Journalism and American Democracy

As we bid adieu to the iPads I reflect on what the device did to contribute to my overall learning experience. But besides that what I thought most about was the convenience of having a tablet device as a college student. That is why I would like to urge that colleges and universities push for a more portable-based technological student body.

As we have seen throughout the class, the “age of Twitteracy” is something we are living in the now. With news stories constantly being published, the sense of constant news coverage has reached levels unlike before the radio or television. With the internet in our cell phones and at our fingertips there is a constant checking and rechecking of the latest and hottest stories whether they be of politics or of someone making their relationship “Facebook official.” But what sets the tablet device apart are the capabilities that a cell phone just does not have. For example, the organization it allows. Apart from having a calendar in your phone there is no real way to organize yourself in terms of time. Sure there’s an app for something of that nature like maps, but that’s really it. Compared to the iPad there’s anything from making notes on pdf files (a “green” initiative), putting all homework assignments due dates and the ability to them on the tablet itself, download/buy books for class which also saves time and paper, and many other capabilities.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m making an excuse for the university to buy me an iPad because I don’t have the money. However, the iPad and other tablet devices bring about a new set of rules to the connected world. The capabilities are beyond what I expected, but just what I needed in terms of having what I needed as a student. I just hope that I could afford it sometime soon.

Just over a week ago, I parted with the iPad for the semester. I originally thought that the sorrowful goodbye would be more difficult than it actually was. In the seven days since returning the iPad to its proper owner, my life has remained mostly unchanged. I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss the convenience, didn’t miss the sleek touch screen, or didn’t miss the Twitter interface. But really, the iPad had not made a huge impact on my daily life.

When I first received the iPad, I was hesitant to acknowledge its value. I was worried that it would become an inseparable part of me and that and that I would be judged for using it in public. I quickly got over each of those fears and hesitations. I found the iPad to be tremendously helpful in classes and in life (using it for course readings and calendar organizing). But at the same time, the iPad was a mere convenience and did not really serve many unique functions that can’t be found elsewhere. After the first few weeks of having the iPad, its novelties wore off and I ended up using it a lot less than I thought I would. I’m worried how easy it became for me to use the iPad in public, both in class and around campus. Before having an iPad, I looked down on people who used them all the time- I thought they were just another pretentious use of technology. But I quickly got comfortable using it anywhere and overcame the fact that others might look down upon me for doing that.

Although I’ve stated that the iPad didn’t change my life, it did have its advantages. I’ve learned since not having it how easy it was to tote it around for checking email, Twitter, Facebook, or ESPN. I now understand why they are so trendy. The iPad, and other tablets, are definitely the future of personal technology. Being so easy to integrate into daily life, tablets will likely continue to gain popularity. While I would probably not purchase an iPad for myself, if given another opportunity to use one for an extended period of time, I would not turn it down.

