Porn star Ron Jeremy and Pastor Craig Gross came to MSU last Thursday to debate porn.
Here's a video I made for a class. I could've spent more time editing it, and if I did it again I would've used a tripod, but that's something you realize when you see it on a bigger screen than the camcorder. I used iMovie 06 HD, which is surprisingly easy and a pleasure to work with, but a few things are irritating: namely, I couldn't find a way to merge audio and video once they're separated, and some of the timeline functions are buggy. Aside from that, '06 is a winner.
29 April 2008
06 April 2008
April foolery
In writing the Distorter (the name the paper takes on during April Fools'), I was at first excited I'd make some biting commentary toward the university and student life. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the risks I'd run into if I were to be as daring as I wanted to be.
Pretending to be an Onion contributor for a day is many college student reporters' dream, but there are some risks you run into. I had already decided I wouldn't target or name anyone, who wasn't well known. In other words, not directly mock any students or faculty, but more so administrators. Even poking fun at administrators, however, was risky, or at least I perceived it as such: I didn't want to burn any bridges or cause awkward tensions.
I had little to lose: I'm graduating next month, my position as editor will end soon and I doubted the stories I would've written would've put the paper in any sort of legal woes.
So why refrain from limitless mockery? Well, I didn't want to do anything I'd regret. At 11 p.m., jokey headlines and stories always seem more funny than when someone comes knocking at your door, demanding an apology or yelling at you for screwing with their reputation. In that regard, you have to think beyond the production-night punnery, and into the next day, and beyond.
So did we have fun while making a statement? Readers can decide for themselves.
***
The other day, I received a call from building services, which performs maintenance and cleaning at the university. They were upset about a story I'd written about an author who made a book about bathroom graffiti who was asking for submissions. Building services thought the story would provoke more incidences of graffiti and vandalism. I assured him it wasn't my intention to cause graffiti, and that I'd rewrite that part of the story calling for submissions.
So what to do when you write something like that? Just because you write it doesn't mean you condone or condemn it; you're just reporting on the facts, or ideally so. On the other hand, if you or your editor deemed it wasn't worthy of the paper's pages, you wouldn't pursue the story. That's attaching newsworthiness to certain topics. Although the intellectual merit of my story was obviously lacking, I thought it to be an interesting book and since everyone sees graffiti in their lives and perhaps wonders what becomes of it, it was newsworthy.
***
This has nothing to do with journalism, but I was thinking the other day: you know how brain cancer is supposedly linked to cell phone usage? What if researchers don't take into consideration the fact that cell phones add stress to your life? If you have a cell phone, you're always worrying that the battery is charged, or that you don't forget your phone, or that you check your texts and voicemails, or that someone is trying to call you, or that the phone is silenced. Plus, you submit yourself to the demands of everyone who has your number. On the other hand, if you didn't have a cell phone, you wouldn't have to worry about any of that; people would have to wait for you to return their calls. Perhaps it's not so much the electromagnetic-cancerous waves bouncing into your brain as the added cancer-inducing stress from having a cell phone that causes cancer.
In the past year I've went several times without cell phones, and in Mexico I depended on it far less because they are so expensive to use. For two weeks last semester I didn't have a cell, and it was nice. I dare readers to go without their cell phone for a day: how does it change your life?
Pretending to be an Onion contributor for a day is many college student reporters' dream, but there are some risks you run into. I had already decided I wouldn't target or name anyone, who wasn't well known. In other words, not directly mock any students or faculty, but more so administrators. Even poking fun at administrators, however, was risky, or at least I perceived it as such: I didn't want to burn any bridges or cause awkward tensions.
I had little to lose: I'm graduating next month, my position as editor will end soon and I doubted the stories I would've written would've put the paper in any sort of legal woes.
So why refrain from limitless mockery? Well, I didn't want to do anything I'd regret. At 11 p.m., jokey headlines and stories always seem more funny than when someone comes knocking at your door, demanding an apology or yelling at you for screwing with their reputation. In that regard, you have to think beyond the production-night punnery, and into the next day, and beyond.
So did we have fun while making a statement? Readers can decide for themselves.
