Tivo

We now have a working, connected Tivo in the house.

Some things...

As you could probably notice by my lack of blogging, I have been fairly busy with my first semester of grad school. I think I just got a little overwhelmed for a week or so, but anyway I think I'll be back to blogging regulary as of now. Anyways, here are the things that have been keeping me busy:

1) A quantitative and qualitative look at the emotional response from cellcasting news - This a survey/focus group comparative study on the emotional response people feel when they view news package on cell phones compared to regular television.

2) Looking towards 2008: New Media's effect on the political process - This is a paper where I'll be trying to predict the role of the Internet/New Media in the 2008 Presidential Election.

3) NewsLink Indiana - Again NewsLink is where I work as a graduate assistant.

Here are a few things I find cool:

1)Clinton Presidential Material Project - has working archive copies of all of the different versions of whitehouse.gov

2)Archive.org - This is just cool and I don't understand how it works. If you enter nearly any site into the way back machine you can see old index files dating back for a long time.

3)OpenSecrets.org - Cool site to find out where politicians are getting their campaign money.

4)Homework Express - The show that I co-creator during my undergrad finally launched its first full season the other day, so congrats to them.

Well I am out for now, but I should be back to blogging regularly now.

Fall 05 Ad Rates

LostRemote.com linked up this convent little table for the fall ad prices. The leaders of the pack are:

American Idol (Wed.) $705,000
American Idol (Tues) $660,000
Desperate Housewives $560,000

NYT journalist killed in Iraq

Fakher Haider, an Iraqi journalist working for the New York Times, was found hands bound and a bag over his head outside of Basra. Full Story.

AP Launches ASAP

ASAP is a new news service from the Associated Press, which is geared towards younger readers.

Ball State cleans-up

Congrats to Ball State University's Telecommunications program for winning 6 or 7* regional Emmys, including one professional, regional Emmy for Best Magazine Format show for "Connections Live."

Lost Remote

Lost Remote is at it again, they are talking about the Natalee Holloway with a uncommon amount of sensibility and reason.

Times Select...boooo

The New York Times' pay service starts next week. The pay section includes a number of extra features and stuff that will only available if you pay the fifty bucks a year. One thing included and only available by paying will be the New York Times Op-Eds. Booooo.

Anyone have an opinion

So for my creativity class, iCom 610, we have to do various creative projects. One of our many options was to create the concept for a new class for the Digital Storytelling Masters Program here at Ball State University. Here is my idea:

iCom 645: Storytelling for New Media News

Course Objectives
To examine the effects of the various new technologies, such as the Internet, interactive television, podcasting, cellcasting, etc., on how stories are being told in news media. To look at the classic styles and techniques used to tell effective news stories. To test and evaluate various forms of current new media influenced news storytelling techniques. To theorize on the future of current technologies and on the future innovations which will have an effect on news storytelling.

Course Overview
Since the dawn of the Internet, news media has been trying to adapt their message to the various new media. Currently, both television and print news organizations are trying to figure out how the Internet, blogs, podcasts and the other media can be used to both act as new revenue streams and as a way to promote and bring people back to their television newscast. The role new media plays in a broadcast news operation’s business model is not going to get smaller over the next decade…it is going to explode. Therefore it is imperative to understand how new media can be most effectively used to enhance news stories.

I think it is a pretty solid idea. As a matter of fact I would like to take that class. If anyone has any ideas or opinions that could make the class better let me know. Drop me a comment or an e-mail. If you actually are very interested I do have a full syllabus for this class created.

What I am up to

Well as I have mentioned, I am very busy right now, so I figured I would let everyone know what I am working on. Here is a brief rundown:

601 - Paper tentatively titled, "Looking towards 2008: New media's influence on the political process"

610 - First creative project - the creation of a new class for the iCom/Digital Storytelling program. The class is tentatively titled, "Storytelling for New Media News." - I am also brainstorming for my second creative project. I think I know what I am going to do, but for now I'll just keep that to myself.

