Library News Story Assignments

JOUR 101 Students: Here's an example of how you may post your library news story 

J.D. Williams Library’s Unseen Collection

Did you know the J.D. Williams Library has a hidden floor that contains original theses dating back to the mid 1900s? Mezzanine A, with an entrance near Starbucks, has more than 5,500 theses shelved. If you’re in search of research or support on a specific topic, you’re bound to find a primary source here.

“In Mezzanine A, we have topics ranging from chemical engineering to journalism,” said Alex Watson,  a reference librarian.

Before venturing to this hidden space, it is recommended to visit the library’s website and search for a topic in the online database. Once searched, every original work, based on the desired topic, will appear on the screen for you to sift through to find an appropriate source. 

If used correctly, this unused area, may be one man’s or woman’s treasure. 

                                 More than 5,500 theses are housed in the J.D. Williams Library.

The Known Lawrence Room

  The Lawrence is located on the second floor of the library. It is located in the Archives and Special Collections room. It has been there more many years and has become a very important part of the room. The Lawrence room is a collection of memorabilia, mostly books that were first editions. Many of the books were either written or signed by authors from Mississippi.

One of the Liberian assistants Alex Watson stated "The Lawrence room was made possible by a request from Seymour Lawrence, who donated the items inside it, including the Emmy award on the table." You can see the Emmy in the right corner of the bottom picture. This room was built next to the William Faulkner room which also contains plenty of memorabilia and also is a major asset to the Archives and Special Collections room..

Meagan Patterson

My initial impression after reading this article is no surprise considering I am unfortunately one of the many that do not read the majority of articles I come across.  I find it very interesting that articles that are not read in depth get a lot of tweets or ‘shares’, while on the other hand articles that are read in depth do not generate a lot of tweets or ‘shares.’  So often we skim over articles instead of reading them fully, and even more disconcerting is that these articles we skim we share them with our peers through twitter, or other social media sites without comprehending the full message of the article.  Unknowingly we could be sharing articles that at first glance we seem to agree with, but if we delved deeper into the text we could be representing ideas that we do not believe in. 

            The writer admits that even he himself is a culprit of not reading full articles, and even sharing these articles with his social media peers.  He warns us that if we do not read a full article, in many cases, we cannot fully understand the content, or in good faith, agree or disagree with the content.  Many crucial parts of an article may be missed by not reading an article in its entirety.  These points the author makes imply that either as readers we need to be more focused, and devote more time to the articles that we are sharing, or writers of these articles should try and stay concise, and to the point so that we do read the full message.

            The research is presented in a manner that seems to be valid.  The author presents statistics from his own web page, but also compares these findings to another website for emphasis of his point.  All the while he places himself among those whom he is writing this article about which creates a sense of relation between he and the readers.

            Without the research the point would not be completely invalid, because many people can relate to the topic he is discussing.  The research does indeed add validity to the argument, as well as puts into perspective the high numbers of semi-informed people sharing articles that they have not fully read. 

            I find the website a bit confusing, as well as the titles of many of the articles to be confusing, and not so “eye-catching”.  Once I look deeper in to the website and read through a few articles I enjoy the personalized feel that each article seems to have while at the same time leaving the reader able to make up their own positive or negative opinion about what they have read.  The articles are also written in an easy to understand manner that is not dull, and does not have you reaching for the dictionary every other word.  

Journalism 101 blog

1) My initial reaction of the article was that the author kept restating about losing his readers attention. It made it very difficult for me to read as I kept getting sidetracked. I got the feeling that he wanted me to stop reading.

2) The writer is making a point that if, as a writer, he doesn't hook the reader immediately then he will easily lose their attention. In this article he focused on boring the reader to see if he could get their attention and make them keep reading. He showed that its important to always have an interesting introduction to make his audience keep reading.

3) The writer seemed to have valid information. With the way he wrote, he wasn't trying to hook the reader. His percentages seemed very accurate, especially because I am guilty of doing exactly what he said in the article.

4) The writer could've still proved a strong point without the research, however it did help interest me in the article. The research helped make him prove his point better.

5) I think Slate's variety of articles makes it an interesting website that draws a readers attention. The stories are well-writen and pull a readers attention.

Advice to Young Journalists

Journalist Michael Hastings, 33, died unexpectedly a few weeks ago. A hard-hitting investigative reporter, he wrote for Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, and Newsweek, among others. Read his advice to young journalists, and in a post due by Wednesday morning, comment here on at least one of the points he makes.

From the article "RIP Michael Hastings. Here's His Advice to Young Journalists," as it appeared in MotherJones.com.

Haley Cutright response

My initial impression of this article is that whoever wrote this may be border lined insane. He says he is going to get to the point in the first line and then he reiterates himself too much and we don’t ever know what he is talking about till the 5^th paragraph.

         The point the writer is making is to inform us of how often we don’t read a full article. However, who has time to read an article online that is two pages?? He is making a good point, but if he really wants an audience to want to read his full article he needs to watch the length and take out all the extra fluff no one cares about.

         The writer does have a good amount of information and charts in his article that back up his main points and legitimize his article. The charts and his statistics validate his research and make it appear that he has done his homework.

         The writer’s article would have been nothing without the research. His execution was horrible in my opinion, but he was actually writing about an interesting topic because most people never read a full article but still tweet and repost these articles. And how can you do that with an article that you haven’t full read and act like you know what you are talking about?

I like how Slate.com uses vivid pictures so viewers can clearly imagine the topic of each article. There isn’t much length to each article but they get the information across to the audience as concise as they can, which is good for users who just want to quick facts. I also like how they quote other sources so readers can see what other websites are saying.       

Spenser Sparks Response

Four Stars. Farhad Manjoo's article is a great recreation of what goes on in the minds of people as they surf the web in search of information. He is trying to show how disconnected we are in our connected world and wrote the story the way he did to show readers the scatter brain way we, as connected human beings, go about reading articles online.

Manjoo is attempting to show us how easily news and information are being swept aside for the next new thing (i.e. viral video, American Idol winners, a new "Arrested Development" episode, etc.). He does a great job of this by writing in a way expecting people to stop reading and telling them that they will not read the article, giving them statistics every step of the way so they will continue to read.

I'd say valid enough. It's nothing new that people aren't reading articles in full or even at all. You can tell that by the decline in newspaper sales and readership across America and the world. But in showing the graphs from Chartbeat and quoting Josh Shwartz, he shows that the problem now is that people are reading to an extent, thinking they have all the information, and passing it on to the next person that will do the same. The most amazing fact is the spike at 0% for Slate.com and Chartbeat.com.

Manjoo's article would still have been strong without the graphs, if anything that would have made it easier to read. But without the facts inside of the article, especially the number of people that still hadn't "bounced" yet, I don't believe it would be powerful enough for Manjoo to get people to stick around and keep reading his article.

It seems like a great website with quality journalists writing quality stories, but the format is one that I personally would subscribe to. I do not like, and I am probably one of the only ones, that the articles are categorized by most read, most popular, most commented, etc. That is not necessarily the way I like to choose the article I read, even more so after reading this article after hearing that the majority of people will share or like an article without really reading it. How do I know that they are reliable articles that really touch on the subjects? I would prefer all the articles be displayed on one page for the reader to pick and choose what he/she reads based on their preference, not the preference of his/her peers.