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Media, John Oberst, and Other Delights

Who Is John Oberst?

And other important questions.

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,”
— George Orwell, “1984”.

John Oberst posing methodically in Milford Sound, New Zealand

Hello… Is anyone there? I don’t want to just be talking to myself this whole time. Oh, hello there. Welcome to my objectively blog-like blog. Please keep reading; I promise to not always be weirdly meta in the blog. I’m not sure that I have properly introduced myself yet. As I mentioned earlier, my name is John Oberst, and I heed from the great state of North Carolina (the town of Cary to be exact). I am taking Media Literacy and Info Concepts because it is mandatory for Journalism majors. I am not very experienced with writing in media, but I do consider myself an avid consumer of Journalism and other Medias. I get my media from a variety of sources but my personal favorite news organization is FiveThirtyEight, which I check daily. I love to check the news on my computer or phone. I rely on both of them constantly. I also hear the news through a variety of podcasts which I listen to and the occasional indulgence in Cable News.

I happen to have a love-hate relationship with modern News Media. I believe that the News is one of the most important industries to the Health of our Nation. I love the majority of what our news does. I believe in investigated journalism and using their power as the Fourth Estate to hold members of both Government and the Private Sector accountable. When the news well, it benefits everyone. However, our news still do have problem. Ultimately, a newspaper’s job is not to help the country; it is to sell paper. This can lead to the newspapers acting in dumb ways to make themselves seem better. Whether that is through terrible leading headlines, or by doing some false equivalency. Our news does more right than it does wrong, but it still makes a lot of mistakes.

I apologize for the issues within this blog. I have very little programming knowledge, just the little bit that I learned in the Introduction to Computer Science. If you want me to create an HTML page that has a few sentences, I could probably succeed. But anything more complicated would take me many hours, countless notes, and insane amounts of googling. Despite this lack of technological knowledge, our World is better because it is so immersed in Media. It is quite easy to fact-check, and call people out when they are saying something wrong or offensive. However, that comes with some problems. We are living in a world overtaken by infotainment. What started with talk radio, has expanded into something that takes over our life. It is so easy to see a simple tweet, and assume that it is completely true without double checking. This is the problem with a linked world. We are moving dangerously close to a post-truth world where everyone claims they know what’s right, and you can’t convince anyone of the Truth because no one knows what the truth is.

The I-You Relationship

Communication can be hard. I know that it is the most basic of human skills, but that doesn’t make it easy. After watching Celeste Headlee’s TED talk, I decided I would try to make a conscious effort to have better conversations and communication. Although I am sometimes good at having conversations, I’m not always. So the other day, I stopped by my job on campus (at Campus Ministry) and I attempted to talk using her tips. One of the people working was a co-worker that I am friends with but not particularly close friends. I began having a conversation with her.

One of the first things I tried to ask was how are you. This is a question everyone asks in day-to-day life but rarely actually talks about. Even casual responses about the horribleness of Finals week can give insight into how the other person is. For the first part of our conversation, I listened intently and gave her my entire focus. Yet, as the conversation went on, I found myself having trouble following the advice from the ted talk. I felt my mind wander and distract myself from listening. We have become so attached to our phones and to another world that we sometimes don’t value our conversations.

I And Thou: Martin Buber, Walter Kaufmann: 9780684717258: Amazon.com: Books — Here is the book, I read for class. Highly recommend even if I could not remember the name when I was writing this blog.

Writing about this conversation harkens me back to something that was on my philosophy test today. Some philosopher (I forgot who as soon as I finished the test, wrote a book discussing the difference between I-You and I-It relationships. In an I-you relationship, you try to understand where the other person is coming from. You relate and empathize with them on a personal basis. It is an inherent connection between two people. I was able to maintain an I-you relationship for part of my conversation with my co-worker but not for the entire conversation. I kept feeling my mind being drawn out into unimproved unconnected thoughts. Our society’s current obsession with corporal things rather than relationships is an issue and I will keep working on my ability to have actual conversations and communication.

————————————————————————————-Music Corner

In my opinion, this was the best top 40 song of the past decade and it has the word “talk” in the name so it fits this blog post.

Finally Done (other than my 20 late assignments)

I thoroughly enjoyed our senior capstone. I believe that you did a good job with the brand new syllabus. I think focusing on a creative project that all of us can contribute to was a genius idea. As a chronic procrastinator (as you by now well know), I wish we had sooner and more urgent deadlines on the creative project. I think in the future, the creative project should be our “capstone” which we work all semester on. I think it is a great idea for our future and lets us focus on what we want to do.

