The Daily Show is Frakking Genius.

Tonight saw the Daily Show lambasting the one topic I’d been hoping for the longest time to see them tackle, but up to this point they had–well, not ignored, but, let’s say, given short shrift. That is, CNN’s and the other networks overproduction of the Republican and Democratic primaries.

Regular readers–and by “readers,”  I mean “Pam,” will recall that I had some harsh words for Blitzer and team some weeks back for engaging in a silly game of posturing, with the whole “best team on television” bit. Gloriously, tonight saw the unavailing of the Daily Show’s “Best Motherf***ing Political Team on the Planet.” And the Lord looked upon it and called it good. From the overwrought “central campaign” whatsit, with huge LCD screens, giant rotundas and pompous talking head, to the total lack of useful analysis, The Daily Show nailed the look and fell of these cable news shows, while skewering the content of said program. Specifically, they had John Oliver on his packet-switching network hub access machine–i.e., a computer hooked to the Internet–while others showed off pie charts and bar graphs that swere very shiny and offered no insight into the the race, beyond “oh, hey, Hillary’s ahead tonight”

This does raise a serious point about the news coverage of these events; namely that they either don’t or can’t go in-depth to provide meaning for these events. And by meaning, I don’t mean the rampant hype or speculation, but some sort of in-depth information gathering and synthesis. And must admit I don’t really know what that would look like, but but it just seems like the current situation isn’t it. The current situation reminds me of the old, old schools of philosophical thoughy–and I’m talking Plato’s time, here–that held that by sitting around and thinking really hard, we could all come to realize Truth. And then things collapsed and there were dark ages, and fast forward a bit to the scientific revolution, when some folks realized that, hey, maybe we should observe the real world directly to figure out what’s going on. And it seems that what we’ve got here in 24-hour cable news is a Platonic ideal of thought–that if we get a bunch of pundants together in a room and have them think a lot about this race, we’ll get useful analysis. Which is bullcrap. Sure you’re standing in front of a nice screen, but does that tell us anything beyond statistics and speculation? I’m not convinced that it does.

I think what we need in cable news is a revolution of information. The anchors and reporters need to begin asking how they can dig under the surface to reveal hidden information (good old investigative reporting, in other words) and bring that to light. Start asking questions about what the public needs to know to make and informed decision; what candidate holds which position on what issue? I’ve seen precious little in that vein. Of course, this is hard to do on a 24 hour schedule; you’ve got to worry about filling a non-stop block of programming. So there may be  serious practical obstacles to accomplishing anything more in-depth than what we get; at the same time, I think we need more in order to become better informed. It may be necessary to break away from the 24-hour news cycle so there’s more time for reporters to think about the news they are presenting. How could this happen? I’m not sure. I only hope we don’t have to fall into another dark age to get it resolved.

Glossery Part 2, and Some Links.

Some more definitions:

MOO:
“A MOO (MUD object oriented) is a text-based online virtual reality system to which multiple users (players) are connected at the same time.

The term MOO is used in two distinct, but related, senses. One is to refer to those programs descended from the original MOO server, and the other is to refer to any MUD that uses object oriented techniques to organize its database of objects, particularly if it does so in a similar fashion to the original MOO or its derivatives. Most of this article refers to the original MOO and its direct descendants, but see Non-Descendant MOOs for a list of MOO-like systems.

The original MOO server was authored by Stephen White, based on his experience from creating the programmable TinyMUCK system. There was additional later development and maintenance from LambdaMOO administrator, and former Xerox PARC employee, Pavel Curtis.

One of the most distinguishing features of a MOO is that its users can perform object oriented programming within the server, ultimately expanding and changing how the server behaves to everyone. Examples of such changes include authoring new rooms and objects, creating new generic objects for others to use, and changing the way the MOO interface operates. The programming language used for extension is the MOO programming language, and many MOOs feature convenient libraries of verbs that can be used by programmers in their coding known as Utilities. The MOO programming language is a domain-specific programming language.” See also: MUD, MUCK. (Wikipedia)

MUCK:
“TinyMUCK or, more broadly, a MUCK, is a type of user-extendible online text-based role playing game, designed for role playing and social interaction. The backronym “Multi-User Created (or Character, or Carnal) Kingdom” is sometimes cited, but is not the actual origin of the term; “muck” is simply a play on the word “mud” in TinyMUD.” See also: MUD, MOO. (Wikipedia)

MUD:
“In computer gaming, a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon, Domain or Dimension) is a multi-player computer game that combines elements of role-playing games, hack and slash style computer games and social chat rooms. Typically running on an Internet server or bulletin board system, the game is usually text-driven, where players read descriptions of rooms, objects, events, other characters, and computer-controlled creatures or non-player characters (NPCs) in a virtual world. Players usually interact with each other and the surroundings by typing commands that resemble a natural language, usually English. Arguably modern graphics-based massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), such as World of Warcraft as well as social avatar virtual worlds such as Second Life could be considered MUD variants.

