Both Monday and Wednesday in class we watched episodes of The Newsroom. Right now I am taking a journalism class so I thought I would have a little understanding of how things are ran in a news office, however it definitely was not what I thought. Though the concept of digging through events or issues to find the most newsworthy and being able to sum it up for the leading statement and typical journalism rules, It ended up being more exciting/crazy than I pictured.

The beginning of the first episode “We Just Decided To”, A panel discussion is taking place and all of the candidates are asked, “What makes America the greatest country in the world?.” Will MvAvoy has pretty much avoided every other question at this point by making a joke until they made him actually answer, to which he snapped and didn’t sugarcoat the answer. He told the truth that nobody wanted to hear. That America isn’t the greatest country in the world anymore, and how we need to do something about it. The question at this point is, How does he win back Americans after suggesting the country is not as great as public figures make it out to be.

After his burst, he had gotten a lot of negative feedback and hate, raising the stakes to come up with a perfect angle to the perfect story to cover to win everyone back.

That is when the oil spill in the Gulf happened and they told different story than everyone else and they knew things were going to be okay.

In Wednesdays episode, the focus point was on how they were losing ratings because a very high percentage of people were changing the channel within the first 10 or so minutes. The team is then forced to decide to report on what the audience wants to see vs. what they believe they need to see.

The other topic we discussed this week was how entertainment services have changed throughout the years. In 1983, 90% of American media was owned by 50 companies. That may not seem like a lot to some people but in 2011 it was proven that the same 90% was owned by just 6 out of the original 50.

These big six leave little room for competition, and numerous job opportunities for people.