Echo, Booger
This is for my Journalism class. We had to do a review of the "Echo Times" school newspaper for extra credit. Hope y'all enjoy!
I’ll start off this review of my school’s glorious newspaper by saying this: I avoid this newspaper. I’m not ashamed to say it, but I just don’t like it that much. After having read a few editions a few years back and having been ousted from having my opinions in their paper, and even having asked a writer of the newspaper his opinion of the paper, I’m pretty sure that the paper or whoever edits it has an agenda that doesn’t quite agree with me. Note, however, that all of the above happened in 2004 and even though I’ve forgiven for these petty issues, I have not forgotten them. Thus, I could only read it again if there was money offered or extra credit offered for a class just for reading and reviewing it. That’s why I read it again now, and I don’t think I missed much in my time of not reading it.
First off, we have the big bad news front page headline “Academic Senate Revolts – What happens when COM’s faculty quarrels?” Intriguing and, for the most part, a well written article. This kind of news story, though, makes me feel a tad embarrassed to be going to this college. It seems that there’s some commotion among the faculty with the newest office members on board. So how do they deal with their frustration? Let’s see the actual article itself:
“The August 24 election has led to an outburst of Internet insults and name-calling between the two sides that fought for the leadership of the Senate. One COM instructor compared the ongoing fracas over election results to ‘fifth graders fighting on the playground.’”
A trend I’ve noticed in recent years is that where there are Democrats and elections, there always seems to be fighting over the results. Now I’m seeing that same trend among Democrats voting amongst themselves, assuming that they’re mostly Democratic because 99% of the people working here sure seem to be. Now, it’s come to schoolyard bullying. But I just absolutely love this next part. Hank Fearnley is a professor who I had twice for Political Sciences. We had many political quibs with each other all in the name of good taste and being gentlemen. He always had, and still does have, a respectable aura about himself, giving lectures in the style of a professional speaker and famous orator. But since I read the comment from him, I have to wonder if that train comes to a stop every once in a while. Hank doesn’t think our new Academic Senate Vice President, Patrick Kelly, is a good choice:
“In an e-mail posted on a COM faculty message board, political science instructor Hank Fearnley called Kelly’s reversal ‘truly disgusting’ and demanded that he ‘cut the self-righteous bullshit. No one is impressed.’”
Dost mine virgin ears deceive me? Did Hank, the ever proper and model professor, just lay the verbal smackdown on our new guy? Wowsers, I didn’t see that one coming! And it’s in print too. Rarely have I ever seen swearing in the paper. In the following paragraph, though, Kelly has gained some of my respect just by saying this:
“Kelly, in a same day response, railed against ‘angry, unfounded accusations based on absolutely no fact, paranoia and…conspiracy theories.’”
Anyone who says they’re against conspiracy theories as the kind categorized above gets a plus in my book. What they are, I’ll still have to hear for myself, though.
Anyhoo, stepping aside from the story about our faculty members acting like schoolboys, let’s take a look at how the schoolboys at the Echo Times staff arranged this article. Hmm, nice lead in from page one to page four and later to page five. There’s a major issues I have with one paragraph. The paragraph right before the big quote on page for ends with “I can’t be effective if I can’t be contronta-.” I can’t find the rest of the sentence anywhere near here. But it appears as though the paragraph after the big quote is fragmentized as well, starting with “to be suspicious and resentment toward the administration through spring and summer.” My guess is the folks at the Echo Times staff put that quote in later and forgot to properly reconstruct the graphs. Whoopsies! That one major goof-up though, in a mostly well-written article about how much the faculty here sucks. I give writer Lind Gallanter a B+.
The other big story here on the front page is a personal profile of a student who is sure to be one of COM’s finest: a crazy chicken man who lights himself on fire. Joe Carrol, an amateur filmmaker who is the subject of the article “Feathers fly for student filmmaker – COM student chases his dreams by being a ‘Jackass’”, likes dressing himself up in a chicken suit and catching himself on fire just to get it on camera for laughs on the Internet. Alright, I’ll buy that. I admit, I log onto Ebaumsworld.com frequently to find videos of people doing crazy stuff like that. The issue I have of putting this article on the front page is that it seems like it’s being put up there as something to be proud about. At least that’s how it comes across. To me, that seems rather bizarre. Why boast about having a student who performs stupid stunts just to categorize himself among the thousands of peons who already do this sort of thing?
And furthermore, how does this sort of interest kick off? Let’s see from the article itself:
“It all started when he (Carroll) received a video camera for his birthday and started taking it when he went out with friends. While in Las Vegas, Carroll and some high school buddies recorded themselves sloshing around ina hotel fountain off the main drag. Although they are all now permanently banned from the hotel, the video they took home with them will let the joke live on. The Vegas fountain wasn’t the only video that received attention from authorities.”
