Music of the Day

So, I've decided to get a jump on my New Year's resolution to post more often. It has occured to me that I neglect this blog far too much, and now that I'm not doing much on break, I owe it to the great people reading this blog - both of you - to post more often. So! I've decided to start doing this new feature where I share music found on YouTube with you, the viewers. Something to keep in your head each day. And if you listen to this song too much, it WILL stay in your head all day.



This song is called "Pollyanna", one of the most symbolic songs from the Mother series of video games (known in America as EarthBound). Proof positive that video games can have really good music, something you'll know for sure if you keep following this segment. It's a light, happy, and optimistic song, indicative of the outlook I'm taking with this blog. I'll be talking with you guys again soon, so keep your eyes open.

Confronting the Internet, or, How Old Media are going New.

With newspaper companies in danger—The Tribune Corporation is already filing for bankruptcy, and the New York Times Company taking out massive loans to keep itself afloat—many sources of old media are finding it is getting herder and harder to survive. But many journalists are finding new ways to get by, and are looking to the internet as their vehicle to accomplish this.

Take Jon Keller, a political analyst for the local CBS affiliate in Boston, WBZ-TV. He’s worked for years in television, and has built quite a reputation for himself as one of the finest in his field. In recent years, though, he has expanded his work to the internet – starting a blog, the Keller @ Large blog, where he posts links to articles he finds to be important, links to videos made by WBZ-TV, and opinions on the daily happenings in the news. “I started my blog about two or three years ago”, said Keller, in a conversation we had over the phone. “I had certainly been a blog reader, and I realized that I would need an online presence in order to survive in the current media environment.”

Keller sees his blog not just as an extension of what he does in his television work, but as a separate entity with a whole new—and very different—focus. While his television work is focused at informing viewers, he views the blog as a way to interact with them. ”I think that, definitely, today’s audience is not just going to sit there and be lectured at,” said Keller. “You have to engage them in some way, and that means interactivity.”

Keller is not the only journalist trying to use the internet to help establish themselves. Journalistic blogs pop up all the time, from students jumping in the business, trying to show off their skills - like yours truly - to established journalists using a blog as another platform to do something different then what they do day-to-day. This is what Jay Fitzgerald, a business reporter for the Boston Herald, has done with his blog, Hub Blog.

"I already had the blog going when I joined the Herald," said Fitzgerald, in a conversation we had over the phone. "They [the Herald] were very progressive on blogging, and they let me keep my personal blog." Fitzgerald uses his blog to talk about subjects outside of his everyday reporting, such as politics, which he works on around his day job at the Herald. "I generally post in the mornings, before I go to work...I absolutely don't blog during work," said Fitzgerald. "It is a bit of a balancing act."

Amy Derjue, a former writer for Boston Magazine and Boston Daily, one of the magazine's online sections, has a different reason for keeping her blog - it was how she started writing. In an email interview, Derjue explained, saying, "I started blogging in 2004. I'd graduated from Emerson College, and found a job editing textbooks and wanted to keep writing. " After she began working with Boston Daily, Derjue got introduced to a new way to use online journalism. "Boston Daily was kind of a hodgepodge of work," said Derjue. "We'd follow breaking news, and I'd do interviews or track down my own stories as well. It was reporting meets media criticism meets gossip column."

These are examples of individual journalists adapting to the internet. But how have large news entities, like The Boston Globe, handled the change?. The Globe has had plenty of experience on the internet, as they've been operating on the internet through their homepage, Boston.com, for years. I talked to Mark Micheli, a news editor at Boston.com, about how the Globe has adapted to the internet, at the Globe and Boston.com headquarters in Boston. Micheli doesn’t see Boston.com as just a rehash of what’s in the Globe, as they try using the tools available on the internet to improve the stories on the site. “What we also try to do, too, is add online enhancements to that content,” said Micheli. “So if there’s video to go with the story, or if there’s photos, they’ll add the photos, they’ll add the video, they’ll add the audio, and then they’ll package them in certain ways too, and that’s really where the creative part comes into posting the newspaper online.”