Traditional MUDs implement a fantasy world populated by elves, goblins, dwarves, halflings and other mythical or fantasy-based races, with players being able to take on any number of classes, including warriors, mages, priests, thieves, druids, etc., in order to gain specific skills or powers. The object of this sort of game is to slay monsters, explore a rich fantasy world, to complete quests, go on adventures, create a story by roleplaying, and/or advance the created character. Many MUDs were fashioned around the dice rolling rules of the Dungeons & Dragons series of games.

Such fantasy settings for MUDs are common, while many others are set in a science fiction–based universe or themed on popular books, movies, animations, history, and so on. Not all MUDs are games; some, more typically those referred to as MOOs, are used in distance education or for virtual conferences. MUDs have attracted the interest of academic scholars from many fields, including communications, sociology, law, and synthetic economies.

Most MUDs are run as hobbies and are free to players; some may accept donations or allow players to “purchase” in-game items, while others charge a monthly subscription fee.” See also: MOO, MUCK (Wikipedia)

USEnet:
“A contraction of ‘user network,’ [it] is a global, decentralized, distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name. It was conceived by Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979. Users read and post public messages (called articles or posts, and collectively termed news) to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles bulletin board systems (BBS) in most respects, and is the precursor to the various web forums which are widely used today. Discussions are threaded, with modern news reader software, as with web forums and BBSes, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.

One notable difference from a BBS or web forum is that there is no central server, nor central system owner. Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing conglomeration of servers which store and forward messages to one another. These servers are loosely connected in a variable mesh.[clarify] Individual users usually read from and post messages to a local server operated by their ISP, university or employer. The servers then exchange the messages between one another, so that they are available to readers beyond the original server.” (Wikipedia) Note: Wikipedia article does not cite any sources.

vBulletin:
“A commercial Internet forum software produced by Jelsoft Enterprises.”
Underlies many bulletin boards; for example, The RPF and the TrekBBS. (Wikipedia & Marshall Huffman)

Fanfic:
Fan Fiction. Fiction written by fan of a particular TV show, comic, game, or other entertainment property, which is set within the world of that property. Predates the Internet by years, but has taken off with the advent of online communities. (Marshall Huffman)

I found a few podcasts with some New Media related content (they’re all from the same site, though). First, here’s one with some thoughts on online communities: http://www.clawcast.com/podcasts/claw5std.mp3, which begin at the 21:50 mark; they get into Second Life at around 29:00.

There’s also one featuring a conversation with two self-published artists who use new media outlets to get their work to the public, and it has some comparisons with old media, etc. Pretty interesting; that part’s at 11:57. http://www.clawcast.com/podcasts/clawcast1.mp3

And knowing how much Pam hates hearing people lump mediated news into “The Media”…the hosts do just that in this podcast: http://www.clawcast.com/podcasts/claw4.mp3 at the 51:00 mark. Of course, this is the furry fandom, and if anyone here watches CSI or MTV (or reads Vanity Fair, or watches Entourage, or, or, or…), you know they have reason to be afraid. Interesting to get the perspective from a group that gets burned (unjustly, IMO) by news stories on a regular basis.

There’s a ton of other podcasts on the site, most of which I haven’t listened to yet, but with titles that sound interesting and/or relevant. I’d suggest checking them out.

Glossery Terms, Part 1

Internet Tech Terms

RSS Feed:
Short for “Really Simple Syndication,” a method of providing real-time updates of selected content, such as blog posts or online news stories, to web browsers or other Internet software. See also: Blog, Internet, World Wide Web, Web browser. (Marshall Huffman)

Internet:
A network of computers that share a series of protocols, allowing a global exchange of information between groups of machines. See also: World Wide Web, Second Life, MMPOG. (Marshall Huffman)

World Wide Web:
A specific set of programming languages, among them HTML, which computers exchange over the Internet, in order to allow users to view files as Web pages.  Note that “World Wide Web” is a subset of “the Internet,” and the two are not properly synonymous. See also: Web Browser, HTML. (Marshall Huffman)

Web Browser:
Software that encodes and decodes HTML and other World Wide Web programming languages in order to display Web content. (Marshall Huffman)

