Ahh, the World Wide Web. It’s a marvel of modern technology, to be sure. And like the steam engine and the jet engine before it, the Web-based search engine has allowed man to explore the vast reaches of the world around him–and the many worlds beyond.

Furthermore–ah, forget it. All I wanted to say was OMG CHECK OUT THIS CRAZY PARKING JOB OUTSIDE MY GYM!!!!12$@!~

Nice Job, Jerk Outside My Gym!

Because, why render just one handicap parking spot useless when you can screw with both?

Parking. FAIL!!!

This has been quite a busy semester for my Multimedia Journalism students. They’ve gone from having little (if any) experience with HTML and online media to building and designing their own Web sites. Additionally, they’ve all created fabulous slide shows, audio-stills features, interactive maps, Web video, and so much more in the span of a few short months.

As if this hasn’t been enough, each student will be expected to cover the famed Boston Marathon next week. Most students will cover the event LIVE via tools like Qik, Ustream, Utterli, Mogulus, BlogTalkRadio, SoundSlides and more.

You’ll be able to keep up with everything they’re doing starting later this week via this FriendFeed account:

Be sure to subscribe to the account so you can get updates. Or, just come back here on Marathon Monday and take a look at all of the great work the students have done!

Kudos to my colleague Steve Garfield for setting this up!

House and Senate leaders introduced legislation yesterday that would establish a federal ban on bisphenol A (or BPA, a toxic chemical linked to heart disease and diabetes) in all food and beverage containers.

Click to view a NOVA audio slide show I conducted with BPA expert Dana Dolinoy

This move came just one day after Sunoco, a gas and chemical company, announced that it is now refusing to sell BPA-containing containers meant to store food and liquids for children younger than 3. The company told investors that it cannot be certain of the chemical compound’s safety. Playtex, Gerber and four other baby-bottle manufacturers have also announced that they will stop using BPA in bottles.

The quest to ban BPA is nothing new. San Francisco lawmakers proposed barring the product in children’s producs in 2006, and while they eventually backed down, their efforts have inspired similar proposals in California, Hawaii, Washington and Oregon. Canada banned BPA nationwide in October.

But we hear mixed messages about dangerous chemicals all the time. Sometimes, one group of scientists will tell us that something we’ve been eating/drinking/standing near will kill us, while another group encourages further exposure! Remember all of the drama surrounding the cholesterol in our eggs? And don’t even get me started on this pro-corn-syrup campaign. Suffice it to say, I think it’s misleading.

So what is it about BPA that we know makes it so harmful? Last year, I interviewed Duke University scientist Dana Dolinoy about her research on the chemical and its effects. Click the image above (or here) to watch an audio slide show I created showing what her team has found so far.

The headline says it all. My multimedia journalism student, Ashlie Anctil, is streaming live from spring break at Walt Disney World. The show begins at 3:45 p.m., EST.

Online TV Shows by Ustream

In case you haven’t heard, the members of U2 are taking cues from The Beatles these days and putting on “secret” concerts. Bono and the gang played one show last night at Davis Square’s Somerville Theatre, a mere ten-minute walk from my home and one of the tiniest non-bar venues the band could have chosen for this occasion. Were it not for the internet, I suspect the event would also have been just as “low key” as the later Beatles shows were.

Justin Meisinger, a teaching assistant for the JO540 New Media discussion section, reported on the concert for CNN’s citizen journalism service, iReport. The report (as well as an interview with Meisinger) eventually found its way to Headline News. You can watch the segment below:

Thanks to my colleague Steve Garfield for putting this video online.

A little over two months ago, I reported on the Pew Research Center’s discovery that the internet has finally overtaken newspapers as a leading news source, and how journalists disparate to keep their jobs are now willing–even eager–to learn new skills in multimedia. This new attitude toward the Web as friend (not foe) would have been difficult to imagine a few years ago when many journalists were so afraid of going multimedia, they began threatening to leave their jobs. (Just read my master’s thesis.)