Micheli also sees opportunity in the website to interact with readers and visitors to the site. “If you look at the newspaper, the newspaper’s kind of flat, it’s stagnant, and it stays the same, because it’s published once a day. With online, you can be more interactive with your audience.” He mentioned an example of how this interactivity has affected their work, citing the bomb scare in Boston a few years ago that turned out just to be an advertising experiment gone wrong, saying “Someone noticed that on our message boards, people were talking about how this was just some sort of marketing prank, and that’s where we first got wind of it.

Not all media organizations believe that their website must be something unique, of course. Robin Lubbock, the director of new media for WBUR radio, in Boston sees the website more as an extended conversation with listeners about the content created by the radio programs. "It's not strictly journalism, it's a conversation. In fact, it isn't journalism at all," said Lubbock. "I think the objective is to create or continue the conversation created by the content."

Lubbock expanded on this, saying that, while they are trying new things on the website, in the end, the content should still be focused on the radio program. "I think we have values [about good content], and we use the same values on the radio as we do on the web," said Lubbock. "Are we trying to make [the website] different? No, we're just trying to make it something the users want to have."

As journalism continues to adapt to the internet, it will continue to be presented with opportunities to grow their communities in ways they might not have thought of before. By using the internet to enhance their traditional work and interact with their audience, they can change the way the present the news to a new—and rapidly growing—community of consumers that follow the news on the internet. Whether they can effectively take hold of this opportunity presented to them will have a great impact on whether these organizations will be able to survive in the new media environment.

NewsTrust

NewsTrust is an interesting experiment: it isn't journalism per se, it is more ingrained in the study of journalism, and dissecting what goes in to a good piece of journalism. It asks its reviewers and visitors to go out and find pieces of journalism to be submitted to the community for review. It is unique in the fact that, while numerous sites allow stories to be rated and commented on, NewsTrust really centers on this aspect, trying to identify strong journalistic pieces, and organizations which can be trusted to deliver good journalism.

The latest News Hunt for the site was on the global economy. I helped out by finding and rating three stories on the net. This piece, posted on Green Inc., a blog associated with The New York Times, discussed the proposed auto industry bailout from an environmental point of view. The next work I reviewed was a report, witten by the Associated Press and hosted by MSNBC, on a recent meeting of Pacific Rim nations, where some leaders were optimistic that the recesion will be over in 18 months. Finally, another AP report discussed how the global finiacial crisis has resulted in Japan's first recesion in seven years.

NewsTrust does some verygood things and has a good idea behind it, but has some flaws and shortcomings. Firstly, the site is mostly dependant on submissions from visitors, so when visitors are not submitting topics, the site has very little content. And since the site community is still very small, it needs the few reviewers it has to submit whatever they can. Also, though this may be nit-picking, since the site is essentially an expanded comments section, then the ratings are subject to the whims of whoever the reviwers are. If reviewers are not doing their job, the site suffers. Fortunately, NewsTrust recognizes and tries to remedy this by rating reviewers as well, giving more weight to reviews submitted by trusted reviewers. All in all, NewsTrust is an interesting experiment that will be well worth watching how it develops.

Coffee coffee coffeecoffeecoffee....

...okay, not really. I myself belong to the militant anti-coffee faction, so I did not leave Dunkin' Donuts in a caffeine-induced craze. I did leave with a nice hot chocolate and crappy donuts, but that's another manner. The Dunkin' Donuts located at 283 Huntington Ave. - one of at least three in the Northeastern area, in case you were thinking about being disloyal to your new breakfast overlords - is a nice little place open from 6am to 9pm. A medium coffee costs $1.79, but can be gotten with any of their breakfast value meals - donuts, bagles, etc - for around $3-4. The service was very good, but there's not much room to sit down, if you want to enjoy your coffee there in the shop. And, as I mentioned, the donuts leave...something to be desired. If you want to find another good coffee place in Boston, check out our map.

