Persephone's Playland

2009-12-17T13:19:00.000-05:00

All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.
Marshall McLuhan

I think that media is a form of entertainment (which, yes, as Mcluhan states is intrinisically linked to education), and as such, it is valued differently than the founding principles upon which we are raised. What role does religion play in this? Our religion does teach us the binary of right and wrong, and it is often through television and movies that the gray is filled in. Therefore, we are educated through media, but is this education a bad thing?

New SyFy Show

2009-12-15T01:41:00.002-05:00

Has anyone seen this? Caprica is a new SyFy show and the personalities of the robots is created through search engines so that they are copies of real people created from all information found online!

Scaryy

2009-12-14T19:33:00.002-05:00

What scares me the most is Google Maps's Street View

100 Sites to Download Everything

2009-12-14T19:25:00.000-05:00

100 Sites to Download Everything

List includes free audiobooks, emagazines, sheet music, clip art....

Social Etiquette

2009-12-14T19:08:00.002-05:00

What I think is most interesting about social media is all of the new rules of social etiquette that have come with it.

Writing a letter is no longer a casual thing to do. It has been redefined.

Facebook friending means something between real world individuals. It has definitely evolved in its meaning as Facebook has evolved. I think this is a large reason why people are nervous about it. They don't understand the ramifications of their actions or how to control it.

For example, in my last post, I shared an article about viral crooks and how they can take over your online identity creating a social faux pas. However, if I had received that email/message, I would have known immediately that it was spam. Also, I know how to avoid getting spammed because I have learned how to control my profile. If you are going to interact with social media, it is imperative that you know this. Otherwise it is just as scary as people say.

For example, I would never allow my photos or cellphone number to be open on Facebook. I have it open to my friends. I am incredibly careful about my privacy settings and have created groups to limit what those who I know really well can know about me versus those I do not know well vs employers and my grandparents etc.

Twitter/Facebook Pirates

2009-12-14T19:04:00.002-05:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/technology/internet/14virus.html?_r=2&em

“I wonder what people are thinking of me right now?” said Matt Marquess, an employee at a public relations firm in San Francisco whose Twitter account was recently hijacked, showering his followers with messages that appeared to offer a $500 gift card to Victoria’s Secret.

Mr. Marquess was clueless about the offers until a professional acquaintance asked him about them via e-mail. Confused, he logged in to his account and noticed he had been promoting lingerie for five days.

“No one had said anything to me,” he said. “I thought, how long have I been Twittering about underwear?”

McLuhan Link

2009-12-07T18:48:00.001-05:00

CBC on Marshall McLuhan: The Man and the Message -- 10 tv clips, 8 radio clips

This helped me understand the distinction between "hot" and "cold" media.

Marshall McLuhan adapted these references from the TV jargon "high" and "low definition." High definition means well-defined, sharp and detailed visually, such as a map. Low definition refers to indistinct images scanned by the eye, with which the viewer is left to fill in the blanks, such as a sketch.

McLuhan says television is a cool or low definition medium, offering little information but the user participates with most of his senses. He explains that a book is a hot or high definition medium, presenting the user with lots of information at a level of lower sensory participation.

Also, the direct reference to high definition vs low definition points to the question of the accuracy of his categorization of television, now that it is high definition.

McLuhan

2009-12-07T16:34:00.001-05:00

After reading the blog post about McLuhan and reading the first part of Understanding Media, I am still fairly confused. Radio is hot because there is not a lot of participation, high deterioration in one mode... focused sound...

Technologies are anything that allows your person to have more capacity.

I read Mcluhan Reconsidered which offers this quote:

"...those who offer technologically determinist analyses of the history of western cultures--the Havelocks, Ongs, McLuhans, and their followers--remain marginalized.... The determinists see culture as a series of behaviours determined by the powers and limits of each generation's "hardware", that is, the technologies of communication..."[1]

So, it is not hard to see why McLuhan would have so accurately predicted the evolution of media -- he used a technologically determinist perspective, and thus he was stating what would ultimately be produced by the evolution of technology over time - he wrote about the ways that culture and history have been and will be affected by technological advances.

