Religion in schools

The article about the Muslims in catholic schools in France caught my eye for a couple of reasons. One being a French native myself, and the other is the obvious mention of religion. What got to me was that this catholic school understands and accepts Muslims into their schools, because the state schools do not offer the same openness. This makes sense to me... The United States of America is built upon the Judea Christian bible, and like Christianity, it tolerates other religions. The first amendment, like discussed in class, is all about freedom of religion. And one more thing I thought that was interesting was the mention of how Catholic schools, and other religious schools offer one thing that state schools have lost sight of. That is the implementing of moral values and respect, which I agree, today I went to the library, museum and several trains, and each one of them contained cursing and disrespectful children. It's sad.

Now going on to news values... I'm sorry but this article scores a 1 on every on every single value. Maybe a 2 out of 5 for impact on people, only because it involves two of the biggest religions in the world, other than that it scores very low, even the timeliness is virtually unknown, but I'm sure this school has been this way for quite some time now.

China and the tainted milk

This tainted milk scandal for the past few weeks now has been such a blow to not only China's dairy industry, but China's image. This event has completely overshadowed 2008 as the year of China's coming out, to the year with some of the most problems it has faced in years. With the Beijing Olympics ending a little over a month ago, China's "contaminated dairy products is demonstrating" to the world "the weaknesses" of its political system. It is sad to see a country that was finally starting to get world recognition, get hit left and right with events such as this, and let us not forget earlier this year's earthquake in Sichuan. With thousands of children being affected by the tainted milk, I'm just glad to see that only 3 or so have died, which is devastating in itself. At least it was caught early though, otherwise it could have been a lot worse. But it could have been caught even earlier! This is in part China's own fault for covering up this story during the Olympics. Why are they so obsessed about presenting a false image to the world. They kicked bums out of the city during the Olympics, and set aside Olympic lanes... which is reasonable, no harm in separate lanes. But this is ridiculous... the safety of thousands of unknowing customers of the tainted milk could have been avoided, if they would have just let the public know as soon as they could have. What an ignorant move by Beijing authorities.

Goodbye Yankee Stadium

As many New Yorkers know, last night was the last game at the 85 year old Yankee Stadium. It was covered today in the sports section in the times, in 4 different articles. Two about the legends that were there, and one about the return of former Yankee Bernie Williams. The one I'm focusing on is the one about the game and stadium itself. How they won the game, a little history of the stadium and some small statistics. I'm going to try this newsworthy values thing now with this article so here goes...

Timeliness: 5, it happened about 6 hours before the paper got to my house, so I don't think it could have been any more timely, plus this is something that happened. So... nothing has changed from the moment it happened 'til when the paper hit my doorsteps.

Currency: 3, it was the talk of everybody all day... but mostly by males aged 16-30... That and the fact that mainly sports fan even cared to tune into the game on television.

Impact on people: 1, this is really irrelevant to anyone's everyday lives. It doesn't impact myself, or anyone that I know. It was purely entertainment.

Proximity: 4, it is pretty much 15 minutes away from City College, so it hits pretty close to home. This was the last game at the stadium of the home team. The New York Yankees... NEW YORK.

Prominence: 4, one of the most famous sports franchises in the world. The players on the team are recognizable all around the world as well, so there's a great deal of prominence.

Uniqueness: 4, the last game of all time at a historic stadium with rich (possibly the richest) history, only happens once. It was pretty special.

Conflict: 1, There was no conflict except for two teams facing each other in a game of baseball, but really this was an event of pure celebration.

Sensationalism and emotionalism: 3, it was sad to see a stadium being used for one last time, that many new yorkers grew up with. It wasn't too moving to read about it in this article, but if I were to guess, it was probably overwhelming in person.

Education and public service: 2, We learn some history of baseball and the use of a new stadium in new york. Other than that this newsworthy value doesn't score too high.

Texting!

