JOUR 1111 Media Dairy & Analysis

Over a ten day period spanning from 17^th March to the 26^th, I recorded my various uses of media in a media diary. All times recorded are in minutes.


Table 1.1

Table 1.2

The diary data shows that interaction and reliance on desktop internet for general use and media news has heavily outweighed any other media. The reason for this is for the obvious accessibility of every type of information on the internet. As shown in graph 1 and the table, I have spent approximately 2085 minutes using desktop internet over the ten day period. This calculates to 3 hours and 28.5 minutes per day connected to the web. This time was predominantly used on Facebook, YouTube and other websites of personal interest to me, most notably Foxsports.com.au and okayplayer.com (a music website).

My data indicated that time spent on desktop internet fitted around when I was away from university. It is difficult to compare the time with the UQ survey, as its data does not disaggregate internet time between the use of desktop and hand held internet devices.

The use of a hand held devices was my other way of connecting with the internet when away from home, particularly when travelling. My iPod receives a work over whenever I am on the train or bus each day, and I regularly use Heytell – an audio messaging application.

When comparing this to the UQ public survey, the data shows that, when adding the times recorded for desktop and hand held internet use, I am just within the 13% group that spends 4 to 5 hours a day on the internet.

Table 2

	Total time (mins)	Average time per day (mins)	Survey Comparison (mins [%])
Internet	2465	246.5	240 – 300 (13%)
Television	640	64	1-2 (29.9%)
Radio	0	0	0 (16.7%)

I generally found myself using the T.V purely for watching sport and sport news, and occasional viewing of world news. Overall I spent around 640 minutes watching television, which comes to just over an hour per day. In comparison with the UQ data, I am the majority 29.9% that use television for between 1-2 hours a day. This is something of a commentary on my personal relationship with particular areas of journalism. I commit to far more time of sports news then I do of domestic and world news.

I was surprised at how little time I spend engaging with hardcopy media. My recordings indicate that approximately 80 minutes was taken up by newspapers. There is no comparative data from the public survey that I can use. Hardcopy media is the least accessible forms of media, and I simply don’t go to the effort of buying newspapers often. However, my use of newspapers tended to be on weekends, and was generally sport oriented.

Radio use was something on which I was fairly confident I would not be spending too much time. It has always been a form of media that I have ignored. The main reasons for the avoidance of radio are probably the ads and the tiring personalities that distract me from the more worthwhile aspects of radio. Whatever the case, I did not spend a minute listening to the radio, joining the other 16.7% of people in the UQ survey.   

My media diary has illustrated my overall relationship with journalism and communication. Frankly, my connection with journalism is strictly interest based. The only time I interact with journalism is when I am interested in the topic, which tends to be sport, music or video gaming. I aim to broaden my relationship, by being more critically engaged with the profession. Further, my recordings show new media’s dominance over old media. This imbalance is not because I dislike old forms of media, but rather it is due to new media’s level of accessibility. This appeared to be a trend in the UQ survey, as new media was favoured over old to find news. 

JOUR 1111 Lecture 3: Journalism None of Academics' Business

On Monday's lecture we had the opportunity of listening to journalist Skye Doherty. After telling us about her time spent working on Fleet Street in London, it became clear that she is a very experienced journo. What stood out to me wasn’t just her obvious knowledge on journalism as a trade, but also her understanding of the politics behind it.

After covering many technical elements regarding factual storytelling, Doherty answered some questions in relation to what was happing in the UK with the News Ltd phone hacking scandal. She said that the scandal was ultimately brought about through competition for sales. As it has been seen, some journalists will do anything with their story, in order to sell newspapers. In Australia, there is not nearly the same amount of business pressure on newspaper companies. Doherty believes that this is the reason why Australia is unlikely to see anything like what is happening in the UK to this degree of controversy.

'Uncle Rupert' understands Journalism as a business... but perhaps he went a little too far.
Photograph: Eric Gaillard/Reuters

She went on to link this to the recent Finkelstein inquiry, saying that due to lack of newspaper competition, it is unnecessary to have a higher level of media regulation.

This got me thinking... I posted on Monday about the Finkelstein inquiry (read it if ya want), and posed the question of why there is such a divide between academics teaching journalism and working journalists. After re-reading Cameron Stewart’s article in The Weekend Australian, I feel that I initially underestimated the significance of the business aspect of journalism. “...few journalism teachers have recent experience in the profession. Some are career academics who have never spent time in a working newsroom.”

My interpretation of what Stewart says is that academics actually don’t understand the business aspect of a news publisher. This raises some serious questions for journalism students. Are the people teaching journalism in universities cut off from the real business of journalism? Are they living in theoretical ‘ivory towers’? In the end, a newspaper or a radio station has to sell product at prices that cover costs and make sort of profit. Without neglecting the code of ethics, selling newspapers is important. How else are journalists going to make a living? 

Widening Gap Between Practise and Theory

I read an interesting article in The Weekend Australian last Saturday, which addressed the Finkelstein media inquiry that was conducted last week. The report recommended a new government-funded regulatory body to manage news reporting, with the intention of making the media more "answerable to the courts". This proposal has seen a widening gap between academics (who are teaching the subject at universities across the country), and the working journalists (running the press, T.V, radio etc). While the academics have embraced the idea, the working journalists see this kind of regulation as a potential threat to freedom of speech. 

I find it remarkable that teachers are having this ethical and political debate with the people that will eventually be employing students. As a first year journalism student, I wonder how this sort of debate could affect my opportunities of future employment. I will certainly be following this story closely to see how it unfolds.