But is this acceptance of the Web “too little, too late”? In 2008, nearly 16,000 newspaper journalists lost their jobs to layoffs. And so far in 2009, another 3,000 have found themselves out of work. These figures don’t even include television, radio, the struggling magazine sector, or the Internet.

I interviewed writer, public speaker, and founder of the aptly named AngryJournalist.com, Kiyoshi Martinez, last week about our struggling profession. Although Martinez has left the reporting world, he keeps up with the industry as much as he can and is currently developing a new site, Journalism.me, which currently lists the most popular topics journalists are blogging about on any given day. Here are some highlights from the interview:

Rima Chaddha Mycynek: Your brief career in journalism includes a stint as a stringer for Newsweek and as a Web editor for five Chicago-area newspapers–at once. Why did you leave the field?

Kiyoshi Martinez in Chicago, February 2008. Photo courtesy Jason Reblando

Kiyoshi Martinez: Short answer? Money. Long answer? I wanted fair financial compensation, job stability, weekends off, good benefits and a broader range of career opportunities.

RCM: Fair enough. Is that why you started AngryJournalist.com?

KM: I started AngryJournalist after reading a report from Dr. Scott Reinardy on how the burnout rate of young journalists was on the rise. Some of the responses (anonymous) were similar to either my views of the profession or those expressed by friends in the industry. I wondered how universal these thoughts were and what journalists would say if given the platform to anonymously and freely speak their mind. For a site though that hasn’t changed much and required no extra effort by me, I’m satisfied with its results. I saw this project as more or less an experiment that has overperformed my expectations.

I think a lot of people assume that I was an angry journalist. I would say it was more a “disillusioned” or “disappointed” feeling about the industry. I’m not angry now. I’m pretty content with my life, but I do empathize with friends who are still in the industry and being let down by it. I’ve known three close friends who were laid off in the past year, one was my girlfriend. Another was my roommate in [an] internship program. And the other was my bureau chief who mentored me during my [government reporting] internship in Springfield. I think what David Simon’s essay for Esquire nailed it: you can love newspapers, but “a newspaper can’t love you back.”

RCM: Do you think the journalists who visit your site are more angry than disillusioned or vice versa?

KM: I think journalists are transitioning between anger and sadness, especially as we witness more layoffs, shutdowns and general chaos in the industry. Will they quit? Honestly, I think that decision may be made for many of them soon enough.

RCM: That’s pretty ominous, but probably not inaccurate considering the 2008/2009 job-loss figures. Do you think “angry journalists” are more intent on leaving the field now, or are they doing everything they can to keep their positions?

KM: Initially, a year ago, I would’ve said that people were making these threats [to leave their jobs] because they were fed up with management and the general way these companies were being operated. Now, I think it’s shifted to survival. The industry has no financial stability or job certainty. Additionally, all these layoffs are creating a large surplus of experienced talent for the few positions remaining. Then, throw in wage freezes and reductions, hiring freezes and more work on less people. When the odds are this stacked against you, I think that’s a good reason to leave.

RCM: Do you think there’s any hope for print, which seems to be struggling the most out of all media?

KM: I’m a pessimist and realist. It’s going to get worse. There will be less jobs, fewer publications and too little innovation too late (on both business and editorial ends). Watch for more production duties (page design, creative ad services) to be outsourced to India. Expect some publications to have full-time staff replaced by freelancers paid on pageviews. More sections will be dropped from the physical product and the newshole will get smaller. Circulation will drop further, especially in this economy. And there will be fewer print ads, too. All the ad verticals newspapers built their empires on are eroding away right now: auto, real estate, classified, retail, etc.

RCM: Surely you can’t be completely pessimistic. Is there anything at all that you feel we can do to keep professional journalism alive?

