The Value of a College Education

The major issue of low-wage workers in the United States was covered recently in articles from newspapers like The Star Tribune, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. The common theme found throughout all three articles is that due to the current state of the economy, anyone can fall into the poverty and other hardships that a low-wage worker must endure at the drop of a hat, and anyone really means anyone. Someone with a college degree? Certainly. Look at Emily Franklin who was featured in The Star Tribune's article - a woman who graduated with a college degree and teaching experience and who never got a teaching job to date. Someone with a white collar job? Sure. Look at Joseph Williams featured in The Atlantic's article - a man who fell from a white collar job as a journalist to a retail salesman. Additionally, the immense hardships that low wage workers must endure were highlighted in all three articles. In The Star Tribune's article, the difficulty of repeated rejection was seen in the story of Emily Franklin. For example, she said that after having over 100 applications rejected, she had to start going to job fairs where "You’d just hang your head when you walked in." In The Atlantic's article, the issue of wage theft was brought up along other incredible hardships that Joseph Williams faced. In The New York Times's article, the difficulties of raising children and trying to get by with bills piling up were discussed in the story of Erika McCurdy. The pictures included in these articles served to add to the effect. In The Star Tribune's article, the picture of Emily Franklin and her sister showed the great divide between low wage workers and higher paid ones. Emily, a low wage worker, sat with her hands covering her face, probably overwhelmed by her fear of what her not-so-bright and also unpredictable future has in store for her while her sister sat in a seemingly chipper mood with a smile on her face. The reason why Emily's sister's mood differed so much is because she has the reassurance of a steady, well-paying job that her sister had been deprived of for so long. In The Atlantic's article, the picture depicting a shopper in a sporting goods retail store had a significant effect as well, but in a different way. This picture allowed readers to contrast what they had always believed sporting goods retail shops to be like with the harsh reality in that the picture was showed what's on the surface while the story below contrasted the surface with the bitter truth. In The New York Times's article, the picture of Erika McCurdy also had a significant effect on the article. The sadness and weariness conveyed by McCurdy's facial expression alongside the bill she held in her hand serve to personify and put a face on the hardship that always accompanies low wage work. There were, in addition to pictures, graphs that added to the stories in a similar way to the images. For example, the bar graph found in The New York Times's article revealing that modern day low wage workers are older and more likely to have high school and college degrees and be of ethnic or racial minorities adds to the story in that it shows how this story does not only apply to the unfortunate woman featured in it but rather that this issue is widespread and covers all kinds of people. It also stresses that a college degree does not have the same guarantee of a job and nice life that it once did. In addition, in The Star Tribune's article, the video included in the article features a few charts that accentuates the fall of opportunity for young people looking for jobs and the decrease in pay over the years for middle-aged people enhance the effect of the story in that it - much like the graph in The New York Times's article - allows the audience to realize that this effects not just the people focused on in the stories but rather that this is more of an epidemic that wreaks havoc on a great many lives. Going off of the graphs in another article from The Atlantic that analyzed the job market for college graduates, wage rigidity is - as one could guess - as rigid as ever. The amount of college students with good non-college jobs have decreased significantly over the years, and this could be partly due to the tendency of businesses to cut workers rather than wages. That would explain why there was data indicating not a drop in the pay of college students with these jobs but rather a drop in the amount of college students with these jobs. In regard to job creation, these graphs do not bring good tidings, but quite the opposite. These graphs reveal that there have been fewer and fewer good-paying job opportunities to people with college degrees, and that this trend may continue in its descent. Concerning worker productivity for good non-college jobs. these graphs indicate that this may decrease because even though college students are working in non-college jobs for which they are overqualified which may indicate that productivity would increase, the graphs also show that less college students are getting these jobs which means that less experienced workers who may be less productive will fill these jobs. On the other hand, worker productivity for low-wage jobs may increase since the amount of overqualified college students with these jobs is increasing. Regarding skill attainment, these graphs once again bring bad news: college students that spend a great deal of time and money mastering the subject of their choice are not ending up in the jobs they tried to attain the skills for, but they are rather ending up in low-wage jobs for which a college education is not needed. Lastly, in regards to retooling, there is actually a bit of good news - even though the good news is not for college students but the companies that they work for in their low-paying jobs. Their businesses will definitely be enhanced by the increasing amount of people with college degrees looking for jobs in their businesses in that their skills that are not necessary for employment in that area will enhance the company once filled with unskilled laborers without college educations. Just like almost any other controversy in the United States, this issue can be analyzed from a political standpoint. For example, liberals tend to try and fight for these low-wage workers and college students just barely making minimum wage, and they in some cases even call for a higher minimum wage. The article on U.S. News that covered the issue of the ever-increasing amount of college graduates with low-wage jobs attended to the biases of liberals in that it focused on the need for a higher minimum wage to accommodate these low-wage workers that, in the eyes of liberals, deserve to make money and support themselves and their families just as much as the next guy. The article pointed out that the improvement of the job market - perhaps by the increase of minimum wage mentioned in the beginning of the article - would lead these suffering college graduates back to the higher-paying jobs they trained for. This appeals to liberals in that it suggests that the solution to this low-wage working college graduates issue is by carrying out one of the things they believe in: higher minimum wage. A study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on employment participation by college graduates 25 years of age and older seems to agree in some ways and also to disagree in other ways with the statistics found in articles previously mentioned. For example, one common theme among all the statistics is that there is a significant amount of people with varying amounts of college education who are working low wage jobs. One thing different about these statistics, however, is that the article in U.S. News said that there were 284,000 college graduates employed in jobs paying at or below the minimum wage while the study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics had not indicated that number. The only way to get an accurate picture of this problem would be to see the effects of this issue for oneself. Finding someone in one's own community suffering in this manner can do much more than any set of numbers, data, and graphs can because of the emotions that humans cannot control coming largely into play in a situation like that. A May 2013 study from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce yielded many shocking results from my point of view, as a high school student constantly looking at what the future has in store for me. One noteworthy trend I noticed among the unemployment rates for the various jobs noted in the study is that there was no major theme among all the different career fields studied for unemployment rates. The study revealed to me that it truly does not matter what a person's interests are; there is always a chance that one is not going to end up with a job. Even though I recognize there are definitely jobs that are in much higher demand than others, aside from that, there really is no specific warning sign that pops out at me, telling me to avoid this or that kind of job. Rather, one must put oneself out there in order to find out whether they will get a job in a certain area or not. The job market is obviously quite fickle, and the only way to deal with that is by having strong back up plans that are perhaps just as strong or even stronger than one's primary and preferable plan. There is a similar article found in The Wall Street Journal that looks at the choice college students face in regards to choosing a major based on different factors. This article, while it has a similar goal to the Huffington Post article in that both articles give tips to college students in regards to choosing a major for their careers, the two differ in that the Huffington Post article focused on the comparison of unemployment rates particular to different majors in choosing a major while The Wall Street Journal article looked at the comparison of salaries in choosing a major. I am more swayed by the arguments made in The Wall Street Journal article, mainly because the experts quoted in the article seem to back up their arguments more sufficiently while the Huffington Post article lacked the back up or discussion of a topic by experts. Going off of a chart on comparative unemployment rates of college graduates versus non-college graduates over several decades, it seems as though one could predict that the premium of a college education, though it is falling, will not become irrelevant. Information on average indebtedness, however, could add to this analysis because it may decrease the value of a college education. College was once the institution that set apart the elite from the average in the United States. Things have certainly changed.

