I know I’m not the only one who’s thought they had a great idea for a TV show. Well Michael Rosenblum had an idea and shot it. Granted he somehow got access to the TLC executives to make his pitch…still its a nice post on how “Trauma, Life in the ER” came to be. Here’s the post!

My latest story on the hot debate over what to call the fizzy drink.

Watch this BBC special about “The Most Hated Family in America.” Note: This is part one of seven also as the youtube page says, “Warning: this video contains offensive attitudes from homophobic nutcases!”

A must watch…

A lot of people have asked me about my thoughts on the Neo-Nazi march taking place in Columbia this weekend. My thoughts a best summed up by the Dvar Torah that I am giving tonight at Hillel. A copy of the Dvar Torah is after the jump. Also if you are interested in pledging money to your favorite organization promiting diversity and acceptance click here.
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This great YouTube video from KSU is a neat way of showing what Web 2.0 is. Take a look…over a million other people have.

A couple days ago Lucus Grindley posted a nice letter ‘Dear editor, anit-gay slur isn’t quotable.’ His point was that the f-word should not be printed in stories. It is just as offensive as the n-word. The story that ran in most papers about the “Grey’s Anatomy” situation included the word (New York Times excluded).

On of the top stories on ABCNews.com today is “The Other ‘F-Word’: When It Comes to Reporting on Hate Speech, All Slurs are Not Treated Equal.” I was delighted to see that Laura Coverson with ABCNews.com had picked up on the story. It would appear that she may have even read Grindley’s post (She uses a lot of the same examples). In her story she quotes a representative of NLGJA questioning if the word is necessary to tell the story. Most of the time in her story instead of spelling out the word, she wrote “f-word” or “f – t.” Yet, twice in her story she spells out the word. Why? She herself even noted that “it’s considered hate speech when used to describe a homosexual.” (We’ll have to work on not using the term homosexual at a latter date). If it’s hate speech, why publish it?

While I think (or at least hope) we all can agree that putting out information that Obama may have gone to a terrorist training camp without verifying it is probably not the best bet, I am left wondering how much weight we can give the internet as a source. I think it would be very foolish for any media outlet to not use the internet as a source. While some blogs might have a tendency to sensationalize stories and rumors, sometimes there is some truth to them. I am afraid that this situation will steer newsrooms away from using blogs or the internet as a source at all. I think it is important to point back to the Foley scandal that broke because of tips on the internet and blog posts made by journalists. We couldn’t substantiate a lot of the claims being made, but by putting the information out there, more information began flowing. So yes the internet is a good source but it clearly shouldn’t be your only source.

I’ll be adding more soon. Be sure to check back. Check out my old blog at MizzouNYC.WordPress.com.