Ethics!?!

I should be doing homework.

I have an assignment in my ethics class to write four journal entries that put me in an ethical dilemma and then I have to choose an ethical rationale to decide what to do with the dilemma.

I have written three out of the four: re-victimizing, how to report on suicide and how to deal with the line between advertisers and the paper.

I have learned quite a bit about the situations that can put turmoil in the heart of a journalist by doing this exercise.

But strange enough, I found out what I would do in these ethical dilemmas, not always what I would think I would do honestly.

I find myself to be more conservative than the typical 21-year-old girl. I like to go to bed at 11 p.m., read for fun and think that playing Wii at someone’s house until 1 a.m. is a crazy night.

But when it comes to news decisions I don’t always think like a conservative, which I never thought I would do.

Maybe it’s the liberal college breeding that I have been subject to for the past three years, or maybe that stereotype is wrong and college has allowed me to find my own voice.

I am no longer in sync with my parents opinions, but decide things based solely on my own opinion.

Weird.

I think that being a journalist can be challenging and the situations that they get put into can be scary and tough to handle, but the more and more I think about it the more excited I get.

I mean I have decided 10 decisions already in written format, what else could possibly stump me now, so bring it on.

Internet Literature

Ever heard of internet literature?

Me neither.

I thought it would be a fun English class where you read poetry online .

I was wrong.

It is reading crazy books about art and making websites out of those books. I never really know what I am doing, but the professor seems to like anything and everything as long as we make it sound smart and arty.

Well we are entering phase 2 of the semester and now I am beginning to work on my second Web site. I have decided I am going to “pastiche” the book Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. An amazing novel about materialism, isolation and relationships.

I am starting to gather some thoughts and ideas about what I want to put on the Web site and what special affects I want to put on the site.

So far I have character synopsis, writings on materialism from each characters perspective and the loss of identity each individual character feels.

Things are still in progress, but I am chugging along.

Online Media

The world of media has expanded so much in the recent years, on-line has become one of the most important parts of the newspaper world.

In order to really understand this I interviewed Tom Ninestein from the Pensacola News Journal. He has been the metro editor for the paper for 15 years and the last 10 years the paper has had an on-line Web site.

“It allows us to be more competitive with radios and news,” Ninestein said. “For the future, convergence is up and coming. The printed product will continue, but on-line allows more outlets for news media.”

Ninestein also remarked that on-line media allows readers to be more interactive.

“In the past 10 years viewers had to write a letter to the editor and wait. The responses back and forth could take months. Now a viewer can respond within seconds of the story being posted,” Ninestein said.