Definitely makes sense that he was in a Woody Allen movie. I think I will write more after today's discussion when I have a better idea of what to take away from his ramblings.

EPIC 2014

2009-12-03T17:22:00.000-05:00

Watching Epic 2014 .

(I feel like I'm in watching one of those creepy museum videos. And then Google conquered the Macedonian Empire....)

I don't see The New York Times going offline, especially because if they ever did, people would just begin to type up the articles or scan them onto computers. That is why I imagine newspapers went online in the first place -- to control access to their own content online. By requiring a username and password to access its site, The New York Times is able to keep its full articles from coming up in Google searches.

I think that this video is an overreaction. If print media fails, it will be because the newspapers realized the amount of money they could save by becoming exclusively online organizations.

Also, newspapers are just as capable of printing false facts or stories skewed by special-interests as any citizen journalist. The same people who police the facts of the media now will be policing the facts of citizen journalists. We do not implicitly trust what we read but have been taught to question its veracity and motives. A more trusted journalist gets more hits and more hits means more advertising revenue. The same systems in place today to police the media will continue to police online media.

Facebook/Twitter

2009-11-24T10:37:00.000-05:00

I think that it is a mistake to attempt to compare Facebook and Twitter. On both sites, users become entangled in the development of an online image, however, this image is constructed very differently on the two sites.

The most obvious difference between the two images is that on Twitter, the user identity does not necessarily have to be tied into the real world identity of the user due to the option of anonymity. It is still important to note that this user identity is still an identity that a user must cultivate. Even without the assignment of a real world name, the username becomes a construct in itself. There is a self-consciousness with which even anonymous twitter users tweet. There is still a connection to this anonymous identity that is run by vanity. People do not want to be boring or to be considered a spam-like, feed-cluttering Follow, and hence, people cultivate their user identities to be interesting.

Although, many Facebook users similarly do not want to clutter their Friends Newsfeeds, it is expected of Facebook to be more personal. The identity that is cultivated by the user does not only include informative status updates, but also photos and a profile detailing interests. (Even the absence of filling out the profile section or of photos is a part of a Facebook identity.) The updates are thus a part of a larger image that is furthermore tied to a real world persona. This real world person is more interesting than the information they spit out. This person stands on its own as interesting. On Facebook, users are still motivated by vanity, but they exercise this vanity to create an overall image of themselves that includes much more than the occasional 140 character tweet.

Both Facebook and Twitter allow users to create online images of themselves; however, the Twitter image is a markedly different one than the Facebook one.

Twitter Lists

2009-11-23T16:06:00.000-05:00

A new feature on Twitter are the Lists. Anyone can create a list consisting of any public profile (or profile of someone who has granted you access to view their tweets). I used the List feature to create a list of everyone in our class on Twitter. I am not sure that I got everyone, so feel free to Tweet at me (@CC12887), and I will quickly add you to the list!

Now that I have made the list, anyone (even people not on the list) can now "Follow" the list I created. Once you have done this, you can click "@cc12887/Trinity-bloggers" on the right hand side of your screen, and only tweets by people on the list (our class) will show up!

I wish I could Tweet at a list so that every time I want to say something about Twitter, I don't have to create a whole new blog post!

Anywaaay, a few useful tools:

Mashable does a free Twitter Guide Book for those of you who are still lost. It is updated consistently as Twitter continues to try out new features.

Answers.com also has a 5 Twitter Tips You May Not Know. Posted by Susan Elaine Cooper (@buzzedition)

Find Friends on Twitter

2009-11-23T15:30:00.000-05:00

If you are looking for people to follow, go to the search box on your Facebook page and type in twitter.com. Then select "People" from the left hand side. A lot of people put their Twitter site on Facebook in the website section. Facebook will show you your friends who have done this. It is only a matter of time before Facebook adds Twitter Username as an option.

I Follow:

2009-11-23T15:26:00.000-05:00

For those of you new to Twitter, here are some people I enjoy Following.