And since you probably can’t get the song out of your head…

And so I recede back into the technological darkness from whence I came, disconnected from the world and alone. Or so that’s how I feel….
Yes today we reluctantly return our iPads. The too-close-to-magic machines have reached the end of their journey with us as we complete our class. As I reminisce on the endless hours I spent studying, reading, exploring and generally messing around on the iPad, I realize how quickly it integrated itself into my day-to-day life. I used the thing at every possible moment, whether it be in class for a reading or to study news stories or to play numerous mind-numbing games while on a long car trip.
And as much as I kid, I am sincere when I say that this iPad really changed how I read the news. The Flipboard app simulated an infinitely interactive newspaper and helped me maintain a strong connection to stories I would have never discovered otherwise. Our Twitter page was only a button away. Within seconds I was able to scan the big stories of the day, just by looking at our Twitter feed. And the user-friendliness (sp?) made all other computers seem like an old western telegraph machine. Jumping from web browser to news story to blog post to twitter was as easy as can be.
I am even more sad when I realize how much more as left to be discovered. I only recently found out how to take screenshots and every day I find another news app that I want to check out. I have a weird guttural feeling that despite all the wonderful experiences I had with the iPad that I still have left so many possibilities out on the table. I guess the ipad can do that – it makes you feel as if the information at your hands is infinite and that no matter how much time you spend on the darn thing you’re always going to find new efficient tricks or apps that open up another world to connect to. I understand now why Apple is sometimes considered a cult – and I’m chugging the kool-aid.
I have even considered getting an iPad for myself for Christmas….or at least an iPhone for Christ’s sake. I need something to satisfy my fix. And that’s the way things are going now, news has become a 24/7 ordeal and the public is constantly connected. Whether it be an iPad, an iPhone or some sort of other lesser smartphone (I kid, again), the source for news has become the palm of our hand, it is at our fingertips. As soon as I discovered the vastness of news media on the iPad the problem wasn’t staying connected or keeping on top of it all, the problem was disconnecting. Surprisingly, the endless information was not overwhelming – it was fluid, easy to find and constantly available. Having the iPad was a peek into what journalism has become and how it connects a multitude of publics – something we have never seen on such a large scale. With the advent of internet and now devices like the smartphone or tablet the news has become personalized. As Michael Schudson claims, traditional lines within journalism have become blurred. The distinction between writer and reader has disappeared, as has the difference between a blog post or a newspaper article or a tweet. Everything has meshed together and this seems to be for the betterment of the informed citizen. As a class, we became part of the future and participated in a new system of news-reading. Having to remove myself from that world feels like being sent back to the 5th grade. GoodbiPad

Or: The Punning

I remember the old jokes about the iPad when it first came out, chief among them that it was an extremely advanced sanitary napkin. At the time I wasn’t terribly excited about it, but I didn’t discount it either. Eventually, it found its niche, in my life between the computer and the smartphone. You see, my laptop is a desktop replacement model. It is large, too large to be carried about casually, though still quite portable. So the iPad came to occupy the space between, being brought to classes, a place to take notes and so on, since it was awkward to do so on my phone. Additionally, for whatever reasons, teachers tend to be more suspicious of students with smartphones out than with iPads out. Perhaps their aversion is not so much to distracting devices but specifically to phones, and not to messaging in general but specifically texts.

It was always something that was fairly unique though, and in this new program it was made common. Everyone in the class had one. It was an improvement overall, I think, since it gave common ground for discussion and avoided people probing your motives with questions. The number of times I was asked why I needed an iPad, the tone silently accusing me of being a tech geek or someone flaunting a new toy. Furthermore, the trade of tricks and tips helped out improve the utility of Apple products for me generally. I was able to learn more than a few new things from classmates, despite prior experience. A community can do wonders for any item.

Now, with the time to turn them in coming, I am honestly curious to see how many people will just let their lives go back to the way they were before, and how many will seek to get an Apple product themselves. I would think more of the later. While I am no marketeer, I would think Apple could be induced to provide such devices on the cheap, since it would lead to an even greater customer base. Then again, I’ve heard tales of Apple being rather tight fisted, so perhaps not. Regardless, we shall see about the challenge of new tablets, but despite feeling no particular brand loyalty to Apple, I do feel the iPad is a wonderful specimen of tablet. Hopefully it shall enrich the lives of many classes after this, eventually ending up in a history class about electronic devices humans used to use before the robot takeover.

As our semester comes to a close, so does our time as iPad owners. I will admit, I am sad to see them go.

This iPad is the first and only Apple product I’ve ever owned, and I will say I was impressed. And, I understood the theory behind why our class received them for free this semester. However, I am not quite sure I took full advantage of owning one for a brief time.

I’m not saying that these aren’t amazing tools, because they are. They made my life and things I did incredibly efficient, and using them in other classes in order to go paperless was huge. However, that’s just about all I used mine for, aside from a couple of apps, which I could have just as easily downloaded to my smartphone (which is even more convenient due to its size) or accessed on my laptop (which is, for me, more user-friendly due to the ease of typing). Plus, nobody wants to be “that person” who carries an iPad everywhere and uses it for everything. It’s a silly stigma, but I will admit that I sometimes hesitated to use it even just to access readings in other classes because I didn’t want my classmates to judge me as the girl with the iPad who flaunted it everyday.

