It’s not a piece of cake—writing headline stories, especially crime stories, brings a lot of downsides to the journalist. There are many inevitable dangers in writing crime stories in media. As a reporter, the journalist has the responsibility to cover the situation which is assigned to him/her. In order to perform the duty well, it’s better to be present on the scene, either before, during, or after it so that the journalist can say that s/he has seen it with his own eyes. Though, being a witness in the scene can bring the journalist a lot of trouble. For example, in a hostage situation wherein the criminal holds a gun: one wrong shot from the criminal and a stray bullet could have hit anyone, including the journalist. Another is that if a journalist who is writing about politicians unveils something contrary about them, then his or her life may be put on stake. Just an article that may go against a powerful and influential person can cost a life. Dangers always accompany a journalist wherever he or she goes, that’s why extra care should be maintained.

      But of course, as a reporter, things that should be covered must be covered, though guided with the limits and guidelines of journalism. If the journalist knows and covers the right thing, at least s/he knows that s/he is on the objective side and s/he’s right. Unlike if a journalist covers the wrong news because of biased reasoning or some sort of threatening, not only his/her life but also the lives of the people who listens to his/her news might be put on the line.

      Engaging yourself with media is a very large step to deal with—you will be having your life grilled with critics, your reports will be seen by different kinds of people, and your articles will be used as a basis of factual situations and events. Dangers are always around in the field of journalism, much more if you are writing for crime stories. Safety is never always assured to the part of the journalist.

      As to the question, “is there still a worth in a journalist’s life if what he is going to do is like suicide”, I think there is a very huge worth of a journalist’s life. The worth in here is that, “if a single life can save a multitude, why not do it?”. The same answer applies to the question “To write it or not?”. After writing this article, I realized that even if a journalist is in a very dangerous field, writing an article that can save a multitude is, of course, worth the danger.

For young people out there now preparing for their year-end exams (and even more important, where to bum around in Europe during the long holidays): 

Now is a good time to stop and think of jobs and a long-term career strategy. 

No, we’re not talking about retail, building construction, bus driving, nursing and service-related jobs which are now firmly under foreign labour domination. 

We’re not even talking about those so-called high-tech work that demands rigorous experience and skill set, such as Java programming, network design and server administration. If you ask around most major IT companies in Singapore, they will tell you that these jobs are mostly outsourced to places like India and China, where foreigners can replace you at 10 percent of the salary you expect. 

1. Your first career plan-of-action is to identify jobs where locals are preferred. Such jobs usually combine some technical expertise (known in HR jargon as “domain knowledge”) and lots of leadership and people-relationship skill. 

An example is IT Project Management, such as upgrading all the computers in Singapore schools or building a Web portal for a shopping mall. For that matter, any project management career is highly desirable, from starting a neighbourhood hair salon to building a stadium for the World Cup. 

Other areas where it would be much preferable to hire Singaporeans include: 

• Managing IT security, Web and social media and computer-based creative tasks
• Working in the creative and media industries – publishing, Web content design writing and production, mass media communication, and of course good old fashion journalism
• Training and teaching, counselling, human resource development and social work. 

2. Next, identify your own skills and inclinations, which would include those outside of your current school studies. Think of all the things you would dearly love to do even if you have no idea how to do them. 

By the way, never ever say you can’t do certain things (e.g. writing, flower-arrangement or brain surgery) just because you’re not familiar with it. In the 1950s and 1960s socialist countries like the Soviet Union, Cuba and China used women to do traditional hard-hat male jobs such as operating bulldozers, building bridges and mining. 

If your middle-age aunt can potentially handle a bulldozer, you too can handle any job, right? 

3. Do research on those skill sets that you don’t have, but like to, and find out where you can acquire them. Set out a timeline on how and when you intend to accomplish it. 

Note that your timeline is not cast in concrete. It is an evolving plan, and it will have to be amended continually after you’ve graduated and started on your first job. 

There are many more tasks and challenges ahead in your career strategy planning. The one key message you must remember is to avoid setting out on a career path where the available jobs are cheaply given out to foreign workers.

