There’s a fun meme making its way around the internet. It’s called the 30-Day Song Challenge, and if you haven’t taken part in it yet, you’ve probably at least seen it on Facebook, Twitter or any of the other social-blogging sites. The idea is pretty simple: Every day for about a month, you answer one question from a predetermined list (below) with a YouTube link to a specific song. Many of the questions do require some thought, so it’s no lie to call this challenging.

I’ll confess that while I loved the idea, simply posting links got pretty boring after the first few days. So, I took the meme a step further and cobbled together the following two-part compilation video, complete with clips from my 30 songs and narration explaining why I chose each one. Thanks for watching, and enjoy!

Note that these are embedded Flash videos. I’d prefer to use YouTube for the sake of social sharing, but the site blocks some videos containing copyrighted materials from streaming, even when they’re well within the realm of fair use like these are. Nevertheless, as I always say, “When YouTube fails you, convert your MOVs to FLVs and host them yourself.” At least I can be proud of my technical troubleshooting skills!

Anyway, for the sake of anyone who wants to skip around (and, honestly, for search-engine optimization since I don’t have the YouTube coverage), here’s the full list of questions and my answers:

Day 1 – Your Favorite Song
Queen – “March of the Black Queen”

Day 2 – Your Least Favorite Song
Shinedown – “Second Chance”

Day 3 – A Song That Makes You Happy
The Rolling Stones – “Get Off of My Cloud”

Day 4 – A Song That Makes You Sad
Gary Jules – “Mad World”

Day 5 – A Song That Reminds You of Someone
Bunty Aur Babli Soundtrack – “Kajra Re”

Day 6 – A Song That Reminds You of Somewhere
Better Than Ezra – “This Time of Year”

Day 7 – A Song That Reminds You of an Event
Social Distortion – “Story of My Life”

Day 8 – A Song You Know All the Words to
Bob Dylan – “Subterranean Homesick Blues”

Day 9 – A Song You Can Dance to
Vanilla Ice – “Ice Ice Baby”

Day 10 – A Song That Makes You Fall Asleep
Radiohead – “Exit Music (For a Film)”

Day 11 – A Song From Your Favorite Band
The Beatles – “Revolution”

Day 12 – A Song From a Band You Hate
Nickelback – “Photograph”

Day 13 – A Song That’s a Guilty Pleasure
Naughty By Nature – “O.P.P.”

Day 14 – A Song No One Would Expect You Love
Johnny Cash – “Folsom Prison Blues”

Day 15 – A Song That Describes You
Charlie Schmidt – “Keyboard Cat”

Day 16 – A Song You Used to Love But Now Hate
Cee-Lo Green – “F*** You”

Day 17 – A Song You Always Hear on the Radio
Mumford & Sons – “Little Lion Man”

Day 18 – A Song You Want to Hear on the Radio
Massive Attack – “Teardrop”

Day 19 – A Song From Your Favorite Album
Queen – “Seven Seas of Rhye”

Day 20 – A Song You Listen to When You’re Angry
Dropkick Murphys – “I’m Shipping Up To Boston”

Day 21 – A Song You Listen to When You’re Happy
Save Ferris – “Come on Eileen”

Day 22 – A Song You Listen to When You’re Sad
Dave Matthews Band – “Grey Street”

Day 23 – A Song You Want Played at Your Wedding
Back to the Future Soundtrack – “Earth Angel”

Day 24 – A Song You Want Played at Your Funeral
Death Cab for Cutie – “I Will Follow You Into the Dark”

Day 25 – A Song That Makes You Laugh
Key of Awesome – “Angry Birds”

Day 26 – A Song You Can Play on an Instrument
Top Gun Soundtrack – “Top Gun Anthem”

Day 27 – A Song You Wish You Could Play
Eric Johnson – “Cliffs of Dover”

Day 28 – A Song That Makes You Feel Guilty
Rick Astley – “Never Gonna Give You Up”

Day 29 – A Song From Your Childhood
Kenny Loggins – “Footloose”

Day 30 – Your Favorite Song at This Time Last Year
Cascada – “Evacuate the Dancefloor”

Last week, University of Maryland researchers found that college students who swore off social media and texting showed signs of withdrawal similar to what drug addicts experience after quitting cold turkey. Sound familiar? Here are some highlights from their “Day Without Media” experiment:

Students use literal terms of addiction to characterize their dependence on media.
“Although I started the day feeling good, I noticed my mood started to change around noon. I started to feel isolated and lonely. I received several phone calls that I could not answer,” wrote one student. “By 2:00 pm. I began to feel the urgent need to check my email, and even thought of a million ideas of why I had to. I felt like a person on a deserted island…. I noticed physically, that I began to fidget, as if I was addicted to my iPod and other media devices, and maybe I am.”

Students hate going without media. In their world, going without media, means going without their friends and family.
“Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort,” wrote one student. “When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life. Although I go to a school with thousands of students, the fact that I was not able to communicate with anyone via technology was almost unbearable.”

And here I thought I was going crazy; that my dependence on social media was a sign of some yet undiagnosed psychological problem. But if I’m nuts, then so are you. And so are America’s youth.

This week, New York’s Riverdale County School ran a two-day experiment similar to the Blackout, prohibiting middle school students from texting, IM-ing, and engaging in any kind of social media. As you might predict, the kids suffered varying levels of anxiety during the study. But they survived, and they were better for it.

