Feedback November 2002 (Vol 43 No 4)

More documents

Recommendations

Info

COMMENTYO, YO, YO! THIS IS THE HIP-HOP CNNTimothy D. Pollard, Ball State Universitytpollard@bsu.eduThe following originally appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, October 9, 2002. Reprinted withpermission.There is one holy grail in advertising: the 18-to-49-year-old market. This demographicis responsible for the bulk of advertising purchases on television these days. If you donot have this group, you are considered old-fashioned and out of touch with today’ship culture.To reach this audience, CNN Headline News has adopted a list of terms from“hip-hop” language for use by anchors, in the “crawl” (the news strip that runs at thebottom of the television screen), and in graphics. On this list are words such asbling-bling (“jewelry”), flava (“style”), fly (an older term meaning “attractive”) andfreak (“dance provocatively” or “have sex”).With advertising budgets stretched thin by more and more “niche” televisionchannels on satellite or cable, networks have to refine their missions. The theory is thathip-hop lingo will influence younger audiences to view CNN Headline News and notthe other news networks. In fact, CNN Headline News has beaten MSNBC in the key18-to-49-year-old group for the past two months.Two questions: Is CNN Headline News pandering to get this age group, or is itsimply ahead of the curve? And will the other news networks follow suit?The question of using current vernacular to replace standard English has beendebated for years. Is it OK to use language common to a certain group to get the storyacross, or is it pandering to the lowest common denominator? If the bottom line is toget people to watch your station or network, then you need to find a way to attractviewers. In an increasingly crowded market, where broad-based networks are losingaudience share to niche networks, the thinking goes that segmenting an audience, andgoing after that audience, is the way to go.The biggest question is whether young people, who are used to talking in streetlanguage, will be attracted to news shows if their language is used on the air. Willgetting a young audience to watch the news and learn about the world make thoseviewers more fluent in the world, less ignorant than many of us old coots think theyare?Those who take the opposing view will see the hip-hoppification of CNN HeadlineNews as pandering. The responsibility of a news organization, they argue, is not tobring street language to the business—it’s to present the news in a traditional way,using broadly accessible, standard language that allows the audience to make up its own66Feedback November 2002 (Vol. 43, No. 4)
mind. We shouldn’t bring in hip hop; we should give the audience the story as itshould be: straight, using proper English. This, in turn, will allow the viewer toincrease his or her vocabulary. More learned viewers improve the overall intelligencelevel of the country.This argument has a fatal flaw: Young people are not watching news. It is scary howilliterate our children are concerning world and national events. If bringing in theirown language puts them in seats in front of the TV and helps them learn about theworld, then so be it.We oldsters used to have our own language. Remember groovy? Remember far out?Our parents must have had a heart attack when we started talking like that. Now, thesewords are found in many dictionaries. Twenty years from now, when today’s kids arerunning the country, the same will be true of their youthful slang. Here’s hoping theywill have watched enough news to know what’s going on.BEA—Educating tomorrow’s electronic media professionals 67
Page 2 and 3:
Feedback November 2002 (Vol. 43, No
Page 4 and 5:
CommentSWOT Analysis: Disney Consid
Page 6 and 7:
without adding enough people to do
Page 8 and 9:
his favorite questions for prospect
Page 10 and 11:
The intellectual satisfaction you
Page 12 and 13:
Finding qualitative evidence via te
Page 14 and 15:
2 Using a two-tailed Pearson Correl
Page 16 and 17:
• We need to expand digital editi
Page 18 and 19:
Two final points: While this paper
Page 20 and 21: 1. As elsewhere in the profession,
Page 22 and 23: EvaluationThere will be approximate
Page 24 and 25: CLASSROOMEMPHASIZING ETHICS: PROMOT
Page 26 and 27: “Avoiding Plagiarism” ( http://
Page 28 and 29: CLASSROOMMULTIMEDIA FOR MORTALS: RE
Page 30 and 31: Video files come in a variety of di
Page 32 and 33: CURRICULUMDISMANTLING THE SILOS: MO
Page 34 and 35: the Web on deadline and conceptuali
Page 36 and 37: CLASSROOMADAPTING DIGITAL LEARNING
Page 38 and 39: strategies. Unfortunately, most tex
Page 40 and 41: Figure 2. Good Practice and the Enr
Page 42 and 43: CLASSROOMSTUDENTS TACKLE SUPER BOWL
Page 44 and 45: Usually, I urge students to use the
Page 46 and 47: aggression with intelligence, when
Page 48 and 49: e lost in sole reporting of undiffe
Page 50 and 51: COMMENT“SCHOOL DAYS, SCHOOL DAYS,
Page 52 and 53: CLASSROOMSWOT ANALYSIS: DISNEY CONS
Page 54 and 55: analysis. SWOT is an acronym for St
Page 56 and 57: Disneyland ResortDisney Vacation Cl
Page 58 and 59: CURRICULUMDON’T ISOLATE E-BUSINES
Page 60 and 61: mention implications from legal and
Page 62 and 63: viable media alternative to televis
Page 64 and 65: management are needed to deliver th
Page 66 and 67: Humboldt, Chris (2000). How E-comme
Page 68 and 69: editing is a place of influence. St
Page 72 and 73: REVIEWSchroeder, Sheila E. (2002).
Page 74 and 75: ANNOUNCEMENTS2003-2004 Scholarship
Page 76 and 77: ANNOUNCEMENTSBroadcast Education As
Page 78: NEWSJohn Mark DempseyUniversity of
show all

Feedback November 2002 (Vol 43 No 4)

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?