Sam’s Hot Takes S2, #6 - Mobile WAVE

This is Samuel Watkins... with the final post for Season Two if Sam’s Hot Takes! I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading this content as much as I enjoyed making it, even if it was admittedly a bit rushed.
A lot of people consume the news on their mobile device. It’s always in our pockets and extremely accessible compared to something like a cable show or newspaper. Therefore, it’s really important that a news outlets website is mobile compatible… and there’s our problem.

Browsing the WAVE website on my phone, I notice some immediate problems. Primarily, it takes way too long to find what you need and even longer to browse if you just want to stay updated. The link to one particular story and corresponding photo takes up about half of your screen, and it’s extremely cumbersome to categorize this massive and poorly formatted list of stories because scrolling in the categories section after clicking the three lines in the upper-left often doesn’t work correctly, and causes you to hit a tag you didn’t want to. Lastly, ads also take up about half the phone screen during your scroll, perpetuating both these problems. Overall, it’s clear the website needs a mobile revamp.

Sam’s Hot Takes S2, #5 - WAVE Off Filler

This is Sam’s Hot Takes - bringing you our penultimate post of Season Two! It’s been a wonderful, albeit short journey. 
I find the dynamic of incorporating filler into local cable news quite interesting in general. Unlike a lot of my peers, I think that it definitely has its place. Often, there’s just a slow news day… and that doesn’t mean you can just end your broadcast there. So, you’ve gotta fill it up!
But WAVE’s approach to filling empty time seems to be a lot different than one might initially perceive. Instead of only including stories that aren’t relevant, they’ll often find some really heart-warming human interest story that’s local - or expand more in detail about a national story and give it some local perspective. In my opinion, it’s an extremely admirable approach, and it’s something I wouldn’t have thought out had I not done this project. Hopefully, quality local news coverage like this can help bring a new wave of reporters into the scene. But hey, that’s just my take.

Sam’s Hot Takes S2, #4 - An Applause for a WAVE

This is Sam’s Hot Takes, Season Two and Post Four... where we’re now definitely panicking, but nevertheless staying positive!

There’s a lot of things that WAVE does really well. First of all, the show generally presents news in a really enjoyable and easy to digest format. I very rarely find myself bored when I’m watching, as they stay on each topic for the perfect amount of time and strike a nice balance between local and national stories.

Everything also transitions well, and the anchors we see on screen are fun to watch and have a solid chemistry. Though I do think there are faults with our local news project (something I might touch on later), I overall have enjoyed my time watching WAVE and do think the show may find its way into my schedule somehow, even it the work I do with it for this project comes to a close.

Sam’s Hot Takes S2, #3 - The Sports WAVE

Welcome back to Sam’s Hot Takes, Season Two! On this ten minutes, we discover that stories about the local news we’re following net us ten points and subsequently spam them!

Lots of people are talking about it, and it’s clearly a problem with WAVE as well - wayyy too much sports coverage. Look, I get it, we’re a sports town. It’s important to a lot of people in our community to have coverage like this, but it’s the battle for balance we fight as journalists between elitism and populism… and WAVE’s losing it.

Our group typically sees about 4 sports stories a day from WAVE’s coverage each night. These stories are all extremely surface level, covering who’s playing who in the next U of L, Kentucky, or Louisville City game as well as dates and times. Perhaps it’d be better if they had some more insightful things to say? Some sort of columnist, or some predictions… but hey, what do I know? That’s just my take.

Sam’s Hot Takes S2, #2 - Critically Gone

Welcome back to Sam’s Hot Takes, Season Two! This’ll be another critique of a post from one of my classmates.
http://morgandvd.blogspot.com/2018/10/missing-girl-or-missing-news.html
While I initially enjoyed Morgan’s blog post, Missing Girl or Missing News?, after taking it apart a bit I quickly realized that it crumbles under pressure. My main criticism is this: it seems Morgan fails to make the distinction here between journalism for the purpose of informing people and journalism for the purpose of entertainment. The low-hanging fruit for these responses is to just call things not relevant on the national stage, but the problem with this is that it’s clearly not meant to be. True crime gathers so many clicks because, simply, it’s entertaining. Following a national mystery like this in the news is almost a journalistic tradition at this point, and I for one really enjoy coverage like this — even if it’s not entirely pertinent to my everyday life. That’s why I think that our critic is the person missing something here.

