Signing Off

Well, I'm done here for the day. Most of you are in shape for tomorrow. Some of you will be working until very late tonight. Good luck.

This is my son, Ian. He insists on wearing a Viking helmet everywhere.

The Hot Topic

We just made dinner for my parents and my brother and his family. Pork on the grill and mashed potatoes.

Over dinner, everyone was talking about an article in the New York Times about the salaries of the police officers in Clarkstown.

According to one national ranking, Clarkstown, in Rockland County, is consistently among the safest towns in America with at least 75,000 people, based on its crime statistics. In 2007, it was the second safest, and in 2008, it was the sixth.

But Clarkstown is also at the top of another category that Chief Peter T. Noonan is less thrilled to discuss: police pay. In 2008, Chief Noonan, 56, made $332,529.88. He was not even the highest paid: One of his two captains earned $335,676, while working two days a week because of a disability and spending three days a week undergoing physical therapy. The other captain earned $311,369.

Many of you are worried about employment opportunities after graduation. This sounds like a good gig. In fact, I think I will be applying for a job there soon.

Blogroll Corrections

There were some errors in my blogroll, and those errors are showing up in your blogrolls.

This is the correct url of Shawn's blog and Nick's blog.

Please fix those links.

More Links and Ideas for Posts

The Washington Post has a fascinating article on David Souter.

The LA Times reports that it is very difficult to fire tenured teachers.

The New York Times polled City Council Members in New York City to find out whether they supported the Yankees or the Mets. They shouldn't have been allowed to answer "both." Totally lame.

Don't Panic!!

Many students have written posts about the Swine Flu, including Lindsay and Kayla. The class consensus is that there's no need to panic.

Make sure you add as many hyperlinks as possible. Don't just link to a classmate's blog post. Also link to an article on swine flu found elsewhere.

Up In Smoke

This class is officially obsessed with pot. Here's another blog post from How Amusing (author?) on pot and the media.

Even More Links

Please check out Laurie Sobel's blog. First of all, the writing is top notch. Secondly, she made some creative graphics. Thirdly, she's written so much that google has found her and she's getting visitors from outside Ramapo.

Laurie responds to Christy's blog post on gun control. Both feel very strongly that guns are different from women's shoes. Read their posts to find out why.

More Links!

More links:

Dan does some hippy-bashing.
Nico writes a letter to USA Today. Go Nico! Steve blogs about Barbie and tattoos. Just get those hyperlinks up, Steve.

SiteMeter Wars, Part 2

It looks like Chris Doyle is in the lead now with 175 visitors.

Sunday Early Afternoon Links

I just spent two hours in the rain watching my kid's soccer game. Frozen solid and the coach only put my kid in the game for ten minutes. Grumble. OK, let's see what going on in the class blogosphere.

Lindsay, who appears to have hit the 20 post mark, has several excellent posts. I liked her post on the Girls Next Door.

I've been reading about an American journalist's experience living in Holland for a couple of years. A sample:

Friends who have small children report that the government can reimburse as much as 70 percent of the cost of day care, which totals around $14,000 per child per year. In late May of last year an unexpected $4,265 arrived in my account: vakantiegeld. Vacation money. This money materializes in the bank accounts of virtually everyone in the country just before the summer holidays; you get from your employer an amount totaling 8 percent of your annual salary, which is meant to cover plane tickets, surfing lessons, tapas: vacations. And we aren’t talking about a mere “paid vacation” — this is on top of the salary you continue to receive during the weeks you’re off skydiving or snorkeling. And by law every employer is required to give a minimum of four weeks’ vacation. For that matter, even if you are unemployed you still receive a base amount of vakantiegeld from the government, the reasoning being that if you can’t go on vacation, you’ll get depressed and despondent and you’ll never get a job.

The Political Machine defends the medicinal marijuana.

Site Meter Wars

I believe that Hristo is winning the sitemeter wars. As of Sunday morning, Bul Media Blog has had 146 visitors. Angie is catching up with 111 visitors, because she added a link to her blog on her facebook page.

Sunday Morning Links

I hope everyone is nearly done with their blogs. If you are looking for ideas or examples of excellent work, check out:

• Corinne's responds to Chris Doyle's post on NCLB.
• Andy writes: "I mentioned in a previous post that I didn’t think anyone could put a political spin on the recent Swine Flu epidemic. Well thanks to Mr. Limbaugh I stand corrected because I’m pretty sure he implied that Obama’s visit to Mexico caused the outbreak."
• Logan writes about "our escalating cultural issue of parental apathy in raising and supervising their children." Angie responds, "Logan fails to take into account that there are ways for a child to gain access to unsuitable media."

If you looking for items in the news, here are some articles that I read this weekend that might inspire you.

• When the cell phone teaches teenagers about sex education.
  
• IQ matters less than hard work.
  
• Yankees had to cut the price of their tickets.
  

More later...

Comment

If you have a chance, leave a comment on a classmate's blog today. Some posts that caught my eye this afternoon:

• Courtney's post on the local news
• Chris' post on NCLB.
  
• Lauren's post on Michelle Obama's expensive sneakers.
  
• Shawn's post on unemployment in West Virginia.
  
• Laurie's post on Ben Franklin's letters.
  
