Who wants to be my new BFF?

By: Jessica Hartgers

Why is it necessary for a celebrity to be the star of a reality television show were the winner of the contest is suddenly their new best friend forever?

After watching the season finale of Paris Hilton's My New BFF on MTV tonight I had a lot of thoughts running through my head. First of all, why in the world did I allow myself to watch this crap? And second, why do so many people desire to be Paris Hilton's best friend forever?

The reason for all the hype is due to the media. Our society idealizes celebrities because of the way celebrities live and the way the media portrays them. Photographers and paparazzi snap every shot of celebrities that they can, putting an image with the name.

It is somewhat depressing to think that our society idealizes celebrities so much that they will put their own life on hold to hopefully win a contest to be that celebrities best friend. What happens if you really do win the contest? You can not live your own life, you must live the life of Paris.

Paris has a new BFF named Brittney. Brittney is the newest member to the red carpet. The paparazzi have a new target.

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Sacrifices

By: Jessica Hamell

If you want to keep your reporting job you might need to make a few sacrifices. The Palm Beach Post has decided to not have a holiday party and to not give all its employees raises this year. If you make less than $65,000 you get a 2 percent raise. If you make more than that you are just
out of luck.

All of the company executives now have frozen salaries. There are 150 employees who will not be getting raises this year. This is all taking place because the downward spiral our economy is in and because newspaper revenues are going down also.

I think that this is a good choice. People need to make sacrifices in order to keep some from losing their job. It will help the company in the long run.

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Going to far

By Kellie Green

Newspapers are published everywhere, in America, different countries, high schools, colleges, the lists goes on and on. Publishers of newspapers should always be aware of what they are printing no matter who their target audience are.

As I was going through a couple of blogs online I came across a blog about a column that was posted in the University of Washington's school newspaper. The column was entitle Gay Marriage? Let's stop and think about this.

The article is an opinion column but in my opinion the publisher should have read through the article and thought about what kind of message they were sending out to their readers. The article is very disrespecting not only to homosexual men and women but also to any one that supports the idea of legalizing gay marriage.

The article stated that if, "you legalized gay marriage, why not polygamy, incest, bestiality or any other form of union?" How can we compare gay marriage to any of these? I think that opinion columns are necessary and that people should be allowed state their opinions about many issues but this seems to go a little far.

Something that to me seems like poor journalism is that the publisher of the paper didn't seem to think about what they were publishing before they did. The article caused a major upset in the college and many students are protesting the article.

The article even included a offensive picture, the one I have included, in its article.

Opinion pieces cause controversies all the time but when is it that an article is just to much?

This article to me seems like it should not have been published. It feels overlooked by the publisher because they should have known what problems it would cause for those that would be reading it.

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MySpace cyber-bullying goes too far

By: Allison McNeal

The Internet has reached its first cyber-bulling case on MySpace's network.

Lori Drew, from Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, has been convicted of impersonating a teenage boy in an online hoax that led to a young girl's suicide.

According to officials, Drew, 49, posed as a teenage boy, named "Josh Evans," using a MySpace account to send romantic, then disturbing, messages to one of her daughter's classmates, 13-year-old Megan Meier.

Meier thought she was messaging with a new, good-looking boy in town and never realized it was all a joke.

Meier, who suffered from depression, killed herself in October 2006 soon after reading a message from Drew's account that said: "The world would be a better place without you."

The case was tried by Thomas P. O'Brien, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, after Missouri officials determined that Drew had broken no state laws, but the verdict did send an "overwhelming message" to Internet users.

Former federal prosecutor Matthew L. Levine, disagreed about this proposed law and told The Associated Press that O'Brien's legal theory was "very aggressive."

"Unfortunately, there's not a law that covers every bad thing in the world. It's a bad idea to use laws that have very different purpose," he said.

Even though there are disagreements, online safety experts told The Los Angeles Times that the verdict is now pushing social networking sites to regulate their users' activities.

"I think the industry was hoping there would be a strong verdict blaming one user for abusing another because that way it's not their fault," safety expert Linda Criddle said. "These companies claim to have good standards and then do nothing to enforce them. They let people breach their terms and conditions and do nothing about it."

Even though this proposal is up in the air, one major question to ask is what should social network sites like MySpace do to end cyber-bullying?

With the increase in technology and the availability of the Internet, online citizens will have to be more cautious than ever about social networking sites.

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Turkey with a twist

By: Erin Floro

A read a humorous story by Regina Schrambling, food editor for the New York Times, that gives her perspective on coming up with a gimmick for preparing Thanksgiving dinner.  She said most food writers dread this assignment because you must be creative and come up with a new idea each year for preparing the feast.  She compares it to trying to reinvent the wheel.

She has written articles with themes like beautiful Thanksgiving, budget Thanksgiving, lavish Thanksgiving, and ethic Thanksgiving.  She has written about fast turkey, slow turkey, etc.  You get the picture.

Writers and editors put so much effort in tweaking the menu when, for the most part, Americans like the good old traditional dinner.  Nothing fancy about it, just turkey, stuffing, cranberries, potatoes and gravy, and pumpkin pie.

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Comparing Michelle O to Jackie O

By: Erin Floro

Fashion and style writers are having a heyday with Michelle Obama.  Many have compared our next first lady to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who was admired for her fashion sense in the 1960s.  The New York Post has referred to the Obama White House as "Bamelot," similar to the "Camelot" of the Kennedy era.

Carl Anthony, historian for the National First Ladies' Library, doesn't see the connection.  He points out that there is a world of difference between the two women.  One example given was that Jackie was a child of privilege, while Michelle grew up in the working class.

Maybe the two women have a few similarities like their beauty, youth, and young children, but Mrs. Obama will surely set her own style.  She will want people to remember the social issues she plans to focus on, not what she is wearing.

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Don't let those names get you!

By: Sarah Harl

A recent blog warns newspaper editors that they need to be skeptical about surveys they choose to run in their papers, and any stories that may accompany them.

It is important that editors not be fooled by long, important sounding names, and run surveys that are less than newsworthy, or not credible.

Our culture will believe anything they read in a newspaper, and so we need to be able to trust that newspaper editors and reporters are doing everything they can to get the best possible information to us.

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