Churnalism Search

Screen Shot 2013-04-29 at 12.00.49 PM

At the University of Virginia, one summer when I had a summer job writing press releases for a theater company, and I also volunteered for one of the campus papers, I was amused to see how much of my press releases would appear under a different author’s name in the competing student paper. One time [...]

Why No One Clicked on the Great Hypertext Story

It’s not that hypertext went on to become less interesting than its literary advocates imagined in those early days. Rather, a whole different set of new forms arose in its place: blogs, social networks, crowd-edited encyclopedias. Readers did end up exploring an idea or news event by following links between small blocks of text; it’s [...]

Oh the Overthinks You Can Overthink: Horton the Elephant, the Wickersham Brothers, and Masculinity in Seussical

20130427-100118.jpg

Yesterday, I performed in a school matinee for Suessical, dashed back to campus to advise with students working on their 20-page term papers for Literary Criticism, served on oral exam panels for four graduating seniors, then went back to the theater for an evening performance.

Somewhere along the way, I found myself chatting in [...]

Slash: Not Just a Punctuation Mark Anymore

20130427-091507.jpg

I will have to watch for these uses of “slash.” I wonder if it has any relation to the practice of using a slash to denote romantic pairings in fanfic (e.g. Harry/Hermione).

Two weeks ago, one student brought up the word slash as an example of new slang, and it quickly became clear to me [...]

We Had No Idea What Alexander Graham Bell Sounded Like. Until Now | History & Archaeology

“Hear my voice. Alexander Graham Bell.” That was really quite thrilling.

In that ringing declaration, I heard the clear diction of a man whose father, Alexander Melville Bell, had been a renowned elocution teacher (and perhaps the model for the imperious Prof. Henry Higgins, in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion; Shaw acknowledged Bell in his preface [...]

Stage Right’s ‘Seussical’ offers songs, messages

20130423-220224.jpg

The Tribune-Review does a great job covering the local arts community. Here is their preview of this weekend’s Suessical. (My daughter plays one of the baby kangaroos, and my wife and I play Whos and various other supporting parts. I also play Judge Yertle the the Turtle and the Grinch’s dog, Max.)

TribLIVE.

[...]

Rookie News Anchor — Fired Instantly for Dropping ‘F***ing S***’ On the Air

Screen Shot 2013-04-22 at 3.40.42 PM

Yes, it is nerve-wracking to speak live on the air, but… wow.

 

Grading the MOOC University

20130422-090753.jpg

The MOOC classrooms are growing at Big Bang rates: more than five million students worldwide have registered for classes in topics ranging from physics to history to aboriginal worldviews.

It creates a strange paradox: these professors are simultaneously the most and least accessible teachers in history. –Grading the MOOC University – NYTimes.com.

[...]

Huge Collection of Free CC-Licensed Textbooks (2012)

2012 Book Archive.

Business, humanities, writing, science.

[...]

Police, citizens and technology factor into Boston bombing probe

In addition to being almost universally wrong, the theories developed via social media complicated the official investigation, according to law enforcement officials. Those officials said Saturday that the decision on Thursday to release photos of the two men in baseball caps was meant in part to limit the damage being done to people who were [...]

Features