I do understand that the underlying reasoning for having iPads this semester was to use it to explore different publics and to identify now means of communication and journalism, and I think it was successful to this end. Like I said before, I’m kind of disappointed in myself for not taking the time to fiddle around with mine a little more and see what other neat things I could take advantage of for the semester, but, who knows — maybe someday I’ll have a tablet that’s mine forever (but not an iPad. As long as I’m my father’s daughter, Apple products are off-limits. Samsung Galaxy Note anyone?).

Please excuse the bad pun or whatever you can call a term like “goodbiPad”, I just can’t resist a good play on words.

Alas, the time has come to bid thee farewell, loveliest iPad.  Although I never named you, I feel as though we knew each other so well.  We shared laughs, memories, stressful moments – even though we’ve only been together for a semester, you came home with me for every single break.  That says something about us, ok?  That meant something!

Admittedly, dear iPad, I did doubt you in the beginning.  You were so new and exciting, but also seemingly frivolous.  I had my macbook and my iPhone, so I doubted that you would bring anything new to my life.  I was locked into my old ways.

But then you opened my eyes to things like Flipboard – customizable, interactive news like I had never experienced.  And what about Storify? With this app, you gave me the tools to express myself in ways I had never known existed!  Together, we navigated the muddy waters of political ads, presidential debates, and campaign spin in this tough election year.  You were instrumental to my discernment during this period of inquiry in which I questioned the political conventions that I had always held.

iPad, this is where I leave you.  Although you have shown me many things, I must send you back from whence you came.  I don’t know that I may ever see the likes of you again, but it was grand while it lasted.

Our class’s work on the iPad this semester has been both enjoyable and beneficial to our examination of journalism and democracy in America. With the continuing expansion of technology, news can be delivered and consumed on a huge variety of platforms, and the iPad gives users a mobile, user-friendly device with access to countless media and applications. The iPad introduced me to many useful apps that expanded my ability and options for news consumption, with Flipboard probably being one of the most useful in its function as a news conglomeration program. Flipboard allowed me to access a wide range of news stories from a variety of topics and sources, and fit perfectly with the touch screen page-turning presentation that the iPad allows. Our discovery of the “news-creation” app Storify also showed us some of the great possibilities for utilizing different media to share stories, and the iPad is a great platform to access the social media, videos, and text sources that can combine to make a unique and powerful presentation. Overall, the iPad’s combination of a user-friendly interface with access to a multitude of forms of media made it a useful and enriching tool for our class and for our overall news consumption.

On the other hand, one personal trend I did notice with the iPad was that I probably did not use it as much as I should or could have for all sorts of tasks, largely because I normally and habitually do so much news consumption on my laptop. I have not gotten into the habit of reading news while “on the go,” and I never developed the habit of frequently taking my iPad out and using it while away from my room. While the iPad is a great and innovative device, ultimately I feel like it does not offer many large-scale capabilities that are not available on a laptop. This observation likely occurs to me largely because of my own technology-use and news consumption habits, and there is no doubt that the iPad’s portability and combination of technology and media capabilities make it a very useful device. I very much enjoyed my introduction to the iPad this semester, and I feel that there is a high probability that I will be using a tablet again extensively in the future, whether professionally, leisurely, or both.

I can’t say it better than Rick Astley so I won’t. But lucky me because I had an iPad at the start of class and I’ve still got one now.

I am not an Apple girl. I have a dinosaur of a Dell, a Verizon EnV flip phone, and I still use an iPod mini. Yeah, no not the Nano, the discontinued mini.