HTML:
“[A]n initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document — by denoting certain text as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on — and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects. HTML is written in the form of tags, surrounded by angle brackets. HTML can also describe, to some degree, the appearance and semantics of a document, and can include embedded scripting language code (such as JavaScript) which can affect the behavior of web browsers and other HTML processors.” (Wikipedia)

Blog:
Short for Web Log, a type of online diary which allows users to easily write and post content on the World Wide Web. (Marshall Huffman)

Blackboard:
A Frankenstein mishmash of website, blog, and BBS operated by Oeregon State University as an educational aid to the students and teachers. Functionally, a glitchy annoyance. (Marshall Huffman)

Internet Acronyms ( A.k.a, I wish there had been a list of this stuff way back when…)

L33t:
Stylistic spelling of “leet,” short for “elite,” a term for a form of Internet slang which “uses various combinations of ASCII characters to replace Latinate letters.” History and usage can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L33t. See also: ASCII (Wikipedia)

ASCII:
“American Standard Code for Information Interchange…is a character encoding based on the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that work with text. Most modern character encodings — which support many more characters than did the original — have a historical basis in ASCII.” More information can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII. (Wikipedia)

IRL:
In Real Life. Refers to a person’s non-Internet activities or experiences.  (Marshall Huffman)

IMHO:
In My Humble Opinion. Used as a qualifier in online conversations. Usually employed to offset the effects of the least humble statements being made. (Marshall Huffman)

LOL:
Laughing Out Loud. Indicates the user found something to be funny. (Marshall Huffman)

ROFLMAO:
Rolling On Floor, Laughing My Ass Off. Indicates the user found something to be hilarious. (Marshall Huffman)

IIRC:
If I Recall Correctly. Qualifier for information a user is not sure is correct. (Marshall Huffman)

MMPOG and/or MMOG:
Massive Multiplayer Online Game. A video game played over the Internet, with hundreds or thousands of users playing simultaneously. Popular examples include World of Warcraft and Everquest. (Marshall Huffman)

BBS:
Bulletin Board System. “[A] computer system running software that allows users to dial into the system over a phone line (or Telnet) and, using a terminal program, perform functions such as downloading software and data, uploading data, reading news, and exchanging messages with other users.

During their heyday (from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s), many BBSes were run as a hobby free of charge by the “SysOp” (system operator), while other BBSes charged their users a subscription fee for access, or were operated by a business as a means of supporting their customers. Still others were run by Internet service providers as part of their service to subscribers.

The term BBS currently may also be used to refer to any online forum or message board.” (Wikpedia)

Computer Graphics

Second Life:
Virtual online community, featuring a 3D computer generated world, populated by the avatars of its users. Unlike video games, Second Life has no set outcome or goal, and is used more for social networking. See also: Linden, Avatar. (Marshall Huffman)

Linden:
Unit of currency in the Second Life world. Users can deposit real world currency into the Second Life world had have it converted to Lindens, which can be used to buy “property” (hard disk space), 3D mesh objects, and other items. As a result, items within Second Life have real world economic value. See also: Mesh, Primitives. (Marshall Huffman)

Avatar:
“An avatar (abbreviations include AV, ava, avie, avy, avi, avvie, avis, avies, avii, and avvy) is computer user’s representation of himself or herself, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games, a two-dimensional icon (picture) used on Internet forums and other communities, or a text construct found on early systems such as MUDs. The term “avatar” can also refer to the personality connected with the screen name, or handle, of an Internet user.” The term avatar comes from the Sanskrit for the bodily incarnation of a holy being. (Wikipedia)

Mesh:
Term for a virtual three-dimensional object generated by a computer. A mesh is stored as a series of vertices in an XYZ coordinate plane; these vertices define the surfaces of a virtual object. Meshes are used in everything from video games to computer-generated visual effects for feature films. (Marshall Huffman)

Primitives:
A basic type of pre-built 3D mesh object, generally in the shape of a sphere, cylinder, cube, or other simple shape, which can be combined to create more complex objects. In the early days of computer created visual effects, primitives were used extensively; for example, in the film TRON. Primitives are also the basic building block of much of the Second Life world. (Marshall Huffman)

Texture File:
An image file or files that is mapped onto a mesh object, covering it like paint to provide more realistic detail than can be built into the mesh itself. Used everywhere from video games to TV and film production. See also: Mega Texture. (Marshall Huffman)

Mega Texture:
A texture file that contains more information than a standard texture; can contain everything from “sophisticated  light and shadow effects,” to “information about sound and game physics.” Used in video games. (Game Design: Principles, practice and Techniques—The Ultimate Guide for the Aspiring Game Designer, by Jim Thompson)

