Category: media

Friday Five: Cinco de Mayo Eve edition

Happy Cinco de Mayo Eve, gentle reader. I don’t know about you, but all week long I’ve been thinking about kicking back on Saturday with some homemade guacamole, a few cervezas and some appropriate music (or, better yet, some Los Straitjackets!) for the holiday. Perhaps it’s more spring fever than anything. Anyway, in honor of this special day, I offer cinco cosas to ponder this Friday:

  • Katie Couric rated ‘most negative’ among network news anchors. So says a new poll (link via I Want Media). Who would’ve thought that perky Katie Couric would be a nattering nabob of negativity? Well, she isn’t, despite the headlines. A full 51 percent of those surveyed said they had a positive view of CBS’ Couric. It’s just that more people surveyed think more highly of NBC’s Brian Williams and ABC’s Charles Gibson.
  • EducationPR provides some good blog coverage of the National Education Writers Association conference in L.A.
  • Three higher ed blogs I’d like to see updated more often: College v2 (last updated in February), University Web Marketing and Usability (last updated March 22) and, of course, eRelevant (silent since March 30).
  • Fuzzy Content discusses social networks growing up and sheds light on a couple new networks. (While we’re on the topic of social networks, don’t forget about the latest one for higher ed PR/marketing practitioners, Higher Ed Experts, which combines social networking with professional development.)
  • My top five albums of 2007, thus far:
    1. Living With the Living, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. Rock and roll and politics.
    2. Neon Bible, Arcade Fire. I never thought they could improve upon their debut, Funeral. I’m happy to say I was wrong. More Springsteen than the Smiths, but I’m OK with it.
    3. Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? Of Montreal. Fun, experimental, ebullient stuff from Athens, Georgia’s quirkiest band since the B-52s.
    4. Sermon on Exposition Boulevard, Rickie Lee Jones. A beautiful ragamuffin interpretation of spiritual concepts.
    5. We’ll Never Turn Back, Mavis Staples. Mississippi Delta blues and gospel at its core from one of the Staples Singers.

      6. Interestingly, all are available for download at eMusic, which offers the best deal for independent music lovers. Better than iTunes, IMNSHO.

    Assessing Virginia Tech’s response and text messaging as a crisis communications tool

    Karine Joly points to an Inside Higher Ed article evaluating Virginia Tech’s response to the massacre as it unfolded on Monday, April 16. The article covers some by-now-familiar ground and points to the emerging trend in getting the word out to the masses: text messaging.

    [T]he one medium that the university could not take advantage of was also the one that most experts cited as being the most useful: text messages. While not a major component of most universities’ crisis strategies at the moment, the messages are beginning to take hold.

    A lot of universities (ours included) have been talking about including text messaging as a means to get the word out to students and others during times of crisis. But so far it’s been mostly talk. One exception, according to the IHE article, is Montclair State University in New Jersey. There, students are required to have a cell phone and service that are compatible with the campus’ network. “We’ve made some deliberate decisions about it, and that is that we’ll only use it for emergency reasons,” said Karen Pennington, the vice president of student development and campus life.