Maps

Our ongoing study of online maps had us look at a map made by the New York Times about the Tour de France. The map shows the path that the tour takes, as well as who won that stage of the tour and who possesses the overall lead. It also has links to the NYT's story on that stage, as well as some pictures and audio. Unfortunately, there is only a little audio and a few pictures - many stages lack any additional qualities beside the story. An improvement would be to increase the number pictures and audio clips available, or to add video highlights of the stage, to expand the scoe of the project.

Anime Boston 2009 - Video Journalism

My first attempt at video journalism, hurray! I went to Tokyo Kid in Boston, where they were holding a preregistration event for Anime Boston 2009, the local anime convention. I asked everyone what they though about last year's event, and what they look forward to this year. I got quite a few good responses, and uploaded them here. All in all, it was a pretty fun experience. I hope you all enjoy it.

Jon Stewart at Northeastern

Matthews Arena was filled to capacity, and then some, but strangely, it wasn't for a hockey game. No, tonight, everyone was here for a rare opportunity to see Jon Stewart perform.

The host of Comedy Central's award winning The Daily Show with Jon Stewart appeared at Northeastern University on Friday, October 17. He performed stand-up comedy for an hour to a sold-out crowd of students, alumni, and guests before taking questions from the crowd for a half hour at the end of his appearance.

"It was enlightening", said Katie Fairbank-Haynes, a middler psychology major at Northeastern. "He shares a lot of my views."

For 90 minutes after taking the stage, Stewart kept the crowd laughing with a no holds barred routine on politics, family, and the future of the country. In the question period towards the end, students got a chance to talk with the comedian and ask him more about topics he touched on in his routine.

"I thought it was incredible. Jon Stewart spoke very freely", said Sam Reynolds, a middler biochemistry major at Northeastern. "I think he definitely knows how to talk to college kids."

There was even a bit of national coverage out of the evening. A bit of a stir was caused on the blogosphere when Stweart said "F--- you" to Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin for, in his eyes, looking down on urban America in their appeal to small town voters. He later clarified that he should have said "F--- all y'all", attacking not just Palin but the entire McCain campaign for the tactic.

And for a nice finish, during the question period, when asked if he would mention his appearance at the school on the Monday edition of his show, he first joked, "F--- that", then agreed to mention Northeastern if the men's hockey team could beat Boston College the next day. When the Huskies pulled off the upset of the then-No. 1 ranked Eagles, Stewart kept up his end of the bargain.

Online Polling Databases

With the 2008 Election drawing nearer, online polling databases, which crunch polling statistic to come up with a median average, have become more useful to sort out how the election looks to be. The first database I looked at is Real Clear Politics. Real Clear Politics brings together polling data, adjust the numbers to account for poll sample sizes, and puts out an average spread to show the state of the race, assembled into maps and graphs. However, Real Clear Politics has a major problem in that exactly how it creates the numbers it puts out: what the formulas are, which polls are accepted, etc. This lack of clarity makes their numbers slightly dubious, especially to those on the watch for partisan bias. Another problem for RCP is the messy front page, which is cluttered with data, links, maps, and anything else that can fit.

In this regard, then the next database, Pollster, is much better off than RCP, as their front page leads you to an interactive map of the United States, complete with their polling statistics. Pollster, like RCP, has breakdowns of both nation and state level races, but their highly intuitive map makes looking for the information you want a much less daunting challenge. They are also up front with how they acquire their numbers, in a helpful FAQ located right on the map. As a database, it's extremely well-done, and is especially for those people who are not that involved in the political scene.