High Dynamic Range Image (HDRI):
An image type that records a greater amount of visual data than standard image formats. Standard digital image formats and the computer monitors that display them have a brightness range of 0 to 255; HDRI images have a brightness range hundreds of times that, more closely approximating the great difference found in real-world lighting values; for example, the difference between full shade and bright noonday sun. HDRIs are used in the visual effects industry. More information can be found here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging;  here, http://www.hdrlabs.com/news/index.php; and here, http://www.debevec.org/Research/HDR/. (Marshall Huffman)

Websites

Wiki:
“A wiki is software that allows users to create, edit, and link web pages easily. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. These wiki websites are often also referred to as wikis; for example, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/) is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are being installed by businesses to provide affordable and effective Intranets and for Knowledge Management. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as ‘the simplest online database that could possibly work.’

Wiki Wiki (/wiːkiː wiːkiː/) is a reduplication of wiki, a Hawaiian word for “fast”. In English, “wiki” is an abbreviation of it. However, since its application to consumer generated media, some have suggested that wiki means What I Know Is; this seems to be just a pure backronym.”

Examples of other wikis are:
–BattlestarWiki, a wiki for the television show Battlestar Galactica
(http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page),
–Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Main_Page),
–WikiFur, a wiki for the anthropomorphic animal, or ‘furry,’ fandom (http://furry.wikia.org),
–Wookiepedia, a Star Wars wiki (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page).

(Wikipedia & Marshall Huffman)

Photobucket:
A free online photo and video hosting site. According to Photobucket.com’s about page: “Photobucket is the most popular site on the Internet for uploading, sharing, linking and finding photos, videos, and graphics. Your free Photobucket account can store thousands of photos and hours of video. Photobucket also offers free tools for making slideshows of photos, videos with music. You can share your photos and videos with friends by email, IM and mobile phone. Plus, you browse through Photobucket’s huge online library of photos and videos to find the latest and best photos, images and videos. Finally, Photobucket’s online store lets you print pictures, as well as add them to shirts, hoodies, mugs, calendars, stickers, wall posters and more.

“Photobucket was founded in 2003 and acquired by Fox Interactive Media, Inc., a division of News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) in July 2007. The company is headquartered in Denver, Colo. with offices in Palo Alto, Calif.

“For the latest news and announcements, visit our blog
Company Facts and Figures

“ * Photobucket, Inc.
o Founded 2003 by Alex Welch & Darren Crystal
o Executive Team
o Jobs
o Locations
+ Denver, Colorado – Technology, Development and Operations Office
+ Palo Alto, California – Business and Sales Office

“ * Photobucket.com
o 24.1 Million unique site visitors/month in the US, and 34.6 Million unique site visitors/month worldwide.
o #1 most popular Photos site in the US.
o #3 most popular Entertainment/Multimedia site in the US.
o #7 most popular Entertainment/Multimedia site in the world.
o #24 in Top 50 Sites in the US and
o #47 Top 100 Global Sites.*
* comScore Media Metrix, June 2007” (Photobucket.com)

Flickr:
A free online photo hosting site. The “About” page in Flickr.com has this to say about their service: “Flickr – almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world – has two main goals:

“1. We want to help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them.

“Maybe they want to keep a blog of moments captured on their cameraphone, or maybe they want to show off their best pictures to the whole world in a bid for web celebrity. Or maybe they want to securely and privately share photos of their kids with their family across the country. Flickr makes all these things possible and more!

“To do this, we want to get photos into and out of the system in as many ways as we can: from the web, from mobile devices, from the users’ home computers and from whatever software they are using to manage their photos. And we want to be able to push them out in as many ways as possible: on the Flickr website, in RSS feeds, by email, by posting to outside blogs or ways we haven’t thought of yet. What else are we going to use those smart refrigerators for?

“Flickr is the WD-40 that makes it easy to get photos from one person to another in whatever way they want.
2. We want to enable new ways of organizing photos.

“Once you make the switch to digital, it is all too easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer number of photos you take with that itchy trigger finger. Albums, the principal way people go about organizing photos today, are great — until you get to 20 or 30 or 50 of them. They worked in the days of getting rolls of film developed, but the “album” metaphor is in desperate need of a Florida condo and full retirement.

“Part of the solution is to make the process of organizing photos collaborative. In Flickr, you can give your friends, family, and other contacts permission to organize your photos – not just to add comments, but also notes and tags. People like to ooh and ahh, laugh and cry, make wisecracks when sharing photos. Why not give them the ability to do this when they look at them over the internet? And as all this info accretes around the photos as metadata, you can find them so much easier later on, since all this info is also searchable.

