Ashton Pankey is number 30 for the University of Maryland Men’s Basketball team season 2011-2012. I gave him an interview this past week about the season this year including the struggles, approaches, and competition. A major concern I always had with D1 athletes dealt with balancing school and basketball, or what Ashton likes to call “work”. I asked him how he handled his everyday schedule with the strenuous combination. Keeping Up With the Terps
Ashton is just one of the selected 15 that was chosen to play for UMD basketball this year, so I’m sure the competition was very competitive. Not only getting into the program, but making it as a team is a struggle. So I asked the 6’9 center forward to elaborate on this topic. Fear the Turtle
After their recent Thanksgiving tournament in Puerto Rico, the men's basketball teams begin the season with a record of 2-2 as of 11/21/11. As a freshman on the court but a sophomore in the books, Pankey explains what goes on off the court.
Off the Court but STILL Game Ready
In addition to reviewing tapes, Ashton also mentions how the team practices hard, and goes to scoutings. Due to an injury, Pankey was unable to play his first year last year, so I asked another player that is a returning starter number 21, Pe'Shon Howard "What were the most challenging parts of playing in the season last year and why?" His response,"loosing...it was the most challenging. Im not use to it, and we lost a lot". After my interviews with both players, I have realized the difficulties and challenges that go into being an athlete at UMD, and the challenges they have to live up to just to get recognized and meet expectations of coaches, families, spectators, and fans. Good luck to the team this season!
After my brief interview with the UMD student Jennifer Ramirez,
I have come to find information Satellite radio. After giving me the gist of
what it is, she explains the past, present and future of the top two satellite radio
companies including Sirius and XM radio. She explains satellite radio as “a digital radio signal that can be broadcasted through different
satellite allowing the radio signal to reach farther areas in comparison to
normal radio signals such as AM and FM”.
To begin, I did a little research and read up on a tweet on Twitter posted by Jennifer
stating “Sirius and XM radio merged as one company in February 2007”. After
reading that, I decided to catch up with her to ask her a little more about
this convergence of the two companies.
What else is there to know?In addition to the
formation, subscription price, satellite orbits and number of subscribers, I
also learn more about what SiriusXM has to offer. For example, it includes over
140 non interrupted with commercial channels
including music, sports, executive talk, comedy, news, traffic, weather
and so much more. Because SiriusXM is subscripted based, some of the FCC rules
do not apply that do apply for FM and AM radio broadcasting.
So where is this going in the future? Well according to
another one of Ramirez’s tweets “Sirius XM has now gone 2.0, but with a hefty
cost of course, and car companies and Sirius radio work together”. Some auto
industries including Nissan, Infiniti, and from my own experience, Honda, are incorporating
and equipping Sirius radio for free for the first three months of ownership.
This exposes more people annually to SiriusXM so the number of subscribers
continues to increase from 2010 with 20million.
The above audioboo shows an interview I gave with an expert named Richard in the field of bullying here at UMDCP. I chose this topic because, like I stated in the interview, my major is Communications and I felt it would be important for me to know more about it and understand the techniques we can use to spread the word and help prevent bullying and suicide. After I spoke more with Richard, I learned not only about physical abuse but also cyber-bullying through technology and the effects of it. As a result, Richard says "All in all, parents must keep the communication lines open with their children". He explains the importance of communication at home and programs at school, interacting in sports, and even homeschooling are all preventative measures of bullying and even more, suicide. "Years of torment can lead to life long insecurities"-Richard.
The radio is used more than just for listening to music. We use different aspects of the radio for things like getting updates on the weather, local traffic, sports broadcasts, news, and advertisements. FM and AM radio plays a huge role in today’s radio industry. Before getting into the differences and influence they have, we must first understand what each of them are, how they work, and what they do.
We can start out by defining AM radio as Amplitude Modulation. The numbers on these stations are the thousands of cycles per second of electromagnetic energy. They range from 535 to 1705kilohertz which is another way to say that there are 117 different stations to choose from AM radio. According to A Science Odyssey: Radio Transmission, “With AM radio, the amplitude, or overall strength, of the signal is varied to incorporate the sound information.”
Now that we know about the technology in AM radio, let’s look at the history of it. Before broadcasting begun, early radios used telegraphic signal to transmit messages in the late 1800’s by Gugliemo Marconi. The establishment of broadcast service was conducted by Lee Deforest. He invented a vacuum that allowed multiple radio stations, something that the early radios did not do. Today this is known as Amplitude Modulation.
FM or Frequency Modulation, was invented a few years later in 1933 by Edwin Howard Armstrong. His input made it possible for the advancement of the signal by managing the static noise.
Technologically, FM radio has many differences from AM radio. The frequency of the carrier signal is varied. It is measured in millions of cycles per seconds between 88 and 108 megahertz. FM radio sends high fidelity signals which make static decrease unlike AM radio.
Now that we have the technological differences aside, we can now focus on the variation of content between AM and FM radio.
