Category: media

Friday Five: snow day edition

OK, so it isn’t a snow day for everyone. Some of us had to stick around to alert the media and students, faculty and staff that classes were canceled for most of the morning. But because Thursday’s weather shut down much of the Missouri Ozarks, it seems like a snow day. At least it’s a slow day. Which means I can get caught up on some bloggables. Here are five for your Friday:

  1. After a full November of writing the Great American NaNoWriMo Novel, Morgan Davis returns to his blog, erelevant, without missing a beat. Welcome back!
  2. But enough about other economic news, let’s talk about us. Via Romenesko, a column by William Powers of the National Journal about how the news media’s narcissicistic reporting. “From Los Angeles to Philadelphia, newspapers are flailing — read all about it, in exquisite detail, in those papers themselves and everywhere else. … Of course, you’re reading one of the symptoms of this disorder — a regular column of media commentary, devoted today to questioning the idea of media narcissism. Next week we’ll discuss the media as simulacra of semiotic hyperstructuralism.” Paging Jacques Derrida.
  3. Speaking of media coverage of media: Bad news for old news — and seven more dire predictions for the media for 2007. Includes such shocking revelations as: “Technology will make it easier to find, access, and manage content.” Hat tip: I Want Media.
  4. Why didn’t my journalism profs tell me this? From Slate, by way of CyberJournalist: the newspaper industry knew it was doomed 30 years ago. Seems that in 1976, LA Times media reporter David Shaw wrote a page one feature that posed this question in its lead (lede): “Are you now holding an endangered species in your hands?” And then proposed some remedies, many of which the media have already tries. Interesting story for news junkies.
  5. Prospective college student Sam Jackson has narrowed his college choices to 15, and now he wants to know the dirt on them. ” I don’t want slurs, I don’t want attacks, but if you have a compelling reason for me to not go to one of the fifteen schools on my list, please tell me.”

Friday film: ‘Beneath the Southern Cross’

Have I ever told you that I work with a real live rock star?

I do. And he isn’t just any rock star. He’s the co-writer of one of the anthems of the late-’60s/early-’70s counterculture. (For you younger readers, you might have heard this tune on the soundtrack of that Johnny Depp vehicle, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.)

I’m referring to Tom Shipley — he of Brewer and Shipley, “One Toke Over the Line” fame.

Tom works in our communications department as a one-man video production unit. Tom makes videos for our campus. Not those hokey, scripted videos for which universities are renowned, but mini-documentaries about campus life, research and, yes, the occasional promo video (which Tom insists must be minimally scripted).

His latest video chronicles members of the UMR chapter of Engineers Without Borders as they traveled to Bolivia last August to assist two communities — one in the Amazon, where a school is in need of a safe and sustainable water supply, and another high in the Andes, where EWB students helped build a sanitary latrine system a year ago. Tom tagged along with the group and captured many of the activities on video. He’s posted one version of the pod on Current TV, where it’s getting good reviews and is currently ranked second among user-generated flicks. (It was No. 1 until recently. It should never have been bounced off of there.)

Watch “Beneath the Southern Cross,” Tom Shipley’s latest video.