But I have an iPad 2, which I proudly bought for myself for my birthday two years ago, because I was excited to finally join the age of college kid technology. Since then, I’ve learned that it is more than just a fun object to interact with (read: check my email), it is a device that connects me to the various social media sites which journalists now rely on.

Though I came into the class with a strong mastery of some of the most common social networking sites, I learned about so many more ways I can create because I was encouraged to explore new apps like Spotify, Flipboard, and Evernote. It is crucial to remain connected, and especially for those like myself without a smartphone, the iPad keeps me ready to share even when I’m on the go. I use it to cover football games (it was with me at USC) but I also use it for class.

The iPad represents the shift in journalism toward a multimedia product. Learning with one has better prepared me to be a journalist.

Never Gonna Give You Up

Throughout this semester, I have found and discovered a new side of the iPad. A side composed of interesting media apps, apps capable of annotations, and overall educational apps that have changed my view of the iPad. This semester I have been able to check my weekly news, my twitter updates, and my Facebook. I have been able to check political facts on hand, watch The Colbert Report in bed, and read an in-depth analysis of the Notre Dame vs. Oklahoma game just by the touching two buttons. This semester has not only given me a new understanding of what the iPad is capable of, but a new wave or curiosity of what is can be capable of the future.

Because of the fact that I will not be giving up my iPad at the end of this semester, I am excited for my future with the iPad. Before this class, my iPad was usually stowed away, under my bed, next to my shoe box. But after this class, my iPad is usually smushed in my back pack, next to the multitude a books that usually feels like  ton of bricks. I do not carry around the iPad because I want an extra workout with more weight in my backpack, but because I feel as if it is truly useful. As of a couple months ago, a lot of my articles for classes are on my iPad as well as useful internet search engines that allow for a more direct and filtered search of specific information. Overall, this class had opened by eyes to how the iPad can help me in school work and life. It has opened my eyes to what technology can do to make life easier and how devices such as the iPad have the capability to place many helpful resource in one place, in one tablet.

So as the class says Goodbye to the iPads, I say hello. Hello to a new understanding of how this device can help me in school and most importantly life.

At the beginning of this semester, I really couldn’t conceive of ever needing an iPad – sure, I figured it would be nice to have, but beyond just needing something to blow extra money on, there didn’t seem to be much point.  And yet, I must admit that over the course of the last few months I’ve grown quite fond of the tablet.  What’s more, prior to this class I wasn’t all that interested in the news.  I think from outside a journalist’s or news junkie’s perspective, news tends to seem like a continuous report on everything that’s wrong with the world, just a giant negative spin cycle on society – or, as my dad fondly refers to the nightly news, “our daily death and destruction count.”  Having the iPads in class not only transformed my opinion of tablet computers, but of journalism in general.  The tablets present the news in such a streamlined and easy-to-use manner, it’s hard not to get attached.  I find myself pulling it out between nearly every class (and sometimes in class – hey, it’s not my fault Theo lectures get dull…) to check Twitter, Flipboard, NPR, or whatever.  And by being more or less forced to actively engage with the news, I’ve actually grown more interested in it.  I believe it was Schudson who wrote about the feeling of ‘connectedness’ people get from partaking in the news, and I can’t deny that I’ve experienced some of that, probably in part because of the iPad – if nothing else, keeping up on current events makes for more interesting conversations with people in daily situations.  At this point, I can’t deny the value in owning an iPad, but I’m still not really inclined to spend my own money on one; they’re still pretty expensive, and I think I could probably get more bang for my buck on something else, or donate some of it to a worthy cause (say, helping get radiators for needy Norwegians).  So it looks like I’ll be saying goodbye to my iPad for now…then again, Santa will be here in only three weeks…

Using the iPad this semester has revolutionized the way that I interact with social media, technology, the Internet and the news. I have become an informed citizen, motivated to stay updated on the important events happening in America and around the world. While I know the ambition to get involved with the news comes in part from my interest in the topics we discuss in class, I think the deciding factor was the iPad, which offered convenience and ease to consume news within my daily schedule. As David Carr said in the Page One documentary, we now have the ability to get updated on the news in the time it takes to wait in line for a cup of coffee. I use the iPad to check Twitter, Flipboard, and The New York Times regularly, if not constantly, throughout the day.