623 - Brainstorming for documentary ideas and working on small intro assignments

690 - Creating a one and half and a five minute piece from the footage we collected in the South. Creating a research grant proposal for a study comparing the emotional impact viewers experience when watching television news packages on various media, including television and video-enabled cellular telephones.

So that is what I am doing and that's why I am busy.

What the CMD is up to

The Center for Media Design at Ball State University is one of the more innovative television research facilities around and they are currently working on a lot of very interesting things. Here are a few of them:

The Digital Middletown Study Part 2 - This is the follow-up study to the first project and will be released on September 26th at ad week in New York. In short, the study looks at media usage, but it concentrates on how people use multiple media at the same time. It is very interesting research and some of the numbers are just astonishing.

Eye Tracking for TV - This is by far one of the coolest things in the world. I mean seriously. We saw a short demo of this today and it is really just mind boggling where people look when viewing TV. Right now they are using the eye tracking stuff to look at the current trend of using "fly-ins" for promotions. (You know the logo/text things that fly-into the bottom corner of the screen and tell you Apprentice is on next) It looks at whether or not they are effective promotional devices.

They also have tons of other things going on at the CMD, such as web usability testing and just a countless number of other cool things. More importantly, it seems as though I can get involved in any or all of these different studies and pieces of research. I can also propose to use these facilities for my own research.

Day Four Final 2 of 2

So after we did some interviews and checked out the ABC News logistics center at the Marriott, we headed to a shelter in Baton Rouge. This was another shelter housed in an AME church. While we were there we talk to various people about their experiences. The people at these shelters seemed to be the people from the lowest socio-economic classes and they seemed to be the people who were the most unstable before the hurricane/flooding, let alone now. We also had a long sit-down interview with the pastor of the church.

It was very interesting to see how he saw it and what he was thinking. The Allen Chapel AME Church shelter was opened on Aug 30th, the day after the main landfall of Katrina. Rev. Washington said many things, but two things really struck me. At one point he said, "The upper beaucratic [system] is not doing what they are supposed to be for Louisiana" and at another point he said, "They believe in New Orleans. They're not grasping the magnitude of this...some haven't accepted the fact that they aren't going back. There ain't nothing to go back to."

The first comment was interesting to me, because he wasn't really talking about the short term initial response to the tragedy. He was talking about the long term things. The logistical support required to relocate a large percentage of one of America's major cities. He was talking about jobs support, apartments, getting kids registered for school. These are all problems that he, as a pastor, just doesn't know how to deal with. He knows how to preach to people. He knows out to counsel people, but he does not know the best resources for relocating to another city and there is no reason for him to know that.

The second comment made me realize a major problem cities in the south are going to be seeing over the next few months. Baton Rouge has gone from a population of about 350,000 to about 850,000 in a matter of a week. The economic system of the city can't match that kind of growth fast enough, but people don't want to leave because they believe in the New Orleans...they don't want to leave their home. They are thinking they can live in Baton Rouge for a month or so and then move back home. This is just not going to happen.

The interview with Rev. Washington was very informative, interesting and will be a major part of my story on Faith in Times of Crisis.

We then went to another AME shelter were the church group I was with was able to find a family interested in coming back with us to Indiana. After talking for a while with people from our group and amongst themselves, they decided to come back with us and relocate to Richmond, Indiana. It was interesting to see a family decide to completely move their whole lives in a matter of twenty minutes. It was crazy. Either way, the whole family, with their two kids came back with us.

After that, at about 11:00pm, we decided to head back to Jackson, Mississippi. We got back to the shelter, in Jackson, at about 2:00am, had some cold pizza and corn bread, and decided we might as well just get on the road right then. We ended up leaving at about 3:30am. We drove for about two and a half and then had car problems. We ended up pulling into Muncie at 10:45pm. It was a long day.

Digital transitions commercials

Does anyone know who is paying for the digital transition commercials? They seem to be running a lot on CNN, if you haven't seen them. It says paid for by the 700 mhz association or something.

Day Four Final 1 of 2

So day four..day four...what to say about day four. This not as easy to write a dispatch three days later, but here goes it.