***
The other day, I received a call from building services, which performs maintenance and cleaning at the university. They were upset about a story I'd written about an author who made a book about bathroom graffiti who was asking for submissions. Building services thought the story would provoke more incidences of graffiti and vandalism. I assured him it wasn't my intention to cause graffiti, and that I'd rewrite that part of the story calling for submissions.
So what to do when you write something like that? Just because you write it doesn't mean you condone or condemn it; you're just reporting on the facts, or ideally so. On the other hand, if you or your editor deemed it wasn't worthy of the paper's pages, you wouldn't pursue the story. That's attaching newsworthiness to certain topics. Although the intellectual merit of my story was obviously lacking, I thought it to be an interesting book and since everyone sees graffiti in their lives and perhaps wonders what becomes of it, it was newsworthy.
***
This has nothing to do with journalism, but I was thinking the other day: you know how brain cancer is supposedly linked to cell phone usage? What if researchers don't take into consideration the fact that cell phones add stress to your life? If you have a cell phone, you're always worrying that the battery is charged, or that you don't forget your phone, or that you check your texts and voicemails, or that someone is trying to call you, or that the phone is silenced. Plus, you submit yourself to the demands of everyone who has your number. On the other hand, if you didn't have a cell phone, you wouldn't have to worry about any of that; people would have to wait for you to return their calls. Perhaps it's not so much the electromagnetic-cancerous waves bouncing into your brain as the added cancer-inducing stress from having a cell phone that causes cancer.
In the past year I've went several times without cell phones, and in Mexico I depended on it far less because they are so expensive to use. For two weeks last semester I didn't have a cell, and it was nice. I dare readers to go without their cell phone for a day: how does it change your life?
30 March 2008
Who is your friend and who is your Facebook friend?
I know that time flies, but seeing that I haven't posted in over a month and the fact that it seems like yesterday I made that post, only reaffirms that adage.
Anyway, for my post I'll talk about Skype, becoming cross-eyed, and birthdays. Cell phones revolutionized how we communicate, and Skype doesn't so much revolutionize as evolve how we talk to each other.
Skype blows my mind. For starters, the fact that you can call almost any number in the world from your computer is amazing. But it's the features of Skype that make the program excellent: for example, you can buy a number in a foreign country for about $30 a year. People in that foreign country call that number and it calls your Skype account and pay what it costs to make a local call, rather than spending on long distance. Then, you can change the settings so that all calls received to your account are forwarded to another phone, such as your cell or landline. But wait, there's more! Let's suppose you have a cell carrier that doesn't have long distance. Instead of paying to call long distance, you can get a free SkypeOut local number (as long as you're paying for Skype Pro, at $3 monthly, which includes a myriad of other features) and you call that number -say a 507 number- which accesses your Skype account and you can use speed dial or enter any number, domestic, national or international. With SkypePro, you get free unlimited calls to anywhere in the US, but if you don't pay that $3 a month then it costs $.02 per minute, with other countries varying form $.02 a minute to up to $1.50 or so. There are also special Skype phones that have most of the features the Skype for computer has, but you need to be in a Wi-Fi hotspot to do so. But ultimately you can use the SkypeOut from your regular plain-jane cell phone. In effect, you have Skype wherever you go, regardless if you have a computer. Revolutionary or evolutionary?
That's shameless promotion for Skype, but once you have it and experience all its glory (other features such as voicemail, SMS, webcamming, instant messaging, and a strange feature - SkypeMe - in which you can call random people across the world and talk to them).
Skype certainly isn't the first application to take advantage of these features, but what it did was Apple-ize it, or, take those features, improve upon how the other apps failed at implementing them, or did them poorly, and Skype made them better, user-friendly, and squeaky-clean looking. Skype isn't perfect, that's for sure, as I have problems making calls sometimes using SkypeOut from my cell, but overall Skype is the PowerBook of an all-in-one telephony and instant messaging application.
****
One reason that print media will never go out of print, despite all it lacks when compared to snazzy online media, is the fact that it is very comfortable to read and look at. It can be very difficult to look at a computer screen for an extended period, and perhaps my biggest complaint about most online text is that it's too small. WAY too small....even when i adjust the setting on my computer, it's still too small. I always increase the size of the text, but usually that goofs up the layout of the page. I don't think my eyesight is -that- bad yet, but it might be that I just spend too much time in front of a computer and my eyes begin to hurt, my contacts dry and I start going cross-eyed, unable to control the muscles in my sockets. I wonder what animals think when they see us staring at a rectangular box with light flickering in our face? I remember seeing a comic one time, and I wish I could find it, but it has a family sitting on a couch after the power has went out and instead staring at the TV, they stare at a nail in the wall, and it has a good punchline. I wish I could remember it, but TV has killed many of my brain cells, including the one that remembered that joke.
