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Public Presentation of JOUR 492 Course Work at the Eclipse Company Store

  • Posted by Bernhard Debatin on 06/8/2009
  • tags: advertising, broadcast, editorial, etc, htc, local, magazine, online, PR, scripps notes

Localizing Environmental and Science Journalism in Southeast Ohio

On Thursday, June 11, from 1:00 to 5:00, the class "Environmental and Science Journalism" will present articles that were produced as final projects during this quarter, focusing on the effects of coal industry in Southeast Ohio. This public event, to which OU members and residents from the local communities are invited, will take place at the newly renovated Eclipse Company Store in The Plains (view map here). For an overview of the program, see here.

The event will kick off at 1:00 PM with an introduction and overview by Bernhard Debatin, on the abyss of time and the beauty of algae, followed by Ann Alquist and Susie Shutts, who will talk about abandoned Mines and various acid mine drainage abatement programs. Then, Amy Nordrum and Joe Brehm will present their work on clean coal and the controverial planned coal power plants in Meigs County. The first part will be concluded with Josh Spiert’s and Megan Moseley’s project on coal mine subsidences and relocation of residents.

The coffee break from 2:45 to 3:15 will provide an opportunity for informal conversations and for trying some fruits and local pastry. The second part will then start with a walk through the Dysart Woods by Michelle Shaw and Meredith Barnett. Air pollution in Southeast Ohio and the effects of mercury is the topic Sarah Watson and Emily Hanlon are presenting. Jessica Blakely and Katherine Bercik will then talk about the use of bottom coal ash for skid control in winter and whether the toxins in coal ash pose a health risk. The second part will be concluded with Mary Nally’s and Leah Crone-Magyar’s contribution on agriculture in Southeast Ohio: "You Can’t Eat a Lump of Coal."

A New Course Model

This course on Environmental and Science Journalism is a new, experimental class that combines elements of learning communities with traditional approaches to teaching. The class was a mix of conventional seminar meetings, three workshops with experts, and four field trips to various locations related to our coal mining history. The course was supported by an Ohio University 1804 grant, which made the expert workshops and field trips possible.

Another remarkable element of this class was also the website, a combination of a blog and of static pages with background information. In addition to response papers on their own blogs, students contributed frequently to the course blog at http://esj09.wordpress.com. These contributions were partly course assignments, such as seminar minutes or reports from field trips, and partly voluntary contributions, motivated by the interest in sharing important information on environmental or science issues.

Program for the Presentations

Location: Eclipse Company Store

Time: June 11, 1:00-5:00 PM

1:00 - 2:45 Part I

1. Bernhard Debatin (Introduction: The Abyss of Time and the Beauty of Algae)

2. Ann Alquist/Susie Shutts (Abandoned Mines and Acid Mine Drainage Abatement Programs)

3. Amy Nordrum/Joe Brehm (Clean Coal and the New Coal Power Plants in Meigs County)

4. Josh Spiert/Megan Moseley (Mine Subsidences and Relocation of Residents)

2:45 - 3:15 Coffee Break

3:15 - 5:00 Part II

5. Michelle Shaw/Meredith Barnett (The Dysart Woods: A Walk Among Giants)

6. Sarah Watson/Emily Hanlon (Air Pollution in Southeast Ohio: Mercury and Other Problems)

7. Jessica Blakely/Katherine Bercik (Bottom Coal Ash for Skid Control: Cheap and Risky?)

8. Mary Nally/Leah Crone-Magyary (You Can’t Eat a Lump of Coal: Agriculture in SE Ohio)

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Quote of the day

  • Posted by Bernhard Debatin on 06/5/2009
  • tags: , ethics, htc

"There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground."

(President Obama, Cairo Speech 6-4-09)

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The Story of Stuff

  • Posted by Bernhard Debatin on 04/5/2009
  • tags: htc, online

This is a blog post I wrote for my new Spring ’09 seminar Localizing Environmental and Science Journalism (JOUR 492/792). The original blog post was published at http://esj09.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/the-story-of-stuff/. The reviewed video, The Story of Stuff, is a great example for unconventional, advocacy-oriented science and environmental writing/multimedia producing.