For some laughs, my absolute favorite follow is @badbanana.
Also, @weirdnews, @kennethn,
For social media updates, @mashable is the obvious user to follow.
Random (incredibly interesting) information: @guykawasaki
Celebs that are worth the follow:
Stephen Colbert @stephenathome
*REMEMBER if you are going to follow a celebrity, make sure that it is a "verified account." Twitter did not have this feature when I first started out, and it's really useful.
*ALSO, keep in mind that a lot of celebrities have staff updating the their profiles, so obviously, following PR conscious stars like Britney Spears is kind of a bore.

Hockey Fans: @ecklund
Sports Fans: @deucedbrains -- He's just starting out but I love his commentary.
News is the obvious: @BBCworld, @thecnnwire, @nytimes ......

I also enjoy following specific reporters from these news organizations. That way, you can get information more tailored to your interests (your favorite movie critique, restaurant critique, fashionista, Republican commentator...)

I enjoy Twitter

2009-11-23T15:08:00.000-05:00

There are a bunch of different reasons I enjoy Twitter. I really don't have time to fill out a blog daily, and since so much of my time is spent writing essays, doing readings, etc, I really don't have that much to say on a blog every day. If a blog isn't updated regularly, it loses followers, so I am not a blogger. (Ironically, I am blogging this.) I have time to update my Twitter fairly regularly - random thoughts I have, something I see on TV, read about, something someone else Tweets, I then retweet.

I admit that at first, I did not get the point, but I did enjoy trying to amass followers. For me, more followers implied that I had been 'successful' as a user. Since then, I have learned to love Twitter for thousands of other reasons, and I don't think much about getting followers. I imagine it is similar to having a blog in that you don't actually know that people are reading your posts or necessarily know the people that read them, but you write the posts as if there is an audience, without much thought to that audience. I tweet things I find interesting or my random thoughts on movies I have seen, and it is as if there is an audience that I am writing to. This audience would be interested in the articles I find, but I know that most of the people reading my tweets are people that I know, so they probably care more about the fact that my friend Adrienne is coming to visit me this weekend. But I still refuse to use Twitter to update the world of the mundane happenings in my life. So there is a disconnect between those two lines of thought. I still enjoy tweeting however.

An Article on Twitter

2009-11-23T14:57:00.000-05:00

I posted this earlier, but check it out. This is a blog post I did about Twitter earlier in the semester, which links to an article that I wrote about Twitter last Spring.

http://persephonesplayland.blogspot.com/2009/09/one-writers-quest-to-unearth.html

A couple of other things...

2009-11-23T14:54:00.001-05:00

RT @fadymansour KFC became a trending topic after Magic Johnson said MJ ate a KFC fried chicken bucket when he visited. No ad can top that!

"We've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change." -- Rear Window

Ayatollah Warns Iranians: "I am Following You All on Twitter" http://bit.ly/PGgu5

"Facebook is like Cheers, where everyone knows your name. Twitter is the hipster bar, where you booze and schmooze people" - Annie Colbert

Tweetdeck

2009-11-23T14:36:00.002-05:00

I just want to add something quick about Tweetdeck.

I have experimented with several of the apps, including Tweetdeck, and what I have found that I really liked is Destroy Twitter. The great way for these kind of apps to gain users is that every time someone Tweets from them it says which was used for that Tweet.

This is how I came across Destroy Twitter. An article was tweeted into my feed for uses of the iPhone. A University of Chicago student had figured out a way to use his iPhone to open his dorm room door. I just spent 30 minutes trying to find the article and failed, but his Twitter username is @varenc - This is discrovered after using the Find People feature on Twitter. If a genius like him uses Destroy Twitter, I figured I should too.

Give it a go: it's faster and more streamlined.

Five Uses for Twitter

2009-11-23T14:35:00.001-05:00

1. The obvious - publicity.

2. When following a person who retweets another, you may go check out that "other" and become a follower as well.

2. Also through clicking on one of the trending topics on the right, you will find a live feed of people who have talked about that topic - if they say something interesting, you may go check that tweeter out and possibly become a follower as well.

