Web Journalism - How Journalism is Adapting to the Web

With the decline of newspapers, theres been a lot of talk about web journalism being the future of the news business. But what exactly do we mean by web journalism? Web journalism actually encompasses a whole range of different kinds of sites, including: Newspaper Websites Websites run by newspapers are basically extensions of the papers themselves. As such, they can provide a wide range of articles in a variety of areas - news, sports, business, the arts, etc. - written by their staff of professional reporters. In some cases, newspapers shut down their printing presses but continue to operate their websites. Often, however, when the presses stop running the news staff is gutted, leaving only a bare-bones newsroom behind. Independent News Websites These sites, often found in larger cities, tend to specialize in hard-news coverage of municipal government, city agencies, law enforcement, and schools. Some of them are known for their hard-hitting investigative reporting. Their content is typically produced by small staffs of full-time reporters and freelancers. Many such independent news sites are nonprofits funded by a mix of ad revenue and contributions from donors and foundations. Hyper-Local News Sites These sites specialize in coverage of small, specific communities, right down to the individual neighborhood. As the name implies, the coverage tends to focus on extremely localized events: the police blotter, the agenda of the town board meeting, the performance of a school play. Hyper-local sites can be independent or run by newspapers as extensions of their websites. Their content is typically produced by local freelance writers and bloggers. Citizen Journalism Sites Citizen journalism sites run a wide gamut. Some are basically just online platforms where people can post video reports or pictures on virtually any subject. Others focus on a specific geographic area and provide more targeted specific coverage. Content for citizen journalism sites is usually provided by a loose affiliation of writers, bloggers and video reporters with varying degrees of journalism experience. Some citizen journalism sites are edited; others are not. Blogs Blogs are known primarily for being platforms for delivering opinion and commentary, but many actually do real reporting as well. Bloggers have varying degrees of journalism experience.

Plato’s 1st Argument for the Immortality of the Soul from...

Plato’s 1st argument for the Immortality of the Soul from opposites and Theory of Reincarnation Plato’s Phaedo is a dialog between Phaedo, Cebes and Simmias where Socrates gives some arguments for the immortality of the soul. In this work, Phaedo tells us about Socrates’ final days, who has been convicted to death. Great philosopher does not have a fear of death because he believes that when a man dies, the soul still exists even if the body perishes. Trying to prove his arguments, Socrates presents two proofs – Doctrine of Opposites and second which is based on Theory of Recollections. In Phaedo he writes: â€Å"That soul, I say, herself invisible, departs to the invisible world – to the divine and immortal and rational†¦Ã¢â‚¬ .†¦show more content†¦People from these denominations do believe in concept of rebirth. But religious sects such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism do not believe in theory of reincarnation. This theory is ve ry close to Plato and some other Greek philosophers who believe in the Immortality of the soul. As for me, in some cases I do agree with Plato – in Theory of Opposites. Undoubtedly, in our world we can always find two opposite things, actions, etc. Small and tall people, healthy and unhealthy people, sunny and cloudy day, hot and cold weather†¦ But I do not believe in the Immortality of the soul in general. To my mind Plato came to this conclusion due to the times he lives in. But we cannot base our beliefs on what we want to be true; the truth can be found by weighing the evidence for a given idea. Thus, he took what he knew to be true at the time and formulated his opinions which were founded on that knowledge. I guess, if Plato lived nowadays, may be he would approach to another conclusion. I do not think that Plato makes credible arguments for the immortality of the soul. To my mind, his concepts were built on his desires. I mean, that life is difficult and awkward e nough without knowing of our mortality. There is inexplicable reality that so many people struggle so hard and it seems so unjust. Let’s take a simple example of a man, who has passed away in the accident. He did not do anything wrong – as most people he was working,

