Mission to Mears

The "retreaded," not retired, Walter Mears offered up some first-hand history of the newspaper and wire service as well as some poignant predictions for the industry's future.

Mears explained to our class that the early wire service, mostly a medium of exchange and creature of the American newspaper industry, soon found itself faced with the dilemma of "adapt or die" with the explosion of television and broadcast news.

These new mediums meant that stories from the wire would not always be the first time that the public would hear about certain news items, introducing an impending competition that it simply couldn't afford to ignore.

So adapt it did, and since then, the Associated Press has been responsible for most of its own reporting, striving to produce copy that extends beyond just the lead and gives something more to readers than what they could already know.

Currently, 50 percent of all stories found in any newspaper are from AP, but that's not the true success of the organization, Mears said.

While our nation's newspapers now struggle for survival due to an inability to properly adapt to the new digital age, AP has realized the digitization of news, created new products in response and priced them accordingly.

This proves to be a double-edged sword for newspapers, as not only did they not figure out a way to make money from the new digital mediums, but as a result, they are forced to pay the steep prices of the wire to fill half of their daily issues.

And now, these print organizations are succumbing to bankruptcy one after another, unable to reconcile incoming revenue against mounds of debt, often originating from these wire fees.

Amidst all this gloom and doom, Mears does have hope for the news industry, but he places the responsibility of its ultimate survival on our generation.

"As long as there are people willing to inform rather than argue, they can survive," Mears said.

He added that to do this, aspiring news journalists must adapt to be more entrepreneurial, use multiple media tools and be prepared not to work for a formal news organization, but rather sell their work out to those that want it.

Overall, Mears is confident that the basic structure of news organizations (in some way) will remain because we will find that we cannot function without them.

"If you lose the umpire, then you wind up with argument instead of information," alluding to our nation's current media diet of entertainers and echo chambers.

But more than that, any apathetic demeanor toward keeping these watchdogs serves as an "invitation to all the modern-day robber barons to keep doing what they've been doing that got us into this mess," Mears said.

In other words, if the umpire isn't looking, the players will steal the bases and the game, until they're called out and held responsible for their actions.

Cheating ruins the game for everyone--as we have seen--and I consider it a duty and a privilege to serve as a future umpire.

Bloggy blog blog. Take 1.

So, I decided that for this first round of "Best of Blogs," I would just jump right in to my freebie topic instead of delving into the world of serious, public affairs blogs, as I could use a laugh after this week.

In fact, the need for laughter quickly became my theme for this assignment, as all of my choice blogs for this round were picked because I generally find them hilarious for one reason or another.

The first blog, entitled "Tard-Blog", is a chronicle of the life of Riti Sped, a former special education teacher, as it applies to her students and the daily occurrences she faces in class. The blog seems to serve as a platform through which she can vent her daily frustrations in a healthy (according to me) way.
Despite numerous typos, a complete disregard for political-correctness and very informal structure, I absolutely love to read this blog. At times, I have sat down to read a post or two of Riti's rants, only to find that I was still reading hours later, until I simply ran out of material.
There is almost no post on this blog that has failed to make me laugh until I cried upon reading--laughing being perhaps my all-time favorite thing to do. And it is Riti's natural grasp of timing and knack for incredibly vivid descriptions that keeps the laughs coming and effectively keeps me reading and even re-reading her blog.

I have been a long-time fan and avid reader of the Dilbert comic strip and it didn't take me long to realize, in his short introductions to his compilations of strips or other office-themed books, that I would read anything Scott Adams ever chose to write. I enjoy his voice and how effortless it seems for him to write such cleverly funny things so much that I would read his grocery lists.
So when he started a blog and I found out, it was certainly a joyous occasion for me.
Adams' blog is equipped with various sidebars, connections to his comics and other interactive additions, unlike the blog of Riti Sped which is quite plain with just links to her archived posts, which makes for an ever more enjoyable online experience where a reader can easily navigate to other related interests.

For my final blog choice, I have recently become a fan of the poetry of Anthony Bourdain, professional Travel Channel "foodie" and host of the show "No Reservations." While I fawn over Bourdain's airy gift for verse while he does his voice-overs on the show, I always understood that it may be the result of the time he's allotted to carefully construct what he wants his audience to hear. But his blog revealed that his voice and grace for language is all his own and it's simply how he thinks, speaks and writes naturally. Even when he writes something I disagree with or I find a comment of his unnecessarily harsh, I still loved reading it because of his way with words and ability to turn a phrase.

I highly recommend you click on those links if you have a healthy sense of humor, a little time and an appreciation for the english language at its finest. Enjoy.