Gov. Granholm rallies support for the Michigan Promise Scholarship, at EMU

Hundreds of Eastern Michigan University community members rallied to show their concern about the broken Michigan Promise Scholarship when Governor Granholm visited the EMU Student Center on Monday morning.
The Michigan legislature still has time to change their decision to cut funding for the scholarship program, but Michigan students and citizens must demand action, Granholm said.
“It’s not too late to be able to save the Michigan Promise, and I’m really here to ask for your help,” Granholm said. “This promise should be kept, but we can’t do it alone.”
Several students from EMU and the University of Michigan spoke at the rally about how the broken promise of the scholarship will negatively affect their education. All of the students who spoke come from low-income families, and they illustrate a trend that could continue if state and federal aid for education continues to be reduced; only the wealthy will be able to provide higher education for their children.
Up to 2,000 EMU students will be affected by the loss of the scholarship. For some students the scholarship makes a difference in their decision to attend a university. “When I realized that I was going to get the Michigan Promise I was thrilled. I realized that I could follow my dream and go to a top university like Eastern Michigan,” said Kimberly Rose, an EMU freshman who will be losing the scholarship this year.
Granholm compared Michigan’s predicament to President Obama’s approach to national healthcare reform. “He has a strategy of going around the country asking for citizens to raise their voices, and that’s exactly the right strategy,” she said. “It’s you who have the power.”


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Reporting by Courtney Miller and Rachelle Marshall

TIB Essay - EMU

I believe Eastern Michigan University is one of the best higher education institutions in Michigan. I transferred to EMU from Washtenaw Community College in 2007, and I found that both colleges reflect the positive qualities of the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti communities, as a whole. One of the greatest aspects of attending EMU is the diversity of the students and staff. Learning to communicate and interact with all different types of people has prepared me for life in ways that textbook reading could not. Even as a commuter, I feel like I belong at EMU and that I am part of a community. I would have liked the opportunity to live on campus, so that I could have participated in more events and activities. The students and staff do a great job of organizing opportunities for people to meet each other. Because the school is smaller, compared to Michigan’s other state universities, networking and building relationships, with professors and other students, is easier. Professors can give attention to individual students because of smaller class sizes, and students help each other out instead of stressing over cut-throat competition, like that which occurs at more expensive institutions.

At EMU, students can focus on learning what they want, without the pressure to have to be the best at something. For the most part, students here are self-motivated and hard-working. EMU students often balance work, school, family and life, and many have overcome personal hardships. EMU students are survivors and pioneers. We are at EMU because we want an education, and a lot of students make sacrifices in order to achieve that. It’s not easy, but that makes it seem more valuable at the end. Many of us will be the first people in our families to graduate from college, including myself. I believe that EMU is an ideal learning environment. The students and staff are friendly and welcoming, and learning really is the primary focus of all who are part of the community. I cherish my experiences at EMU and recommend the college to anyone who is looking for a place to find their own direction.

"The Reconstruction of American Journalism" - Leonard Downie Jr. and Michael Schudson

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in his dissenting opinion in 1919, "When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas-that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution."
The reconstructing of journalism is a difficult task that will take a lot of effort from a variety of sources. American society must consider the importance of journalists, specifically concerning "independent reporting." Try to imagine an America without professional journalists. It's difficult. Journalism is something that people must be trained to do. Like digital photography, just because you have the technology and can take a picture, doesn't mean you are a professional photographer. The public benefits from digital technology greatly, but the transition is bittersweet for journalists.
The public must understand that the best test of truth is to allow it to be consumed in the free-market of ideas, but that journalists can make finding the truth, a much easier task. Ultimately, for the public, more news is good, and the Internet has made gathering information much easier for researchers, including journalists. Downie and Schudson explain that the job of journalism is to tell citizens what they would not otherwise know.
Local news is of particular concern to people studying media because it can be difficult to fund local news organizations. This is ironic because local news is very important to the public, and is the news that impacts the audience the most.
Downie and Schudson write, "There is unlikely to be any single new economic model for supporting news reporting." There will be a long period of experimentation that we are experiencing now, before we have a good grasp on funding news production on the Internet. Downie and Schudson write that the IRS and Congress must allow independent news organizations to be recognized as non-profit or low-profit Limited Liability Corporations. Universities, advertisers, philanthropists, advocacy groups and the government will have a role to play with funding independent reporting. Downie and Schudson write, "The federal government already provides assistance to the arts, humanities, and sciences through independent agencies." Downie and Schudson point out that there will be special mechanisms that must be in place to protect the investigative reporting from censorship, and special interests. They are quick to add that they are not suggesting a government bailout of newspapers. "It may not be essential to save any particular news medium, including printed newspapers," they wrote.
There are examples of alternative business models that America can look to throughout the world. Downie and Schudson write, "Much of newspaper journalism in other democracies is still partisan, subsidized by or closely allied with political parties." They continue, "...various direct subsidies that governments give newspapers in many European countries, although those subsidies have not had a noticeably chilling effect on newspapers' willingness to print criticism of those governments."
Ultimately, there will have to be a collaboration on the part of many people to allow journalism to continue as a profession. If you want to be a journalist, you're probably not going into the field for the money anyway. It has never been considered a lucrative career choice. That said, people are not going to want to put in the effort it takes to do good investigative reporting, if they cannot make a living doing so. As patriotic as I'd like to be, I cannot volunteer time to be a journalist, when I need to have a job that allows me to be self-sufficient. One thing's for sure, investigative reporting is something America needs to continue to support because our democracy will not progress without it, and it is a skill that deserves to be paid for.