The article about texting and the laws being passed for it caught my eye... because I'm a young adult and I text a lot. The article was pretty funny. A guy mentions how texting distracts people and some people are always looking down, sometimes running into parking meters. That's pretty funny, I would love to see that happen to someone. The laws being passed are for drivers and train conductors. Too many incidents both minor and fatal, have happened from people texting. The article also mentions how texting has just become a bad habit. I agree with that, sometimes it gets annoying when people are texting, and I'm guilty of it also. When eating dinner with my family, my parents always get annoyed when I'm texting at the table. But I feel it's pretty embarassing that people are getting into severe accidents, because of this though... You either learn to multitask or you stop doing such a thing.. this goes with everything. Why do laws have to be passed? This goes with everything, any mobile device or distraction... If you walk onto on coming traffic, because you're doing something else... it's your fault... you were stupid. End of discussion.

Young people and Chile

One of the front page stories of the September 13th New York Times drew my attention immediately. The article about the youth of Chile having clubs that encourage teens to make out with as many people as possible. The picture itself just drew my attention and it's inapproriateness. I found it to be very sad, but aside from the moral issues I found from the article, what was interesting was the factor with the internet. It's true what the article said, that the internet is changing a lot of how young people are expressing themselves and their social lives. I see people who are always attached to texting and using the internet, sometimes lack certain social skills. They find trouble expressing themselves through words, find themselves in many awkward social situations, and so on. So this culture change in Chile with hooking up and attending parties based on internet popularity, this most definitely has played a factor in how children are growing up in Chile. The internet is truly changing how people interact and those who use it the most (young people) have been most evidently affected.

Hard working man.

On the September 11th, for the first time, instead of reading the front page stories and Page A1, A2 etc, I went to the Metro section, because there, they had all the 9/11 stories. But this blog isn't about 9/11. What this blog is about, is about the killing of a storekeeper named Amou Fall. He was murdered during a robbery that occured in his store. Mr. Bah, Amou's friend, said it excellently in the article when he says that "It was for no reason. You just go to kill a person, why? Just because you want to take what belongs to them?" That sums up nonsensical killing in a nutshell. This article also really hit home, only because this hard working man who immigrated to America for a better life, worked day and night, much like my own parents. It reminded me a lot of my own parents and and from the description that they give of this man, he was very much like my own father. So... he must've been a great man. It's always really sad when I see articles like these. Every article like these regardless if they remind me of my real life or not, it's sad that this stuff happens all the time. It's crap.

How to write a report

After reading the article about the death of Joey Giardello. I think I'm learning a little better on how to report on any given topic. The first paragraph summarizes pretty much what the article is going to be about, and then goes into detail. Since it was an article about the death of a famous person, I expected that the opening paragraph would announce said person's death and then give a quick overview in 2-3 sentences what this person was remembered for. Sure enough this article starts off stating that Joey Giardello was a middleweight boxing champion, and what he has done outside of boxing that people would remember him for. In the last sentence of the first paragraph it announces his death, date and age of death. It then goes into a little more detail about his death in the next paragraph, and then the rest is a quick biography from beginning to end of some of the highlights of his life. The article then ends with some quotes he has stated earlier in his life. I think this article gives me a better idea of how to write a better report, since it was easy to see what the article was trying to tell me, the format was pretty clear.

Jumping and sucking sounds.

Weird articles are the kind that get my attention, and the Monday edition of the New York times article on the jumping carp caught my eye. This article was about a lake in Pennsylvania where when tourists throw bread into the water the carp go crazy. The article then goes on to explain that it has been a long tradition and the state want them to stop doing this 70 year old tradition due to health issues. This article to me just screams "new-guy at new york times gets shafted with covering a useless story." It seems to me the writer of the article Sean D. Hamill is really trying to earn his stripes by working his way up from these silly articles to one day making it to covering the big stories. After googling Sean D. Hamill, he's done other rather useless articles such as Pole-dancing, and museum T Rex stories. I guess when you become a journalist you work your way up just like any other job. First your just the employee, hoping one day to get promotions until you're the head-honcho.