The Wage Theft Prevention Act: A Matter of Crime and Politics and Religion...Oh My!

One of the most heated debates out there right now is the one regarding the Wage Theft Prevention Act. According to AFL-CIO,wage theft "generally refers to employees being denied full compensation for their work under the law. Often...victims of wage theft...are denied meal breaks, overtime pay and minimum wage and are forced to work off the clock without pay. It is illegal to not pay or to underpay workers their wages." This growing issue is more than just a matter of the law, however, as it not only incriminates American businesses but it also initiates political and religious controversy. The fact that Michigan is one of the states at the center of this debate exposes the political nature of this debate. Though somewhat moderate, Michigan tends to lean more towards the liberal side of the political spectrum, and it shows in this wage theft controversy. Liberals strongly believe in the government having a responsibility to regulate businesses in order to protect laborers from the greed of business owners and corporations. The corporation: McDonald's. The greed: McDonald's trying to force their employees to clock in once the first customer arrives no matter how long they spend there beforehand, thus leaving them with time unpaid. The laborers needing protection: McDonald's employees like Jason Hughes whose story was focused on in a Think Progress article recently and who was one of many victims of wage theft. In the same article, it was said that there have been workers in Michigan filing suits against McDonald's for wage theft. Why does Michigan seem to be one of the first states to take action against these alleged crimes committed by McDonald's among other corporations? The answer is simple: the state is full of liberals who abhor this kind of treatment. This issue is considered illegal, and thus a crime. But what makes this crime so newsworthy that it is now a prominent subject of controversy in the controversy-filled United States? According to Jack Katz and his analysis that yielded the four criteria that makes crime news - the four criteria being (1) personal competence and sensibility, (2) collective integrity, (3) moralized political conflicts, and (4) white-collar crime - this crime and the reason why it is newsworthy would fall under the category of it being a white collar crime. The fact that the elite business owners with all the cash are trying to steal labor from their workers make people question not only the elite in question but all high and mighty businessmen that may try and get away with the same thing. The framing of this crime as white collar crime exacerbates what critics have deemed class warfare in that it tries to stir up peoples' emotions. It tries to gain sympathy for the laborers who are oppressed by the unjust elite while establishing a hatred and disgust with these unjust elite. Anyone can make an argument, but what data do these liberal groups have to support their argument that wage theft is a crime that should be put to a stop? One of the major pieces of objective data that those fighting wage theft have on their side is the money - the big bucks that the greedy corporations are pocketing by cheating their workers out of their pay. For example, in a Salon article that condemned the greedy businesses for wage theft, a statistic from a liberal organization was used that indicated that wage theft has annually stolen approximately $600 million dollars from workers in Iowa alone. Another objective fact of relevance used for arguments against wage theft is the people oppressed by wage theft in numbers. For example, in an article on The Nation website, the author used a study that yielded results that 84% of the 500 New York laborers surveyed claimed their employers had committed acts of wage theft against them. The opponents of wage theft definitely took advantage of the substantial numbers found in these pieces of objective data. These opponents of wage theft know not only what's the toolbox but also how to use the tools. They are not just taking their protest to the streets while utilizing the objective data in this controversy. They are bringing this protest to one of the most prominent platforms of the 21st century: social media. For example, Twitter is home to several pages that are all about fighting wage theft: see @FightWageTheft, @DownwWageTheft, @WeAreOregon, etc. Facebook is home to these organizations opposed to wage theft among others as well. Social media is yet another tool utilized by these wage theft fighters. Now, look at the matter of wage theft from a religious standpoint - specifically, from a Catholic point of view. What does the Catholic Church have to say about wage theft? Does it stand with the laborers or the corporations? As seen on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Catholic Church always stands with the poor and works for justice, which ties Catholic social teaching to the laborers' side in that the laborers are the poor and the justice Catholics would work for in regard to the poor laborers would be that they are paid fairly rather than cheated for their labor by the unjust companies they work for. The Catholic Church's stance against wage theft is also seen in Pope John Paul II’s “Laborem Exercens”, especially when he says, "the Church considers it her task always to call attention to the dignity and rights of those who work...[and] to condemn situations in which that dignity and those rights are violated". This statement reveals that the Pope, leader of the universal Catholic Church on earth, calls all members of the Catholic Church to condemn crimes like wage theft that take away the rights of laborers. What is wage theft? Is it just a crime? No. Is it just a political controversy? No. Is it just a religious controversy? No again. What wage theft truly is at its heart is an integration of these three things, making it one of the most heated debates of modern America.