I do think we focused a little too much on talks and speeches from graduates. From my perspective at least, none of those talks came from people on a similar trajectory as me. Although we should still have a few, I think focusing more on our projects would be beneficial. My biggest takeaway from this semester is the amount of paths that I can follow. Speaking with my mentor, hearing speeches and talking with my classmates, demonstrates how many different ways I can choose to take my life.

————————————————————————————-Music Corner

I was tempted to do the worst song ever recorded in complement to the best, but I figured that wouldn’t be true to myself (though you should enjoy this masterpiece anyways because it may not be great musically, it is extremely creative in a fun way). Here is possibly my favorite song of all time.

Pressing the “cancel” button

I was planning on doing an intent dive into cancel culture, and whether it truly exists in the way it was talked about, but I was quickly distracted by the story of Aaron Calvin. Reading his article in the Colombia Journalism Review, inspired me to conduct many google searches into the story. I vaguely remembered the bare-bones of the story, but further inquiry made me curious. Numerous people on twitter, in newspapers and more argued that Carson King had been cancelled. Yet, nothing happened to Carson King. He got fame and interviews for doing a great thing. Yes his bad tweets were aired, but there have been virtually no long term consequences. Meanwhile for his decision to include the tweets in his story and research, Aaron Calvin was fired. Do I believe the tweets should have been included? No. But I think conducting research into them was the right thing. Conducting research means finding everything about the subject and then determining what to put in the story, including negative things.

The worst part about the “cancelation” of Aaron Calvin is that he was clearly a scapegoat. It is not only the journalists decision to post this information. The editors made a decision to in cloud the tweets. They even published a rationale for why it was included. Yet public backlash resulted in Aaron Calvin getting fired. I don’t believe what he did was right, but it was not a fireable offense. Some would argue this is an example of cancel culture, I would state that it is just good old fashion public shaming, which never ends well.

The best breakdown of the Monica Lewinsky public shaming that I believe everyone should watch

One of the posted articles spoke about Monica Lewinsky and the horrible public shaming that she had to go through. This is the most obvious example of “cancel culture” that I have seen. For a long time Monica Lewinsky’s name was synonymous with crude jokes. She went from being one of hundreds of white-house staffers to being a name said by every single comedians when they were looking for a cheap laugh. Monica Lewinsky’s life was completely ruined when she was 21. This is not new and not connected to social media, in fact this was before even myspace was invented. Another example of cancel culture before social media is the Chicks (then known as the Dixie Chicks). After opposing the Iraq War, the Chicks were blacklisted by many country music stations and had a lot of their concerts picketed. Here stating their opinion (not even a bigoted comment or other negative action) lead to them being “canceled”.

“Cancel Culture” is nothing new. Public shaming has occurred for as long as humanity has had a community. Social media can have a negative impact on it, but the phenomena has existed as long as humanity has.

——————————————————————————–Music Corner

With the discussion of music and cancellation in my blog today, I wanted to use one of the greatest protest songs of all time.

Fording the River

A physical version of the metaphorical river (I took this photo in New Zealand, here, to be exact)

I like the imagery of a river. Serene and peaceful. The river flows from one area to another. It is constantly buzzing with life and excitement. It is much better than a latter. One that hides in the shed until you need to clean your gutters then immediately return to the shed. Bridget Thoerson’s post comparing a career to a river rather than a latter really stood out to me. Rivers are constantly moving and exciting; ladders are stationary. Rivers are big and allow multiple swimmers; ladders will fall if too many climbers go at the same time.

Our life is a collaborative effort. No one single-handedly pulls themselves somewhere. We live our lives in teams. We can’t look at our career as a single effort. Our careers require help and work together. I don’t want to work in an environment where everyone only cares about themselves and tier career. That makes a horrible life and a horrible company. Rather, we should strive to work together and build everyone up. A team is only as good as their weakest link is a classic saying in the sports world. I don’t like to look at it that way. I prefer, to think that everyone contributes to the team. In a river, we all work together; on a ladder, it’s everyman for themselves.

The other major part of the river analogy is the adaptability of a river. The river is constantly moving and you don’t know where to go. I think this is a much better way to live compared to a straight and narrow path on a ladder. One of my Gallup strengths is adaptability which I am very proud of. I believe I am able to survive and thrive in any circumstances. I think that I will be able to thrive in the river and end up where I am meant to end up.

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Music Corner:

My song for this week is June’s a River by Big Red Machine. Of one of my favorite albums of the year, this song is beautiful, and utilizes a river as a metaphor perfectly.

