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Monday, April 2, 2012

Journalism is not just a talent. It is a skill to be taught.

There's more to being a journalist than putting personal thoughts together

By Danijela Demarin

Since the appearance of UNYPRESS, there seems to be a great amount of confusion and misunderstanding regarding potential competition to Perception, and negative connotations related to originality. Let us present ourselves properly.

Although our website has a section titled “About Us,” we will assume that not many of you clicked to learn about our mission statement or potential goals. So we will start from the very beginning.

UNYPRESS was established by the News Writing class. This class has been publishing a student newspaper at UNYP for the past nine years. Under the supervision of an experienced journalist and long-term professor, Mr. Frank Kuznik, students learn how to achieve recognition in today’s challenging world of modern media. Basically, creating a website and writing articles are both class assignments, not students’ free will.

Furthermore, News Writing is a class mostly attended by Communication and Mass Media students who have successfully completed Introduction to Media Writing, which speaks to the standards and professionalism required to be in the classroom and participate in projects.

Under Mr. Kuznik’s control, students write about numerous topics that are required to be intensively researched and based on credible sources. Do not let the word “control” mislead you: Students choose topics, and if they are approved, the process of gathering information may start. In order for the process to work properly, there has to be a gatekeeper who will keep the area clean of low-quality stories that do not meet professional standards. To be clearer, all the traditional journalistic values must be cherished and constantly used while delivering high-quality media stories. This is the point where the difference between UNYPRESS and Perception becomes very clear.

Perception was created in Spring 2011 as one of the student clubs, another extracurricular activity. Anyone can write and publish. No criteria, no control, no standards. Students are given full freedom to choose a topic and send it to editors, who then shape the story and publish it. The rest you all probably already know by heart. The project has so far been a great success and we would like to wish the Perception team a very successful continuation of their work this semester, and many more freelance writers willing to share their thoughts with other UNYPers!

However, we also hope that this short insight into our goals and functions manages to clear up the situation, and makes it possible for all of our readers to distinguish between the two different organizations.

10 comments:

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  2. May be it will give more information about who are journalists are http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Media-and-Communication/Reporters-correspondents-and-broadcast-news-analysts.htm#tab-4

    And moreover to know how the editing process works in Perception now, you have to visit Perception meetings first and not write misleading information as a "professional" journalist

    By the way, I'm posting it not as a part of Perception team.

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  3. The article was based on personal experience. If there is any untrue information, feel free to give an example.

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    1. ok: "No criteria, no control, no standards. Students are given full freedom to choose a topic and send it to editors, who then shape the story and publish it."

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    2. I'm still quite confused with what you consider untrue or misleading about it so it would be appreciated if you could be more specific.

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  4. Thank you for finally recognizing the existence of our project! If you wish to do any research on what you are writing about (perhaps it's not too late?), I would be more than happy to provide you with accurate information on how our internal mechanisms actually work.

    Best of luck!

    Margareta Retsnik,
    Perception PR Manager.

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    1. Thank you for such a generous offer! Due to the apparent difference between our aims, I suppose no further research would be necessary.
      The focus of this article was supposed to be on the way UNYPRESS functions so that people are familiar with it rather than confused.

      All the best to you too,

      Danijela

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  5. Just wondering what kind of prior research was conducted in order to support such claims about Perception as I see no signs of any cited interviews with any member of the Perception team. Seeing as the aim of this article was to inform the readers about UNYP press I am left curious as to why any negative mention of Perception was needed in order to do. Lastly, it seems a bit ironic this article stresses the concept of "professionalism" since it seems to have made false claims about the Perception infrastructure (which could be perceived as libel) and doesn't seem all that professional to me.

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    1. Professionalism was mentioned in the context of being taught, not provided in the article. Also, it is quite clearly stated the purpose was to define the difference between UNYPRESS and Perception simply because the two were often confused and UNYPRESS was considered to be Perception's competition.
      Again, it would be highly appreciated to know the example of what is untrue within the article. These are pure facts without any purpose to attack or somehow undermine Perception. Just stating the obvious.

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