I’ve never read The Journal Press with such vigor before.

From City Ordinances to School Board Summaries, I read it all. I read about basketball teams from throughout the county and about the nearly 2,000 people that have toured the new jail. I even read Ed Dubois’ “Dubious Distinctions” for the week – the first opinion column I’ve read in 10 days.

I’m about to take the plunge back into information overload again. Avoiding all sources of news for 10 days has been a challenge for me, but it’s a challenge I’ve gained some real benefit from. Force of habit tempted me dozens of times throughout the week, but I resisted. Surprisingly, I don’t feel tragically out-of-the-loop.

My wife tells me that I didn’t miss much in 10 days, but that I avoided reading a whole lot of negativity and horror disguised as “Human Interest” stories. I have no idea what the Dow Jones did in the last 10 days, and I avoided all the emotions that go with that bit of the world. I spent 10 days thinking entirely locally, about my family, my friends, and my community, and I think the practice was healthy and centering.

This practice has taught me something important about News and Community:

Local news sources shouldn’t give up. Traditional Media may seem to be in trouble, and well-established news sources are shuttinng down. However, local news provided by local sources offers something that those larger media couldn’t. It’s the only place to learn about news that actually matters to your day-to-day life and interactions. When the dust settles, local news outlets may be standing with firmer foundations than ever. If they can survive the panic of the moment, communities and advertisers will realize how important an asset a strong local medium is. This could make for better quality reporting and a larger, more interactive audience.

World News is important; the world is fast becoming a part of our community. Yet, at the same time, we’re losing focus on the traditional meaning of Community. The word has expanded to encompass online communities, console gaming networks, and social networks. Seemingly, all it takes to be a part of a “community” is a shared niche interest or hobby.  There’s still an important sense of community that we need to recognize and value before we lose it.

Just as major media outlets have started running the same watered-down and sanitized stories from the Associated Press – making themselves indistinguishable from each other – we’ve accepted that all our communities should be the interchangeable. Many of us are not comfortable in a new place until we can recognize the Wal-Mart, Perkins, and McDonald’s. We’re scared of trying something new and local. Even in our own communities, we choose big name stores and restaurants above local choices, tossing true community aside because we’re losing the value of the concept. We feel we’re becoming bigger when a Jimmy John’s arrives, but we largely ignore the local options that have moved in right next door. It’s okay to have a unique identity and to embrace the place and people that make up the majority of our lives. We can’t forget that our local community is a part of something larger – but we must remember that it’s valuable. I can’t get so caught up in national news that I forget that the news from around here matters, too.

The new jail does matter. Who the school board is proud of and the teachers that are losing their jobs are important. The debate about where to locate a compost facility in the community matters more than most of the things I used to read each day. As CNN runs stories on “Cats Riding Roombas” and as Fox News focuses on “Hot Grannies”, local news sources, including the ones at the High School, are trying desperately to cover things that actually have gravity for the life of the true communities in which I live.We need to see this before we lose the most valuable definitions of both “News” and “Community”.

This has been a rewarding 10-Day experience, and I encourage everyone who feels overwhelmed by news to do their own version of it. I’ve avoided the weight of negativity and fear induced by incessant coverage of bad news, and I’ve learned a surprising lesson about community that I didn’t realize until I sat down to write this entry.

Tomorrow, I’ll be back to reading, listening, and watching my typical sources, but I hope to be doing so with a new, more centered perspective, and a new appreciation for the Off button.

I know that the weather conditions are bad in Fargo, that classes at several schools in the area are being cancelled in hopes that students will help with sandbagging efforts in order to thwart a round of extremely damaging flooding. I know that it’s been raining there today and that snow is melting rapidly. I’ve read first-person accounts and up-to-the-minute updates, and I’m still keeping to my pledge of avoiding all traditional sources of news.

I’ve got all this news from Facebook.

Through the status updates and wall postings of dozens of former students of mine that now live or attend school in the Fargo/Moorhead area, friends and family that currently live in the area, and parents of students attending college there, I’ve kept up-to-date with an event that really matters. I also attended college in that area and consider it a part of my extended community. Although the news is not good, I appreciate being kept informed.

One of the wisest thing anyone has ever said to me came from a former minister at my church. In a meeting at my house before my first son was baptized, we talked about the influence of news on fear. She told me a brilliant theory of hers, and I’ll paraphrase it poorly here.

People have evolved for thousands and thousands of years by living in small tribes and communities. Throughout this time, they had to band together to work through trials and tribulations, disasters and deaths, floods and fires, and every kind of conceivable tragedy. However, these problems happened relatively rarely, and when they did the whole community banded together to help each other get through it. Bad news came with an opportunity to help.