Here’s an excerpt from “Encouraging the Text Generation to Rediscover Its Voice,” a New York Times article that references the experiment:

This text-free Sunday, the Riverdale students said, was unusually relaxing. They were shocked at how quickly they finished their homework, undistracted by an always-open video chat, or checking in on Facebook or responding to the hundred messages they typically get in a day. … “I had to look for things to do,” said [student] Zachary, who ended up watching a movie with his mother.

A movie? With his mother? Even for a young teen, this really shouldn’t be a last-resort activity. Family bonding should be commonplace.

When you have down time, your activities might include landscaping the yard. We did just that on Sunday.

This leads me to some of my own conclusions:

Since I ended my Blackout more than a week ago, I’ve found myself being more cautious about my social-media postings: links, photos, videos, status updates, private notes, private and public blog entries, etc. I find myself checking Facebook and Twitter a few times per day, but this is nothing compared to my previous almost constant use of these sites. I actually now set aside specific times for goofing off.

I’ve made good on my word to not use my iPhone in the car, except for important calls. (Remember that I’m the passenger, not the driver.) I can tell that this was probably my biggest vice, as I’ve seen more of this town in the past week than I have in an entire year of living here. I’m still ill about the time I wasted just waiting for pages to load.

I no longer feel a constant, nagging compulsion to check my favorite sites “simply because” the opportunity exists. Why pick up my smart phone when I can grab a book, spend more time with my husband or go for another run with the puppy? Why debate politics through my fingers with friends-of-friends when I can have rousing, in-person conversations with people I actually know?

Over the past week, I’ve found myself filled with creative energy. I’ve become even more productive at work, and have ended up with a lot more down time. (That I was so productive before the blackout still baffles me.)

We used some of this down time to landscape the yard this weekend (see image above right). I also try to use the time to read up on corporate policies for renovations, management and modifications, so now I’m not just thinking weeks ahead, but months. I hope that this will translate into greater career success.

Finally, I feel, for lack of a better term, more… alive. Life becomes very two-dimensional and gray when you’ve got your faced shoved into a computer screen all day. Any time away from the technology translates into reconnecting with people, animals, trees, society, and good old-fashioned mortal existence.

I will always be the News-Geek, the multimedia nerd who loves to create, to teach, and to connect through all kinds of new media. But even geeks need moderation. And for once, I’m ok with that.

It’s actually not this simple.

I took the challenge a step further and did away with unnecessary Web surfing altogether. I even banned myself from using my iPhone for checking e-mail in the car. (I couldn’t get rid of e-mail completely as I needed it for work.) Since my husband, Steve, does all of the driving, I didn’t want to put myself in a situation where I could spend entire car rides playing with my phone.

I decided to chronicle my experiences as an internet luddite. Surprisingly, I learned a lot about myself in the process:

Day 1
8:57 a.m. – We’re in the car on the way to work and my fingers are twitching like I’m some sort of addict. (And maybe I am.) This is prime e-mail-checking time and my hands don’t know what to do with their new-found freedom from iPhone enslavement.

Suddenly, I realize I haven’t Tweeted about the blackout experiment, so I start digging through my purse. How can such a small bag be so cavernous? Finally, I find my phone and start typing as fast as I can. Like Indiana Jones grabbing his hat before the stone door shut forever in Temple of Doom, I manage to get my Tweet in before my 9 a.m. cut off. It’s going to be a long 48 hours.

11:02 a.m. – It’s been a busy morning, but I’m back at my desk now. I’m starting to realize just how much of my typical day is spent goofing off online, and it’s kind of scary. So how on Earth do I manage to stay so productive? I have no idea. I just know that I’ve been plugged into the Internet since I was 14–that’s half of my life–and it didn’t prevent me from graduating college with high honors, researching/writing a 153-page masters thesis in less than a year, or gaining some pretty successful career opportunities at NOVA Online and Boston University.

I’m not even bored right now and I definitely have work to do, yet the compulsion to “just check” all of my different sites of interest hits me every time I sit down. In a split-second, my mind thinks “Let’s go to Facebook–wait, I can’t do that; Twitter! Nope, can’t do that either; Flickr! Sorry, not happening…” etc.

My phone is ringing. Saved by the bell.

12:16 p.m.. – It’s almost lunchtime now, and one of my clerks is standing at my door, going over this morning’s crazy events. (At our hotel, every morning is sprinkled with a touch of crazy.) I look up at her as she talks, neither of us realizing that I’m absentmindedly typing “facebook.com” into Firefox’s address bar. I get as far as entering in my password before I notice what I’m doing.

What’s wrong with me?

I exit the browser as a guilty feeling builds in the pit of my stomach. That was close.

For the record, I do realize how absurd this sounds.

2:05 p.m. – I notice that every time I sit down to get a little computer work done, my cursor drifts toward the Firefox icon. It’s happened at least 10 times today already–probably more. I’ve actually stopped counting.

Steve shot this with my iPhone. I fully admit that in a moment of weakness, I asked him to upload it to his Facebook account. He declined.

I’m beginning to see that my problem isn’t really the conscious desire to connect with people, but something more deeply ingrained in who I’ve become. I’ve spent most of my formative years online. The compulsion to surf is like muscle memory, hardly any different from walking around without realizing on any conscious level that I’ve even stood up.

I’ve been following the same internet routine for 14 years. The sites have changed, but the habits remain the same. I wonder if I’m now hardwired to be a geek.

3:42 p.m. – My subconscious is getting clever. I’ve had a little bit of down time this afternoon and without realizing it, I’ve been taking actions that, if completed, would require me to log into Facebook. About 20 minutes ago, I started thinking to myself, “I’ve got some time–why not experiment with some potentially useful code for my blog?”

