Here's Why I Love The Onion

Sarcasm is my love language. This is one of the reasons why sarcastic and satire websites like The Onion capture my attention. After the VMA's on Aug. 25th, the managing editor of CNN, Meredith Artley took to The Onion to defend why CNN's front page story that morning was about a "twerking teenager" and not something about those dying in Syria or the conflict in Egypt.

She took to The Onion and stated blankly, "I want our readers to know this: All you are to us is eyeballs." She's right. Websites thrive off of page views, the higher the page view the more advertisers come flocking to them with their checkbooks out. It's what she likes to call "modern day journalism."

Unfortunately, CNN is not the only news website that functions this way. If the readers, or "eyeballs" as she calls them, keep clicking on pictures of "Miley's crazy performance" then more and more websites are going to post stories about it. Thanks to Twitter, we can see instant trends in communication. If more people are communicating about the craziness at the VMA's, then more articles about it will be published. Unfortunately this leaves real news to be stuck on another page somewhere that no one will read.

It's not always the news websites that are to blame for the lack of vital information that is getting to the public. Most of the time it's the public. After all, the media is a for profit business and they won't benefit financially from posting articles about things that no one is reading about. Low readership means less advertisers, less advertisers means less money. The mass media business is all about returning a profit, which unfortunately leaves the public unaware of certain important events.

I, for one, know little to nothing about what's going on in Syria or Egypt or what our role is in the middle of it all. If I wanted to know more, I'd dig a little bit. But the point is, sometimes, I prefer the media to keep feeding me nonsense articles about celebrities because it takes my mind off of the fact that we are a country and a world at unrest. Everything is not okay nor will it be any time soon. The more I dig, the more scared I get. I'm not saying I don't want to be informed, I just find myself panicking when I am sometimes.

So thank you, Meredith Artley, for publishing the content I wanted to see Monday morning. And for being willing to admit that the underlying point to mass media is not to inform the audience, it's to return a profit. The original intent of the media was to create a platform for politics, but it is far from that now.

Here's the link to The Onion article:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/let-me-explain-why-miley-cyrus-vma-performance-was,33632/?ref=auto

First Day of Class

Today is the first day of classes at Kennesaw. It's my last first day of school, graduation in December actually has me excited about starting back classes! Most of my classes thus far have all been in the COM field. Although this class discusses mass media, I'm a little nervous because it's not strictly communication based like many of my other classes have been. I'm excited to get started!

-Eva Hope