Sam’s Hot Takes S2, #1 - Missing the Mark

This is Sam Watkins’s Hot Takes, Season Two! We’re back with double the sass and double the procrastination, so just strap on in!
http://thedarksoldiersbarracks.blogspot.com/2018/10/wlkys-crime-addiction.html
In response to Justin’s article, WLKY’s Crime Addiction, I’ve got one simple point… where else does one expect these crime stories to be? Citizens of Louisville need to know when a high-profile local crime has occurred for their own safety, and the medium where these stories are conveyed is local news. While every single story may not be relevant to every single person, these crimes most definitely earn the spot they have on the news due to the impact these crimes have within the local communities they take place in. A local fight may be relevant to the families of everyone involved, the neighborhood it took place it, or really anyone who frequents the setting where the altercation took place. Therefore, to call these stories “bland” and “irrelevant” truly misses the mark.

Sam's Hot Takes #7 - Media Critique: "The Difference Between a Watchfox and a Watchdog"

      This is Samuel Watkins, providing you with yet another hot take tonight... but unfortunately, it'll also be my last. Here's the grand finale of my procrastination marathon, the media critique!
The article I'm critiquing is this one...
Politicians caught padding their resumes, from fake diplomas to biographical discrepancies by Jennifer Earl
...published by who else than Fox News. The standard that they violate here is fairness.  

      Firstly, it's worth mentioning that the article covers three Democratic politicians and only one Republican politician. The Republican politician's offense was also covered in the least detail compared to the other three offenses. This is at least somewhat defensible by its lonesome, and on its own could be mere coincidence. 
      However, looking deeper into the article, it's clearly trying to be watchdog journalism when that's just not what's happening here. One of the attacks on Democrat Andy Kim was that "he stated he worked under both Democratic and Republican administrations", but in actuality, "he only worked as a conflict management specialist for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for “less than a year” during the Bush era in 2005." 
      These attacks on these politicians are simply petty, and while the Republican covered in the article dropped out of her race for lying about having a college degree, all of the Democratic candidates covered here are still running in their elections. 
      Looking at this article, the bias is clear. It's a thinly veiled attack piece on Democratic candidates, passed off as 'watchdog journalism'. But hey... that's just my take.

Sam's Hot Takes #6 - Mentor/Mentee Program

      This is Samuel Watkins, providing you with yet another hot take tonight - my last one before our grand finale. The topic I'm covering, though, is a little bit different from all the others. This hot take is going to be about our Journalism and Communications mentorship program, both what I like about it and what I don't.
      Firstly, my mentor has been an extremely valuable resource. Thanks to him, I'm a lot more knowledgeable on our magnet, and he even motivated me to go talk with Mr. Miller and find out information about the RedEye workday coming up. However, at the same time, I think there are some issues with the program too. After meeting my mentor and going over the basic informational stuff with him... there really wasn't any defined steps after that. It'd be nice to have some other way to interact with my mentor in a way that gives me more information about our magnet. This could be anything from a dedicated week for shadowing them during their after-school publication workday, or something like entering a particular J&C related competition with them as a group. 
     Of course, it's up to those reading this if they'd like to implement or push for a implementation of these ideas for the mentorship program. After all... they're only my takes.

Sam's Hot Takes #5 - Response to Emily's "Deck of Cards" Blog Post

       This is Samuel Watkins, providing you with yet another hot take tonight - this time, it's going to be my second response to a blog from one of my classmates tonight. Specifically, to my classmate Emily's blog post about the deck of cards Mr. Miller uses to call on people in the class - you can read the post in question here.
      Firstly, I want to give props to Emily for making this observation. It's not something I would've thought of to talk about personally, but she makes some really good points about how these cards Mr. Miller uses give everyone a chance to speak their mind on the topics we discuss. While Emily gives the perspective of how these cards give her the needed encouragement to speak up, I'm often someone who falls on the opposite end of the spectrum - I have a tendency to talk too much, ask too many questions... and thus not do enough listening. Reflecting on this, the cards really do make a difference and help me learn.
      However, I do have a couple suggestions for Emily's blog post, a bit of constructive criticism to offer. First off, it's just a bit short and lacks a bit of detail. This fact, along with how she missed a couple of obvious errors like missing commas and a space between the words "in" and "front",  makes me think the blog post was slightly rushed... a bit of a shame for such a neat concept, but that's only my take.