It just so happens that I’ve been planning on implementing Facebook Connect features that would allow people to comment on News-Geek via their Facbook accounts. This would prevent users from having to go through the hoops of registering or retyping all of their personal information to post to this site. It’s all about convenience, right?

Wrong. Well, sort of. It’s partially about convenience, but today it’s also about having an excuse to log into Facebook. I can’t implement this feature without getting an application programing interface (API) key, a unique Facebook-generated identifier that will allow users to interact with my site. I’ll have to play with this functionality another time.

5:45 p.m. – It’s after work and we’re running errands. I still don’t miss my social networking sites, but I do find myself thinking about them frequently. Every time I get into the car, I have to remind myself to not reach for my phone. So, I stare out the window–and wow, it looks like there’s a new tattoo/massage/goth attire/head shop just outside the really nice part of town. How the hell did that get there? And when?

I thought that being plugged in kept me informed, in the know, aware–and it does. It keeps me in touch in the world. But what about my own backyard?

6:28 p.m. – I cooked with quinoa for the first time tonight. I have the urge to take a picture of the tasty meal with my phone and to Tweet it, but only as a passing thought. Current realization: I am incredibly lame.

9:45 p.m. – I’ve enjoyed a nice, quiet evening with Steve and our puppy, Herbie. I’m grateful because I’ve learned I’m not so attached to the internet that these nights aren’t common. In fact, it really feels like any other night, only I’m not mindlessly playing with my iPhone every few minutes. For the first time today, I don’t feel like an addict.

Day 2
6:00 a.m. – We’re going into Nashville today and I don’t want to get up. My usual morning ritual begins with my alarm, followed by at least 15 minutes of Web-surfing via my phone as I wipe the sleep from my eyes with my free hand. Unfortunately, staring at the ceiling doesn’t have quite the same waking effect. I begin wonder how impractical it would be to get a coffee maker for my nightstand.

6:45 a.m. – It’s hard to disconnect when so many aspects of your real life and social-media life are intertwined. I haven’t given up e-mail because I have a lot of work information saved in messages and drafts.

I notice that there’s a “3″ beside the Google Buzz link underneath where it says “Inbox.” That’s way too convenient. I don’t click on “Buzz,” though, because it’s the Valhalla of social networking. It all too easily aggregates your activity on sites like Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr, and shares it with other Buzz’ers (and vice versa).

When did we all go meta? And why?

I understand the need to reach our entire potential audience, but no one cares (or should care) enough about what I say to be willing to read the phrase “I just had my first glass of soy milk since leaving Boston” three times across three different sites.

1:30 p.m. – I see an NRA poster that reads “Insure Your Gun Rights!” I cringe. My inner grammar Nazi wants to take a picture with my phone and upload it to Facebook along with some sort of snarky “fail” caption.

Once again, it’s more reflex than desire. I realize how obnoxious it is to nitpick a poster. I don’t even dislike the NRA or disagree with a lot of what their less paranoid members stand for. I find out later that insure/ensure faux pas wasn’t a one-time mistake. They’ve got the phrase all over some reading materials and this Web site.

I twitch a little.

I wonder: In an addiction scenario, would my iPhone be the dealer or just an enabler?

4:42 p.m. – It’s a long drive home, and in between conversations with my husband, I wonder what my frenemies are up to. (A frenemy is someone who pretends to be a friend but is actually an enemy. I argue that in the social-networking world, the term should extend to rivals who maintain a continued interest in one’s life or vice versa, regardless of whether the two parties even speak. Online, you don’t have to talk to someone to legally and secretly keep tabs on them.)

We are the millennial generation, sometimes called the “net” generation. I believe that we all passively stalk people from our past, simply because we can. The only difference between us and creepsters with restraining orders against them is our motivation. While conventional “stalkers” are driven by obsession and a side of chemical imbalance, we’re just curious. Any malicious intent on our part could be likened to what you might feel during a class reunion: We want to ensure that we’re happier and more successful than our frenemies, and we want to see if they’re as lame/sketchy/weird/mean as they were when we still spoke to them.

In the interest of full, embarrassing disclosure, I admit that I have a couple of frenemies I check up on every few months. I know for a fact that many of my friends, acquaintances, former students and employees do the same.

I’m fairly certain that this is why the various social-networking sites won’t add a “see who’s looking at your profile” feature. Can you imagine the drama that would ensue if you suddenly learned that your proctologist, who isn’t even your Facebook friend, looks at your account more than your wife does?

10:30 p.m. – I’ve enjoyed another great evening in with Steve and Herbie. I don’t really want to go online at this point.

Day 3
7:24 a.m. – I wake up with the realization that this hiatus is almost over. I feel guilty, like I really shouldn’t go back to life as I knew it two days ago. If you do the math, a minute here and a minute there can add up to hours wasted online.

I want to keep fasting, but I also want to publish this post and share it across my various social-networking accounts. I want to connect with others out there who can relate to me and to this entry.

I’ll compromise: I will go back to my sites, but I’ll limit my use. There will be no more idle surfing in the car, and conversations with real, physical people will have to trump internet usage altogether. This means that if I’m at a restaurant with my husband, I will not grab my iPhone at any point as we wait for our meal.

12:55 p.m. – I’m publishing this blog entry. I haven’t been to Facebook or Twitter yet. I suspect I’ll have a lot to catch up on, but I think I’ll have some lunch and pick up around the house first.

