Weezer makes video filled with youtube pop culture

Leave it up to the nerds of Weezer to  make a video filled with youtube pop culture references. I think when you get parodied, that means you made it? Way to go youtube! Now lets just hope you can win your suit for copyright infringement against Viacom…

Military videos detailing life in Iraq are blogs too

Videos provide a type of realism that blogs with words just can’t provide. This video “Stories from the Frontlines” is great for anyone who wants to learn the lingo that Marines and soldiers use while in Iraq. A must-see video!

Military blogger Colby Buzzell is going back to Iraq

Colby Buzzell, a military blogger who published the book My War: Killing Time in Iraq, which started as a blog, has been recalled to the Army to go back to Iraq, according to his blog. Colby has been in the Individual Ready Reserves since leaving active duty several years ago. Here is what he said in his book about if he was ever called recalled:

If I ever get a phone call saying, “Hello, Mr. Buzzell, this is the United States Army calling to congratulate you on being called back to active duty!” I swear to God I’ll say, “Dude, I’m way too stoned right now to be talking to you, hold on. Here, talk to my live-in boyfriend Stevie, and tell him exactly what you just told me, but make it quick, because me and him are about to make love to each other, now that these Ectsasy pills that we swallowed are kicking in.”

Bloggers should grow up and implement a code of ethics

A long, long time ago, blogs were born as a way for people to create online diaries and provide intricate details into who they were dating or what they had for lunch that day. Now, blogs are ubiquitous and are written about every topic under the sun. And like all young children that reach adolescence, they become a little bit ornery and rebellious. Parents establish guidelines to keep their teenagers in check and out of trouble. Nobody wants to hear about the police picking up their child, or lawyers calling bloggers to say “You’ve been served” with a libel lawsuit. And so, that’s why there needs to be a code of ethics established in the blogosphere.

 

From pandit to pundit, and all the problems along the way

We are currently in the midst of a transformation of what a pandit is. Its definition is a “respected scholar,” but I personally have very little respect for most of them. In the ’30s, the “punditry” was a small, select group of intellectual white men who discussed the major problems of the day. Back then, though, this country was isolationist, so very few of them supported taking any action against Nazi Germany as it began its blitzkrieg of Europe.

Investigative journalism is getting a new name: blogs

I visited my parents last weekend and spent some time watching a segment on a local tv station online titled “Does it work?” The show’s purpose was to take products shown in infomercials and to test them to see if the claims made about the product was actually true. Some of the products worked, some did not. One of my first questions about the show was if the makers of the products or the public relations firms that represented the products had had a hand in determining which products worked and which didn’t. In other words, did the companies represented on the news show use their advertising dollars as a way to manipulate the outcome of the product, whether positively or negatively?  

 

Reporter covering Iraq mold blogs and stories

I remember when a military reporter from the San Antonio Express-News embedded with our unit in Iraq for a month, and along with his normal stories for the News section of the newspaper and Web site, he also published a blog. He used the blog as an extension for his news reporting – he wrote about his impressions of Iraq: the sights, smells and sounds of war. But he went beyond that, and wrote stories for his blog that wouldn’t be printed in the newspaper. For example, he wrote a story for the front page about two helicopter pilots who were about to turn 60 years old, were best friends and roommates. In his blog, though, he wrote about their experiences in Vietnam, and how they felt about the current war.

 

Journalism came first, blogging came second, third came…blogalism?

I wonder if the natural outcome of Shirky’s article about the mass amateurization of publishing is to now wonder what’s going to happen when blogs and Webzines become the scribes of the 1400s or the journalists of today. Will blogs themselves allow for their adaptation to the future?

 

Give me a blog and I’ll give you the news

If the 20^th century was the professionalization of journalism, then the 21^st century will be the re-emergence of the amateur eyewitness. These prophetic words are playing themselves out right now as mass media moves away from the professional and closer to the amateur. This move is happening for several reasons, and is best represented by Josh Benton’s “Curve of Journalistic Interestingness.”

           

Webzine writing injects private thoughts into public voice

Philip E. Agre’s paper “Finding Your Voice: Writing For a Webzine” provides the reader exceptional points on how to pick up the proverbial “pen”, or in this case, click away on the “keyboard,” and start writing. Developing a public voice injected with private thoughts can be difficult for some, but it’s not impossible.

 

Agre said that first and foremost, that… “In order to have a public voice, you have to care about something.” (Agre, “Finding Your Voice,” 3). Once someone has figured out what their passion to write on will be, Agre transitions his article to 10 “rules of thumb” that every ‘zine writer should know.