Last Fall, when our hand mixer broke after only two or three years of usage, my the eight-year old son had a theory: "This," he maintained, "is because the little cogs that drive the beaters weren’t made of durable material." So, we got out screwdrivers and took the thing apart. If it’s broken, we might at least have some fun with it, I thought. Once we had peeled the electric motor out of its shell, we discovered the driveshaft with a little metal gearwheel at the end that was connected to the two bigger cogs for the beaters. And sure enough, these cogs were made of soft plastic and their teeth had worn off almost completely. This was the day when I introduced my son to the concept of purposeful obsolescence: Products are no longer made for durability but for short-cycled replacement; either because they simply cease to function properly (planned obsolescence), or because they are falling out of fashion (perceived obsolescence).

Planned and Perceived Obsolescence

Planned and perceived obsolescence are at the heart of our throw-away consumer society. They drive the ever-accelerating process of continuously replacing one short-lived commodity with the next one. The Story of Stuff, written and narrated by Annie Leonard, explains how we produce, use, and discard goods in our highly technicized and globalized capitalist society. In a span of 20 minutes, this fascinating animated video gives a succinct overview of this process, its limitations, and how its evolution over time.

As members of today’s society, we are first and foremost consumers. And as consumers, we are mostly concerned with buying, using, and discarding stuff. Historically seen, this is a relatively recent phenomenon, not older than 80 years. As the Story of Stuff emphasizes, our society’s shift toward a consumer society happened particularly after World War II. Goods were now intentionally produced for short-term consumption -- made to break -- and no longer for durability, based on the idea that continuous economic growth can only happen if products get discarded at the same rate as new ones are coming on the market. And because things don’t break fast enough for demand to keep up with supply, perceived obsolescence was introduced: fast changing fashion cycles that render a product obsolete and worthless, even if it is still working.

However, this also required the act of shopping to become intrinsically valuable. The video shows that shopping, together with watching TV, has indeed become Americans’ favorite pastime. It has become a ritualized action that ensures that we "fit in" socially and that we can fulfill (or at least imagine fulfilling) our artificial needs created by the advertising industry: their ritually repeated promise that buying new stuff and getting rid of old stuff will make us happier. Ritualized consumption is thus built upon the paradox that we have to buy ever more and keep up with the latest fashion, only to realize each time we buy something new that it became obsolete the moment we bought it. Unsurprisingly, the national happiness index has been declining continuously since the 1950, when -- as Annie Leonard explains -- "consumption mania" took off.

Ritualized consumption is thus the driving force behind the reckless exploitation and pollution of natural and human resources. It is also the most visible part of the overall process, while extraction, production, and disposal are hidden from view. The Story of Stuff explains that it is a linear and finite process with many limitations that come at a heavy price, although many of these costs, just as most of the process itself, are hidden. They remain invisible and usually only reveal themselves at a later point in the form of damage to the environment, our health, or society at large. These are the hidden costs of a capitalist consumer society.

Externalization

The Story of Stuff makes very clear that the hidden costs of our society are not coincidental. Rather, they are a result and expression of a basic and systematic mechanism that is applied to all steps of the process: the mechanism of externalization, which is at work whenever costs are shifted from the system where they originate to the system’s environment.

I believe the concept of externalization is crucial to understanding what’s wrong with our society and therefore deserves special attention. In economics, externalization has long been known as a "socio-economical term describing how a business maximizes its profits by off loading indirect costs and forcing negative effects to a third party." It includes a variety of different strategies, such as outsourcing, downsizing, environmental pollution, resource depletion, climate change, exploitation of labor, and damage to people’s health and well-being.

