Media: April 2007 Archive Page

Surely, Cho's diseased mind was prepped and primed to commit mass murder, at some point. But did NBC's show, the night before, serve as his prompt? In his afflicted state, did that "Dateline" installment push him over the edge? It's unlikely that we'll ever know.

Yet, the numerous similarities between the Hyde and Cho stories are inescapable. So is the timing. Cho's rampage began fewer than 12 hours after NBC's episode about Hyde ended. And Cho interrupted his rampage only to send NBC a you-pushed-me-to-do-this missive. --Paul Mushnick --Did 'Dateline' Push Cho Too Far? (NY Post)

Floyd Collins was a caver who became trapped in Sand Cave on January 30th, 1925 50m from the entrance by a 26 1/2 pound rock. He was found and provided with food and media attention until February 4 when a further collapse cut him off, leading to frantic tunneling attempts, but he was found dead on the 17th of February.
--Floyd Collins (Metafilter)

A good collection of links about a caving legend.

Since Collins was the subject of the first modern media circus, I'm considering doing a unit on the event in a future journalism course. I'd probably include the "Baby Jessica down the well" incident and the more recent West Virginia mining accident (where the press reported jubilation after the false word spread that most of the miners were rescued, when in fact most were dead).

Told to express emotion for a creative-writing class, high-school senior Allen Lee penned an essay so disturbing to his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct, officials said Wednesday.

Lee, 18, a straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School in Cary, Ill., was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with the misdemeanor for an essay that police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.--Jeff Long and Carolyn Starks --Illinois police arrest teen after teacher "disturbed" by essay (Seattle Times)

Contestants had to stand with their hands behind their backs until a bell sounded and a message appeared on an overhead screen. The winner was judged on whoever's message -- checked for exact punctuation -- reached the judges first.

The text tests ranged from "faster than a speeding bullet..." and "what we do in life echoes in eternity" to the less poetic "OMG, nd 2 talk asap," which for those over 30 means "Oh my God, need to talk as soon as possible." --FYI, 13yo skool grl is nu US txt mssg chmpN (Yahoo! AFP (will expire))

Olympus DS-50 Voice Recorder (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

Two brand-new Olympus DS-50 voice recorders just arrived at SHU. I've ordered two DS-40s as well.

My students have been learning podcasting basics with some older voice recorders, but the virtue of that older equipment is that it's very easy to understand.

The DS-50s are state-of-the art, but I realized with dismay just now that they only record in Microsoft's proprietary WMA format, rather than the more common MP3 format. The open-source Audacity audio editing tool does not currently have the ability to open WMA files. I can, of course, just plug the voice recorder's output into the computer's mic jack, push PLAY on the voice recorder and REC on Audacity, and transfer the file that way. That's how my students are importing audio from the voice recorders they're using now, so it's really not a burden when you think of it individually.

But that wouldn't be at all efficient if I asked students to fan out and bring back raw audio for me to incorporate into a workshop of some kind.

Microsoft says Windows Media Player 10 will export a WMA file into an MP3 format, but I found Windows Media Player a bewildering labyrinth of features that are completely irrelevant to my needs. The menu interface is not like any of the hundreds of other Windows tools I have used, so I can't even tell where I am supposed to look to find out what version of Media Player I've got.

Fortunately, I found a free tool called Switch, which quite painlessly converts WMA files to MP3s.

At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia's largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be "positive."

In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of the Kremlin. --Andrew E. Kramer --50% Good News Is the Bad News in Russian Radio (NY Times)

This is a frightening development.

Make the logo as big as you can
Make the logo bigger, yeah!
That logo isn't big enough
So make the logo bigger
Bigger, bigger, make it big!
Make the logo bigger! --Make the Logo Bigger (Burn Back)

Awesome heavy metal spoof of a naive request that web designers hear from their clients all the time.

Displaying the client's static logo is not the the best use of the user's screen real estate.

On my "Newbie Web Author Checklist," item 5 includes the following:

Get rid of wasted space at the top of the page, and move the content up higher on the page. Shrink that logo and move that long-winded mission statement to an internal page; use the space you recovered to tell me what's new on your site, so I won't have to hunt for what you're so eager to share.

