Am I too old for Facebook?

I’m glad to find out that I’m not the only forty-something who wonders if he might be too old for Facebook. My apprehension was reaffirmed this week by JD Lasica on his Social Media blog, where he drew attention to a Salon.com column by Michael Martin.

Essentially, Martin’s column boiled down to this: Bad things can happen to well-meaning oldsters (aka those over 30) when they hit the wrong keyboard command. And these things are bound to happen more often to those of us who have a hard enough time resetting our digital alarm clocks and finding the volume control on the master TV remote.

Filmmaker Kim Bowen lived a nightmare after she mistakenly sent a less-than flattering video clip to all her Facebook friends. Unfortunately, her friend list also included co-workers and business associates who she wished didn’t know she existed after the aforementioned clip made its rounds.

Which brings me to my own Facebook phobia. In my role as a media instructor, it’s essential that I know about MySpace, Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites that are having such a profound impact on media and communication. But when it comes to networking, I prefer the old-fashioned forms, especially face-to-face meetings and phone calls.

I’m not as adept at the witty repartee that I enjoy seeing my friends exchange via Facebook. When it comes to Facebook, I’m the equivalent of a freshman wallflower at the high school dance – I want to be out there dancing but I just don’t know the steps.

So for now, I’ll continue to think twice, even three or four times, before I hit the send key. And as my wife reminds our teenagers, never post anything that you wouldn’t want your mom to see…

(Photo credit: "Return of the Nightmare Vision" by left-hand, courtesy of Flickr.com)

Facebook Nightmare: Block Party Bummer

Beware the power of social networking. A student at my alma mater found out the hard way what happens when a fun idea gets posted on Facebook, goes viral, then gets out of control.

Jimmy Lemke, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, thought it would be fun to organize a block party and generate some spirit among the 29,000 students who attend the urban campus. So he tentatively arranged the Sept. 20 gathering and announced the details on Facebook. That was in the spring.

By summer the number of people interested in showing up had approached 5,000, setting off alarms with neighbors and campus officials, according to the story at jsonline.com, the Web site of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. They feared the sort of drunken riot that has occurred elsewhere, including one attracting more than 10,000 people called the Mifflin Street Block Party, held near the UW-Madison campus.

Hearing reports that the local SWAT team might be called and that he might be expelled for encouraging the event, Lemke has tried for the last month to dissuade those who insist on showing up. We'll see if he succeeds.

It just goes to show how powerful word of mouth and social networking have become. And how quickly things can go awry.

(Flickr Photo credit: "Spinning Out of Control" by ortizmj12)

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Blogging in the Classroom: “Can I Say That?”

As a journalism instructor at a public college, I consider everything I say in class “on the record.” Whatever I say in class should be open to public scrutiny, and not just by the students who pay to take my class.

Now that we’re into the age of blogging, who knows where my name and comments might show up. That’s why it’s fascinating to read the story posted by Mark Glaser on MediaShift, which follows up an article about social media and journalism by New York University student Alana Taylor.

Glaser discusses the tension that followed Taylor’s criticism of her NYU professor, who she thought was behind the times in teaching the students about new media. Glaser then went on to explore the nature of blogging and free speech in the classroom. His story has generated two dozen additional comments (as of 3:30 p.m. PST Thursday, Sept. 18), many of them insightful, others inane.

Among the messages this makes clear is the changing nature of communications and the responsibility we have in higher education to share and model behavior for our students. We can’t expect to ruminate on the First Amendment, free speech and freedom of the press and in the next sentence tell student journalists “you can’t report that.”

I can’t wait to share this discussion with my classes this fall, and brace myself for whatever they choose to share on their own blogs.

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Check Out the Commuter Online

If you haven't already done so, take at look at the Commuter online. The Commuter is the student newspaper at Linn-Benton Community College.

This summer a group of five students -- Greg Dewar, Lydia Elliott, Brandon Goldner, MaryAnne Turner and Elliott Duke -- took a blank shell and transformed it into a colorful, provocative, newsy and opinionated online site.

As the start of fall classes nears, the students are looking forward to more fully developing this experimental site, including adding their own news videos. So, stay tuned.

(Photo credit: Oregon Country Fair by Greg Dewar)

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Blogs Worth Checking Out

Now that you’ve started your own blog, why not take a look at some others that are worth reading regularly.

Here are some suggestions:

Mindy McAdams, a journalism professor at the University of Florida. The focus of her site is online journalism, and features a lively discussion of journalism in the news on a daily basis. For example, she featured coverage of the Republican and Democratic conventions and how photojournalists are creatively using the Internet to display their work. (If you want to see a good example of what students are doing, see Alana Taylor's blog, which earned a mention from Mindy.)

Bright Green blog by Eoin O’Carroll of the Christian Science Monitor. As the blurb says: “A future of poisoned oceans, withered crops, and irate polar bears is nobody's idea of a good time. It's clear to anyone who is paying attention that our civilization is due for an upgrade. Bright Green covers the news, ideas, opinions, and trends littering the road to an environmentally sustainable future.”

Theresa Hogue’s blog in the Corvallis Gazette-Times. Theresa’s topics range from pop culture to politics, and she almost always has at least one observation that will make you laugh out loud. Not to mention lots of cool photos and video clips. For diehard fans of the OSU Beavers, the GT also is home to informative blogs by Cliff Kirkpatrick and Brooks Hatch.

The Daily Score, presented by the Sightline Institute in Seattle. Here's a place to find interesting, informed and provocative discussions on topics such as energy, growth, pollution, traffic and other concerns of daily living in the Northwest and beyond. (In the interest of self-disclosure, know that I do occasional online editing for Sightline and didn't even blink on this shameless plug for the good of the order.)

Look for additions to this list from time to time…

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Where Does Obscenity End and Art Begin?

What separates free speech from obscenity? When does government have the right to prosecute an American for exercising her First Amendment right to freedom of speech?

Nationally syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. revived the debate for readers of the Oregonian, which published his column Sept. 1 under the headline "A fine line between art and obscenity."

In his column, Pitts writes about Karen Fletcher, 56, a Pennsylvania woman who was sentenced to six months of house arrest, probation and a $1,000 fine after writing about rape, torture and the murder of children. However, her online stories were fiction, which she said she wrote as a way to cope with sexual abuse she suffered as a child. She was prosecuted under federal obscenity laws.

As Pitts notes: "... You have a woman doing a repellent thing with no discernible social value. By all available evidence, Fletcher's imagination is a garbage barge ripening under the sun. The world of arts and letters -- the world, period -- is not diminished by the loss of her work.

"On the other hand, you have a writer prosecuted -- in America! -- for something she wrote. That demands a ruminative pause if not, indeed, a full stop."

Later, Pitts poses the question: If offensiveness is reason enough to restrict free expression, then what protects the work of writers such as Stephen King ("Pet Sematary") or Vladimir Nabokov ("Lolita")?

"What is the line where obscenity ends and art begins? And who gets to say?" In the end, Pitts writes that he's not ready to trust government to decide.

This example is a great conversation starter when students and others consider the First Amendment and the freedoms it grants in our democratic society. It mirrors a discussion question tackled by students in JN201-Media and Society: Some people believe the First Amendment grants individuals and the media too much freedom of expression, what do you think?

It's often surprising how students first react to this question, and the lively discussion that ensues. I'm encouraged by the thoughtful consideration of this question by students, and the range of the debate as they consider free expression in an increasingly complex and often divided society.

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