The Story of Stuff demonstrates this vividly with the example of a $4.99 radio that can only be sold at that low price if everybody along the way, from extraction of the raw materials and production of the different parts to transportation and assembly, pays for it with their resources, work, health, and poverty.

Cost externalization occurs anytime a company makes money while damaging the environment or another element of the public interest (e.g., human rights, public health and safety, the dignity of employees or the welfare of our communities).

Robert C. Hinkley: Profits vs. Public Interest. Published on Tuesday, June 11, 2002 in the Miami Herald. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0611-01.htm

From a microeconomic and short-term perspective, cost externalization is entirely rational behavior. It follows the simple logic that you want to reduce your overall costs as much as possible so that you can maintain or improve your profit margin. However, from a macroeconomic and long-term perspective, externalization has mostly negative consequences because the costs do not just magically disappear when they are externalized. Rather, they accumulate and lead to devastating consequences once a critical point is passed. This is known as the "tragedy of the commons" (Hardin, 1968). The sum of individually pursued benefits does not, as Adam Smith’s invisible hand metaphor assumed, result in an increased common good but in the ruin of the commons. Sooner or later the public and/or third parties have to pay for it. Typical examples are:

The concept of externalization is also of particular importance in the discussion about fossil fuels and other energy resources. In their brief article Some Simple Arguments about Cost Externalization and its Relevance to the Price of Fusion Energy, R. Budney and R. Winfree state that "is widely agreed that the environmental costs of fossil fuel use are high. Because these costs aren’t included in the market price, and furthermore because many governments subsidize fossil fuel production, fossil fuels seem less expensive than they really are." The same argument can be made for nuclear power, which recently has seen a (self-declared) "renaissance." However, nuclear power plants can operate at an economically competitive level only with massive government subsidies, particularly for building plants and for nuclear waste disposal -- a nightmare in terms of both the magnitude of costs and long-term waste management.

The Research Behind the Story of Stuff

The Story of Stuff is a great example for unconventional, advocacy-oriented science and environmental writing/multimedia producing. It is almost too dense; it’s filled to the brim with facts, concepts, and interesting stories. Once you have watched it, you want to watch it again; too many details may have escaped your attention. However, the visual realization of the video, using relatively simple stick-figures and graphics, does a great job in holding the viewer’s attention. Together with the narration, the visuals help greatly in reconstructing the story of stuff step by step. It is clear that much thought has gone into the production and realization of this video. This is not surprising because the site was designed and produced by Free Range Studios, a non-profit advocacy agency known for clever web campaigns such as "The Meatrix and "Grocery Store Wars."

It is also worth exploring the website of the Story of Stuff. Particularly the Resources page offers a wealth of information and it also shows the research that went into the video: the Annotated Script encompasses the complete text of the narration with footnotes that show exactly how the video’s far-reaching claims are supported. The Fact Sheet (PDF) pulls together the 15 most important facts from the video, again with footnotes that show the origin of these facts. The seven page long Glossary provides definitions and explanations for important keywords, such as byproduct, conscious consuming, finite planet, maquiladora, or supertoxics. The Resource page also includes a valuable Bibliography with recommended reading, organized by the main steps shown in the video (extraction -- production -- distribution -- consumption -- disposal -- solutions). Finally, it also provides a list of NGOs and the 10-step tip sheet "Another Way" for taking action.

All in all, the Story of Stuff is a well done, highly engaging, and stimulating think piece. As always, there is certainly more that could have been included. The globalization issue, for instance, is touched on but not developed systematically. Similarly, the video shows clearly that consumerism is an act of choice, not of nature, but it fails to deal with the difficult question of how to change things beyond the level of individual action. Not that I would have a good answer, either. I hope my son does because he’ll inherit all the problems we are producing today with our wasteful lifestyle.

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College Green -- A New Online Magazine Is Taking Off

  • Posted by Bernhard Debatin on 03/11/2009
  • tags: editing, htc, magazine, online

Looking for an opportunity to write about the environment?

