Create a press release for Joe Paterno’s death.
Joe Paterno passed away January 22nd, 2012. A recent controversial figure, Paterno was a father, a coach and memorable man in the sports world. Paterno, affectionately nicknamed JoePa passed at the age of 85 from complications with lung cancer. Not only leaving behind his loving wife and five children, Paterno is leaving behind a complicated legacy with Penn State that will change the sports world long beyond the foreseeable future. Despite the charges brought against JoePa, Penn State mourns the loss of this incredible coach that impacted collegiate sports for decades coaching there for almost 50 years. During his tenure at Penn State he championed the football field for the Nittany Lions in addition to promoting academic and athletic cohesion. The loss of Paterno is a difficult one for thousands as recent scandal can greatly impact his legacy; but today JoePa is a loving father, husband and coach who completed his long life fighting for education and athleticism.
Craft an accompanying Facebook post.
Penn State and family mourns the loss of father, coach,and memorable figure as Joe Paterno passed away yesterday. Read more here (link to press release above).
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Module 6: Social Media Tools
1. Come up with a group/company or non-profit you wish to represent.
I work with a couple close friends, and a couple far-away connections on a "combo-blog" as we call it. Raddish Beats is a place where each of the authors has a focus, but the blog allows them all to post together. While I write about the health and lifestyle, my friend Jesse write about sports, our friend Matt write about Rap music, and others write about TV, music and city life. This is a rare experiment for a blog, where usually a person searching for their interests must find one blog for each of the above listed categories. Raddish Beats attempts to put as many topics of interest in front of as many viewers as possible. If they like what they read--they might stick around and read something they didn't plan on reading.
If readers find themselves liking one author or another, they can sort the posts by author and by topic-- creating a hub of searchable content in one page-- as opposed to the entire internet.
2. Come up with an target audience for that organization.
Our target audience is not only the general public, but the general public who gets most of their information from blogs. I think it is fair to say that we are reaching out to a demographic interested in entertainment-- be it in their personal lives (lifestyle activities, diets, health, consumerism) or outside (music, movies, concerts, sports) they can engage at any level they wish-- but most of it is entertainment based.
3. Come up with a message for that audience.
Our message is at the baseline, come to our blog and read some interesting things about entertainment and engage directly with the bloggers. We want readership to be aware of our blog as it is just starting up-- and encourage its use outside of our friend group.
4&5) Pick three Social Media Tools and explain their effectiveness.
Raddish Beats utilizes Twitter primarily right now, as a place to post our blog links to the Twittersphere-- it is a good way to get word out quickly about a new post. Right now they are auto linked and every time we post, a tweet is sent out to our followers. This is an effective way to increase readership, link to those our stories are about, and create a more cohesive package for our readership.
I think that as we continue to grow we should use Instagram--particularly for the folks blogging about city life, diets, lifestyle activities etc. Those genres within the blog would get the most use out of snap shot photos to supplement their posts. Instagram is great at showing what we do and images will boost readership and interest for readers.
I am not sure if there is another social media platform we would use, because our whole blog is hosted on a social media platform, WordPress. I would consider that the third social media tool we use.
Facebook-- as a group we have talked about Facebook as an option to expand on our posts etc-- and we have come to this conclusion-- Facebook would take away viewership. Meaning that if we linked everything on Facebook readers could get thumbnails and summaries without even visiting our blog. We lose in that situation, almost Facebook likes to spam folks who join groups or like them. We decided against it.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Module 3: Sources Under Fire
Sources are the best indication that written work is thoroughly researched and fully backed by evidence. However, the roots of these source must be analyzed to ensure that the information provided is as free as possible from political or monetary benefit. For example, if I state that chocolate is healthy for everyone, but I work for Willy Wonka, that would be an investment that prevents me from presenting unfiltered information. Understanding my position at Willy Wonka, a reader can interpret my findings as self-beneficial and can decide for themselves if they agree with my statement. Understanding the sources, and where their loyalties lie is very important in understanding the facts presented to us on a daily basis. We as readers, become hyper aware of the connections sources have to the topic at hand.
Article:
Venezuela Offers Asylum to Snowden
By WILLIAM NEUMAN and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: July 5, 2013
THE NEW YORK TIMES ONLINE
Sources:
Wikileaks Twitter account
María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting from Caracas, Venezuela.Daniel Ortega, the president of NicaraguaPresident Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela
Evaluation:
1. Is there any evidence that the author of the Web information has some authority in the field about which she or he is providing information? What are the author's qualifications, credentials and connections to the subject?
Yes, all of these sources have some authority in the field of the matter-- they are leaders and contributors to the news first hand-- while WikiLeaks is known for presenting information that is confidential and oftentimes not pleasing to the government. Usually Wikileaks is known for presenting unbiased information.
2. With what organization or institution is the author associated? Is there a link to the sponsoring organization, a contact number and/or address or e-mail contact? A link to an association does not necessarily mean that the organization approved the content.
