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Posts by George Altshuler

Jan 22

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Life Skills: Lean Forward And Participate In The News

This post is part of the “Life Skills” series by former MiddBlog editors.

Creative Commons / Jessamyn

My two previous posts addressed the problem of keeping up with the news from a traditional perspective.  I described what to look for in the news and how to get the news to come to you.

If you only do what I describe in my first two posts, you’re engaging with the news in a way that is fundamentally similar to the way people have consumed news for centuries — you’re literally and figuratively sitting back and receiving information.

But this is the digital era and the Internet allows people to lean forward and participate. As citizens, we can now be active in analyzing, distributing and reporting the news.

This doesn’t mean starting a blog if you don’t want one.  And it doesn’t mean always aspiring for the standards of professional journalism if you decide to produce stories.

Instead, it’s important that we overcome the belief that there is a theatrical fourth wall separating producers and consumers of news.  This means participating in news decimation and creation as you consume it.

Recommend while you read  

The newspaper industry used to be based on bundling together content.  Newspaper front pages organized the day’s stories and all the paper’s content was held together by a rubber band.

Today, one of the many reasons the newspaper industry’s financial model is falling apart is the news has been unbundled.  Stories are viewed haphazardly online and there is no easy way to sell all of a newspaper’s content as one product. Read more

Jan 15

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Life Skills: Keeping Up With The News

This post is part of the “Life Skills” series by former MiddBlog editors. 

Creative Commons / Jessamyn

In my previous post on being an active consumer of the news, I discussed how to assemble the sources one needs for a media mix that will keep you informed.  In this post, I’ll  provide advice for keeping up with these sources.

Make Twitter work for you

There are a lot of reasons people stay away from Twitter.  People see it as being too turbo, too nerdy, too much of an obligation for their careers or too superficial.  Twitter may not be for everyone, but I believe most people can find a way to make Twitter work for them.  The key is to assemble a list of followers you find compelling and to think of Twitter as a tool for keeping up with your interests and for sharing.  Twitter can easily become a natural extension of one’s interests and one’s desire to share.

Creative Commons / Matt Hamm

If you’re new to Twitter, create an account and find users to follow.  When looking for feeds, I recommend keeping in mind the Media Mix I suggested: you want a cross-section of news sources ranging from the hyperlocal to the international.  Also, one of the great things about Twitter is that you can follow people and organizations that you’re interested in without getting information through a filter.  If you want the latest on Tebow, go straight to the source.

As you choose whom to follow, it’s important that you assemble a feed you’ll find compelling going forward.  Especially if you’re just starting out, be wary of accounts that are too prolific and don’t double up on accounts that essentially do the same thing.  This means not following too many sources for breaking news, for example.  To keep your feed organized, make lists that create new streams with a combination of accounts you chose, including accounts you don’t follow.  You can also subscribe to other users’ lists.

Many users like to download applications that run Twitter on their computers and mobile devices.  There are many options out there, but the applications made by Twitter itself work quite well.

Finally, Twitter is also about leaning forward and interacting with other users (more on this in my post next week). This friendly introduction to Twitter includes a glossary and will help you get started. Read more

Jan 8

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Life Skills: Developing Your Media Mix

Read all “Life Skills” posts.

This post is by George Altshuler ’11. George, a former lead editor of MiddBlog, just finished an internship with Tikkun magazine in Berkeley, Ca. He’s now living in San Francisco and teaching English at San Quentin State Prison.

Creative Commons / B.K. Dewey

The cliché you hear the most about our demographic’s news consumption is that we get all our news from The Daily Show.  Just to clear up any potential inter-generational confusion: this cliché is most often employed as a genial criticism by people who think we should get serious every morning with our coffee and a New York Times dead-tree edition.

Contrary to the criticism in this cliché, however, most people in our demographic care about the news and do follow it.  But we also understand that we live in an era in which the Daily Show is a good source for news and the paper New York Times is increasingly obsolete (unless you can wrestle one way in Proctor).  In this era, the news doesn’t literally arrive on one’s doorstep, and it’s important to be proactive about finding ways to follow the news.

