An analytical piece dissecting a woefully inaccurate local TV news segment. This isn’t to say that people aren’t still being arrested for recording cops in public—in Pennsylvania or elsewhere—or that cops aren’t still threatening people who attempt to record them with cell phones or other devices. In fact, in spite of those court rulings, a…
I wonder what kind of a government we would have, if laws were written as collaborative Wikis. Looks like Iceland’s new constitution came close. To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document…
For my journalism class, I have already created some fake press releases and other documents and created a scenario that simulates how a student reporter might cover an incident involving a member of the campus. If you’ve been following the news, you’ll know that there’s been a real-world incident. I’ve been freshening up what I…
While teaching Richard II in a Shakespeare class, I had to get up to speed on the rules and customs of succession, as Shakespeare knew them, so that my students and I could understand and explore the political issues that Elizabethan audiences would find in the play. News from England today bears word of some…
[J]ournals ceased being a means of communication a long time ago – more than 20 years ago for sure. New research would be unveiled in seminars, circulated as NBER Working Papers, long before anything showed up in a journal. Whole literatures could flourish, mature, and grow decadent before the first article got properly published…. The…
Before you start answering questions from a telephone solicitor, you must “qualify” the company as a potential prospect for a law suit. If, during the introductory pitch, the telemarketer indicates that they are working for a non-profit firm, or a survey company, hang up immediately. They are not subject to the law and are a…
Even when I mentally adjust for the alarmist rhetoric, I find this truly frightenting. What a pathetic use of resources… what a painful sign that our public schools are failiing, when they circle the wagons like this and villify their neighbnors, in an attempt to keep their local systems afloat. Other school districts use services…
Kismet is set in ancient Baghdad, a time historians call “The Islamic Golden Age.” Johnstown is in western Pennsylvania. “Flight 93 flew right over our heads,” school Superintendent Thomas Fleming Jr. explains. United Airlines Flight 93, of course, plowed into the ground nearby on Sept. 11, 2001, after the hijackers were overpowered by the passengers…
And this is, apparently, the best they could come up with? FUD works when you have the advantage of power, or numbers… or, apparently, a still-hefty taxpayer-backed budget. “A refrigerator has never been hacked,” an announcer says in the first message as an actress pins a paper bill to her fridge. In the other ad,…
Since President Barack Obama announced last month that he would sign an executive order allowing states to request waivers from mandatory participation in the program, at least 27 have signaled that they will ask to opt out, and most others are reviewing their options. — States line up to ditch No Child Left Behind –…
The right to take photographs in the United States is being challenged more than ever. People are being stopped, harassed, and even intimidated into handing over their personal property simply because they were taking photographs of subjects that made other people uncomfortable. Recent examples have included photographing industrial plants, bridges, buildings, trains, and bus stations.…
Four reporters from the Setonian (Seton Hill University’s student paper) conducting an interview at the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on 9-11-2011. A black smudge visible between the trees (upper right) is one of three helicopters in the presidential entourage.
Photo captions matter. Someone has to write them. Looking forward to the chapter in my journalism textbook. Here’s a real-world example of how captions can affect the news. In this case, the captions were themselves newsworthy; they created the news. The Weekly Standard reported Aug. 9 about a set of White House photos from Jerusalem that…
Today was the last day of a Benjamin Franklin exhibit at the Heinz History Center. My daughter stayed home sick, but I am glad I was able to visit with my son. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the exhibit on glass-making. I also enjoyed the detailed history of the Pittsburgh Courier, a…
I have mostly a good first impression of the website touting MyPlate, the USDA’s replacement for the food pyramid. It wasn’t entirely clear that the items on the plate were clickable — probably because the graphic treatment of the plate resembles a button, and my brain said to me, “Oh, that’s a plate, how cute”…
If by “completes mission” you mean “makes us all sad by dying,” well, okay. It is not scientific or logical that I am sad because a cool little robot is dead on another planet, but it is human. This press release from NASA suggests that PR professionals are also apparently living on another planet, where…
The industrial age worked hard to separate “work” from “home.” Everything about the common or public schools started in the mid-nineteenth century reinforced that division: from the school bell ringing for each child at the same time of day, of each child entering school at age 6 whether they were ready or not, about sitting…
Photographers are kept out of the room during live presidential telecasts, because the sounds of their cameras distracts from the audio. This is standard practice. As President Obama continued his nine-minute address in front of just one main network camera, the photographers were held outside the room by staff and asked to remain completely silent.…
With his tweets, 33-year-old Sohaib Athar, who moved to the sleepy town of Abbottabad to escape the big city, became in his own words “the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.” —Man unknowingly liveblogs Bin Laden operation – Boston.com.
From a “realistic” standpoint it makes sense; it would indeed be impossible for a nigh-omnipotent being ideologically aligned with America to intercede against injustice beyond American borders without creating enormous political fallout for the U.S. government.While this wouldnt be this first time a profoundly American comic book icon disassociated himself from his national identity —…