Students Are Talking Through Web Logs
LAST spring, when Marisa L. Dudiak’s second-grade class in Frederick County, Md., returned from a field trip to a Native American farm, all the students wanted to do was talk about what they saw. But instead of leading a discussion about the trip, Mrs. Dudiak had the students sign on to their classroom Web log.
There they wrote about learning to use a bow and arrow, sitting inside a tepee and petting a buffalo. The short entries were typical of second-grade writing, with misspelled words and simple sentences. Still, for Mrs. Dudiak, the exercise proved more fruitful than a group discussion or a handwritten entry in a personal journal.
Teachers and students are finding blogs effective because they’re so easy to work with.
For teachers, blogs are attractive because they require little effort to maintain, unlike more elaborate classroom Web sites, which were once heralded as a boon for teaching. Helped by templates found at sites like tblog.com and movabletype.org, teachers can build a blog or start a new topic in an existing blog by simply typing text into a box and clicking a button.
What’s the Blogger Buzz?
Blogger.com is a fun and easy way to kickstart your blogging career. They even have a competition to see who is the ultimate blogger. Check it out.
Could It Be You?
The Ultimate Blogger is a 6-week competition between 12 people to be the best blogger in order to win a $500 dollar prize package. Each week consists of two challenges and two eliminations. The person or team that wins the challenge is safe, forcing the other players to vote someone out of the game. The last blogger remaining will be crowned The Ultimate Blogger and win the prize package.
Come On, Everybody’s Doing It
Political commentator Arianna Huffington will launch a news and opinion Web site next month including blogs written by more than 200 celebrities and leaders such as retired journalist Walter Cronkite, writer David Mamet and billionaire Barry Diller, CEO of IAC InterActive Corp.
Senator Hillary Clinton Says Children Are Exposed to Too Much Sex in the Media.
New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, whose husband’s affair with a 23-year-old intern prompted saturation news coverage for a year, complained on Wednesday that children were exposed to too much sex in the media.
Clinton said that in 1994 she worked for the passage of the Children’s Television Act, which led to the implementation of the V-chip, however,
It was also the year Mr. Clinton was sued for sexual harassment by Arkansas state worker Paula Jones - which led to the discovery that he was using the Oval Office for sexual trysts.
Soon the evening news was saturated with reports chock full of R-rated material, forcing parents to deal with uncomfortable questions from children as young as 5 years old.
And
Surveys now credit Sen. Clinton’s husband with making oral sex an acceptable practice among the impressionable teenage population.
How Powerful Are Bloggers?
And while blogs have the power to ruin reputations, end careers, and bring corporate giants to their knees…they are also creating a secret breeding ground of stock market gems - ‘blog sensations’ - which could make you very rich, very soon.
Here’s How.
News Crawler is on the cutting edge of the blog revolution - and has already tapped the secret world of blogs for staggering gains of 107%… 270%… 246% … 111% …253%…100%…90%…85%…108%…and many more.
In fact, in 2004 alone, News Crawler generated 131 winning stock picks for my EVS investment advisory readers.
Are Newspapers Old News?
Rupert Murdoch urged newspaper editors Wednesday to embrace the Internet, saying print news executives have “sat by and watched” as a new generation of digital consumers has turned away from newspapers.
Murdoch also had this to say.
“The trends are against us. Unless we awaken to these changes which are quite different than those five or six years ago, we will, as an industry, be relegated to the status of also-rans,” Murdoch told the annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Is Wallace the Front-runner in Replacing Rather?
“Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace is dismissing a recent report in Florida’s Sun-Sentinel suggesting that he’s the front-runner to replace “CBS Evening News” anchorman Dan Rather after interim anchor Bob Schieffer steps aside.
“All I can say is that Edward R. Murrow and [CBS chairman] Les Moonves should be considered in the same league,” Wallace joked Friday to WRKO Boston radio host Howie Carr, sounding as if he was sucking up to the man who has to sign off on Rather’s replacement.
Satellite Radio featuring Stewart on a 24-hour Channel
Six weeks after being released from federal prison, Martha Stewart has reached a deal with Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. to create a 24-hour channel featuring cooking, gardening and entertaining programming for women.
Coming on the heels of separate deals to create a version of “The Apprentice” and a daily cooking show, the four-year agreement announced Monday with Sirius marks Stewart’s latest move to rebuild her business after serving time for lying to the government about a stock sale.
Stewart also said that she likes the move from television to radio.
“I’m very excited about this,” she said. “Of all the things that I have done in the last few years with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, radio is actually one of the most enjoyable.”
Stewart said she had liked her 90-second “Ask Martha” radio segments. She said she didn’t have to worry about makeup or wardrobe while doing radio.
