This is a public service announcement...

So it's fairly late, I'm completing one last bit of homework and listening to my favorite radio station, KWVA, the UO's campus radio station. Then I received a welcome relief from the mindless task at hand: a public service announcement.

My goal is to blog about every major media format, and I've neglected radio. There' s much more to say on this subject that I won't mention now, but I do have a brief observation. It's about the PSAs on KWVA (88.1, for those of you who haven't yet discovered this little miracle).
The PSAs are great. As one of the only forms of advertisement this station broadcasts, I tolerate them (normally ads get little more than a punch of the mute button from me) and actually find myself listening when they come on. First of all, I'm never really sure if it is one, it's normally just music faded in, then faded out just a bit before a kindly voice starts speaking. I wish I could remember some of the personalities they've had do announcements, but the one I was just listening to was Frank Zappa. What could Frank Zappa possibly have to say in a PSA? Well, this is not a direct quote, but, "Hey, folks. This is Frank Zappa, asking you to unload. Don't do smack or downers."
That's it! There's not even the typical PSA signoff by a speed-talking deep voice from the National Center for Drug Control (or whatever they call it). Another one I seem to hear all the time is some older rock-star guy going "Of all the ways to get off these days, dope is simply not your best option." It makes me smile every time.
I guess these ads have an intentionally nostalgic feel for the radio golden days, but I can't help being impressed at the way that they seem to be simultaneously cool and completely out of touch with youth culture. These guys sound like they're taking it so seriously. But yet they know that they're never going to get through, and they're just being paid to record a PSA, so they don't even make an effort and use words like "smack" and "dope."
After Zappa, the second-best PSA I've ever heard came on. The sweet potato PSA. For every bit as concise and to-the-point Zappa and the other drug-PSA announcers are, the Louisiana Sweet Potato Grower's Association's guy is just as long-winded and round-about. He starts off talking about nutrition in general, which he says is important. Then it's on to beta carotene: also important, and found in "bright orange vegetables." Like carrots, bell peppers, and oh, sweet potatoes too. Have you tried sweet potatoes yet? They're pretty tasty, according to the announcer. Oh, and they have a lot of beta-carotene. Low in fat and nutritious - what's not to love? And so he leaves us with this question to ponder. Actually, I'm wondering why in the world Louisiana's Sweet Potato Grower Association EVER decided to run an ad on this station.
The best thing about KWVA's PSAs is seeing what the DJs think about them. For the most part, they poke fun or make some sort of irreverent comment. Which takes away any shred of dignity the PSAs ever had.
Thank god for student fee funding, if this station ever had any "real" ads, they would get torn apart in an instant by fledgling DJs desperate to prove their hip-ness.
This post doesn't really have a point aside from the above observations.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled study time...

Good Night, and Good Luck

Just in case I forget to print this out and bring it to class:

Edward Murrow was an influential journalist in radio and television and the host of the CBS program See it Now. He was respected by his listeners and viewers because of his efforts to always represent both sides of a story fairly and equally. Many now say he set the standard for ethical reporting in broadcasting.

The events that take place in “Good night, and Good Luck” center mostly on See it Now’s role in stopping Senator Joseph McCarthy’s persecution of supposed communists. During this time, there was much generalized fear of communism and little rational thought about the possibility of spies within the country. This time in history is significant to us now because is reflects the fear and confusion surrounding terrorism and supposed terrorists. Just as Murrow was fearless in challenging respected government officials over their labeling of innocent people and senseless hearings, this film seems to be suggesting that journalists and citizens now have a duty to be as critical as possible.

Another good point that this movie caused me to reflect on was the idea that not all stories have two equally valid sides. Murrow has one line in the film that essentially says that sometimes there is only one story to tell, not two. This was a pretty drastic statement for him considering his long-standing policy of always reporting every angle, even if he disagreed with one. In the case of McCarthy’s acts against the innocent Air Force and government employees, he felt that there was only one way to interpret the Senator’s actions: unfair and wrong.