Varadarajan writes:

[S]hould we think of Facebook as yet another canvas on which the Indian etches himself into an entwined crowd? One can see this art of connection on display on many Indian Facebook pages, where seemingly private conversations are conducted in a wide-open space. “I sacked the maid,” an Indian “friend’s” recent status update said. “Anyone know how I can find another fast?” “Should I wax or thread?” another asked, provoking, like the first questioner, a torrent of responses that other cultures might regard as intrusive or presumptuous.

To be honest, I’m not really keen on the thesis here. I don’t mind the stereotypes (more on that later), but I do think it’s a bit of a stretch to use these stereotypes as an explanation for why any particular demographic enjoys connecting and communicating via the Web. Sure, Indian Facebook users love to tell people what they’re doing and to read about what everyone else is doing! Isn’t that the curry-eatin’, chai-drinkin’ point? It’s social networking; this is what Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut are for. (You remember, Orkut, right? If not, you might be living out the American stereotype of only caring about things that matter to America: Orkut is Google’s answer to Facebook, and while it thrives in places like India, the long-awaited service actually bombed in the States. But, I digress.)

There are about 1.2 billion people in India today. Of those, only 13 million use Orkut, while a scant 4 million use Facebook (Source: ComScore). Even if you count Indians worldwide and include those of us who live in the States, Varadarajan himself estimates that only 8 million of us are on Facebook. To give you some perspective, more than 275 million Indian citizens use mobile phones. Not all of our billion-plus people are Slumdogs hanging out at the Temple of Doom. (Talk about stereotypes!)

But back to why I don’t really mind Indian self-stereotyping: This might be an unpopular stance to take, but I believe that a lot of generalizations–particularly those that groups come up with for themselves–have at least some basis in truth. Why would we make this stuff up if we didn’t see these traits in our friends, our families, and even ourselves? I mean, most of the stereotypes that other groups have created for us have been pretty great: Everyone seems to think we’re all brilliant doctors and engineers who are genetically predisposed to academic success. We’re exotic, our food is fabulous, and above all else, we can dance.

So, I don’t disagree with Varadarajan’s assessment that social networking really jibes with Indians’ disdain for privacy and boundaries because when it comes to generalizations, you have to take the good with the bad. I do, however, disagree with his suggestion that this disdain is somehow unique to us. I seriously doubt Indians’ interest in social networking, which really is somewhat modest given the figures above, has anything more to do with cultural traits than with human ones.

Take a look at the frequently updated social-networking mockery sites, Failbooking and Lamebook. Maintainers of both sites seek out the most inappropriate, foolish, weirdest, creepiest content from the likes of Facebook and Twitter, and compile them for the rest of us to see so that we may join in them in pointing and laughing at the blurred out faces and scratched out names.

Here’s an example:

This mass ridicule is nothing new. Back in the days before social-networking sites, when more internet users socialized via chat rooms, sites like Bash.org sprang up to bring us comic gold like this:

Josh: QUESTION FOR EVERYONE....
SecureXeC: IT'S TO THE LEFT OF YOUR 'A' KEY.

All of these sites are based in The United States, one of the most racially and ethnically diverse nations in the world. All content is user-generated, and despite Failbooking’s halfhearted attempts at concealing names and faces, it’s quite apparent that this content comes from people from myriad walks of life.

The truth is, we’re all just a bunch of voyeurs with exhibitionist tendencies. If we weren’t, social networking would fail and Facebook, once run out of a dorm room, wouldn’t be worth the whopping $11 billion it is today.

While Stupeflix is definitely more useful for your average user than to professional journalists (to whom I strongly recommend Soundslides), I will say that Stupeflix is quite innovative: It provides a simple and speedy API to process images, sounds, and other components into videos with relatively complex visual effects (complex for a Web app, anyway). Furthermore, the API allows users to create content and applications quickly and easily for the Web as well as Apple’s iPhone.

Lastly, the interface is so clean and simple that even a Web novice would have little trouble generating content and getting it onto YouTube.

Here’s a video I made with pictures of my new puppy. All told, it took me about 10 minutes (including interruptions).

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

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

Parking. FAIL!!!

Online TV Shows by Ustream

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.)

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?

Joe the Plumber in Elyria, Ohio with Sen. Lindsay Graham and Cindy McCain behind him

Now, I like the concept of reporting on Israelis’ daily lives and how war affects the average citizen. And, as a multimedia journalist, I also like the idea of regular citizens getting involved. The Web–including social networking sites, CNN’s iReport, Fox’s UReport, and blogs–has changed what it means to even be a journalist. It has grayed the line between “professional journalism” (e.g. the Associated Press) and “citizen journalism” (e.g., someone’s uncle’s blog on local UFO sightings or any other instance where non-professionals collect, report, analyze and disseminate news and information).

For better or worse, there is no Hippocratic oath for us in the media. And as much as I love my Society of Professional Journalists membership card, it’s not a license. Any argument against average citizens reporting the news is purely opinion-based. Surely any citizen, if he or she reports the truth, is a better journalist than Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair were in the end.

On the flip-side of things, I admit that I am more than a little uncomfortable at the prospect of Joe the War Reporter. To say the Israeli-Gaza conflict is a “serious topic” would be a gross understatement, and so I’ve got a lot of concerns: Does Joe have any journalistic training? Will he be fair to all parties involved in the conflict? Does he know the difference between objectivity and editorializing, and does he care? Will anyone be there to fact-check his work?