Throughout this time, our brains learned how to help us survive by acting appropriately on bad news. We’re prepared to respond to occasional tragedies – perhaps the stuff that comes once or twice a generation – with action and assistance. However, now our brains are made aware of every pervert, murderer, act of terrorism, disobedient school child, shooting, rape, sickness, natural disaster, and economic disaster in the world. Not only that, but through the miracle of 24-hour news, we’re exposed to it dozens of times a day. Our brains don’t know how to respond to this type of coverage. We’re not prepared to deal with that level of bad news. We can encounter an entire generation’s worth of tragedy in a single day if we read enough headlines. We have simply become overwhelmed and, when we can’t take action to help in these situations, we don’t know any better way to respond than fear, helplessness, and depression. These emotions get worse over time.

Again, that was a poor way of describing her theory, but it’s a theory that makes a heck of a lot of sense to me.

When I got my news through people in my community, through their own voices, it made sense to me. These were people expressing real needs, telling me what could be done, and showing me what they were doing to help with the situation. Getting my news through status updates clicked with the way my brain has been wired.

I think I’ll allow myself to start looking at community news sources before this 10 day experience is over. The Wright County Journal-Press and KRWC radio seem to be good places to start. Maybe it will change the way I value the delivery of news. When I’m presented with actionable news from my own community, I can regain a sense of perspective about the part of the world I inhabit.

Now, I don’t think that the appropriate response to too much news is to bury your head in the sand permanently. Part of the wonder of modern journalism and communications is that the world has become a closer community than our ancestors could ever have imagined and we should care about each other more than ever. There has to be a way to put things in better perspective and to train my brain to handle an amazing onslaught of information with a better frame of reference. I love information. Like I said, I’m an info addict. I love news. I’m simply hoping that this experience helps me find a balance for myself in the way I consider the importance of news and what I consider a valuable source of information.

On a side note, I really apprecaite Facebook’s new layout. It makes it easier to focus on my group of friends as a community with news of its own.

I’m addicted to information.

Within five minutes of the time that I wake up in the morning – just long enough to pour a bowl of Total Raisin Bran and head downstairs – I’m in front of my computer, thirstily hunting down information. Without fail, my day beings with a check of The Drudge Report, The Star Tribune, CNN, and many other sources. Throughout the day, I instinctively and repeatedly load those sites and follow dozens of links to news – most of it alarming, sensational, and negative, before logging on to the same type of sources right before bed time.

As a journalism teacher, I feel it’s very important to stay aware of not only what is happening in the world but also the way in which it’s being reported. However, at the same time I’ve begun to question the effect that a nearly-constant stream of negative, depressing, and repeated news is having on my emotions and outlook from day to day. With the exception of the hospital stays surrounding the births of my two sons, I can honestly say that I’ve never given myself more than a 12-hour break from news for perhaps ten years or more.

So, for the next ten days, I am taking an extended break from the news. I understand that it may be impossible to avoid news altogether, but I will not seek out television, radio, online, or paper news for the duration of Spring Break. I’ll keep track of how it goes in this blog.

Today was Day 1. It was difficult to simply resist the habit of typing in the addresses of each of my habitual sites. I cleared my cache and browsing history so that I would think twice when the URLs didn’t pop up automatically when I typed them in. That saved me.

My wife did have CNN up on her laptop at one point today. As I was making lunch, I could see her screen from the kitchen as she sat in the living room. I saw the familiar layout and she caught me trying to steal a peek at the headlines. I’m glad I have her support in this. She promptly chastised me and repositioned her screen.

Day one is nearly over and it’s been a strange experience. I satiated my need for info with several trips around Wikipedia, but I avoided any news sources.

But Home Is Nowhere: Hang

Originally uploaded by Enjiu

Thanks, Roddy, for finally showing me why Flickr is worthwhile.

Last month, CNN launched a beta version of its iReport.com page, designed to give “Independent Reporters” a chance to get their work featured on a mainstream media outlet. The term iReporter is a loose one, but the bottom line is that nobody who contributes work needs any journalistic credentials or background.

They say that it’s a “site for uncensored, user-powered news” where “all the stories here are user-generated and instant: CNN does not vet or verify their authenticity or accuracy before they post.”

I could write a few pages about whether or not this is right for journalism, but the bottom line is that it’s here. CNN has already started airing stories and other content from this site.

At some level the content is harmless and almost silly. However, the site says that “the [content] with the “On CNN” stamp have been vetted and used in CNN news coverage,” meaning they put this silly stuff on national television. They’ve gone a little overboard with their stamp, too, placing it on content at the expense of even being able to read it, making me believe that this whole site is more of a ratings ploy for CNN than it is a place to empower Citizen Journalists. Their stamp even partially obscures the meaning of this comic.

