Tonight I attended an event called Plugged In, Tuned Out: Young Adults and The News Media at Back Bay Events Center on 180 Berkeley Street. The event was a panel discussion moderated by Adam Reilly who is the media reporter for the Boston Phoenix. There where 4 members of the panel: Adam Griffin who is the co-founder of universalhub.com, Assistant Professor at Northeastern and The Phoenix’s former media critic Dan Kennedy, The Boston Globe’s Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dante Ramos, and. Reporter for WBUR Bianca Vasquez Toness. Below is a picture of the panel:

First off, I have to give props to the event for having food which was free. (Drinks you had to pay for.) If something has free food, I am there.
 

The panel started off making opening statements. Kennedy gave a few anecdotes from the freshmen journalism class he teaches at NU and how he was surprised at the type of stories that his students found when they where asked to write about a story that they felt passionate about. (one found a Obama story in the Atlantic Monthly and another wrote about a story in SI that pertained to Vietnam/Iraq) Furthermore, Kennedy mentioned that his students where not that interested in political stories especially those that pertained to the political horse race.

Toness was the next panelist to speak. She was more pithy then Kennedy and mostly stressed that what the media covers is irrelevant to young people. She illustrated her point by saying that more media coverage is given to things like taxes or immigration during the political process then something like Dafur which she believes young people are passionate about. Toness also said that young people are not as focused on things such as taxes because they are buying houses and starting a fam at later points in their life then past generations.

I wish I could write more about what the next panelist Ramos said but nothing he said really compelled me to take notes nor is my memory remembering what he said. However, I do recall Ramos saying that he was most likely the least qualified person on the stage to discuss the issue at hand. In the end, my apologies will have to given to Mr. Ramos if he made any sage points which I have failed to document in this post.

Universalhub.com’s Adam Gaffin not surprisingly came out most in favor of "new media" during the night. In addition he said something to the effect that he has no problem and does not think it would ruin the fabric of society if the nightly news went away.

The next part of the night was the most interesting; audience members raised points and asked questions to the panelist. The first audience member who spoke ( I did not catch her name) raised an interesting point regarding the idea that young people are tuned out of the media. She talked about how sites like myspace, facebook, live journal, blogs, message boards, et al have become a form of instant word of mouth where people can notify friends and like minded people of news events. The next audience member mentioned how documentaries appear to be playing a greater role in how young people inform themselves about world events such as the war in Iraq.

Then I got a chance to get on the microphone and I started rambling about how young people are turning to more primary source material in order to get information instead of through the filter of the traditional news media and that traditional media can’t compete with the army of on the ground reporters that is the blogosphere. When pressed for examples, I mentioned the Adult Swim Bomb scare from last year and the Dan Rather/Bush National Guard fiasco. Later when asked examples of what I meant by primary sources, I cited the youtube clip of the George Allen racial slur that derailed his campaign. As that discussion kept going Kennedy asked me how bloggers could inform on bigger stories such as the Iraq war to which I mentioned the blogs being written by American soldiers and citizens of Iraq. To that Kennedy said something to the effect of it is hard for people who work 8 hours a day to look at all those different kinds of blogs and or doing the work of series journalists themselves. At that point, I came close to flipping out because for a second I thought the tone Kennedy used was suggesting that I myself do not work 8 hours a day which I do. However, I kept my Greek temper in check because sometimes I think something may be a personal slight when it is not and I gave Kennedy the benefit of the doubt in that case.

Enough about me; later on a member of the audience, who was a 20 year old female pointed out how she felt too often the stories that where highlighted on the front page where irrelevant to her. She mentioned a story about cheese makers on the front page of the globe as an example of that and then gave a counter story about T $$$ waist as something that was relevant to her because she pays for her monthly Charlie Card.

Overall I found it to be an interesting night. It should be noted that while there where young people there, I would say the majority of people in attendance where older then the target audience being discussed. There was also a video camera taping the event and one other guy taking pictures throughout the night; I am curious to see what media entities they where working for and or if they where bloggers.

In the end, this post in effect illustrates the point I was trying to make. I am a Pre-K teacher not a professional journalist. Hell, I never even took a class in Journalism. In addition, my perspective of the event tonight is biased and this post probably contains more grammatical and spelling errors then one would typically find in the Globe or Herald. On the other hand, I doubt that tonight’s event will be reported on by those types of media outlets. Thus, showcasing how the army of citizen journalists can cover a lot more then traditional media. Furthermore, if I got anything wrong in this post people can tell me about it in the comments section. Or if people perceive I was inaccurate or unethical in my reporting, word will spreads quickly in the internets that I am not a trustworthy or a biased source of information.

That is the ethos of the new media that the old media has to now live by. For years, the old media got by as being the only way for people to get info and they did not have to deal with alot of fact checking and contrary views. Now people are constantly checking everyone else fact and opinions and forcing people to prove what they are saying is true and or right. The old media will survive in some shape of form and the current young people as they get older will look to the old media as just one of a 10000000 places to get information with each source having to constantly prove its trustworthiness. Now, I am just rambling so I will leave you with more pictures from the event.