I’m leaving this one up to you guys. What do think about this issue? You don’t have to be a journalist to fill out this poll. In fact, I’m hoping to get a healthy mix of responses. If you do choose to take the poll, please elaborate upon your answer in the comments section.

Note: I could be completely wrong to attach a time limit to Joe’s fame–a lot of Americans really seem to love him. Considering his personality and political leanings, he could wind up being the next Bill O’Reilly. O’Reilly, after all, didn’t start out as a reporter either.

Now, it looks like journalists–once notorious for their distrust of new media and the blogosphere–are finally stepping up and accepting that one can’t be a Walter Cronkite or a Bob Woodward if one’s audience is disappearing. And that’s exactly what’s happening. According to a report last week from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, the internet has overtaken newspapers as a leading source of news. Considering the Web’s noticeable jump in popularity even since the 2007 survey, it is not unreasonable to think that television news could be the next victim. Not only does this same survey show television and the internet in a neck-and-neck race for audiences under thirty, but Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that virtually every media sector apart from the internet is slowly losing Americans’ attention.

Each year, the Project for Excellence in Journalism publishes a report on the The State of the News Media. This year’s report includes a survey of 500 journalists on what some fear is a dying profession. Here’s are some of the findings:

Journalists have become markedly more pessimistic about the future of their profession. But their concerns are taking a distinctly new turn. Rather than worrying as much about quality, they are now focused on economic survival. And in that new focus, we see signs of new openness to change.

Journalists are ready — even eager — to embrace new technologies. They think a range of new digital activities, from blogs to citizen media, are good for journalism. They even think, by 2 to 1, that splitting their time across multiple platforms is a positive change rather than a problem that is taking time from their reporting or spreading them thin. These are all attitudes hard to imagine a few years ago.

…

[L]ook inside what journalists say and they are largely optimistic about what technology brings to the craft. When asked to name what in particular they see as the industry’s strengths, those naming adapting to Web more than tripled among national journalists and increased ten-fold among those at the local level. And near the top of the list are two direct results of technology — timeliness and speed. About one in five name these as something the industry is doing especially well.

The emphasis above is mine. My master’s thesis actually focused on media convergence in student, professional, and mixed newsrooms from 2004-2006. I won’t summarize all 157 pages here, but I will note that as objective as I tried to be, my most frustrating finding was that the biggest roadblocks to creating multimedia newsrooms were the journalists themselves. The old rivalries among print and broadcast people were as rabid as ever, and few of the hardliners had any respect for the Web as a medium (or, more accurately, a vessel for media). I found that perplexing. I’ve always been interested in getting my fingers into all media, so what was up with these curmudgeons being so adversarial?

Well, part of the reason was fear. The term “convergence,” which has since fallen out of use and has found its way to buzzword heaven (or hell), has unfortunate ties to failed efforts to force journalists to do things that made them feel uncomfortable. The idea at a lot of these newsrooms was basically, “we want our journalists to be all-in-one reporters!” I don’t need to explain the potential for disaster when you send a reporter out to be his own cameraman during a hurricane, and I doubt I need to explain how scary it is for a lot of writers–no matter how good-looking–to speak into a lens, knowing that there’s no backspace key for a misspoken word.

Managers came to these journalists with nonsensical figures and charts on paper, trying to convince them that by taking on extra tasks they didn’t initially sign up for (or want to do, or know how to do), they would make their media conglomerations’ market shares skyrocket.

It wasn’t a convincing argument.

A lot of reporters quit their jobs in search of papers and stations that would allow them to flourish in their specific crafts.

But now, with the economy at a low and with so many news organizations cutting jobs, reporters have an even greater fear to worry about: their viability in a market saturated with unemployed talent. And while the circumstances for this new-found acceptance of the Web are less than ideal, the push for journalists to educate themselves on new technologies will surely have lasting long-term benefits for both content creators and consumers.

I can’t stress enough the importance of continuing one’s education even when gainfully employed. I’m convinced that my side-projects during graduate school are what got me my first “real job,” a great gig as a multimedia journalist for an internationally broadcast TV show. And now that this position has ended, I’m equally convinced that it was not just my work there but also my side-projects here and elsewhere that brought me the chance to teach multimedia journalism at Boston University starting this spring.

Over the next few months, I intend to learn more about the development aspect of multimedia journalism (specifically ActionScript and other elements of Flash). How about you?

There’s a strange garden just outside of Boston that’s been grabbing a lot of attention lately. It’s called “Cross Into the Abyss,” and like most things people put any effort into these days, it even has a Web presence. I recently completed an audio/stills piece on the Abyss, which you can see in all its overly compressed glory below. I plan to upload a higher-res version of the file to News-Geek fairly soon.

The goal here was to take a low-budget, NPR-esque/”This American Life” stab at a feature story. I wanted to cover something quirky and interesting. But while these pieces are fun, they can also prove challenging:

- How do you know that what’s interesting to you will interest your audience? Unlike hard-news pieces, features don’t necessarily justify themselves.
- How quirky can quirky be before it becomes crazy? That is, will your audience laugh at you for doing serious or semi-serious pieces on topics they might find… comical?
- Are you introducing bias simply by choosing your angle? Let’s say you want to do a story on how, when Timmy Smith and his parents took in a five-legged dog, the animal changed their lives for the better and made them all kinder, gentler human beings. But what if they all hate the poor mutt and simply can’t find anyone else to take him in? Pick your angle, but be willing to change it (or even your entire story) if the facts don’t fit the idea.