This film made me consider that not all stories stick to the format of Perspective 1 vs Perspective 2, and because they can’t be reported that way, there really is no such thing as objective journalism that can be performed by formula. Not that I will now only report the side that I feel is correct, but I will stop trying to give a clearly irrational viewpoints ground to stand on in efforts to appear unbiased.

scary Facebook

Ok, if we're calling websites like Facebook, YouTube and Myspace "new media", this media blog should be able to cover them, right?

Obviously, I can't do the traditional "what are kids up to these days" rant, but I do have a complaint. The only one of these "new" services (although I would argue that personal websites have been around a lot longer than some of the critics) I actually use frequently is Facebook, and it recently took a big step away from service to advertising delivery method. And it's invading our privacy to do so.

Since I first opened my Facebook account two years ago, I've noticed some gradual changes in its format. It went from being open only to college-enrolled people (verified by a university email address) to adding high school students, then the general public. Now, I'm not one to promote social-networking elitism, so that was ok. Then it added Google-style pay-per-click ads. Hey, they're a business, so that's acceptable too.

Then these little "applications" started appearing. Play a zombie-attack game with your friends. Give your friends "gifts". Keep track of local shows. I had the option of not adding any, so I was still fine with simply denying all the requests to "start biting chumps" and find out who has a crush on me (ok, so I added that one, then removed it again in embarrassment when I realized I'd been tricked).

The straw that broke the camel's back came when I got online the other day to find a Thanksgiving pie recipe. I often use the website Epicurious.com for this purpose, and I have an account with them where I save potential recipes in a "box" in some wild fantasy that I'll one day have time to cook them. So I saved a recipe in the box. Then, as I do before and after almost every computer session, I checked Facebook. I stared at an entry at the top of the home page. Then I looked over my shoulder to find out where the Facebook spy goon was standing and reporting my activities to Corporate. Or did they just use a hidden camera?

The message that had catapulted me into a 1984 mindset said that Facebook would publish on my "news feed" (the home page for all Facebook users in my network of friends that reports on the Facebook activities of me and other friends) that I had just added "Pecan Pie IV" to my Epicurious recipe box. No joke. It wasn't even asking my permission. It was informing me. I had not been logged into both websites at the same time. I had not put in any request to link the two accounts in any way. But somehow, Facebook had used my name or email address, found the account on an unrelated, previously unaffiliated site, and kept track of my activity there to make Facebook's knowledge of my online - and offline - life more complete. Yike.

I got up from the computer and hid in the other room. Then I went back to Facebook to see if it knew that I'd opened a window. Ok, I'm exaggerating. But it was just that confusing. How did it know??

It just goes to show how complacent I've become about this thing that I didn't do anything more about the matter after that, other than to find the privacy setting that "shared" (I think "prostituted" would be a me appropriate word, but whatever) my Epicurious info with Facebook. I was a little bothered that I couldn't find out what other websites it was sharing with the feed (imagining lines like "Tuula has just checked her Gmail for the 18th time today"; "Tuula just spent 5 minutes on NYTimes.com but 14 minutes on craigslist" appearing before my acquaintances), but I figured I'd find out soon enough. Then I decided I'd wasted enough of my life to the thing and went on to do something more productive. (Myspace. Just kidding.)

I did learn a little more about this when my news feed informed me, this morning, that a friend had posted a "note" (similar to a blog entry) about Facebook's privacy settings. (Take that for irony, Facebook!) Apparently, others have noticed the goon standing behind their desks, and they don't like it either. There have been a few news stories on the new "feature", this one being the most complete.

It's hopeful that people have paid attention to this invasion, but I don't know whether the unhappy murmurings among users and a few "outsiders" will actually remove it. After all, there were news stories when Facebook opened itself up to the general populace, and when it launched what is now ominously referred to as "the feed." People were upset about those things too, but now they accept them and have even come to like them. (Personally, I rejected the feed at first. Then, I found myself having conversations with my friends like "Did you hear Monica broke up with Jake?" "Yeah, saw it on the feed this morning." "She's really pissed at him. She wrote on Sara's wall that she defriended him.")

There is a very thin line between an innocent gossip-aid and a spy. I think it gets crossed when my activity is shared with outside companies without my prior permission. Yeah, the Epicurious thing wouldn't have been a big deal. If they'd asked me. But they didn't, and I only found out because I was paying attention. I have a feeling only about half of my friends will notice this, and not many who do will actually do anything about it.