KM: A “better” economy aside, the only thing that I believe can be done by news organizations is to have a huge push to innovate when it comes to online advertising and make your services and product more appealing. Don’t pursue any editorial projects that you can’t monetize. Find new revenue streams. I would also stress an emphasis on finding a way to monetize the growth of mobile broadband Internet browsing being done, but I doubt many news orgs right now have the funds to seriously become a player in that market right now, let alone last long enough to take advantage of it.

RCM: That’s a lot to ask, considering that journalistic education nationwide still seems to be focused on the us-versus-them mentality of broadcast-versus-print. I won’t get into how arcane I think that is, but I will ask you this: How can we tweak journalism education make what you suggest possible–or at the very least, to ensure that we’re not sending students out to face a bleak future of unemployment or temp work?

KM: To justify the cost of a journalism degree, it should have business courses training journalists to be entrepreneurs. You have as good a shot in being successful working for yourself as you do for the established companies. This mythical wall between editorial and business needs to come down. This willful ignorance is a huge problem.

I can’t speak for journalism programs around the country, but I think that my undergraduate classes were mostly a waste of time. All the classwork wasn’t as valuable as the experience of actually performing acts of journalism and learning skills by practicing them. This is something you can do outside of a journalism college. You can train yourself and let your peers review you online. There are plenty of free resources to learn about multimedia. However, one class that I think was valuable was media law. Knowing about libel, copyright, the First Amendment rights, etc. was essential and helpful.

One thing that I’d stress is that anyone can perform acts of journalism. Having schooling or training doesn’t matter as much anymore. What matters now is having the tools to distribute information to an audience. One of my favorite journalism-related movie scenes is from “Superman Returns” when the editor of the Daily Planet is screaming at Jimmy Olsen for getting scooped by a kid who snapped a photo of the Man of Steel with his cameraphone.

Four years of schooling, thousands of dollars of student loan debt and a piece of paper doesn’t have anything over the guy with a iPhone and a few hundred followers on Twitter.

What do you think? Is journalism (or at least the journalistic model we’re still teaching in schools) dead? Can we save our profession?

I’ve learned several surprising things in the two days since asking, “What’s so appealing about Twitter?” Among them:

1. Lots of celebrities use Twitter and if you follow enough of them, some will eventually start following you back. This is the case with Yoko Ono, who not only supposedly reads my Tweets now but who has also sent me a direct message via the site. Now, I’m almost positive she uses a third-party site to auto-contact all of her followers–but she also sent along another, more special note just for me. Being the huge Beatles fan that I am, the experience of hearing from John Lennon’s widow has left me feeling a little star-struck. I’ll admit I’m a little embarrassed by that.
   If you’re interested, you can search the Web for reliable lists of celebrity Twitterers, but some of my favorites are Shaquille O’Neal, Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson and, of course, the truly amazing John Cleese.
2. Experienced Twitterers can come up with really clever ways to say a lot while staying within the meager 140-character limit. That might not sound too impressive to some of you social-networking veterans who have mastered succinctness in your status messages, but if you’re a journalist, you’ll understand that brevity–effective brevity–is nothing less than a fine art. There is a reason they call it “the soul of wit.” Twitter even has awards for the best “short content” creators.
   There are, of course, some Twitterers who haven’t fully embraced the concept of brevity just yet. If 140 characters isn’t enough for them, they’ll just continue their message in a second, third, fourth or even fifth post. Yes, I’m looking at you, Dr. Drew.
3. Congress Tweets. And texts. And chats. And… does pretty much everything with their phones except take notes on important events? Here’s an excerpt from the The Washington Post’s article on what, exactly, our leaders were doing during President Barack Obama’s address to Congress last night:

President Obama spoke of economic calamity and war last night in that solemn rite of democracy, the address to the joint session of Congress. And lawmakers watched him with the dignity Americans have come to expect of their leaders: They whipped out their BlackBerrys and began sending text messages like high school kids bored in math class.

“One doesn’t want to sound snarky, but it is nice not to see Cheney up there,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) announced as Obama entered the chamber.