“Crossing into the Abyss” video, images, and audio (unless otherwise noted) © 2008 by Rima Chaddha-Mycynek. Two images from Post Secret and music performed by Piano Tribute Players used under fair use and not intended for profit.

I was interviewed last week for a feature in Mississippi’s largest-circulation newspaper, The Clarion Ledger. LaReeca Rucker contacted me for the piece, which was to focus on the increasing popularity of personalized products, when she learned that I had used HeadBobble.com to create Bobblehead versions of my fiancé (Steve) and myself. You can read my brief commentary on love, personalization, and the fun of bobbles below, but first here’s the article:

Getting personal: Products touting individuality appeal to the masses
LaReeca Rucker
lrucker@jackson.gannett.com

Ole Miss graduate Rima Chaddha and her fiance, Steve Mycynek, are fans of the NBC television show The Office and the show’s quirky characters, Dwight and Angela.

Click on either image to enlarge

“One year for Valentine’s Day, Angela gets Dwight the perfect gift – a mini bobblehead of himself,” said Chaddha, who did the same as a first dating anniversary gift for Steve.

Using photographs submitted to HeadBobble.com, customized figurines were created that look eerily similar to the couple. Mycynek holds a golf club, and Chaddha, who studies ninjitsu, wears a martial arts uniform.

Despite her effort to find the perfect gift, Mycynek topped Chaddha’s offering, presenting something a little more personal – an engagement ring.

Today, it’s all about (insert your name here.) Americans are getting personal with products, and you can find everything from customized Bobbleheads to DNA portraits.

Several Mississippi businesses allow customers to showcase their individuality. The Jackson store Fresh Ink offers personalized stationary, decals, towels, money clips and a variety of bags that can be monogrammed.

“We even have cutting boards with initials,” said manager Allison Ertz.

Emily Hassel, manager of the Jackson store Turkoyz, said engraved initial necklaces are popular.

“A lot of movie stars are wearing them,” she said. “They were in the new movie 27 Dresses. Catherine Heigl was wearing a ‘J’ for Jane.”

Stacy Stovall, owner of the Jackson store Monogram Magic, said she bought the business nine years ago when it was a luxury to have an item monogrammed, and since then, the demand has steadily risen.

Click on either image to enlarge

“It does make a $5 gift look like a $25 gift,” she said, adding that the store carries personalized car mats, among other products.

“When I saw the car mats, I thought, ‘What will they come up with next?’ ”

At MyKleenexTissue.com, you can upload a photo and create a customized box of Kleenex for $4.99 plus shipping. M&Ms offers custom-printed candies. NikeID.com lets you be the shoe designer. Clinique offers perfume bottles featuring your favorite pictures. And at ColorWarepc.com, you can customize your computer, gaming console, digital music player, cell phone and other products.

Adrian Salamunovic, 32, co-founded DNA 11 three years ago with friend Nazim Ahmed, a 31-year-old geneticist. They started their business in a 600-square-foot apartment in Canada and now operate a multimillion business selling DNA, Fingerprint and KISS Portraits to 52 countries and all 50 states.

Salamunovic saw a brochure of technical DNA images, thought they resembled modern art, and an idea was born. He asked Ahmed to “take a picture” of his own genetic code, and a new personalized product soon hit the market.

The company also creates lip and fingerprint portraits that resemble Andy Warhol pop art. You can even send a copy of your signature, and they’ll add it to the piece.

“The art is very now, very modern and it’s very personal,” Salamunovic said. “Whether it’s the DNA of a loved one or a pet, that’s what makes it so unique.”

Personalization is about distinguishing yourself from the pack, Salamunovic said.

“We’ve really noticed an interesting trend,” he said. “What’s happening is, in the world of cookie-cutter homes and generic cars in suburbia, people are trying to differentiate themselves from one another.

“The bigger and more compact the city, where you’ve got thousands of people stacked on top of each other, the more we sell.”

Chaddha, who lives in Boston where she produces Web content for the PBS science television shows NOVA and NOVA scienceNOW, understands the trend.

“We’re saturated with things to buy, and the variety we’re offered is insane,” she said. “Remember how the first iPods were all white, but not the bright white we see today? Now each of the several varieties of iPods has its own line of colors.

“I think people get addicted to that. Everyone wants to stand out. And why not?

“To get philosophical, I think it gives some people more of a sense of identity … Once you have everything, the next step seems to be ‘How can I be different?’”

The extended version of what I told Rucker is basically this: I feel that personalized gifts aren’t limited to (yet certainly cater to) a very specific demographic–people who are young, professional, and who have fewer worries in life compared to those with families and more prominent financial burdens. They tend to live in cities in similar buildings with similar amenities, and they tend to have similar hobbies and interests. (For a tongue-in-cheek list of these hobbies and interests, see Stuff White People Like. One interest is irony, hence the racially exclusive name of the site.) It seems that once you have “everything,” the only thing left to do is to stand out, lest ennui set in. Think Edward Norton’s character in Fight Club, only taken down a notch.

As for the American version of The Office, anyone fan can tell you that neither Dwight nor Angela is the epitome of love, romance, or feelings in general, at least on his or her own. As the more likable character, Pam, put it when talking about Angela’s decision to date another Office nuisance named Andy: “Angela and Andy might actually make a good couple… but I couldn’t do that to Dwight. Or Angela… or Andy.”