3. Once you are a follower, there is a pretty strong chance you will check out the blog or site that the Twitter account is linked to.

4. When someone mentions your Twitter account, that person's followers might click on your username just because it was mentioned by someone they follow. And the cycle continues.

5. If you have a new article or post that you think deserves attention, you can tweet about it, so your followers never miss a good one.

6. Someone might tweet about your site and publicity! Even if you don't have your own account.

When the plane crashed into the Hudson River, it was a Twitter user who first broke the news of what had happened (namely, what had happened was not a terrorist attack, but an accident). I happened to be with a friend and we were searching the news to find out what had happened, fearing the worst. I decided to open up Twitter, and sure enough, there was a trending topic, and Twitter calmed my fears before even the news could figure out what had happened. The news channels probably knew what had occurred but could not report it until they had confirmation from a number of sources.

Hyperlocal Blogging in Lake Forest

2009-11-09T19:03:00.000-05:00

I was telling my friend who is a blogger about the class discussion of hyperlocal blogging, and she directed me to this site which covers news and events in Lake Forest and Lake Bluff. The first thing I noticed was that the blog has the weather (which was one of the first tips on the site Courtney posted about hyperlocal blogging). This site has everything -- from an armed robbery at a nearby gas station to coverage of the local sailing team to finding a home for a dog. Very cool. The suburban mundane is suddenly celebrity.

Blogging the Hyperlocal

2009-11-09T17:15:00.000-05:00

After reading Courtney's find 'PeytonPlace.com' I decided to check out Lake Forest blogs. I went to the blog link off of the Lake Forester's web site. I expected to find people I knew or events I had heard of. Instead, I found blogs that covered the entire area covered by Pioneer Press, which is the company that owns the Lake Forester. Most of the information on these blogs did not pertain to my area or peek my interest.

The best site I found for local blogging was a site dedicated to my county, not my city: LakeCounty.org/blogs. The site is not well planned or updated very regularly, so it is not very helpful for someone trying to stay up to date on Lake County news; what it does do, however, is provide information to prospective visitors.

The Hyperlocal: The Lake Forester

2009-11-09T16:45:00.000-05:00

My town's local newspaper, the Lake Forester, is still widely read by Lake Forest residents. The most interesting news that it covered however was always who was on the honor roll and who was in the blotter. To be in the blotter was the cardinal sin of Lake Forest. Once someone turned 18, his or her name could be printed along with the offense and due to the overzealous nature of Lake Forest's finest, anyone was at risk. Even the curfew breakers were subject to humiliation.

My first memory of our town's newspaper was when a photographer came to interview my grade about Pioneer Days (a fairly self-explanatory week during which third graders had to live life as if they were pioneers). Looking back on it, it was very exciting for us to be in the newspaper, but who really read this article other than our parents? And couldn't our parents have been easily informed about the event by the school through a newsletter as my high school did? The answer is that the Lake Forester's article on Pioneer Days gave our school positive publicity. A family moving to the area could look to local newspapers in deciding where to settle on the North Shore. This means that the hyperlocal's newspaper's primary responsibility is the town's reputation, not reporting the truth.

Furthermore, now that the Lake Forester has an online platform, anyone looking for information about the town is likely to look at the site instead of buying the newspaper. This goes for the Classified section as well.

BREAKING NEWS: The Primaries in Lake Forest

2009-11-09T16:31:00.000-05:00

So pretend you're a hyperlocal reporter, and record Election Day in your town on your blog, at least as you experience it.

It was the first time I would ever vote. Awesome. I walked into City Hall -- who knew Lake Forest had a City Hall? It was like walking into early 1900s Ginevra King's Lake Forest with wooden inscriptions on the walls supporting the winding staircase. The only indication that it was the 21st century was the sheet of paper at the top with an arrow, directing voters to the voting room.

The room that I had imagined so many times during Bush's election (when I had been too young to vote) was just like any other room. No sneering politicians, no lobbyists, no protests -- Just some elderly volunteers handing out clipboards.