Searchlights and Sunglasses Chapter 5: Guided Reading Questions

1) Journalism, media innovation, freedom and community are valuable to the process of democracy and civics education because they allow the knowledgeable to reach out to the sometimes uninformed and even sometimes misinformed community in the most efficient and beneficial way. 2) The two examples of modest projects that the Knight Foundation helped to fund are a major youth journalism initiative with a website entitled SchoolJournalism.org as well as Sunshine Week. 3) The pursuit of the truth is so very important in our society today because the ignorance of the truth in order to stick with only desirable information while denying other truth outside of our news orbits leads to disaster due to widespread misconceptions that result in misunderstandings and many problems and much hostility within communities. 4) Journalism contributes to the process of truth-seeking in that it can in many cases be a source of the unmodified truth on matters of importance. Innovation also contributes to truth-seeking in that it can provide new and perhaps even better means of finding the truth. 5) "Comfort news" is, essentially and in the simplest of terms, the news that falls within our comfort zone. It is only the truth that we can handle; it does not include opposing views or challenging information that can upset us or lead us to question ourselves. 6) A few other comparisons the author makes between news and food are: (1) we need food daily for the body and news daily for the mind, (2) just as we choose junk food over healthy food, we choose biased and sometimes manipulative and deceptive journalism rather than good and informative journalism, etc. 7) According to the author, "we the people" drive media consumption. 8) Literacy is important to our society because it is essential in becoming a first class citizen in the digital age. 9) Digital literacy contributes to media literacy, news literacy, and civics literacy in that allows people access to a multitude of sources of these areas of information and the ability to distinguish between them what is truth and what is deception or manipulation. 10) The author defines great journalism as writing that does not just inform an audience in an interesting way but it also engages communities. 11) The San Francisco Public Press waited 32 months to get tax-exempt status. 12) The problem with the way the IRS grants media outlets non-profit status is that the prerequisites for non-profit status were published before the Internet was made, which makes them outdated and not adapted to the digital age. 13) After 9/11, support for and agreement with the First Amendment sharply dropped amongst Americans. 14) Schools observe Constitution Day on September 17th which is the anniversary of the 1787 signing of the Constitution. 15) Teachers should know about current media technology because it allows them to find creative ways to connect with their students - using social media would be an example.

Searchlights and Sunglasses Chapter 4: Guided Reading Questions

1) According to the Knight Foundation, being an informed and engaged community means that a community is not just made aware of what's happening in the world, but they also must be willing to act upon that information and to engage with each other and the issues at hand. 2) The three examples of investigative journalism and the monetary impact they made are as follows: (1) ProPublica and NPR's investigation - $200 million, (2) the Center for Public Integrity and The Washington Post's investigation - $100 million, and (3) The Center for Investigative Reporting's investigation - $200 million. This combines to approximately half a billion dollars of social impact, and the lives saved and/or improved by these investigations are priceless. 3) Several thousands of journalism jobs have been cut within recent years. 4) Though education systems definitely share the blame as well, the author makes it clear that journalists themselves are somewhat to blame for news illiteracy in America since they chose not to tell people how news systems worked. 5) One way a journalism organization highlighted the impact of investigative reporters was through the hefty financial support the Knight Foundation granted in that area: the Knight Foundation invested millions of dollars in nonprofit investigative reporting. Journalism contests and conferences also serve to highlight investigative journalism. In addition, journalism schools can highlight investigative journalism by teaching 21st century literacies to all the students in their universities. 6) The problem before the Deerfield Forum was created in New Hampshire was that there were not many candidates in the city of Deerfield's local elections, no one seemed interested in trying to solve community problems, and the city had no newspaper to report to the citizens. After community volunteers began reporting for the Forum, the number of candidates for public office as well as voters at these elections have gone up and continue to do so. 7) In terms of revenue, digital advertising differs from print advertising in that despite the fact that online ads bring in less than a tenth of the money that print newspaper ads used to bring in, print advertising falls yearly and by 2015, the main source of revenue for newspaper companies may be digital. 8) According to the author, arts journalism is doing well nationally while it is not doing well locally. The author uses the fact that there film critics prosper on the web as an example of the state of national journalism. 9) According to the author, every major upward spike in U.S. election turnout has come during a time when new forms of mass media arose. 10) The mistake that traditional news media has made with their websites is that they encourage anonymous comments on their websites. 11) News organizations can better engage their community by having conventions with community representatives. 12) Community engagement with a news story oftentimes leads to the creation of a change of sorts. 13) One can find a journalism code of ethics on the websites of news organizations. 14) Digital media definitely does create new ethical concerns of journalists and citizens, partly due to the opportunities for anonymity which leaves many thinking they can get away with even the harshest and nastiest of criticism. It also does create potential to deal with those problems, however, starting with the availability of journalism codes of ethics on news organizations' home pages on their websites. 15) Personally, I try and abide by this common rule regarding web ethics: if you have nothing good to say, say nothing at all. Therefore, I do not talk about anyone or anything in a demeaning way on the Internet, for I know it is unethical and that it can lead to further complications.

Science Friday Podcast Recap: Could a Blood Test Help Diagnose Alzheimer's?