The New York Times. There could be a link between them and the recent stories with Snowden and their dedication to presenting the news in a fair and balanced way, but no I do not see any direct correlation.
3. Does the author have publications in peer reviewed (scholarly and professional) publications, on the Web or in hard copy? (If an author does not have peer reviewed articles published, this does not mean that she or he does not have credible information, only that there has been no professional "test" of the author's authority on that subject.)
Yes, every article in a newspaper is peer reviewed.
4. Are there clues that the author/s are biased? For example, is he/she selling or promoting a product? Is the author taking a personal stand on a social/political issue or is the author being objective ? Bias is not necessarily "bad," but the connections should be clear.
It does not appears that the author is demonstrating bias-- however, they are a citizen of one of the countries involved in the article which makes her maybe more credible, but also invested in the issue.
5. Is the Web information current? If there are a number of out-of-date links that do not work or old news, what does this say about the credibility of the information?This is a highly current article. Says that this news was recent and generally has active information sources.
6. Does the information have a complete list of works cited, which reference credible, authoritative sources? If the information is not backed up with sources, what is the author's relationship to the subject to be able to give an "expert" opinion?
There was no work cited at all within this article, these names/sources were pulled directly form the text itself. As it is spoken word from President of other nations.
7. Can the subject you are researching be fully covered with WWW sources or should print sources provide balance? Much scholarly research is still only available in traditional print form. It is safe to assume that if you have limited background in a topic and have a limited amount of time to do your research, you may not be able to get the most representative material on the subject. So be wary of making unsupportable conclusions based on a narrow range of sources.
This one can be fully researched with WWW sources, as it is highly current.
8. On what kind of Web site does the information appear? The site can give you clues about the credibility of the source.
A newspaper site-- which actually gives the article more stance as it is backed by a news institution.
Impact:
These sources, as leaders in their respective countries and the impact of the website that hosts this article being a news source contributes to my belief that this is an accurate telling of the current Snowden situation. We are constantly evaluating the things we see and read, and taking the time to process this information is highly beneficial to reading works outside of the text alone.
-Abbey
Article:
By WILLIAM NEUMAN and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: July 5, 2013
Sources:
Wikileaks Twitter account
María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting from Caracas, Venezuela.Daniel Ortega, the president of NicaraguaPresident Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela
Evaluation:
1. Is there any evidence that the author of the Web information has some authority in the field about which she or he is providing information? What are the author's qualifications, credentials and connections to the subject?
Yes, all of these sources have some authority in the field of the matter-- they are leaders and contributors to the news first hand-- while WikiLeaks is known for presenting information that is confidential and oftentimes not pleasing to the government. Usually Wikileaks is known for presenting unbiased information.
2. With what organization or institution is the author associated? Is there a link to the sponsoring organization, a contact number and/or address or e-mail contact? A link to an association does not necessarily mean that the organization approved the content.
The New York Times. There could be a link between them and the recent stories with Snowden and their dedication to presenting the news in a fair and balanced way, but no I do not see any direct correlation.
3. Does the author have publications in peer reviewed (scholarly and professional) publications, on the Web or in hard copy? (If an author does not have peer reviewed articles published, this does not mean that she or he does not have credible information, only that there has been no professional "test" of the author's authority on that subject.)
Yes, every article in a newspaper is peer reviewed.
4. Are there clues that the author/s are biased? For example, is he/she selling or promoting a product? Is the author taking a personal stand on a social/political issue or is the author being objective ? Bias is not necessarily "bad," but the connections should be clear.
It does not appears that the author is demonstrating bias-- however, they are a citizen of one of the countries involved in the article which makes her maybe more credible, but also invested in the issue.
5. Is the Web information current? If there are a number of out-of-date links that do not work or old news, what does this say about the credibility of the information?This is a highly current article. Says that this news was recent and generally has active information sources.
6. Does the information have a complete list of works cited, which reference credible, authoritative sources? If the information is not backed up with sources, what is the author's relationship to the subject to be able to give an "expert" opinion?
There was no work cited at all within this article, these names/sources were pulled directly form the text itself. As it is spoken word from President of other nations.
7. Can the subject you are researching be fully covered with WWW sources or should print sources provide balance? Much scholarly research is still only available in traditional print form. It is safe to assume that if you have limited background in a topic and have a limited amount of time to do your research, you may not be able to get the most representative material on the subject. So be wary of making unsupportable conclusions based on a narrow range of sources.
This one can be fully researched with WWW sources, as it is highly current.
8. On what kind of Web site does the information appear? The site can give you clues about the credibility of the source.
A newspaper site-- which actually gives the article more stance as it is backed by a news institution.
Impact:
These sources, as leaders in their respective countries and the impact of the website that hosts this article being a news source contributes to my belief that this is an accurate telling of the current Snowden situation. We are constantly evaluating the things we see and read, and taking the time to process this information is highly beneficial to reading works outside of the text alone.
-Abbey
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