So I woke up at about 9:30am and found out that the plan was to go to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but there was no real mention of why. But at that point I had finally accepted the fact that I was at the will of the group and half of the group weren't journalists at all, so they weren't really interested in the storytelling aspect of the trip. Either way I figured what the hell, I've never been to Louisiana, so giddy-up.

We were apparently shooting to leave at about 11:00am, that didn't happen. The nice ladies at the church had decided to make a real good lunch, since it would be our groups last meal at the shelter, so we couldn't get on the road until after our specially prepared lunch. They said it would be like a half an hour or so, but like seemingly everything else in the south it took much longer than expected. We ended up leaving Jackson at about 2:30pm or so. But the food was great...fried chicken, chicken casserole, corn bread, green beans, caramel cake...it was good stuff.

Anyways, Baton Rouge is about two and a half or three hours away from Jackson, so we ended up pulling into the Baton Rouge Marriott at about 5:00pm or so. We only pulled in there to get directions to a persons house for a previously set-up interview, but it ended up being a lot more than that. The Marriott, like apparently every hotel in Baton Rouge, was being used to house some evacuees. But they were different evacuees than the ones we had been talking to all week. These were the middle/upper class evacuees and the juxtaposition of them to the lower/working class people we had seen at the shelters and at the Coliseum was astonishing.

These people were not concerned about what they were going to eat or where they were going to live or how they were going to get adequate health care for their kids. In most cases, these people weren't concerned about losing their house. They were most shattered because they lost family photos or heirlooms or special personal knick-knacks. I don't mean to talk down to this group or about this group, because I am that group, everything I own is insured and I have never worried about how I was going to eat or where I was going to live. But the juxtaposition of the thoughts of these different classes and groups made the upper class thoughts seem so frivolous and petty. It was very interesting to see and to compare.

Also while we were at the Marriott I went for a walk, following some guys who had media credentials, acting like I knew what I was doing. They lead me back to a large conference room, which was acting as the logistical center for ABC News for the whole Gulf Coast. That was pretty cool. That room was dealing with all the supplies (water, food, tapes, batteries, gas, etc.) for all the ABC News employees in the Gulf Coast. They were also equipped to do some light production work and they had a couple of sat trucks available.

Sunday was really a long day. In the second half of this post, the group will head to a couple of shelters in Baton Rouge, meet a family interested in coming back to Indiana, and start working our way back to Muncie, but for now I must get back to school work.

I'm busy

Unfortunately going out of town makes you busy when you come back. I am going to try to get some stuff done today and get back to blogging, but I need to get that done first...or I'll have to end up changing the header of my blog from Ball State Grad Student to former Ball State Grad Student. Anyways hopefully I'll get back to being the Media Dork this evening or tomorrow.

For now check this out:

Roberts answer questions about media access - MSNBC story

Finally back...

I am back in Muncie. I got back late. I have slept about two hours, since Sunday morning and I have to work tomorrow morning at NewsLink. Anyways, the Baton Rouge experience was amazing and the trip back was long, so please check back and expect a full forth day dispatch plus a conclusion/wrap-up from my trip to the South.

Day Four pt1

It looks like we are heading to Baton Rouge, LA today. I don't really know the purpose for this trip, but they told me that is where the van is going, so that is where I'm going to head. And I've never been to Louisiana before, so I guess I'll get to cross that off my list. 29 down 21 to go.

Day Three Final

Well day three is over and again I find myself exhausted. It really has been a long three days. To recap my earlier post, we woke up at about 8:30-9:00am loaded a semi full of various goods (water, clothes, food, etc.) and then went over to the Coliseum. At the mass shelter, housing three hundred or so people, we were able to set-up a camera and do some interviews. We did a number of interviews ranging from a guy who evacuated New Orleans to a set of teens volunteering their time helping with the kids in the shelter.