But here’s the kicker: In the scenes where it was just the two of them, Dwight and Angela made a great couple. Their affection for one another came through in a very real way, at least for prime-time TV. And it reminded me of the sweet “secrets” that so many close couples have–their inside jokes, their stolen glances, even their pet names (Badger and Monkey, in this case). Love is a very raw emotion. It can be as cruel as it is magical. But it is, in my humble view, a feeling and an experience to be cherished.

And so, the bobbleheads. I had ours made for Steve because I admired the way these two characters were able to portray the honesty of love, and because I knew that Steve felt the same way.

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And in sports news, News-Geek’s sympathies go out to Senators Lott and McCain, as it looks as though Ole Miss football has seen yet another defeat this season. Thanks a lot, LSU.

[CLICK FOR THE PRESS CONFERENCE: (Nov182005pressc.mp3--00:14:48)]

John McCain is the man to watch in 2005 and beyond. While he never admitted to a possible presidential bid for 2008, he more importantly did not deny the possibility that he might run. A moderate who calls himself a republican, McCain is beloved by many on the right, the left and in between as a statesman and leader.

His record on most issues is mixed. For example, while he did not support same-sex marriages in 2000, he did say that he would be comfortable with a homosexual president in office. Likewise, while he did not support the Kyoto Accord on international emissions standards, he also voted no on drilling at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in Alaska. Moreover, he voted yes on developing 100,000 hydrogen-powered vehicles by 2010, and 2.5 million of these by 2020 (Bill S.14; vote number 2003-212 on June 10th, 2003).

A republican with the political blood of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt coursing through his veins, McCain is unafraid of working against party lines, as could also be seen last year when he was one of 58 senators to sign a letter to President Bush, urging him to work with Congress and researchers in the realm of embryonic stem cell research. The letter requested that all 78 lines be made available to researchers, as they only have 19 to work with right now. All 19 are contaminated with mouse feeder cells (Letter to the President 04-SEN8, June 4th 2004).

Soon after this press conference, Sen. McCain, along with Sen. Lott and Chancellor Robert Khayat, made the short journey to the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, also on the University of Mississippi campus. During this time, he delved further into the war in Iraq, as well as a number of other topics (as can be seen here and here).

I had planned initially to bring you, my dear reader(s), recordings of both this conference and Sen. McCain’s address to the public, which followed directly.

However, before I explain what happened, let me share with you a brief morality tale on the pros and cons of technology.

Unfortunately, while the digital age has been a godsend in terms of saving time and bringing the public at large information through multiple media, such technological advancements do come at a cost.

That is, while a man who uses a ballpoint to write his Pulitzer-worthy masterpiece has no reason to panic when his pen runs out of ink upon his work’s completion, even the most prideful of today’s tech-savvy journalists have the all-too-real fear of data loss lingering in the backs of their minds.

Hardly a pride-filled reporter, myself, this fear is a constant for me. But, hey–technical accidents happen. My much beloved iRiver H320 lost a bit of data last night thanks to a power issue. Lost in transit were my recordings of Sen. McCain’s main speech and, more regrettably (as I have no backups for this) a set of interviews I’d recorded for News-Geek.

Keep an eye out for Sen. McCain’s address to the public at the University of Mississippi, as I should soon be able to obtain a backup copy of his speech (and the question and answer session that followed thereafter). Thank goodness for fallback plans.

Is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a demon, or does she just play one on the internet?

The Web was abuzz with rumors and excitement yesterday as word circulated about the latest so-called “Left-wing” attempt at making the Right look bad. Bloggers, webmasters and forum watchers worldwide spent the day debating amongst themselves about Michelle Malkin’s latest commentary on USA Today’s supposedly suspicious use of photo-manipulation techniques.

A conservative columnist and regular contributor to Fox News, Malkin posted on her website copies of the following images, the first from the Associated Press and the second from USA Today’s website:

The Original Image

The Doctored Image

As you can see, the USA Today image is clearly and undeniably different from the original photograph, but this is not the point. The question at hand is whether USA Today intentionally altered Rice’s picture to make her look “possessed” and “demonic,” or any of the other laughable adjectives conspiracy theorists all over the political spectrum are throwing around about her these days. This resulting backlash from Malkin’s blog entry should come as no surprise. After all, accusations of a liberal slant in the media always get attention when there are visual aids involved

Careful not to make any accusations against the paper herself, Malkin speaks through the commentary of the letter-writers she chooses to quote on her blog.

One commentator named “Steve I.,” who claims to have received an A.A. from the Colorado Institute of Art, is quoted as saying the following:

(1) Any filter in Photoshop would apply to the whole image. The absurd sharpening would bring out her necklines, the stripes in her shirt, her lips, her nostrils, her earrings, etc. So the image was deliberately manipulated around the eyes.

(2) Notice how the pupils have been narrowed, like a cat’s eyes. Sharpening would not alter the roundness of her pupils, only accentuate them. Another paint or erase tool is required to achieve that effect.

Whatever Steve received his degree in, chances are that it was not in graphic design. Both of the above assessments are laughable.

On the first note, it is indeed possible to filter just one part of a photograph, even with versions of Adobe Photoshop that are older than the copy of v. 5.5 that Steve uses.

Using “masks,” a term very familiar to users who are even just moderately experienced with Photoshop, artists can apply image filters (such as those for sharpening, brightening or creating contrast) that will only affect the unmasked sections of a given image.

In simple terms, a mask of an image is like a gray-scaled copy of it that is placed on top of the original image, although the mask is not visible in the photograph itself. The black parts of this invisible mask are opaque to filters, while the white sections are transparent and the gray sections are semi-transparent.

