Apologies for missing class

2 things I wanted to bring up.

First, since I missed discussion about the NYT article we read, I just wanted to offer a little of my two cents. I do expect change back.

To me the two most striking things from the article were first the introductory disclaimer about the article containing possibly offensive material. This coupled with the second striking thing, a tenor throughout the entire article of insisting that people can't handle themselves maturely in an online commentary forum, just goes to show that the NYT falls into the category of what Jay Rosen describes in his article of media conglomerate managers who see us as little more than eyeballs. We are clearly, in their view, a non-thinking, non-producing, unintelligent glob of consumer mass.

It's very interesting that the NYT lauds itself as one of the greatest publications in the history of language and purports to have the smartest readers in all the land but doesn't trust them one single bit. It not only warns them (treating readers as childish) but then says flat out that its readers are the smartest but it doesn't trust them to comment on its stories.

Sure, I understand their argument that people might use profanity or suggest incredibly untrue things in their comments, or make wild and outrageous claims. But the fact of the matter is the NYT does the exact same thing, except without profanity. Their articles suggest wild claims, have offered false research, and are often incredibly offensive to the mature, logical, intelligent mind. In fact, the more I think about it, it makes perfect sense. The New York Times wants to prevent us from becoming The New York Times. It has nothing to do with protecting their (mythical) journalistic standard and everything to do with protecting their exclusive club as the originator of public opinion.


The other thing I wanted to mention in this behemoth of a post, is in the wake of our finishing up of talk about convergence culture, I came upon another interesting example of the convergence of tv and the web. One of the shows I like to catch from time to time is NCIS on CBS, it's about a Naval Criminal Investigation Service. In tonight's episode, the man character's daughter (who was killed when she was little) buried a time capsule in her back yard with her friend when they were young. The father found out about it from a young friend of his daughter's, and dug it up. The episode continued, but he never opened it and at the end of the episode went back to bury it. So after the closing credits CBS announced that if you wanted to see what was in Kelly's time capsule you could go to CBS.com/NCIS to see what was inside. I did, (and so did my dad, that dork, he's a huge fan of the show!) and it had several items created for the show, complete with small backstories. Given the fact that the target demo for the show is...well..old people, I was quite surprised that they had something like that. I mean, it's the same target demo that JAG had, old people who keep the TV on just for company.

Anyway, there you go. Feast, comment, etc.

~J