Making Love Out of Nothing At All

Maybe the title of this blog is a bit... misleading.  I am, indeed, listening to Air Supply, but instead of "making love out of nothing," I am creating news articles out of something.  Last week, we were asked to write down an idea for a news story (to whoever got "Post-Olympics Beijing: Public and Political Reactions," I say both "Sorry" and "You're welcome!").  We handed our sticky notes to Rick, he mixed them up, then passed them out again.  Here is the nugget bestowed upon me:

"Cambodian army making personal profit from tourists for using excess artillery."

Right.  Here are my story ideas:

1)  Ethnic minority rights and restrictions in Cambodia (home to Muslims, ethnic Chinese, etc - how do ethnic tensions play into political and economic issues in the country?)

2)  Medical care in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia (Pol Pot and his cronies had denied tenets of Western medicine to its citizens - does this influence the welcoming of "tourists" and their access to Western medicines?)

3)  How "open" is the Cambodian government/media in its international reporting?  (Cambodia is consistently rated low on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index; how does this affect the validity of news reports coming from the country?  Does this affect reports on the aforementioned quote about the Cambodian army?)

4)  Recent tensions on the Thai-Cambodian border and their effect on tourism

5)  Investigation into the artillery in question.  Where are they getting this artillery?  Is it left-over from the short US invasion?  Was it purchased from the Soviets?  This can expand into a world-wide study of arms sales - who is buying and who is selling.

Initial Reactions

In response to the classmate who had some qualms about blogging, blogs, and bloggers:

1) I agree with you that some bloggers aren't the best grammarians, or writers for that matter.  But - does someone's employment at a standard print publication (i.e. a newspaper) mean that they are actually a good writer?  Or are they just really good at AP style?  Or did they get the job because they are a white male who went to a good school?  Please reference anyone at the Philadelphia Inquirer or its sister publication, The Daily News (even Dan Gross, who I love for his tips, but wants in voice).  Most newspapers are cluttered with hacks who fail to report anything original or interesting, and hold stories back at the behest of PR people (let me remind you that, of all godawful publications, the National Enquirer broke the John Edwards affair story first and the LA Times bloggers were asked to NOT write about it!).  I also encourage you to read Deus Ex Malcontent and Pajiba for some truly stellar (and academically-sound) blogging.

2) Public vs private: is blogging too public?

Let me tell you this: the government owns every text message you send and thanks to the Patriot Act (and compliance from big business telecoms in return for FCC leniency), can arrest you on any of these.  CU owns your emails.  You don't even own the domain of this blog - and the company who does can release your personal information if subpoenaed.  And I could have appeared at your door even before the advent of the internet (where at least you can hide your IP or create an entirely new identity if you desired) - all I had to do was read, ironically, the NEWSPAPER or hit up the library or the county office because everything that leads me to you - deeds, birth certificates, police records, etc - is public domain.  Googling your name gives me less information.

Just a few things to keep in mind... the internet makes news more accessible to more people, allowing for somewhat less privacy and the lack of formal education.  But it doesn't mean that the old standards of privacy and gaining jobs by way of wealth/nepotism has become any more rampant than it was 50 years ago.

Shake-up of the Clergy

"The news of the day as it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumor, suspicion, clues, hopes, and fears, and the task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy." - Walter Lippmann, 1920

Initially, I wanted to rant against this quote - don't ask me why, I think it's just in my nature to immediately find fault with a comment made several decades ago and rail against it as being irrelevant. However, the more I drank - and, consequently, thought about it - the clearer it seemed to me that this quote from Mister Lippmann still rings true today.

I admire the fact that he has the gumption to throw the word "propaganda" in there, especially being in a country that considered itself particularly in the right after "winning" its first World War. News today still is propaganda in a sense - some sort of agenda being put forth in the form of information. If you disagree, think of the reasons that you don't watch Fox News or that you condemn the media at large for being "liberal." It seems that since journalism is formulated by humans and not scientific tenets or mathematical equations, it fails to be "objective" (and, yes, this will lead to an entire debate on what qualifies "objectivity"... at least I hope so). I believe that, no matter how "objective" one tries to be in this new world media (online, blogging, etc), a personal point of view still shines through. However, since higher ups were still selecting what news got printed "back in the day," it was as true then as it is now. If this weren't the case, there wouldn't have been the uproar around Upton Sinclair's The Jungle as there was back in 1906 when it was released to popular, well, nausea.

I think the main difference is not in the fact that the selection and publication of news is a priestly endeavor, but that the clergy has undergone a popular upheaval. No longer is journalism - in all of its forms - relegated to the Hearst publications, followers of the paper movement, and rich white males, but (thank you, internet!) is open to anyone with an internet connection. As if our class and its full-on blog creation weren't evidence enough, the clergy is rapidly breaking the lines of race, gender, and, I think most importantly economic class. News is now made and selected by anyone who thinks that a subject is worth writing about - and also confirmed by any audience who is willing to read it.

How much really has changed since then? Well, newspapers aren't printed on hemp and white men with college degrees still propagate papers (although women are making their inroads, no doubt, but I'm using the sources I know - Philly publications and their owners to make this assumption - anyone willing to prove me wrong, please feel free to argue). However, the media have changed. Welcome to the rise of blogs, written by people frustrated with mass media careers or just intelligentsia in need of an outlet for commentary outside their everyday lives. We're now ordaining classically untrained and "unseasoned" rogue writers as our purveyors of news (and thank goodness for that, or else I wouldn't have had the minor Internet blogging career I've had to this point). As time goes on and technology advances, who's to say that the clergy can't expand to everyone with access to a computer?

I suppose this means that media power, via the Internet in particular, will still belong to people in first or second world nations, where technology abounds. The World Wide Web is our newsroom and we pray to the temple of individual opinion as opposed to at the altar of an editor.

This is a test... and only a test.

We're all trying the whole blogging thing out... thanks to Mike Panic for already whipping my blog-writing html-useless ass into shape.