Orwell's nightmare future began with a sudden revolution, a definite shift in power toward a technology-enabled dictatorship. But the "party" in 1984 could have done it another way. They could have introduced the telescreens as a convenience to users, then slowly increased their dependence on the technology while adding to its invasiveness. In our case, this dependence is ironically linked to our need to stay informed, in touch, in the loop. I wouldn't dream of closing my Facebook account for fear of losing track of my friends. Unfortunately, the information we're receiving is falsely relevant; and is now becoming geared toward our habits as consumers more than our actions as "friends". And who is Big Brother in 2084? Not government. Marketers, and the corporations behind them.

LA Times - "Marlboro Marine" series

Rescue operation aims to save a wounded warrior

I picked up the Oregonian this morning and read the last story in this series about photographer Luis Sinco and his relationship with the marine in this now-famous photograph at left.
The story sucked me in and after reading the print version, I went online for the rest. (A critique of the Oregonian: Why not publish the link where readers can easily access the entire series? Why make me search on your website, then on the LA Times' to find what I'm looking for?)
Sinco's series was fascinating not just as an excellent in-depth story of one Marine's (Miller) post-combat struggles, but also as a first-person account of a journalist's relationship with his subject.
Sinco wrote: "A journalist wasn't supposed to get personally involved with his subjects. But I felt somehow responsible for Miller. Over and over, I thought: It will be my fault if something bad happens to him."
Reading statements like this in a newspaper kind of surprised me at first. I've never seen a story that uses this perspective. But it effectively brought me in and kept me reading, even online, which tends to be tremendously distracting. Is this the format stories will move toward as newspapers try harder to engage their readers? Traditionally, I would be opposed to that, favoring a continued effort toward third-person objectivity. But then again, it works, and there really is only one side to this story.

I also wonder about the impact of this story on other readers: do they sympathize with Sinco as well as Miller? People seem to have this jaded, negative attitude toward journalists, saying that they only care about what will cause a sensation or sell more papers. Obviously, this particular journalist cares very deeply about his subject. How does his experience fit in with their stereotypes?

The only thing that bothered me about this piece was that it ran in the same paper that included a story about a bomb in a marketplace in Baghdad killing 15 people and injuring 56 others. Yes, a disgraceful amount of American soldiers have died in this war. But their numbers are nothing compared to the amount of Iraqis killed by related terrorist acts. I understand that it is much more difficult to follow the story of an Iraqi affected by this violence, but it would make much more sense to do so from a human-tragedy standpoint. Miller, to some extent, had a choice about going to war. The people in the Baghdad bombing had violence brought to their doorstep without any say at all in the matter. Maybe we should start looking more closely at their stories too.

anecdote 1

It rained all weekend, so it was difficult to find an anecdote with people in it while on my beat. So this one deals more with description and scene-setting, and might make a good segment in a story about the proposed Railroad Quiet Zones in Eugene.


It's a typically quiet evening at the Campbell House Inn. The large Victorian-style house on the hill sits regally in the rain, the large, multi-paned windows displaying gleaming dark wood furniture and Tiffany lamps. Their orange light spills out onto the well-manicured lawn and rose bushes with the season's last petals being tattered by large raindrops. The only noises here are the rush of the occasional car passing by and the nonstop chorus of gurgles coming from the gutters and storm drains that keep the neighborhood from becoming a lake during days of ceaseless rain like this.
Suddenly, a noise tears through the dusk that seems to blast away even the rain for a brief moment. It's a train - only a few hundred feet away on the railroad tracks below - sounding its horn for the neighborhood's two ungated intersections. Two short, screeching blasts, followed by a longer one that seems to stretch on for minutes. The volume is deafening, meant to warn pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists of the oncoming mass of steel and freight.

