No Jobs for Europe's Brightest Graduates

So as it turns out, American students aren't the only ones having a hard time starting their post-graduate careers. This video that has been circulating on the European Observer talks of the hardships students are facing in many countries in Europe after they graduate university. 

Even with different political systems and sets of societal norms, citizens across the world still face the same problems. Echoed in one of the interviewees is the sentiment we hear in America all the time, that policy makers are simply just working to "strengthen the advantages of the already advantaged."

My food for thought on this blustery winter day: Is it true that youth today really have to curtail back their expectations of achieving the same careers their parents had? And if so, what can we do to help them achieve more?

A Sad Goodbye

Barbara Park 

1947 - 2013

I felt a pitter-patter in my heart yesterday when I found out that the author of my favorite books as a child had passed away at the age of 66 after a long fight with ovarian cancer. 

While she authored countless other children's tales, her most famous books were about a spunky little kindergartener named Junie B. Jones. Junie B.'s misadventures through elementary school not only helped me practice reading, but was the first character most little girls could really relate to. It's fun to read about princesses and fairy tales, but Junie B. had problems that we had too: "Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus," "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells! (P.S. So Does May.)," Junie B. Jones has a Monster Under her Bed," and my personal favorite, "Junie B. Jones and her Big Fat Mouth." 

The books are still proudly stacked in my bookshelf at home and I was sure to read them all to my younger sister every night when she was Junie B.'s age. 

I understand that print novels don't sell as well anymore and that many kids resort to online entertainment now, but for me and so many others out there it would be a travesty not to teach our own children the beauty of bedtime stories and the pride of reading your first books. 

Authors have guts these days, knowing that they may not get rewarded with money or fame. But as Park said in an interview with PW last year, "For 20 years I've gotten to laugh my way through my work. For me, that's a dream job." 

Something for Everyone

Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine

As I've become more involved with my major and minor, it seems like everything falls more and more into place every day. The core curriculums overlap and I find myself grasping the wider concept when the week is through.

Every government agency, like the European Union, needs an ombudsman to remind administrations what they could possibly be doing wrong. Oh, journalists need that, too? A partner who has nothing to lose, to speak on behalf of the greater good? 

Hmm, corporations are walking around with too much power within the media industry and they've got to be checked by journalists. Wait, governors and lobbyists work or have worked in corporations, too? And it affects the way they make their way through the legal system? 

It's nice, these days, to have so much overlap in school, because it offers us more of a chance to participate in constructive discussion and to actually apply the things we've learned to our lives a little better... who knew school really worked!! 

Today as I read the article, "Entrepreneurial Lessons" by Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine, I was reminded of a business idea competition my friend competed in last week. While it wasn't required for class, it's heavily encouraged in the business school to participate. Basically, Chad had to develop an idea, present it to the "mentors" and they would guide him in how to move the product forward. While his idea only made it a few rounds, the person who won was granted $1,000 to go towards their project. 

Jarvis taught a class which participated in the same style of an entrepreneurial idea competition with the ending being prize money and mentors to help you pursue your ideas. His article, though, was based on the lessons he learned from teaching it. Here are a few things I chewed over while reading the article:

- Startups = Seduction. Which, according to Jarvis, may mean a pitch of 17 words or less. That's like a tweet! He makes an interesting point that might be giving business kids the upper hand: people won't pay attention to your idea if you don't whittle it down to it's main purpose. Without being too vague or too specific, solidifying an idea will not only keep peoples' attention but also show that you know what you're marketing.

- If you've thought of it, there's a good chance someone else has, too. So if you're going to try to start your own business, be sure that you know who you potential partners and competitors are, while learning from them and creating features that make your idea different. 

- Advertisements, advertisements, advertisements. They're the part of business that we journalists love to hate. It's just that... well, when we decide to create our own start ups, we're going to have to suck it up and just hate to love them! They are a huge part of getting revenue and, on the flip side, a big part of putting your brand out there. 

I think every journalist should take a look at this article, it may be 6 years old but still holds a lot of promising features about business that we communications kids may not know! 

Strike That From the Record, Please

Had I not read the article "Barack Obama can thank 'citizen journalist' for 'bitter' tempest," I would never have known that Obama's infamous "guns and religion" line about mid-Westerners broke through the news barrier by a citizen journalist.

The article brings up an important point about journalism today, which is that there is never an off switch for those in the public realm. That is not to say that citizen journalists break privacy laws (although I'm sure they sometimes do...), but it reiterates the point that has been made time and time again since social media has boomed.

"We have entered new territory and the rules are not all clear," said Larry Pryor, a USC journalism professor. "You have to assume that everything is on the record. There's no getting around that anymore."

You know what though, I'm not so sure those whom run for president should be able to speak to a "closed press" group anyway. I mean, what can they say to one group that they can't say to another, when they're going to be the one running the country as a whole? Maybe "closed press" means more along the lines of no distractions... but I digress.

When it comes to politicians, I never think its a bad thing to report everything they say and do (if it helps the public getting a better understanding of the person or situation). However, when some public figures ask for something to be off the record and would like to speak candidly, I can respect that as both a journalist and an open-minded citizen. Off-the-cuff speaking can give you a more in-depth understanding of the person or event, and can guide you in a better direction in your research or writing. It also gives listeners a break from the edited and pre-written serious stuff that public figures often use and offers up a moment of real transparency.

