Welcome to MMC 1000

Welcome to MMC 1000, Survey of Mass Communications. Since this is the first semester the class is online, a portion of your grade will come from your responses to my media-related questions and topics through your personal Tumblr blog.

For your first assignment, I’d like you to compose an approximate 200-word auto biography with some brief basic background information on yourself (what year you are at CF and your major), your interest in taking this class and where you receive most of your news (the Internet — be specific about which social media outlet , TV, radio, newspaper, etc.)

To help you get started, I’ve put together a short entry about myself.  (you can model your first blog post similar to mine) (please keep your paragraphs short — no longer than three sentences/paragraph)

As an assistant professor at CF, I am starting my eighth year at the school this fall. I have always been intrigued by the media’s influence on our society.

I was a newspaper reporter for 10 years prior to coming to CF, so I witnessed first hand the power and enormous responsibility journalists carry for printing the truth and remaining objective.

Media serves a vital role in our society. It polices government. It can dictate public policy and opinion. Would scandals like Watergate or Monica Lewinsky have occurred without investigative journalists?

I receive my news though a combination of TV and the Internet. I try to watch a few minutes of local TV news each day, but I’m kept abreast mostly through a combination of news sources (Ocala Star-Banner, New York Times, CNN) I received through Twitter.

Twitter is one of the most useful tools for any journalist.

You’ll read more in a few weeks when we reach our chapter on newspapers about the current dismal financial shape of the print media industry. In the past, I had always subscribed to a daily newspaper wherever I lived, but I have found Twitter to be useful in my life as far as receiving immediate, updated information.

 I hope you enjoy this class and look at a media in a different way by the end of the semester.