We came back to the AME shelter, we have been staying at, for lunch and to regroup. After lunch, we went to a ordination ceremony for elders in the AME church in Eastern Mississippi. It was very interesting for me...your average white guy from the north to find himself in a black church in the south. It was defended a situation I am not accustom to and so it was a learning experience for me. After the church service, we went back to the AME shelter and had the most impactful and interesting interview I have had yet.

The interview was with Cleveland, a man from Biloxi who has been staying at the Coliseum since last Tuesday. It ends up Cleveland will be heading back with us. He is relocating to Richmond, IN, which is offering free long term housing for people effected by the hurricane. It was just really interesting to talk to this man who has lost everything. He walked into the shelter at the Coliseum with seriously, just a fanny pack worth of stuff. And now he has decided to move to Richmond. He says he has a good feeling about it, but he also pointed out that really it can't get much worse. Either way over all he had a good attitude and was really amazed and effected by the out pouring of support.

We closed our day by doing an interview with our professor, who is also a Reverend in the AME church, so that worked pretty well for the story I am looking to tell. Faith in times of tragedy. Now I am going to sleep I'll try to go in to more detail about everything when I am not so tired.

Day Three pt1

So here is a brief rundown of what I have done with my day so far. First I woke up at about 8:30am and had breakfast at the shelter. Then we went across the street to some other relief organization that needed help loading a semi. I believe the semi was heading down to Gulfport, but I am not entirely sure. Then at about 11:00am, we went back over to the Coliseum where we were OKed to set-up a camera and get some interviews. I feel we got some solid interviews, both with survivors/evacuees and with volunteers donating their time at the shelter.

We now just got back to the AME shelter we are using as a home base and we are going to eat lunch. We brought Cleveland a man from New Orleans, who is staying at the Coliseum, back with us, so he can have a good hot meal. I am not sure what we are doing with our afternoon, but so far it has been a successful day.

Day Two Final

Well Day Two is finally over. Again it was a long day. It started at 4:00am, when I woke up and got ready to head to Baton Rouge, LA to meet up with a supply plane. Unfortunately, there was not enough room in the truck going to Baton Rouge to fit me, so I went back to sleep.

I woke up again at about 10:00am or so and we headed over to the Coliseum in Jackson, MS, which has been set-up as a mass shelter. The Coliseum is currently playing host to about 300 people, but at its max was sheltering over 1200 evacuees. Again, we were unable to bring cameras into the facility, due to the Red Cross privacy rules. We ended up volunteering at the shelter, doing various jobs. For the first number of hours I worked separating toys. As it can be imagined, people donate lots of toys, books, crayons and various other things for kids do, to the Red Cross. At some point those toys all need to be organized and put out, so the kids can find what they want. That was my job. As a side note, I think the whole South has enough crayons. Man, were there a lot of crayons.

But really there was a lot of everything. Walking around the building you saw semi, after semi of supplies being unloaded. Food, toys, clothing, medical supplies...everything. It is also amazing how much they have for the kids and parents to do. For example, tonight was movie night. Outside on a huge screen, they were showing children’s movie and passing out tons of free popcorn. All donated by a local movie rental chain. They also have a computer bank manned with people who are trained at helping evacuees to fill out the FEMA paperwork to apply for grants and low-interest loans. All of this was donated by AOL Broadband. Starting next Monday, they have a whole crew of people volunteering their time to tutor kids, to make sure they don't fall behind in their studies.

I think because of all this people seemed generally in a good mood. I mean don't get me wrong everyone wasn't walking around singing in sheer joy, but I really expected a lot more negativism, a lot more anger. The kids also amazed me. They all just seem amazingly happy. After we finished sorting the toys, we had a quick box lunch provided for us by the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. While we were eating, we saw that there were people giving out stuff in the back parking lot of the Coliseum, so we walked back there to see what it was all about.

It was a group involving the supposedly famous Mississippi rapper David Banner and the magazine Juice. They had three truckloads of stuff that they were giving away. This ranged from nice new Nikes, donated by ludicrous, to baby food and medical supplies. We ended up interviewing the on-hand representative of David Banner and a woman who calls herself Juice who, you guessed it founded and runs Juice magazine. As much as I want to mock her name and all, I really must say they are doing some good stuff. Over the last week, they have raised over $261,000 and they are driving around to different shelters and hard hit neighborhoods and giving away supplies. It was two nice solid interviews.

