COMM 150 -- midterm hints

Our midterm, as you know if you were in class Monday, is at 1 p.m. Monday, March 5. It will be an open-book (which also means notes and anything you can find on the Internet) essay exam. There will be a 50-point essay (shoot for 750 words or two to three typed pages) and two 25-point essays (shoot for 250 words or a page to a page and a half). Here are some hints:

Have you noticed the way we've talked in class about the difference between entertainment values and the social responsibility that the media owes to society -- i.e. to report on public policy issues, keep a watchdog on government and others who abuse the public trust, and so on? Columnist Dante Chinni of the Christian Science Monitor calls it a conflict between "hard" and "soft" news. And you'll find references to the same tension linked to earlier posts to The Mackerel Wrapper. But some people, including Sue and Dean Barr writing for a website called COOLSchool in Oregon, say both entertainment and informing the public are legitimate functions of the press in a free-market system. The Barrs also have a webpage on theories of the press that explains the social responsibility theory (among others). Anyway, we'll have a question on the midterm that touches on these issues, and you'll want to quote from the book, the Barrs, Chinni or whoever else you want to. Read especially the chapters on print media in our textbook, and be ready to trace this conflict between the profit motive, entertainment and the social responsibilty function of the press for a 50-point essay.

There will be 25-pointers, too. A couple of them. One will be a self-reflective essay in which you talk about what you knew about the media when you started the class, what you know now (clearest point so far) and what you want to learn next (or the most confusing point). Here's what I say in a tip sheet on reflective essays linked to my faculty page. It mentions other courses I teach, since it's written for all my students, but you can adapt it to our course content in COMM 150:

A "content" course is a course in which you learn about a subject area -- like American Indian cultures and the history of their interaction with European-Americans, for example, or the basic principles of advertising and public relations. So you focus on the course objectives: What did you know about the mass media, U.S. history, the newspaper business, advertising, public relations or integrated marketing strategies at the beginning of the semester? What, specificaly, do you know at the end? What, specifically, have you learned? How does it fit in with what you already knew, as a media consumer or a college student?

To get ready for this, think about what we've learned so far. What was the clearest point? What still needs to be explained?

Wait, there's still one more 25-point question. It will have to do with the way radio and popular music have influenced each other over time. Here's what to look for: In the 1930s and 1940s, network radio broadcast a lot of "potted palm music," nice, inoffensive stuff that a dance band might play in an old-fashioned hotel ballroom of the period (the kind that had potted palms next to the windows). Mass market schlock, in other words. That gave way to the "Top 40" format. More schlock. When FM came along, it allowed more small stations with specialized formats to find an audience. So they could appeal to more specialized audience segments. Be able to show how the technology and the marketplace influenced the kind of music available to us as consumers over time.

Don't know what schlock is? It comes from Yiddish, and this website will tell what it means. Reader's advisory: The definition refers to other Yiddish words, some of which are body parts. Don't use them unless you know what they mean, and you know who you're talking to! Your Jewish friends -- or their parents or grandparents -- might consider them offensive and/or highly insulting.