television

An interesting thought struck me yesterday. Everyone constantly says how dead the print media are, but nobody considers the death of television. But, when I look at most of the people around me (ok, all college students, but still), all signs point to newspapers surviving - albeit in online form - and television, in the traditional, boob-tube sense, rapidly losing popularity.
Nobody will read newspapers in ten years, the editors and old-schoolers worry. Kids these days get everything off the internet. Now, if somebody ever gave me a good argument about why "kids these days" ARE so different from kids in any other day, I'd have to congratulate them. Honestly, we're doing all the standard stuff - challenging the system, pissing off our parents, trying desperately to distinguish ourselves. I, for one, have given up on this effort, but I don't doubt that other of my generation will continue to try until they hit that magical point (probably when they have kids) when they decide they like the world the way it is and complain about anyone who tries to change it.
But anyway, a newspaper on the internet is still a newspaper. But television, when converted to online form, is something a bit different. It's not an Orwellian telescreen. It's user-controlled and relatively light on advertising. Best of all, it's no longer a necessity. I don't have a single friend who, when I come over, makes me compete with a blaring TV for attention. In my neighborhood, its Snoop Dogg on the stereo and band practice that keep me up, not late-night infomercials. Sure, the older generation may still spend a good portion of their time mesmerized by live television. But if someone I'm talking to brings up a show and I ask them when it's on, they'll have no idea because it's on all the time - on the net, free and often downloadable.
The TV network owners are probably in bigger trouble than the newspaper guys, because it seems that a lot of TV's profit comes from people watching things they don't necessarily mean to watch because they have the tube on in the background. Internet TV will never be compatible with this method of media consumption. As a result, I believe it could become more content-driven, not advertising-driven. Sure, formats can change, and the transition away from telescreens will probably be seamless. But if there's room to worry about the death of media, it's in TV, not newspapers and magazines.

midterm fiasco lessons

I suppose we can blame it all on the blog.

A well-intentioned comment on my last post indicated that my writing had reinforced the commenter's conviction that Oregon's Measure 49 must go down. This is not in line with my beliefs and was certainly not the intention of this blog. I made a mental note to research the matter further and give a well-reasoned argument for the measure on my next post.

Then midterms hit, and I never got the chance to work on it. But, because of some poor scheduling on my part, I ended up switching my midterm story topic assignment for Reporting from football to Measure 49. Never have I felt so gleeful about a project that would determine a good part of my grade and require the sacrifice of my entire week.

I got started on Friday, talking to campaign representatives in Salem because I happened to be there and calling people I knew who might have Measure 37 claims. I finished my interviews by Monday evening and on Tuesday consigned myself to the library for most of the day (leaving to take a midterm exam that I probably didn't do so well on, considering I only studied for about half an hour). On Wednesday, I struggled with the conclusion until about 1 pm but turned in my 2000 words on time, without a hitch. I was exhausted from the effort and lack of sleep, but satisfied.

Yes, there were a couple times in that period that I complained to myself about the story's length. Last spring, I took an Environmental Writing class that required a 2000-word feature as a final project, and we had all ten weeks of the term to work on it. This summer, I completed a similar type of story in three months. But mostly, I found myself pondering the philosophical questions that my interviews brought up, calling a cagey logging company repeatedly, reading and re-reading legalese, and happily typing away through the night and day as I sipped hot tea to keep my strength up.

The moments surrounding the time that I realized I had written almost three times as much as I needed to are slowed down in my memory and riddled with gaps. I remember printing out the story in the Journalism school's computer lab, then standing in the hallway waiting to go into the classroom to turn it in. Then the record skips to the student who placed her assignment on the pile on top of mine. I remember noting how un-harried and calm she looked - but something marred the surface when she looked down at my first page. She said something like, "Wait, we only had to write 750 words, right?" Everyone standing around nodded their heads. "Oh good," she said, "I thought I saw it say '2000 words' at the top of that page." I had faithfully recorded the word count at the top of my story - and it was actually 2100 because I can never seem to hit those right on.

Now, everyone's probably had an experience like this, so I don't need to detail the mixture of remorse, anger, frustration, and - eventually - amusement, I felt upon learning this. I sputtered a few words, found my way outside, then I sat and stared at the fine detailing of the cement wall outside the J-school for quite a long time.


Lessons learned from the past week:

1. If something doesn't seem right, it's not.

2. I like writing features way too much.

3. Somewhere along the line I decided that I'd attained perfection and that I don't ever make mistakes. As a result, I also started not bothering to check on whether I've made a mistake, and that in itself was the biggest mistake of all.

4. Blogs are dangerous things.