The main focus for this week had to do with the media’s effects on information and more importantly, the news. This was an interesting topic for me this week because this really ties into our generation and how we are connected to the news. We focused this week on watching two episodes of The Newsroom. This show allows us to see the struggles within the newsroom as well as the obstacles a newsroom faces when trying to report on true news as opposed to the news that is out there for pure entertainment.

We began by watching episode one, which was called “We Just Decided To.” The series with star anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) onstage at a university event with a couple of political experts and a moderator. The liberal and conservative pundits are yelling at each other over him as the moderator and students ask questions. When a young, blonde woman steps to the microphone to ask each person why America is the greatest country in the world, the liberal and conservative experts give there responses. The moderator then turns to Will and pushes him for a real answer. When he looks into the audience, he sees a woman that looks very familiar holding a notepad saying “It’s not, but it could be.” Will then goes off on a rant about how America isn’t the greatest country in the world unless you want to look at ways it’s number one like number of incarcerated prisoners or people who believe in angels. He calls conservatives crazy and liberals losers. After the talk is over, everyone thinks Will is crazy and this whole moment soon goes viral. Will tries to cover this up by blaming it on his vertigo medicine instead of the fact that he was finally just speaking his mind.

Since this fallout, no one wanted to work with Will at the ACN newsroom. Because of this, McKenzie McHale was brought in to help. McKenzie has been producing the news in war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq for the last few years. It turns out that Will and McKenzie had a romantic past and he goes ballistic when he hears that she is going to be his EP (executive producer). While is bursting allowed in anger, McKenzie and her senior producer Jim Harper show up at the ACN newsroom. Jim was an associate of McKenzie’s through her previous part of her career.

Meanwhile out in the newsroom the first word of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill in the Gulf begins to trickle out. After receiving phone calls from highly placed sources, the newsroom scrambles into gear to get this story on the air. The team ends up broadcasting the story while other newsrooms broadcast other top stories. It turns out that this oil spill story became the most popular story at that time, which proved to be a successful broadcast.

In the second half of the week, we watched another episode called “The Blackout Part I: Tragedy Porn.” Since the first episode, ratings have dropped significantly because ACN was not reporting on the Casey Anthony trial. Many viewers began watching the trial on other news networks. After promoting the story ACN gets its numbers back, with a large share of the new audience being female. 

After this incident, another news story appears. The new headlines are talking about Anthony Weiner’s “accidental” picture of his groin. In the wake of Weiner accidentally tweeting a groin picture to his 40K followers, ACN feels obliged to give the story a bit of coverage as a ratings boost, and to get a pre-tape interview with Sandy, who will let the world know “what kind of a man Weiner really is.” As the interview is prepped, a 98 degree heatwave hits, which knocks out the entire power of the news room turning it into a blackout.

Personally, I was always on and off with watching the news. It really wasn’t until I got a little older that I got my news through social networking. According to the textbook, “young adults have a reputation for being connected to one another and disconnected from the news, but a survey found that mobile devices and social networking are keeping them more engaged with the broader world than previously thought.” Since I only use Instagram, I get some news from there as well as other news applications. The textbook also says “the survey of Americans ages 18-34 found that two-thirds of respondents said they consume news online regularly, often on a social networking site.” Instagram isn’t just the only place to get online news. There are other news apps available as well as social media apps like Twitter where many people get their news daily.

-Tyler Tanevski