Flickr continues to evolve in myriad ways, all of which are designed to make it easier and better. Check out the Flickr Blog to stay apprised of the latest developments. The fact that you’ve read to the end of this entire document and are hanging out at the bottom of this page with nothing but this silly text to keep you company is proof of a deep and abiding interest on your part. What are you waiting for?  Go explore!” (Flickr.com)

Del.icio.us:
Delicious is a “social bookmarking site,” which allows users to collect a database of bookmarks for web content. This database is stored online, instead of in a web browser on a specific computer, which, according to the Delicious website, “has several advantages.
“First, you can get to your bookmarks from anywhere, no matter whether you’re at home, at work, in a library, or on a friend’s computer.
“Second, you can share your bookmarks publicly, so your friends, coworkers, and other people can view them for reference, amusement, collaboration, or anything else. (Note that you can also mark bookmarks on del.icio.us as private — only viewable by you — if you like.)
“Third, you can find other people on del.icio.us who have interesting bookmarks and add their links to your own collection. Everyone on del.icio.us chooses to save their bookmarks for a reason. You have access to the links that everyone wants to remember. You can see whether two people have chosen to remember a link, or whether it was useful enough for a thousand people to remember — which may help you find things that are useful for you, too.” More information can be found at http://del.icio.us/about/. (From the Del.icio.us about page)

Process Memo for the Broadcast Assignment.

So this is now completely outdated, what with the assignment being revised, but I figured I’d post it here anyway for giggles. Note, of course, that the word-count issue is moot now that we’re expanding the scope of the podcast.

*****************

Simultaneously much better and much worse than the first assignment. Plusses: working in a group made it easier to stick to the task at hand, and see it through to completion, which—as you know—is a sticky point for me with this kind of work. Minuses: holy crap, that was a lot of work. I know, I know…WIC and all. But still, we spent seven hours in the computer labs tonight just writing the darn thing, forget all the time we spent doing the actual interviews over the prior two days.

More importantly, we fell very short of the 700-word-per-person mark that we were supposed to hit; we ended up with a story that’s around 1200 words; however, we all feel that we wrote a strong piece, and frankly padding it out to hit 2800 words not only would have weakened the product, but would have been nigh unto impossible for a broadcast-style story without repeating ourselves to no point.  We discussed the issue and are hoping you’ll agree with us; if not, we’re prepared to go in a group and all be taller than you are.

I do feel like we all pulled together as a group to do this; everybody made a contribution and played to various strengths. So I think we’re generally happy, even if it was midnight by the time we got out of Hovland.

The one detail that I’m unsure about is that it feels like our transitions to the audio clips are formulaic and dull; I had suggested trying to mix it up a bit, but Jennifer overruled me, saying that we were doing it the way you do it in broadcast. She may be right—I have no way to ascertain that off the top of my head—but I’d be interested in your feedback on that point.

Beat Journal, Week 5

So it seems that major media outlets—and I’m looking at you, CNN and Fox News—are engaging in the 24-hour cable news equivalent of children trying to out infinity-plus-one each other.

CNN has long been touting their Blitzer-led team of talking heads as “the best political team on television,” a claim which always struck me as rather arrogant to make; I’ll digress here for a second to wonder, what are the laws on this stuff? I’ve been under the impression that there’s at least some kind of truth-in-advertising laws out there that prevent outright lies. Now, I’m not saying that this *is* outright lying, since it’s awfully hard to prove one way or the other—and maybe that negates the question I’m about to ask—but how is it that a network is allowed to make such claims in their advertising? Or is this like the US patent office, where the burden of proof is on the person trying to naysay the claimant, e.g. it would be up to somebody to prove that Wolf and crew are not, in fact, the best team on television in order to put a stop to the ads?  It just seems odd and rather disturbing that sweeping generalizations about one’s own awesomeness are not only permitted but required in order to market a product or service in the modern marketplace.

Anyway, as I was saying before so rudely interrupting myself, Fox News has begun attempting to one-up CNN by claiming—and I saw this on the Daily Show, so I *know* I’m not making it up (wink)—that they have the best political team ever. Yes, that’s right. Ever. As in, in the history of the universe. Now, given that I find CNN’s motto questionable, you can imagine how I feel about this. Really? Are you so sure about that? There might be a political team on Galaxnar VII that outshines you; you never know.