While many teens post their first name and photos on their profiles, they rarely post information on public profiles they believe would help strangers actually locate them such as their full name, home phone number or cell phone number.

At the same time, nearly two-thirds of teens with profiles (63%) believe that a motivated person could eventually identify them from the information they publicly provide on their profiles. --Lenhart and Madden --Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks (Pew Internet & American Life Project)

Gamers like me have spent years railing against ill-informed parents and politicians who've blamed games for making kids violent, unimaginative, fat or worse. But now we're in a weird position: We're the first generation that is young enough to have grown up playing games, but old enough to have kids.

So it turns out that, whoops, now we've got to make sober calls about what sort of entertainment is good or bad for our children. And what, precisely, are we deciding? --Clive Thompson --You Grew Up Playing Shoot'em-Up Games. Why Can't Your Kids? (Wired)

The Mercury News posted an Associated Press package that included a video news story, accounts from witnesses and a disturbing home-made cell phone video that recorded dozens of gun shots and angry and disturbed screaming, presumably from the gunman.

Perhaps most troublesome was that whoever was shooting the cell phone video, actually moved toward the gunfire instead of away from it. Some obvious advice: It's not worth it. Do not endanger your life for a YouTube moment.

News coverage aside, technology potentially played a key role in informing those most at risk. The way school administrators used their digital tools may even have saved lives. --Mike Cassidy --Digital tools were potential life savers during Va. Tech massacre (MercuryNews)

My brother is a Va Tech alumnus. At the University of Virginia we enjoyed a friendly rivalry with our larger land-grant sibling.

This time of year I have lots of papers to mark and lots of stressed students who need attention; further, three days this week I'm leaving early to attend to family business (today was a birthday party for both my kids, Wednesday I always leave early so I can watch the kids while my wife prepares for her night class, and Friday my son will be in an art show), so I haven't been following this as closely as I really wanted to.

Someone else will write a thoughtful analysis of the Wikipedia and Wikinews articles on the events, and someone else will track what the Va Tech students were saying to each other on MySpace and Facebook while the Va Tech authorities wondered how to get in touch with students and what they should say.

I'm glad my kids don't mind being hugged and kissed in public, since I was doing a lot of that today.

Update: the Roanoke Times has been covering the event on its breaking news blog, changing the title to reflect recent developments, adding time-stamped items to the top of the page.

I may be nostalgic, but I'm not stupid. Today's technologically superior, multi-million dollar monstrosities are, in almost every way, superior to anything that even the most creative guy could do in his basement on an old TI. But, without the full spectrum of gaming to be measured against, the games of the day really did more to inspire and amaze on a more regular basis than today's demographic targeted, designed by committee with corporate oversight games. --The Lost Art of Innocence (Gamers with Jobs)

On Sunday, April 15, Westmoreland County residents will remember the victims of Nazism by observing Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust Memorial Day. --Interfaith Community to Observe Holocaust Memorial Day (National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education)

I just got back from taking my nine-year-old son to this service, which was very moving.

The service began in the Congregation Emanu-El Israel synagogue, with a moving service that had people in the congregation reading names of victims, resistance fighters, and martyrs (rescuers) of all walks of life.

Next door in a social hall at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, filmmaker Debbie Brukman showed her documentary, "Perla: The Last of the Seven Dwarfs," a fascinating story of a family of Romanian Jewish family of seven siblings, each no taller than 90 cm, who were deported to Auschwitz. They and their family members were kept alive due to the special interest of the infamous Mengele. The last of the seven siblings died in 2001, and the film is built around an interview with her.

I was surprised that this film doesn't seem to have a web presence anywhere, but this article in the Bonita Daily News has good information about the film.

My ultimate aim is to illustrate children's books with images like the ones on this site. To this end, I am trying to find ways to make good-looking 3D images quickly--images that have all the magic of the illustrations I loved as a child. --Nick Towers

--Children's Book Illustration by Nick Towers

For a year I have been working on and off with Hammer, the Half-Life 2 world builder, with the idea of making an educational game mod. My idea involved creating a photorealistic downtown setting that journalism students could explore.