Morbid Entry On Real World Fatality in the Virtual World

2009-11-09T16:13:00.000-05:00

Thoughts on Virtual Estates Lead to Real-World Headaches
I hate the idea of my family and/or friends having access to my email or Facebook after my death. People always joke about someone being responsible for hiding the porn from someone's wife, mother in the event of his/her death. The virtual world holds even more secrets. People can have entire lives on Second Life and no one would know. For all we know, Enchant could have an entire real world family as well. I like the idea of a digital executor, who will receive a person’s latest passwords in the event of his or her death. This recalls the idea of the friend who knows where the porn stash is or how to continue to get money to the illegitimate child.

Random Note about Wikipedia

2009-10-26T20:57:00.001-04:00

I was editing the Wikipedia page for Accidentally on Purpose (the tv series) and I came across my BIGGEST pet peeve about Wikipedia. I hate when a Wikipedia link is created toward something random that has nothing to do with the article. For example,

"While Billie receives encouragement and advice from her party girl best friend (and fellow journalist) Olivia and her conventional, younger, married sister Abby, she also has to deal with Zack's freeloading friend Davis"

First of all, "party girl" does not link to anything in Wikipedia, but more importantly, what does that have to do with the tv series? And, who does not know what a party girl is?

Wikipedia Edits

2009-10-26T20:37:00.003-04:00

I edited the page on my home town of Lake Forest. (By the way, if you type LakeForest.com into the browser, the Wikipedia page for Lake Forest comes up).

I found information that gave the population data for Lake Forest in 2008, and I added information about former resident and inspiration for Fitzgerald's Daisy Buchanan Ginevra King.

I attempted to edit the page on Katharine Hepburn, but her page had been protected. There were several additions I would have liked to have made, and I think that I need to pursue those changes on the "talk" page. Something I came upon while attempting to make this edit was a post made under this "talk" page about a "deletion campaign" being run by ip address 76.176.167.130. Apparently, someone at this address has been deleting posts about the sexuality and queer identities of actors such as Katharine Hepburn and Carey Grant.

I also added a friend as a "famous alumnae" of my high school and put a "watch" on the edit to see how long until it is changed.

Wikipedia

2009-10-26T20:31:00.001-04:00

I think that people take Wikipedia with a grain of salt. It's interesting to look for information on Wikipedia for small information, but I don't think that I would ever use it as a reference for an essay. If I was watching a movie and it brought up something I had never heard of, I might browse it's Wikipedia article. It is a useful starting point.

Google Takes Over

2009-10-13T16:41:00.002-04:00

Upon reading New Yorker article "Searching for Trouble; Why Google is on its guard" a few things stuck out to me. First of all, these facts are astounding:

Google search takes in about four of every ten online advertising dollars, and last year Google's revenues exceeded twenty-two billion dollars, more than two-thirds of the thirty billion in total U.S. newspaper advertising projected for this year.

Does print advertising play a signifant part in revenues anymore? Is it even worth investing in print advertising if online advertising is so much more profitable?

A family friend owns packaging and shipping company Uline. It was a profitable business but it was not until the company paid for the Google AdWord "packaging," among others, that business boomed. Now, whenever someone types "packaging" into Google, ULINE.com is the first site that pops up.

Epic On Facebook Privacy Outdated

2009-10-07T16:51:00.000-04:00

A lot of the Epic site on Facebook privacy is out of date. I realize that the top of the page updates with the different changes that Facebook makes, but the "Encyclopedia" toward the bottom is completely outdated. So much so that I did not know how to navigate what was still true of Facebook and what was not.

USA Today Web Platform

2009-10-07T16:40:00.000-04:00

USA Today does a great job with their web site. If you want to finish reading an article, you must watch a very short ad. Also, they dedicate a substantial amount of space to their news bloggers, who keep readers up to date while the magazine is not updated.

Annie Le Murder vs. '98 Murder of Suzanne Jovin

2009-10-06T13:01:00.000-04:00

What I found most interesting about the coverage of the Annie Le murder was the spotlight it put on the violence in New Haven. When I first heard about what happened, I immediately began to scour the web for more information. (It sounded like something straight out of Law and Order SVU.)

