The Mackerel Wrapper

A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.

Thursday, September 03, 2009

COMM 207: For class today (Thursday)

At the end of class Tuesday, we were talking about how well news media prepare us for our roles as citizens and taxpayers. Today I'd like to broaden that out a little, and see if it gives a context for the rest of what we do in COMM 207 (editing for publication). Let's discuss and THEN post our thoughts on it as comments to the blog. Here's the question:
How well do all the media, separately and taken together, give us what we need in order to function effectively in our society?
In order to get anywhere with that question, we'll need to break it down some. To what degree is contemporary American society mediated? What do we need to get from the the communications media? What? Why? (Always ask "why?" To everything.) What do we get? How? When? How much? Why? Let's talk about it, come to some conclusions and think about what those conclusions mean to us (or don't mean) as we study the nuts and bolts of preparing copy for a mass readership.
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About Me

Springfield (Ill.), United States
I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.