However, after picking up a copy of Scott McCloud's Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels, I have begun to think about other options. This illustration was made with Blender3D, a design tool I've come to know very well. Since I'm not a good artist, the idea of being able to pose 3D shapes and generate a 2D graphic like this is appealing. I can imagine importing these graphics into Flash, and further animating them there.

I'm still dreaming about an immersive photorealistic world, full of enough detail that it could be used as a resource for practicing travel writing or investigative reporting. But that level of detail would be overkill for entry-level students who simply need practice using "on the record" and "off the record" to get sources to be more forthcoming, or figuring out what part of a source's answer is most quoteworthy.

Disney cartoons from 50 years ago are still watchable today, but what counted as eye-poppingly realistic graphics 5 years ago is painful to look at now.

I'm thinking... thinking... thinking.

Although the CRPG has certainly suffered its share of ups and downs over the decades, history shows that when things are at their bleakest, there is always a new company poised to spring onto the scene with an amazing new title that brings every true CRPG fan back to the table. Perhaps we're at such a point now; major CRPG titles have slowed to a trickle, and some critics seem all but convinced that online games like Blizzard's World of Warcraft are the logical heirs of the "oldskool" CRPG. However, rather than trace the lineage of games like World of Warcraft or EverQuest back to CRPG classics like Ultima or Wizardry, I see them more as the descendents of another genre called the "MUD," or the multi-user dungeon. --Matt Barton --The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part III: The Platinum and Modern Ages (1994-2004) (Gamasutra)

A well-done piece. I always crave more analysis from overview pieces, but it was still great to see so many familiar games (and hear assessments about the games I wanted to buy but decided not to, for one reason or another.

CITY COUNCIL is based on an actual city council meeting I covered while working for a small twice-a-week newspaper early in my career. Some of the items here have been fictionally enhanced for educational purposes. And, of course, some names have been changed to protect the foolish.

Even as an assistant editor at this small paper I knew that someday I wanted to teach journalism and I had the feeling after the meeting that the notes from this particular meeting would come in handy some day, so I filed them away. Coincidentally, my solution to writing this story was to write eight of them. The editor was out of town and I was the only one who had to make a decision on what to run in the paper. So I wrote eight separate stories on different aspects of the meeting.

Alas, the poor journalism student in my newswriting classes these days does not have that option. Instead, my students must write one mega-story that covers the whole meeting. I use it as a kind of final exam in my newswriting classes. --Rich Cameron --City Council (rcameron.com)

Only nominally interactive, which is especially notable when you are faced with all the questions that you can possibly ask each source. Still, it looks like a good tool for teaching accuracy, cross-referencing, and news judgment.

It's a stretch to call this a "game" but I'll file it there anyway becasue I don't have a separate category for "simulations."

A CBS News producer was fired and the network apologized after a Katie Couric video essay on libraries was found to be plagiarized from The Wall Street Journal. --Producer for Katie Couric Fired -- For Lifting from 'Wall St Journal'  (AP | Editor & Publisher)

Here's a copy of Jeffrey Zaslow's "Of the Places You'll Go, Is the Library Still One of Them?"

Update: Rosemary Frezza says this is the text she copied from Couric's page before it was taken down and replaced with a correction:

Hi, everyone.

I still remember when I got my first library card, browsing through the stacks for my favorite books.

For kids today, the library is more removed from their lives. It's a last-ditch place to go if they need to find something out...if Google doesn't turn it up FIRST.

Sure, children still like libraries, but books aren't the draw. A recent study found kids use libraries more for DVDs, story hours and computers than for checking out books.

Many kids skip the library altogether and head for the store. Sales of juvenile books rose 60 percent from 2002 to 2005. It's an encouraging sign that kids value reading, but many tech-savvy kids never experience the joy of using the library's shelves as a place to discover new worlds. And students are arriving in college unable to navigate libraries with a Dewey decimal system many have never used.

You local library is still worth checking out, and so are the books.

That's a page from my Notebook.