Mass communication is essential an urban phenomenon. As far as the spread of the media units and media users are concerned, mass communication in India is an urban phenomenon. Ninety percent of the print media and seventy percent of the electronic media are concentrated in the four large metropolises, state-capitals and industrial towns. Even though seventy-five percent of the entertainment of India’s population lives in the rural areas, media use is largely urban and predominantly for entertainment and petty political squabbles . There is very little attention on the use of the media for getting vital discussions of economic and social development of the rural majority. The media turn the countryside only when there is some crisis or calamity whether natural or man-made. 

Education is part of life; it defines who we are and what we want to be in times to come. Unfortunately, education can only bring most people to a certain extent in life. To make matters worse, education is so straight-forward that one seldom has areas to turn to when everything comes to a halt. The question is: Is it the end of the journey for those whose work industries or work areas come to a standstill or can one still be able to look for jobs in other areas deemed suitable for them?

                Once upon a moment, one may find that a law graduate eventually becomes a public relation executive or a business graduate becoming an architect. With the economic downturn and recent recession, graduates these days are competing with each other to gain a place in their chosen profession. While demands in a field is so low and the supply is so high, it is time for students or graduates alike to re-think about their options to or to not carry on with what they’re doing. For instance, if a marketing student later figures out that his or her industry is pretty much “overcrowded” and flooded with other graduates, he or she would have to emphasize on their strengths and focus on their unique selling proposition.

                Another concern that a graduate should take into consideration is to upgrade on their skills and abilities by taking an additional course. This would not only assist in making one’s resume look good on paper but it would also make one stands out among the rest. For instance, if one is doing a degree in Mass Communication, one can also pick up an English language course to hone on their linguistic skills. This course can be used as an alternative if one finds that he or she cannot his or her chosen or desired industry.

                Despite the fact that one can take the initiatives to continue looking for their chosen profession, they can also look forward to entering other industries for a start just for the sake of gaining the experience. After all, it’s never a lost to learn something new in the process.  

Written communication in the form of pictures and then an alphabet.

The initial written form of communication was a pictograph. Each picture represented different actions and objects. The earliest forms of these picture words were in 3500 B.C. in an area of the world called Sumeria, that is now Iraq.

A Sumarian clay tablet 3500 B.C.

image source

The Egyptians came up with hieroglyphics, which was developed a few hundred years later.

Egyptian Hieroglyphics

image source

The Chinese used pictographs around 2000 to 1500 B.C.

Written communication in the form of an alphabet had a foundation of symbols relating to sounds and not signs. The Phoenicians established an alphabet around 800 B.C. The Romans much later took the Greek alphabet and translated it into 26 letters. An alphabet was far more efficient than the old system of pictographs. A simple sentence might require less than 50 letters and punctuation marks using an alphabet. In comparison, that same sentence would use about 9,000 pictures to say the same thing.

Paper

The invention of paper was necessary once a form of written communication was invented. Paper was the surface that made written communication manageable.

At first, clay tablets were used for written communications but they were bulky and difficult to transport. The Egyptians came up with a woven surface from the papyrus plant and painted hieroglyphics on this paper. The Greeks used a parchment from animal hides. But it was the Chinese who invented the standard writing surface of paper that is still used today. While the Chinese were using paper around 100 B.C., it was not used widely in Europe for another thousand years.

The world’s oldest book from China, 868.

The invention of paper allowed those who could read and write to attain wealth and social status. It also made tax collecting and record keeping easier. Another way that the invention of paper had a profound influence on society was that history and journals could be written for future generations to read. Finally, the laws of the land could be recorded and developed on paper thereby establishing a posted code of civil conduct.

Paper can be made from wood fiber, hemp, cotton, linen and rice

image source

Print

The invention of printing satisfied the huge demand for books. After the invention of paper, there was a tremendous demand for books to be written. But all books had to be written by hand and this was tremendously time consuming and expensive. If you wanted to write a book you had to hire a scribe to write it and it was costly.

A 14th century scribe.

image source

The Chinese developed a block printing system in 868 and then a kind of movable type made of clay and then wood. The Koreans even had a movable type in the 15th century.

An example of Chinese movable block type in the 13th century.

image source

But it was in Germany where Johann Gutenberg developed the printing press that utilized movable type and allowed the Bible to be printed about 1453. This printing method spread throughout the continent of Europe. Suddenly books were being printed, although the rich were the only people who could afford them. The newspaper was officially created as the primary source of news for the masses.

