Hofstra Class Reunion Reveals Nothing but Success amongst Alumni

By: Briana Messina

Hofstra University journalism graduates are seeing great successes across the board. Their accomplishments reach far beyond an academic level as several former students have found love both within and outside their careers. With talents ranging from excelling in the art of dance to creating innovative technology that could change our lives forever, there is no slowing down these alumni in their quest to further their success.

Thirty year old Savannah Holzwarth has found a home at the N.Y Times arts section after moving on from a five year career as a profession dancer for a popular New York City dance company.  Her love life seems to have blossomed along with her career as she recently announced her engagement to her longtime boyfriend. Fellow classmate Johannes Sorto appears to being doing well for himself as well. The 29-year-old entrepreneur married a woman named Ashley and the couple happily added two beautiful children to the family.  Sorto just recently returned from the future after creating the first ever time machine. When asked what he could tell us about the future with all his advanced knowledge, the young billionaire was hesitant in his answer.

He said, “After seeing the future, I decided to only share it with people I trust.”

Sorto has high hopes to do more time traveling in an effort to better the future of our generation while Holzwarth aspires to do more writing about her passion. There is no limit to what these Hofstra students can do. Whether it is educating readers about the importance of art and culture or visiting the future to make better decisions in the present, these couple of students have proved what great assets they are to our society.

Journalism: 2 News Sources

I followed the shocking announcement that Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaelle Sollecito, were going to be put on trial for the third time for the murder of Knox’s English roommate.

Since there were so many articles on this story, I followed an angle which focused on the judge’s role in the case. Fox’s coverage on the matter proved, as per usual, that Fox is a horrible excuse for a news source. Fox interviewed Judge Alessandro Nencini and there was a clear bias in his favor throughout the entire story. The reporter focused on how hard it was for the judge to announce the verdict rather than focusing on how he ripped apart two young, innocent people’s lives. The only person Fox interviewed was Nencini which shows a very narrow-minded viewpoint on both their parts.

On the other hand, a journalist for USA Today made it clear that the Italian judges were looking to blame anyone for the murder in an effort to appease the Italian media frenzy that surrounded the case. There were many quotes included in the article from several sources which all express that there is “a clear bias from the judges against the defendants.”

The differences in the content of the story for each news source shows the massive gap between each of their values. Fox is willing to take the easier way out by only interviewing one key player in a very complex trial. Additionally, I think they should be embarrassed for using quotes from an interview that NBC News conducted with Sollecito instead of interviewing him for themselves. USA Today proves its credibility by including multiple sources and exposing the corruption of the Italian court system. The writer for that newspaper was more concerned about getting the opinions of the people who supported the victims rather than gathering the thoughts of the prosecutors who have a loud enough voice in the news already.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/02/01/knox-judge-explains-guilty-verdict/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/02/03/amanda-knox-judge/5183469/

Briana Messina- “Religion is Media”

Angela Zito’s article “Religion is Media” had a lot of unique perspectives about the interaction between religion and media, many of which confused me. She mentions several times the idea of ‘mediation’ but I’m still not exactly sure what she meant by it. When she states, “…’religion’ and ‘media’ can be seen to function in surprisingly intimate ways, and to form even more potent forms of social practice when deliberately intertwined” I was unsure if she was using that as a definition of mediation. She later mentions, “Media transforms religious possibilities, and religious necessities press upon and re-form media.” It was also unclear to me if this quote could be used to define the concept of ‘mediation’. As for the article as a whole instead of individual details, I thought the reading was targeted for an audience who had at least some prior knowledge of religion and media. On the contrary, a new reader like me was easily confused and felt as though there was a lot of information but not a lot of explanation.

After reading several posts of other students, I found that Marialena made an interesting point about her interpretation of what Zito meant when she said, “Media transforms religious possibilities…” It has become easier to share your faith with a larger audience because of how far technology has come. However, it is unclear as to if that fact has more positive or negative effects on our society. Often times, technology makes it too easy for anyone to share their beliefs. I find that people are too quick to share their thoughts when they have a keyboard to hide behind which leads to a lot of ignorant comments being spread across the web. I personally believe that religion should have less of a role in media because it is such a personal topic. It’s so easy for comments to be misinterpreted through the media and people can easily get their feelings hurt. Although I think it’s important for people’s different viewpoints to be shared, I find that the media focuses too much on the most radical opinions from each group purely for shock value. This hardly yields positive results as there is too much sensationalism being promoted and not enough logical thought.