She also sent me a link to a screencap.

The first issue was providing enough fun. Every puzzle should have some reward, and a complicated or multi-stage puzzle should provide some minor rewards for partial solutions. So once I had the puzzle structure in mind (more about that later), I could see which puzzles were going to open a lot of new game-play and which were only going to bring the player up against another puzzle -- the structural equivalent of getting through one locked door to find that there's another beyond it. Everywhere there was a puzzle without much game-play reward, I added plot material for the player to discover instead -- ideally, a hint that raised more questions than it answered, something that would both reward him for getting part-way through the puzzle sequence and keep him interested in what would turn up next.

The other point had to do with managing player attention. The more time a player spends in the presence of an unsolvable puzzle (say, a door he can see from the first room but that stays locked until half-way through the game), the more importance he tends to attach to that problem. It's a huge let-down to walk through that door and find that it leads to a broom closet with one cheap treasure in it. So the big puzzles, the puzzles the player has been taught to care about, should pay off in multiple ways at once: *both* major new game-play *and* major plot information. --Emily Short interviewed by Jim Munroe --Inside Interactive Fiction: An Interview with Emily Short (Gamasutra)

MySpace vs. Facebook (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

I just searched Google News for MySpace and Facebook, and was surprised at the difference in what I found. Of the first seven MySpace hits, five emphasized criminal acts, and two were PR-driven pieces.

Of the first seven hits on Facebook, only one involved legal worries (in an item that also included MySpace in the title), two items seemed PR-driven, and the other four were news features that included references to Facebook organically (through a profile of the Facebook founder, or a high school paper article about the online community).

Facebook is still owned by its boy-geek founder, while MySpace was recently bought out by Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorporation (which also owns Fox, TV Guide, and HarperCollins). Of course this is not a scientific survey, but MySpace was referred to over 12,000 times in Google's news database, while Facebook appeared only about 3000 times. Given that MySpace has about 80% of the social networking market share, and Facebook has only about 10%, Facebook is getting proportionately more positive press (though the coverage is not as broad, with an article in a high school paper happening to hold the top spot when I did my search this morning.)

Here are the first seven MySpace posts.

1. Court Reverses Penalty Over MySpace Post
2. Man Gets 10 Years For MySpace Assault
3. Teen Kegger Pictures in Myspace Page Lands in Arrests
4. Police: Mom solicited kidnappers on MySpace
5. MySpace Launches Dedicated Video Community for Theatrical Trailer ...
6. CBS is totally hip, and down with the Myspace
7. UMD Asks Athletes To Stop Using Facebook, MySpace

Here are the first Facebook hits (I've grouped the duplicates).

1. Students forge friendships with future college classmates on Facebook
2. UMD Asks Athletes To Stop Using Facebook, MySpace
   UMD Asks Athletes to Stop Using Facebook, MySpace Web Sites
3. OtherEgo Launches - Myspace, Youtube, Facebook in One Place
4. Online Business Community Makes Appeal to LinkedIn, MySpace ...
5. Class of '11 unites around T-shirt
6. The kid who turned down $1 billion!
7. Let's all be friends

Perhaps the only thing that could have made this movie better would have been if Xerces, the God-king of the Persian army, had been played by John Stamos, the actor who played Uncle Jesse on Full House. Even the Spartans would have cowered beneath his seductive gaze and shining, well-combed hair.

[...]

Not only did I leave the theater feeling like I had gotten my $8 worth, I left wanting to go outside, rip up a sign post and throw it through my friends chest. --Paul Crossman --300 spears reviewer's attention (Setonian)

These lines gave me a good laugh. (Missing an apostrophe on "friend's", but otherwise well done.)

Colleges and universities must inform students about the particular dangers they face online. But if schools actively monitor their students' online activities and students are aware of this policy, they may have a duty of care that includes preventing any illegal acts committed as a result of information posted online.

Thus, schools should inform their students about the potential dangers of using social networking Web sites, but should also be careful not to become liable if the students engage in illegal behavior. --Sheldon Steinbach and Lynn Deavers --The Brave New World of MySpace and Facebook (Inside Higher Ed)