From clicking random links on the right hand side of many pages, I came across the murder of Suzanne Jovin in 1998. The Yale Daily News did an interesting piece in which they compared the two murders, the public's reaction to the murders, and how they were covered by the media.

I think that a lot of the fascination with this case, especially on the Trinity campus, is that this horrible thing happened to such an average person. I mentioned the case to a friend, who informed me that there is a web site that shows crime rates on different campuses. She said that Yale University pays this site -- which I should mention in full disclosure she did not remember the name of -- to falsify the crime rates of New Haven... hm, sounds like a conspiracy theory, but still, it raises some pretty big issues about the responsibility of such sites.

Bloggers Must Report Endorsements

2009-10-06T12:37:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I wish I could just send a link along with a quick sentence out on this blog for something this small. According to Popculture, Bloggers will now be fined by the government if they do not report that they are being paid by brands to plug their products. Fines can reach up to $11,000 per violation. What do you think about this? Should government be able to regulate the blogs to this extent? What does this complicate?

Poke Me

2009-09-30T18:27:00.000-04:00

I am sure that Facebook generates a lot more money now than it did when I first became a user, but am I the only one who longs for the simpler days?

Now, I have to check my Facebook account every five seconds to make sure that no one has posted an embarrassing photograph of me or written something inappropriate on my wall. Also, sometimes I just feel, well, overexposed. So what do I do? Delete my account? But then all of my friends who are avid users will not be able to get in touch with me, and what are the chances that they know my email address?

When I first logged into Facebook, it was as a prospective Trinity student. At the time, Facebook was open only to college students, so I used a friend's log in information to look at pictures of students at Trinity. A year later, I opened my own account. Facebook consisted of information such as interests, favorite movies, TV shows, quotes, etc. The only photo that was displayed was the profile photo, and people could post on your wall, but it looked more like a blog post and they had to sign their names afterward. Something like 5 posts could show up at any given time, so I had to delete less important ones to leave up my favorites.

Facebook has now become a source of controversy, drawing a lot of attention from the debate over privacy on the Internet. How many times have we been told that our future employers will have access to our accounts. How does anyone in the future intend to run for a position in government with the photos that will be of them all over the Internet??

I miss the days when there was a little Facebook guy in the upper left hand corner, and the most exciting thing to happen on my account was that I got poked.

PS Can someone please bring back the poke?

The Hartford Courant: Plagiarism or Just Lazy Journalism?

2009-09-28T19:05:00.000-04:00

Thoughts on plagiarism by the Hartford Courant....

I think that it has become general procedure for newspapers to take information from other news sites. I think that better news meaning collaborating with media outlets that are able to focus on a smaller issue or population. However, collaboration implies that the other media outlets were informed that their piece would be used. Also, since it is the larger media organizations putting the smaller ones out of business, it is important that the smaller (collaborating) one get the credit. This means that maybe instead of using the article as a source, the Hartford Courant could have posted a link on their web site. This would be a better method of acknowledging that the Courant is not able to adequately cover everything.

I agree with Matt's line of thought in that I find this to be poor journalism and lazy, but also, not plagiarism. I think that since so many people use web sites as their primary source of information that the creation of a site that combines the resources of several different media outlets would be better than expecting any one organization to cover all the stories to the fullest extent. If more than one organization covers a story, then links can be placed to the different accounts of the story, allowing readers to get a more informed view of the story from different perspectives.

More On Bowden's Atlantic Story: Power to the People

2009-09-23T19:19:00.001-04:00

As I highlighted below, Bowden's central thesis was unclear and too mixed with side arguments and comments. One huge point I drew out amidst the craziness was that blogs mean more "eyes" watching. They mean that there are multiple sources of news, and people who do have the time to explore more in depth and issue or a developing story have a space to publish that information. Bad policies are not as easily passed as they were before and tyrants do not as easily go unchecked. Take the case of the most recent election in Iran. The protests were largely organized via blogs and Twitter. Ahmadinejad can control the sanctioned news outlets but he can only control the blogs as fast as he can shut them down. Blogs mean the furthering of democracy, putting power in the hands of the people as it was originally intended. The primary problem then is how journalism as a profession can survive. Bowden says that we need to couple this with a financial model that works. But, maybe the profession of journalism is fated to end. This does not mean the end of good reporting; it means the beginning of a new kind of media.

