Lecture 3

Lecture 3

Today’s lecture was delivered by guest speaker Skye Doherty and I have to say, it was very interesting to hear from someone who has had such a long and varied career. Ms Doherty obviously knows her stuff, especially when it comes to text based journalism, the topic of the third lecture. Here she introduced us to what could be considered the ‘golden rule’ of basic news writing, the inverted pyramid. The crux of the pyramid is that the most important and newsworthy info goes at the top, and becomes the lead of the story, and the other details flesh out the rest of the piece. I found this diagram which illustrates this premise:

She also went into the different types of text, such as online text, and into the more complex meta tagging (which I am still trying to figure out). She also explained the importance of ensuring your story is appropriate to the textual format, i.e suitable for newspaper or online publications.

Rather than go as in depth into the lecture as I did in the last post, I thought I would change tact slightly. We have been required to keep a media diary, and somewhat prompted by this I began searching for articles, not necessarily about media from a journalistic perspective, but rather as an everyday consumer.  I should probably make the point now that I love pop culture. Anything from television, movies, music, fashion, literature, I love them all. And I especially love looking at how they reflect our culture. With that in mind I stumbled across this article in the online edition of Vanity Fair: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/04/revenge-modern-family-tv-class-warfare

Up until now I had never really considered the amount of television that revolves around the upper echelons of society. But sure enough, one look at the shows screening, streaming and winning ratings, and quite a number of them feature those who are lucky enough to be in the upper socio economic bracket. Revenge, as mentioned in the Vanity Fair article, predominantly revolves around the lives and antics of the residents of the Hamptons, a known hideout of the sometimes famous and always rich. Gossip Girl too falls into this category, with the young Manhattanites wearing more designer goods and splashing more cash than I could ever dream of. This is not to say that all television characters fall into the super-rich. As mentioned in the article however, even in Modern Family, which we all like to think is a fairly exaggerated, yet somehow eerily accurate depiction of a suburban family, the characters live in large, expensively furnished homes. Television is ultimately a form of entertainment, and the shows we watch reflect what we find engaging. So perhaps this attraction to the lives and losses of the upper classes reflects the longing of a society still reeling from a financial crisis. Or maybe we just like watching pretty people with lots of money do things we never can.