“I did big wooohoo for Justice Ginsberg,” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) broadcast, misspelling the name of the ailing Supreme Court justice. McCaskill could be seen applauding with BlackBerry in one hand.

“Capt Sully is here — awesome!” announced Rep. John Culberson (R-Tex.), spotting the US Airways pilot in the gallery.

Then there was Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), in whose name this text message was sent at about the time the president spoke of the need to pull the country together: “Aggie basketball game is about to start on espn2 for those of you that aren’t going to bother watching pelosi smirk for the next hour.” A few minutes later, another message came through: “Disregard that last Tweet from a staffer.”

Wow. Seriously? My students pay far better attention in class! And as special as I think each and every one of their smiling faces happens to be, none of these students is ever going to have the effect on my taxes, bank account and general livelihood that Congress will.

Do we need to start confiscating their cell phones?

A few months back, I downloaded a few Twitter applications for my iPhone. Yes, more than one. I do that a lot with (free) apps since it’s the only way I can figure out which ones are right for me. When you use as many Web tools as I do (as often as I do) speed and usability become paramount.

The problem is, I never bothered using any of them. I’ve tried to get into Twitter, but micro-blogging has never really appealed to me–well, until now, anyway.

Long story short, I’ve recently come to accept two important facts of internet life:

1. Twitter isn’t the passing fad I thought it would be. To the contrary, it’s still gaining in popularity more than 2 years after its release. According to a February ‘09 report from Web traffic analysis site Compete.com, Twitter is now the third most popular social networking site behind Facebook and MySpace.
2. Twitter is a symbol how internet users are now essentially online all the time. Smart phones and WiFi have really changed where we connect, when we do it, and how often we can do it. We can both have lives and yet stay in constant connection with the Web and our peers, which is a huge shift from just a couple of years ago. Sure people still have their stereotypes: To a lot of folks, if you’re online, you must be at your computer in your mom’s basement, drinking a 2-liter Mt. Dew and arguing with strangers over which “World of Warcraft” characters are the coolest. But regardless of stereotypes, things are really changing. Look at teenagers: Even the cool kids are always texting, Facebooking, Twittering, etc.

As a self-respecting multimedia journalist, I know that I should accept Twitter as the increasingly popular tool that it is. Yet it’s that journalistic part of me that really needs to decipher what’s behind the popularity of this whole micro-blogging thing. Both Facebook and MySpace offer “status update” tools in addition to myriad cool features that Twitter doesn’t have. So why do we Twitter?

While even Twitter CEO Evan Williams can’t answer that question (as he’s stated in multiple interviews) perhaps the Times of London can. Just yesterday the Times published an article in which they asked several experts about the Twitter phenomenon. The conclusion was this: We Tweet because we have an underdeveloped sense of the self. Ouch.

From the article:

The clinical psychologist Oliver James has his reservations. ‘Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It’s a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity.’

‘We are the most narcissistic age ever,’ agrees Dr David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist and director of research based at the University of Sussex. ‘Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognise you, you cease to exist. It may stave off insecurity in the short term, but it won’t cure it.’

For Alain de Botton, author of Status Anxiety and the forthcoming The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Twitter represents ‘a way of making sure you are permanently connected to somebody and somebody is permanently connected to you, proving that you are alive. It’s like when a parent goes into a child’s room to check the child is still breathing. It is a giant baby monitor.’

Those are some pretty strong accusations. But what do you think? Are those of us who Tweet or update our statuses on Facebook and MySpace narcissistic? Are we insecure? Do we need validation?

For me… I just think it’s fun. No harm, no foul. But what do you think? Are we truly just a bunch of big, fearful, attention-seeking babies?

Let me know. And while you’re at it, follow me (and my lacking sense of self) on Twitter. You can do that at right.

Kudos to Steve Garfield and my student, Nick, for this great on-the-fly chat about new media tools for journalists. Steve interviewed Nick today during the discussion section immediately following our class. You can listen to the clip right here:

Using only his cell phone, Steve had the above report and Nick’s picture online and ready to be viewed within minutes. Now it’s just six hours later, and so far more than 120 people have listened to the file.

