Austin’s Site

Throughout intro to media, I’ve gained such an in-depth understanding of objectivity and bias. I thought I knew quite a bit about it before I had intro to media as a class, but once I walked into Gaylord College and started getting it explained by professionals, I realized what I thought I knew was somewhat untrue, and the stuff that was, were only a tiny part of the entire true definition.

When we first started learning about bias the first specific topic, we covered was yellow journalism. Which is essentially where journalists and news outlets use the biggest, flashiest, most controversial headlines that will grab the reader’s attention. These headlines may not always be true, but they work in helping draw people in and making them read through an entire article.

I thought that people did this just to do it or just because they heavily favored one side. But little did I know one of the main reasons that these people put out heavily biased headlines and yellow journalism is because people are willing to sponsor the company or pay the company for them to advertise them or even write about them in a high regard and demonize the other party/side.

We learned that yellow journalism has only increased with the rise of social media and that everyone has access to it pretty much all of the time. People can hop on their phone and will be exposed to multiple different forms of yellow journalism. Another thing that we talked about was about the algorithm and how it will trap people with content and media that only aligns with their beliefs causing them to only view a one-sided view.

Then I learned about objectivity which is essentially where a media outlet or a single reporter is presenting fair and truthful news. They help the audience view the issue in an unbiased manner and write about the current issue in an extremely neutral tone.

Overall, this showed me that a lot more goes on behind the scenes than I realize, and it also showed how much of an impact money can make on persuading a company or media outlet to put out certain headlines. I learned how to clearly sight and tell the difference between objectivity and biased articles and now understand the in-depth process that influences each outcome. My media literacy skills have massively improved over the course of the semester, and I know that will help tremendously moving forward in my career and degree as well as my time at Gaylord.

Kanye West has Inspired many…He’s widely known as a pioneer of the music industry and is a reason that “sampling” which is taking an old song, chopping parts out of it and flipping it into a beat is such a popular method to make beats today.

Kanye was born on June 8th, 1977 in Atlanta Georgia. He was raised by his mother Donda West, and from a young age she knew he was creatively gifted. from a young age he would always find ways to make music of some sort. He’d beat on the table with silverware or use a pencil at school and make a beat and would often get in trouble at school for causing a lot of racquet.

He grew up in Chicago, Illinois and attended Chicago State University. He had been making music since he was 15 years old and at this point was good enough to where he decided to drop out of college to pursue music full-time. Hence prodding him to drop his first studio album “College Dropout”. The album exploded right off the bat on the billboards selling roughly 441 thousand units in the first week marking one of the best albums debuts ever by an artist’s debut album. Right then and there a star was born. After Kanye debuted his sampling style on his song from the album “When it All Falls Down” everyone wanted to get a beat from Kanye, he was making beats left and right for the biggest artists in the game like Jay-Z and Nas. He was making a lot of beats and selling them to record labels like Roc-a-fella records.

Over his career he has done many things that nobody else has done and has blazed a trail for many artists and creatives today including me. He was one of the main reasons I fell in love with music and decided to take it a step further and start making beats and producing just like he did. Another thing he did was get into fashion and he teamed up with Adidas to create his own line of high-end clothing and shoes called “Yeezy”. This brand, much like his first album took off and generated millions up millions of dollars for Adidas in the first year of its launch.

Overall, Kanye West has done many remarkable things and has broken many streaming records in the music industry and currently stands as one of the top musical and creative artists in the industry today. He again has blazed a trail and shown what’s possible to other creatives when you’re willing to step out and believe in yourself and in your creative talents.

Just recently the NBA made a huge announcement, they’re launching their first ever in-season tournament. They built custom court designs for all of the teams and the way that they made the announcement was in quite the creative way.

They made a commercial inspired by the film “The Heist” and in the commercial they made a classic movie scene introduction where the narrator was introducing the play-in trophy as the prize that they were all trying to get to and introducing certain NBA players that were casted to be in the commercial as different roles in the master plan to steal the trophy. The commercial was shot in all one long take with a lot of motion and moving pieces, so it was extremely impressive and was super engaging. Each player was playing a certain part, the undercover janitor, the undercover waitress, a fake guest and they’re all working to get this trophy.

This commercial impacted me because it was super entertaining and put a funny and creative twist on the announcement of the in-season tournament. It also made me excited for the in-season tournament and did a really good job of enticing me to watch the tournament. This commercial made me laugh and built hype toward the tournament.

Cole Bennett is a creative genius. He’s my biggest inspiration that inspired me to pursue my cinematography/creative career. Everything I do creatively has some sort of influence or has some similarity from what he’s done.

Link to Picture Above – Cole Bennett Interview – Lyrical Lemonade Empire, Indie Success – XXL (xxlmag.com)

He was born in Plano, Illinois and was creative from a young age, he was always playing with cameras and was always intrigued by them. When he was in college he started a film, event coordination, and promotion company called Lyrical Lemonade. The way he came about that name was unique. Him and his mom were sitting in their kitchen in Plano, and he knew he wanted the name of the company to be the name of a fruit and then something to do with music, his mom then from out of nowhere said “How about Lyrical Lemonade?” At first Cole didn’t like the name but sat on it for a while and then it grew on him, and he picked it as the official brand name.

He started hosting small rap performance events and shooting music videos for various artists around the Chicago area. Those events then grew, and Lyrical Lemonade started to become a more popular, well-known brand around Chicago. Cole then started filming for superstar rapper Famous Dex and that’s where it all took off, Cole booked rapper Lil Uzi Vert out of Philadelphia for his biggest event ever and his video for Famous Dex blew up and just like that Lyrical Lemonade was known nationwide.

picture above – https://i0.wp.com/ourgenerationmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/3a3a6860-1.jpg?fit=2048%2C1365&ssl=1

He continued to throw events and shoot videos and now throws one of the biggest festivals of the year, the Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash Festival and shoots videos for some of the industry’s biggest artists (Gunna, Lil Durk, Juice WRLD, Cordae, Eminem, Skimasktheslumpgod, Justin Beiber, Don Toliver, Kanye West, Polo G, Lil Yachty, Yeat) and many others. He has a unique creative style so that you can recognize his videos from anywhere and has now expanded into making studio albums and dropping a clothing line. He has changed the creative industry as we know it and is on track to go down as one of today’s greatest creative directors ever.