Blogs won’t keep bankruptcy away from newspapers

Originally published August 3, 2009.

Everyone has their net surfing routine, the order of Web sites they check the first time they get online during the day. On most days, mine is Gmail, school e-mail, Penny Arcade, Anders Loves Maria and Facebook. My partner’s routine is e-mail, Facebook, Fark.com and MSNBC.

For many, the web routine includes checking a number of blogs to see their daily (or even more frequent) updates: I Can Has Cheezburger, Fail Blog, Cake Wrecks and Look at This F—ing Hipster, to name only a few. Blogs have increasingly become the focus of the print media industry given their viral popularity in the last few years.

But given what seems to be the standard format of blogs, are they really the magical panacea struggling newspapers expect them to be?

Sites like Tumblr and WordPress, while they offer customizability, make it easy to organize blogs into what has largely become the uniform look of the blog. Content is typically image-heavy with minimal text—posts feature a picture that adheres to the theme or topic of the blog and a brief caption. Tumblr essentially operates like Twitter but with the ability for users to post photos outright instead of links. WordPress’ utility ComicPress serves to populate the blogosphere with still more image-based posts in the form of webcomics, including notables such as PvP, Little Gamers and Anders Loves Maria.

The blog, like film and television before it, encourages people to embrace primarily visual culture. Many have adapted to and even come to prefer content in concise, obvious, manageable bursts. They are the kind of bursts both furthered by and intended for viewing on gadgets that saturate the market: laptops (and now netbooks) appearing in classrooms and coffeehouses, cell phones and iPod Touches resting in pockets. They’re especially good for that quick break between assignments at the office or that moment of boredom in class.

Is this really what print media hopes to become? In that case, are newspapers planning on reducing their content to streaming news feeds online containing an Associated Press photo and caption?

It’s difficult to imagine this dramatic overhaul actually taking place. But it’s even harder to imagine newspapers successfully converting a text-based communication of information into the burst that fills those momentary pauses/compulsive internet checks during the course of the day.

I’m not denying that this compulsive behavior has created news junkies, too. Their increased presence, proportional to our growing accessibility to the internet, is verified by the development of sites like Fark and Digg.

There’s also Drudge Report, Huffington Post, Daily Kos and, in Illinois, Capitol Fax. Yes, their content all centers on text — news stories and opinions pieces — but they still hinge on the visual aspect of blogs that makes the medium nearly incapable of presenting objective news information. Drudge Report and Huffington Post both employ huge images with attention-grabbing captions in the same vein as our favorite lolcats. And though the extensive readership of Kos and Cap Fax might be encouragement for the print media industry, they deal in opinions, not news. To equate the two is dangerous territory, embodied by the increasing attitude that the Daily Show is the best place for news content in mainstream media.

Are opinions and special interest blogs (like sports and entertainment) a good starting point for newspapers looking to adapt to the challenges of the Internet Age? Yes. Can blogs save newspapers, publications inherently designed to present factual news content? Not unless we’d like to condemn ourselves to adding I Can Has Noozstory to our daily web routines.

Chelsea is a student in LAS.

Politicians pointing fingers in clout scandal conveniently forget where idea comes from

Originally published July 27, 2009.

After getting the run-around from the chairman of the Board of Trustees last week, the Illinois Admissions Review Commission will see current University president B. Joseph White step up to the plate today.

But will a thorough examination of White’s involvement in the clout scandal really make that much difference in the outcome of the proceedings?

Doubtful.

The daily reports from the hearings have been appalling enough on their own. Most recently they’ve included Niranjan Shah’s attempts to pin the blame on everyone from previous University president James Stukel to Shah’s own secretary at his engineering firm for meddling in admissions and housing decisions, not to mention scoring a six-figure job for Shah’s son-in-law.

The estimated 8,000 pages of documents submitted to the review commission have undoubtedly contained the numerous quoted e-mails White himself sent regarding the admittance of many clout-backed candidates.

It’s easy to see the huge scope of the clout scandal when reading any news related to the University these days.

What’s equally apparent are the deep roots of the scandal firmly seated in the Illinois legislature. And Governor Quinn and his Illinois Admissions Review Commission plan to keep a hallowed state tradition alive by turning a blind eye to obvious political corruption.

Thus far, the commission has required the University to send at least two dozen staffers to the admissions hearings. They’ve only asked nine legislators to testify. A grand total of two agreed—Rep. Mike Boland, whose name doesn’t even appear in any of the materials released by the U of I in relation to the Category I list, and Sen. Chris Lauzen.

The big dogs have all politely told Abner Mikva thanks, but no thanks: House Speaker Michael Madigan, Senate President John Cullerton, and House Republican Leader Tom Cross.

Madigan has acted on behalf of more applicants than any other legislator with a total of 43 over the last five years. According to his spokesman Steve Brown in a Tribune piece last Saturday, Madigan “believes he has little to contribute to the probe” as he was only acting on requests by constituents.