Gutenberg Printing Press, 1453

image source

The printing press led to a revolution of items that were invented or reinforced. These items were religion, scientific research, journals of exploration by explorers, knowledge and study and what we know today as news reporting.

The Telegraph

It is impossible for those of us today to imagine life without our cell phones, but before cell phones were invented there was another huge milestone in the invention of the telegraph.

The telegraph was the fastest form of communication at that time and seen as remarkable. It could travel with a message at the speed of light. Samuel Morse was one developer of the telegraph and his “Morse code” of dots and dashes is still used today.

Morse’s Telegraph, 1837

image source

An Optical Telegraph in Germany.

image source

The telegraph was called “the great annihilator of time and space” in that it changed society itself through transportation in the railroads, the way war was conducted, the speed of communication between buyers and sellers and trans-Atlantic communication.

Most of all, the telegraph was pivotal in the formation of news services and agencies.

image source

Photography

The invention of the camera was first evident in the photographs taken during the Civil War. Suddenly war was a horror in the visual sense that was never understood even in the most graphic written descriptions. Photojournalism where “a picture says a thousand words” became popular as a picture could be internalized faster than the written words.

For the first time historical information could now be journalized in pictures and images.

President Lincoln’s Inauguration, 1861

image source

Civil War Photo, 1862 – Bull Run area

image source

Cinema

The technology of the camera led to moving pictures and the video capabilities that we have today. Movie theaters and “nickelodeons” became big hits. By 1910, there were more than 10,000 such movie houses in America. Soon filmmakers began to see the power in producing films and the potential for a huge business.

A Nickelodeon Movie Theater in Canada, 1910

image source

The Radio

Advances in wire telephony and the consequences of the war allowed radio to be brought into many homes worldwide. The radio was a source of entertainment as well as news for a multitude of families. The radio became the major communication source for people to receive their news.

Pearl Harbor Radio Address, 1941

Young girl listening to the family radio.

image source

The Television

Once again the technological advancements of war paved the way for television in the 1950’s. The television in the 1950’s and 1960’s was the most wanted appliance. About 10 million Americans had a television set in the 1950’s. It soon became a huge consumer of time. People watched their news each evening as well as their various television shows. The entertainment industry now branched off from films into television. Television became a massive form of communication and generated social changes. We watched the Vietnam War and the assassination of John F. Kennedy on our televisions.

Elvis Presley, Milton Berle Show, 1956

Assassination of John F. Kennedy, 1963

Footage of Vietnam war

Live televised Motorcade of John K. Kennedy moments before he was killed, 1963

image source

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “I Have a Dream” speech.

Moon landing, 1969

Television in Germany, 1959

image source

The Computer and Internet

The digital revolution allowed computers to instantly relay information to all parts of the world. In the blink of an eye, through computers and the Internet mass communications was changed forever by bringing the people of the world together.

Newspapers and magazines are now online, as well as on paper. Music-sharing sites are online for distribution both legally and illegally. Businesses can be anywhere whether in a downtown office or in a bedroom. You can buy and sell anything online. You can pay your bills and do your banking online. You can meet people in chat areas and have online relationships. Everyone has a website and politics has invaded the Internet as well. In 2004 in the United States, 1 dollar of every eight dollars was spent online. Emailing is now more popular than “snail mail.”

Al Gore, the Internet’s creator?

Radio Shack home computer, 1970

image source

A microprocessor.

image source

Wireless Technology

Wireless portable media has overtaken our society in the presence of wireless laptops, cell phones and PDAs. Everywhere we look in public places we see the huge impact of our wireless connections. It is difficult to remember life without a cell phone or a wireless connection. I often wish I had stock in a cell phone company as I scan my own monthly bill. But with the speed of technology everything we buy today will only be more advanced tomorrow. Technology quickly becomes obsolete as something new is introduced.

Apple PowerBook, 2006

image source

Apple iPhone

image source

Apple iPods

image source

I wonder what technology will look like in the next 100 or even 1000 years. I can’t even begin to imagine the ten greatest communications inventions of the next millennium!