Lastly, there's FiveThirtyEight, run by baseball statistician Nate Silver. While Pollster and Real Clear Politics focus mainly on the stats in the polling, FiveThirtyEight uses a complex formula to get its numbers, involving the past accuracy of the pollster, analyzing pollster methodology, breaking down the domgraphics of the state being polled, running election simulations, etc. Even with the FAQ to help sort it all out, it's enough data to make a normal person's head spin, contrasting to the more simple methodolgies of the other databases. It requires a lot more understanding of polling methods to fully grasp how the numbers are created, so it's probably not for political newbies. Of course, those more involved will revel in the sheer amount of information that is available on the site, so FiveThirtyEight is much more geared at political junkies than the average voter.

WBUR

The expansion of WBUR onto the Internet allows for some interesting developments in how the station reaches viewers. Radio has the benefit of retaining its audience, since most listeners listen to radio in the car, and since the car is still the dominant mode of transportation, radio still has a ways to go before obsolescence. But expanding to the Internet will allow local radio stations - like WBUR, a chance to keep their customers interested in their product, so that even if some development in technology occurs and renders local radio obsolete, they still have a unique and viable product that causes viewers to stay engaged with WBUR.

Look at where WBUR has expanded to. They are on Twitter, bringing updates about news stories and chatting with listeners and followers. They have pages on Flickr and YouTube, expanding on their radio content with pictures and video pieces. They have pages on MySpace and Facebook to stay involved in the new social networking scene. And of course, they can be listened to live on the internet and on podcast. What will all these expansions do to keep WBUR afloat should a radio apocalypse occur?

Well, most importantly, it allows more people to find out exactly what WBUR offers as a news source to the city of Boston. NPR is a valuable national news source, and should the Internet expand so that it is easily accessible anywhere, then it will undoubtedly remain the stadrad bearer for national online radio. What WBUR should hope for, then, is to remain as a standard bearer for Boston local news. The audience may be smaller than the national circut that NPR has, but in this way, WBUR would still fulfill its obligation to be keep the people of Boston informed.

Expanding will also allow people who are away from the city to find out what is going on - say, for instance, someone on vaction wanted to hear about local news. Internet expansion allows WBUR to fill that role, even when the listener can't reach WBUR on radio, they can find out what is going on through the Internet. Obviously, this means that WBUR faces new challenges and new competition, as many news sources are expanding onto the internet as well. WBUR must then work hard to keep people interested in what the station is providing, so that their audience will stay with them.

Wired Journalists

Wired Journalists is one of the many new networking sites popping up on the web. Wired Journalists is mainly an image hosting site that hopes to develop photojournalism online. It's a rather simple site to use - go out into the field, take pictures of events, and upload them to the site. The layout is intuitive and works quickly, so there are rarely problems. As long as you are used to taking pictures, i works quite well. One thing about the layout that could be improved is photo editing: unlike a site like Flickr, which has basic photo editing on the site, Wired Journalists does not - they must be edited before being uploaded.

As for the community of Wired Journalists as a whole, it has the simple problem that it hasn't quite taken off like sites like Flickr or Photobucket. The community is quite small, compared to the followings other image sites have gained - which in turn leads to fewer images being posted. Another problem is just how much of the site is geared towards journalism. While the intention of the site seems to be geared towards newsworthy images, many images on site have little to do with news, as some members seem to disregard the journalistic leanings of the site. Hopefully this can be improved as the community expands, but as of now these problems are hard to reconcile.

Boston blogs on the Red Sox comeback and Game 7

Win or lose tonight, what the Boston Red Sox have done these last few days - coming back to force a Game 7 in the American League Championship series, after being left for dead in Game 5 - is undoubtedly incredible. So, what are Boston bloggers saying about the series?

Adam Kilgore, blogging at Boston.com, runs through just how improbable the comeback would be:

“In that situation, with the home team down by 7 runs, only 0.6% of all teams between 1977 and 2006 have come back to win the game,” Agami writes. On Friday, “coolstandings.com gave the Sox a 22% chance of winning the next two games in a row, so that would mean that when Balfour entered the game the Sox had a 0.1% chance of winning the ALCS (multiplying 0.6% by 22%) - about one in 1,000.”