As if Madigan had no idea what his lil’ ol’ requests could do.

Mikva, head of the review commission, “seemed unconcerned about” lawmakers’ unwillingness to participate, saying in the aforementioned Trib article that “the heart of the problem is that the university had no policy of pushing back to the pressure that was exerted.”

Instead of commenting on the absurdity of this statement obvious to anyone with even a minimal knowledge of Illinois politics, I’ll follow up with an example that captures it exactly.

Sen. Kirk Dillard, a Republican candidate for governor, has already introduced a bill that aims to remove all nine members of the University Board of Trustees. And who better to demand swift, decisive action to restore public confidence in the university than someone who put his political influence behind seven applicants, three of whom were admitted?

No, we certainly cannot allow University officials to come out of this investigation unscathed, nor can we leave admissions practices unchanged. But, as with almost all of this state’s troubles, nothing’s going to change until we confront the real problem: Illinois legislators’ belief that nothing can touch them.

Chelsea is a senior in LAS.

Smoking habits will linger on, despite tasteless legislation

Originally published July 20, 2009.

If you smoke cloves, you won’t be for much longer—at least in theory.

Meet the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which was signed into law on June 22. It hands the oversight of the manufacture, marketing, and sale of tobacco products to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Starting in October 2009, flavored cigarettes (including cloves and fruit- and candy-flavored cigarettes, though not menthols) will be officially outlawed. Additionally, tobacco companies will no longer be able to advertise through means like logo-printed clothing, samples, or even sponsorship of entertainment or athletic events. Companies must also disclose fully the ingredients in their products to the FDA, in addition to the nicotine content of cigarettes and the health effects of smoking.

Those who championed the legislation have an admirable goal in mind, one that Obama addressed directly as he signed the bill: keeping tobacco companies from targeting kids. They’ve criticized (and demonized) Big Tobacco so heavily that the rest of us can’t help but be mildly supportive of the bill, imagining that the tobacco industry is the real monster under the bed waiting to devour our children at night.

For any smoker or anyone considering smoking, the part of the bill that requires reporting of cigarette ingredients is a great victory—one that should have happened a long time ago. If tobacco companies want cigarettes to remain a legal avenue of recreation, it’s about time people should completely know and understand what they’re choosing to put into their bodies.

But banning flavored cigarettes puts the righteousness of the bill on shaky ground.

At this point, anyone could say, “But tasty flavors encourage young people to smoke! Do you want our children to be fooled by Big Tobacco?”

It’s possible that the availability of products like Swisher Sweets catch the eye of kids not yet smoking. But the same could be said of alcoholic beverages like Bacardi Razz, Smirnoff Ice, and Mike’s Hard Lemonade, all of which are legal. Of course there’s an age restriction on alcohol, but there’s one on tobacco as well. Both are ineffective. If underage people want to drink, it’s easy for them to do it. In the same vein, if those underage choose to smoke, they can and will easily acquire cigarettes, flavored or not. Eliminating the variety of cigarette flavors will not change that fact.

From here, the million-dollar questions become: where does the FDA’s new authority end, and how do they expect to enforce legislation on flavored cigarettes (aside from the obvious removal from store shelves)? When—because it’s only a matter of when, not if—does the FDA decide to take on all flavored tobacco instead of just cigarettes?

My thoughts here extend to people who purchase loose tobacco for pipes and or rolling their own cigarettes. Because of its potential use in cigarettes, will flavored tobacco also face relegation to a “black market” of sorts?

If flavored tobacco generally becomes the target of the FDA’s newly-acquired regulatory powers, hookah smokers are also in murky waters. And if flavors can be phased out, why not tobacco itself? At the very least, the FDA will restrict the tobacco industry so greatly that public tobacco usage cannot help but be impacted, with or without their consent.

As for enforcement, I don’t expect police training to include a controlled burn of a strawberry-flavored cigarette come October, or to see someone getting patted down for cloves on Green Street because she smells suspiciously like a Christmas ham.

No, I only expect the obvious: if people want flavored cigarettes, they’ll find them, end of story. And if the majority of Champaign-Urbana will drink Keystone Light for the sake of getting trashed, then I don’t imagine teens wanting to smoke will mind Marlboros over kreteks.

Chelsea is a senior in LAS.

Want to continue your education? No worries, there’s a test for that

Originally published July 13, 2009.

Standardized testing: one of those pointless high school requirements that make students glad to graduate.

The idea that the government should have the power to mandate the information everyone should know in order to become dutiful citizens is more than a little reminiscent of any dystopian novel you’ve ever read. Even kids who cared minimally about high school (or even their entire K-12 tenure) got sick of being taught a test.

After all that, a college education is like an intellectual adventure. At least, until you get to the end.