If you’re interested in doing this kind of reporting yourself (as any self-respecting multimedia journalist should be) you should check out Utterli. With tools like this available all over the Web, there’s no excuse for any reporter with a decent cell to miss out on breaking news.

In other news, here’s my only contribution to cell-phone reporting today:

In my grocery store’s organic freezer section–right above the soy ice cream and next to the chocolate-covered frozen bananas–is the Yoghund, a yogurt treat formulated just for your dog. Yummy. Or should I say “yuppie”? (I also have a close-up shot of the text. I took both of these images with my iPhone and posted them via the iPhone WordPress application, which I once reviewed here.)

There’s an “Angry Journalist” (specifically Angry Journalist #8010) out there who has come up with an interesting solution for preventing bloggers from stealing his/her content (let’s just say “his” for the sake of simplicity). Of course, by “interesting” I mean “insane,” but more on that later. Here’s what he writes:

I’m angry that nobody wants to hear my simple solution to the ‘they’re stealing our work’ problem. Here it is: Instead of posting stories online as HTML text, which can be read by search engines and copied-and-pasted by anyone, just convert the text to an watermarked image of the text. It would appear no different to the reader (except for the watermark, which could include a copyright notice), but nobody could copy the text (to paste elsewhere) because it would be a .jpg or .gif file and not text. If they copy/paste the text-image then the watermark and copyright notice have to go along for the ride. Search engines couldn’t read it without OCR processing, which they wouldn’t do (except for the largest major market papers) because that’s processor-intensive and they’re rather just steal from the next source than go to the trouble of transcribing yours. Problem solved (no charge).

In short, AJ8010 wants all copy text to appear as an image on his Web site, thus preventing search engines (and the people who use them) from finding them. In a later post, he writes:

If I want my stories cataloged by a search engine so they’ll send hits my way to read my stories and SEE MY ADS, then I’ll gladly send them a feed of tags in whatever format they need. They all have back doors for that purpose. But bloggers won’t be able to steal my text and reuse it without my ads because there won’t be any machine-readable text at the deep links I provide to the search engines.

Now on to why I think this journalist is barking up the wrong tree: Not only will bloggers be able to embed his JPEGed articles onto their blogs as he notes (still bypassing his ads for their readers), but he obviously has no real understanding of how search engines work.

Here are a few points I think he should consider:


Angry Journalist image courtesy of Gawker.

1. Bloggers will almost always cite where they get their news. Most people want to validate their arguments by saying things like “Hey, see? This was in the Times!” Also, though perhaps to a lesser extent, no one wants to take the blame for writing something that’s potentially inaccurate or controversial, so they give credit where credit is due. If anything, bloggers might end up driving more traffic to AJ8010’s site, particularly traffic that wouldn’t have gone there to begin with. Why pass up free advertising?
2. If bloggers are such a threat that their actions are noticeably taking away from his readership, AJ8010 should spend this time and energy trying to figure out why he and his news site aren’t getting more traffic. The key is to entice people to read your articles, not punish the few who were so enticed they decided to post your work on their own blogs. Logic dictates that people would prefer to read the news from the source, and not just from a blogging “middleman.” So if a blogger intrigues his or her readers with your work, those readers will eventually go to your site.
3. Search engine optimization: Let’s look at Google because it’s the big dog right now. Google’s algorithms still read meta tags, page titles, and URLs, but they put huge value on what’s visible on a page because that’s what readers want and because that’s what readers will see. If there is no or little text available with the article, Google will simply throw it out. Also, even if Google keeps the article, its ranking in a search will be lowered considerably because so many important key words from the article have now disappeared. (If you’re one of my students, you’ll remember my discussing all of this during our talk on search engine optimization. If you’re not one of my students, you can read a quick overview in the Week 2 lecture.)
4. What about visually impaired readers who require larger fonts, or the blind who use text-to-audio software to get their news?
5. By passive-aggressively only posting articles as JPEGs, AJ8010 will only end up sending whatever readers he has left away from his news site. People expect a certain freedom on the Web. If they don’t get it, they go elsewhere. Even if AJ8010 writes for a small-town paper, there are surely other regional papers or those from neighboring towns that wouldn’t mind absorbing his online readership. Print is suffering and newspapers are hungry.