Sam's Hot Takes #4 - Response to Wisal's Media Critique

      This is Samuel Watkins, providing you with yet another hot take tonight - though this time, it'll be a little different. This is going to be a response to my classmate Wisal's media critique, which you can read here.
      There's a disclaimer I need to give before I begin, however - because although I do criticize this specific piece of writing from Wisal, she's done an absolutely wonderful job on consistently keeping up with her blog throughout this assignment. She has multiple posts containing multiple detailed paragraphs... and she's certainly done a better job of planning out the timeline of each of her posts, and not procrastinating as I have.
      But that's enough with the flattery! You're not here for that, you're here for hot takes! The main issue I take up with Wisal's critique here is that it's just a bit... petty. While yes, there are many important current events going on at any given time in the world, it's okay to have news that's a little more populist, and geared a little more towards entertainment from time to time. The murder case covered in the article she critiques even clearly mentions a book being written on the topic - clearly, it's being covered not because it's the most pressing story in the world, but because it's an interesting story.
     But who's to say which of us is correct? All I can do is provide my take.

Sam's Hot Takes #3 - Media Conglomerates

      This is Samuel Watkins, providing you with yet another hot take tonight. This time, I’m addressing the lecture we received on conglomeration and demassification. Specifically, this hot take is addressing the concerns I have with conglomeration as it relates to media companies.
      At around the beginning of April this year, this viral video was making the rounds across numerous news headlines:

 
      For context, this is a group of local news stations reading a conglomerate owner’s script word for word - and according to the group’s own website (Sinclair Broadcasting Group) they’re involved in 191 television stations across the United States. The impacts here are pretty much self-evident - the more media companies a conglomerate controls, the more they’re able to influence what the public sees, reads, and hears… and thus, sway public opinion and the “truth” in whichever direction they wish. If an elitist media conglomerate were to spread even further, the effects would be disastrous.
      But hey - that’s just my take.

Sam's Hot Takes #2 - Binary Models

      This is Samuel Watkins, providing you with yet another hot take. Today, I’m addressing the lectures we received on mass communication and the binary models. To be a little more specific… is information really ever restrained to one aspect of a binary model anymore?
      If I’m looking for information, not only can I turn to traditional news, but there’s also comedic shows that rely on journalism - like Last Week Tonight or Stephen Colbert. They clearly aren’t meant to be substituted for the real news, but they also clearly inform the viewer along with entertaining them. For another example, let’s say you browse the NPR website or mobile app. Clicking on most articles, you’re shown a screen like this:

      I’ve got the option to view this content in both a hot or cold format… both sides of the binary model, all easily accessible in one place, delivering me the same content. It’s the same story when I’m deciding between a news briefing or podcast, or an audiobook versus a regular one.
      Put simply, as the future becomes the present - the world’s becoming a lot less binary.

Sam's Hot Takes #1 - Room For Dissent

      This is Samuel Watkins, providing you with my first - yet one of many hot takes you will see from me in the coming days.
      One of the first topics we covered in our Journalism 1 class was The Elements and Yardsticks of Journalism - two metrics used for identifying what’s important in news coverage. These 17 different standards (though some of the elements do overlap with some of the yardsticks) cover a vast array of topics in journalism, from initially obvious aspects like “truth”, to concepts that were a little more complex, such as the theme of “room for dissent.”
      I found this to be really interesting because there’s now, there’s so much fighting between different partisan news networks… but even so, this standard still really isn’t met. If I’m trying to discover if something I see that’s shared is true, I usually just compare and cross-check with other articles I’ve seen. At the most, I’ll take a quick glance at something off of a site like Snopes.com to debunk headlines that appear too dramatic to be true. While it’s a supposed standard for journalists to both give room to criticize and criticize others - in this world of extreme partisanship, of facts and alternative facts, it still feels taboo to truly call someone or something wrong. In an effort to avoid bias, we’re often too afraid to admit when the other, or even our side has fouled. If that’s case… is there really any room for dissent at all? 

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