On a recent episode of the Science Friday podcast with host Ira Flatow, he and his guest Howard Federov - professor of neurology and Executive Vice President of Health Sciences at Georgetown University in Washington - discussed Federov's recent discovery regarding the diagnosing of Alzheimer's. Currently, about 5 million Americans are afflicted with Alzheimer's disease of which there has yet to be a cure found. On top of it be incurable to date, it is also difficult to predict who will have Alzheimer's. Howard Federov lead a preliminary study involving a blood test that has the potential to successfully predict Alzheimer's. In this experiment, he took blood samples from those with and without Alzheimer's. The experiment attempted at identifying cognitively normal people of 70 years old or older, and from this group a subset emerged of people that developed cognitive impairment, a.k.a. Alzheimer's. What the scientists discovered from the blood tests is that there were 10 lipids circulating in the blood of the people in the subset that developed Alzheimer's, and those lipids were predictive of the event where they would develop the disease. Though the scientists are not certain of the role that these lipids play in Alzheimer's, they do know that the people with Alzheimer's had a lower concentration of these lipids than those without the disease. They also discovered that these lipids can provide them with 90% certainty of their prediction that the person will develop Alzheimer's in two or more years. Scientists now are wondering if they can test people at a younger age, for if it could be diagnosed earlier, medicines could perhaps be tested to see if they could delay the disease. Federov claims there is definitely further testing to be done since this was merely a preliminary study. It will take much more testing before doctors would begin to give patients the same test at an ordinary doctor's office. Even so, this study can definitely be a source of hope for the millions of lives that this disease has affected.

Searchlights and Sunglasses Chapter 3: Guided Reading Questions

1) According to the World Freedom Map, press freedom increased after World War II, and press freedom decreased after the start of the war on terror. 2) According to the author, World War 3.0 has already started. It will be conducted in cyberspace. 3) The author proposes two new formulas for measuring global press freedom: (1) war ends and freedom grows, war begins and freedom shrinks, and (2) the freedom in today’s digital media ecosystem minus the censorship. 4) The legal defense fund set up by the Open Society Foundation serves to help defend bloggers and website proprietors unfairly jailed around the world. 5) According to the author, teachers are not doing good enough at teaching the First Amendment because even though they deem it important, survey says that they still do not teach it. Also, the author was disappointed that teachers go against the First Amendment by harshly censoring student expression and use of social media. 6) There is a connection between social media use and the understanding and support of the First Amendment in that there has been a recent increase in the amount of students that agree that the First Amendment is just. 7) Nationally, students use social media more than teachers. 8) Television is not the number one news source for all forms of news, but rather forms of news are spread amongst different sources. 9) The sorts of news that people tend to consume from each of these sources are as follows: (a) mobile media - out and about news like restaurant tips and weather reports, (b) Internet - education and local business news, (c) local TV - weather, breaking news, and traffic, and (d) newspapers - overall civic news, especially government news. 10) Entertainment as well as political news interests me, and I always use either the TV or the web to access that information. 11) The term "fourth estate" comes from the three estates of the government - executive, legislative, and judicial branches - which means that journalism is considered the fourth branch of the government, or in other words, an essential element of our country. In my opinion, this is a good thing - good in that it displays our rights, particularly those found in the First Amendment, are one of the most important things in governing our country. Journalism has been doing a good job as the fourth estate - it has made it this far without (significant) limits, has it not? 12) The four C's from the business model the author believes will help support developing media are (1) content, (2) connectivity, (3) community, and (4) capital. 13) According to the author, our country's current media policies lag behind those of other nations like Great Britain. He explains his assessment through providing an example of this by saying that Americans are more knowledgable of cartoons than of the First Amendment. 14) According to the author, one thing that the federal government could do to help consumers have more acccess to journalism would be to ensure that consumers have universal broadband access. 15) The seven ways in which a public Media Technology Transformation Fund could produce results are: (1) technology transformation and tool adoption in existing public media organizations, (2) partnerships and megers through technology, (3) new technology testing labs, (4) media innovation projects/a "circle of champions, (5) senior fellowship fund for master teachers, (6) scholarship funds for tomorrow's media technologists, and (7) beyong the classroom - digital literacy. 16) 25% of Americans consume ethnic media. 17) Three advantages of Technology Testing Labs are: (1) they could become installed at schools and prepare future journalists for a high-tech world, (2) it can take the open source software emerging in the public media center, rewrite it and promote its adoption by public media which makes it easier for reporters to find stories, and (3) they would help speed adoption of open source software and the applications that run on it. 18) Public media must change by making it correspond with basic human rights and freedoms and by making it accessible to all.

