librarian questions

1) how do i research a case about shephard fairey?
2) which is the best way to research fair use?
3)

FINAL PAPER

1) the relationship between cablevision and newsday newspaper in new york.
2) the strength of the wall street journal compared to TV financial news. what is more effective?
3)something about Bernie Madoff, cause hes an evil man!

"Columnist" Does not mean you are right

Dark Green Doomsayers is an article written by George F. Will, a columnist for the Washington Post. He is supposed to be a political and government policy analyst who has been writing for the post since the early 70's. 

This article is about doomsayers who have predicted catastrophe that has not happened. Right off the bat we see that this article is not about political or policy issues; domestic or foreign. This is not to say that Will cannot write a good article about the environment, but how can we believe him? This article has facts cited and then he ends by giving his "opinion", but what kind of opinion can he give if he is not an expert in environment but in government?  I already do not trust this article and the author.

His method is very good because he makes sure that he uses facts relating to what he is trying to prove; that although you say you are an expert that does not mean that you can predict what will happen and bet that you are right. Will uses examples from strong sources like the New York Times. The facts do seem credible because he cites them right away and makes sure the reader knows that he did not just pull the fact from nowhere. 

After researching the sites that Will cited I can say that they are credible sources. I was not able to find the exact articles that helped Will write his article but I did check the editors of the magazines and papers during that Will used. 

For example, Will referred back to a magazine called Science News. This magazine is an award-winning bi-weekly magazine whose publisher is an actual science buff. Elizabeth Marincola has been the president of various clubs, groups and companies all associated with some type of science. However, the downside is that she never studied science, she studied business at stanford and has her MBA in business. The columnist for environmental issues is Rachel Ehrenberg who is an accomplished writer and scientist

The way in which the facts are presented is credible because Will makes sure that he did not use a magazine or newspaper which was small or had nothing to do with science at all. After check the sources and making sure that they had a reliable science columnist, i could see that those publications used reliable columnists.

The issue that i have is that he quotes these magazines to help him make a point but only quotes certain things and barely quotes an entire sentence. Who is to say that he did not use random words from science magazines to simply help him prove a point whose relevance has nothing to do with what the original article was talking about.

I went straight to the source and tried to focus on what the actual sources had to say about themselves. i researched the bios of some authors for these publications and saw that most of the people involved are experts in their fields.

Indie Promotion Should Be Shot!

Have you ever wondered how songs get to the radio stations? Maybe you've wondered how is it that radio stations make their money. It's fairly simple; nothing is free in this world, especially not radios. Just because you ain't paying for it doesn't mean its free. Music stations make a bunch of money and it is money that is paid by record labels to keep their music playing.

http://archive.salon.com/ent/feature/2001/03/14/payola/index2.html

However, there is a middle man that not many people know is there and that middle man is called the "indie promoter". The indie promoter is the person who is the liaison between the record label and the radio station. The indie promoter is usually associated with radio stations who they pay "promotional payments" to which are usually six figures........ tough to say "no, thank you".

Back in the day, around the 1950's, record labels used to slide money under the table or in the record itself so that the DJ would play the record............yea, that was illegal and often referred to as payolas. Today, they are not illegal, the FCC changed the regulations and the record label is allowed to directly give money to the station. However, by law, if cash is exchanged then the audience must hear about it. For example, a song by Sony BMG singer, Chrissette Michelle would be played and after wards the DJ would say "that song was payed for by Sony Records." Yeah, thats pretty lame and stations don't want to deal with that.

The issue here is that everyone hates the indie promotion. They are an unneccesary step in music marketing. Why cant the station and the label just come up with agreements on playing the music. Record labels spend so much money... better yet, waste so much money on that middleman.

There used to be a time when the DJ had the gut, ability, freedom and instinct to choose music. Not anymore. Now it is all decided by the indies. A label will pay between $100,000 and $200,000 for ONE SONG. This money does not go to the station but to the promoter who ends up with most of the money for the "hard labor".

