Who cares?

By: Adrian Aitken

The Politico published a story about the extracurricular activities that Barack Obama partakes in. They focused on what Barack does during his Sunday mornings. According to the article the president elect has missed church the past few weeks to workout at the gym instead.

I don't understand this what so ever. Shouldn't the media be more focused on what our future has in store rather than Barack's religious habits. The article then compares Obama to President Bush.

Apparently George W. Bush has also missed a few services. I cant say for the publisher of the paper but I can forgive the president for being too busy to attend church. The Politico is being too shallow in reporting during such important times in America.

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Hurricane Ike

By: Quinn Albrecht

In early September Hurricane Ike was approaching the Texas Coast in a hurry. News outlets were trying to figure out what they were going to do to keep people in the know about the breaking news.

They set up blog sites where people could post things and read up about new information about the up coming hurricane. Readership skyrocketed to new highs, sometimes even getting a million views per hour.

They also set up networks through cell phone blogging, so people could stay connected even if they did not have power. This picked up after the hurricane made landfall.

I think in the future more sites will be doing this 24/7 so that people can read the news where ever when ever. It wont take a natural disaster for them to gain the motivation to keep that up.

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Newspaper standards

By: Taylor Browning

As I was searching through the Internet for my topic I fell off track with my short attention span onto some pretty outrageous headlines. One headline in particular was Pirates' luxury lifestyles on lawless coast.

With so much information a click away and the spectrum of news being reported, it is easy to see why newspapers are still holding on. The more I thought about it, well known newspapers have become a standard guideline for news reporting, even within their own online version.

There is no need to sort through the newspaper for 'meaningful' news because there aren't links, videos and other added things to draw the reader away from what is at the heart of the newspaper.

We talked in class how there are knock-off magazines of People Magazine, because they are a standard. Maybe newspapers don't have that much to worry about in the technological world if they keep setting the bar high and maintain their standard.

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Code of Ethics

By: Kayla Miller

It's one thing to commit suicide. But it's different story when you post a video of your suicide on the internet. And of course this makes national news. Is this right?

CNNs Prime News reports that 19-year-old Abraham Briggs commits suicide live on Justin.tv last Wednesday. This suicide is now known to all viewers, and now I'm sure people aren't trying to look for the suicide video.

Is this ethical for journalists to make this national news? Think of Briggs's family. It is only making matters worse to have them know that their child's suicide is on television. I thought jouranlists were supposed to "show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage" according to the Harrower text.

To me, it is wrong to make it national news. I know if I had a child, I wouldn't want his suicide being known to everyone, even people they don't know. Next time maybe they should think twice before putting it on the air.

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Best man for the job

By: Gabe Gilson

Kansas State University has made news again in College football for a recent decision that the University has made. Three years into the Ron Prince era of Wildcat football, they decided to let their coach go and hire back the man that brought the school the greatest amount of success, Bill Snyder.

Snyder was the coach that brought the program 136 wins over his 16 year hiatus. He is also a 69 year-old white man. Prince is a 39 year-old African-American and his firing made it so there are no African-American coaches out of the 119 Division-I football teams.

On Monday’s episode of Around the Horn on ESPN, Woody Paige who writes for the Denver Post said it was an awful idea for Kansas State to bring back Snyder without even interviewing any other candidates. He also said it would be smart for all football programs to have to interview at least one minority candidate for a position as the head coach.

The media has voiced its displeasure recently about the lack of diversity in college football coaching. While it does seem like an unfair problem, it seems as if it has been blown out of proportion lately. Most colleges try and hire the best man for the job, at least I would think. Until the African-American candidates become the best person for the job, this sad trend will continue.

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Oh my God

By: Alex Jones

Where is God's place in the journalism world? For talk radio reporter it sure isn't on talk radio.

Carolyn Lewis a talk radio voice for "an especially churchy" audience was fired after a discussion about abortion. The conversation brought her to the conclusion that she was weary of anyone that claimed to know what God wanted people to do. 

For something so minor, it is surprising that she was fired. Especially in a country that promotes free speech. So where does the news draw the line? Why is religion many times, the exception? Reporters are sometimes reluctant to cover religious controversial topics.

I believe in free speech and I also believe that no topic should be taboo, religion is no exception!

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"Slow blogging" is a flop

By: Kathryn Lisk

Sharon Otterman from The New York Times wrote a story on Sunday about how today's blogging world is too fast-paced for its own good. 

Slow blogging, which was inspired from the slow food movement, argues that quality writing can take time. Just like fast food, which can be consumed occasionally yet isn't healthy on a regular basis, immediate blogs shouldn't be the only form of news for readers. 

Slow bloggers said they take their time with what they write and can spend a month or more in between blogs. They said writers from Web sites like Huffington Post, who publish up to 50 entries a day, aren't thorough enough with their work.

I understand the phenomenon of slow blogging and respect writers who examine their work and add artistic style. But little is achieved from a few bloggers fighting against others who post their thoughts on the internet faster. 

Writing about breaking news a month later makes the story entirely irrelevant. 

Furthermore, how is this issue any different than the way stories are written in newspapers? Regardless of how fast a blogger posts, news will continue to unfold. Faster blogs just mean faster news for the public. Where's the problem?

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Spiders and grapes.

By: Sarah Keller

Spiders, I absolutely hate them. I do not know what it is about them that scare me so much, if it is the way they look and all of those legs that come crawling toward me. Or if it is the fact that there are some poisonous spiders out there that could possibly bite me and kill me, though very unlikely. Whatever the reason is, I know that I hate them.

When I was looking on the internet the other day I came across an article about one of my favorite things; grapes, and one of my least favorite things; spiders. I decided to look further and read the article to see what it was about.

The article was an opinion piece by Geoff Williams from Wallet Pop. Williams talked about a woman who bought grapes from Costco, and was washing them and found a spider in them. The woman did research on the spider to find out what kind of spider it was. It turned out that the spider was a black widow, one of the most deadly spiders there are.

After reading the article it made me realize that I really should wash my fruit out before eating it like I was always told to do, but never chose to actually do. You never know what you will find in your fruit so you should be careful. The article talked about how it is more common than people may realize to find a spider in your fruit.

I think the article did a nice job of supporting both the woman’s anger at Costco for finding a deadly spider in her grapes, and a nice job of supporting Costco’s side by talking about how the grapes are organic and natural, not dripping with pesticides, because if they were the spider would have been dead. Also you cannot expect the store to thoroughly check every grape. Luckily for the lady and everyone else who may come across a black widow, the journalist said that no one had been killed by a black widow since the 1960’s. The article definitely made me think twice about cleaning fruit before eating it; I don’t want to be the one to eat my biggest fear in my favorite fruit.

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