Public Relations

Robot Journalism

Garth Beyer

I recently read an article in the New York Magazine titled “The (Robot) Creative Class.” It mentioned that robots are being created to do the work of a comedian, musician, bartender, and – what stood out to me – journalist. It noted that,

Developed with Northwestern University’s prestigious Medill School of Journalism, Chicago-based Narrative Science created a computer program that writes basic news articles like sports-game summaries and earnings reports. It already has at least 30 clients, including Forbes and sports heavyweight the Big Ten Network.

I like to believe that, sure, robots can do the menial parts of what is required of a journalist, heck, possibly robots can have their own genre of journalism, we’ll call it Robot Journalism. I wouldn’t mind reading what a robot thinks.

Would you?

Storytelling In The Digital Revolution

Garth Beyer

Being a digital native, using the term new media does not feel accurate. While it may be new to other people, it is perfectly normal and expected to me. However, the world does not consist entirely of digital natives and the media must account for this. They do in the sense of utilizing and incorporating storytelling into all forms of media. Every TV program, radio station, YouTube video, and E-version of a magazine use storytelling to not only gain the attention of you and me, but to maintain that attention. Rushkoff, who spoke in Digital Nation explains how everyone is multitasking now. Rarely does a person focus on one specific thing intensely; they are all over the place! It is our inability to focus which requires the new media to use storytelling.

It seems that when media uses storytelling, it is the only time when a person is face-to-face with technology, which they can actually focus on one specific thing. You can find examples of this in every medium of media. On TV, you can watch the speeches given by Romney, Anne, Michelle, Obama and others. Most people who do watch those speeches are not doing ten other tasks at the same time. Why? Because each of the speakers go up and tell a story, they get your interest, they offer a plot, rising action, a climax and so on.

Why is this so effective? Because storytelling has been around since the beginning of man. Before scripture was invented, people communicated and entertained each other through storytelling. It is in our nature to be attracted to storytelling and the media knows this. However, not all media knows it and this is where we get the distractions; the ads, the pop-ups, the proclamations of people who interrupt our lives. “It may be decades until we know what living in a state of constant distraction will do to us,” says Rushkoff. He is right in the sense that we are living in a state of constant distraction, but since the media utilizes storytelling in all that they communicate effectively, as long as we continue to subject ourselves to that type of media and not the type which only acquires are attention for a few moments, we will be safe.

If the media and storytelling are so vitally important to our lives and society in general, we better be paying attention to the right kind of media. It is almost as if media’s storytelling ability makes us grow or destroy us. Since storytelling holds such persuasion over our daily lives, how do we know what storytelling is right and just? This is my biggest fear. The new media direction of storytelling is an absolutely great thing overall, so long as the storytelling persuades positive action. Going back to the example of our presidential candidates and ladies speaking on TV, their speeches were inspiring, positive, and radiating love for one another and our nation. However, we can look at the type of storytelling that is occurring in another country to find that the particular storytelling the media is producing creates negativity, arguments, and even wars. I suppose you can go so far as to say that our quality of life is dependent on the media’s quality of storytelling.

Constitutive Choices

Garth Beyer

With the founding of the Republic, sets of conditions for its future had to be developed. Paul Starr refers to these conditions as “constitutive choices.”

The first of which that was made is what we have simply come to know as the First Amendment, or freedom of speech. However, the constitutive choice Starr mentions is much larger than that as it directly affects the development of newspapers and by extension the postal service. The old ideas of who should and could know what have been thrown out. Now a sovereign land, people needed to know how their state was running, what was occurring in far off areas, and they needed to have a solid way to communicate with each other – quickly.

Starr refers to this transition as “America’s First Information Revolution.” With the support of the Government for the first 40 years, the postal service helped build a knowledge economy. Since postage was cheap, newspapers were cheap, and most other factors of the press were cheap, information was able to be delivered all throughout the states. The expansion of the Post Office closed the information gap between communities and outsiders (country folk). As a result, the public and political lives of the people were able to closely interact with each other. In other words, the mass had access to information and used it.

In addition, the advance in the postal system and the expansion of newspapers helped create a modern census and played a large role in the rise of common schools. With the rise of common schools, literacy would rise and the cycle would be pushed even more. The constitutive choice to build an open source foundation for the Republic lead directly to its next constitutive choice: the creation and establishment of networks.

The invention of the telegraph gave rise to modern technological networks which in turn speed up the connections that now not only people have with each other as a mass, but that states have with their armies, that towns have with their sister merchant communities, that government has with itself and that newspapers have with each other.

However, at a play against the first constitutive choice, the telegraph evolved into a means of centralized control of information. While chiefly used for business, the telegraph service was also the first national monopoly. The reason behind the controlling path that the telegraph grew into is that it began growing without any government regulation. The telegraph was established as a private enterprise and as a result went through a series of competitions: who would control the networks? How would they control it? Luckily these answers were already provided pre-telegraph.

The interesting aspect of the constitutive choices that Starr discusses is that they are cumulative. The telegraph was simply a new technology to place at the front of processes of communication and information that were already developed and established. All in all, the decision to develop the telegraph privately gave America the challenge it needed to strengthen and affirm their constitutive foundations but it also represented America’s choice for future technological advancements. The telegraph was America’s fork in the road, their initial setting of networking structures, and their decision to privatize it was a precedent to broadcasting.

The third constitutive movement Starr discusses is the development of institutions that resulted in real, human, intangible progress. Previously I had mentioned the expansion of public schools with the rise of the Post Office and newspapers. From there, the technological networks that were implemented furthered the expansion of education. From the beginning, it was decided that knowledge, education, research, and information would be a priority (a constitutive movement) for America. While this movement continues today, a prime example in history involves the radio. The National Committee on Education by Radio (NCER) proposed that 15 percent of broadcast channels be reserved for government-chartered educational stations. This movement promoted the diffusion of knowledge. By extension, the mass flow of information, knowledge, and ideas laid the groundwork for further explorations, developments, and innovations. It needs reiteration that the constitutive choices that were made were cumulative and that there is no going back once the choice was made, which only further signifies Americans transformation through communication.