Exercise 2. Defining the NEWS.

Defining the word News seems like a pretty broad answer. News today is only there for the facts. You only hear about what has happen or whats going to happen. When i watch the news i never hear anything about the newcasters have to say about the topic. Not hearing their opinions, and just the facts, help you to assume that these are the real facts. If you wanted to find some opinions the interenet would be you best guess. Blogs are usually full of the writers opinions and not the most reliable facts but they are pretty close. I personally do not go on the internet for my news because i like to hear it more that read it so i just watch channel 2 or channel 4. Both of these news channels are very reliable because they give you the local news fast and pretty detailed. That is a major qualification for a good new source. These channels have to compete with others to get the news out first and these two channels are pretty good at beating the crowd. They also give you alot of good statistics many different stories. Everything from the upcoming election to who has the best food in town, they have the winners from what the polls say.

All in all the news is a place where people can get the facts fast.

Class Wiki.

It would be great for our wiki to have all of the same standards and Wikipedia. The most important areas are what our wiki is and is not, and manual of style. We need to say that this wiki is not just a silly place to write what ever we are feeling like"so and so is cool" it is not important to what out wiki is trying to help out with. There also should not be our own opinions, we should try to make them at least some what true like when we were talkikng about the parking sucking out front in the certain time range is still our opinion but it helps more giving the time range than just how bad it sucks.

The manual style is also very important for our wiki. Since we are college students we should at least write, and use the proper grammar like we know what we're doing. When writing about different subjects we should find a common ground where we all know what to call our campus like is it should be UMD or UM-D or all spelled out. This will keep it more professional, and well respected.

Questions one & two.

Q1:
The message in my ad is that Starbucks is too costly for todays economy. Even if i love Starbucks i still feel that five dollars for a little cup of coffee is a bit much. So i decided that i would just let everyone else know that their money will dissapear from the cost of this coffee. The design i chose for this ad was the teamwork posters, with a simple picture and saying underneath. Although it may be plain, the message gets across through the picture. Seeing your money sitting there in a Starbucks sleeve, sends the "hey! you are getting ripped off" idea for just one cup of coffee. A problem that came up was that i didnt know what little saying i wanted to say. i had tons of little thoughts that sounded good but when they were written down, seemed a bit lame. i also didnt know exactly who i wanted to write this for. Did i want to choose teenagers or the steady adults that constantly need their Starbucks coffee.

Q2:
Doing this ad i've learned that making one takes some hard thinking. Who do you want to target? How should you put the ad together? What colors would work best here? all these questions and more had to be answered. You really have to have a great idea to have your ad become successful. There are no real ethics of advertising, the more vulgar and crazy the ad is the more response you get on it.

social networks & the politics

Myspace and facebook have helped so much in the years political campaigns. These two sites promote each party equally, with the pages of the parties and even group dedicated to them. The sites also allow young voters learn more about who they are voting for, and what each candidate stands for. On facebook itself you can join so many groups for just Obama or just McCain, or you can even join proposals. You can watch live video feeds on each candidates pages, and find new updates on where their next campaign stop is. Its much easy to get teenagers to follow these pages and site than to have them sit through a debate if they dont really know anything about politics. Having them learn the basics that each candidate stands for they will become more interested and want to watch the debates and support a candidate.

Since Mivote is connected to UMD and PBS, our voices get to be heard. Like Tom Murphy told us hundreds of kids go on the site and post videos and things that matter to them in the is election. Being able to hear what most people are talking about and understanding their views would help other make their decisions or agrue with the others opinions. This sites techniques to target the undecided voters, works so much better then wanting to have a town meeting. Instead of hearing people that cant really relate to the college students, telling us what they think that we are worried about, we can hear from peers and share our own opinions with this site.

Most if my friends on facebook have joined a group for their candidate or one bombing the other. Either way they are all pretty much showing some sort of support to one candidate and staying loyal. It is so much easier to share your ideas on the election with these sites available, and you also get feed back from your friends. With the connections between joining these goups and the comments from your peers, these site help out in many ways to get voters ready to make the right decision at the polls.