Chandra Levy, Laci Peterson, JonBenet Ramsey, Elizabeth Smart and now Natalee Holloway all became household names because of the way television news divisions, particularly the cable networks, extensively covered the story when they went missing. Each had another common trait: they were young, white, pretty and female. Some have questioned how they became stories, when…
If the blogosphere continues to expand at this rate, every person who has Internet access will be a blogger before long, if not an actual reader of blogs. The conventional media – this very newspaper, for instance – have often discussed the growing impact of blogging on the coverage of news. Perhaps the strongest indicator…
A number of colleges and universities are having to assign full-time staffers or forming entire new departments to field parents’ calls and email. Others hold separate orientations for parents, partly to keep them occupied and away from student sessions. The University of Vermont employs “parent bouncers,” students trained to divert moms and dads who try…
In 1945, an overwhelming majority of Americans regarded as a matter of course that the United States had used atomic bombs to end the Pacific war…. The critics divide over what prompted the decision to drop the bombs in spite of the impending surrender, with the most provocative arguments focusing on Washington’s desire to intimidate…
Terrorist cells in Baghdad are in mourning for suicide bomber Ahmed al-Khalaf, 19, who was killed by a car bomb Monday, 200 yards from an Iraqi police station, his intended target. Suicide Bomber Killed En Route By Car Bomb Sources within the insurgency said al-Khalaf was “on his way to becoming a glorious martyr” when…
What does it mean to read new media? How have digital spaces changed the activity of reading? How does reading digital texts?including games, instant messages, digital art and music, and other forms?enlarge our conception of what a text is? Is there a digital canon forming, and what are the consequences of such a move? We…
At a time when newsgathering techniques are under increasing scrutiny, big business tries to intimidate news organizations by filing lawsuits based on novel tort theories ranging from fraud to breach of duty of loyalty, courts order journalists to jail for refusing to disclose confidential sources, and government officials are finding new ways to close down…
Readers spoke compellingly of their experiences with newspapers and their observations about the behavior of journalists. Their comments evoked a sense of belief in the press as an important institution in our democracy, but they were unsparing, as well, in documenting their concerns about basic journalistic practices that they see as being unfair: Newspapers get…
The entire concept of cyborgs or automated labor of any kind is inseparable from the contexts of economic production, and R.U.R. emphasizes this context much more than the first cyborg text, Shelley’s Frankenstein. Some of the basic concepts of Marxist analysis involve recognizing the social and economic structure as consisting of a base and a…
Both books are full of obtrusive directions, comments, questions and pictures that would hinder even the attentive readers from becoming absorbed in the readings. Both also “are not reader-friendly. There is no narrative coherence that a student can follow and get excited about. It’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that,”…
A brain-dead woman who was kept alive for three months so she could deliver the child she was carrying was removed from life support Wednesday and died, a day after giving birth. —Matthew Barakat —Brain-Dead Woman Dies After Giving Birth (AP|MyWay) Because there isn’t any controversy that drove the coverage of the Torres story, it received…
For now, the Pentagon officially tolerates this free-form online journalism and in-house peanut gallery, even as the brass takes cautious steps to control it. A new policy instituted this spring requires all military bloggers inside Iraq to register with their units. It directs commanders to conduct quarterly reviews to make sure bloggers aren’t giving out…
Most interviews are not the kind of confrontations that we’ve come to associate with journalism due to the ambush-camera techniques of some TV broadcasts. The vast, vast majority are all about something simple: You want to learn more about a subject or person, or both, and the person you’re interviewing wants to help. Also remember…
An American journalist and author was found dead after being shot three times in the chest in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, a U.S. embassy official said on Wednesday. Steven Vincent’s death came four days after an opinion piece he wrote criticizing the rise of Shi’ite Islamist fundamentalism in Basra was published in The…
The group was frustrated that the disappearance of Latoyia Figueroa, 24, who is five months pregnant, did not get national press, though her case is similar to other widely covered disappearances like those of Natalee Holloway and Laci Peterson. The bloggers argue that Holloway and Peterson, who are both white and good-looking, are more attractive…
By integrating the newsrooms we plan to diminish and eventually eliminate the difference between newspaper journalists and Web journalists — to reorganize our structures and our minds to make Web journalism, in forms that are both familiar and yet-to-be-invented, as natural to us as writing and editing, and to do all of this without losing…
I’m not to enthused about this Current TV thing. It’s for the people…but you have to pay a cable subscription fee to media conglomerates to see it. It’s apart from the establishment….except that it gets its revenue from the same corporate advertisers as every other channel. It’s new and independent… except that it’s headed up…
Rosenblum’s idea is to bring “video journalists” to TV newsrooms and beyond, one-man bands that can report stories, shoot digital video, edit it on laptops and broadcast it. His client list already includes the BBC, New York Times TV and Oxygen, and he is currently helping to train VJs at local TV stations such as…
Nicknames and Grammar (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) While I was at home with my son, my wife took our three-year-old shopping. “We’ve got a lot of things to get,” she said, “so we’d better get a move on, Honeycakes.” In a strangely mature and clipped voice, Carolyn replied, “Peter isn’t here. So I am just one honeycake.”…
—Nanny Net News (4Nanny.com) And the Award for Painful Obsiousness in Medical Reporting goes to the September 2000 edition of the “Nanny Net News” newsletter, which offers “tips…for preventing shaken infant syndrome”. The list begins with this particularly stunning insightful: “Never, never, never shake a baby…” Who says you can’t find solid medical advice on the…