Hmmm...

"The system will bring down Obama." Hmmmm..... curious words. I think it a bit funny when people start taking issue with a "system" (aka the Constitution and government of The United States of America) that has worked so well for 275 years, because they need a scapegoat. The "system" grants people like Matthews, like Limbaugh, like myself, the right to speak freely, to report freely about the very "system" that they are complaining about. Laugh of the day.

Read more commentary at http://tinyurl.com/cuoyhe.

Our substitute: Miss Technolgy

BYU's newspaper, The Daily Universe, has a blogazine(an "online magazine and blog hybrid" see Google's definition) called Beyond The Universe . I hope to one day help produce it, so you should go check it out. Anyway, I was just reading a Q&A with LDSmingle.com creator Ben Peterson. He said something I already knew, but thought I would put it out there to remind us all....

"Q: How do you think our society is changing the way that we interact with each other?

A:I think technology is becoming a substitute for some key social interaction, and that people need to be cautious and have balance."

Is the world becoming too "twitterpated," is there a new disease that my sister Zoey seems to have called"textaholism," and should I be writing in my actual journal as often as I "blog?"

Somethin' I've been fiddlin' with....

(Click on the photo)

An audio slideshow I've been working on. Shots from lunch time at the Wilk, BYU's student center.

Maybe I'll Go Tweet Ashton and Demi...

I'm bored...what better to do then tweet Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, right???

Demise of Domino = Demise of Mags?

I read about the death of Domino Magazine and sighed a sad sigh. I had enjoyed picking up the magazine once and a while, envisioning my future home. Even though circulation was up, advertising was down, and thus the death of Domino. Money really does make the world go round.

While I was home over President's Day weekend, I was in Wal-Mart with my mother. She was expressing her frustration that two of her favorite magazines seemed slow in coming out this month. I told her about Domino's demise and jokingly suggested mayber her magazines were going out of business, too.

While sitting at my desk back in Provo, my mother called me to vent her sad dismay (she's often the barer of sad/bad/disheartening/dismaying news) that indeed the two favorite magazines discussed earlier (Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion and Country Home) were both stopping publication.

Shelter magazines aren't the only mags taking hits. For instance, LIFE magazine stopped publishing hard copies more than a year ago. It is interesting to ponder the effects of the economy on the print world, and wonder what this implies for the future of the magazine.

As for now, I'll miss poring over the glossy pages of Domino whilst envisioning my oh-so-chic future home....

Hmmmm...on Mumbai coverage.

It seems to me that what bloggers and microbloggers did was regurgitate the news. They took stories from other sources and put it on twitter. This, I think has its pros and cons depending on what you are trying to get from a microblog source like twitter. If you want new news, then twitter isn't your best source. But, if you want a variety of headlines from a variety of sources, kind of like the Drudge Report, then twitter is a good source. Though, to me, it seems like there is A LOT of sifting to find credible, good, and accurate stuff. Who has time to sift? Especially to check credibility.

"A Twitterer owes no duty except to their own impressions and own state of mind, they'll pass on rumour as readily as fact," says Tom Sutcliffe in an article from the Guardian. This article was about the BBC's regrets with using twitter in covering the Mumbai attacks. I think credible news sources have to be extremely cautious in their use of tools like twitter. It's very difficult to "factcheck" a feed that comes from twitter before damage is already done. I think CNN uses twitter, but in a modified way where....like commentary rather than relying on it for breaking news.

I think this is becoming a big issue with blogging....credibility. Anybody can write just about anything with little accountability.

It seems that a "trend" may be the sacrafice of professionalism and accuracy for speed, competition, and beating the other guy to the punch. I love twitter. If I wanted I could "follow" a hundred different news organizations and get a well rounded feed of the day's news. I become much more weary of joe-six-packs who are trying to pose and breaking news journalists....

Just some random thoughts.

"Local News"

I was just looking at the local news headlines of my hometown paper, The La Grande Observer.

More Local News
Summit sought to address local jobless rate
Help buy bike rack for The Link
Raffle proceeds aid Halfway clinic
Have orchestra, will travel
New Baby Jesus figure to grace nativity scene
Santa's trains will depart Elgin depot Dec. 13-14

For those avid readers of The New York Times, or those who constantly check CNN.com, this news may seem a bit funny, and of little to no importance. But to the members of my little community, this is the stuff they want to hear about. I've been doing research on community journalism for a big research paper in my english class. A common theme is the idea of bringing the community together. I think from these headlines, we can see that my newspaper in a way is trying to do that.

Is this what "they" mean by hyper-localization talked about in "NewsWar" (wait is that what that documentary was called?)? Anyway, it is just interesting to go back and forth between national papers and community papers. Do you guys take stuff like fundraising for a bike rack seriously? Just some random thoughts on community journalism.....