College Green is an exciting new online publication that will cover the scientific, economic, and cultural aspects of environmentalism in southeastern Ohio.

If you are interested in becoming involved with this student organization, there will be an information session at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, March 11, at Scripps 111.

Leadership and editing opportunities are also available. For additional information and for application information, please contact Katherine Bercik at collegegreen.editor@gmail.com

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The Future of Journalism: Newspaper Die-off and the Opportunities of the Crisis

  • Posted by Bernhard Debatin on 02/26/2009
  • tags: etc, htc, online

Note: This is a condensed draft for a longer article on the future of journalism. It grew out of discussion at our school, particularly the Friday Colloquium. Critique and suggestions are welcome.

We all know that the newspaper industry is not doing too well. Employment figures and advertising revenues don’t look too encouraging. Newspapers are dying or, like the Christian Science Monitor, migrating onto the Web. But the widespread doom-and-gloom reaction might not be the only way to understand this process.

Let’s take a look at some numbers.

According to the ASNE (American Society of Newspaper Editors) Newsroom Employment Census, the year 2008 is the first time since 1985 that the total number of newspaper employees has fallen under 53,000 (see Table A). And we have not yet seen the impact of the current economic crisis on that number.

Table C of the same study shows that the vast majority of job losses from 2007 to 2008 (both in percent and absolute numbers) happened in the category reporters (-1,489 = 6.1% of the 2007 reporters), followed by copy-/layout-editors (-495 = 4.4% of the 2007 copy-editors), then photographers (-192 = 3.3% of the ’07 photographers) and finally supervisors (-271 = 1.9% of the ’07 supervisors).

The total number of lost jobs from ’07 to ’08 was 2,447 (which is 4.45% of the ’07 total). And note that the overall number of jobs in the US (the so-called civilian labor force) hardly changed from 2007 to 2008.

So, this is not looking too good.

The pie is getting smaller. Particularly larger newspapers are in trouble and some of them have gone under. The watchblog Newspaper Death Watch notes that since March 2007, the following US metropolitan dailies have died:

Baltimore Examiner, Kentucky Post, Cincinnati Post, King County Journal, Union City Register-Tribune, Capital Times, Halifax Daily News, Albuquerque Tribune, South Idaho Press, San Juan Star...

Other newspaper decline watchblogs, such as Reflections of a Newsosaur, Media Shift, and The Demise of Print make similar observations.

This is mirrored in the ad market: According to the Newspaper Association of America, advertising revenues of newspapers have declined dramatically by "18.1 percent (third quarter 2008), 15.1 percent (second quarter 2008) and 12.8 percent (first quarter 2008)" (quoted in NNA).

However, as my colleague Bill Reader pointed out in an e-mail to me, this is mostly true for the bigger newspapers, not for local and community newspapers. Indeed, the National Newspaper Association (NNA) reports that

community newspapers are not experiencing the massive ad revenue declines that are being felt by some others in the industry nor are they experiencing massive layoffs.

Data collected in 2008 showed a 1.7 percent decline in advertising for the third quarter, 2.4 percent in the second quarter and 2.7 percent in the first quarter (all were measured against the same reporting period from the prior year).

This is good news.

Or at least not as bad as the news about the larger papers. Small town and community newspapers are less affected by the die-off than the big ones. This is, in part, related to the fact that local news is just not as easily available on the Internet as national and international news. But it might also be a delayed-reaction issue. We don’t know if the trend is just taking longer to trickle down onto the local level. It is also noteworthy that the long-term trend of ad revenues (1990 - 2007) for local papers does not look any better than that of national news (see Newspaper Next 2.0: Making the Leap Beyond ’Newspaper Companies’, p. 95, Figure 2).

It seems likely that the increasing migration of local newspapers to the Internet will ultimately lead to similar cuts in revenues and employment, and a higher dependence on citizen and lay journalists who contribute to their local newspaper via blog-based RSS-feed and other such technology.

