'So, What's the Mood on Campus?'

This is a very interesting column from Dan Radmacher, a Virginia-based writer, that asks some of the same questions we were thinking about in class about the quality of media coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy.

Feeding the Beast

Journalist Amy Gahran gives tips on how to feed the blog beast.

Project 3

The third and final mini-project of the year is due in two weeks -- on May 3. That assignment is to pick a piece of convergence journalism on the Web and to critique that project, using multimedia to tell your story. That means you can use whatever elements of blogging, photojournalism, video, audio, podcasting or whatever other convergence journalism tools of the trade to tell your story.

If you want to borrow class equipment, let me know, and we will set up a sign-out sheet over the next two weeks.

How'd They Do?

Writing an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, media critic Tim Rutten says the media by and large did a good job in covering the Virginia Tech tragedy.

He writes:

Taken as a whole, the news media did a thorough, competent and humane job of
covering the massacre at Virginia Tech, particularly over the story's first 24
hours, when facts were most in demand and hardest to come by.

Today in class, we will look at the coverage from a more student-centric point of view.

To Air or Not To Air

NBC had a tough decision on whether or not to and when to air the video of the Virginia Tech shooter. Here is the background on that.

Two Quotes for Today

For the first part of class today, I want us to consider two quotes from the Henry Jenkins book Convergence Culture.

The first one actually is from historian Michael Schudson who is quoted in the book on page 226. Schudson says:

Monitorial citizens tend to be defensive rather than pro-active... The
monitorial citizen engages in environmental surveillance more than
information-gathering. Picture parents watching small children at the community
pool. They are not gathering information; they are keeping an eye on the scene.
They look inactive, but they are poised for action if action is required. The
monitorial citizen is not an absentee citizen but watchful, even while he or she
is doing something else... [They] are perhaps better informed than citizens of
the past in that, somewhere in their heads, [while] they have more bits of
information, there is no assurance that they know at all what to do with what
they know.

That is an interesting comment and something Andrew Shelffo should be able to talk about first hand today.

The other quote comes from the very end of Convergence Culture. Jenkins writes:

Welcome to convergence culture, where old and new media collide, where
grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer
and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways. Convergence
culture is the future, but it is taking shape now. Consumers will be more
powerful within convergence culture -- but only if they recognize and use that
power as both consumers and citizens, as full participants in our culture.

A pretty powerful ending and a call to action. What do you think?

Voice Gets a Face

This is a simple audio slideshow from the Herald Tribune in Florida that shows the face of one of the most famous voices of all-time. It is only about a minute long, but I like it a lot.

Assignment for the Week

Assignment this week: Read Chapter 6 and Conclusion of Convergence Culture.

Guest speaker this week will be Andrew Shelffo. His blog Prospect Perspective is very good. Check it out in advance, so you can be prepared to pepper him with insightful questions.

What Are You Doing Right Now?

At first I was skeptical. But after numerous visits, I will say Twitter.com can become fairly addicting. I mean, during my downtime, when I happen to be doing nothing the slightest bit captivating, I find it interesting to find people that are doing interesting things, even if many of them happen to be liars.

An Audience of One

Dan Barry wrote a funny piece on blogging for the Hartford Courant. He says he does not blog because of:

the fear that if I post my most intimate observations about, say, my all-time
favorite Abbott and Costello movies, no one will read them. I can just imagine
laboring over an appreciation of "Lost in a Harem," then checking in every hour
to monitor the number of visitors, only to find that any increase was because of
me and me alone: 0006; 0007; 0008..."

Funny stuff.