Starting with AM radio, an article called Why I listen to AM Radio Stations by Aaron Tadeo writes “There are lots of news programs that update me about what’s going on around me.” The AM station 4SB1071 writes on their online page the content they play including local content. Other stations include talk radio, sports radio, and religious radio. News can be locally, nationally, and even internationally on AM radio stations.
The content of FM radio consists of mostly music. Different genres have specific stations like country, hip hop, pop, gospel, and oldies.
Captive audiences like Alaskan communities mostly listen to AM stations because they are “captive” and uses it as a primary way for reports. AM Radio Listening writes, “The audience of public AM stations is plummeting at an average rate of 10 percent each year”. This chart shows the comparison of younger and older audiences to AM and FM radio.
After doing the research on Amplitude Modulation and Frequency Modulation, I have come to find many differences. This includes technologically, audience, historically, and content. All of these make it possible for radio as we know it today and its influence it has on our culture.
William Randolph Hearst was a newspaper publisher in his life span from 1863-1951. He studied journalism at Harvard University. He worked under Joseph Pulitzer writing for the school paper. After a few years, he took over the San Francisco Examiner newspaper with the help of his wealthy father in 1887. It became a popularized with increased profits from remodeling using what he learned from his previous employer and used “Pulitzer-style sensationalism” and reformation.
The next major successful step for Randolph Hearst was buying The New York Morning Journal in 1895. He published a lot about the Cuban Revolution. It became very successful and started the war between himself and Joseph Pulitzer who wrote for the New York World at the time. The competitors brought great work to readers across the nation. Hearst made a decision to hire a few of Pulitzer’s workers. One specifically who drew the Yellow Kid which was a hit cartoon in 1895 Pulitzer paper.
Yellow Journalism became coined through Pulitzer and Hearst’s actions when writing about the American war against Spain. Both did things like personally changing the stories, stretching and distorting news, spinning the reports, and elaborating rancid details about the war. Hearst’s publications were biased against Cuba. Both publishers gave readers excitement and thrill through articles and brought in an increased number of sales with their scandalous acts.
Hearst eventually grew to own over 200 United States newspapers. As well as magazines, books, and films, he had a castle built in California in the 1920’s.
Randolph Hearst has had a great influence on newspapers and the industry it is today. His unique style of bold headlines, layouts and large illustrations still play a huge role in newspapers today. The role of Yellow Journalism in the late 1800’s leaves our newspaper industry today with guidelines that both negatively and positively affect the business today. Things like fabrication make it possible for publishers to only state facts and give audience the truth. But like Hearst, publishers also use biased opinions to help increase sales rates.
Overall Randolph Hearst has made a tremendous contribution to newspapers today because of his establishments of major papers like The New York Morning Journal and even Yellow Journalism. Major magazines including Hearst Magazines, films production, and books were also assets and achievements in his lifetime.
After reading chapter 5 on How to Blog, I have found many advantages and disadvantages about blogging. For example, comments may be a good or bad thing depending on how you take them. Also, consistency and length of a blog is important and also has its up and downs. Also I think mechanics like headlines and links are important and can be a pro or con to a blog.
I learned from the reading that unless you are willing to allow comments, it is not best to start a blog. I think this is important because it helps the readers get involved and gives you feedback on your post and may bring up discussions. They can also be negative because the author may take them the wrong way and get discouraged because of reader comments.
The length of a blog is important because lengthy blogs may lose readers interest. And the consistencies of postings are also essential to keeping and obtaining new readers. I think mechanics and characteristics of blogs like headlines, links, and the design are all necessary. Headlines should be short and catchy, links are important for legitimate and accuracy, while well designed blogs can help catch the readers eye with pictures, font, and colors.
Blogging in my field of Communication can be necessary at work. For example, public relations are a part of my field that can including dealing with celebrities and the media. The following link is a good example of a blog that includes comments, links, and mechanics.
My name is Kayla Sortor. I am 19 years old and this is my first year here at UMD. I transferred here as a junior with an associate’s degree in communications. I am taking this journalism course to expand my knowledge in technology as it continues to grow. The media has a huge impact on my field in communications in many ways. First, the media uses television and newspapers to send messages out using mass communication.
Technology has also had a major influence on the people in my major around the world. Broadcasting is a part of the communications field that is affected by technology. For example, when UMD recently beat Miami in football, not only did news spread through the sport anchors on ESPN, but advanced technology including the internet made it possible for people to tweet, facebook update, and listen to online radio. Even the book, newspaper and magazine industry have been affected by technology. A recent article called Books without batteries: The Negative Impact of Technology by Bill Henderson wrote, “An MIT visionary predicted that in five years we will read almost no paper books-just digital devices.”
Technology such as e-readers, nooks, and kindles has taken over these industries. In my field, journalism has been impacted by the newest technology. Writing for the press, sports, weather, or even breaking news in the local newspaper can all be found with a simple app on smart-phones or the World Wide Web. One major advantage includes the speed of receiving the message is faster than waiting a day for the paper or 10oclock news.
To sum it up, I would say technology and the media have significantly impacted my field of communications more than any other subjects. My goal by the end of our discussion of mass communication is to develop a better sense of familiarity about the media and technology in the past and present so that it can hopefully lead me to a more understanding future.