Perhaps we’re employing the wrong metaphors.

Maybe this is not the big die-off. Do caterpillars die? Obviously, we don’t know whether we are going to see moths or butterflies, nor do we know how long they will live. But looking at the decline of the newspaper business as a transition, rather than as an extinction, might open up new perspectives. The transformation of the media will necessitate a transformation of the self-concept and the profile of journalism. The transformation is also an opportunity to ask questions about the future role of newspapers and advertisers, and about alternative models for financing the news business.

Future journalists should make sure they are well prepared for a multi- and crossmedia production that will revolve around the online world. They will also need to be prepared to make a difference in an environment that has very low publication thresholds, so that anybody with access to the Internet can publish. The difference lies in the combination of

  • - the usefulness of the information -- which implies knowing the needs of the audience as citizens and members of different communities

  • - the competence of the journalist -- as their ability to translate complex issues into understandable common language

  • - the ability to create meaningful contexts -- transforming mere facts into rich and appropriately weighted information

  • - the ethical orientation of the journalist -- a necessary condition for truthful, reliable, accurate, transparent and critical reporting

The information flood has made filtering more important than ever before, but journalists no longer exclusively hold the gatekeeping privilege. Today’s journalists must also be gatewatchers, interpreters, and sense-makers. They need to assume the role of meta-filters to help us through the jungle of information that is partly raw and fragmented, partly pre-filtered, and partly overly-complex.

Journalists will also increasingly be expected to listen to their audiences and learn from them, while offering them venues of communication. Journalists will be expected to guide and educate citizens about how to use the advanced networked media of mass communication as both critical consumers and potential producers.

Journalism schools of the future will need to put a stronger emphasis on educating all-around journalists who are able to assume the roles outlined above. We need to educate journalists who are generalists and who, at the same time, are able to communicate across the many different expert and lay cultures. This means that the profile of the journalistic profession will actually be more demanding than in the past. It is no longer sufficient to produce good "worker bee" journalists. Sure, there will be the McDonald’s jobs, flipping info-burgers -- shoveling existing content from one medium to another -- but highly skilled, competent, critical and versatile journalists who engage with their audience will become increasingly important. Or, as Dan Gilmore said in Journalism Education’s Broader, Deeper Mission for the PBS Media Shift Idea Lab:

Journalism educators should be in the vanguard of an absolutely essential shift for society at large: helping our students, and people in our larger communities, to navigate and manage the myriad information streams of a media-saturated world.

We need to help them understand why they need to become activists as consumers -- by taking more responsibility for the quality of what they consume, in large part by becoming more critical thinkers. And they need to understand their emerging role as creators of media.

What is going to happen to newspapers?

First of all, newspapers will need to develop strategies of how they can derive synergistic energies from a smart combination of online and print. They need to try to "become a new kind of local information and connection utility" because "this is a time of huge opportunity in local markets -- a time when the new local audiences and business models of the 21st century are being formed or soon will be," as the American Press Institute’s Newspaper Next 2.0 Transformation Report Making the Leap Beyond ’Newspaper Companies’ states (p. 5).

Second, a lot in the newspaper market will depend on if and how new business models will emerge that use the Internet as their main source of revenue. In fact, it all depends on how much companies will be able to maximize their online revenue:

The good news: Local online advertising spending will skyrocket in the next five years. The bad news: Traditional media will be hit hard. To capture their share of the explosive growth, newspaper companies must push aggressively into new sales structures and ad technologies and new online solutions for key verticals.

(Newspaper Next 2.0: Making the Leap Beyond ’Newspaper Companies’, p. 92)

It would seem that the move of news media toward the Web will pull advertisers toward that medium, too. The problem is, however, that on the Internet, the Emperor has no clothes: The advertising industry (in concert with the conventional media) used to apply the cluster bomb principle -- the more and the broader, the better -- without knowing much about the audience’s reaction to this constant stream of ads. This pretend attitude can no longer be maintained in an environment that allows for precise, user-specific behavior monitoring.