A Book Review on Martin Jacques’ When China Rules the World Free Essays

A Book Review On Martin Jacques’ When China Rules the World By Abhinav Pathak â€Å"The underlying argument of the book is that China’s impact on the world will be as great as that of the United States over the last century, probably far greater†¦. China, with continuing economic growth (albeit at a reduced rate) is destined to become one of the two major global powers and ultimately the major global power†- Martin Jacques Martin Jacques’ above statement is a bold one, but shouldn’t come much of a surprise as Goldman Sachs gave such conclusions credibility in 2007 when it concluded that China would surpass U. S. We will write a custom essay sample on A Book Review on Martin Jacques’ When China Rules the World or any similar topic only for you Order Now GDP in 2027, and double it by 2050. I believe that Jacques, in a serious and comprehensive analysis, puts modern-day China into a long historic context and explores contemporary (and possible future) relations between a resurgent China and other East Asian states, the United States, and other parts of the world. The book is split into two parts, The End of the Western World and the Age of China. The Age of China section is much better than the End of the Western World. It gives the reader a background of China in relatively decent depth. It describes biases and history. It describes issues like racism; the repercussions of Confucianism are described in depth. A lot of the statistics seem to be from earlier in the decade suggesting this book was written over a long period of time but only recently completed. That being said, the main forms of argument of this section and the book, are images, not real facts. Chinese proverbs are used as evidence of the perspective, which I think is very ineffective, as for each one which supports a point, one can find another proverb which offers a different perspective. The Rise of China is an incredibly important and seemingly irreversible process, this could have been a great opportunity to back up claims with case evidence, but that was really not done in any convincing fashion. The author often makes hyperbolized points, which within a paragraph become qualified with a much more balanced perspective. An example is the description of China and democracy. China it is claimed has no need for democracy and there is no reason to expect it, based on their historical citizens arrangement with government, and the fact that the people are not demanding it today (there are several times when it is stated that the Chinese need 8-9% growth as not to cause civil unrest implicitly stating that it is the growth that excuses the lack of demand for political rights and that citizens are willing to forgive political rights for economic growth)†¦ Most people who make convincing arguments about China and democracy make the claim that democracy in China will follow from socio-economic development. When people move to the point from having to worry about subsistence to worrying about their leisure time, their priorities of governance chance. The allusions to history are just not convincing arguments, they can be dismissed as contextual and the authors own description of growth needed to prevent civil unrest makes the same point as stated above. The author sure knows this, so after making a claim which is not backed up, qualifies it by saying, it probably will democratize, but not the way you expect. Well, I don’t know what that means. Points like this should be argued with case studies, look at the political associations and power that the well off have vs. the poor, look at how those have changed. If there has been no change in political ideals of a person/group as their socio-economic condition has changed, make a point. Unfortunately the book does not take this approach, it looks to the past when the world was little changing in a relative context to today, and makes inferences. To quote Park Chung Hee from Korea which also took a state centered followed by democracy approach – â€Å"In human life, economics precedes politics and culture. † If one is going to dispute this, one should be doing it with cases not words with any evidence. However, there are many illustrations that Jacques, the author, gives us to back his claim of the Chinese domination. Since the economic reforms launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 (just two years after the death of Mao), the Chinese economy has been growing at an average rate of 9. 