30 Seconds to Tell Your Story

Hopefully my discussion with the Dean of the Law School at Georgetown will occur in a much nicer elevator than this one

Sitting on the floor of my professors office listening to others present, I was faced with a question. Would I perform this elevator pitch in real life. If I happened to find myself in the elevator with the Dean of the Law School at Georgetown, would I just start talking about myself. I don’t think so, it doesn’t fit my style. But that doesn’t mean this elevator pitch is without merit or frivolous. In fact, it helped solidify how and when I will use this pitch.

Conducting these elevator pitches has helped me become more confident in what I want to do. I have had an idea of why I wanted to go to law school for a long time. But, conducting these mock elevator pitch allowed me to formalize the right words to describe what I wanted to do. It allowed me to come up with a story about myself that will help me with my personal statement and into the future.

My elevator pitch also helped me boost my confidence. Although I consider myself a good public speaker, I do not like to talk about myself. But hearing the helpful suggestions and compliments of my small group really helped assure me in what I was doing. Hearing a classmate tell the whole class that I had the best talk really solicited my strength and confidence. Oddly enough, I felt a lot better about giving the speech to people rather than online. In fact, I think I would have preferred to give it to the entire class. It taught me that I prefer to be in front of people rather than online.

Elevator pitches are not something I look forward to. They are not fun, exciting or thrilling. But, I think I did a good job in being authentically myself, which is what law schools and jobs will like.

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Music Corner:

Todays music corner was chosen based on the first words of the song. But there is never a bad time to put a song of London Calling in a blog post

Flying through the Interview

I listened to the podcast where Gary Raz interviewed David Neeleman the founder of JetBlue Airlines, Azul Airlines and Breeze Airlines. I was drawn into this podcast because I knew how static the airline market is. As a global scholar, I have travelled immensely and seen the lack of options. In fact, Breeze (which was a just founded this year) is the only other new national airline to be founded (and still be running) since the founding of JetBlue. How did David Neeleman succeed in such a hard-business to succeed in. This is what drew me to the podcast.

A JetBlue plane prepares to leave the airport

But what I found was not what I expected. I expected Neeleman to be cocky and proud. I expected him to belief that he built this all through pure skill and American effort. But what I found was a brutally honest man. He discussed how his set-backs at Southwest Airlines actually inspired him in his work at JetBlue. And most importantly, he took full responsibility for his mistakes. There was a part of the podcast where Neeleman was discussed a particular bad day where many flights were canceled. He said that he took full responsibility to the public. This form of leadership is highly lacking and very important. It was amazing to hear such honesty and candor.

However, I did not believe all of Neeleman’s methods of leadership were the right choice. In particular, he discussed that he did not want his workers at JetBlue to unionize because he felt that if they needed someone to stand up them, he wasn’t doing his job right. Although from first glance this seems like a noble thought process, he actually is harming his workers. If he truly wanted to prove to his workers that he is doing his job right, he should allow them the full ability to negotiate with him. However, my negative feedback was a lot smaller than my positive lessons from the interview.

There were two particular things that stood out to me from the interview: his taking of responsibility, and his relentless effort. I have already discussed the taking of responsibility, but what I want to learn and emulate is his effort. As you have already realized, I am a habitual procrastinator. It is not a trait that I am proud of. I want to inspire to achieve Neeleman’s level of commitment.

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Music Corner:

Since we are discussing airlines today, I wanted to play one of my favorite songs that I listen to every time I drive to the airport.

They Say I’m a Dreamer

Upon taking the Adobe Creative Type Quiz, I did not know what to expect. Although I am well familiar with the Gallups strengths tests and other similar strengths test, I had never heard of this one. Yet, I found the answer to be interesting. The test described me as a DREAMER which means I have connection to emotions and imagination, empathy and sensitivity. It also means I use dreams to fuel real-world action, and I am an innovator.

One of the things that appealed to me about my test results is where it said that I am “naturally drawn to express your inner world through literary pursuits, music and the visual arts. Although I am not a particularly talented musician or author, I do attempt to follow these pursuits in my free time by scribbling down random novella ideas or possible song lyrics. Considering none of the questions discussed this output, I was shocked and impressed by the tests assumptions. Additionally, I was a big fan of their description of my greatest gift is my depth of sensitivity and empathy. I highly value empathy and think of it as possibly my greatest strength (although it is only #4 on my CliftonStrengths dashboard).

