Week 5 Blog

    Whew! It sure is a whirlwind of a semester, and time is flying by fast. I feel like I am gaining a lot of information from this class. This includes writing skills, reading skills, time management skills, and much more. I definitely feel the urge of growing more self discipline in this course, as there is much to do to keep up with the due dates. Nonetheless, it is all a learning experience!

    We have just finished out our first traditional reporting assignment. I had a lot of fun with this assignment, but also can see points where I can do better in the future. For this assignment, I got to utilize my chosen beat of culture and picked up on Paia’s water sport culture. To do this and delve into the community, I attended beachfest and watched and interacted with the contestants and the people who were there to just watch the contest in general. There was a great sense of community here, and I am very glad I was able to be a part of it and cover that story.

    In this upcoming week, we are starting to work on another traditional reporting assignment. We began exploring this assignment this week by doing a brainstorm of three different and unique ideas that we think would make a great story, and would also fit in with one of our beats that we are focusing on for the semester. I am pretty excited to apply myself to this story, and I am also excited to see what everyone else is going to come up with. I am thinking that I will be focusing on my chosen beat of art for this story, and have a few ideas that I am excited about the potential of covering. One of these ideas is covering a story on the Pau (Pacific Artists Union) art gallery in Paia. I have some friends who are a part of the production and artistry of this gallery and think that this could be a fun one to cover. At the Pau Art gallery there are art showings every Friday, featuring one artist. The community gathers here to gaze upon the art and socialize with one another. I am thinking that I will either cover the Pau, or another gallery nearby in Makawao that is also having a really interesting and unique gallery showing happening in the upcoming weeks. Reading my classmate’s ideas on the stories that they wanted to cover got me even more excited to really delve into my own beat and story and create some good work that I would be proud to share with the class.

    This week, we also had a news analysis assignment. I honestly really enjoyed this assignment, and its purpose and lesson. The topic of biases in news and journalism is very important, and should always be addressed. I often do forget that I have my own biases when I feel so strongly about certain things, and this assignment reminded me to stop and think and consider my own biases and where I get my news and information from. Growing up in Seattle, Washington, I was always surrounded by very progressive and liberal thinkers and news outlets. I was never one to agree with right-winged thoughts, conservative ideals, or republican politics. I do however think it is important to listen to both sides, to be able to have a clear view and understanding of the world rather than only have one view of things. I thought that it was interesting to watch the three different news stations and analyze each report in terms of how blatant they were with their political biases. I never watch news stations such as Fox News, so it was really interesting and different to see this type of information being broadcasted as reality. I am thankful for this assignment because without it I probably would not have willingly or intentionally watched the news station Fox News and seen that story. This assignment also really opened my eyes to my own biases based off of liberal ideals. This assignment also made me think about how different everyone’s reality is based off of where they are from, their surroundings, their upbringings, and what news is being fed to them. Our realities really are so malleable based off of what news reports are constantly being shown to us, and become our norm and our comfort. I think it is important for all of us to question our beliefs in order to live a more truthful reality outside of our biases and what we were raised to believe. Since moving away from Seattle and living in many different areas since then, my view of the world has definitely changed and I am very grateful for the different types of people and different viewpoints that I have been exposed to since then. I am all for growth, and I think that the lessons that I will be learning in this class, especially this week and moving forward, will greatly aid that.