The surreal aspect to all this is how it requires media outlets to oversell themselves in an attempt to grab viewers. And I’m not convinced it would work that well.  There’s a movie review website called Jabootu that’s compiled a glossary of clichés and failings of really bad films; one of which is the “informed attribute.” This is where the filmmaker declines to show us something important—such as a character trait—in action, and instead has everyone talk about it as if it were obvious; this is basically the “show, don’t tell” rule from writing, only writ for visual imagery. And that seems to me like what we’re seeing here: at no point are the media doing anything to earn the name “best-fill-in-the-blank;” (as I mentioned in a prior reading response); they’re just saying it loudly and repeatedly, until we believe it. And like in writing or in film, when you talk about it but never show it, people can tell. And they often don’t react well.
It’s an interesting subject to contemplate in conjunction with the narcissism piece I read for the reader response; marketing gimmicks like these are quintessential narcissistic behavior, and they surround us in all media outlets. Even presidential candidates act that way; have you ever heard one say “if I can be elected president?” Not in recent times, at any rate; it’s always claims of “when I am president,” and “introducing the next president,” and so on. Even the also-rans talk that way. When Huckabee was giving a speech on Super Tuesday, he used exactly those terms, even though the other candidates were crushing him in most states. It made me wonder, briefly, at what point this kind of attitude shades over from extreme self-confidence and egotism into full-blown mental illness. What if these guys lost the election and *still kept talking about the inevitability of being president?* I didn’t find it difficult to imagine, given the break from reality some of these candidates display at their rallies.

Reader Response, Week 5

Reading Response, Week 5.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/fashion/17narcissism.html?_r=1&ei=5070&en=5ec7dbe8dbfd02f5&ex=1201237200&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

“Generation Me vs. You Revisited.”

As sometimes happens with these sorts of debates, I wish people would define their terms better: just how is narcissism different from being egotistical?  Or is it the same thing? I wasn’t sure what the line about “Yet despite exhibiting some signs of self-obsession, young Americans are not more self-absorbed than earlier generations” was even supposed to mean. The criticism about youth being increasingly narcissistic, via YouTube and Titter and the like seems persuasive, in a gut reaction kind of way. Heck, this generation is my contemporaries, and even I think all this stuff is too egotistical at times.
But I’m starting to suspect that the critiques of this excessive narcissism idea are right: that social networking just makes it easier to spot the self-absorption that was always there.  Though there are sociological theories that would suggest that it would amplify the selfish leanings of the people involved…
I think the biggest aspect that bothers me about this is the suggestion that more focus on people feeling good about themselves is somehow responsible for all this. How does that inevitably lead to narcissism?  I was raised with all the fell-good ‘you-can-do-anything, your-happiness-is-most-important’ stuff you can imagine, but I still agreed with all the #2s on that questionnaire at the start. This is purely my opinion, but part of liking who you are is knowing about yourself, which includes knowing what you are and aren’t good at. And what they call narcissism here seems more like a total lack of perspective…and I just don’t see how having a solid self-image would be the primary factor in leading to that kind of absolutist delusion. “I am going to be a great person?” Please. Something else has to be at work.

Reader Response, Week four

Reader Response for Week Four, Re Atlanta-Journal Constitution story on regulating Citizen Journalism.

For some reason, the link to the article proper on the Poynter page was broken and took me to a 404 page not found. However, there was a nifty little link to a blog reacting to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution piece: http://blog.iconflict.com/newspaper-unfettered-citizen-journalism-too-risky/
I must admit my first reaction to what the Atlanta-Journal wrote is the same as the blog’s.  It would certainly be in the best interests of the “old” media to put a tight reign on new forms of journalism. But I’m wondering exactly how the old media would be expected to do that. Just take the blog linked above; would a ‘certified’ reporter review it and in some way red flag it if something it said didn’t check out? It seems like there would be logistical problems with such an approach, since journalists are already overworked (as we found out when Theresa Hogue spoke in class).
A better approach would be to find some way to recruit citizen journalists or offer them help in leaning the basics of sound reporting techniques…at least if your goal is journalistic integrity and helping the public good. The way the little snippet of the Atlanta-Journal piece reproduced on Poynter is worded, it sounds morel like traditional journalists are supposed to “crack down” on citizen journalists, which fits more with the dark view that the paper is suggesting this as a method of self-preservation.
The blog raises an interesting point about what constitutes a real journalist. There’s no test, or degree, or certification, and I recall one of Bill Loges’s classes spending a lecture on this exact subject. I wish I could recall the details, but it sounded like there would be serious problems if the job of journalist were professionalized to the same degree as doctors and lawyers. I might have to drop by his office some time and ask for a refresher on the subject.

Reading Response, Week Three

Reading Response, Week Three, For Commonwealth story “Plugged In, Tuned Out.”