Standard Broadsheet Newspaper vs. Tabloid
Faced with steadily declining circulation, the Chicago Tribune’s publisher, David Hiller, is looking at a number of options to deal with the problem, including converting the standard broadsheet newspaper into a tabloid.
“Paid circulation is not necessarily the best thing, and it’s certainly not the be-all and end-all,” Hiller told the Sun-Times. “What readers care about is, ‘Is there something interesting to read?’ What advertisers care about is, ‘Are there engaged readers?’”
NBC’s ‘Today’ Show’s Top Exec Fired
NBC on Tuesday ousted the chief executive behind the “Today” show, with the network’s biggest moneymaker in a ratings slump and feeling the heat from ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Although Chief Executive Touchet was not immediately available for comment, rumors composed his reaction to the news.
It’s also said to be a volatile place backstage. One gossip column report a few weeks ago had Touchet slamming a glass door there with such force it shattered.
Esquire magazine ran five pages of ads for online gambling casino Bodog.com in the April issue, and there was more of the same on the boards, but now the New York Post reports that Hearst executives may be pulling the gambling ads – under increasing pressure from the feds.
Read the full story here.
More and more people are using the Internet to receive information due to convenience.
During last year’s presidential race, more people relied on the Internet to attain their political information rather than on the influence of newspapers.
Eighteen percent of American adults cited the Internet as one of their two main sources of news about the presidential races, compared with 3 percent in 1996. The reliance on television grew slightly to 78 percent, up from 72 percent. Meanwhile, the influence of newspapers dropped to 39 percent last year, from 60 percent in 1996, according to the joint telephone-based survey from the Pew Research Center for The People and the Press and the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
“It’s a channel difference, not a substantive difference,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet group and author of the study. “Newspaper executives probably now have to think of themselves less as newspaper people and more as content people.”
A free trade in ideas according to Dalzell is that the truth will eventually be found out because you have so many versions to hold up against one another, and because of that, each person should decide for him or herself the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression, consideration, and adherence. This concept can be demonstrated in more areas than just journalism. It is demonstrated in the Bible with the four Gospels, and it can also be seen in children and people, where it is necessary to get different people’s points of view to extract the truth of the situation. Anytime you hear multiple sides of story—especially if you get to pick and choose what you read or hear—it’s a very good thing because you then get to make the final decision of whether or not that something is truth. Americans are smart enough to find the truth ourselves, and I believe it is belittling to have an opinion from a newspaper handed to me disguised as truth.
This is why Internet journalism, especially blogs, is such a great concept with even greater possibilities. The free trade in ideas has many more opportunities on the Internet rather than with newspaper or television, where the free trade is inhibited. In newspaper and television, only certain powers of the media win the freedom of the press, and that means fewer voices and fewer people get heard. Whereas with the Internet, which has these capabilities, many people can be heard, and we are instilled with more freedom—more freedom to express ourselves and more freedom to pick which news we find newsworthy.
Internet journalism is also such a good thing because virtually anyone can invoke their First Amendment rights because the barriers are so much lower than the barriers for newspaper and television. According to Matt Drudge, freedom of the press needs to be given to anyone who owns one. Not just anybody can publish in newspapers, so if we give freedom to the imperfect newspaper, then even more freedom needs to be allotted to the Internet.
Weblogging is such a big part of Internet journalism because it gives the reader and writer many more opportunities that a newspaper reporter or reader just doesn’t have. It gives them the capability to do such things as linking to other news stories, post news early, is easily searchable, and is also tailored to the reader’s personal interests. Weblogging is a great development in mass communication because if someone posts a story on their blog, anyone in the world can link to their story and say why they agree or disagree with their point of view. Communication and news can travel much faster than newspapers could ever dream of. Another reason why weblogging is so important is because of its easy self-publishing. Anyone can be a journalist and then post their story on the Internet—it’s simple—and anything is newsworthy on the Internet.
The chaos of Internet speech definitely strengthens the journalism marketplace. I am a true advocate for all of our constitutional rights, and Internet journalism makes freedom of speech and freedom of the press that much more tangible to the everyday person, not only newspaper and television journalists. I do, on the other hand, definitely believe that Internet speech should share some basic restrictions that newspaper and television embody. Everyone should be allowed the freedom of speech and freedom of the press so long as it does not violate or infringe upon someone else’s rights. However, anytime we get a chance to embrace our liberties, it is a great thing, and this is one liberty that many people are embracing, and it is only making the news business stronger. Matt Drudge has more visitors than most regular news sites, and that means he is right when he said that people have a taste for unedited information, and if technology catches up with individual freedom, we definitely need to embrace that.