At 10:57 p.m. Thursday, the Red Sox had a 1 in 1,000 chance to win the ALCS. Now they’re nine innings away, and they have already thrown some of the final shovelfuls of dirt on the Tampa Bay Rays’ season.

Randy Booth at Over the Monster compares the comeback to last year's:

Does anyone remember what that feeling was like at this time last year? I don't remember. I wish I could, because I'd like to compare it to right now. Right now it just seems like it's set up nicely. The Sox evened the series and now it's do-or-die time. Someone will be playing their last baseball game tonight.

It's hard to compare this team to last year's team because it is so different. Mark Kotsay at first base and Jason Bay in left field? Could anyone have guessed that in spring training? Coco Crisp in center field, nevertheless, after the benching of Jacoby "Jactober" Ellsbury. It's a different team.

A different team, but the same attitude: play like there's no tomorrow. That's how the Sox will play tonight. From the top of the order to the bottom, from the starter (Mr. Jon Lester) to the bullpen. The ALCS is culminating with this and it feels great.

The Rational Sox Fan marvels at the team's playoff tenacity:

I think the Red Sox have made it clear, once and for all, that it is simply a waste of time to count out a playoff team, even when their back is to the wall. You cannot say, "it looks like it is all over for the Red Sox this year", or anything like that. Instead, you need to say things like, "the Red Sox are down 3 games to 1, and are in a perfect position to make this a truly exciting playoff series".

Jose Melendez gives the Red Sox a new tagline:

Don’t bury me… I’m not dead.

That was the tag line for the 1988 Wes Craven film The Serpent and the Rainbow, based painfully loosely on a book by ethnobotanist Wade Davis describing search for a scientific explanation for Haitian zombie myths. It might as well be the tagline for the Boston Red Sox.

The Red Sox are not dead; they are never dead, and yet year after year, teams come to throw piles of moist black earth upon them.

Jeff Louderback at Sox and Pinstripes looks ahead to Game 7:

After a rough start in Game Three, Lester has another chance to show he is one of the top go-to starters in Major League Baseball. A game like this is where Lester's poise will help. Tampa Bay starter Matt Garza is intense, and his emotions are sometimes detrimental to his success on the mound. The keys to a victory for Boston tonight are no different than they were for Game Six. The Red Sox need to drive up Garza's pitch count and get into the Tampa Bay bullpen, which was exceptional during the regular season but now must be feeling some doubt after the last two games. Lester must control B.J. Upton, Carlos Pena, Evan Longoria and Carl Crawford (the 2-6 hitters who have pounded Boston pitching in the series)

Mass Live blogs

The MassFacts section of Boston.com is, essentially, a database of databases, containing links to a number of database sites with information about both Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a whole. These sites are rather plentiful, and contain information on a cariety of topics.

The "Your Town" section of the page is information pulled from databases about the city and surrounding towns. For instance, have you wondered how many Dunkin' Donuts are in your town? Matt Carroll did, so he went to Dunkin' Donuts, asked them for the information, and listed it on the site. This is handy information to have if you want to write an article on, say, Dunkin' Donuts' slow domination of the New England area, one town at a time.

For more serious information, though, we have the database of the 185th General Court, aka the Massachusetts state legislature. The site lists information on the current legislators, such as their backgrounds, contact info and the committees they serve on. It also lists petitions and bills that have come before he legislature, which can be found with a simple search. Obviously, such a source can lead to any kind of story, especially if there is something large in the news: for example, if there are protests to the legislature on abortion, you can look up recent petitions and bills on abortion, as well as who brought the bill to the floor, to write a column on the legislature's history.

When you are looking for more tangible information, though, there are databases with more substance, like the list of homicides in the city in the last year. Thanks to the interactive map, we can find not only the basics of where the killing happened, but also more detailed information such as information on the victims, the circumstances of the death, and any arrests in the case.Again, it is easy to see what can be made of with this information: seeing if the city is having an upswing in violence based on recent trends, or writing about which sections of town are more dangerous.

