Jacksonville Media Watch is an e-mail discussion group, currently hosted by Topica. Along with the list member discussions, you will receive an irregular though fairly frequent "Update" from the Listowner. This web page is not the focus of JMW. If you are interested in discussing the media, please sign up!

After you subscribe to JaxMediaWatch you can join in and discuss the quality of our local media or national media issues or pretty much anything media-related. To join, just click on the above link and send. Then you will need to reply to a Topica mailing to confirm your desire to join.

That's it! Or, for the truly easy way, simply e-mail me, and I will sign you up myself.

If you register at Topica (free), you can read group mail there from your web browser and also read the archives. I will not be keeping archives at this site.

Purpose Statement

The mass media have a huge impact on us as individuals as well as a society. In general, media outlets operate as highly profitable businesses protected by the U.S. Constitution. News divisions espouse the "people's right to know," but then instead of news we get health stories about fat-substitution products and trend stories about a new bra style. This is news? We might argue about what constitutes news, but we can't argue that the media make more money than anyone except the U.S. Treasury and maybe Bill Gates.

And then there are advertising and marketing -- those generally evil twins designed to get consumers to spend, spend, spend, even if it means buying things they don't need or extending a credit line beyond a reasonable point. Heck, one of the recent approaches to getting commercial products in our faces is proudly referred to as "viral marketing." That's honest, but we're supposed to think that's OK?

I can't leave here without mentioning another personal favorite subject of discussion: public relations. Is the PR industry media? In the sense that the goal of PR is to manipulate public opinion by using the mass media, yes. Too much of what we see in our media is unfiltered PR hype -- the newsies are too busy and underpaid to do a good job of reporting. So let's talk about PR, too.

We could also talk about how local radio "news" in the morning is basically the Florida Times-Union for the visually impaired, how the T-U can't seem to get sports scores that occur after lunch local time, or how local TV news is more about the money than about solid journalism. We can talk about anything at all about local and national media, advertising, and public relations and how they impact the way we think and live.

I want to make the point that all these -- journalism, advertising, PR -- have positive goals and many fine practitioners who work hard to reach them. But each has its toxic side, a "Dark Side," if you will, that should cause concern. We need to praise the good, but we also need to discuss and try to fix the bad.

All media-related topics are fair game for comment, complaint and discussion. If we need to, we can create separate lists for various sub-topics. We'll just have to see where the discussion goes. Also, I hope local media people will join in. That would be great, even if only anonymously (create a new YAHOO! or hotmail or other account and join us, mediaworkers of Jax!). The only caveat is that this is not the site for personal attacks or airing of grievances at work. This is about media and the public, not internal policies or politics.

I also hope the conversations will be at a high level with at least some positive spin. The goal of this site is not merely to fuss and whine -- though I dearly love to do just that. My hope is that the conversations we engage in on the discussion list, and the postings we make on this web site, will lead to better awareness of our media and their impact, and maybe even better media.

Join us!

--Robert Bohle

The opinions stated herein do not represent in any way the opinions of the University of North Florida, the College of Arts and Sciences or the Department of Communications and Visual Arts. For comments, suggestions, questions and criticism, contact communications professor Robert Bohle at UNF: rbohle@unf.edu

© Copyright 2000, 2001. All original editorial content on JaxMediaWatch is protected by U.S. copyright and international treaties and may not be copied without permission. All rights reserved. Copy and distribution of this material for any commercial purpose is strictly prohibited. Permission to use JaxMediaWatch content is granted on a case-by-case basis. Please direct your requests to rbohle@unf.edu