Searchlights and Sunglasses Chapter 2: Guided Reading Questions

1) Journalism and mass communication education matter because students that are well-prepared in that regard are able to adapt to an ever-changing digital world, and, statistically speaking, 9 of every 10 entry-level newsroom hires are graduates of journalism and mass communication programs. 2) It does make a difference whether a community is informed by a professional journalist, a student journalist, or a citizen journalist because the level of understanding greatly varies as well as the levels of skill and ability to pass on news correctly. The professionals have the deepest understanding due to the significant percentage of their life spent studying, but then again, the students - so long as journalism education changes with the times - may be more up to date on how to inform their communities. 3) I agree with the author that journalism education must modernize, for the traditional newspaper will no longer cut it. Journalism needs to change with the times so that people may remain informed of the truth. If it does not modernize, then the news will be spread partly by the uninformed as well as the deceptive and manipulative that can endanger people if they do not learn the truth. The quality of journalism, however, may suffer because if we shift to focus primarily on shifting to making everything digital, less time will be spent ensuring the quality of the writing and perceptions of the truth. 4) There are greater implications for society if we change the way journalism is taught because this society will become one that is better-informed and manipulated far less. 5) There are about 450 college or university journalism schools in the country. Not even that considerable number, however, can satisfy the information needs of communities. 6) University faculty members should be hired for both their degrees and their real world work experiences as opposed to only one of these because ability is not just measured by one's experience in school though schooling is of course crucial in this selection process, and real world experience can never make up entirely for a lack of proper education. Rather, a combination of the two can give the ultimate professor with copious knowledge on the subject of journalism from their schooling alongside the experience that can allow aspiring journalists insight as to what they are getting into. 7) Interdisciplinary study is very important when studying journalism because one must not only understand how to write and how to spread news and the truth to the community - journalism is much more than that. Journalists must also understand the field they are writing about to properly inform others and avoid deception. 8) The team-teaching concept works in the context of journalism education in that multiple professors from different fields teach journalism courses that teach students about the subjects they want to cover, anywhere from art to science. 9) The advantage of team-teaching is that it allows students to avoid going out into the world of journalism as lone wolves while they also were not forced to work in huge groups under bosses that they despise. 10) Knowledge journalism is journalism with a foundation of knowledge of other subjects or disciplines. 11) According to the author, the potential news outlet underused at many universities is The New York World. 12) The four steps universities need to take to become relevant in journalism education are: (1) expand their role as community content providers, (2) innovate, (3) teach open, collaborative methods, and (4) connect to the whole university. 13) The college level teaching model foundation leaders advocated in a letter to university presidents was the teaching hospital model. 14) Some pros of the teaching hospital model are: informing communities and providing them with civic engagement, understanding what makes a story a story, etc. Some cons of it are: it requires schools to have to step up their digital game, it asks schools to modify their teaching methods, etc. 15) A newspaper or teaching newsroom needs libel insurance because the stress journalists undergo while writing on tight deadlines can lead to issues with the legal matter of libel - the publication of slanderous writing. 16) I agree that journalists should be able to earn a professional doctorate. What harm would that do? And why should other fields have it while journalism does not? 17) Licensing is a good idea because it would allow those with a deep passion for the field to reach the highest level of expertise that people in other areas have had access to while journalists have not. It would definitely make journalism more of a profession. It seems that the First Amendment does allow the licensing thereof because it dictates no limitations on the free exercise of the press. Governments have abused licensing by restricting first amendments rights by asking for proper licensing. 18) Research is important to those who teach journalism and professional journalists because when it boils down to job advancement, research beats teaching. 19) Journalism and media research would be better if scholars and professionals did it together. Some types of research would benefit more than others, such as academic research in the field of science, for example. 20) Student journalists should be connected with their communities by means of the teaching hospital model in that the student journalists would pass on the news to their community while still in school. 21) According to the Federal Communications Commission, over 18,000 journalism jobs have been lost over the past few years. The bulk of these jobs have been erased from daily newspapers alone. 22) The author compares watchdog journalism to a security camera that keeps the powerful honest. 23) Without watchdog journalism, the powerful are then able to more easily get away with things that harm American citizens. 24) Journalism students can become better prepared to enter the current job market by becoming better acclimated to modern journalism, consisting largely of digital techniques.

Searchlights and Sunglasses Chapter 1: Guided Reading Questions

1) The Knight News Challenge is a 25 million dollar initiative to invest in breakthrough ideas in news and information and the first of the Knight Foundation's digital efforts in regard to training journalists. An example of a successful project funded by the Knight News Challenge is DocumentCloud. 2) The four major phases of communication throughout history are the visual, language, mass media, and digital ages. 3) The innovation that started the phase of mass media was the movable metal type invention in Europe. 4) The name of the first generation of American media consumers is the Republican Generation. The form of media popular in that generation was pamphlets. 5) The three eras following the first generation of American news consumers were the Compromise (characterized by the new media of partisan weekly newspapers), Transcendental (characterized by populist daily newspapers like The Penny Press), and Gilded (characterized by the Associated Press and the telegraph) Generations. 6) World War 3.0 refers to a war taking place in cyberspace that has already begun and shall continue with countries already armed and ready with cyber armies. It is the first invisible war with the potential to alter it. 7) The name of the four generations that will follow the digital age are the Cyber (characterized by intelligent media with the cloud, grids, robotics, and artificial intelligence), Visionary (characterized by bio media with augmented reality, nanotechnology, media implants, and enhanced human capacity), Hybrid (characterized by hyper media with cranial downloads, thought aggregators, and sentient environment), and Courageous (characterized by thought projection, telepathy, teleportation, and telekenisis) Generations. 8) According to the author, news literacy is important to college students because this among the other 21st century forms of literacy are essential to survive in the world of modern media. 9) The disadvantage of having news that is more portable and personal than ever before is that it puts one into a digital cocoon where one is exposed only to the news that interests them and is unaware of the harsh realities they block from their news orbit. 10) The solutions to the current state of journalism offered by the four reports highlighted by the author are to have traditional newspapers become more digitally friendly and less focused on competition while sharing information with other papers instead, to have the government initiate nonprofit news organizations, etc.

Science Friday Podcast Recap: Your Brain on Jazz

In a recent podcast episode of the Science Friday podcast with host Ira Flatow, he and his guest Charles Limb who is a researcher and musician discussed a study Limb conducted that looked at how jazz affects the brain and where the unique aptitude for improvisation jazz musicians seem to have comes from. Limb started his experiment by creating an fMRI-safe keyboard that he would use to study brain activity among multiple jazz musicians when they use the piano and improvise with each other based on another piece of jazz music. He said the purpose of his experiment was to understand the musical conversation - it is a musical conversation in that it does not involve words - concept that takes place between jazz musicians when they improvise. He went about trying to understand this by studying neurological activity that occurs when this musical conversation is going on. The procedure for this experiment consisted of two musicians taking turns or going back and forth with a musical conversation as is seen to be done frequently in jazz. The results that this experiment yielded were that when musicians engage in musical conversations, language areas of the brain responsible for the syntax are very active compared to the level of activity of that area of the brain during a memorized musical exchange. Also, there was a lack of activity found in the part of the brain that analyzes the meaning of words. This means that language is good for conveying meaning while music is good for conveying emotion with less precise meaning. Areas of the brain linked to aversion were suppressed as well during this process which means that music is processed as a reward, thus deactivating that part of the brain. The goal of the conduction of this experiment was to gain a deeper understanding of human innovation by using artists to tap into creativity from a scientific and neurological standpoint. Limb's research raised questions like: How do we acquire creativity? How does creativity differ from child to adult, beginner to expert?