The advertisers’ lack of enthusiasm toward Internet advertising is not based on the assumption that the Internet is a suboptimal environment for ads; it is a reflection of the fact that the Internet is too good and too precise. It forces us to recognize what we always knew but were able to ignore in the cruder print and broadcast environment: that people pay little to no attention to ads and that ads hardly ever cause a specific behavior.

The question is, therefore: Will advertisers and their customers knowingly accept that Internet ads are as ineffective as any other type of ads and still pay for them, or will they insist on a result-oriented model that combines the ad with click-through rates and buying decisions? It seems that some German flagship media like SpiegelOnline and Bild have been able to convince their advertisers that the old cluster bomb model is sufficient for the Internet, too. But at the same time, German newspapers are undergoing the same decline as American ones. In analogy to the Waldsterben, people now talk about the Zeitungssterben.

Of course, there is a third solution; micro-targeted and localized advertising, an ideal model for highly interactive media such as the Internet. But this, again, requires a fair amount of strategic planning and a consequent reorientation and reorganization of what used to be called "newspaper."

Alternative support models

Alternatively, public support models could be considered. The French model of direct governmental support (as initiated by President Sarkozy in his Etats généraux de la presse) raises obvious questions of the independence and freedom of such a press.

Foundation-based models, such as the Poynter Institute (St. Petersburg Times), the Scott Trust (Guardian), or ProPublica guarantee excellent and independent journalism but they are singularities and can’t be generalized.

A third model would be the idea of a controlled subsidies model governed by public law, similar to the British or German public broadcast model. Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger stated that "local papers are vital - and must be saved." He proposed a tax-like fee that would be used for a publicly (not governmentally) controlled fund to support independent quality journalism, including newspapers.

These may not be panacea solutions, but they should be considered as the air in the news business is getting thinner.

--

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Spring Course in Environmental and Science Journalism

  • Posted by Bernhard Debatin on 02/26/2009
  • tags: HTC

Yes, it’s true. I will be teaching a new course on Environmental and Science Journalism in Spring.

It’s Jour 492 (call No: 04369, undergraduate) / Jour 792 (call No: 04450, graduate), on Friday, 9:10 AM - 1:00 PM / Scripps Hall 116

It also includes some workshops and field trips that will extend into the afternoon.

Here’s a description:

LOCALIZING Environmental and Science Journalism is a course that focuses on local issues, particularly the effects of coal mining, and on the sciences at OU. This means that students have an opportunity to learn in a tangible way and to develop a sense of place and interrelationships. At the same time, this will be a good training ground for non-fiction narrative journalistic writing.

ENVIRONMENTAL AND SCIENCE journalism is increasingly important in our techno-scientific world. It requires a high level of technical and scientific understanding and the ability to translate complex issues into everyday language without oversimplifying.

JOURNALISM means informing and educating the public. Environmental and science journalism is about the interrelation of science, ecology, and risks. It requires unveiling the hidden costs and consequences of techno-scientific action. This implies giving up the ideological fiction of indifferent objectivity that tells “both sides” of the story regardless of the validity of their truth claims.

A NEW, balanced, knowledgeable, and nuanced approach to reporting is needed: a blend of basic ethical principles -- such as informed citizenship, sustainability, and social justice -- with a weight-of-evidence approach and a critical, highly educated perspective on techno-scientific, social and environmental processes and their risks and unintended consequences.

COURSE members will participate in field trips to get first-hand knowledge of acid mine drainage, abandoned mines, and other environmental issues and locales. In addition, we will conduct workshops with OU faculty, activists, and local citizens, who will serve as both expert sources and potential interviewees.

More information and course website:

https://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~debatin/ESJ/

or talk to me (Scripps Hall 118, 740-593-9808)

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The Future of OU...