To David T.Z. Mindich: Thank you.  You just summed up exactly what I, and I’m sure many others my age, think about network news vs. The Daily Show (I’m sorry… A Daily Show).
When the Heath Ledger story broke last week, I had the opportunity to really focus on how networks like Fox and CNN do their jobs. When the story was fresh, I found the reporting to be tight and effective; new information came in, it was reported and analyzed—not excessively, but enough to do the job—and I thought “Huh. They’re doing a pretty good job here.” Then the next day rolled around, and they were still talking about it. And here’s the thing: they had nothing new to say. Nothing. Literally zip. Yet Heath Ledger was all they had on the headlines all day. Larry King tossed to a field reporter to get an update on all the nothing that was coming in. The latest? We still don’t know anything! And when might we know something? In four weeks when the toxicology report comes in. Great, but you guys told me that yesterday. Why are you wasting airtime reporting something I already knew, without adding any substance?
Of course, if they analyzed the nothing, it wouldn’t have been any better. I’m kind of shocked that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are often the only “news” shows calling politicians on their BS and hypocrisy.  Wolf Blitzer and his “best political team on television” don’t do that, certainly not with documentation like The Daily Show does. Listen, if a bunch of comedians can sort through news footage to sort out lies, and then show said footage to us in an effective manner in only 20 minutes, why can’t you guys? You’re the trained journalists, and you have a whole 24-hour network!

On the other hand, part of why us young ‘uns are tuning out of news may be that it’s all too depressing. There are now more forms of entertainment media than ever, so we can easily stick headphones in our ears to pass the time, instead of listening to worrisome stories about collapsing economies.
I also think another problem is that, for the middle-class demographic the article seems to be referring to, many of the more dire discussions seem to have no overlap with everyday life. For example, in World War Two, Americans cut back on consumption to help the soldiers on the front lines, something that made the war real even for people who might otherwise have been sheltered from its effects.  But with the modern economy and globalization, we no longer need to do things like that; we pay more for gas, for example, and take it away from some third-world farmer, instead of rationing it.  So for us, many of these debates are academic; and it’s hard to care about something that we’re told is true—frequently by politicians and other public figures we don’t fully trust—but never actually feel.  The war in Iraq has been going on for years longer than World War Two did, which is hard to believe. And it’s hard to believe because it’s been going on in the background; all the suffering is happening to people somewhere else that we only hear about in snippets on those ineffective and boring cable news channels.
Which may contribute to the apathy about elections; if nothing ever changes, and nothing these stuffed suits in Washington say matters, why pay attention? We’ll be listening to downbeat stories for no purpose. And if we elect new leaders, well, won’t they be the same way? So why bother?

Beat Journal, weeks one and two.

Boy howdy, I get imaginative with these titles.

Beat Journal, weeks 1 and 2.

Ah, blogs. I don’t go out of my way to read them, but then I don’t go our of my way to avoid them, either. If something that counts as a ‘blog’ pops up on a site I like, or in regards to content I care about, I’ll read it same as everything else. I suppose this is a good time, continuing on form the thoughts in the week 2 reading response, to point out that I’m not sure why blogging is such a huge deal. It gets the reader information very quickly (or, in principle, it can), but other than that…it’s still just people writing stuff and distributing it for others to read. We’ve been doing that since Martin Luther tacked protests to church doors. The big things that’re different about web logging are the ability to add other content like video and audio clips—the New York Times blog has several embedded YouTube clips (one of Al Gore defending gay marriage, for example) and how it allows people to obtain information from different parts of the world very easily; just try doing all that with a flyer!  But still, this is something that anyone with a website could have done; write material, put it up on a page for others to view, and add supplementary content. I guess what I’m wondering is, how is this so different from a website that it deserves to be put in it’s own box and given a cute name? Is it just the convenience of using prepackaged tools like WordPress, thus obviating the need to know how to code?

Time for a confession: I have dialup. Yes, you can stop laughing now.

Really, you can. Ok, I’ll give you time.

Finished? Good. Now that you’ve quieted down, this does present some problems for viewing audio and video content. Streaming podcasts? Forget it. Of course, I couldn’t find the assigned NPR piece on blogs anyway, so it’s moot right now, but since I spend most of my time at home, or when on campus, in class or at work—which is a customer service job, so I can’t be sitting there with headphones on—it does present a snag.
So, yay for not having a thing to say about NPR this week!

Though, if anybody can stick the link for the podcast up, that would be great. Some journalist I’ll be.

Scanning the political blogs out there, I am wondering how I’m supposed to know who is and isn’t trustworthy. Sites like the NY Times, sure, since it’s written by their on-staff journalists, and I would hope that it’s given the same attention to fact-checking as a regular print story, but what about all the other stuff? CNN mentioned today, in a piece on the death of Heath Ledger, that blogs are exploding with various unfounded and uncorroborated rumor about why he died, nefarious connections he may or may not have had, and the implication was that many of these people were making this stuff up.

