Media — Jerz's Literacy Weblog

News report from 1981 about the Internet.

A human interest story about an early experiment in online journalism. Imagine a time when “owns home computer” is enough to identify a random talking head as authoritative. Look for the rotary telephone hooked up to an acoustic modem.

News report from 1981 about the Internet. [MOBILE VIDEO].

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The Transformation of American Journalism Is Unavoidable

There will always be a public appetite for reporting on baseball, movie stars, gardening and cooking, but it’s of no great moment for the country if all of that work were taken over by amateurs or done by machine. What is of great moment is reporting on important and true stories that can change society. [...]

Business | Culture | Media | PopCult | Rhetoric

At The Movies, The Women Are Gone

In many, many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn’t a documentary or a cartoon — you can’t. You cannot. There are not any. You cannot take yourself [...]

Technology’s Impact on Education

Technology’s Impact on Education | Visual.ly.

NAVY TO DROP ALL-CAPS COMMUNICATIONS

Caps off to the Navy’s plan to drop all-caps.

OFFICIAL COMMUNICATIONS AND ORDERS HAVE BEEN IN ALL CAPS SINCE 19TH CENTURY.

YOUNG SAILORS ACCUSTOMED TO TEXTING SEE ALL-CAPS ORDERS AS A FORM OF SHOUTING!

NAVY WANTS ITS ORDERS AND OFFICIAL MESSAGES TO BE MORE READABLE AND LESS RUDE.

“WHILE THIS DECISION WAS MADE TO SAVE [...]

Positive Feedback on a Blogging Assignment

A former student who is now excelling in grad school took a moment to share her thoughts about my blogging portfolio assignment, which is usually 25-40% of a student’s grade.

In April, a different former student who had blogged for me in several classes, whom I invited as a career workshop guest, surprised me [...]

Academia | Cyberculture | Media | Rhetoric | Social_Software

It’s Not What You Say; It’s What Google Says

“More people will learn about your institution from Wikipedia than from your own site,” the panelist said. “And in a crisis, more people will learn about what happened from Facebook and Twitter than from your own press releases.” That was a sobering assessment to many of us in the room. –It's Not What You Say; [...]

Books | Culture | Education | Media

Picture Books Languish as Parents Push ‘Big-Kid Books’

Picture books are so unpopular these days at the Children’s Book Shop in Brookline, Mass., that employees there are used to placing new copies on the shelves, watching them languish and then returning them to the publisher.

“So many of them just die a sad little death, and we never see them again,” said Terri [...]