All in all, I suspect AJ8010 is only going to hurt his readership. But what do you think? Does he have a case? On one hand, we’ve seen extensive digital rights management in the realm of music and movies–why not print? On the other, we’re now seeing a trend away from DRM, particularly with iTunes because DRM only really hinders those who buy music or DVDs legally–those who take these things illegally always find a way to get around DRM.

So, what do you think?

This week, my students are learning the importance of storing data on maps. Not only do maps offer readers additional visual entry points into Web content, but they can also make mundane or unwieldy data interesting.

If I gave you a chart showing what Twitter users tweeted about during the Super Bowl, what would you learn? That Cardinals fans were talking about the Cardinals and Steelers fans about the Steelers? That “Springsteen” overtook both teams as the most commonly tweeted word during halftime?

Sure, I could tell you about that. But it would break one of the cardinal most important rules of multimedia journalism: “Show. Don’t tell.” (Sure, this phrase exists in fiction writing as well, but the meaning here is much more, well, literal–sorry, that was one pun I couldn’t escape.)

If you don’t know what I mean, visit the New York Times’ Web site and check out their Super Bowl Twitter map and time line. They’ve really got the “Show. Don’t tell” mantra down. Try clicking the links at left (emoticons, ad talk, etc.), hit “play” on the time line, and then take note of how much you’ve learned in how little time.

Thanks to Steve Garfield for pointing me toward this link.

While constructing a lecture today for my multimedia journalism students on search engine optimization (among other things), it occurred to me that I hadn’t taken the time to fully optimize my own Web site.

Boy, was my face red.

By default, WordPress gives a very unassuming permalink to each new post and page. It includes an ID number and a question mark–exciting, I know.

But why settle for something like…

http://www.news-geek.com/blog/?p=10

…when you can have:

http://www.news-geek.com/blog/2005/bob-woodward-judith-miller-and-rovian-semantics/ ?

Search engines place a lot of value on words and phrases within URLs. If two blogs share all the same content, but one uses the original link structure while the other implements the new-and-improved structure, the latter blog will always outrank the other in a Google search.

You might be asking yourself why this matters. Who shares content like that?

Well, the answer is simple. While most blogs don’t syndicate original posts to other blogs, most news Web sites feature syndicated articles every day. (Ever hear of the Associated Press?) Just go to an aggregator like Google News and search for anything that comes to mind. Chances are, your top hits will not only have your search term in their headlines, but in their URLs as well.

If you want to stand out and make sure your content gets found–and you’re using content management or blogging tools–you should consider spending the five minutes it takes to optimize your URLs.

It’s pretty straight-forward, and even if you can’t figure out how to do it, I’ll bet you dollars to donuts you’ll find the answers you need in your software’s FAQ.

Or, if you prefer, Obamicon yourself.

What is an Obamicon, you ask? Well, it’s a four-color visual representation of any image designed to resemble Shepard Fairey’s famous poster (below) depicting President Barack Obama and the word “hope,” a key term from the leader’s 2008 campaign.

Thanks to Paste Magazine and their Web site project, Obamicon.me, users from around the world can easily upload an image of their choosing and caption it with any word or short phrase. As you can see, the end results aren’t perfect, but they are pretty close.

They’re so close, in fact, that users worldwide have generated more than 150,000 icons since the site launched two weeks ago.

While this internet meme might never see the massive success of I Can Has Cheezburger’s famed Lolcats or even Rickrolling’s accidental star, ’80s pop artist Rick Astley, don’t be surprised if you start finding Obamicons in unexpected places. Not only are users setting their icons as profile images on sites like Facebook and MySpace, but some are also using Obamicon to borrow from the famous “fail” meme. (You can see other fail meme examples here.)