How do we police the veracity of claims made by this new media? When students write papers, they don't run to the library so much as scour the Internet. We have adapted to learn which sites to trust and which to ignore. Web sites and blogs are held accountable for what they write by their name. They are not responsible to the people, but if they want to gain followers and national attention and (thus become financially viable) then they have to be accurate. People will comment on fallacies on sites. I would not be surprised if a web site pops up directed exclusively at keeping popular sites in line, reporting on bad reporting.

Bias In the Media: Bias Becomes Scandal, Scandal Sells

2009-09-21T17:07:00.003-04:00

After reading Mark Bowden's The Story Behind the Story, I was not entirely convinced of his point. As a case-study, it was very interesting to read, and I liked that he found the source of the Sotomayer videos, but his ultimate argument was unclear. Okay, so, reporting has become more about presenting propaganda than find the truth, but to blame that transformation on the rise of ambitious bloggers is inaccurate. If he meant to blame it on the rise of the Internet, I might buy his argument; however, even then, I think that this change in reporting has to do with what the public wants. Whereas in the past, the public wanted to the truth and all of the scandal that its unveiling brought with it. Nothing has changed except that the media has lowered its standards in order to bring the public what it wants: that scandal, that biased, scathing remark. There is a reason why some news makes headlines. The Internet does contribute to the spreading of inaccurate reporting, but it is still the reputation of the news organizations that is on the line when they publish a story regardless of context.

One Writer's Quest to Unearth the 'Twitterverse'

2009-09-21T14:48:00.003-04:00

Last Spring, everyone was abuzz about the new Twitter craze; well, at least the media was. The new vocabulary that Twitter had generated left me completely confused -- what the hell was a tweet? -- so I decided to investigate. After creating an account and spending a couple of weeks reading Twitter guides on sites such as Mashable, I decided I knew enough to write an article for the Tripod where I was the Features editor. For those of you in the class who are completely confused, check out the article (I also posted it here on an experimental blog that contains links to some of the information I collected). Bear in mind that Twitter really is whatever you make of it. Also, no one cares that you have been reading some article or watching some movie for hours. Readers want to be able to engage with the people they follow on Twitter: USE LINKS.

Take a look at Persephone's Twitter Stats

Old Media Tries to Put Pulse Back Into Stale Forms of Entertainment

2009-09-21T14:27:00.008-04:00

Today, while scanning the web, I came across this article on Gawker: "Emmys Are Relevant Again, Declares Dying Old Media". I personally did not catch the Emmy's -- I believe I was watching Zorro on ABC Family -- but the article makes an interesting point. According to Gawker, the Old Media, such as the NY Times and USA Today, described the Emmys as a huge success. The Washington Post's Tom Shales notably went so far as to say that in the award show "America's traditional old broadcast networks staged a comeback." Gawker then goes on to criticize the show, saying,

"But in the end, 90 percent of the show is reading lists of names and listening to pompous speeches punctuated by dumb jokes, and even a teenage doctor can't make that relevant for the modern age."

Is the Old Media merely attempting to put a pulse back into an antiquated form of entertainment? The New Media says yes, and that there is no room for the Emmys, or the nostalgic perspective of the Old Media for that matter, in today's modern age.

Cary Grant and Old Media Glamour

2009-09-16T19:36:00.011-04:00

In class Monday night, a student waxed nostalgic about the old media as if it was a thing of the past to be missed by future generations. I was immediately reminded of Cary Grant in His Girl Friday, a movie which captures a time when reporters spoke too fast and couldn't get enough of the action. When I decided to enter the world of journalism, I'm not sure that I was looking for that ruthless, fast-paced lifestyle, but I definitely did not imagine myself sitting behind a computer, communicating with my editor via iChat. (Although, I should admit that as far as fact-checking goes, the Internet is a godsend.)