And the comic was followed by a meaningless and short editorial about how Hilary Clinton is a flip-flopper. Do we not have enough political pundits to tell me this on every radio and television station in the country? Do we really need an iReporter’s obviously slanted perspective to be given CNN’s stamp of approval? At what point does a poorly produced “battle” between Ketchup and Mustard become worthy of either the iReporter or CNN name?

What CNN is gaining through this experiment could potentially be great. They’re generating some serious buzz and gaining ways to fill air time by paying for nothing but bandwidth expenses (and the $750,000 they paid for the domain). This obviously helps their bottom line. Some of the content is actually worthwhile, raw, and powerful.

But what’s the cost to journalism and to viewers? It’s already exceedingly obvious that iReporters can have an impact with Blogs, on YouTube, and all over the internet. They didn’t need CNN to get their voices heard. They were able to shape a powerful grassroots journalism effort on the internet built on the power of their ideas and the uniqueness of their voices. Now, people are giving CNN ownership rights to their work for absolutely no compensation, essentially selling out for no pay.

Their air time comes at the expense of content created by professional journalists and unbiased coverage. While people are used to exercising caution with the content they’re exposed to on the Internet, they expect CNN to be truthful and important. Doesn’t CNN have an obligation to the truth as best it can be told? Granted, sometimes raw coverage is more truthful than what comes from the Mass Media, but does CNN want to put it’s name and reputation behind “uncensored” content that’s filled with bias? At what point does this start reflecting on the character and values of CNN?

What are we supposed to think of CNN when they’re airing a child’s book report (albeit a very well done one) on national TV? Doesn’t CNN bill itself as the “most trusted name in news”.

Maybe I’m giving professional journalists and CNN too much credit, though. Watching this video about people riding a subway without pants makes me question all television media. Perhaps iReporters will hold themselves to higher standards.

To their credit, professional journalists abide by an Ethics Code and are trained with years of experience at telling complete stories. iReporters need no such training. They just need a camera and an opinion.

Does CNN need bloggers and iReporters? Probably. Do iReporters need CNN? I highly doubt it.

The first time I saw CNN relying on an iReporter was during the Virginia Tech massacre. The used this footage from a student’s camera phone to help cover the tragedy more closely. At the time, it was pretty revolutionary. The footage was grainy and poor quality, but it was the closest CNN could bring its viewers to a newsworthy situation. CNN paid Jamal Albarghouti, a graduate students at Virginia Tech, an undisclosed amount for the footage, compensating him for his work. It again relied on iReporters during the 35W tragedy. Clearly CNN needs iReporters, so they should start treating them better to build a better reputation for them and their valuable work.

Despite my diatribe, which could definitely continue, the CNN iReporer site has launched. ABC News, Fox News, and MSNBC have launched a similar sites. For better or worse, we may be looking at the future of the mainstream media as it rushes into a marriage with citizen journalists. At this point, although it’s early, it looks like both sides have little to gain from this merger.

A breakthrough national study of Canadian Schools that was released today concluded that, “homework is of little benefit to students from junior kindergarten to Grade 6, [and] it is often the source of stress and burnout in children, as well the cause of conflict – even marital stress – for many families.”

So, does that mean high school educators can continue piling on homework?

Surely homework doesn’t stop being stressful in later grades, and it certainly still is a major factor in students burning out, especially students who are heavily involved in sports, activities, church, and things like dance or club teams.  In addition, more students than ever are holding part time jobs. Over a third of teenagers have jobs in high school and another third volunteer at least an hour a week.

In addition to these enrichment activities and obligations, teenagers have more complicated home lives than ever.

If a high school teacher is to give homework, they should first hold the work up to some scrutiny. If a piece of homework can’t pass the following test, it shouldn’t be assigned.

1. Is the homework truly enriching? If the work we send home with kids is not as valuable as the other activities they’re engaging in and the family interactions they could be having, then the work serves no purpose but to turn kids off to the subject at hand and to take them away from other worthwhile priorities.
2. Can the homework be easily copied? Sending work outside of the classroom that is easily copied – things like word finds, crossword puzzles, worksheets, and study guides -creates a tempting situation that nearly every student succumbs to eventually.
3. Is the homework about memorization rather than application? Homework should strive to promote understanding by letting the student actually apply knowledge in a unique way or fill a real-world application.

Teachers giving homework must also be aware that students often go home to sick parents, relationship troubles, physically and emotionally abusive situations, obligations to babysit siblings, and a lack of any quality places to study and learn. Assigning homework immediately puts these students at a disadvantage and rewards more fortunate students, creating a divide that carries over into the classroom.

