The first episode of Health Dialogues since I’ve signed on as the web producer aired yesterday. It includes an audio slideshow I put together after a trip to Balboa High School, a public school in San Francisco that has banned junk food, sodas, etc. from campus.
I’ve also added a “my latest work” section to the right sidebar, where you’ll find links to my latest work online.
I just finished up my stint directing a reporters camp in San Rafael (see previous post for more details). Lots of fun turning kids on to multimedia reporting. Nick News — a kid-focused news show on Nickelodeon — called us yesterday. They’ll be coming out next month to film me and some of the kids for a piece they’re doing on summer camps. So if you watch Nickelodeon on a regular basis, keep an eye out for me…
A gallery of all the slideshows is in the works. As soon as that’s up, I’ll link to it. In the meantime, follow this link to watch a slideshow the kids produced last week, after we took a trip out to Infineon Raceway.
Sammy Hagar Poses with the first session of this year’s Fast Forward Adventure Reporters.
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks helping 5th - 10th graders learn to be multimedia journalists, as part of Fast Forward’s Adventure Reporters — an annual summer camp in San Rafael.
For the past several years, kids attending the camp have had the opportunity to interview a variety of famous and interesting people in the Bay Area. Their writing appears throughout the year in Fast Forward Magazine, which is distributed to schools throughout Marin County.
This is the camp’s first foray into multimedia, and I think the kids are enjoying it. Here’s a link to a slideshow created by two boys who went to Pixar studios and interviewed Andrew Stanton, director of Wall-E, before the film’s release.
In a piece titled “‘Charlie Rose’ by Samuel Beckett,” filmmaker Andrew Filippone Jr. splices together footage from a single episode of the famous PBS program, replacing the interviewee with a second interviewer. The result is a wonderful bit of postmodern minimalism (hence the Beckett reference) that’s equally absurd and disturbing.
From the artist’s description:
Something has happened to PBS favorite “Charlie Rose.” The erudite conversations and sober intellectualism have been replaced by an absurd world where illogic, inane dialogues, and open hostility rule. The one-on-one interview between Charlie and his guest begins as usual but quickly goes awry, so much so that Charlie is warned that, somewhere, a man named “Steve” is “not happy.” Though this seemingly random statement might confuse us, Charlie understands it for what it is — a threat. But who is “Steve” and why is he angry? And why does the mere mention of his name stop Charlie cold?
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 marked a major shift in the way the Federal Communications Commision, or FCC, deals with media ownership. Among its changes, the Act allowed companies to own more than one radio station within a local market and removed a limit on national radio marketshare. The result was more than 1,000 radio mergers within one year.
Since 1996, the FCC has continued on its course of deregulating media ownership. In 2003, the agency attempted its most dramatic deregulation yet, allowing cross-media ownership. That is, owning broadcast and print media within the same local market. But after a federal court struck down many of the deregulations (and the Supreme Court refused to hear multiple appeals), the FCC was told to revisit its reasoning behind relaxing its media ownership rules.
Now, the FCC appears to be ready to try this again. Chairman Kevin J. Martin has announced that he wants a vote on cross-media deregulation in the next two months.
The last time the FCC tried this, it was flooded with 3,000,000 public comments against the rule change, it went ahead with it anyway and a federal court threw out the new rules.
What will happen this time?
More on:
FCC’s new plans for deregulation here.
Promethius Radio Group (anti-deregulation activist group that won its case against the FCC’s 2003 rules) here.
Hey, I wrote a paper about the FCC and the public interest in grad school! It’s right here.
While stories such as Karl Rove’s resignation and the conviction of terrorism-suspect Jose Padilla dominated the news this week, there are some low-reported yet interesting research studies that were recently released. They each throw a monkey wrench into the way we perceive certain issues. Namely: Iraq, military safety and the news.
More on:
Study on shifting Iraqi attitudes here.
Comparing the security danger of official military websites and millogs here. Full documentation from the Electronic Frontier Foundation here.
Gasp! Americans like hard news here.
Mainstream coverage of the Crandall Canyon Mine collapse has largely focused on the dramatic rescue efforts. Many citizen journalists, meanwhile, have been quick to point out the political leanings and character flaws of the mine’s co-owner (and mainstream media favorite), Robert Murray. But lost in all of this coverage are the simple questions: how, why and what can we learn from this?
More on:
Criticism of main stream media coverage here.
Example of soft, rescue-drama coverage on the part of CNN here.
Salt Lake Tribune uncovers important yet largley ignored facts here.
Murray Energy Corp.’s recent safety problems here.
Television is obsessed with Karl Rove, but the Internet is focused on Dick Cheney. A YouTube video posted a few days ago shows the Vice President thirteen years ago, saying things about Iraq that today would sound like a statement from one of his critics. He even goes as far as to say that invading Baghdad would result in a “quagmire.”
Does this really mean anything? And what will be the lasting effect of this type of footage showing up on the Internet?
More on:
the YouTube video here.
This past weekend, liberal bloggers, politicians and activists got together for YearlyKos, an annual convention held this year in Chicago.
Among the visitors this year was Sergeant David Aguina, who has put himself smack dab in the middle of a blogging slugfest by engaging in political discourse while in uniform. That kind of behavior is strictly forbidden, and he was quickly admonished for it by the speaking panel, which consisted of an Army Reserve Captain and Retired General Wesley Clark.
The conservative blogging world has been trying to spin the event as a case of progressives censoring dissenting opinion. The progressives, meanwhile, are arguing that it was purely a matter of following the law.
Lost in all of this is, of course, Sargeant Aguina’s desire to bring people together, not drive them apart. And where is he’s appearing tonight, in order to further his cause? The O’Reilly Factor.
We can only asume the bickering will continue.
More on:
Video of panel’s reaction to Sergeant Aguina here.
Video of Sergeant Aguina’s comments and subsequent interview here.
Daily Kos full account of what happened here.
Interview with Sargeant Aguina the next day here and author commentary here.
Well, it’s actually pulping them, but what’s the difference?
Cambridge University Press has agreed to destroy all unsold copies of a book linking Saudi charities with terrorism, after a Saudi businessman threatened a lawsuit. That businessman, Sheikh Khalid Mahfouz, has brought libel suits against multiple publishers for their books accusing the Saudis of supporting terrorism through various charities. The publishers often settle rather than going to trial, regardless of the validity of the claims, causing free speech advocates to fear a chilling effect.
More on:
Cambridge University Press decision here.
Blog commentary from author who won a British libel case here.
