As always, though, before we get to this week’s links I again want to strongly recommend signing up for a free Feedly account. I get absolutely no kickback for promoting Feedly, but I am so appreciative of their product being the best RSS reader on the internet and I encourage everyone to use it. If you are using another RSS aggregator, please consider following JerseySmarts.com at http://www.jerseysmarts.com/feed/. If you are already on Feedly, then you can follow us by clicking here. Thanks!

Have you come across any great articles lately? If so, please share those links in the comments below! And one more time before you go – for those of you who love reading online articles, I strongly recommend considering a free Feedly account. You can follow JerseySmarts.com on Feedly or you can add us to your existing RSS aggregator. Enjoy!

In no way do I suggest that JerseySmarts.com is engaging in such reporting. In fact, I would agree that I provide my personal point of view in all, if not most, of the entries on this blog. In providing that point of view, though, I do try to counter any biases that I find in the topic, should such a counter be relevant.

Anyway, the purpose of this entry is to announce a Citizen Journalism Conference at Monmouth University one week from today, November 18, 2009. Complete details are below.

CITIZEN JOURNALISM – COUNTERING THE CULTURE OF CORRUPTION

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

The Citizens’ Campaign and Monmouth University are co-hosting a conference on November 18 to discuss the current state of local reporting in our new media environment, including how hyperlocal websites provide a means for stepped up local coverage and opportunities for citizen journalists to report from the frontlines.

The “Citizen Journalism: Countering the Culture of Corruption” morning panel will discuss the cuts in local news room staff and its impact on the quality of local government coverage, and how new online tools make it possible for journalists and citizen activists to report what is happening in city hall and throughout the community.

Speaking on the first panel will be Michael Delli Carpini, Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania; Richard Benfield, former editorial writer of the Bergen Record and New York Times; Ted Mann, Founder of InJersey.com and Digital Development Director for Gannett New Jersey; and Michael Shapiro, CEO and Editor of www.TheAlternativePress.com.

The day will also feature a “Citizen Journalism” certification course for beginning bloggers & citizen activists who want to submit their own local news stories to online publications; and an afternoon “Meet & Greet” panel for journalism students and activists to talk and network with online news site editors.

The Conference will be held at Wilson Hall at Monmouth University from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Light refreshments will be served. This event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited, so please reserve your seat today by emailing heather@jointhecampaign.com.

The Citizens’ Campaign is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to promoting and encouraging civic engagement. To learn more about the Citizens’ Campaign, log onto www.JoinTheCampaign.com.

November 18, 2009
11 am – 2pm

Monmouth University
Wilson Hall 400 Cedar Ave.
West Long Branch, NJ

11 am – 11:30: Registration & Refreshments

11:30 am: Opening Remarks by Harry Pozycki & Round Table Discussion:
The New Media Climate: How the internet is transforming modern day journalism and its impact on local government & politics

12:30 pm: Becoming a Citizen Journalist

1:00 – 2:00 pm: Meet the New Media Innovators.

Registration
This event is free and open to the public. To register, email Heather@JoinTheCampaign.com

This should be a great event and I hope that my fellow bloggers in the New Jersey area will plan to attend the conference. I’m hoping to get over there myself, schedule permitting. If you DO attend the conference, please consider sending a report on what was talked about and some of your thoughts.

There is a lot to write about this particular issue. I could write about how one of my liberal professors is touting the White House’s opposition to FOX News strictly on ideological grounds. One could also write about how Chris Wallace from FOX News Sunday hit the nail directly on the head when he suggested that this White House is filled with a bunch of crybabies. Or one could write about how other news stations are sticking up for FOX. In fact, directly from that New York Times article comes this:

In a sign of discomfort with the White House stance, Fox’s television news competitors refused to go along with a Treasury Department effort on Tuesday to exclude Fox from a round of interviews with the executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg that was to be conducted with a “pool” camera crew shared by all the networks. That followed a pointed question at a White House briefing this week by Jake Tapper, an ABC News correspondent, about the administration’s treatment of “one of our sister organizations.”

Pretty respectable for the competition to honor the unfair treatment that FOX News has been receiving, huh?

However, I want to focus on two things regarding this issue – the White House’s intentional blur between what is news and what is opinion on FOX News and the game that the White House is playing with FOX News.

