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| Home >> Index Pages >> Informational Pages >> Discount Computer Systems >> News >> Applicants of Scholarship 2008 >> |
Bits, Bytes and WordsDirectron Scholarship 2008 Essay No. 119by Allegra Woodward Smith Current School: Senior at South Lyon High School Intended School: Michigan State University Intended Major: Journalism The influence of computer technology on the journalism world At 10:45 a.m. every weekday for the past two-and-a-half years, I have walked to a classroom tucked away next to the English wing stairwell. The room looks like any other at South Lyon High School; it's got a white board and an overhead and shelves full of books, but what's attached to it is the special thing. It is the Press Room - or as some like to refer to it, the Press Cave. This pop culture reference is more apt than one would think, however. Just as Batman holes himself up in his Bat Cave to toil without rest to save the city of Gotham, I too lock myself inside the Press Cave for hours on end in order to bring truth to the student body. Monday through Friday I walk into the South Lyon High School Press Room, taking my MacBook off of the cart and sitting down at the table to practice for the career in journalism that I intend to pursue after graduation. This aspiration would be impossible - or at least a much more arduous journey - without recent advancements in computer technology. When my adviser and mentor, Journalism teacher Jane Haslett, began overseeing the production of the Lions' Roar in 1978, page designers on staff had to type out stories on a typesetter, a special machine like a label maker. This spat out the text, and page designers would position stories line-by-line onto a layout "dummy sheet" along with photos, headlines, captions and other graphic elements. In 2009, with much improved and consequently more affordable computer technology, the Lions' Roar layout editors create each eight-page issue on Mac G5's using Adobe InDesign. This shift in the method of page design is by far the greatest timesaving innovation to sweep the journalistic world. Computerized design enables us not only to save paper by not using dummy sheets to lay out an issue, but also provides the staff with professional layout experience. Through InDesign, the staff creates broadsheet layouts similar to those of regularly published professional newspapers and magazines. In addition, page designers can make revisions to the layout quickly and easily. Thirty years ago, if a page had to be scrapped and re-designed, a layout editor had to start over again and re-type each individual line on the typesetter. Today, pages can be rearranged nearly effortlessly on screen; saving hundreds of layout sheets annually, thus keeping the publication ecologically as well as economically friendly. Lastly and most importantly, layout takes much less time when designed on a computer rather than by hand, which ideally provides the staff with more time to focus on thorough, investigative reporting - what a student-run newspaper is really all about. Even an aspect of the production process as seemingly mundane as checking spelling has been revolutionized by advances in computer technology. Because I am the Editor in Chief of the paper, it is my job to read all copy in order to ensure that it is free of errors both broad and meticulous, and computerized editors make that job infinitely easier. Microsoft Word Spellchecker tends to catch smaller typographical and grammatical errors so that when I print out a story and go over it with a fine-toothed comb, I can focus on the bigger picture instead of worrying about trivial spelling mistakes. Journalism has made leaps and bounds in the last thirty years with improvements in computer technology, as evidenced by current layout, photography and editing practices. In my own lifetime alone, the Internet boom has cultivated a new breed of young writers who possess a wealth of information at their fingertips. In the journalistic days of yore, interviews had to be either conducted by telephone or in person. In 2009 however, a staff writer for the Lions' Roar can send interview questions to the district superintendent in an email, allowing him to answer on his own time and send his reply instantaneously. Online resources and news media provide student journalists with an abundance of easily accessible facts in order to flesh out their stories, furthering the most basic goal of the paper - to provide the people with complete information on which to base their judgments. In Cameron Crowe's film Almost Famous, budding 1970's rock journalist William Miller is in New York City researching a band for a story when his editor at Rolling Stone asks him to forward his notes to their San Francisco office. "We need you to transmit whatever you have of your story tonight, along with your notes," says the editor. "There's a 'mojo' at the Daily News that they'll let us use. It's a very modern machine that transmits pages over the telephone - it only takes eighteen minutes a page!" In Woodward and Bernstein's heyday, this crawling pace may have been the norm, but in the new millennium newspapers move lightning-fast thanks to the growth of computer technology. Photos are of students working in the Press Room. In the first, former Editor In Chief Chris Jefferies edits a page on a Mac G5 next to adviser Jane Haslett. In the second, staff writer Robert Swain eats his lunch while editing a printed broadsheet page laid out in Adobe InDesign. References: | Directron.com College Scholarship | |
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