Final Lecture and Semester Reflection

The final lecture for the semester featured guest lecturer "Steve Molks", a blogger and entertainment journalist. This guy was pretty cool, and he spoke about areas of journalism that I see myself drawn towards in the future. He emphasised the potential of becoming a 'new media' journalist, which is becoming a growing approach to the profession. Blogging and social media is a growing key medium in the world of journalism. He was quite encouraging with his point that journalism is a broad profession. This guy would be a quite a handy mentor, so I'm going to add him to my list of contacts. And so this brings me to my final reflection for the semester. JOUR1111 has proved to be a very engaging course and my most enjoyed course I've studied thus far at UQ. Its inclusion of speakers and experienced people from the industry have offered considerable insight into the profession. Tutorials were a very stimulating environment and gave great oppertunity to listen to other's ideas and be heard. I found head lecturer Bruce Redman to be quite knowledgable and charismatic, and gave interesting talks. Despite my slackness this semester, I made it my mission each week to make it to JOUR1111 lectures.

Agenda Setting & Investigative Journalism

Agenda Setting:This week, the topic of Agenda Setting was covered in the lecture. He started off by showing a clip that took the mickey out of the format of today's news stories and the way they are reported. As cynical as it was, it was quite true! The content of the lecture was similar to that of last week's News Values. Bruce discusses the four agenda's- these were:
Public Agenda- Topics the community perceive as important.
Policy Agenda- Issues that decision makers believe as salient
Corporate Agenda- what do corporations think to be important e.g Coal Seam Gas
Media Agenda- Issues discussed in the media

Investigative Journalism:
Week 12's lecture looked at Investigative Journalism. Unlike last weeks topic which bored me to death, this one seemed to be relatively engaging. It looked at investigative journalism, which involves a journalists questioning and investigating skills. The idea behind it is to be intelligent, informed and intuitive in its approach critical and thorough journalism. Bruce made the point of 'shoe leather journalism', meaning a journalist is required to get out there as an active participant in search of valuable information for the public's best interest. A huge emphasis was placed on the facts, and interviews, observations, documents,briefings were a means of gaining them. It was also interesting to hear the biggest threat to this kind of journalism is propaganda, which contradicts its primary values.

News Values

Todays lecture covered the topic of News Values. Bruce started out with a definition. He said News Values are the degree of prominence a media outlet gives to a story, and the attention given to it by and audience who receives it. "If it Bleeds, it Leads", refers to stories with high degrees of tragedy are often the headlining stories. Topics of this include the shooting of superstars, car accidents etc. If its local, it leads- is another phrase used to describe how local stories are most prominent news stories. What I found interesting was the point that editors hold considerable power in the news room, having the ability to choose the stories worthy of public attention. He also discussed various types of news values- these included:
-Negativity
-Coseness to home
-Recency
-Currency
-Continuity
-Uniqueness