First, anyone who studies media or watches a great deal of CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News while reading a diversity of newspapers can tell you that there are only so many ways a company can report a story. When a tornado hits Kansas, you don’t often hear FOX News reporters saying, “A tornado hit Kansas today and the lousy liberals are to blame.” Just like you don’t hear any legitimate reporter on MSNBC blaming conservatives for acts of God. When it comes down to reporting events from around the world, you’re going to read or watch the same report no matter where you go.

However, when it comes to commentary, you’re going to get a divergent approach to “reporting.” Bill O’Reilly calls himself a “humble correspondent.” That’s part of his approach to opinion journalism and there is nothing wrong with that at all! O’Reilly takes a very traditional view on the issues, but that’s okay because he’s hosting a program that is rooted in commentary. Glenn Beck has a staunchly libertarian point of view. Now, those who are not well-versed in political ideology would suggest that Beck is a conservative, but he’s not. So the next time you hear a mass media report or read in a newspaper that Beck is a conservative, then you need to second guess that source of news. Sean Hannity, on the other hand, is a hardcore conservative and there’s nothing wrong with that, either.

FOX News clearly labels these programs as commentary and anyone who knows anything about social interaction beyond “Hello, my name is…” can tell that these programs are NOT news-based! The White House isn’t filled with dummies, they understand that these programs are opinion programs. However, their strategy is to lump the legitimate news departments in with these opinion programs to paint FOX News with a broad, anti-liberal, anti-Obama brush. They know that by doing this, there will be a certain percentage of the population that completely agrees with them and will eventually take over this fight now that it has been brought up at a higher level. It’s a shame that such easily influenced, non-critical thinking people exist to do the White House’s prolonged dirty work.

My second point is that the White House actually managed to do something that they hadn’t been able to do up until they began attacking FOX News, i.e. get the FOX News commentators to STOP digging into the backgrounds of Obama’s staff. Think about it. Glenn Beck single-handedly led to Van Jones’ downfall, which opened up the door for other media organizations to wonder what they had missed out on (read the New York Times article linked above). This, frankly, scared the hell out of the White House and led to them attacking FOX News. If the media is covering itself, then they’re NOT digging into the people who maybe shouldn’t be sitting around the table with the President, right?

Hopefully, people will begin to notice this on a large scale and begin to demand that their White House stop engaging in partisan attacks on the media and, instead, get back to the job of running this country.

A dance troupe!

I’m not sure how the voting is conducted by Britain’s Got Talent, but I think I read somewhere that there are ten finalists and they are all voted on by the public. I have to imagine that if the show pitted Susan Boyle against any of the other nine finalists in a head-to-head showdown, she would win the vote hands down. Having potential votes siphoned off by eight other acts is tough on any contestant in any competition.

After Susan Boyle lost the competition, she reportedly hollered that she hated Britain’s Got Talent as she went back to her dressing room. Worse yet, she checked herself into a hospital as she was suffering from extreme exhaustion. Frankly, I blame the tabloid media in Britain as they tried to paint her as a monster after she blew up earlier in the week letting off a few four-letter words. The poor woman – who gives a shit if she told someone to fuck off? The woman was tired and overexposed by the very media that then had the gall to call her overexposed!

Regardless of her loss on Britain’s Got Talent, expect big things coming for Susan Boyle. She has a raw talent that, once refined, will make her a good living in the European theater scene for the rest of her life. And besides, while she may not have won Britain’s Got Talent, she certain won the hearts and minds of the world-at-large and, most importantly in terms of marketability, she won over the internet crowd.

The poll of registered voters found that 90 percent agree that the state budget is in a serious fiscal crisis. Sixty-nine percent said state government has not managed its finances well over the past three years.

And 58 percent don’t think the state government is in a good position to deal with the current financial crisis.

However, only 22 percent have read or heard a lot about Corzine’s state budget plan, the poll says.

I would link the Daily Record article, but they pull their articles offline after a few days and you wouldn’t be able to get there (just go to their site and look for it today – should be one of the top stories). The article shows the inherent bias in New Jersey’s major media outlets in favor of Governor Corzine with lines such as, “Corzine has ‘not been doing a good job communicating the soundness of this budget or the necessity of the cuts that he’s making,’ Murray said.” Really? A reporter actually took this obviously biased quote from the Director of the Polling Institute and used it verbatim in the article? So anyone reading this article quickly may only recall later on that Corzine has a sound budget and that cuts are a necessity. Moronic work on behalf of Gannett.