Imagine looking at a field (your main image) behind a fence (you mask). The wood of the fence would be the black part of the mask, while the gaps would be the white. If the filter of sunlight hits the fence, the light only affects those parts of the field not hidden by wood. As a result, the image of the field would appear unaffected in some places (the shadows) and affected in other places (the strips of light).

It is common practice for artists and photo editors to create masks that cover everything in a photograph but someone’s eyes. This allows for them to run simple, one-click filters on just those eyes, making them in many cases both brighter and sharper.

Here are the eyes of the original image and the doctored image:

The Original Image

The Doctored Image

On the second point, Steve’s alleged ten years of experience with Adobe Photoshop obviously never led him to use sharpening or contrast filters. While the doctored eyes certainly look a little “cat-like,” it is absurd to say that this was done with the elaborate brushwork or erasing tools.

Below are the results of what I got when I took the original image and ran an unsharp mask on it. For the sake of effect, I used the maximum amount of sharpening with the maximum radius and no threshold. Of course, I did not select just the eyes, as you can see by the changes in Rice’s other facial features, but this is not the point. Instead the point here is that, unlike what Steve said in his commentary, there is no need to use brushes in order to change pupil and iris shape. Instead, this is a side-effect of changing the sharpness of the picture.

The Original Image

The Original Image, Now Doctored By Me

Obviously, this was not the only filter that USA Today used on the eyes, but as you can see here, even the simple use of an unsharp mask has made the them look “cat-like.”

So much for Steve’s expertise. It seems just a touch suspicious that Malkin has yet to publish any letters refuting Steve’s claims.

As for the claims of another commenter, “L.C.,” it is true that USA Today used more than just an unsharp mask to edit the look of the eyes. As you can see above, such a mask makes the eyes look very un-human, so of course more editing was done to make them look more realistic.

What L.C. neglects to mention is that newspapers will often brighten eyes just so that they appear normal on “dead tree” editions of the papers. While the photo editing certainly appears a bit excessive on the web, here is what the normal photograph and the doctored image would look like in newspaper print:

The Original Image

The Doctored Image

In order to get these effects, I enlarged the original and doctored images until they were about 600 pixels wide and 473 pixels tall. This should be closer to their actual size prior to going to the Web.

Next, I grayscaled the first set of images and then used a halftone filter on them before bringing them down to the size you see above. For the second set of images, I simply used a color halftone before resizing again. Mind you, I used the weakest halftone I could get.

The images on the left represent what the original photograph might look like on paper, while the ones on the right depict the doctored image. Being that newspaper paper is low in quality and porous, chances are that the eyes in the first image would be very difficult to see in print. The second set of images now show clearer eyes.

These supposedly “demonic” photographic edits, then, were probably not part of a vast, Left-wing/USA Today conspiracy. With the evidence shown above, it looks more like the for-print photograph accidentally made it to the web.

This is one of the flaws of media convergence. Sometimes the wrong image goes to the wrong medium.

This is not to say that photographic doctoring is new to journalism. Indeed, sometimes magazines and newspapers make major ethical mistakes. While airbrushing and body part shifting is common place in fashion magazines, the real ethical problems lie in photo editing in relation to hard news.

There are countless examples of this taking place in the media, and for the most part, there have been no political ties associated with the editing. Below is one of the most famous examples of this, which took place during my childhood in 1994.

The Original Image

The Doctored Image

When the above issues of Newsweek and Time hit the newsstands simultaneously, it was easy to see that Time, perhaps in an effort to be dramatic, darkened their copy of former football player O.J. Simpson’s mugshot. Although race was likely not a motivating factor in this, many groups responded with anger, accusing Time of perpetuating the “brute” stereotype of African Americans.

To be sure, photo doctoring happens all of the time. This is not a justification of the matter, but it is a very important point to make. What USA Today did hardly seems unethical, despite what the likes of Michelle Malkin or Matt Drudge have to say. These two are not exactly bastions of journalistic ethics, themselves.

While Malkin picks and chooses her “evidence,” provided by pseudo-experts who just happen to agree with her, Drudge seems to accept any story as fact, regardless of the lack of details before him.

According to research conducted by media journal Brill’s Content after the President Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal, Drudge claimed that 51 of his stories from January through September of 1998 were exclusives, although only 31 actually were. Of those 31, a full third contained glaring falsehoods, while another third consisted of questionable information that had yet to be authenticated. (Source: David McClintick–”The big extract: Drudge’s report card.” The Guardian, 31 Oct. 1998: 12.)

As for any “Right-wing” conspiracies in the news, it is only fair to make note of what I like to call the Republican Halo Phenomenon, something many forum-goers have been discussing since Malkin posted her blog entry. The RHP represents a plethora of pictures taken over the past few years where various republican leaders have been “haloed,” so to speak, by different objects. Is this meant to be subliminal? Possibly. Is this just a coincidence? In most cases, I would say so.

However, if you’d like to see some examples of President Bush haloed in a variety of ways, go to this Google Image Search.

Certainly, there are many folks at many different news organization who like to insert their political leanings into all that they do. Most journalists agree that these people, regardless of their politics, should be weeded out.

There are no vast, any-wing conspiracies lurking in the shadows like the bogeyman at night. There are only those individuals with persecution complexes thinking that the entire “other” political side is out to get them.

Ms. Malkin, Mr. Drudge and dear readers, please understand: the biggest conspiracies man sees in the world around him actually reside in his head.

[Special thanks to Thomas for helping me put the Photoshop information in laymen’s terms.]