The twelveth of several stories by Hunter students describing their communities and especially focusing on their methods and strategies for getting important news information that could effect their lives. The project was inspired by the reported death of newspapers around the country followed by future obits about the demise of the news print industry. Requiescant in Pace.
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I reside in a neighborhood with all types of people: Mostly white (non-Hispanic), some with Italian ancestry, some with Irish ancestry, and some are Hispanic, East Asian, African American, Latino and Arabic. Many possess houses of three or four bedrooms.
Alcohol-related hospitalization in Stapleton and St. George is four times the overall New York City rate. Stapleton and St. George have the third highest rate of child lead poisoning among all 42 neighborhoods in the five boroughs. One in three adults aged 65 and older suffer injuries from falls each year. The rate of hospitalizations in Stapleton and St. George for falls is more than 25 percent higher than overall New York City.
There were 25 drug related deaths in 2008. The chances of becoming a victim of a violent crime in Staten Island is 1/352 compared to 1/221 for the city. According to the 120 Police precinct, there were 1,551 major felony crimes and 301 cases of felonious assault.
Staten Island has only one newspaper that purports to cover the borough, The Staten Island Advance. The Advance and SILive.com are teamed as the Islands’ purported leading community news sources. They, in an sense, are a monopoly. And I have witnessed firsthand how flawed their reporting can be.
“SILive.com is Staten Island’s largest local Web site for news, sports, entertainment, jobs, autos, real estate and information,” the online news services says on its website. “In addition to serving as the online home of the newspaper, The Staten Island Advance, SILive.com offers forums, blogs, webcams, and listings on where to go and what to do on and around the island ” My biggest issue about living on Staten Island is how they monopolize news. Although I loathe the Advance Iread it in order to stay informed about my community.
In high school, a friend died from a Ben Gay overdose. [More info here] The Advance, before an official cause of death was reported, published stories intimating she died from abusing alcohol and that egregious news angle insired it to publish stories about teenage drinking. It published pictures of friends’ Facebook pages showing them drinking. The pictures made the front of the paper.
Drinking contributed in no way to her death, but until the cause of death became conclusive, the Advance engaged in preacious publishing, sullying and smearing my dead friend and the people who knew her by using allegedly anonymous sources, posts from online forums citing only user names, reporting things that were not even true.
The news media continues to radically change. Media news and news about friends are easiest to find using Twitter. This is one of the quickest and most constant news sources I find myself using. I can follow links to interesting articles or hear about an award a friend has just won at school. This is one of the newer ways people learn of information and one of the things that is influencing the way media are viewed.
For state news I sometimes pick up The New York Post but most often read the New York Times articles via my IPhone’s NYT application.
The Post’s posted mission statement on its website states, “As the preeminent daily newspaper in the competitive New York market, the mission of The New York Post is to chronicle the triumphs and tragedies of this great city through a bold, irreverent and edgy tabloid design that readers know and love. The New York Post knows its readers, and readers love the Post.”
The Post is one of my guilty pleasures. Sometimes on a Sunday, I’ll find myself reading “Page Six” or the “Weird But True” section. I skim the names of people arrested in each burrough to see if I know anyone. I don’t usually look at the Post for any serious news stories and am not a big sports fan, thus a large chunk of the Post is useless to me.
The New York Times lists core values on its website, “Content of the highest quality and integrity. This is the basis for our reputation and the means by which we fulfill the public trust and our customers’ expectations. Fair treatment of employees based on respect, accountability and standards of excellence. Creating long-term shareholder value through investment and constancy of purpose. Good corporate citizenship.”
I feel the Times is a reliable source and is much more serious and in-depth than The New York Post. I know if someone mentions a piece of serious and important news I do not feel informed about or am completely unaware of, I can simply open the NYT application on my phone and most likely will access an article regarding the topic in seconds.
For national and international news I usually end up using Google News and The NYT IPhone application.
Google describes Google News on its website, “On Google News we offer links to several articles on every story, so you can first decide what subject interests you and then select which publishers’ accounts of each story you’d like to read. ..Stories are sorted without regard to political viewpoint or ideology and you can choose from a wide variety of perspectives on any given story.”
Fox News is usually the broadcast station that is on in my house. Although I only sometimes find myself watching news and most often reading it, I have been made aware that Fox News isn’t always the most reliable of sources. This is why I enjoy Google News so much. It does not report news but compiles it. When I say I use Google News, I mean I am really viewing numerous news media sources. There are links to many websites that provide numerous points of view and stories. This is a great way for me to be able to decide my own views after reading numerous reports of situations and issues.
My biggest concern right now is health care. I try to utilize news sources to keep myself aware of progress, measures, and policies created for healthcare reform.
For news regarding Hunter, I subscribe to the Hunter L. I do not currently find myself deeply concerned regarding any of the issues on campus. I do, however, like being aware of some issues. I like feeling that I’m in the loop and being aware of what is going on around the campus. I am glad that moderation has been recently brought up as some people do not utilize this source properly.
I think news and information are powerful tools that influence our everyday lives. I feel it is hard to actually want to access the news sometimes, at least for myself, because of the ubiquitous presence of media, they seem to be everywhere. There are youtube videos, facebook news feeds, emails, newspapers, magazines, television, radio and internet I often access and sometimes it makes me push away a lot of news that I may have access to. I do want to take some time and find a good balance of news. There has to be a line between ill informed and over saturation and I think I’m almost there.
Daniel Okrent, the Times’ first Public Editor, wrote of issues being brought up because of “Preserving Our Readers Trust.”.= He discusses the controversy behind anonymous sources. He discusses how criminal justice, foreign policy, world, and intellegence community reporters would not be able to do their jobs without unidentified sources. He goes on to say how many journalists who use blind quotes may be perceived to be practicing dishonorable behavior. Readers tend to challenge the authenticity of these quotes. Sometimes anonymous sources can be viewed as lazy or dishonest tactics by the reader. Sometimes these reporters have valuable sources when the competition does not but they insist on anonymity.
Anonymity, David Leavy of the National Security Council writes, “You’ll be a lot more forth coming and rely on less diplomatese.” This may lead to people learning a lot more. If policy makers want to get their stories our, Okrent says they’ll do it with or without an anonymous backgrounder.
The latest Public Editor, Hoyt, discusses how the Internet has impacted his writing. He hastily published an article hastily trying to compete with the “instant” news of the web. This article ended up being of poor quality with many errors. He says print journalism puts value on accuracy, tone, and context, something the internet does not always do.
Jonathan Landman, managing editor of web operations, felt he made a false choice between speed and quality. He said, Journalistic quality has always involved a combination of speed, thoroughness, authority, discovery, seriousness, humor and many other things that sometimes conflict with each other the trick is to find the right balance.”
A good example of integration was the forced landing of US Airways flight 1549. Within moments two editors were informed, one by the social networking site Twitter. Immediately, photographers, reporters and freelancers were dispatched. The Times even used new software and for the first time used 17 pictures taken by the public.
Print editors are being trained to handle the web and web producers are being trained to be more assertive story editors.
Bill Keller, the executive editor, says editors “don’t speak directly to the reader in newspapers” unless its in a serious matter. The web is an informal way to talk to readers with a more personal voice.
The Times offers a rich web experience but the main goals are still the scope depth, and authority of reporting. As it builds its web future, Hoyt warns it must keep it’s standards even with the pressure of the instant reporting of the web.