As I prepare to take the GRE, I find myself confronted with standardized testing in a form even more ridiculous than what Texas schools presented. I can only imagine how tedious and awful attending a university would be if students’ classes all revolved around passing the same single exam. But it only makes the GRE all the more asinine to have spent at least four years studying specialized topics of our choosing to have it culminate in a test that, at its core, has nothing to do with what we learned in college or plan to study in grad school.

For students geared toward creative and philosophical fields, math classes are but a distant memory from freshman year. Vice versa, people concentrating on analytical or business focuses got those boring literature and composition classes out of the way early. For the test prep industry, this is an excellent set-up. All the specific math and verbal skills that test-takers need to brush up on can be broken into separate study guides, flashcards, and learning-by-hypnosis CDs not included with general test practice books. And no one can say they haven’t seen one of the Kaplan exam prep class advertisements aggressively printed eight times on every chalkboard on campus.

Potentially a few hundred dollars and precious hours consumed by studying, and the bloodletting doesn’t stop there. The general test itself costs $150, not to mention the cost of taking any additional GRE subject tests—you know, the ones that actually pertain to your chosen field of specialization, what you’ve been primarily studying in these last few years. Those are another $130 a pop.

Yep, there’s gold in them thar exams for everyone except the students actually taking them.

Academicians set the test standards, the testing giant ETS makes a huge profit (especially as a “nonprofit” organization), and companies like Kaplan and Barron’s can do well for themselves, too.

From grade school to grad school, we take classes on taking tests. ISAT, AP, PSAE, ACT, SAT, GRE … it’s an endless list of acronyms.

People in academia and politics can argue infinitely about what everyone “basically needs to know” to function as a member of American society, or even what it should take to get accepted to grad school.

If they want empirical data, they should look at the GPAs they demand to see, not the test scores. Or maybe it’s about time to refocus on what universities depend on—the students themselves. Because right now at institutions of higher learning, where free thinking and free speaking are supposed to trump all, we’re still reduced to test scores like anywhere else.

Chelsea is a senior in LAS.

Paging Chris Crocker: Sarah Palin needs you

Originally published July 6, 2009.

Remember the “Leave Britney alone!” kid, Chris Crocker? Given her speech last Friday, it sounds like Sarah Palin could use his support right about now.

In her rambling announcement, the soon-to-be ex-governor of Alaska gave few reasons why she plans to step down next month: refusing to continue with “politics as usual,” the freedom of Alaskans (which has apparently been in danger these last two-and-a-half years, if you believe Palin), and the almost $300,000 tab billed to Alaskan taxpayers thanks to investigations into 15 ethics complaints made against Palin.

However, it’s hard to break the cycle of “politics as usual” when you opt out of politics altogether.

Palin’s speech was disorganized, repetitive, and didn’t explain why she plans to resign. That is, all but the brief moment when she mentioned asking her children their feelings about her decision.

John P. Coale, a Washington lawyer who spoke with Palin this spring, hit the nail on the head when he quoted conversations with her. In a Washington Post article last Sunday, Coale explained, “She asked me, ‘Well, what do you think all this is? Why are all these people attacking me?’… she couldn’t ignore the hits on the kids. She said, ‘It brought out the mama grizzly in me.’”

There may be a small amount of chivalry left in politics, which at least last fall resulted in a swearing-off of candidates’ children as targets during the heated campaign rhetoric. But Palin insisted on leading her children to the media slaughter, shoving daughter Bristol into the jaws of the spotlight, as well as, albeit to a lesser extent, sons Trig and Track. Palin did little but complain in an effort to keep both news and entertainment media from sensationalizing the details of her family’s personal lives.

Taking up a career in politics is willingly exposing yourself and your loved ones to the scrutiny of others, including those in the blogosphere who will endlessly Photoshop pictures of you, your children, your great-uncle Bob and your dead mother. This not-unusual behavior, evidenced recently by Linda Kellen Biegel’s superimposition of Anchorage radio host Eddie Burke’s face onto Trig’s in a photo from the RNC, was only amped up by Palin’s characteristic defensiveness­— illustrated clearly by her reference to the image in follow-up announcements about her resignation.

I hate to break it to you, Sarah, but no one will ever take you seriously if you believe the “right” response to any public or media scorn is to hold a press conference to whine about being teased and quit in an attempt to spite everyone.

After all, it doesn’t quite make sense to spend several minutes explaining how well your state is doing under your direction in order to make the case that it’s better for you to quit. If this whole quitting business wasn’t about Sarah Palin’s hurt feelings, I imagine she simply would have said, “I have personal reasons for declining to run for a second term, and my family needs me now. Thank you for your time, and for the opportunity to be governor of this great state.”

I certainly don’t mind Mrs. Palin unintentionally falling back into the obscure hidey-hole she crawled out of last year (despite her insistence that she’ll remain a strong advocate of change outside politics), but here’s something she should keep in mind. In many places around the world, bringing real political change often means death. She would do well to read up on events in countries like Iran, and count herself lucky that her greatest concerns are Tina Fey skits and insensitive media.