WSJ

Using the Wall Street Journal as our primary instructional tool in the course helps the students have motivation instead of having a big chunky book. The WSJ obviously contains new information and new headlines that we most likely are familiar with. It helps us be informed of what is going on today instead of what happened years ago. Specially for a class of Mass Communications, it is important for students to be updated with new information specially for those who are planning to continue their career within this industry.

The WSJ touches many issues concerning Mass Communications and while reading the daily newspaper we all learned different things that are going on within the media. We learned things about the e-book reader, iphone, movies books etc., topics that are most likely of our interest. One curious thing I will always remember is the randomness of the first page story. These stories were definitely different and outrageous.

Textbooks often have old information and it is really hard to keep track of what is going on today. During this course I read and learned different stories of things that are really happening today and we could compare and think of what can happen tomorrow. Using a text book I think that is limiting our knowledge because obviously does not contain current information.

I honestly wont renew my Wall Street Journal subscription due to the lack of time that I have between work and school. But I would definitely recommend this newspaper to everyone because is a complete newspaper and in my opinion, it is well distributed.

The Road

“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy is a movie that takes you to an extreme and makes you think what would you do in a situation where you barely have the necessary things to live. It makes you think and question yourself how far would you go to protect your family. This book/movie also presents the values of a family and how you should keep those values no matter what.

Personally, I have to admit that I did not like the book or the movie. While reading the book I was utilizing the audio book provided through the Internet and it was just really boring and it was a story stretched into a book. During the story some very exciting moments occur but then again they were on the road on a journey to the coast to get nothing.

This book should not have been made into a movie, at least that is my opinion. I went to see this movie with my fiance which thought the same thing without reading the book. I was actually really excited to go see the movie since the trailer was really good and it kind of made it seem like there was going to be a lot of action and a lot of exciting moments. But then again, it was the same way as the book was written.

Obviously the movie had a couple of differences from the book due to cinematographic elements. A couple of scenes I though would not be seen in the movie but did surprised me such as the one with the little boy which it ended up being the same once that the boy ended up with when the father died. This was something that was not clear in the book and we actually thought that it was an hallucination from the little boy.

If I have to choose between the book or the movie I would definitely choose the movie. First, because I am a visual person and I think I enjoy the theater and the music behind the story. Second, because for me, the book was really difficult to read maybe due to the language barrier. But I still liked the idea of reading a book and been able to watch a movie afterwards and compare the movie to my imagination.