• 
  

More Feedback

1. Every blog post MUST have a hyperlink. For example, if you are writing about America's Top Model, link to the webpage for that show.

But do not just put that code down on your blog. Highlight a key word in your blog post. If your hyperlink is for America's Top Model, then highlight that word. Click on the hyperlink button and paste in the code.

2. Do not just embed a video. You must add some commentary on the video.

FAQs

I have been getting lots of questions from students today. I'm going to post my answers here, just in case others have the same questions.

I'm having a little bit of trouble remember how to embed a youtube video in my
post. I'm going to go ahead and write the post without it, but if you could get back
to me how to put it in I would appreciate it.

How to embed a video:

1. Get the embed code from YouTube
2. Switch back to blogger.
3. Create a new post
4. On the upper right side of the post box, you'll see two tabs: "edit html" and "compose." "Compose" lets you type in your post without seeing all the code. "edit html" shows all the code.
5. Click "edit html". Paste in the code that you copied from Blogger.
6. Click "compose" and then type whatever text that you would like.

If you are still having trouble embedding the video, don't worry about it. Just do a regular hyperlink to the YouTube page.


I was just looking at the assignment sheet for the blog and noticed that it says something about a subtitle. Would that be in addition to the regular title that it has at the top of the page, or should it be something like "Title: Subtitle"? I also noticed that it says to put the counter in the sidebar. Is it okay if it is on the bottom?

re: subtitles. Check out the class blog http://www.mckennamedia.blogspot.com/

Title = McKenna's Media and Politics
Subtitle = This is the Official Class Blog for Ramapo's Politics and Media class.

The counter can be on the bottom. But I think it does a better job counting on the sidebar.

could you please explain the post number 5? I didn’t get it.

5. Link to an op-ed on a website of a traditional paper. Describe and critique.

Every serious newspaper has a section just for opinion articles. These are written by columnists who don't find new facts. They just given their opinions about current events.

This is the New York Times's Opinion page -- http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/index.html?8dpc

You should check out the work of Nicholas Kristoff from the NY Times. He often writes about women's issues from an international perspective. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/nicholasdkristof/index.html

The Media Circus

The media industry, as we know it, is in toilet. And if we weren't so distracted by the stock market, Bernie Madoff, face-eating chimps, and Octo-Mom, we might be talking about this problem more.

David Carr, in this week's Times, says that one way that the newspapers should deal with the crisis is to stop giving away the candy for free.

The Web has become the primary delivery mechanism for quality newsrooms across the country, and consumers will have to participate in financing the newsgathering process if it is to continue. Setting the price point at free — the newspaper analyst Alan D. Mutter called it the “original sin” — has brought the industry millions of eyeballs and a return that doesn’t cover the coffee budget of some newsrooms.

The big threat would be that newspapers could lose the readers they have, lots of them. The mitigating factor is that a lot of those readers aren’t paying anyway. And keep in mind that people are already paying for quality content all over the Web: The Wall Street Journal, Consumer Reports, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Tiered Web access — from a bare-bones free product to a rich, customized subscription — could be among the solutions.

Yeah, because The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is a daily read of mine. If people have to pay to read the Times, they are going to just go back to blowing things up on their computers. Frankly, I think that newspapers are going to have to pay their readers to look at their stuff.

Then he says that aggregators (and bloggers) are just stealing the work of journalists. Already, guys, check out this fab map of immigration patters in the U.S. My guess is that it took a staff of five three weeks to put this together. And it's yours, for free.

And then there's my favorite media critic du jour, Jon Stewart. In case, you've missed it, he's been really laying into the financial analysts at CNBC and CNN. It's good stuff.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

In Cramer We Trust

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Economic Crisis

Michigan Messenger (via Scott) has all sorts of good links with their responses, including Cramer trying to lamely respond on the Today Show. That was quality TV. And they wonder why their numbers are in the toilet.

Jon Stewart on Twitter

How to Make a Blogroll

How to Make a Blogroll:
1. Log into Blogger.com.
2. Notice that there are 3 tabs at the top: Posting, settings, and layout. Go to the Layout Tab within blogger.com.
3. Click on a box that says "add a gadget."
4. Click on "bloglist."
5. Uncheck all of those boxes. That way just the title of the blog will show up on your sidebar.
6. Click on "add to list" and keep adding the urls. You can cut and paste.
7. When you are done, don't forget to hit "save."

You want that blogroll on the sidebar and not on the bottom of the page. If you have already set up a blogroll, but it is on the bottom of your page. You can move it around in the layout page. Just drag it where you want it.

Blogroll

I am setting up a class blogroll. Please replicate this blogroll for your blog.

I have the incorrect url for several students. Please use the comment feature of this blog to give me correct information.

UPDATE: Shawn, please give me the correct url of your blog.

The Political Machine and Afghanistan For Change have been added to the blogroll.

UPDATE 3/11: I fixed the links for two class blogs. Shaima's "Politics Change the World" is working now. It replaces AfghanistanTowardPeace. Also Shawn's blog "In the Alley" works, too.

The only blog address that is having problems is "Political Animal."

Welcome Students

Welcome, Politics and Media students! I hope you are all getting the hang of this software and are having fun as "citizen-journalists."

I will be updating this blog periodically to suggest things to read or watch. I will also set up a complete blogroll of all the student blogs and other important sources.

Prof. McKenna