****
So, today is my birthday, and although I got many salutations and "happy birthdays" in person and over the phone, only one person, my cousin, wished me happy birthday on Facebook. Not that I feel sad, but I just think it's funny how dependent we've become on technology. The thing is, I didn't have my birthday displayed on my profile until 11:30 p.m., on purpose, and I changed it so anyone seeing my profile would see my anniversary of life. And what do you know! As soon as I put public my birthday, I get a birthday wish from someone who I haven't talked to since last summer! For those of you not in the Facebook loop, the site compiles the birthdays of whoever's completing that day and puts a little birthday reminder section on the homepage. That way you can see birthdays of everyone in your network, and most peoples' networks consist of anybody from best friends to minor acquaintances and internent-only friends. Now, I don't expect acquaintances or distant friends to remember my birthday, but it just goes to show how much we need Facebook for birthday reminders, if anything else. Since I've had a Facebook account I've put public my b-day, and every year I'd get at least 30 birthday wishes, maybe even much more, and it irritated the hell out of me. I get all these people who, one day a year, decide to send me a brief wish for a good year and bla-bla-bla, and pretend to care, but the other 364 (or 365) days, when that message really would in fact make my day a little brighter (I have enough family and close friends wishing me a happy birthday as it is), those so-called friends don't decide to care. It's like Black History Month: you can care about it for one month, but the rest of the year blacks don't matter, according to Chris Rock. That's one of the reasons why I'm a little uneasy with birthdays. Oh, and the happy birthday song is annoying. I'm not a cynic, and I like good food, good company and a few presents, but it just makes me wonder how dependent we're becoming on technology to do stuff for us (ie, birthday reminders, or have an excuse not to make physical contact with someone and tell them in person, or the phone, to have a happy birthday).
I'll wait and see these next few days who sends me a belated-Facebook-birthday wish after making the connection of my birthday, the fact they didn't wish me a happy one, and the fact that I got few wishes on the Wall: in lieu of the belated birthday card, it's the belated birthday message on the Wall. That way, people will care (even if it's minimal and to the extent of writing a one-sentence greeting lacking punctuation and capitalization) when I most need it.
Anyway, for my post I'll talk about Skype, becoming cross-eyed, and birthdays. Cell phones revolutionized how we communicate, and Skype doesn't so much revolutionize as evolve how we talk to each other.
Skype blows my mind. For starters, the fact that you can call almost any number in the world from your computer is amazing. But it's the features of Skype that make the program excellent: for example, you can buy a number in a foreign country for about $30 a year. People in that foreign country call that number and it calls your Skype account and pay what it costs to make a local call, rather than spending on long distance. Then, you can change the settings so that all calls received to your account are forwarded to another phone, such as your cell or landline. But wait, there's more! Let's suppose you have a cell carrier that doesn't have long distance. Instead of paying to call long distance, you can get a free SkypeOut local number (as long as you're paying for Skype Pro, at $3 monthly, which includes a myriad of other features) and you call that number -say a 507 number- which accesses your Skype account and you can use speed dial or enter any number, domestic, national or international. With SkypePro, you get free unlimited calls to anywhere in the US, but if you don't pay that $3 a month then it costs $.02 per minute, with other countries varying form $.02 a minute to up to $1.50 or so. There are also special Skype phones that have most of the features the Skype for computer has, but you need to be in a Wi-Fi hotspot to do so. But ultimately you can use the SkypeOut from your regular plain-jane cell phone. In effect, you have Skype wherever you go, regardless if you have a computer. Revolutionary or evolutionary?
That's shameless promotion for Skype, but once you have it and experience all its glory (other features such as voicemail, SMS, webcamming, instant messaging, and a strange feature - SkypeMe - in which you can call random people across the world and talk to them).
