Assignments

Here is a recap of the two assignments for this week...

Project One: 1,000-word blog post on your first-hand experience being an active member of an online community.

Assignment for no-class week: Write six different blog entries (on whatever topic you want) with the express purpose of eliciting as many comments as possible. Write one follow-up post summing up the project.

Vote for the Worst

After reading some of the Jenkins book, it is especially fun to check out the Vote for the Worst site. Their goal is to influence enough people via the Internet each week to pool enough votes for the worst contestants each week on American Idol to push them through to the next round. In the words of those animated Guinness dudes: Brilliant!

The Anna Nicole Smith Story

We watched together in class as the Anna Nicole Smith story started to break. Huge coverage across all the major media players. Was it over the top and too much, we asked ourselves.

Investigative report Diane Dimond thinks so, and she had a very interesting conversation with Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik, discussing the matter.

ZURAWIK: You know, we are so bad in the media today. When the public really cares about a story the way they cared about the O.J. story -- you know, I experienced a little of this when I wrote about the Anna Nicole thing. There was a lot of back and forth -- should we treat it this way, should we treat -- listen, the public cares about something this much, we ought to not be above it. We ought to try -- now, there's way to explain it. Help us understand why we care about it.

DIMOND: But five straight hours? ...If a less popular person died, and it wasn't Anna Nicole, the sexpot -- say it was Dick Cheney. I guarantee you he would not get five straight hours of coverage on MSNBC or a full hour on "20/20."

Read the whole CNN interview transcript here.

Related: Houston Chronicle ombudsman James Campbell in his About:Chron blog writes that he thinks the Chronicle set a new low in running a lengthy A1 story on Smith and her alleged long-running lesbian affair with an older Texas woman.

Behind the Scenes at On Being

In class last week, we looked at some of the On Being videos being featured on WashingtonPost.com. I thought you might find this blog Q&A -- you need to scroll down to see the answers posted in the comments section -- with Rob Curley at WaPo interesting. Curley talks about what goes into On Being each week, and why he thinks it is successful.

The PAPER of Record?

Will the New York Times printed edition still be around in five years? The paper's publisher made his own headlines across the media-watching blogosphere when he said earlier this month that he was not so sure.

The paper's futurist, however, thinks the print edition will continue to hang around for a while, while the newsroom spreads its wings a bit.

Read more.

On On Being

This Washingtonpost.com video project On Being is fascinating to me. I really like watching them -- and I like reading the comments. Once you watch a couple, trust me, you will be hooked and checking back every Wednesday for the next one.

The Power of Gossip

In Chapter 2 of his book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins tackles both the historical and more recent role of gossip in society.

He writes:

The specific content of gossip is often less important than the social ties
created through the exchange of secrets between participants -- and for that
reason, the social functions of gossip hold when dealing with television
content. It isn't who you are about but who you are talking with that matters.
Gossip builds common ground between participants, as those who exchange
information assure one another of what they share. Gossip is finally a way of
talking about yourself through critiquing the actions and values of others.

It is especially interesting to me that Jenkins focuses on American Idol in this chapter of this book. This season marks my first year as a viewer of that wildly popular show. And what blows me away about the whole phenomenon is the life the show takes on after everyone has left their TV screens. There is water cooler chat, but beyond that it dominates media coverage and the conversations on the Internet are endless.

Take the latest controversy -- or gossip: the steamy photos of contestant Antonella Barba that have been flying around the Internet. As a result, Barba (and American Idol) has been one of th biggest news stories of the day today. Web sites from major news outlets are all over the story. Watch what TV news does with it tonight and newspapers tomorrow. And bloggers are all over it is well.

Check out this post at NJ.com of this one from PhillyBurbs.com. And just dive into those comments at both places. Wow. Yes, Henry Jenkins is right on the mark.