Not only has the news become an integral part of my daily routine, but the iPad has also changed the way that I do homework. Having the ability to open, download, read, annotate, save, and refer back to articles on a single device is great for an American Studies student, who has no shortage of reading assignments. I bring the iPad with me everywhere and love that everything I need is stored in one place.

Over the semester, I have been no stranger to other students making fun of me for having an iPad. The frequent response I get when students find out the University provided iPads to our class is: what? Why? Okay, it’s super convenient. That’s great. But why? Why did the Notre Dame sink money into giving the newest gadget to a group of journalism students? The undeniable fact is that iPads, or tablets in general, represent the future of how the public is going to obtain news. As we have studied this semester, print journalism is gradually fading out and tablets embody the technology that will replace it. Though many people remain sentimental and long for the old ways of doing things, as we saw with Kathleen Parkers anti-Twitter speech, technology is advancing quickly. As students with an interest in entering the journalism field, our futures depend on our ability to stay updated on the technology with which our stories will be made available to the public. I feel that, as journalists, we were given a great opportunity to embrace technology this semester; we created intellectual Twitter feeds, set up personal blogs, observed the way that other journalists embrace social media (Brian Stelter, anyone?) and familiarized ourselves with the growing world of online news.  The opportunity to use the iPad put us ahead of the game in the journalism world. Because of the familiarity I have gained with the technology, I know I am better prepared to work as a journalist because I have a better handle on where the future of news is heading.

So, while the iPad has done great things to change my life this semester, it has also been hard at work changing the way that the media operates in America.  Though it is sad to say goodbiPad, I know that this is not the last I will see of tablet technology, and the iPad will grow to be a widespread fixture in the lives of many Americans quite soon.

As my time with the iPad is quickly coming to an end, I realize how attached I have grown to a technology that I never thought I needed. Getting the opportunity to use the iPad was such a great experience, because it was like a technology test drive, where I got to try out the iPad and all its capabilities for the semester. Prior to this class, my mom would often call or text me, asking me if I had heard about a particular news story or event. More often than not, my response would be something along the lines of “No, I don’t really watch the news. I live in the Notre Dame bubble.” During the course of this semester, though, I found that I was much more connected to the world outside of Notre Dame, as a result of the class discussions we had, as well as the convenience of the iPad.

Although I do not necessarily see myself continuing with the use of Twitter after this semester, it was interesting to see what it was all about after having been encouraged by my friends to join for ages. I still do not love Twitter, because I feel it is used by many people in a manner that is less than productive, it was interesting to learn about what a major asset it is becoming for journalists. While it was initially challenging for me to find a story to tweet everyday, I eventually found myself checking Twitter and finding stories to tweet without deliberately having to search for one. Admittedly, prior to this semester, the “news source” I most commonly read was probably people.com. Through the use of Twitter, I have been able to read headlines and stories more quickly and easily from a greater variety of sources.  This is the same reason I also love the Flipboard app, because I was able to follow all the news sources I was interested in, as well as my social media networks, in one easy place. In fact, I think I like Flipboard more than Twitter, because I particularly like how visual it is, with the bold headlines and photos being more engaging.

It is going to be a sad day on Thursday when I have to return my iPad (I always have called it “my” iPad in denial of the that I would not be able to keep it…), but I really enjoyed having it for the semester in order to more completely immerse myself in the relationship between journalism and democracy. As a non-journalism student, this class was a great introduction of sorts. The use of the iPad allowed us to really immerse ourselves in the new technologies associated with the journalism profession. So not only were we learning about journalism and its conventions, but also acting as mini journalists as we also employed these technologies. So after a wonderful semester together, on Thursday I will fondly say “goodbiPad.”