Those of us who live in New Jersey can feel the change coming. Governor Money Bags ran on a platform of understanding that the common man in New Jersey is hurting and struggling to make ends meet under the weight of the state’s taxes with property taxes being the biggest burden. So what does he do? He increases the sales tax, does away with the property tax rebate, and adds a large variety of new taxes and fees. Governor Corzine has broken the back of New Jersey’s middle class. If such strong familial and community bonds didn’t exist throughout this state, we’d be losing people left and right to our neighboring states.

Corzine is ripe to be kicked out of office…now let’s see if the Republicans can put up a decent enough candidate in Chris Christie to actually change this state for the good!

Any for the brainwashed leftists out there, understand this – just because someone speaks with a definitive tone (which Obama clearly speaks in) doesn’t mean that they are a good speaker! It means that they are confident, yes. But interrupting the free verbal flow of one’s ideas with constant, “iii” and “aaaaahhh” blips is indicative of a speaker who is unsure of the intellectual weight of his words.

As someone who supports this President (and all Presidents, by the way), I really hope that Obama invests some time and resources into practicing how to speak in public. When he stutters and stammers his way through a press conference like he did tonight it does NOT show this country the strong leadership that it voted for during the election.

Oh, and enough of the “I inherited this” crap already. You’ve been President for two months – you’re no longer “inheriting” the initial problem, but you’re now dealing with pieces of the recession that have been created on your watch! And what, exactly, did you create? There is a mess with this AIG thing, right? Hey – didn’t YOUR Treasury Secretary create that mess before you were President? Does that mean that your administration is inheriting its own mistakes? Can you rightly blame that on Bush?

Here’s hoping for more from President Obama and his administration. Where is the change that America voted for?

I hope to learn more about the lung transplant situation in the coming days and weeks. I wonder if he was on some list and he just didn’t get high enough on the list in time or if they couldn’t find a specialized lung for him (I don’t know, but I’d assume that blood type has a part to play in that stuff). I haven’t really searched into that, but it could be eye-opening to know what happened especially when you take into account that doctors gave him an additional 15 years after a transplant.

For what it’s worth, he always seemed like a good-natured, nice guy. My thoughts go with his family and friends.

America has a serious problem with its media sources and unless the people come together to fight this garbage, we’re in for some bad times. You see, the media has grown to help frame the world-at-large for the public. This is true for all aspects of the world from international wars to local trade to elections and more. Listening to the Democratic and Republican debates on CNN this week and reading the New York Times this morning made something abundantly clear – the upcoming Presidential race is NOT being framed in any meaningful manner by many of America’s media sources.

Example: This morning in the New York Times, a piece ran on the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy currently enforced by the United States military. The piece focused on the two drastically different responses given by the Republican and Democratic candidates. Every Democrat raised his or her hand that they would repeal the current policy and let gays and lesbians serve openly. Every Republican candidate did NOT raise his hand when asked if they would repeal the policy.

From the New York Times:

The issue flared anew because it came up in this week’s debates, not because of any big new campaign initiative on either side. But aside from policy considerations, there is a political rationale for the Democrats’ stance: Gay men and lesbians make up an important part of the Democratic Party’s political and fund-raising base, and voters in general are increasingly tolerant on gay issues related to employment and discrimination, analysts say. While gay marriage remains deeply divisive, allowing openly gay men and lesbians to serve in time of war has a far more centrist appeal, advocates and analysts say.

This newspaper, which is quickly becoming irrelevant on many issues that the majority of Americans care about, managed to pump out a 1,000+ word article on this “issue” which it readily admits is not a major one for this campaign. Well then why did you waste your time and effort on this crap, New York Times? Better yet – why did the idiots at CNN decide to throw this question into their debate when there are MUCH more pressing issues in America today?

What issues are more pressing? How about the fact that FEMA is a bigger disaster than some of the natural disasters it is sent to clean up?! There was not one question in the entire Republican or Democratic debates about how the candidates would have handled the clean-up of a natural disaster the size and scope of Katrina.

But the lunatics at CNN ask about gays in the military? And we’re supposed to believe that they’re not being pressured to ask these ridiculous, completely-out-of-touch with reality questions by far-left extremists? Give me a break.

And the entire issue is one that many homosexuals could care less about. Sure, they’d like to openly serve in the military, but good Lord – they’re serving the country right NOW! You don’t see straight soldiers demanding that they be allowed to define their sexuality. You know why? Because it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the job at hand!

CNN making this an issue – and the New York Times covering it – pushes these two once-mighty media establishments deeper into the abyss.