One starting point for following the news in this digital age is to understand how this era of turbulence for journalism actually makes this a great time to be a consumer of news.  The decline of traditional media (newspapers have lost half their revenue in the past five years) and the advent of new technologies have opened the door to a myriad new news sources and tools for distributing the news.  And, for now at least, traditional journalism still exists. The key to being a good news consumer is learning to take advantage of all that is being offered to us.

In this first of three posts on keeping up with the news, I’ll provide suggestions for assembling your Media Mix — the different types of sources you’l need to successfully follow the news:

  •  It’s good to have at least one source that works like the front page of a major newspaper by assigning importance to stories and exposing you to important stories you may not have otherwise found. Traditional news websites like The New York Times, Reuters, and The Washington Post work well in this role.  Aggregators like Google News and Memeorandum that use algorithms to find and feature the internet’s most popular stories are another option. Read more

Nov 1

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‘Picking up Butch’ On ESPN Tuesday Night

Click on this image for a short preview of the segment

ESPN’s show E:60 will run a segment on the 50th anniversary of the tradition of bringing Butch Varno, a local man with cerebral palsy, to basketball and football games. Basketball players give him a ride to football games and football players perform the opposite favor.

Middlebury’s best sports fan has also earned recognition in various other media outlets, including Sports Illustrated (during that magazine’s best days, if I may say so myself).

Tune in to ESPN at 7 p.m. Tuesday night to watch the segment.

Update: You can watch the segment in its entirety here, and let me say these 12 minutes are absolutely worth your time.

Oct 25

2 Comments

I’m Out.

I’m pretty sure Wednesday at Middlebury College will be a day for a collective sigh of relief.  The Middlebury Open Queer Alliance (MOQA) is spearheading a community-wide “I’m Out” day Wednesday. From their website:

The idea for Midd Out Day is to have everyone participate communally in an event that allows each individual to assert that they are comfortable with their own unique identity. Though the phrase “Coming out” is often referred to within the narrative of sexual orientation, our hope is that we can broaden the context in which this statement can be used. By being ‘OUT’ on Oct 27 individuals have the opportunity to recognize that they have many unique identities.

… With this in mind we encourage everyone who wants to join the movement to wear a T-shirt with “OUT” on the chest on Wednesday Oct 27. We are going to be making the shirts on Proctor terrace from Sunday Oct 24 to Wednesday Oct 27, and would love it if you would come and join us! We will provide the T-shirts, the spray paint, and the music to inspire you- all you need to do is come and you can create your own OUT T-shirt. You may also feel free to bring a shirt you already own and would like to spray paint.

MOQA members have told me that they’re happily running out of shirts, but thanks to sponsorship from all five commons and the Dean of the college, they’ll have some more available tomorrow between 12 and 2 on Proctor terrace.

So stop by and paint either your own shirt or they’ll provide one for you.  And don’t forget to wear your shirt Wednesday.

Finally, I’m proud to say that this blog is now read by an audience outside of the immediate Middlebury College community.  I think this idea of everyone being “out” for a day can and should spread.

I believe everyone should be “out” as someone who respects themself and others regardless of their physical body or their “gender” (the way they assign meaning to their bodies).  As long as people are respecting themselves and others, people have the prerogative to interpret their bodies any way they want.

I also believe everyone should be “out” as a respectful person regardless of where they come from or what they look like.  I think it would be amazing if the t-shirts people at Middlebury will wear Wednesday spring up elsewhere.

Say what you want about “queer theory,” but we are all human beings, and we should all be “out” as tolerant people to ourselves and others.

The one qualification I would offer in this is that being “out” should not belittle how hard it can be to “come out” as a homosexual or whatever else.  If you need support, I hope you can take solace in how very often, it gets better.

 

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