Another Opinion on Blogs!

I wonder if John Carroll's views will be any different than what we have been reading for our summaries.

Move over Katie Couric Kaplan's in town

Rick Kaplan has had a huge impact in television. I wonder what he will change with Katie and the Evening News.

Katie Couric's Troubled Newscast

I thought this was interesting. I liked Katie on Today but have been really disappointed with her evening news role.

France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence

Oooh..touchy one, especially after all that we discussed in Monday's class about the role of citizen journalists.

Jill Carroll Back in Middle East

Since we spent so much time admiring the Christian Science Monitor's piece on Jill Carroll's abduction, I thought everyone would be interested in this article about how she is returning to the Middle East. Editor and Publisher, by the way, is a great journal/magazine that covers the media if anyone is ever looking for coverage of the media itself.

Interesting Profile

This was an interesting piece on the turmoil going on at TIME magazine. It talks about how all media is being challenged to be relevant today in the world of online/multimedia options and also gives a glimpse into the politics being played at the coporate level.

Global Voices Online

Interesting site started at Harvard Law School. It covers issues like ethnicity, freedom of speech and human rights. The kind of stuff that we discussed in class today doesn't seem to get attention in other citizen journalism-oriented sites. Maybe that's not a fair comparison though, since those were hyperlocal.

Anyway, worth a peep.

(Their stated goal):

"At a time when the international English-language media ignores many things that are important to large numbers of the world’s citizens, Global Voices aims to redress some of the inequities in media attention by leveraging the power of citizens’ media. We’re using a wide variety of technologies - weblogs, wikis, podcasts, tags, aggregators and online chats - to call attention to conversations and points of view that we hope will help shed new light on the nature of our inter-connected world."

Moving Politics Online

Some of you may have seen this on the news today (Sunday). Ann Coulter recently made a rather offensive comment about John Edwards, who in turn is using that very comment by linking to her video with those remarks to raise campaign money. Another twist to furthering politics online!

MTV - Virtual Community

I was watching MTV's The Hills on Monday night and saw a commercial advertising their virtual community so I checked out the website thinking it would be relevant to this class. Here are the basics of what I found:

You can join the online virtual communities of MTV Central, Hills Central, and Laguna Central.

Part of the goal is to stay updated on what's going on with the characters in these shows and to get to know more about the people and communities where these shows take place.

The draw? MTV lays it out clear as day on the site, "Don't just watch the Hills. Live it! Meet cast members, take part in challenges, watch episodes and bonus footage, get to know other fans, and so much more."

You sustain yourself in the community by purchasing MTV$, the official currency. "You can purchase MTV$ with any major credit card and use it for stuff like buying a hot outfit, renting cars and decorating your crib. You can also earn MTV$ by completing challenges, winning contests, and leveling up your status! "

There are so many other things you can do, but this sounds similar to some of the virtual sites that have been talked about in class.

MSN Messenger takes on blogs

I got an email through my hotmail account earlier this week about how the MSN beta is now offering blogs or what they call Windows Live Spaces.

Here's what the text of what they sent in the email:

"Now you can easily share your stories and stay connected by publishing your Windows Live™. Spaces blog entries right from Windows Live Mail. Get started by going to Options from your space, and selecting e-mail publishing. Enter up to three e-mail addresses and either save entries in draft form or publish immediately. Then create a new e-mail with the name of the blog entry in the subject field and the content in the message area. Send the e-mail, and you're good to go!"

If you go here: http://spaces.live.com/, they also post "spaces of the week" with a photo and brief profile of that space. Only one of my friends has a space, but he didn't have a thing on it so I don't have much more info to give. But you can check it out....

Here are a couple of interesting websites:

www.carbonfootprint.com
Calculates personal impact of consumption - this is a website that Al Gore promotes when talking about personal responsibility and global warming.

www.ope.ed.gov/Security/search.asp
Campus crime statistics - it will give you the number & types of arrest on campuses across the country, although 2005 seems to be the most recent data available.

http://www.grab.com/games/g/parking_perfection
This was just a fun site someone in my office found. The whole office wasted an afternoon (on the sly of course) trying to see who could get the best time.

Media Consolidation and the Online Universe - EPIC

I found this short film online about the future of news (online and print) called EPIC. It is a fictional piece. It's supposed to be a look back from the year 2015 at how media evolved. Given how much we've spoken about blogging and the impact of the Internet and new media, I thought this outlook was really interesting. It's worth the five minutes to check it out.