"Take a Stand" - Brent Cunningham

American journalism has not always strived to be objective. Some of the most progressive times in American history have been advocated by the media. During the Revolutionary War period and when America was first established as an independent nation, politicians and people in power used the press to promote partisan views. Objectivity didn’t become a characteristic of American journalism until the 20th century, and since then, journalists have occasionally crossed the line of objectivity to lead the country in the right direction. One example of this was Edward R. Murrow’s coverage of Senator McCarthy’s communist witch-hunt. American media has played an important role in shaping our history, from abolition to the election of George W. Bush.

As more people tended to get their news from television in the late 20th century, the news became more of an entertainment business than a public service. People basically yell back and forth at each other and progress is never made. In the article, “Take a Stand: How journalism can regain its relevance,” Brent Cunningham writes, “But the hard truth is that the press mostly amplifies the agendas of others –the prominent and the powerful—and tends to aggressively assume its adversarial role only when someone or something –a president, a CEO, a institution—is wounded and vulnerable.” Journalism should be working to set an agenda that fulfills the needs of the public. In order to do this, media outlets must develop a closer bond with their audiences. Digital technology, specifically the Internet, makes it possible for journalists to strengthen their relationship with the public, and at a very important time in history.

Cunningham explains that record keeping is an important part of journalism, but there are several other roles a journalist must perform in order to do justice for the public. Cunningham describes journalists as investigators, explainers, and arbiters of our national conversation. We talked about climate change in class. Cunningham quotes Yale economist Robert Shiller, from the Washington Post, 2008, “Whenever the public endures a crisis, ordinary citizens start to wonder how –and whether—our institutions really work. We no longer take things for granted. It is only then that real change becomes possible.” With something like global warming, the public cannot afford to wait too long to pressure the government to make important changes. It is the responsibility of journalists to educate the public about the importance of the issue. Climate change is scientifically supported fact, and the fact that the media do not report it as such, is worrisome. It makes you wonder about the motives behind the lack of reporting; whether the government is trying to prevent panic, or that global warming is simply bad for corporate business. Cunningham points out that when the public is economically content, they tend to ignore issues that still really matter. “Indeed, once the Dow begins nosing back toward ten thousand, the window of opportunity for fundamental change may close,” he writes. This is important to consider when defining the future role of journalists, because maybe it would be a good thing for people to have to confront these issues, rather than continue to avoid addressing major root problems of society.

Sometimes the public’s need to know outweighs the importance of trying to remain objective. Objectivity doesn’t necessarily mean giving equal time to two sides of an issue. Sometimes the facts support one side more than another. 21st century journalists must validate facts, and put them into the context of the big picture in order to illuminate the reality of situations.

Nobody does a better job of pointing out the problem with American media, than Jon Stewart. Here’s a link to an episode of the Daily Show, which illustrates what is wrong with the current mainstream media: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-october-12-2009/cnn-leaves-it-there ...Hilarious!

Pierre Levy's Collective Intelligence

I found a story on Poynter.org, that demonstrates Levy's "integrated dynamic". The article, written by Craig Kanalley, is called, "Fort Hood Shooting Shows How Twitter, Lists Can be Used for Breaking News Posted."
You can view the article here: www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=173078

Kanalley explains how journalists can benefit from social media, like twitter. In the story, a Texas newspaper called The Austin American-Statesman, used Twitter to link up with various other groups to report on the Fort Hood shooting incident, in real time. No event had ever been covered in this way, because Twitter lists are new to the public. People worked together like never before to break the news of the situation. Levy writes, "But real-time democracy is organized not around the vision of power over a society...but the communication of the community with itself, knowledge of the community's self." In the case of the Fort Hood coverage, the role of the digital journalists was to organize and analyze the information that was streaming on Twitter, and to post new information whenever it was available. Journalists were responsible for evaluating the information and making connections between bits of information. The digital journalists became listeners and collaborated with members of the general public, as well as representatives from other organizations, in order to produce thorough coverage of the incident.

