Hostess

For the past few days, on television news and in the newspapers, I've read/heard a lot about Hostess going out of business.  I think it is kind of funny how this is such big news to everyone, because it makes me realize how much a company that makes donuts and other bakery snacks seems to mean to people in America.  On the news, it showed several people going out of there way to go to the store to buy "the last twinkies" and ding dongs, ho-ho's, etc.  I just think it is interesting how it seems to effect everyone.  Television news also reported on many stores actually being out of twinkies and other Hostess snacks after people heard that they'd be going out of business. I think the most devastating part of the news about Hostess leaving is that so many jobs will be lost from it.  According to a news article I read about it, it said the number of jobs being lost would be close to 18,000, which is such a large amount of people that are officially out of a job now after the strike against Hostess.  Luckily, I heard there were many companies planning to buy out Hostess, so maybe all the snacks people are buying could be back on the shelves before we know it.

Libel

Today, it seemed that there was a lot of news going on, however, a story I found on USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2012/11/02/amanda-bynes-not-naked-not-troubled-but-very-rich/1677765/?morestories=obnetwork, was the focus of my attention because it goes really well with what we talked about in class a few weeks ago about libel, and what you can say in the media.  In this story, popular actress, Amanda Bynes, is reportedly suing InTouch magazine because they reported on her in a tanning salon walking around naked because she forgot a robe. Bynes claims this is not true and is suing for printing a fake story, why InTouch says they stand by their printing.  I'm still kind of confused on what the rules are for her doing so, since she is a public figure, but I thought this story was really interesting, mostly because of what we talked about in class.  The discussion we had definitely made me think more about celebrity gossip magazines more than others because of what they put out there, for instance, almost every week I see something about the Kardashians, and how Khloe Kardashian and her husband are getting divorced, but they are clearly not getting divorced.  I think it's interesting that the rules vary for those in the public eye.

News Reading 11/14

Today, I read a couple of different articles.  One of the articles I read was from my local newspaper, Seacoast Online, about a man jailed for having heroin in his house.  This article caught my attention because its kind of a rare occasion in my area to see in the news, and stood out to me over the rest of the articles which seemed to be able school related things in the area.  Another article I read was in the Huffington Post, and it was about 5 hour energy drinks and how they have been reported to be a possible cause in 13 different deaths over the past 4 years.  I thought that this was a particularly interesting article, because although I don't drink energy drinks like 5 hour energy, I know a lot of people that do, so I was very curious to see what it had to say.  I think this kind of story would draw a lot of people in with its kind of delayed headline, "Caffeinated Drink Cited in Report of 13 Deaths."  I thought this was a good title on the writers part because automatically, readers, including myself, will be interested to see exactly which caffeinated drink it is talking about.

News reading 10/9

I read some articles today about the progress of New York City after the hurricane last week.  One article I read was the implementation of the even-odd gas rationing system in NYC.  On even numbered days, those whose license plate ends in an even number can get gas, and on odd numbered days, people with an odd last license plate digit can get gas.  According to the article read on USA today, this has worked a lot better and gas lines in the city are now only about 20 minutes compared to the hours and hours of waiting that was taking place before this happened.  Apparently, people were also selling gas on Craigslist for outrageous amounts of money.  Personally, I thought that it is rude for people do sell it for so high when there are plenty of people in need and who have been out of power for over a week at this point.

Today, I decided to finally take a look at the Washington Post as well because it is a site a have forgotten about all semester up to this point.  On the site, I found an interesting article about a Jeep recall from Chrysler in Detroit.  The jeeps are apparently recalled because of an airbag problem.  The airbags have been randomly deflating while people are driving in the 2002-2004 grand cherokee models.  The recall includes 919,000 vehicles.

In other news, I decided to do my issue story this week on the gym and was very surprised at the amount of survey-takers I have gotten on the survey I did, as it was more than double what I got on my last one!

Laws passed yesterday

Today, aside from reading a lot about the election itself and President Obama's big re-election, I found a lot of articles on the law that passed making marijuana legal in Colorado and Washington State.  I not only read about this on the news sites, but also on social media sites like Facebook and twitter.  It seemed like people almost cared more about that than the win from Obama.  I personally believe it is really stupid for people to be so hyped up about it, and it's actually annoying to see that people seem to care more about that, at least, people from my hometown.  I think it partially shows that people don't really know about politics in my age group, so it is definitely time for everyone to get more educated before the next election.

Election Day 2012

Today, as I expected, the election is taking over everything for one of the last times!  I decided to read some articles in the Hampton Union today, as well as in the USA Today.  The articles in the Hampton Union I read were pretty random ones, like about some kids who are facing criminal charges that went to my high school because they decided to break into a house.  Another article I read pertained to the election, and was actually about a man that comes into my work and how he is voting for Romney, and his quick election day story.  One of the articles I read in the USA Today was about how Dixville Notch, way up north in NH voted.  This one was interesting to me because I heard in the past that usually, whoever wins in Dixville Notch is the president, and since results aren't in yet, I was curious.  However, it came by surprise to me that Dixville Notch actually was a tie- 47% Democrat, 47% Republican.  This will make it very interesting to see how the election goes, especially because I've been seeing that it is a tie in many polls that i've looked at over the past few days.

Election Takeover on the news

Like I've mentioned in many posts lately, the election is really taking over the newspapers and TV news.  Today, on the Huffington Post homepage, there is a big chart of the 50 states and it gives you a lot of information and statistics about the candidates, as far as how they're doing in each state and what states are swing states, etc.  I took some time to look at this and kind of put it together, and it looks like there are a lot of Romney states, especially in the Southern portion of the country, however, electoral college wise, I'd say Obama definitely looks like the winner, but I guess we'll all see on Tuesday.  On top of spending time looking at the charts on the election, I noticed in several news sites, including the Huff. Post, there were a few articles about the New York Marathon being cancelled.  In the New York Times specifically, it went into how canceling it wastes a lot of money, however, I think there is more to it than just that, as there are many people still without power in the city.  Another article I read was about the MBTA system in Boston shutting down during the storm.  What I liked and found most interesting about this news story (found on the Boston Globe site), is that the article had little writing by the actual author, and mostly used peoples tweets about the MBTA system and its updates during the storm.  I thought it was very effective in telling the story, as twitter is very updated nowadays and you can find things out on there before even the newspapers report on something.