OK, so it all started when Adam bit the apple and suffered the consequences. Classic, except Adam didn’t quite learn. Because, dear reader, it gets juicier than that:
“Eleven police cars, a police boat and police helicopter responded to a call of a flaming chicken jumping into a river. ‘They told us later it cost $50,000 in man power” said Carrol, who has film interests other than roasted poultry.
“I got the camera and just started filming. I always liked the entertainment industry.” Along with public service announcements for his high school and Internetvideos, Carroll said his future lies in documentaries, where he’d like to travel and film on location.”
DANG! He’s got high hopes for a man who’s got a permanent stain on his record. Again, why are we doing a personal here glorifying someone who attracts police attention by dressing in a chicken suit and burning himself? Isn’t that kind of, yunno, stupid and dangerous? You can’t justify any of this, folks.
Page two of the newspaper and we finally find something of interest. By that, I mean “Piracy 101: The cost of illegal downloading and file-sharing” by Diane Smiroldo. I say this because piracy has been a favorite issue of mine since high school. As a young man of twelve or thirteen, I was introduced to the wide world of MP3 downloading in a time where such a feat could hardly be accomplished on a 56k modem. In high school, I stumbled across pirating movies online when I looked for clips of the film “Stuart Little” online. Before long, I was going onto FTP sites downloading countless movies. Nowadays, I’ve noticed pirating has become much smarter and complex, although I have actually now cut down majorly on downloading MP3s and instead relied on Itunes and Wal-Mart now that I can pay for my music. Trouble is though, there are some songs that are rare enough that I can’t find them in either place. On those rare occasions, I turn to the ever popular Emule for compensation. So I guess you could say that I’m a recovering piracy addict.
So now, about this article. I’ve read the sort of info before. I know all about the rules. Except for the part where he mentions purchasing things on online auction sites as being illegal. If that were true, I think Ebay would be long gone by now. Now he says that borrowing disks from friends fits into the illegal category as well. Everything we do is stealing basically. I think that’s a bit extreme. Here’s why I justify my piracy though. In the past three years, I’ve given more to the industries than I ever have in my life. I can’t count the number of movies I’ve been to see in the theatres. I can’t count the number of songs I’ve legally obtained from online stores like Itunes and Wal-Mart. But with all the movies I want to see, I can’t afford to see them all, let alone get access to them. So why not download stuff you can’t get any other way, especially if you’re just going to watch it once and delete it?
A lot of the movies I’ve seen online, I wouldn’t pay a cent for in the theatres. I felt screwed over royally as I sat through pirated copies of “Scooby Doo”, “Garfield: The Movie,” The “Masters of Horror” film series and pretty much every episode of “The Outer Limits.” Why would I pay for something I hate? I have just as much expectations of greatness for those movies as I have most others. Are you saying that it’s a good thing that I paid for “The Cat In The Hat,” “The Shaggy Dog” with Tim Allen, “Are We There Yet?,” “The Bourne Supremacy,” “Scary Movie 3,” and every other piece of crap I’ve seen these past three years? Are you saying that I shouldn’t download “Dune,” even though it’s not available in my local video store? Are you saying that I should pay a hundred dollar or so fine or do time in jail for watching any given cartoon movie that I would have put the usual ONE dollar it’s worth up if I could have? I can’t agree to that. And furthermore, they can shut down these sites and programs as much as they want, but they’re not going to stop piracy.
Thanks to piracy, I got to see “Rent,” a movie which I would not have gotten to see otherwise. And you know what? I loved it so much that I put it on my birthday list and got a copy of it just over the summer. I gave back. You cannot deny this.
Well, I got completely off track there. I believe I was reviewing a school paper, right? Yeah, well-written editorial. Just disagreeable.
You want a story that’s good in this newspaper? Turn to the very last page and you’ll find a story about a COM dancer who has his sights on great horizons. He’s appearing in a show at the College this semester. He’s trained in modern dancing long and hard for the past year and he’s ready for some intense ballet, jazz style and circus arts. He’s even ready to try out for “Cirque Du Soleil” and “Cirque Eloise.” You know what? I like dancing. It’s good exercise and it should be encouraged. All kinds, in fact. It’s also a good escape from the everyday hustle and bustle and a chance for individual self expression if utilized correctly. I think I’ll be going to see something like this. It sounds like fun.
In conclusion, I must say this. What kind of newspaper focuses mostly on bad news and glorifying immorality on it’s front page? Why is it that I read an inspiring and fun story in the back of the paper and the story of a crazy man on the front page? Does Mr. Dougan, the beloved professor of my Journalism class wonder at all at this point why I usually pay no attention to the school newspaper? I guess not. In short, I think the paper needs serious repair in many areas.