All this goes back to the stupid rules set by the FCC. Another one of the stupidest decisions that the government has made.

In the end................ its all about money.




IKE

Privately Owned Media delivers only for their target audience,

Privately owned media companies still run as businesses. Therefore, they must know who to target in their delivery of whatever their service is. If a newspaper or news station is liberal or conservative in their reports and their take on news than they are aiming there service to the people who are conservative or liberal. It seems impossible that one newspaper and one news channel can get to all people and service all people.

There are people who like FOX better than CNN and there are people who prefer the New York Times over the Boston Globe. Because of this it is not possible to say that privately owned media represents the people. It would be more correct to say that privately owned media takes care of their own target audience.

Live free or die......governed!

I would first like to start by saying, blah, blah, blah. I feel like this article went in to so many different directions that I constantly focus and had to keep taking breaks to finish the reading.

That being said i can now say that there was one part, and only one part that caught my attention and I said "damn, that's deep".
"for the purpose of government is to compel people to do what they would not do of their own volition. In short, government is a process by which some people exercise compulsion on others."

DEEP! I, subconsciously, have always had a problem with governments in general, and ultimately with any type of authority. However, I pretend to be obedient and love being an American so I go along with the government and the rules. I never stopped to think about how government is just kinda giving up your freedom. However, is it possible to live without government?

Let's go back a couple of weeks to when the good Lord flooded the earth and left only a couple alive and the reason was because there were no rules and people were just "governing" themselves. That is the last example that we know about people living without rules. So, if you think about it, we vote for people to take our freedom.

We vote for the people who raise our property taxes and who push business owners to raise prices so that "we" can all benefit from a growing economy. At the end of the day we still cannot say "no I refuse to pay that tax because it is a free country and I do what i want". Yeah, OK, you'd find yourself in jail so fast and not even that would be free.

This country was founded on the basis of FREEDOM and there are only basic freedoms, but they are all limited in a way. For example, it is illegal to pray in a public school and mention the name Jesus or God. When the pastor, who gave the inaugural prayer this year for Obama, accepted the invitation to participate in the ceremony there was an uproar about what he would say at the end of his prayer. When I was listening to him I was waiting to hear what he would do as a pastor and what he would say. The bible that he reads says that at the end of a prayer you need to send it up in the name of his son "Jesus" and he had to go in so many different circles just to end the prayer when he, with all his rights could have just said "in Jesus' name we pray, Amen"



IKE

"it's right because it's right"

Of the more than 1000 words we had to read for this class' assignment, there was only one part of it that actually made me think about something interesting. Why do people vote what they vote? this has been a question that has been on my mind since Barack Obama announced he received the nomination for president. as soon as people found out that there were be a black democratic nominee, there was chaos. some people, that i knew, immediately decided that they were going to be vote republican. was this a race issue? at the same time, even more people that i knew decided that they would vote for the black nominee.

This immediately bothered me, both sides. in my quest to find who to vote i asked these people why they thought their candidate was the best and the reasons i got were limite to none and i received plently of " its right because its right, i dont know".

Sympathy seems to have played the biggest role in this election, black and whites sympathized with the fact that this could be the year that we have the first african american president and the others thought that we should vote for the veteran and pow because he truly knew what it was to give your all to your country. blah blah blah, color will not run the country and something that a candidate did 40 years ago will not run the country either. what can these people do for us today???

I remember there was a church that i visited for a youth meeting and they were preaching about politics and the church. They said "if you vote democrat you are not a real christian". i was thinking to myself, what is their positioning for saying this statement and when i asked that, the youth leader said that it was because democrats support abortion. so wait, does not supporting abortion take us out of a recession? will morale alone take us out? i really dont think so.

When Schudson, author of Click here for Democracy, says that politics is more of chosing for comraderie than policy, he is absolutely right. the church that preached that was brainwashed by the pastor to believe that if they voted democrat they would go to hell and so McCain got all 1500 votes from that church.

If politics are run as a popularity contest i better start friending people now for my run in 2040!

IKE