My Dad with his band, an inspiration for my creative outputs

However, this is not to say that the test is perfect. In fact, there are a few issues I have with its judgement and ideation. Conducting any form of personality test on such few questions is likely to be rife with potential issues. For example, I am not a big fan of the description of DREAMER, or more accurately the word choice of DREAMER. I definitely consider myself to have big dreams and aspirations, but that is a tiny fraction of my creative output. I like to be creative for the sake of being creative, even if it is just an off-poem that has no purpose other than to entertain me for the ten minutes I write it. I also have motivation problems with following through on my dreams which could be why I have an adverse reaction to the word choice DREAMER.

Regardless of the test, my creativity is important because it allows me to entertain new perspectives and thought processes. It allows me to add a new perspective which is crucial in any field, but especially in law, where you are preparing rebuttals and responses. You have to be able to think on the fly and be creative in how to react. Creativity makes everything better.

————————————————————————————- Music Corner

I attempted to connect my music today to the concept of being a DREAMER. I unfortunately already used “Imagine” for my title pun, but I love this song and it has very creative lyrics and storytelling.

Over five hundred twenty five thousand possible words

How do you write a sentence for you?

How does one define themselves? This is the question philosophers have debated for ages. Who am I? Most people would respond to this question by reciting facts about themselves and constructing a narrow picture of who they are. Giving a full answer to this question is nearly impossible. We are constantly changing. There is no way to purposely encapsulate yourself in your sentence. Instead, I did my best to focus on the most important things about myself. After a little of time thinking, I came up with the following sentence:

John Oberst puts effort into making the world a better place through empathy, intelligence and goodwill.

A poor quality photo of the lake we used to camp at

There is a lot that defines who I am, and condensing it into a single sentence is a nearly impossible task. I considered discussing many aspects of my being, but I ended up building my sentence around two things. The first was a saying my Dad always told me: “Leave this place better than you found it.” Every year, he (a middle school teacher) led his class on a camping trip which I would join. When we were cleaning up he’d say, leave this place better than you found it. This is a motto I try to live by and so I made it a part of my sentence.

I chose the second half of my sentence by focusing on three very key characteristics that I believe describe me. Empathy is one of my top five Gallup strengths and an important characteristic. I believe it allows me to understand where other people come from which makes me both a better person and a better professional (both for my public relations major and for a potential career in law). I then added intelligence because I believe I am an intelligent person. I go to a good school and make good grades. Additionally, I believe that I think critically and am willing to challenge my beliefs which is a form of intelligence that is very important in all potential professional aspirations. My final characteristic was goodwill. I believe that having good intentions is an integral part of who I am and who I would want to be employed by. I want to have good intentions and be surrounded by people with good intentions. My sentence is authentically John, and having goodwill is an integral part of myself.

Music Corner:

The song I choose asks is the question we all had to answer in order to write this blog. It might be a little on the nose, but it fits the topic.

How I could have been a pre-teen Entrepreneur

The summer before I headed to Middle School (yes, I was just a young tot), I spent two weeks in Washington DC taking a Gallup class for kids on strengths and entrepreneurship. Everyday I would take the metro into the city with my Grandma and then learn about entrepreneurship. We would take field trips to fancy restaurants and talk to the owners and head chefs. It started me on learning about what entrepreneurship is and why it is a good thing.

Here in Omaha, I am still surrounded by entrepreneurs. I like to joke that my family knows half of Omaha and that is only a slight exaggeration. I have family and family friends that founded restaurants, record labels and more. And honestly, I have not noticed much difference between entrepreneurs and others. The main difference is that entrepreneurs followed through on a dream. Whether that is owning a restaurant or owning a record label, they started off with an idea to do something they loved, and then they followed through.

Although I have known about entrepreneurship for a long time, I had not thought about applying it to media until recently. Entrepreneurship was business; media was media. Yet, my time at Creighton has me rethinking this notion. Of course, media is a form of business, but I had never considered that you could start your own thing in Media. In my mind, Media was a thing that had already existed. But with Dr. Rupprecht’s, history of American mass media class, my mind began to change, and I hope to further expand on it in this class.

However, there are some issues with media entrepreneurship, the first is how fickle the market can be. The Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship cited that 15 major city daily papers have been shut down since 2007. It is very hard to run a successful newspaper. Even the positive stories that the chapter cites has negative consequences. Vox used their early strategy by focusing on Sports blogging with SBNation, a site I frequented many times as a kid. But, they have had to layoff some of their best writers, and severely diminished the site. I now turn to other places for my sports news.

Being an entrepreneur in the media business is not easy. The intended audience and profit margins are not always easy to maintain. But, those that innovate and build new better brands will end up succeeding.

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Music Corner

I can not think of any great songs that perfectly fit the discussion of entreprenurship. Instead I will add one of my favorite songs that was released by a record label started by a family friend.