5% a year which represents a doubling in size every seven years. Jacques comments: â€Å"Given its scale and speed, China’s economic transformation is surely the most extraordinary in human history†¦ The country has borne witness to the greatest poverty reduction programme ever seen†. He further observes that the most important single characteristic of China is its unity. It has been relatively unified for over two millennia, attaches compelling priority to the maintenance of this unity, and is not prepared to compromise on the sovereignty – as opposed to the forms of governance – of Tibet or Xinjiang or the ‘lost territories’ of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Jacques argues that â€Å"the Chinese have a pathological fear of division and instability†. China will become modern not by simply replicating the established modernity of Europe and North America, but by creating its own distinctive modernity in what will become a world of what he calls †contested modernity†. In many respects, the coming global supremacy of China is seen by the Chinese themselves as simply re-establishing the natural order of things, since they have always seen Chinese civilization as the greatest in the world and the ‘century of humiliation’ (1850-1950), involving the ‘unequal treaties’, colonialism and occupation, is regarded as an aberration which is now being corrected. This sense of superiority is underlined by a specifically racial view of the Chinese in which the Han Chinese, who comprise 92% of the total population, are seen as a single race and even the 100M non-Han are described as different nationalities rather than races. Indeed there is a view in some quarters than the origins of the Chinese are discrete and unconnected with that of other branches of humankind. All of these form the main themes of the book, â€Å"When China Rules the World† and it does sound that the 21st century will witness a paradigm shift in the centre of world power and influence. I do have couple of criticisms though. I feel the author is inconsistent at times and does not draw conclusions based on the evidence he presents rather than the feelings that he has about the subject. It often seems like the author is describing a zero-sum world, China moving up is the west moving down. The West has started growing again, given there are major issues still being worked through (though the author says the West is in a depression†¦ ) and there is a title called the end of the Western world. In my opinion if he US manages to grow, then that doesn’t mark the end of the western world. As long as the quality of life per person is greater than in China or wherever, it is a model for something right? Otherwise one should just join the country with the greatest number of citizens. The end of strict western hegemony seems inevitable, but the west is a model for something as again, it has the highest living standards in the world. If china doesn’t dominate t he US GDP that would be a tragedy, it has 5 times the people†¦ This balance of power perspective is what drives a lot of the commentary. It is an important perspective and it would be naive to dismiss it, but as long as the model for economic growth is yielding good results, it is a valuable model for how a society should run. One cannot compare China and the US/Western Europe. They are not anywhere close on a GDP per capita. The rise of Chinese nationalism is very much a result of the great things China is achieving and the desire to be a part of it and to show the world what the Chinese are capable of. It is not a we are better, any average Chinese citizen would with a high degree of confidence switch place with a US citizen of Chinese origin- as long as that is the case, we haven’t seen the end of the west. That phenomenon will be around for a long time and the end of that situation isn’t even contemplated in this book, the more defining data point to the author is, when china’s GDP will exceed the US. So as not to bore people, the book gives good history, discusses central aspects of Chinese culture that aren’t prevalent in the west, and discusses how they might manifest themselves on a global scale. That perspective is an important one, as the strategic power of China grows, so will its use of influence and it is important to understand the context of its perspectives. Another criticism that I have is that he not infrequently darts backwards and forwards in time. Perhaps this is unavoidable and I might not have been better pleased with a strict chronological account which would necessarily have hopped about between geography, military and economical viewpoints. In conclusion, I believe that China will change the world. However, the future is seen here mainly through the prism of a somewhat overstated China-centric historical determinism. The clamor of conflicting voices within China, with their potential to shape coming events, is barely considered. A more symbiotic development – that of China reaching an accommodation with the world in mutual self interest – is played down. China is locked into global systems that it will be difficult to fully extricate itself from – or replace – and which will mitigate its actions. Jacques himself convinced me that China’s rise is not a new paradigm but one of many burgeoning hybrids of existing modernity which will be eventually assimilated, albeit at great cost to Western global dominance. This book is a valuable addition to an important debate. But at times the author stares so long and hard at China’s history that he seems to develop tunnel vision. Surely China’s past, although important, will not shape the global future in the overwhelming way that Jacques clearly believes that it will! How to cite A Book Review on Martin Jacques’ When China Rules the World, Papers