I’ll start off this review of my school’s glorious newspaper by saying this: I avoid this newspaper. I’m not ashamed to say it, but I just don’t like it that much. After having read a few editions a few years back and having been ousted from having my opinions in their paper, and even having asked a writer of the newspaper his opinion of the paper, I’m pretty sure that the paper or whoever edits it has an agenda that doesn’t quite agree with me. Note, however, that all of the above happened in 2004 and even though I’ve forgiven for these petty issues, I have not forgotten them. Thus, I could only read it again if there was money offered or extra credit offered for a class just for reading and reviewing it. That’s why I read it again now, and I don’t think I missed much in my time of not reading it.
First off, we have the big bad news front page headline “Academic Senate Revolts – What happens when COM’s faculty quarrels?” Intriguing and, for the most part, a well written article. This kind of news story, though, makes me feel a tad embarrassed to be going to this college. It seems that there’s some commotion among the faculty with the newest office members on board. So how do they deal with their frustration? Let’s see the actual article itself:
“The August 24 election has led to an outburst of Internet insults and name-calling between the two sides that fought for the leadership of the Senate. One COM instructor compared the ongoing fracas over election results to ‘fifth graders fighting on the playground.’”
A trend I’ve noticed in recent years is that where there are Democrats and elections, there always seems to be fighting over the results. Now I’m seeing that same trend among Democrats voting amongst themselves, assuming that they’re mostly Democratic because 99% of the people working here sure seem to be. Now, it’s come to schoolyard bullying. But I just absolutely love this next part. Hank Fearnley is a professor who I had twice for Political Sciences. We had many political quibs with each other all in the name of good taste and being gentlemen. He always had, and still does have, a respectable aura about himself, giving lectures in the style of a professional speaker and famous orator. But since I read the comment from him, I have to wonder if that train comes to a stop every once in a while. Hank doesn’t think our new Academic Senate Vice President, Patrick Kelly, is a good choice:
“In an e-mail posted on a COM faculty message board, political science instructor Hank Fearnley called Kelly’s reversal ‘truly disgusting’ and demanded that he ‘cut the self-righteous bullshit. No one is impressed.’”
Dost mine virgin ears deceive me? Did Hank, the ever proper and model professor, just lay the verbal smackdown on our new guy? Wowsers, I didn’t see that one coming! And it’s in print too. Rarely have I ever seen swearing in the paper. In the following paragraph, though, Kelly has gained some of my respect just by saying this:
“Kelly, in a same day response, railed against ‘angry, unfounded accusations based on absolutely no fact, paranoia and…conspiracy theories.’”
Anyone who says they’re against conspiracy theories as the kind categorized above gets a plus in my book. What they are, I’ll still have to hear for myself, though.
Anyhoo, stepping aside from the story about our faculty members acting like schoolboys, let’s take a look at how the schoolboys at the Echo Times staff arranged this article. Hmm, nice lead in from page one to page four and later to page five. There’s a major issues I have with one paragraph. The paragraph right before the big quote on page for ends with “I can’t be effective if I can’t be contronta-.” I can’t find the rest of the sentence anywhere near here. But it appears as though the paragraph after the big quote is fragmentized as well, starting with “to be suspicious and resentment toward the administration through spring and summer.” My guess is the folks at the Echo Times staff put that quote in later and forgot to properly reconstruct the graphs. Whoopsies! That one major goof-up though, in a mostly well-written article about how much the faculty here sucks. I give writer Lind Gallanter a B+.
The other big story here on the front page is a personal profile of a student who is sure to be one of COM’s finest: a crazy chicken man who lights himself on fire. Joe Carrol, an amateur filmmaker who is the subject of the article “Feathers fly for student filmmaker – COM student chases his dreams by being a ‘Jackass’”, likes dressing himself up in a chicken suit and catching himself on fire just to get it on camera for laughs on the Internet. Alright, I’ll buy that. I admit, I log onto Ebaumsworld.com frequently to find videos of people doing crazy stuff like that. The issue I have of putting this article on the front page is that it seems like it’s being put up there as something to be proud about. At least that’s how it comes across. To me, that seems rather bizarre. Why boast about having a student who performs stupid stunts just to categorize himself among the thousands of peons who already do this sort of thing?
And furthermore, how does this sort of interest kick off? Let’s see from the article itself:
“It all started when he (Carroll) received a video camera for his birthday and started taking it when he went out with friends. While in Las Vegas, Carroll and some high school buddies recorded themselves sloshing around ina hotel fountain off the main drag. Although they are all now permanently banned from the hotel, the video they took home with them will let the joke live on. The Vegas fountain wasn’t the only video that received attention from authorities.”
