Hello Again

I haven't posted in quite a while. I plan to get back into the habit of updating this blog on a regular basis. Life was a little hectic for a while and it still is, but I'm going to make time to write. Stay tuned.

Molly Ivins died

http://www.ksdk.com/news/world/us_world_article.aspx?storyid=111874

Update about this blog

I just changed the layout so that it's a three column format and so that I can cram more stuff in the margins. Hopefully, I will have a chance to fix the colouring and tweak the header a bit. I can't make any promises though. I'm hoping that I can get a logo designed some time in the next month.

There are a lot of new links. I want to explain more about the blogs that I've listed and the links, but I don't really have time for that right now. I hope to write about them all some time within the next week. Most of the links are to entities that do good work and have good information, so check them out.

The media reform conference is over and I've taken a lot of good information back home with me. I plan to improve the quality of the things that I post and I'm going to post more information that focuses on the issues that are important to me and the few folks who are like me. I'm thinking about also getting a domain name and email addy to match, but that'll be a few months in the future.

Anyway, I plan to make this blog more fun, more informative and more reflective of what's important to me. Alles.

ncmr2007: Last morning of the conference

Today is the last day of the media reform conference. Overall, it's been a good experience. I didn't take advantage of this opportunity like I should have. I did have a chance to talk to Janine Jackson of FAIR about how she got where she is in the media analysis field. It seems that getting a job is really about being in the right place at the right time.

Before I came to this conference, I was concerned about paying off my student loans and not making enough money after college because I don’t really want to sell my soul to another large corporation. I had been thinking about going into advertising or some other horrible industry that would get me lots of money. But Janine Jackson mentioned the possibility of never actually making it into whatever field I actually want to make it into. I could do advertising and sell my soul for a couple hundred thousand bucks, but get hit by a car or die in a plane crash before I do what I really want to do. I don’t want that to happen, thus, I’m going to work for nothing/work for cheap for however long I have to.

It’s been hard to actually get any writing done during the conference because I’m here with a group and I’m not getting enough time on my own to digest the information that I’ve been bombarded with. I’m going to post a little about the sessions that I’ve attended when I get back home.

Blogging the conference

I have press credentials at this conference because I’m a blogger. That puts me on the same level as an actual journalist, which I find fascinating. I would never claim to be on the same level as someone who has gone to J school and has committed the time and effort to earn a position as a journalist. I write pretty well in general, but I don’t know anything about how to really cover an event and I have no journalistic ethics as of yet. I hope to get there eventually. I think that this conference is a great place to start. Being surrounded by so many people who do good work that they are passionate about is inspiring. I hope to muster up enough courage to talk to a few more people here. Until then, I’m going to check out a couple more sessions.

Friday morning opening

This morning was the opening plenary for the conference. It’s taking place in the Memphis Cook Convention Center in downtown Memphis. John Nichols gave the opening introductions. I like him a lot, but the one problem that I did have was that he often used the term ‘media’ in the singular, instead of in the plural as it should be. That only bothers me because he’s one of the major, well-known folks in the movement, but he makes the same mistakes that the freshmen in my media literacy class do. I know that it’s not big, but it is a little surprising.

The mayor of Memphis, Willie Herenton, gave a great speech. He told the local media that if they’re in attendance, then they need to learn something from this conference. Mostly, he wanted them to learn about diversity and how to actually reflect what’s going on in the city. The audience loved his speech. I think that the universality of the message was the ticket.

Bill Moyers' speech was excellent, as was his speech the previous year. He’s funny and his style of delivery reminds me a little of being at a church service, but in a good way.

From just the opening speeches, I feel that I really want to pursue a career in journalism. It sounds like the mainstream press is ridiculously screwed up, but there are a lot of people here, 3000 people here who want to change it. Maybe the mainstream press will never be what it was because of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and relaxation of ownership rules, but the independent press is really working hard. It feels like there's so much that needs to be done and not enough folk to do it. I want to be one of those people. I will be one of those people.

National Conference for Media Reform part 1

I'm in Memphis, TN for the FreePress National Conference for Media Reform. The conference doesn't really get started until tomorrow, but Mary Kaye and I got here today to go to the Party for the Future, hosted by Savetheinternet.com, MoveOn and Freepress.

