What I Learned This Semester

 This semester I had the privilege of learning about the history of journalism starting all the way back from the 17th century. 

One of the most interesting things that I learned about was how journalism started and gained popularity through inventions such as the printing press. As well as how its growth in popularity allowed the public to get access to print media.

My favorite thing that I enjoyed learning about the
most was how women played a role in journalism. 

I enjoyed learning about this because journalism was primarily seen as a male-dominated industry where women did not seem to have a place. 

I loved discussing this in my Journo Hero presentation on Gloria Steinem where she dealt with sexism as a female writer.

As well as I enjoyed hearing about other female journalists paving the way such as Martha Gellhorn.

I think doing the blog posts was helpful for me because writing them allowed me to think in different ways about a topic we were discussing in class. As well as put my own twist on it and express how I interpreted the event. 

The blogs did improve my writing ability because if I did not completely understand an event that happened or an important figure we discussed, I had to do my own research to understand. 

One of my favorite aspects of class was watching films. As a film student, it is normal for me to have to watch a film and analyze it. However, it was interesting watching them in a journalism class where I had to focus on the specific press involvement throughout the storyline. 

My favorite film that we watched in class was The Front Page. The Front Page was my favorite film because I felt like it combined humor and historical accuracy in one and was overall entertaining to watch. 

I do feel that in some situations might be slightly overdramatised to keep the audience interested in the story, but I felt as though all three films we saw were generally historically accurate. 

If I had to compare journalism now to an earlier period I would compare it to the early 2010s. I say this because I believe that due to the internet print media sales are slowly plunging more every year and in the early 2010s due to the rise of smartphones people started to receive news straight from their phones so there was no purpose in buying a newspaper.