Science Friday Podcast Recap: This Fish Sucks

In a recent podcast episode of the Science Friday podcast with host Ira Flatow, he and his guest Adam Summers of the University of Washington Friday Harbor laboratory discussed a recent discovery regarding the northern clingfish that may lead to scientific innovations. The northern clingfish lives in the Pacific Ocean along the coasts of North America in the intertidal zones. The fish is about the size of the average human hand, and it initially seems like your average bottom-dweller - perhaps a cross between a catfish and a tadpole. What makes the fish so very unique is that, as the title claims, "this fish sucks". On the bottom of the fish, there is a small disc resembling a suction cup that is the pelvic and pectoral fin of the fish. This suction cup allows the northern clingfish to latch itself onto rocks along the coast and not get carried away by the strong force of the tides that constantly exist in its home. The surface of the rocks it clings onto is not like the bathroom tiles that suction cups stick onto in the average person's house, however. The surface is very rough and covered in slime called biofilm. So how does this fish do it? The suction cup on the northern clingfish is special because it does everything that a normal suction cup does - it pushes out all the air underneath the suction cup creating a vacuum with no air pressure while the atmospheric pressure surrounding it presses it down and allows it to suck on to the surface it is attached to - the secret to the extraordinary power of its suction cup is the hairs around the sucker. The hairs provide friction and stop the sucker from slipping. Does this mean that scientists can use this information to create more powerful suction cups that human can use to, say, walk up walls? Yes and no. These hairs only function when immersed in water, so it could not be used to scale walls with special suction cupped shoes. However, scientists are now developing technology using the information found from the study of the northern clingfish's suction cup that will attach to whales in order to more closely study them.

Define "Truth"...

In an article entitled "Who cares if it's true? Modern day newsrooms reconsider their values" by Marc Fisher that took a look at the concept of truth in modern day newsrooms like BuzzFeed. There was an assertion made in the article that BuzzFeed is trying to assure that their readers are reading the truth by hiring copy editors to avoid having to fix errors after publication of their most popular posts. This I do not buy, however, not because the change they are trying to make is impossible, but because of the newspaper itself. BuzzFeed is no New York Times - their goal is not to enlighten their leaders. Their goal is to lure their readers in with entertaining rumors and embellished truths, and embellished truths are very far from truth. Sure, they may be hiring new editors to make sure there are no grammatical errors. What these editors are probably not checking is the level of truthfulness per article. When looking at the landing page of the Buzzfeed website, there is perhaps some evidence of these copy editors. There are no noticeable grammatical errors or website flaws. Once again, however, that is probably close to the extent of their duties - looking for conventional mistakes rather than misleading untruths. Also covered in the article was the not-so-fine but more blatant and thick line between the two major generations of American that receive news - the "digital evangelists" and the "print chauvinists". It describes the digital evangelists as those who distance themselves from traditional methods of editing with pride, and the print chauvinists as those who are disgusted with the rumors that modern day journalists tend to spread as a result of little to no editing. This comparison does not completely represent the choice between the two polar opposites, for there is more to look at than just sites like BuzzFeed. There was another assertion made in the article regarding the tendency for newsrooms to release news before any facts have been verified and the corresponding tendency for the public to believe it and consider it news regardless. One experience of mine that speaks to this assertion is when I read in a magazine article that Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel's relationship was coming undone. This was, however, merely a rumor that the magazine published anyway, knowing that few actually question things like that and those who do do not do anything about it. Another experience of mine that speaks to this assertion is when I heard a rumor from CBS news that Gabby Giffords had died. Both The New Yorker and The Huffington Post covered stories on Hollywood and religion - particularly Christianity and atheism - in recent articles, and the subject covered would be the only similarity between the two. The way in which each article was written revealed the differing pace and interests of the newspapers' audiences. For example, The New Yorker probably has an older audience that take it slow in some ways since the article was lengthy with some advanced vocabulary and deep subjects that a younger, faster-paced audience would easily overlook. This younger, faster-paced audience would be more suited to the article in The Huffington Post due to its use of much more photographs than words as well as popular celebrities to catch the attention of younger and faster-moving audiences with interests in more shallow matters than the readers of The New Yorker with deeper interests in U.S. controversies and who only have time to scroll through pictures than to pore over more reflective articles on matters of religious issues in the U.S. It is clear that news has evolved tremendously, and so has the concept of truth in newsrooms. Can differing audiences - consisting of older, more slow-paced and younger, more fast-paced - find common ground?