Truly motivated students will choose to learn outside of the classroom, bringing home with them burning questions and new ways of thinking. Inspiring lessons stick with learners after school and change the way they view the world.

Granted, some homework is necessary and can be positive. High school students electing to take high level courses and elective classes know the potential homework load before volunteering for the classes they take. Often, homework can extend learning and enrich a course. However, not all homework is equal. Teachers need to keep their egos in check and understand that their class and the work they assign are rarely the most important things a student will experience in his or her day. They must also acknowledge the complex and busy lives of their students and the hidden message homework can send about learning and a subject.

All teachers and parents who still hold to traditional notions of homework’s benefits should read The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning.

Meet Corey Worthington.

He’s the guy with the glasses.

Last week, Corey gained international recognition from a TV interview he did on Australia’s version of A Current Affair. Corey had thrown a party that got out of hand, and while he apologized during the interview for the commotion he caused, he refused to remove his glasses for the camera. The anchor pushed that issue several more times, but he refused to oblige. His glasses were “famous” he said. Thus, maybe even against his will, his celebrity was born – just one day after the original interview.

Corey was enjoying his 15 minutes of fame as a harmless internet celebrity.However, his fame may have progressed too quickly. Yesterday, Corey was ambushed and beaten in an attack that was captured on camera phone, propelling him further into the spotlight.

Throughout the whole experience, I got the feeling like Corey didn’t really have a choice in his celebrity. Although he did choose to go on A Current Affair, the reporter wasn’t exactly accepting Corey’s reluctance. He was famous less for the interview or the party than he was for refusing the interviewers repeated requests for him to remove his glasses. Since when has it been ethical for a reporter to make these kinds of requests and demands from interview subjects. Without that insistence, he’s not famous.

His attack was a direct result of his Internet fame, and his fame was a direct result of a really poor interview on a national TV channel.

A few questions came to my mind while thinking about this today.

1. Who is to blame for him getting attacked and beaten?
2. Why is his party news?
3. Is the world this desperate for meaningless celebrity?
4. When we live in a culture where celebrity can be created overnight, even without the consent of the celebrity, how are people supposed to manage fame?

We are entering a new age of Celebrity, where Internet celebrities have crossed over into the mainstream. That brings with it a new set of responsibilities for the news media. They have to be ready for the risks involved with helping create the celebrities.

There’s always the possibility that this is a stunt designed by Corey and his friends to further his celebrity. I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s becoming increasingly easy to manipulate the media.

It’s quite a coincidence that the day we wrapped up our introduction to the Meaning of Truth was also the day of the debut of the Fox game show The Moment of Truth.

We’ve just spent the past two days talking about how Truth can be a difficult concept to grasp and how it can be so abstract at times that it’s nearly impossible to reach. This show simplifies it, asking contestants simple yes-or-no questions about their beliefs and past actions. If they answer a list of increasingly embarrassing questions truthfully, they have the potential to win $1 million.

The Moment of Truth seems to define truth as honesty and has no way beyond a polygraph test to verify the claims of the contestants. The show turns honesty into spectacle.

This program brings up more questions about the nature of truth than answers. Often, it asks contenstants to tell the truth about their perceptions, which can often be far from reality. It also asks them to tell the truth about moments in the past, which lose their truth shortly after they end. Again, it goes back to perception and memory – both of which interfere with the truth. Truth isn’t an exact science by any means, and I really don’t believe that Truth can sustain a game show like this.

I’m watching this show, trying to come to some understanding of what this show has to say about the meaning of truth, and how that may relate to journalism, and it’s been difficult. Here’s what I’ve concluded:

1. The truth can be embarrassing, ugly, damaging, and predatory. It can be exploited easily. A journalist has to understand this when they begin reporting and know how deep they want to dig. They also need to know the purpose of their assignments and strive to meet them with the most fairness and accuracy as they can.
2. Ugly truth is more entertaining than beautiful truth. As a journalist, it could be difficult to balance a demand for the unflattering truths of the world with what else is worth reporting.
3. Truth can change over time and between perspectives. The sky isn’t blue. The sky was blue for part of the time today. Right now, the sky is black, yellow, pink, purple, orange, red, and blue all at the same time. For part of the day today, it was blue for me. Now it’s blue for someone else. Only a portion of the sky is blue, though. Outside of it, it’s very, very black. Journalists see truth only part of the time from very few perspectives. Because of this, they must be careful to balance their perspective with the type and number of sources they choose. They must also be careful to step back and look for the bigger picture before they rush to publish.
4. A journalist can never publish a version of the truth that satisfies everyone.

Overall, I didn’t enjoy watching the show, and I can’t imagine it will last more than a season – or even much longer after the writers’ strike is settled. It did reveal a lot to me about the nature of truth, however, just not the side I like seeing.