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Hi, I'm April

Yep folks. It's April.

Friday I had my classes and all, threw shot a bit, then Mel came to town and ten of us had dinner at Froggy Bottoms. That was delightful. Later we watched the animated version of The Hobbit in Allen House. Now, that is quite a movie. Neal and I sent everyone else away by talking about unified theories of physics and chaotic interpretations of social sciences.

Saturday I never quite woke up, I don't think. I got brunch, and I saw Mark Wheat of 89.3 Minneapolis, The Current ramble interestingly for an hour and a half or so. He gave some excellent advice on radio as well as telling his own story and his opinions on the state of radio.

Relating to the state of radio, on Friday Summer and I also attended a convocational address on the state of the news media, which I thought made some very apt points. Before I get into that, you might be interested in the background of the speaker, lifted from Carleton's site:

Convocation: Catherine Manegold '77

Prior to becoming Professor of Journalism at Emory University, Catherine Manegold '77 worked for twenty years as a reporter and editor with with The New York Times, Newsweek, Philadelphia Inquirer and several smaller papers. Her award-winning work includes reporting on the fall of Marcos in the Philippines, civil war in Sri Lanka, life under communist rule in Vietnam and social and political upheaval across Southeast Asia. While at Newsweek she covered the Gulf War and was posted as a foreign correspondent in Japan. She is a seven-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and was a member of the New York Times team awarded a Pulitzer Prize in spot news for coverage of the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Manegold addresses why an effective, aggressive, independent and responsible press is crucial to the healthy functioning of democracy, in her presentation titled "War on Words: Why an Ethical Press is NOT an Oxymoron."

10:50 am, Skinner Memorial Chapel

One thing she mentioned was the "softening" of the language of war in the press; in Sudan when people are killed, the language of the press says so. When American troops are doing the killing, however, they're merely "softening up" the situation for the benefit of freedom. You can say that the Sudan and Iraq situations are hardly comparable, but death is still death, and torture is still torture, and the US has endorsed the use of both.

In addition to other crimes of language, including the bludgeoning into meaninglessness of once-important words like that aforementioned "freedom," she lamented that speeches from important people don't make the news any more, but rather become the news. This is to say that journalists tend not to write well-researched pieces based around official proclamations, but merely present the proclamations as news. This could be due to increasing laziness in the profession, or possibly a technique that the infamous Sen. McCarthy apparently put to good use: releasing some bit of press so shortly before deadline that fact-checking becomes impossible. Anyway, here's a bit more on the press situation courtesy of the University of Missouri's Freedom of Information project.

At least it appears that there are plenty of movements within radio to make the field more independent and responsive to its constituents, from XM to public radio, including The Current. Hopefully the press will follow suit.

Speaking of radio, I should know now when Fun Time with Laveranues will be this term, but I guess I won't until tomorrow. I'll be sure to let you know when I find out.

Back to Saturday, though, I talked to some folks and Summer came over to visit, which was nice, and I neglected my work to some extent while also thinking of a topic for my Religion and the Constitution research paper. Now that should be interesting. After a dining hall dinner, Summer and Anna and Lauren and Neal and I played Sheepshead until Taylor came over, then we got a movie to watch. The film in question was Mean Creek, which takes a somewhat stock situation and manages to do something interesting with it by creating complex and interesting characters and using some nice, not too obvious supporting imagery. I highly recommend it. Speaking of highly recommending things, though, I have to interview poor RA candidates in the morning, so I'd best go to bed now.

The world is an interesting place.