After that we went back to work in the Coliseum. This time we were assigned to help and clean-up in the play area. It ended up just being playing with kids for hours. It was really fun and refreshing and interesting. It was interesting to hear what these kids were saying. If they really understood what was going? If they knew their family was hitting some if its hardest times? After we finished playing with kids, we saw a video crew talking to some people outside.

We talked to the videographer and finally found out who we needed to talk to and how we could go about getting some interviews. We talked to the man, Butch Harms, the shelter manager, and explained to him what we interested in doing and he set us up. So tomorrow it looks like we are going to head back to the Coliseum, were we will be getting to interview whoever is willing to be interviewed. I am really looking forward to this. All the conversation that I did have with people today, I had really wished I could have gotten them on film, so hopefully tomorrow I can.

Moving on, we then left the Coliseum and came back here to the AME Church shelter, where we had an impromptu kind of class with our professor talking about what we have done so far and what we are planning to do. I told her I plan on doing my story on faith in times of crisis. I think that is an interesting topic and can lead to many different things. We also hung out with the people here and picked up a crewmember.

Also we plan on heading somewhere down south again on Sunday. We are going to try to get together with a church that has lost their church and see if they are having any kind of non-traditional service. That is another reason I picked the above topic. I know I will have more than enough good video. Also we will tentatively be leaving here on Monday morning at 7:00am. Arriving back in Muncie at about 9:00 or 10:00pm. Give or take.

Day Two pt1

Heading to Baton Rouge, LA to meet with a supplies plane. Then I am not sure where does supplies will be distributed, but that is where I'll be headed.

Day One

Well day one is finally nearly over and it seems to have gone fairly well, all things considering. As previously noted we got a very late started and did not end up arriving in Jackson, Mississippi until around 9:45am. We then hung out for a while at the African Methodist Episcopal shelter in Jackon. We had some breakfast and then interview some of the residents. The woman that really struck me was one of the people that you here of on TV. A person who has truly lost everything, but she was OK with it. Her whole family had survived and that is all that mattered to her, "...everything else is just material." she said.

At about 11:30am or so, the trucks started arriving. Four in all. One semi and three large U-Haul style trucks. They were ended up being filled to the brim with supplies, everything from food and water to much needed medicine and baby formula. After helping load up the trucks we were off to Gulfport, MS, one of the worst hit cities.

It was insane, as far out as about 70-80 miles you started seeing the devastating effects of Katrina. It began with just a few blown over trees and a few signs knocked over, but then every mile it kept getting worse. We were able to get into to Gulfport and move around the city, but there seemed to be an impenetrable force field of military humvee's and national guardsman blocking the way to the actual gulf area. Either way it was amazing to see...to see the shear devastation a simple natural disaster can reap on an area it just mind boggling and we didn't even see the worst hit parts.

Other the brighter side of the news, the supplies that we brought down to Gulfport nearly filled the gymnasium of Gaston Point Elementary School. We ended up making it back to Jackson at about 11:00pm, eating, writing this and going to bed. I will be waking up at 4:00am to head to Baton Rouge, LA to meet a plane which is bringing in more supplies. As of yet the experience has been very interesting, the people I have met so far have all been inspirations.

Katrina's Aftermath: M.D. updates tonight

Media Dork, a.k.a Nick, has asked me to post this on his blog:
NIck arrived in Jackson, Mississippi early today, and has caught a bus heading to Gulfport, Mississippi. He has no internet connection at this time, but wanted to include this brief update on his blog. His first dispatch will be posted later tonight. His blogs will be posted on Media Dork, as well as Lost Remote and A13.
-Glenn Luther, American University Grad Student.

Leaving...