All in all, I think Obamicon makes for a pretty fun site. Below are a few of my favorite images that others have created. You can see more on the Obamicon site.

I can has memes?

I’d vote for him.

Damn it, House! It’s never lupus!

Like the Gods of Ancient Greece, every president has had his epithet. Back around 1980, an Arkansas Newspaper dubbed Bill Clinton “Slick Willie” in response to what editors perceived was his misrepresentation of his own politics. Toni Morrison later called him “the first black president” for his interest in issues affecting minorities. Through the years, we’ve had an “Honest Abe” Lincoln and a Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon. And who could forget “The Gipper,” Ronald Reagan?

Now, a variety of news organizations are calling Barack Obama the “Internet President.” (1, 2, 3 — This is just a random sampling.) Not only did Obama make great use of the internet during his campaign through sites like YouTube and MyBarackObama.com–the latter being an innovative social networking tool–but he has announced many goals that if achieved could bring high-speed internet and better computers to schools and communities nationwide.

Did you know that YouTube didn’t even exist during the 2004 election? The site is so ingrained into our Web culture that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t available for public use until ‘05.

Now, news sites like CNN.com and FoxNews.com are doing what they can to keep up with our tech-savvy president-elect. CNN has paired up with Facebook to allow users to watch the inauguration live starting today at 12 noon (EST). The Facebook element will allow these users to chat about the event as it happens, whether just with their friends or with people worldwide–it’s up to the viewer.

Meanwhile, FoxNews.com has also set up some live chats as well as a live feed for inauguration coverage, but the methods are a little old school. The chats and streaming video aren’t integrated into one neat little page as on CNN.com, but are rather separated throughout the site. One interesting difference, however, between Fox’s coverage now and the live chats of yore is that the network is taking to heart Obama’s grassroots message. Recently laid-off autoworkers will preside over the Detroit chat, for example, while military servicemen, women and their families lead the North Carolina discussion.

For the first time, internet users everywhere can truly experience an American inauguration together, sharing thoughts and expressing feelings with others next door and miles away. If you can take advantage of this unique privilege, I suggest you do.

I’m neither the first journalist nor the first blogger to reflect upon our nation’s past with an eye toward her future. To say that tomorrow’s inauguration will mark an important day in our history is like saying the sun will rise and water will flow. The importance here is obvious.

Regardless of whether you (my readers) support President-elect Barack Obama’s ideas and goals, I suspect you all understand their significance.

You see, my generation never had a Jack Kennedy. We barely had a Ronald Reagan. By the time we came of age, Bill Clinton’s philandering was old news, and any respect for the office of President ceased to exist when journalists started vying for book deals. As for patriotism, we were too young to appreciate the nationalistic effects of the Cold War. Sure, we’ve got textbooks, archived footage and even the Rocky movies to show us how things used to be–for better or worse–but it’s not the same. Even the American solidarity we saw following the September 2001 terrorist attacks quickly faltered as we focused our hatred onto the Middle East, almost as if the entire region swarmed with enemy combatants.

Growing up in the early ’90s, bands like Nirvana told us to be apathetic. As the decade continued, television and films said that we should be sarcastic and condescending toward anyone with a positive outlook on life. The naught years told us to be excessive–to party hard, revive the yuppie spirit, and to first and foremost look out for ourselves.

I didn’t buy into it, and neither did my friends. And now it seems the tides might turn in our favor. “Hope” is no longer an idea that inspires childish snickering. People seem to have regained their optimism.

Perhaps it’s a pipe dream, but maybe tomorrow will mark the day when Americans started looking out for each other again. It’ll be a long road… but do you think we can do it?

“Yes We Can”

The artist Will I Am created the above video and song from Barack Obama’s speech at the New Hampshire primary. You can watch the speech here. If you’d rather read the entire transcript, click here.