Response #4 - Ch. 25

Ellyn Gary                                                                              Reading Response 4 – Ch. 25

            Chapter 25 was titled “The Contemporary Media” and covered topics such as the news business and mergers, more recent events and how they were covered, and conflicts between the media and the government.

            The part that I found most interesting was the business portion of the chapter.  My generation has grown up always having television around, and being a pretty big part of our lives – whether for news or entertainment purposes.  I liked finding out all of the parent companies (such as Disney, Turner, Time Warner, etc.) and which networks they owned, and how some of these came about.  Most of them have happened within the last 20 years or so, which only proves the point of how my generation has always had these giant networks around and really can’t imagine a television with the variety of choices we have had growing up, and still have today. 

            The 24-hour news coverage of the 2000 presidential election was something that the nation had never seen before.  This was due in part by both the fact that this was the first time our nation had had an issue like this, and the first election where we had a few 24-hour news networks.  I was in elementary school at the time, and remember the constant coverage of the election, until it was finally decided that Bush was the winner.  I thought it was completely normal that the stations cover it, which it is, but I did not realize that this was one of the first big events that had the opportunity to be covered by multiple 24-hour news networks, each with a different viewpoint.  This chapter helped me to realize, once again, how people my age have always had television as a main media source, and how most of us cannot imagine a world without it.  It really made me think about the huge impact television has had on the world over the past 50 years or so. 

            I may be a bit biased about this, since I’m from New Orleans and went through Hurricane Katrina, but I feel like Sloan could have touched on the work of the local television networks too.  Most of the local television networks did what they could to keep most of their broadcasts or at the very least news coverage going.  I remember watching WWL’s broadcasts from LSU (actually the Manship School) while my family and I were still evacuated.  I liked that Sloan gave the much-earned credit to the Times Picayune, and mentioned them in this section, but I feel like he could have touched on the broadcast side of it too.  Though maybe I understand him only sticking to the work about Katrina done by newspapers, since it was an easier and more widespread way for New Orleanians and other people interested in the hurricane coverage to get hard news about the situation. 

            In the last section of the chapter, about the media and a complicated future, I liked the points that Sloan brought up about the current state the American media is in.  The point about what defines a “journalist” and how that is linked to where Americans will look for their news was very interesting.  I am interested to see the future of the media, especially because of all of the recent developments that we have seen in just the past ten years.  It leaves me wondering, “What’s next?”