An example of that is when a political theorist visited a university and was recorded and placed on Mother Jones after asking to speak off the record. While he didn't have a huge reputation to damage, the comment was slightly embarrassing and probably wasn't newsworthy enough to publish. Because of that, it is doubtful that he'll speak as candidly again, which is a shame.

For politicians, off the record comments like Mitt Romney's rather racist remarks in 2012 are important for the public to grasp the full image of them, given the proper context. But every so often I appreciate a nice, little, off the record tidbit, so long as it doesn't harm anyone!

Dinner and Two Movies

Friday night, Sabrina and I headed to Dinner and Two Movies, an event put on by Ithaca College's Buzzsaw magazine, which screened two Robert Greenwald films and hosted the executive director, Jim Miller, for a Q & A session afterward. 

I knew a good amount about whistleblowers from my Independent Media class this semester, but for the past year or two, I've realized that I don't know enough about drone warfare and the role my own country plays in it across the world. With some background in hand of what drones were, how they're used, and the argument for anti and pro drone use, I walked into the screening of "Unmanned: America's Drone Wars" without knowing what I'd learn.

Ok, so me crying or getting emotional during movies doesn't really hold a lot of clout because that's how I always am. But this time I wasn't just sad for the people in the movie... I was angry, at myself for not being more aware of this issue, and at my government, for being so reckless and irresponsible in the international community. A government official was cited in the documentary when talking about the positives of drones, saying that their controllers are able to see as close as a license plate number through the satellites. But rather than this being a selling point, I found this to be a scary fact when considering the number of civilian casualties that have come along with remote control warfare. 

One quote from the documentary that struck a chord was when it said "Pakistan doesn't have to train suicide bombers anymore. Drones build suicide bomber factories." While there are positive aspects of keeping our soldiers safe and effectively using technology, policy makers seem to have a complete disregard for the minds of the people whose lives they are affecting. War is heavily a mind game, and in  the eyes of those who we are "helping," we are the villains.

I'm appreciative that I am in a school that encourages its students to expand our knowledge when it comes to issues that are avoided in mainstream media, and I am very grateful to have been able to hear Miller answer questions after the screenings. His insight on the root of the issue reminded me not to sit idly by while our country is conducting its own form of terrorism abroad.

http://www.space4peace.org/uav/obama_using_iran_to_justify_drones.htm

Lifestyle of the Poor and Undiscovered

So as it turns out, I actually can make money mom and dad! All that time spent on YouTube hasn't been all for naught! Regardless of whether or not we journalists will end up working in our dream job (an on air reporter, a newspaper editor, a magazine writer, etc), if we try hard enough there's no saying we can't make money in another media: YouTube.

Michael Buckley, from YouTube's "What The Buck?" webisodes, described his rise to Internet stardom in a recent article by the New York Times. Buckley talks about how he started from a small salary on a TV station to a six digit paycheck based on videos from his living room.

Here's the website I found for some further information about becoming a Partner of YouTube and creating revenue from your videos: Click Here.

It's funny, there's a current subculture of YouTube stars these days, who all started the way Buckley did and picked up larger fanbases. Through their fans and social media, obviously, they've been connecting and getting together as sort of representatives of YouTube and their own little brands.

Because of their partnerships with the online medium, and due to their similar new lifestyles, these vlogging individuals collaborate ALL the time! If you spend enough time on YouTube, you'll start to see lots of familiar faces. This is one of my favorite guys who's done video blogging right:

Tyler Oakley- Just two years ago, he was spending every day making endless videos around his house by simply videotaping himself and bringing up talking points. He found some popularity online, but it wasn't until he made a video about the band One Direction during the peak of their rise to fame, that got him TONS of attention.

So that one is pretty silly, but now, a little over a year later, every person in the audience at the Staples Center for One Direction knows who he is (he also now designs and sells tee shirts like the one he's wearing)....

And yes, that booth was paid for by One Direction themselves, who he has now interviewed many times on television and online. YouTube has helped sponsor him to become a fresh face in pop culture, as one of the first people I, and many others, turn to for celebrity news and hilarious YouTube videos on a regular basis (see Drunk Pumpkin Carving...).

I'm always so happy for people like Michael Buckley and Tyler Oakley because their Internet fame definitely did not just fall into their laps. They worked on their image, consistently made videos (even when nobody was watching them) and utilized everything they knew about the Internet to connect their videos to the public. Congrats YouTubers, for being the new, quadruple-threat generation of media experts.

Poetry's Still Got It

Last week, one of my friends posted a video on Facebook by a group called YOUTHSPEAKS, an organization that supports slam poetry competitions across the US. I was immediately sucked in to their YouTube page in awe, watching handfuls of videos and wondering how I could have brushed off this powerful style of poetry.

As I sat there, listening to these young people express themselves with such artistry and raw emotion I had to think, where does poetry fit in today's society?

After initially reading an article by Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post, I felt a little disheartened. I appreciated that she defended journalists by saying that people can say what they want about newspapers, but they'll always need news. I was saddened, however, when I read that not only are people not as "good" at poetry as they were in the past, but that nobody is even reading/writing/listening anymore.

So you can imagine my joy when I found this article by Emily Temple on Flavorwire, combating Petri's story with references of recently published poems that are in no way fading out of the spotlight. Like ballet and opera, Temple says, art forms are not dead simply because they are enjoyed by a minority.

It gives me hope for print journalism, that traditional newspapers and books will always hold a little place in people's hearts...

____________________________________________

Here's my favorite slam poetry video I watched from YOUTHSPEAKS, which is eerily appropriate for today...

"Starburst" by Jude Marx and Emily Bjustrom