Causes And Effects Of Earthquakes Essay Example For Students

Causes And Effects Of Earthquakes Essay I chose to research earthquakes and the prediction of earthquakes because I was curious as to how they work. In this paper, Iwill discus the history of earthquakes, the kinds and locations of earthquakes, earthquake effects, intensity scales, prediction,and my own predictions. An earthquake can be defined as vibrations produced in the earths crust. Tectonic plates have friction between them whichbuilds up as it tries to push away and suddenly ruptures and then rebounds. The vibrations can range from barely noticeable toa disastrous, and destructive act of nature. Six kinds of shock waves are generated in the process. Two are classified as bodywaves, that is, they travel through the inside of the earth and the other four are surface waves. The waves are further classifiedby the kinds of motions they incur to rock particles. Primary or compressional waves, known as P waves, send particlesmoving back and forth in the same direction as the waves are traveling, as secondary or transverse shear waves, known as Swaves, create vibrations perpendicular to their direction of travel. P waves always travel at faster speeds than S waves, sowhenever an earthquake occurs, P waves are the first to arrive and to be recorded at geophysical research stations worldwide. During ancient times very little was know about. Some of the ancient Greek philosophers connected earthquakes tounderground winds, where others blamed them on fires in the depths of the earth. Around AD 130 the Chinese scholar ChangHeng, believing that waves must ripple through the earth from the source of an earthquake, created a bronze object to recordthe directions of such waves. Eight balls were carefully balanced in the mouths of eight dragons placed around the outside ofthe object. When a passing earthquake occurred the wave would cause one or more of the balls to drop. Earthquake waves were observed in this and other ways for centuries, but more scientific theories as to the causes of quakeswere not proposed until modern times. One such concept was recreated and advanced in 1859 by an Irish engineer, RobertMallet. Perhaps recalling on his knowledge of the strength and behavior of construction materials, Robert Mallet proposed thatearthquakes occurred either by sudden flexure and constraint of the elastic materials forming a portion of the earths crust orby their giving way and becoming fractured. Later, in the 1870s, an English geologist, John Milne created a device similar toone of todays earthquake-recording device, a seismograph, which in Greek seismos means earthquake. A simple pendulumand needle suspended above a smoked-glass plate, it was the first instrument to allow visual difference of primary andsecondary earthquake waves. The modern seismograph was invented in the early 20th century by a Russian seismologist,Prince Boris Golitzyn. His device used a magnetic pendulum suspended between the poles of an electromagnet, created themodern era of earthquake research. There are three general classes of earthquakes that are now recognized: tectonic, volcanic, and artificially produced. Thetectonic kind is by far the most devastating, and these earthquakes create many difficulties for scientists trying to develop waysto predict them. The main cause of tectonic earthquakes is stress set up by movements of the dozen major and minor platesthat make up the earths crust. Most tectonic quakes occur at the boundaries of these plates, in zones where one plate slidespast another, such as at the San Andreas Fault in California, North Americas most quake-prone area, or where one plateslides beneath the other plate, subduction. Subduction-zone earthquakes count for nearly half of the worlds destructive seismicevents and 75 percent of the earths seismic energy. They are concentrated along the Ring of Fire, a narrow band about38,600 km long, that meet with the border of the Pacific Ocean. The points at which rupture occurs in these earthquakes tendto be far below the earths surface, at depths of up to 645 km. Alaskas disastrous Good Friday earthquake of 1964 is anexample of one such event. Tectonic earthquakes beyond the Ring of Fire occur in a variety of geological settings. Mid-oceanridges, which are the seafloor-spreading centers of tectonic plates, are the sites of many events of moderate intensity that takeplace at relatively shallow depths. These quakes are seldom felt by anyone and account for only 5 percent of the earths seismicenergy, but they are recorded daily on the instruments of the worldwide network of seismological stations. Another setting fortectonic earthquakes is an area stretching across the Mediterranean and Caspian seas, and the Himalaya, ending in the Bay ofBengal. In this zone, which releases about 15 percent of the earths seismic energy, continental landmasses riding on theEurasian, African, and Australian plates are being forced together to produce high, and new mountain chains. The resultingearthquakes, which occ ur at shallow to intermediate depths, have often devastated areas of Portugal, Algeria, Morocco, Italy,Greece, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, and other countries partly or completely on the BalkanPeninsula, Iran, and India. Financial Instability EssayAttempts at predicting when and where earthquakes will occur have had some success in recent years. At this time China,Japan, Russia, and the U.S. are the countries most actively supporting this research. In 1975 the Chinese predicted themagnitude 7.3 earthquake at Haicheng, evacuating 90,000 people only two days before the earthquake destroyed or damaged90 percent of the citys buildings. One of the clues that led to this prediction was a chain of low-magnitude tremors, calledforeshocks, that had started about five years earlier in the area. Other potential clues being investigated are tilting or bulging ofthe land surface and changes in the earths magnetic field, in the water levels of wells, and even in animal behavior. A newmethod under study in the U.S. involves measuring the buildup of stress in the crust of the earth. On this idea of suchmeasurements the U.S. Geological Survey, in April 1985, predicted that an earthquake of magnitude 5.5 to 6 would occur onthe San Andreas fault, near Parkfield, California, sometime before 1993. Many unofficial predictions of earthquakes have alsobeen made. In 1990 a zoologist, Dr. Iben Browning, warned that a major earthquake would occur along the New Madrid faultbefore the end of the year. Like most predictions of this type, it was proved wrong. While I was trying to predict earthquakes, my first prediction wasnt too far off of my target, I predicted one about 100 milessouth of the California-Mexico border. There were a couple of earthquakes that occurred in California, near L.A, they were ofcourse very minor and couldnt be felt, they were only detectable by seismographs. The next day I predicted that there wasgoing to be an earthquake in the same spot that it occurred the day before. I was correct, in fact there were three. The nextday I picked a spot about 50 miles north of the earthquake that occurred the day before, this time I was wrong, there weretwo that occurred near the San Francisco bay area and none within a 50 mile radius of my approximation. The next coupledays I predicted earthquakes that were within a 100 mile radius than were they actually occurred. From my experiments Iconcluded that predicting earthquakes was easy, you just have to pick a spot on the fault. The only thing that troubled me andprobably most scientists, is magnitude, there is no possible way of predicting an earthquakes magnitude. Which is what we arereally trying to predict. Earthquakes happen all the time, but what we are really trying to figure out how to predict is when amajor earthquake is going to occur. I learned that earthquakes are almost unpredictable, and devastating acts of nature. I also learned how earthquakes occur andalmost all of the earthquake dictionary. There is still alot more to be known about earthquakes that we still do not knowabout today. Prediction of large earthquakes is still under development, where prediction of small, unnoticeable earthquakescan be easy to predict because they happen mainly around fault lines. Science