Social Media, The Internet, and You

The Society of Professional Jounalists put on this program tonight at the former Church (located at 29th and Oliver) now owned by Wichita State University.  Some of you may remember this church as the large community church where the minister attempted to save his church by making a deal to distrubute cocaine.  He was caught on camera via a sting orchestrated by the F.B.I.  We do have some memorable characters in the church communities here in good ole Do-Dah, don’t we?

Sorry, I was digressing… The program was put on by the WSU Elliot School of Communication.  The program featured Ron Sylvester of the Wichita Eagle and Jeff Cutler a blogger and writer from Boston (http://www.blogger.com/profile/02095350031114092271).  Sylvester reports on crime and the courts in Wichta.  Jeff has a number of blogs and manages to make money with his blogging – a popular site of his has to do with what he considers edible.  Ron has become self-educated in terms of the social medias as part of doing his job.

A journalistic device the guys mentioned was looking up the facebook pages of accused murderers.  With that they are able to find “friends” and family to contact for stories.  The theme of the presentation was using social media to do one’s job as a journalist.  But also digressions were made in terms of social media aids in finding other work.

The presentation was what they promised: 60 sites in 60 minutes.  Here is the link:  http://60sitesin60minutes.blogspot.com/  I took notes, but it was hard to keep up.  A site I was impressed by that I’d not heard of was – http://addictomatic.com/ – this site searchs all search engines, Youtube, etc. regarding a subject.  It gives it all to you.

To keep up with the growing social sites, the presenters suggested keeping up with http://mashable.com/2009/08/03/facebook-journalism/ .

Jeff’s site was worth looking at.

iggydonnelly

Penn Puts Gay Box on Application

The University of Pennsylvania last week became the first school to announce that it will provide a spot on its application for students to indicate their sexual orientation. Is this a good idea? There seem to be some obvious objections—for example, hyper-competitive students will simply lie about their sexual orientations if they think it will give them an edge. But Gabriel Arana raises some more interesting points at the American Prospect: “Students who are out in high school live in communities that are more tolerant. Statistically, these communities are more educated, less religious, wealthier, and whiter. Having grown up in a conservative, largely Hispanic community on the U.S.-Mexico border, I would not have felt comfortable identifying as gay on college applications. So if the intention is to recruit gay students, the effect will be felt only by the subset of gay applicants who, at 18, feel comfortable identifying as such. It really becomes a proxy for other demographic attributes that on the whole are largely indicative of privilege.” Furthermore, Arana points out that elite schools like Penn already have large and active LGBT communities—in general, they don’t face the same problems in attracting gay students than they do with students of racial minorities.

This is how the rumors and lies spread

The Internet was abuzz Thursday morning with rumors that Chief Justice John Roberts would resign for personal reasons—a report that was later proven to be false. Where did it originate? Above the Law says it started in Professor Peter Tague’s criminal-law class at Georgetown University Law Center. Apparently, Tague taught a lesson today on what one student calls “the validity of informants not explaining their sources.” He started the 9 a.m. class by telling his students that, they couldn’t tell anyone, but he had heard from unnamed sources that Roberts would be stepping down. At 9:30, he told them he was joking, but by that point the rumor had already taken off online, notably on RadarOnline.com, which published its first report at 9:10 a.m. EST.

How many people never hear the retraction and continue to spread the rumors and lies?  How much does this phenomena contribute to our political disconnect?

President Obama on the Final March for Reform

Thursday, 3/4/10, Public Square

Laughter Is Good for the Soul

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/f5a57185bd/funny-or-die-s-presidential-reunion

Sorry it won’t imbed, but don’t miss it!