OK, so it all started when Adam bit the apple and suffered the consequences. Classic, except Adam didn’t quite learn. Because, dear reader, it gets juicier than that:
“Eleven police cars, a police boat and police helicopter responded to a call of a flaming chicken jumping into a river. ‘They told us later it cost $50,000 in man power” said Carrol, who has film interests other than roasted poultry.
“I got the camera and just started filming. I always liked the entertainment industry.” Along with public service announcements for his high school and Internetvideos, Carroll said his future lies in documentaries, where he’d like to travel and film on location.”
DANG! He’s got high hopes for a man who’s got a permanent stain on his record. Again, why are we doing a personal here glorifying someone who attracts police attention by dressing in a chicken suit and burning himself? Isn’t that kind of, yunno, stupid and dangerous? You can’t justify any of this, folks.
Page two of the newspaper and we finally find something of interest. By that, I mean “Piracy 101: The cost of illegal downloading and file-sharing” by Diane Smiroldo. I say this because piracy has been a favorite issue of mine since high school. As a young man of twelve or thirteen, I was introduced to the wide world of MP3 downloading in a time where such a feat could hardly be accomplished on a 56k modem. In high school, I stumbled across pirating movies online when I looked for clips of the film “Stuart Little” online. Before long, I was going onto FTP sites downloading countless movies. Nowadays, I’ve noticed pirating has become much smarter and complex, although I have actually now cut down majorly on downloading MP3s and instead relied on Itunes and Wal-Mart now that I can pay for my music. Trouble is though, there are some songs that are rare enough that I can’t find them in either place. On those rare occasions, I turn to the ever popular Emule for compensation. So I guess you could say that I’m a recovering piracy addict.
So now, about this article. I’ve read the sort of info before. I know all about the rules. Except for the part where he mentions purchasing things on online auction sites as being illegal. If that were true, I think Ebay would be long gone by now. Now he says that borrowing disks from friends fits into the illegal category as well. Everything we do is stealing basically. I think that’s a bit extreme. Here’s why I justify my piracy though. In the past three years, I’ve given more to the industries than I ever have in my life. I can’t count the number of movies I’ve been to see in the theatres. I can’t count the number of songs I’ve legally obtained from online stores like Itunes and Wal-Mart. But with all the movies I want to see, I can’t afford to see them all, let alone get access to them. So why not download stuff you can’t get any other way, especially if you’re just going to watch it once and delete it?
A lot of the movies I’ve seen online, I wouldn’t pay a cent for in the theatres. I felt screwed over royally as I sat through pirated copies of “Scooby Doo”, “Garfield: The Movie,” The “Masters of Horror” film series and pretty much every episode of “The Outer Limits.” Why would I pay for something I hate? I have just as much expectations of greatness for those movies as I have most others. Are you saying that it’s a good thing that I paid for “The Cat In The Hat,” “The Shaggy Dog” with Tim Allen, “Are We There Yet?,” “The Bourne Supremacy,” “Scary Movie 3,” and every other piece of crap I’ve seen these past three years? Are you saying that I shouldn’t download “Dune,” even though it’s not available in my local video store? Are you saying that I should pay a hundred dollar or so fine or do time in jail for watching any given cartoon movie that I would have put the usual ONE dollar it’s worth up if I could have? I can’t agree to that. And furthermore, they can shut down these sites and programs as much as they want, but they’re not going to stop piracy.
Thanks to piracy, I got to see “Rent,” a movie which I would not have gotten to see otherwise. And you know what? I loved it so much that I put it on my birthday list and got a copy of it just over the summer. I gave back. You cannot deny this.
Well, I got completely off track there. I believe I was reviewing a school paper, right? Yeah, well-written editorial. Just disagreeable.
You want a story that’s good in this newspaper? Turn to the very last page and you’ll find a story about a COM dancer who has his sights on great horizons. He’s appearing in a show at the College this semester. He’s trained in modern dancing long and hard for the past year and he’s ready for some intense ballet, jazz style and circus arts. He’s even ready to try out for “Cirque Du Soleil” and “Cirque Eloise.” You know what? I like dancing. It’s good exercise and it should be encouraged. All kinds, in fact. It’s also a good escape from the everyday hustle and bustle and a chance for individual self expression if utilized correctly. I think I’ll be going to see something like this. It sounds like fun.
In conclusion, I must say this. What kind of newspaper focuses mostly on bad news and glorifying immorality on it’s front page? Why is it that I read an inspiring and fun story in the back of the paper and the story of a crazy man on the front page? Does Mr. Dougan, the beloved professor of my Journalism class wonder at all at this point why I usually pay no attention to the school newspaper? I guess not. In short, I think the paper needs serious repair in many areas.
posted by Jaimetud at 9:27 PM
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