  • Posted by Bernhard Debatin on 01/23/2009
  • tags: HTC

... is something I have been concerned about for quite some time. I am a member of the editorial board of the new website FutureOU.org and have recently written a column titled Budget Crisis Is an Opportunity to Redefine Our Priorities.

Check it out!

and, by the way, here’s how The AthensNews reported on the launch of FutureOU.org: FutureOU.org seeks to provide forum for those wishing to better university.

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Living in a Globalized World

  • Posted by Bernhard Debatin on 01/10/2009
  • tags: htc

A couple weeks ago, I heard a fantastic story on NPR’s All Things Considered: Recycling Industry Slows As Consumers Shop Less by Chana Joffe-Walt (December 22, 2008).

The short version of it is that our individual actions as consumers have a direct impact not only on our economy, but also on economies in different countries (in this case, China), which in turn has an impact on our economy, which then also has an impact on our recycling and waste management.

This is a good example of excellent reporting -- making connections that normally remain unperceived, linking individual actions to their unintended consequences, and showing how local stories relate to the broader context in our complicated world.

The bottom line is: As consumers, we can no longer act as if our actions had no consequences; as journalists, we must contextualize our stories and make an extra effort to make the invisible visible.

Listen to the Planet Money report

And if you liked this story, you might also want to listen to A Strange Shortage Illustrates The Global Economy, again by Chana Joffe-Walt (November 15, 2008).

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’A Blue Island in a Sea of Red,’ or, the Power of Images

  • Posted by Bernhard Debatin on 11/15/2008
  • tags: HTC, news, online

During and after the elections, we’ve seen a lot of maps, and most often, they looked like this:

- or like this:

.

And for those, who did not get it from the picture, the title at the bottom reads: Athens County a blue island in a sea of red.

What’s wrong with this picture? Let’s put it this way: If you’d write the premises of this picture as an argument in a text, it would be called a faulty argument, a fallacy. Because you’d state that it is ok to represent the amount of elements in a given space by the size of this space, even though the size of the space has nothing to do with the amount of elements in it.

Complicated? Well, what it means is that we’ve become accustomed to accept a geographic representation of population numbers. If you look at an electoral map of Ohio or the US, you would think that it is almost impossible that the Democrats won the elections. Sure, we all know that population density matters. But the manifest message of all these territorial maps is different.

This is why some people have created population cartograms, in which the sizes of states are rescaled according to their population.

The site techpresident.com has a cool flash animated electoral map that morphes from territorial representation to an accurate electoral vote representation, which at the end looks like this:

.

(watch the animation here)

Mark Newman, a physicist from the University of Michigan, created an even cooler set of cartograms, which keep the overall landmass intact while representing the actual popular and electoral college votes. The popular vote map, for instance, looks like this:

-

Check out his cartograms at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/.

Why is this important? Because it’s a good example for how a particular perspective--in this case geo-territorial representation--creates an implicit argument, and with it: media bias.

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What is HTC anyway, and why are we doing it?

  • Posted by Bernhard Debatin on 10/30/2008
  • tags: HTC

As you may have noticed on the J-school’s front page (see section Scripps News) our HTC freshwoman Taylor Mirfendereski has produced a fabulous video report for CNN on the Honors Tutorial College (HTC).

It can be viewed here:

The piece gives a good overview of this amazing academic opportunity, but it also shows that not everybody may enjoy the challenge and self-motivated learning style that HTC students are expected to bring to the table.

Part of the HTC experience is a stronger focus on the scholarly side of your education. It culminates in an honor’s thesis, written during the senior year. Another part is the ongoing dialogue among students and among students and professors.

Talking about dialogue -- if you’re in the HTC journalism program, don’t forget that we will have our quarterly HTC Journalism meeting on Nov. 6, from 5:00 to 6:30 P.M. in Baker Center 237.

We’ll have pizza and soft drinks, and talk about thesis plans and related issues. Our current seniors will give you a quick rundown of their thesis projects.

We will also watch/discuss some videos on covering the environment and how to make the invisible visible.

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