Video Blog!

Here’s me!

Dyin’ ain’t much of a livin’…or is it?

Whereas previously I wrote about a movie where a man dies, this time I’m writing about a show where a girl dies. While he moves on, she doesn’t get the chance. After re-watching this show recently, I have been reminded of just how great it is and why I love it, and I want to share it with you.

Television: Dead Like Me

I have never had satellite or digital cable, so I haven’t gotten into as many HBO or Showtime shows as I wished I could have. But when I was only 17, I knew I wanted to see this show. I had to wait forever for it on DVD, and it took a long time for it to go down in price enough for me to afford on the pay I got from my old low paying job. I had to download a few episodes before I could get the set, but I knew I would love this show before I ever saw it. I had always pondered about death and the afterlife. To know that there was a show about grim reapers, and their lives, well, afterlives, I knew it was something that had my interest right there. Then the day came where I finally found the first season on DVD within my price range. I snapped it up and rushed home to watch it.

I became entranced. Everything was done so well. The cast was amazing. Rebecca Gayheart as Betty, Callum Blue as Mason, Jasmine Guy as Roxie. They are the veteran reapers. Mandy Patinkin plays Rube, the boss of all of the reapers. These reapers are joined by 18 year old Georgia Lass, played amazingly by Ellen Muth. Georgia dies in a tragic accident, and rather than pass on to the next life, she finds out she is stuck. Not something she is used to. She used to live at home, and had just dropped out of college and died on her first day at her new job. She is stuck being a grim reaper. Her new job is to take people’s souls from their bodies before they die. She is in charge of deaths caused by accidents, much like how she died.

It’s neat to have a show where someone gets a second chance at life, even if they had to be dead to do so. She has to get a real job, find somewhere to live. She grows up and enters the real world, but at the same time it’s like starting all over for her because she has no ties to her old life. It’s a show about growing up, but also about death. I love the combination.

I was only 17 myself when I started watching this show, so it really made me appreciate my life a lot more. You never know when it could be taken away from you. I even planned how to handle my own funeral after watching this show, which worried my mom, until I explained why. It was quite the misunderstanding.

For any person at any place in their life, this show is just great. It has some hilarious moments, but also can really touch your heart and make you think about a lot of deep things. I highly recommend everyone who reads this to check out the pilot episode if you haven’t already. I guarantee you won’t be dissapointed

Sadly, this show is now cancelled, but this summer there will be a follow up movie that takes place after the series finale! So stay tuned!