Partisan Selective Exposure is the Real Deal

Neal McCluskey, part of the Cato Institute, wrote an argumentative article on the controversial matter of Common Core in the United States. Key word: argumentative. In his article "Common Core Treats Students Like Soulless Widgets", there were many instances of language that I would consider partisan. It all starts with the title: he starts off by accusing Common Core of seriously demeaning students, so much that they are "soulless widgets". That type of language right off the bat reveals that this man has clearly taken a side, and that side is the side of libertarianism that not only himself but his entire organization endorses. He also uses the somewhat disrespectful term "feds" often which reveals his aggression towards controlling government officials and strong support for limited government that libertarians like himself and the Cato Institution believe in. He also had some choice words for the National Governors Association, one of the government institutions behind Common Core. He described the NGA as "powerless", a claim that once again ties to the political ideologies of himself and his institution. These and many other instances in his article of language that would be classified as partisan. On the other hand - and the exact opposite end of the spectrum of opinions on Common Core - is Carmel Martin who is the Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress. The organization she is part of is against conservative beliefs in many ways, making them a somewhat liberal organization, unlike the conservative and libertarian Cato Institute - and Martin is no exception to this as her testimony reveals her liberal values. Her frequent mentions of government organizations that she used to support her claims reveal her ties to the liberals, for liberals are the ones all about the government - they consider the government to be essential and endorse a larger, more controlling government in order to maintain peace and equality within the nation and among all nations. Also, her large discussion of teachers' endorsements of Common Core and mention of a poll that yielded results that indicated widespread support for Common Core. This also ties to the liberal beliefs of herself and the CAP organization she represents in that liberals care about teachers a great deal and fight for them in regards to their salaries, so it only makes sense that she would focus on teachers' opinions. She also frequently mentioned New York as being a state that she considered to be educationally elite compared to other states, and she also made sure to point out that New York teachers supported the implementation of Common Core. This connects to her liberal beliefs that her and CAP hold in common because New York is one of the top ten liberal states in the United States according to a Gallup poll (to see other statistics from this poll, use this link: http://www.gallup.com/poll/152459/mississippi-conservative-state-liberal.aspx) and it would only be logical for her to compliment a liberal state and try and subtly convince others to aspire to be like this state - perhaps on more than just an educational level. A presentation by Dr. Hung-Hsi Wu, a Professor of Mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley can be compared to Carmel Martin's testimony in many of the things he says that can also be considered partisan in that he shows subtle yet certain ties to the liberal party. For example, similar to Martin, he complimented California Math Standards which, according to the Gallup poll afore mentioned, also makes the list of top ten liberal states in the U.S. which means Wu, like Martin with New York, is trying to persuade other states to adopt a liberal state's educational standards and perhaps more. Also, Wu brought up the matter of the government needing to increase funding for education - specifically in mathematics - in order to advance, which is a belief held common by many liberal. This is similar to how Martin brought up the teacher support in her testimony, for they both tied their statements supporting Common Core to commonly held liberal beliefs on education. Another testimony supporting the implementation of Common Core that is comparable to Carmel Martin's is the statement from James B. Hunt, Jr., the Chairman of the Hunt Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy and former governor of North Carolina. The word that jumped out of this testimony as being considered partisan is the word "governor". This man was the former governor of North Carolina of the United States; an inference can be made that this man, having partaken in the government and thus has an obvious passion for politics and government, that he would perhaps side with liberals that support larger and more controlling governments since he has had a taste of the power first-hand. Lastly, the testimony coming from the National Association of State Boards of Education concurs with that of Carmel Martin and it also has a clear instance of language that could be classified as partisan. NASBE says that they stand behind their endorsement of Common Core because they want high quality education for all students. Key word: all. This ties to the liberal beliefs this organization allegedly hold in that liberals are all about equality and equal opportunites for ALL. There are many other places where partisan selective exposure is present on the matter of Common Core. For example, on the Media Matters for America website, a blogger attacked Fox News for supporting a North Carolina mother for trying to fight Common Core. The blogger used some choice words to express her siding with the informed conservatives rather than the apparently uninformed liberals by pointing out that Common Core "does not mandate how those standards should be reached". Though it is somewhat unique for the blogger, most likely a conservative, to be for Common Core, the blogger still discussed the freedom that schools maintain regardless of the standards set. Commentary Magazine also looks at the conservative side of this debate through an article by Seth Mandel where his speech clearly labeled him as a liberal. He attacked the liberals by using words like "ranting" and "weak" to describe how they tried to fight conservatives' claims that Common Core was just another attempt by the Obama administration to control the people and the state, revealing that he definitely has strong conservative beliefs that largely carry over into his writing. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, though it seemed fairly neutral, did seem to perhaps lean more towards the conservative side of things with its hinting that teachers' freedom in the classroom playing a significant role in this controversy. The article from this institute mentioned teachers as being an integral part of education and that they should be allowed to develop and improve materials part of their teaching of their classes and that this is what enhances "ownership" of Common Core. Conservatives are all about freedom to the people and private ownership which this journalist also concluded to be important. Similar to the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the article from The New York Times seemed almost completely neutral and nonpartisan because the author of the article gave an account of one side of the spectrum's opinions without taking a side himself. The only thing even remotely partisan is that the author, for whatever reason, chose to focus on the more conservative side of the controversy that has been joined by the predominantly liberal state of New York. There is a chance that the author chose this side because he himself is a conservative and he believes what those he wrote about believed. That however cannot be assumed since the article did not make it clear. The article from the Education Week website contained some speech that marked it as partisan in the way the writer made sure to mention the big problems and political opposition that the Common Core new standards have been encountering. This implies that the writer is perhaps a conservative since that is the group that seems to oppose Common Core and the writer focused on the fact that there are big problems to try and scare readers away from supporting a cause that encounters much opposition. The opinionated page of the US News webpage's article on Common Core presents clear uses of partisan language that indicates the author as having liberal beliefs. For example, when the writer mentioned how Common Core can help in the mending of the U.S.'s public school system, that revealed the person's affiliation with the liberal party in that the liberals strongly support the public school system as did this person. The Politico webpage also had an article on Common Core that included the use of language that could be considered partisan in the way it tied the author to the conservative party. The author mentioned that the source of the outrage in the public is a result of distrust for government officials, indicating that the author may be find the government to be a nuisance that leads to outrage and wish for a less controlling government to prevent this. The article from the National Jorunal definitely included some partisan word choice that labeled the author as a liberal. The author deemed the conservatives to be sources of "suspicion". She goes on to say that liberals must find more support for their arguments. This all implies that she finds the conservatives to be somewhat misinformed due to their "wildly hypothetical" proclamations against Common Core while she is urging on the liberals. The Washington Post has an article of its own on this subject matter that includes partisan language - actually only one word in particular - as well that may have labeled its author as a liberal. The use of the word "outdated" to describe the law requiring annual standardized tests in public schools is the one word that tied the author to the liberal party because that implies that the writer is looking for an updated law to change with the times and advance education which is the issue Common Core tries to tackle - and Common Core is endorsed by liberals. The Huffington Post's Black Voices page contained an article that contained clear examples of partisan word choice siding the author with the liberals. For example, the author mentioned that he supported Common Core's implementation because it would "level the playing field" and provide all U.S. citizens with an equal opportunity to receive the education they need to make it in the modern world. This falls under one of the liberals' main beliefs: equality among all citizens and equal opportunities. As seen in a plethora of articles, partisan selective exposure is a concept that largely exists in modern day political journalism.