Political Blogs

Politifact.com, a fact-checking site run by the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly magazine, goes through statements by politicians and figures in the Presidential race to sift through what they say in order to find how much truth is there. It rates the amount of truth and truthiness is in each statement and grades it. The site is very well done and has a fun style that makes it very good all-around.

Factcheck.org is a very good at showing how truthful political statements and ads are, and their articles are extremely thorough in this aspect. They are also slightly faster than Politifact. However, Factcheck covers far fewer statements than Politifact, usually just going over ads made by the campaigns or affiliated groups, while Politifact goes over ads, statements, and attacks anyone who injects themselves into the debate. Expanding their range would help greatly.

The Congress Votes Database, run by the Washington Post, is exactly what it says: a database of votes made by the House of Representatives and Senate, and their reasoning for the votes and statements about the votes. It is an extremely valuable resource for researching the history of the legislators, but that's all it is - good for research. It doesn't really talk about ongoing events, and there is no information on the front page. A suggestion would be to take an issue on people minds today, like say the bailout, document what the politicians are saying about it, and put this information on the front page, so people know where they stand without having to sift through pages of votes.

Lastly, Project Vote Smart, is similar to the Congress Votes Database as it goes over decisions and votes made by politicians and stores them in a database. However, while the Congress database limits itself to only reporting on the national Congress, Project Vote Smart is much broader in scope, going over Congressmen, governors, state legislators and state office holders, and allows readers to find their representatives just by searching their zip code. It also goes over not just votes, but it also keeps track of public stances and speeches given by the figure. I still would like to see something on today's issues on the front page, but Vote Smart is still a very well done site.

Reminding the media to do its research

Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy - Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for that rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.

It's not a really closely guarded secret that the mainstream media just doesn't understand nerds. Since nerds and geek chic are one of those odd subcultures that lies just outside of the media's comfort zone, any attempts to report about them often seem like their reporting from bizarre overseas country, where they've just finished talking to the locals and more or less learned the customs. It's not really their fault, since no one in the mainstream culture really cares about it, and since the arrival of the internet, it's no problem at all, since there are now sites run by nerds for nerds about stories they understand. So while the mainstream media doesn't provide up-to-date accounts in the latest Star Wars news, it's all right, because there are at least 15 websites dutifully dedicated to stalking George Lucas's every move, run by people who actually understand what the words Alderaan and Sarlacc mean. (Note to the uninitiated: Wikipedia is your friend.)

But every now and then, someone in the mainstream media gets an adventurous feeling and decides to head into the depths of Nerditania to assess the landscape over there in a way that most people can understand. This usually comes as great amusement to the locals, who relish in watching others struggle to grasp their customs and learn the trms. Which brings us to the topic of this post, a sex column on MSNBC.com about sexually explicit anime and manga. Through the course of this column, he tries to explain the inner dealing and fetishes of "otaku" (a recent Japanese term for nerds that has somewhat gained acceptance in Japan and the US subcultures), and had almost did a good job of it. Almost, though comes into the fact that a number of oversights and misstatements which make it obvious to anypne who knows anything about anime that this reporters has little idea of what e's talking about, if any at all.

The main line that gets nerds laughing is this beauty:

But sexually-suggestive and explicit anime like "Gurren Lagann" and "Legend of the Overfiend," is finding an eager audience of adult Americans who are drawn to the post-modern, almost post-human mash-up of playful, blurry morality found in the genre.

