Music of the Day

Couple of days missed due to the move in back to school, but eh. Anyways, D.A.N.C.E. by Justice. This song is addictive as hell, and the trippy video just as fun to watch. A quick peek on the song's Wikipedia page shows that it was dedicated to Micheal Jackson, and that the song's actual vocals are provided by a London-based children's choir. I don't know it was planned that way, but I was laughing.

Music of the Day.

Night, whatever. Anyway, Hall and Oates' "She's Gone". Love the chorus on this one. The deliciously awkward video? Uh, not so much. You also might want to see this live recording (warning: has some ausio sync issues) is nice for the new feel of the song and the comedy of John Oates' amazing porn stache.

Ahh, football

Just finished watching the Indianapolis at San Diego game. One question: how is it that Peyton Manning loses every playoff game he's supposed to win, yet every announcer is convinced that he'll come through in the end? Did that one Super Bowl win against an plucky but outmanned Chicago team really fool everyone this much? He's won three MVP's, which is an amazing accomplishment, don't get me wrong, and lead each of those teams to 12-4 records. His record in the playoffs during those years? 3-3. And he's never sniffed the Super Bowl in those seasons, the closest call being making the AFC Championship Game in 2003 and getting pasted by the Patriots in the snow at Foxborough, a game in which Manning threw 4 picks.

Yet, all we hear about in the playoffs is "Oh boy, you don't want Peyton Manning to have the ball at the end of the game!" I wonder if the evidence in this game will change that: playing with a three point lead, Manning was miserable in the 4th, including two drives where he first couldn't get the Colts out of their own endzone, nearly taking a safety in the process, and the drive to finish the quarter where he struggled to move downfield for a potential Adam Vinatieri game-winner, eventually kneeling down with one second left instead of taking one last no-lose shot at the endzone. (Admittedly, though, a lot of this was caused by San Diego's defence, who played their hearts out in this game.) That was basically Manning saying to his team "Let's just start pray really hard we get the coin toss," which, as we know, he didn't, and the Colts ended up never touching the ball again.

Which moves to the next topic: How far can the Chargers go? They looked great in this game, especially on the defensive side of the ball. And that was without question the best offence they'll see in the playoffs, at least in the AFC. Unfortunately, it was also the worst defence they'll see, and even then the Chargers struggled to score points and made too many dumb turnovers. Sure, maybe they can hold the Steelers and Titans offenses under 20, but would anyone bet that they can put up 20 on those D's? Seeing LaDanian Tomlinson play more than two quarter would be nice, because I'm guessing that Darren Sproles doesn't have too many 300+ all-purpose-yards games in him.

Music of the Day

Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Why? Funny story that - it started when I was reading manga.

Stay with me on this.

You see, there's this very funny manga called Cromartie High School. It's wacky, weird, and will confuse anyone without a degree in Japanese pop culture. Well...there's this character in Cromartie...here, let me give you a visual.



Yeah, that should do it. Yep, there's a manga with Freddie Mercury as a character. Though he looks...slightly different then in the video, it's obviously still him. Even though he doesn't actually talk in the manga...the other guys just decide to call him Freddie. He usually...just stands there and looks badass. Or does something badass. Or does something...extremely odd. Yeah, it's Japan, it doesn't have to make sense.

About that "posting more"

So, let me explain.

I was ready to start posting more. Had fun things to talk about. Politics, sports, music, yada yada. And then the internet intervened, with it's magical spyware crashing my computer. So the last few days have been a lot of fixing, re-fixing, still not working right, then finally, complete memory wipe and reinstalling everything. Fun.

But now everything is mostly resolved, hurray! I've still got stuff to fix, but nothing that will take me too long. In the mean time, let's get another Music of the day...week...whatever going.

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.