So let’s try this: Heath Ledger was murdered by Martians. The police found a dead alien on site, and are covering it up.

There. It’s on a blog. I could even put in a YouTube clip of Ledger from a movie or something for “context.” But would it be true? If my statement were something equally false but less obviously loony, how would anybody reading know for sure?

One of the first sites to pop up on Google under the term “political blogs” is http://directory.etalkinghead.com/. Which his cool, because it categorizes hundreds of blogs and groups them based on political leanings, but it also left me wondering what criteria it uses for determining that. Do the site owners read through all the blogs and decide themselves? Probably not, so I’m guessing they go by how the blogs describe themselves. Which concerns me, because let’s not forget that Bill O’Reilly denies being a conservative Republican, and considers himself “independent.” Uh, yeah.

Reader Response for weeks one and two.

Here’s hoping that this is where we’re supposed to be putting this stuff…sure, that’s what Blackboard says, but at this point, I don’t trust things not to have changed again.

But here goes:

Reading Response, week one….

Maybe it’s something about me, but as tends to happen when I run across a bunch of new and/or complicated stuff, the first things that jump out are those that seem really stupid.  I can’t get past the feeling that blogs are mostly annoying, egomania stroking setups. I really don’t want to hear about your opinion of baseball. Well, if you’re doing it because you really have something useful and interesting to say, ok. But doing it because some other guy says you should to advance your career? How…cheap. That’s first-draft stuff, and I don’t want to read it. But never mind; it’s new media, so whatever pops into of your head can now be slung across the world for anyone to see, regardless of quality.
Ditto the Twitter thing. Oh joy, now we can see constant, never ending updates of every little thing someone does. It’like the news feed on the side of Facebook, only even more inane. I’ll confess: I’m on Facebook, but frankly…those feeds are useless. They don’t bring me closer to anyone, or in any was strengthen a friendship. They’re trivia. If anyone has seen the Demitri Martin “Trendspotting” segment from a ways back on the Daily Show (where he talks about MySpace), that’s basically how I feel about the subject.
Now this I am reacting to the implications for personal friendships and this blog entry is about business opportunities, and in the area of business, I can see how it would be useful; there, you do need frequent, impersonal updates. The business mindset is much more utilitarian.  But it doesn’t seem like the folks who put these technologies together are aware of the difference; Twitter looks like it’s aimed at friends and families. How the f#$% does it help me to get a constant data feed on what my aunt Edna is doing right now, rather than wait for her to tell me personally what *she* thinks were the important elements of her day? I think the latter is an important building block of human relationships, and functions like Twitter strip those away.

(Upon seeing the posted assignment for week three, I’m glad to see there are other people—professional people! —who agree. And they’ll hopefully be more in-depth and less pissy about it than me. )

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Reading Response, week two.

Like they say (cliché alert!), the more things change, the more they stay the same.

From a business perspective, I suppose I see why new media is such an enormous shift, but as a person just living a day-to-day life, I don’t quite get the big deal. We’re still people, doing what people do, living our lives, etc, and the tools are just there to help us do it. (Sound like the assigned reading printed on the syllabus? Yes, I suppose it does…) Anyway, it seems like we’re moving back to a tribal organization for how we get our information (at least, as it’s presented in the articles for this week); I doubt very much that human societies way back when had ‘packaged’ news stories in the manner used by modern journalists; it seems like for thousands for years, we must have thought about what was going on around us in society in a manner closer to this quote from the Newspaper Association of America: “Heading into the future, news becomes less of a concrete deliverable – a story or package of stories occupying some form of real estate online or on the printed page – and it becomes more of an ongoing process of imparting and learning about information.”

Viewed this way, the ‘old’ way of doing business in news is less a status quo that’s only now changing, and instead—from a historical perspective—an odd detour in human history that lasted a few centuries before giving up the ghost. The notion of localism and hyper-localism puts the focus back on small groups of people.

Of course, in tribal societies and early civilization, one couldn’t pick-and-choose who and what were in your small community, so it was a life style which may have  required people to get to know folks very different from themselves; in the new media environment, we run the risk of people cherry-picking which interests they pay attention to so as to surround themselves in a narcissistic bubble of only like-minded opinions. So this may be very different after all…only time will tell.

Note: Please stop using the term blogosphere. I know you think it’s cute, but it’s not.  If you persist, I will be forced to burn down the Internet. Thank you.