Levy predicts, "New forms of writing will be developed." This was proven true with the coverage of the Fort Hood shootings. Kanalley wrote in his article, about the amount of traffic on the Fort Hood twitter lists, "Quigley wasn't entirely surprised by the rapid growth, citing Twitter's potential as a "viral medium" and its snowball effect once something takes off on retweets." The term "viral medium" is a good description of how information gathering occurs on the Internet. In the book review from Amazon.com, included with Levy's "Collective Intelligence," article, reads, "Levy insists we are in the early moments of an historical paradigm shift of the manitude of the Renaissance." This is really exciting, and I do think that we have just seen the beginning of the potential of online interaction.

In-class Response

One of the greatest aspects of the new hybrid news model is that the relationship between the journalist and the public is evolving, and the interaction between the speaker and the listener allows journalists to do their job more efficiently and productively. One of the major roles of a journalist is to spark debate about issues. An example of how digital technology enhances the new information environment and experience, is exhibited in a story published in The Eastern Echo.

link:

http://www.easternecho.com/index.php/article/2009/11/concealed_weapons_bill_would_allow_guns_in_trunks_on_campus

This story shows how the Internet allows readers to participate in a debate after reading about an issue. With print media, readers could discuss stories they read, but not as effectively as they can using digital technology. People are able to discuss the issue with other people they would never communicate with otherwise. After reading the article, readers can look at the comments below to get further educated with all sides of the debate. When people look at the discussion boards, they see the entire argument and can judge for themselves what they think. This teaches readers to be more responsible and productive news consumers. Really, the news doesn't matter if nobody acts on it, and interaction on the Internet encourages responses from readers. One of the greatest things about the two-way communication on the Internet is that readers can demand that the news organization follow-up on the story to address unresolved issues. Also, a reader might say something that isn't stated in the story, that might need further examination. In this way, the writer becomes a listener, and the traditional roles in the legacy news model are switched. The article I looked at in The Echo, is a prime example of a story that creates a lot of debate because gun control is one of the fundamental issues that people have argued about throughout history. It is only through debate and collaboration that we can find solutions to these issues that have plagued our country for so many years. The Internet makes it easier than ever for people to participate a national, and now international, debate. I think the Internet is a blessing, that may one day help us sort out our issues and finally compromise on solutions to serious problems. Of course, it will be up to journalists to help set that agenda and add credibility to the debate.

Steve Outing: The Layers of Citizen Journalism

Steve Outing explains in his essay, "The Layers of Citizen Journalism," that there is no standard model for citizen journalism at this time. There are varying degrees of citizen participation within any given online publication, and traditional print news sources have options when it comes to how much citizen created content is contributed to online and print publication.
The hybrid news model creates two-way conversation between professional journalists and the public. Most online publications allow for readers comments and responses to some stories. This is a good start, but there are other ways that citizens can contribute, besides just leaving comments to the editor. I like the idea of "citizen add-on contributions," which can act as a side bar to a major story. Add-on contributions can turn an article into an ongoing story, and "Offer the community better and deeper coverage, than is possible with a lone professional reporter," Outing writes. By taking the idea of add-on contributions a step further, citizens can participate in the actual reporting process. I like the idea of asking readers to submit questions prior to doing interviews. This enhances the service journalists provide, and allows journalists to tailor the information to the audience's specific inquiries and needs.
Ultimately, any online news presentation from a print organization, must include some format, for example forums or blogs, that allows the public to communicate with the paper. During this digital revolution, it is important that news organizations re-build their relationship with the public. One way journalists can do that is to create "transparency" blogs. Outing writes, "This involves inviting a reader or readers to blog with public complaints, criticism, or praise for the news organizations' ongoing work." This concept goes along with the Society of Professional Journalist's guideline from their "Code of Ethics," which states, "Journalists should: Clarify and explain news coverage and invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct," and, "Encourage the public to voice grievances against the news media."
News organizations will have to determine how they want to control citizen journalist content. Editors may want to monitor and edit the submissions, in order to uphold the reputation and legacy of their brand, however, it may be more wise to all citizen contributions to be published unedited to avoid legal issues like libel. The organization can attach a disclaimer to the citizen content portions of the publication, and allow other readers to monitor the material to control obscenity and false information. It is really exciting to think that there could be multiple types of content on a page, and that readers could interact with stories in various ways, adding their own contributions to give depth to a story or issue. I agree with Outing that the most important thing to achieving a balance is to clearly label the type of content that readers are seeing. This has been true of editorial vs. hard news, in the past, and it shouldn't be difficult to provide transparency about where the information is coming from. Professional journalists establish trust with their audience, and are supported by the reputation of legacy news organizations. Information from citizen journalists may be credible and accurate, but readers must learn to be skeptical of the news they consume, and the people who provide it for them.