In which my mug graces MTV

You probably don't know what I look like, so this isn't very exciting to you. But MTV's first "Best of Street Team '08" is airing this week, and yours truly has an ever-so-brief cameo. It's really just a (silent) clip of me talking in the upper right hand corner. They also use a clip of my story on the Minutemen. Good stuff! Check out my fellow Street Teamers in action:

• MTV
• Music Videos
• MTV Shows
• Entertainment News

THINK: Obama, Iraq and England

LONDON -- I’ve spent the last week or so traveling in England and keeping an eye to the British press about their takes on issues important in U.S election. People here are certainly aware of who is running. John McCain was even in London last Thursday, visiting with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The most striking coverage of American events has been surrounding the five-year anniversary of the war in Iraq. While there was plenty of coverage – news, editorials, breakdown of costs – there was little on the streets of London to commemorate five years of war. (On Saturday, March 15, sources tell me a massive protest of 40 – 50,000 people marched down Whitehall to Parliament to protest the U.K.’s involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wish I’d seen it, but it pales in comparison to the hundreds of thousands who marched in protest as the war convened.)

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New video on MTV's THINK site: First name bias?

I'm in England, and forgot to post my latest video for THINK. It's a vlog, asking why do we call some candidates by their first names, and not others? Hmmmm?

Cheney: Iraq's all good

Dick Cheney's AirStream trailer landed in Baghdad today, and then he declared the war a success! Woohoo! Mission accomplished! He then told Pat Leahy to go fuck himself and shot him in the face.

I'm heading off to England this afternoon, and I'm going to bring home some analysis of what the British papers are saying about the war, which apparently is going well. I'll be there for the fifth anniversary of the invasion, and will be filming for MTV. Should be interesting.

MTV News Street Team '08, Kansas Style

So I'm about three months into my Street Team '08 experience, covering Kansas for MTV News' Choose or Lose campaign. So far, it's been a lot of fun and very interesting, but I look forward to broadening my horizons from northeast Kansas.

Mark Glaser at MediaShift wrote about the Street Team today, as well as some of our competitors (?), like HuffPost's Off the Bus and PurpleStates. Overall, he's pretty spot on in his criticisms and praises. We've got some work to do in our reportage (this reporter included). But it's all a grand experiment, and it will improve. I'll discuss this more in an upcoming issue of the Nieman Report.

I thought I'd link to my stories and see if anyone actually reads this blog. Most recent first.

Hussein? Who cares? (video)
What do Kansans think about the Barack Hussein Obama question?
Nader: He's baaaaack (blog)
Commentary on Nader's entry to the race.
Kansas City Clash (v)
Minutemen come to KCMO
Why Pakistan Matters, and Why You Should Care (b)
Pakistani journalist, and KU student, Rauf Arif talks about the importance of Pakistan
And, yea, there was a Huckabee (b)
Republican caucus coverage
Kansas Caucus Wrap-up (v) (blog)
A weak wrap-up to my caucus coverage; we live-vlogged all day on Super Tuesday. For some reason, MTV has not archived that footage.
Young vets await education bill decision (v)
Kansas vets petition the legislature for money to supplement their GI Bill funds
Related blog here: Republican response
All eyes on us...so don't drop the soap (b)
Gov. Sebelius gives the Dems rebuttal to Bush's SOTU
Kansans hope they have a voice at the caucus (b)
Pre-caucus coverage
A singular image? (b)
Kansas: More than what you think.
Kansans rally for Ron Paul (v)
My first video about Lawrencians supporting Ron Paul

Spitzer's girl is pretty pleased with herself

Ashley Dupre, the call girl linked to Eliot Spitzer, is not ashamed of her place in history, at least according to her MySpace page. But, really, Tom is her only friend, so let's not read too far into this.

Also, the Daily Show's hilarious take:

New video on MTV's THINK site: Hussein? Who cares?

When reporters attack

Here's an awkward exchange (towards the end) between a morning show anchor and a reporter. I really have no other words to explain it.


Reporter Fights With Anchor On Camera - Watch more free videos

Apparently, I was in Slate

During some late-night Googling of myself, I found a blurb on Slate.com from August...apparently this blog was quoted, with regards to the Daily Show's Iraq coverage. Cool!

If only Slate knew I was full of crap!

Anonymous reader comments hurt democracy

There's been a battle about the use of anonymous reader comments. How can a newspaper, which values transparency above all else, advocate readers masking who they are? These comment board discussions often devolve into name-calling and other unintelligent discourse. It's pretty reasonable to think that discussions would be more high-minded if users were required to provide their real names. We're all responsible for what we say, but not if you use a pseudonym.

I did some research on this in the fall, and concluded that anonymous reader comments hurt freedom of speech and democracy, by subjecting sources to intimidation and ridicule. Sources can be unwilling to go on the record, thus limiting the press' ability to hold others accountable. It's probably more prevalent on a local level.

This is something Doug Fisher will address at a journalism conference this summer in Chicago.

I wonder what others out there think about this? How harmful are anonymous comments?

The Internet is bottomless cup of coffee

Mindy McAdams has a succinct list of what journalism students need to learn, um, now.

Web stuff (XHTML and CSS, whatever those are...); audio reporting and editing; photo (graphy, editing, shop); video (check) and Soundslides, which is apparently ridiculously easy storyteling.

Bryan Murley suggests maps and blogging, too. Good points, all. I wish I knew what half of these things were without using the google.

It's part of a larger discussion across the Internets about what journalism education may be lagging in. Murley, at Innovation in College Media, even wrote up a syllabus for an all-encompassing multimedia course.

This can only help the journalists of tomorrow -- and today.

After all, everyone's pretty much in agreement that the Web is where it's at.

And isn' that part of a greater conversation about the need for entrepreneurship? I'd be interested to know how many j-schools are teaching students about creating their own news venues, whether they're part of a larger news organization or their own media venture.

They're talking about it in England, where there's a Journalism Enterprise & Entrepreneurship conference next week.

And Mark Glaser writes that journalists need to better exposed to the business side of the...business. Some schools, like CUNY, teach entrepreneurial journalism.

I think of all the possibilities that the Internet provides. Whether its ventures like Rocketboom or the Chi-Town Daily News or the Voice of San Diego, the Web is an bottomless cup of information coffee. I think if you localize a news venture, providing a very Webby product -- more than a blog, less than a newspaper -- you can tap into a niche that has yet to mature.

And thank God for the Web to teach me all about it.

FX tries to keep up morale

I flipped on FX's broadcast of "Behind Enemy Lines," an Owen Wilson flick where he plays an American pilot shot down over Bosnia. As he and his co-pilot try to figure out where they have crashed, Serb rebels find their plane and celebrate shooting down the plane. They jump on the fuselage and one soldier picks up part of a wing, labeled "U.S. Navy."

But not tonight.

FX cut that shot out.

As the camera pans over the rebels' celebration, we see a brief glimpse of a man holding something above his head before the scene abruptly cuts away.

What is the motive behind this? Why did FX cut the scene of a downed American plane? Would they cut out scenes from "Black Hawk Down" or American soldiers being mowed down on Omaha Beach in "Saving Private Ryan"?

Is the network -- a subsidiary of Fox -- worried about American support for the war on terror dropping by showing a two-second clip of an action flick?

I don't get it, and I don't see the problem.

Any ideas?