Well it looks like we are about to finally leave. As with any big trip such as this, we are running behind. But we should be hitting the road soon and heading down to Indy, where we will be picking up more supplies and a second van. That's the story as of so far.

Leaving Soon

Well we leave in about four hours. As far as I know I have everything I need...hours of tape, rolls of film, digital media cards, a change of clothes, my iBook, and a handful of reporters notebooks. Hopefully I'll be able to get media back here to Ball State to get distributed, but either way it looking like I should be able to blog at least a few times during the trip.

MediaDork going south pt. 2

Well, we are leaving from Muncie, Indiana tomorrow at about 12:30pm. We will be heading down to Indy to pick-up some extra supplies. Then we will be heading the rest of the way to Jackson, Mississippi, where we will be setting-up a base camp of sorts. We should arrive in Jackson at some time around 2 or so AM.

Thursday should be filled with interviews and setting-up the various trips our groups will be taking. My group is supposed to be going to New Orleans, we also have a group going down towards Biloxi, and another group will be staying up in Jackson. Of course this is all subject to change, but that is the plan.

I will be posting media to various sources through out this week. You can keep checking back here at MediaDork for the latest info, but I'll also be posting blogs at http://www.lostremote.com. My video clips will be going back to Ball State University for use by NewsLink Indiana, NewsLink @ 9, and any other source that wants to use it. We are also trying to set-up phoner interviews for me with WIPR, Muncie's public radio.

That is the plan as of now, but I am sure it will change.

MediaDork going south

I am going down to Jackson, Mississippi with part of my iCom 690 course and with the African Methodist Episcopal 8th District Relief Fund. We will all be heading down to Jackson and then spreading out from there with the relief group. I believe I and a couple other classmates and some relief workers will be heading down to New Orleans. I am planning on blogging as much as possible on this trip. Hopefully I will be able to tell the story as I see it to anyone who wants to read it.

I will be posting various things through out the day. Stay posted.

Apple Announcement

I don't know if I got something wrong or if they changed their original announce date, but as everybody knows Apple did not make any announcement yesterday, they are actually making it this Thursday. The current rumor is that the announcement is going to be iPod enabled phones (256 and 512mb) and new color iPod minis (4, 6, and 8gb). We'll find out Thursday.

My guess is still a video iPod and the rollout of iTunes 5.0 with video download options.

The Big 6

The big 6 nets, or the big 4 nets and then the other two, are planning on simulcasting a benefit show for hurricane relief this Friday.

Weather Service Warning

On Brian Williams's "Daily Nightly" blog he talks about the last National Weather Service warning he received on his Blackberry on Sunday night before Katrina hit. It is quite disturbing how accurate they were.

Here's the bulletin:

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005

...DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED...

HURRICANE KATRINA...A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH...RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER.

AT LEAST HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED...ALL WINDOWS WILL BE BLOWN OUT.

THE VAST MAJORITY...OF TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED.

POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

Apple announcement

Apple is supposed to make a huge announcement tomorrow. My guess is the release of the video pod and the release of iTunes 5.0, which will included a section for video download. But my guesses don't count for much so, we'll find out tomorrow.

Depressing story

As if all the other stories aren't depressing enough, this one I think is really bad. In the last number of days, according to a recent CNN.com article, at least two New Orleans police officers have committed suicide and many more,maybe hundreds, have not shown up to command centers. This is an incredibily depressing indicator of how bad it really has been on the ground over the last six or so days.

Times-Picayune editorial

Again I applaud the men and women of the Times-Picayune. If you have been following my blog or the real news, you probably know that the Times-Picayune is the newspaper in downtown New Orleans that had to evacuate their headquarters in the aftermath of the hurricane and flooding, yet still managed to keep publishing a least a web-based version of the paper. Their staff kept coming to work, kept covering the story and kept getting the news to the people who needed it.

With that in mind, the Sunday edition of the Times-Picayune has a very impressive editorial in the form of an open letter to the President. Its main theme is that New Orleans has been and continues to be accessible, unlike what FEMA and Homeland Sercurity have cited when talking about the delay response time.

