NEWS IS A JOKE: Assignment 1a

In my first ‘The News is a Joke’ studio class, I certainly gathered a further understanding of what I’d gotten myself into. Not in a bad way or anything, but I’m not the most avid news watcher (but I do enjoy comedy) so I was a bit nervous about doing a news studio. Fortunately, immediately the studio felt comfortable and welcoming. We started off pretty simply as we delved into a bit of a binge session of some great comedy news. Featured comedic reporters included Stephen Colbert and John Oliver. Watching these segments from their programs certainly set a mood for the studio and enabled us to establish standards and definitions of what comedy news is exactly. As a class, we also spoke after each clip as each of expressed our ideas, thoughts and opinions, which really enabled us to further develop our own standpoints on comedy news, what we think it is, how it works and so on.

Watching these clips from well known comedic journalists and reporters certainly helped me personally as I found that I related to Colbert and Oliver in ways that they use their humour to handle serious issues. Their personalities too are something that certainly stood out to me and how they use their charisma to engage audiences whilst discussing serious issues. For me personally, this definitely helps me in gathering an understanding of how to engage audiences (i.e. use of personality and conversational talking to make audiences feel comfortable and not forced into engagement)

Overall, I feel as though I’ve made a great decision in choosing to study ‘The News is a Joke’ for my studio. I already have an interest in comedy itself and personally, take more interest in comedy news than regular news. Seeing the technicalities behind the news production and comedic writing is something I am greatly looking forward to doing over the next 12 weeks.

 

Assignment 1b: http://www.mediafactory.org.au/lauren-bisignano/2018/07/25/the-news-is-a-joke-assignment-1b/