Skype certainly isn't the first application to take advantage of these features, but what it did was Apple-ize it, or, take those features, improve upon how the other apps failed at implementing them, or did them poorly, and Skype made them better, user-friendly, and squeaky-clean looking. Skype isn't perfect, that's for sure, as I have problems making calls sometimes using SkypeOut from my cell, but overall Skype is the PowerBook of an all-in-one telephony and instant messaging application.
****
One reason that print media will never go out of print, despite all it lacks when compared to snazzy online media, is the fact that it is very comfortable to read and look at. It can be very difficult to look at a computer screen for an extended period, and perhaps my biggest complaint about most online text is that it's too small. WAY too small....even when i adjust the setting on my computer, it's still too small. I always increase the size of the text, but usually that goofs up the layout of the page. I don't think my eyesight is -that- bad yet, but it might be that I just spend too much time in front of a computer and my eyes begin to hurt, my contacts dry and I start going cross-eyed, unable to control the muscles in my sockets. I wonder what animals think when they see us staring at a rectangular box with light flickering in our face? I remember seeing a comic one time, and I wish I could find it, but it has a family sitting on a couch after the power has went out and instead staring at the TV, they stare at a nail in the wall, and it has a good punchline. I wish I could remember it, but TV has killed many of my brain cells, including the one that remembered that joke.
****
So, today is my birthday, and although I got many salutations and "happy birthdays" in person and over the phone, only one person, my cousin, wished me happy birthday on Facebook. Not that I feel sad, but I just think it's funny how dependent we've become on technology. The thing is, I didn't have my birthday displayed on my profile until 11:30 p.m., on purpose, and I changed it so anyone seeing my profile would see my anniversary of life. And what do you know! As soon as I put public my birthday, I get a birthday wish from someone who I haven't talked to since last summer! For those of you not in the Facebook loop, the site compiles the birthdays of whoever's completing that day and puts a little birthday reminder section on the homepage. That way you can see birthdays of everyone in your network, and most peoples' networks consist of anybody from best friends to minor acquaintances and internent-only friends. Now, I don't expect acquaintances or distant friends to remember my birthday, but it just goes to show how much we need Facebook for birthday reminders, if anything else. Since I've had a Facebook account I've put public my b-day, and every year I'd get at least 30 birthday wishes, maybe even much more, and it irritated the hell out of me. I get all these people who, one day a year, decide to send me a brief wish for a good year and bla-bla-bla, and pretend to care, but the other 364 (or 365) days, when that message really would in fact make my day a little brighter (I have enough family and close friends wishing me a happy birthday as it is), those so-called friends don't decide to care. It's like Black History Month: you can care about it for one month, but the rest of the year blacks don't matter, according to Chris Rock. That's one of the reasons why I'm a little uneasy with birthdays. Oh, and the happy birthday song is annoying. I'm not a cynic, and I like good food, good company and a few presents, but it just makes me wonder how dependent we're becoming on technology to do stuff for us (ie, birthday reminders, or have an excuse not to make physical contact with someone and tell them in person, or the phone, to have a happy birthday).
I'll wait and see these next few days who sends me a belated-Facebook-birthday wish after making the connection of my birthday, the fact they didn't wish me a happy one, and the fact that I got few wishes on the Wall: in lieu of the belated birthday card, it's the belated birthday message on the Wall. That way, people will care (even if it's minimal and to the extent of writing a one-sentence greeting lacking punctuation and capitalization) when I most need it.
23 February 2008
Riding the media bandwagon
One of the biggest challenges, I think, to ethics in the media is the fact that there are no ethics when no one else follows them.
What I'm referring to is the bandwagon effect.
Last week, an MSU student allegedly made threats to other students through text messages and e-mails. We got a press release from Mankato police about the incident, alleging that the student was also pulling fire alarms and that threats and alarm activations were allegedly connected.
On the press release was his name, age and hometown. At first, I thought it wouldn't have been a problem printing the name. After all, he was facing charges of terroristic threats. But notice "facing," not charged -- yet. Is it fair to use suspects' names if they haven't been charged yet, risking their reputation and perhaps your credibility? And what benefits are there to naming suspects in a story? What happens if you say that so and so is facing charges of sexual assault, for example, and it turns out a week later that he's not guilty? Putting a story that he faces charges will probably receive more attention than the follow-up story that says judges ruled him innocent. How has his reputation been smeared in that week, and how does the credibility of your journalism and paper look if you allege that someone is guilty before ruled as such?