"...there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach." -excerpt from the Times-Picayune editorial

This editorial is a must read.

Helping Media Workers

The Poynter Institute has set-up a webpage for journalists to help journalist.

But I still want to know where I can donate money to the journalists who lost everything in the storm/flooding yet continued to show up at work and get the news out to the people.

2 Big Wins

One went the way I wanted...the other one...not so much. In case you didn't know, today was the first saturday of the college football season. Here's how the teams I follow fared:

OSU 34
Miami 14

BSU 0
Iowa 56

BSU Football

Not that we weren't screwed before, but this is really bad for the Iowa game,

"Thirteen Ball State players, more than half of them projected starters, were suspended for Saturday's season-opening game at No. 11 Iowa in a continuing investigation of NCAA violations." AP article on ESPN.com

[Update] Thanks for the pointer from Dave.

NBC special

NBC Hurricane Special...gets political and racial...example: "Bush doesn't care about black people"

[ed. note] I did not actually see this yet...I am in Muncie, Indiana, so we don't see it live. This was info from Glenn Luther, a journalism grad student, at American University. But it will be interesting if it airs in my version.

[update] The show just started here...check Lost Remote for a full recount of the events.

[update] I am fairly OK, well I'm not OK with Faith Hill voicing a news-style package, but I will begrudgingly accept it. But putting up a super that says, "Reported by Faith Hill" that is just crap. Come on.

[update] So here is how they dealth with it in Indianapolis...On WTHR-13, Indy, they just went to a live local news cut-in kind of thing. It was pretty impressive if they put it together in only hour. It involved two anchors at the desk, a customized open and a sat-live from a 13 reporter in Blioxi.

[update] No nevermind they aired it. I was confused with when it was in the show with the above update. It aired full. "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

[update] You can find the clip here http://www.pixelmd.com/kanye.html

President

Where is the President or anyone from the White House? This has been mind boggling to me. For a President, who amazingly guided America through the dark days after 9/11, we are seeing a very disappointing White House presence. At no point during this clearly immense national tragedy has the President made a national primetime press conference. Our country needs guidance and it is about time the President of our great country leads us and guide us through our current dark days.

[Update] President Bush kills twenty minutes getting a faux-briefing about the hurricane damage from the republican governors, then admits the relief effort isn't going great. Luckily he finally decided to do that on Friday.

NAB Fundraising

The National Association of Broadcasters has started a drive to raise 100 million dollars for hurricane relief and although I completely and unequivocally agree with their effort and idea, I think some of the money should be earmarked for the various media workers who were not only greatly effected by this, losing their house and the like, but many of them were also showing up to work to get the much needed news out to the people. Either way, this is a good program and should be supported and the NAB should be applauded for starting the ball rolling by donating one million dollars. Now the ball is in the court of every local TV and radio station to raise the other 99 million dollars.

NAB Press Release

NewsLink Indiana

NewsLink Indiana, Ball State University's fully converged newsroom, is back. Right now the briefs are only up on the web, but starting Tuesday briefs will start being available on WIPB, WIPR, on the web and through the Ball State Daily News.

NewsLink Indiana is an innovative program, which covers an eight county area in East Central Indiana. NLI and many other programs at Ball State were created by a $20 million dollar grant from the Lilly Foundation. NLI is also were I serve as a Graduate Assistant.

Anderson Cooper

I have been watching Anderson Cooper 360 and it seems that he is close to breaking down. Multiple times in the broadcast it sounded like he was getting choked up and getting really effected by the lack of help as of yet. During an interview with one of Louisiana's senators he just seem pissed with the lack of preplanning for a natural disaster such as this. It has been interesting. I do not mean this post to sound negative towards Anderson Cooper at all. I think he is an amazing reporter and journalist and I think he has the right to be effected by this. I mean he has been there doing this, dealing with the same problems as the survivors for the last four days, so it is understandable that he is getting effect.

Sat Image of New Orleans

Satalite images of New Orleans before and after Katrina.

(Pointers from Lost Remote)