Science Friday Podcast Recap: Battling HIV, Using a Body's Own Immune Cells

In a recent podcast episode of the Science Friday podcast with host Ira Flatow, he and his guest who is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease discussed three recent discoveries in the medicinal world of HIV treatments. The first discovery discussed was if babies of mothers with HIV are injected with an aggressive amount of anti HIV drugs right after birth, the HIV infection is then purged from the baby's blood. Though hospitals used to use a heavily reduced amount of anti HIV drugs on children of mothers afflicted with HIV before to avoid toxicity, this may soon change due to this discovery. The second discovery discussed was the removal of white blood cells of an HIV positive person followed by the genetic modification to make those white blood cells HIV resistant and then return of these modified cell to the patient that significantly helped these patients. There were twelve people tested in this study, and this test allowed the researchers to know that this method is safe and yields helpful results. The researchers discovered through this study that they can modify cells capable of hanging around in a person's body though these cells do not replace cells vulnerable to the infection. They saw that the virus bounced back, this method of HIV treatment still benefited the patients and needs further research. The third discovery discussed was an experiment involving the testing of antiviral drugs on monkeys with the monkey equivalent of HIV. This experiment was conducted to see if vaccinations 3 or 4 times a year could prevent HIV as much as daily pills do since many humans consider the daily pill too much of a hassle. The study showed that the vaccinations only 3 to 4 times a year rather than a daily regimen are equally effective. There is hope yet for those afflicted with this deadly infection.

Your Move, Putin

The former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul discusses Vladimir Putin's impending actions against the Ukraine in an interview with Brian Williams.Vladimir Putin has certainly been in the spotlight lately for American newscasters around the nation after sending troops to Crimea, and many are now asking, "What will he do next?" The U.S.'s former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul answered these questions that fall into his area of expertise recently in an interview with Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. McFaul tackled questions regarding Putin's next moves first with an analysis of Putin's recent press conference. McFaul discussed two of Putin's statements that he noted as contradictory and the threats he detected therein. Putin at one point said that the Ukraine needs a legitimate government though Russia has no intention of annexing Crimea, and yet he contradicted that statement by claiming that Russia was no longer obligated to commit to any international treaties previously signed with the Ukraine due to the revolution in Kiev. According to McFaul, this means that there is more to come from Putin. McFaul discussed other threats he has noticed coming from Russia as well. For example, he remarked that he felt unnerved by what he had been hearing recently from officials in Moscow. These officials were looking for excuses to take action based on any violence in the Eastern Ukraine that would lead Russia to step up and protect Russian citizens. Though McFaul pointed out that there has been absolutely no violence in Crimea yet, as soon as there is any, that will be when Putin makes his next move. It is certain that people around the world will be watching Crimea and anxiously awaiting what is to come.

Orange is the New Black...and Outrage is the New Politics?

In recent years, outrageous political opinion has begun to completely take over as the new prominent form of political news. Why? Why is this crazed screaming and shouting between anywhere from an expert to an average Joe with that has associated his or herself with a political party surpassed conventional news commentary. The answer is fear and anxiety. These two emotions have begun to boil over and thus lead to outrageous reactions from all areas of the political spectrum. In order to change with the times, newscasters have adopted a variety of rhetorical tools in order to take advantage of these emotions of fear and anxiety that have lead to the explosion of outrageous political opinion and to heighten anxiety and affect intimacy. One of these tools is the mere concept of volume. Nowadays, people appearing on a variety of politically opinionated shows are yelling, getting louder and louder, and eventually screaming out their beliefs and their rejections of other beliefs that reach people more than monotonous tones and lead to anxiety when the particular person is yelling about impending doom brought about by their opposing politics. Audiences tune into these screaming matches between politics because they are hungry for venom and righteousness. Why is that hunger present? That is the case probably because of the vast gap that exists between political parties. These tremendous and insurmountable differences between Republicans and Democrats, Conservatives and Liberals, etc. are what lead people to want to be told that they are the ones in the right party, the party with the correct view on politics, the party that will shape the future for the better, and they also want to see their opponents put down and sharply criticized for trying to go against their beliefs that are "right". These thresholds for anxiety and needs for intimacy could very well be rooted in the very biology of humans and not merely be a matter of nurturing and development. Many factors contributed to the rise of political outrage, such as sweeping deregulation, technological changes, and the exploding universe of citizen advocacy. Sweeping deregulation allows those people with strong political opinions and the desire to share their political with the world to have more freedom to express their outrage in the way that they desire rather than being confined and restricted to lower, less convincing levels of opinionated arguing, debating, and proclaiming. Technological changes also has provided those outraged Americans out there with more opportunities to share their opinions with people and more outlets for their outrage through a variety of ways. This includes but is not limited to: the television, the Internet, and the radio. The exploding universe of citizen advocacy also allows regular citizens rather than political experts to publicly express their outrage and better connect with viewers in that they are watching people like themselves that they can relate to. Festinger's hypothesis regarding psychological comfort, premature closure, and avoidance of dissonance all serve to explain the reason behind the rise of outrage-based political commentary. Humans have a nature inclined towards associating with people that have beliefs similar to their own, and humans thus tend to prefer to avoid interactions with political opponents that may lead to discomfort and the uncovering of harsh realities. Most people would rather watch fellow members of their party scream for five minutes about the opinions the viewer and commentator hold in common even if the person preaching their political beliefs are uninformed rather than listen to a well-informed opponent tell them something that is the opposite of their beliefs because it lacks self-reassurance (which most if not all people desire) and instead enforces the acceptance of painful truths (which leads to much psychological discomfort). One can only hope that this rise of outrage-based political commentary will not leave many in the dark.