It's certainly a gray area. In some instances it would be suitable. I think in a high-profile case involving someone of importance, or something that would affect many people, there's no doubt that printing the name is a problem.
I thought about it more, and after consulting with Ellen and John, we came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth printing the name. After all, the county attorney said charges were still pending, and I never heard back from the commander on duty.
By 6 p.m., his name was public information. KEYC TV ran the story and his name. The next day, MSU had a brief on its home page, with a link to the page of the police report. But the Reporter, being likely the most widely read and seen medium by MSU students, withheld his name. Even if he was guilty, I didn't feel confident in publishing something I wasn't 100 percent sure. I'd rather be safe than sorry, and that might mean withholding information. In this case, I didn't see a disadvantage to waiting to publish the name. As journalists, we owe responsibility to those who we write about to be fair and accurate. If I were this guy, and I was in jail awaiting charges, would I want someone accusing me of being culpable if I weren't guilty? Absolutely not.
At the same time, it's not the responsibility of journalists to be an advocate or attorney of their subjects. Objectivity is valued and important.
So did KEYC overstep their responsibilities as journalists? What happens if the charges are acquitted? Will there be a follow up? I think it's especially important to be careful if the story is published online. Even if it is posted online and then retracted, other news organizations may have already taken the story, or distributed elsewhere, and how do you retract something you don't have access to? That information -- and reputation and perception -- will linger for who knows how long. I don't think it's bad to be hesitant to run something that could have the possibility to damage you or someone's reputation.
At one point on Wednesday, I thought it would be ok to run the story; if KEYC already released the name, then the Reporter could too. But as mom says, "If your friend jumped off a bridge, would you, too?" Does the fact that another media outlet releases information automatically make it acceptable for other organizations to do so? Who sets the standard?
The bandwagon effect was evident after Rissa Amen-Reif died after being struck by a car. One bit of false information by a reporter citing a police officer who stated that alcohol was a factor was carried and echoed by every other medium and thereby changing the public's perception of Amen-Reif and in effect MSU's drinking "problem."
Even the Reporter fell victim to this incident of "everyone else says it so it must be true."
That's a dangerous trap to fall into it, but an easy one at that.
18 February 2008
From a drop in the ocean to a hurricane, bloggery encompasses the masses
How should newspapers approach blogs? How close should the relationship be between blogs and the print edition, bloggers and editors, stories and opinion, comments and posts?
"Blogging between the lines" addresses those thorny issues, after a Poynter Online discussion led to the establishment of some guidelines. The point is blogs are now and have been for a few years an inevitable part of newspapers and it's time for the uninvolved ones to stop pussyfooting around and get with the program. You better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone, as Bob Dylan sings.
The discussion didn't result in any hard and fast rules but did offer some suggestions:
Blogs attract a different audience than print newspapers and they should be treated and executed as such. In other words it's not effective to translate the tone and feeling directly, but rather inject some informality, brevity and commentary to blogs. That's hard for journalists to shrug off, especially if objectivity has been beaten in their heads their whole lives. Perhaps the best way for the fogies (both old and young) to become more adept at bloggery is to start small. I mean, blogs as a whole aren't weighty things and shouldn't be treated as such. Let the Wall Street Journal and New York Times stay as they are in terms of their reporting excellence and credibility, but for the blogs that mingle in the minutiae, the pointless and the irreverent: bring them on. I've been blogging for six years now, and my first blog was indeed pointless. I hesitate to admit this to my classmates / relatives / friends / Bralapistas, but I have a tail-less manx/angora cat named Baxter. He looks and acts like a rabbit, including his little hop. Anyway, he "wrote" a blog detailing his life, and it was called "Baxter News Daily." Posts were short, quippy and involved his perspective on life, the universe and everything, and I'd need to spend a while looking for them, but my friends, and anybody who knew Baxter, was a fan. I'm admittedly a cat person, but I get along just as well with dogs. BND, as the hipsters called it, lasted only a few months, as most blogs do, but writing BND got me into writing a personal blog, which connected me with my friends while I was away at college. As if it's that far, but Facebook didn't exist back then.
Baxter gets intense with his paper bags, and his alter-ego, Bagster, is ready to save the world from mischief and mayhem.
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