Neither of us is very good with walking up to complete strangers and striking up conversation, so the evening involved a lot of standing around and watching other people have fun. I thought that drinking a Corona would help loosen me up a bit, but it only made the evening feel surreal. Hopefully the actual conference is more eventful than tonight was.

Eating Locally

I'm trying to eat locally as much as I can. I want to do so because it's better for the environment and it supports the local economy. I know that I'm just one person and I can't really make all tha tmuch of a difference, but if more people at least tried, then I think that it'd do some good.

It's been pretty hard because my school and work schedules make it hard to fit in time to make it down to the Soulard Farmers Market. I love that place. It's great to stand back and just watch the activity. I think that I might go by the market in the morning. I haven't been there in weeks and I'm curious to see what's being sold right now.

Hopefully this works out a little bit better than my effort to cut beef out of my life. Alles.

No beef for me

The other day, I learned that cows do more damage to the planet than cars. Thus, I am going to try to cut beef out of my life. It's going to be pretty much impossible because I'm a really big fan of steak and hamburger, but I'll try to use more self-control than I have been. I think that I'll try to also reduce my beef consumption to grassfed beef and local beef only. If the cow isn't from Missouri or Illinois and/or a grass fed cow, then I won't eat it.

Monday update

I haven't been posting as much as I'd like. School was pretty hectic in the last weeks of the semester and I wasn't reading the paper or keeping up with the news as much as I should have been. Right now, I'm working on completing an externship. It's a little scary. I have to contact media professionals for interviews and write a one page summary of the interviews. The scary part is the actual interview. I'm contacting people who I admire and who I am inspired by. I'm a little afraid that I'll say or ask something ridiculous and make a fool of myself. I doubt that that will happen, but that fear is in the back of my mind. I guess we'll see how it goes. Most of my interviews will hopefully take place at the Free Press National Conference for Media Reform next month.

Right now, there's a documentary on KETC about Niagara Falls. I had no idea that what we see now is nothing like the old Niagara Falls. The water flow has been rerouted so that the falls have a more perfect look. I don't understand humanity's need to make nature look more natural. It's too bad that future generations are the ones who have to suffer as a result of their ancestor's mistakes, ie global warming.

The life and death of 'Cop Rock'

ABC’s Cop Rock first aired on September 26, 1990 and the last episode aired on December 26, 1990. It held the 10 pm time slot and the first episode’s ratings were below NBC’s Hunter and were about even with a CBS biography on Mike Wallace. The show was the creation of Steven Bochco, the man who also created the successful cop drama Hill Street Blues and later created NYPD Blue. It was a combination of a cop drama and a musical. Every few minutes, like in a musical, the action of the show stopped and the characters performed signing and dancing numbers. The show revolved around Los Angeles police precinct. The characters included the corrupt mayor Louise Plank, two romantically attracted street cops, Captain John Hollander and the police chief with a brash attitude, Roger Kendrick.

The main problems with the show were audience expectations, the unconventional nature of the show and the audience’s lack of attention span. When Cop Rock aired, most viewers expected it to be similar to Bochco’s Hill Street Blues, which was a more conventional cop drama. But when it turned out to be a show full of singing and dancing cops and criminals, both critics and viewers were surprised and turned off to the show. The audience’s attention spans factor into the cancellation of the show because a lot of people immediately flipped the channel when they saw the tough police officers and hoodlums dancing and signing at each other rather than exchanging harsh words. After reading reviews from a few viewers who actually liked the show, I noticed that unlike the ones who reacted negatively to the show, those who turned in for a while saw that it did have at least a few redeeming qualities.

I think that Cop Rock failed because audiences at the time were not used to seeing musical dramas on television. In previous decades, when families still flocked to theatres to see musicals, movies were full of musical acts and Vaudeville style performances were more common on television, viewing audiences would have been more receptive to a television show that mixed these two elements. But I think that the television viewers of 1990 thought of a musical drama that was laden with bad renditions of popular musical forms as laughable at best. I doubt that this show would have better luck today, but I think that it may have done better at a time when audiences were more used to dramas that used music to progress the storylines.