Now, for the uninitiated, there might not seem to be any problem here. But any anime fan who reads that line is likely laughing themselves senseless right now, and here's why: Gurren Lagann is not, in any way, a "sexually-sugesstive and explicit" anime. Gurren Lagann (short for Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann) is a recent - and highly critically aclaimed - anime about giant robots fighting in a dystopian future. With no sex. Maybe a couple dirty jokes and fanservice, but nothing in the realm of the pornographic. Not only is this oversight by the reporter embarassing, but it is impossibly easy to correct - just look up the show on a anime news source like Anime News Network, or even look it up on Wikipedia. It's a simple mistake, but a massive one that kills any credibility with anime fans that the reporter has done any research at all.

While no other mistake is as damning as that one, other lesser missteps don't help the reporters cause. For Instance, he writes a good five paragraphs about adult anime and otaku and naghuty tentacles before mentioning that, oh yes, "...not all anime and manga is overtly sexual — a lot of it is meant for children". Two problems here: One, "A lot" should be replaced by "the vast majority of", as adult anime comprises, at best, 10% of the total anime library. And two, not all the rest are aimed at young children, but that doesn't make them porn. Seriously, you'd think 10 years of South Park and 4000 seasons of The Simpsons would teach people that just because its animated doesn't mean it's for kids.

The other point is that he never distinguishes between the clean anime and the adult ones, Possibly because the reporter never bothered to look into it. The actual accepted term for adult anime and manga - hentai - is mentioned all of once in the entire piece about adult anime. This can only be understandable if we assume that the reporter believed that the two terms were interchangeable, which is just not the case. Yes, Gurren Lagann and Legend of the Overfiend are both examples of anime, but in the same way that The Matrix and Debbie Does Dallas are both examples of film. They just happen to be in vastly different genres, and unless that is explained, then the audience won't understand or will get an inaccurate image of the subject - something journalism is supposed to prevent, not create.

Really, the bad part about this article is that so much could have been improved with simple research. Talk to the editor of Anime News Network or one of the sources you used to make sure that what you are writing is accurate. Maybe talk to a few industry insiders to get a better picture. Or really, if it comes down to it, always remember - Wikipedia is your friend.

A Trip Around Blogville

We have been asked to showcase three of our favorite blogs from the many corners of the Internet. Seeing as my interests are varied, I've chosen three very different blogs that appeal to me. Each one comes from a different subculture on the Internet.

Of course, some of the more well known blogs are political blogs, discussing the news of the day and how it affects you and those in power. There are thousands of these across the net, but one that does things very differently, and thus deservedly gets attention for it, is the political gossip blog Wonkette. Armed with a sharp wit and sarcastic style, Wonkette joyfully mocks the inner workings of today's politics, jokes about the major stories of theday, and revels in the occasional Washington sex scandal. The site takes little seriously, a rarity in the political realm, as can bee seen in their coverage of the recent bank failures:

GO GET YOUR MONEY PEOPLE: Collapsing investment banks are yesterday’s news, trendsetters! Now we can turn our attention to the biggest possible commercial banks failing miserably, like, say, Washington Mutual. And when that collapses on Sunday, probably, it will likely drain up what’s left of the FDIC’s insurance fund. The FDIC can always get more money from the Treasury, or we can just have a BANK RUN!!! EVERYONE RUN TO THE BANK!!! PANIC! CHAOS FIRE OBAMA BURN!!

Moving along, we go too a completely different corner of the Internet to another interest of mine: anime. My favorite blog within the anime community is Random Curiosity, a running diary of shows out in Japan. The editor, Omni, follows a number of shows as they come out each week, writing reviews and discussing the series with other fans. Omni also puts out a preview at the beginning of each season of anime, walking through the upcoming shows and giving fans an ideaof what to watch for.

And lastly, we move on to video games, anime's cousin in geek culture. One of the rising names in online gaming culture is Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, creator of the "Zero Punctuation" series of video reviews at The Escapist, an online gaming magazine. Yahtzee's reviews have been lauded for thier brilliant writing and engaging style. His personal blog, Fully Ramblomatic, has links to all these videos as well as an archive of his older work, including freeware video games which he wrote and designed. It's a good read for those who wish to keep up to date on Yahtzee's recent and past work.