Yay for social media.

In my last post on this blog, I mentioned several newsworthy topics making the rounds of Facebook, Twitter and such that, as yet, had not been considered newsworthy by more traditional (and still more widely attended) news organizations.  One of these was the NFL’s attempt to establish WHO DAT as a New Orleans Saints trademark.

That was a week ago.  Since then, local and national media have caught up.  Most recently, the “Who owns WHO DAT?” story made it to USA Today.  And, even more recently, to the Wall Street Journal.

So, once again, yay for social media.  That’s where the story began, and that’s where it continues to simmer and sizzle while simultaneously being distributed farther and wider by the likes of the Associated Press.

But, I have to note, not too many of these farther and wider distributions contain much information beyond what the social media mavens first revealed.

The Associated Press/USA Today story, for instance, has a couple of direct quotes from the parties involved, but is otherwise a straightforward retelling of what has already been told.  And, conspicuously missing from both the AP and WSJ articles are some important basics — like exactly what was in the original cease-and-desist letter that NFL lawyers sent Lauren Thom (aka, the new New Orleans cause célèbre, Fleurty Girl). You can read that letter where first I saw and linked it earlier:  here.

Local and prolific tweeters — count @kbeninato and @YatPundit among these — are quick to point to their blogging as ground zero of the WHO DAT story.  And these tweets and blogs remain the best source of the WAT DAT about the WHO DAT.  If you’re really interested in the here and now, for instance, why settle for stale Fleurty Girl sound bites?  Why not subscribe to her live Twitter feed?

And then, if you’re ready, you can think about this:

In parallel with how large corporations like the NFL have obscured the origin and ownership of WHO DAT, national news media — intentionally or not — can obscure the origin and ownership of INFORMATION.  That information — its meaning and value — can’t be owned and trademarked by existing news organizations any more than WHO DAT can be owned and trademarked by the NFL.  If it’s our culture, then it’s also our information:  WE DAT.

Just as the NFL is anxious to sustain profits, news organizations have proven equally anxious to sustain their status and reputations.  Nevertheless, it may well be that the Google-like role of news aggregator — a role demonized by the owner of the Wall Street Journal — is the only real role left mainstream media.

***

For further and related reading, see…

• The recent Peabody award-winning investigation by New Orlean’s WDSU, which originated within the blog of Karen Gadbois, who is now writing for The Lens.
• The second-class citizenship of dot.com reporters covering the New Orleans Saints.
• And, of course, one of the more prominent examples of a commodified cultural icon: the Harley-Davidson corporate tat.

We discussed agenda-setting in CMMNA100 last week.

Agenda-setting is one of several contemporary media effects theories that understand the influence of mass media as subtle, indirect, and, over the long term, quite powerful. The catch-phrase for agenda-setting theory: The media don’t tell us what to think; they tell us what to think about. This happens as a result of media sources, particularly news organizations, presenting basically the same topics of interest — an “agenda” — in which a more diverse (and accurate) view of the world is distorted and transformed.

With agenda-setting in mind, I am as often curious about the stories the news media don’t cover as the stories they do — particularly during large-scale media events such as the recent NFC championship football game in New Orleans. Here, for instance, are three Saints-related stories that might well have deserved more coverage than they received.

1. NFL playoff team revenues.

Yes, there is some coverage and commentary on this, but you have to do a little searching to find it. For instance, look here.

Apparently, the revenue stream for NFL teams during the playoffs is very different from that revenue stream during the regular season. In fact, there may actually be economic incentives for some NFL teams NOT to make the playoffs. How all this is pertinent to the Saints payroll and Tom Benson’s financial future remains unclear, however, because I just couldn’t find anything about it.

2. Who owns WHO DAT?

On the Friday before the NFC championship game, the NFL issued a cease-and-desist order to a local business regarding the use and ownership of the “WHO DAT” phrase. Lauren Thom (Twitter’s @FleurtyGirl) produces and sells a series of Louisiana-themed t-shirts in her Uptown store. Among these t-shirts is a “WHO DAT” issue bearing the phrase in question and delicately embellished with a small gold fleur-de-lis. NFL lawyers sent a letter claiming ownership of “WHO DAT” and the fleur-de-lis image. According to a local blogger, Ms. Thom caved to the requests in this letter and agreed to 1) quit using the offending WHO DAT/fleur-de-lis design, and 2) pay the NFL a 10% cut of the sales of the remaining stock in question.

An interesting story, I thought. But, despite all the rampant rah-rah about the WHO DAT Nation, I saw little to nothing about the WHO DAT Corporation.

3. Late-night calls from Sean.

Mike Freeman of CBSsports.com published a column on Friday before the NFC Championship game in which he described Sean Payton’s (and the Saints’) relationship with the press as bordering on dictatorial. You can read it here. This story, in particular, piqued my interest, since (if at least some of Freeman’s claims were true) there might be pressure on the local media NOT to give this particular story any attention. But, surely, I thought, the column’s inflammatory potential alone would propel it to the top of the local talk shows’ list of ratings-positive topics. But no, I heard nothing.

***

Are these three topics interesting? I think so.

Are they newsworthy? Well, in fact, I don’t make that decision, and, as long as there are substantial entry costs to gathering and distributing the news, neither do you.

When will those entry costs decrease? When will the “news” be as easily and widely gathered and distributed by cell phones and social media as by the current cultural institutions of traditional news networks and brands?

Is it now?

It seems we’re just minutes into the new semester and already the calendar is full! For those who’ll be walking at May graduation, it’s the end. The last hurrah. The final countdown (and other cliches). For the rest of us, it’s the start of an exciting spring.

The Center for the Study of New Orleans, directed by Dr. Leslie Parr, the SMC’s own photojournalism professor, kicks off the semester with the third in its 2009-2010 series with “New Orleans in the ’60s: A Time of Change,” on Wednesday, Jan. 20, at 7 p.m., in Nunemaker Auditorium. Marimar Velez is Dr. Parr’s – and the Center’s – intern. Get out your tie-dyed T-shirts and join the crowd on Wednesday night.

The 2010 Bateman team, following in the very large footprints of the national champion 2009 Bateman team, is working diligently on their campaign on behalf of the U.S. Census. Under the direction of Dr. Cathy Rogers, PRSSA and Bateman adviser and PR sequence head, the team includes Jodi Forte, Dominic Moncada, Kate Gremillion, Marimar Velez and Christine Minero (the account executive).

The Ad Team is back in action, with students in CMMN A314 Advanced Advertising Campaigns creating a campaign for the National Student Advertising Competition, sponsored by the American Advertising Federation. Their client is State Farm. Dr. Yolanda Cal, the advertising sequence head, is the team’s adviser as well as Ad Club adviser.

Students in Writing for Public Relations are working with Puentes New Orleans/LatiNOLA to promote that organization, led by Lucas Diaz, a Loyola alum. The team in PR Cases & Campaigns have taken on Episcopal Community Services as their client, working with Arthur Johnson.

The spring also means that Spring Fiesta is coming soon. The SMC celebrates our outstanding award winners, student media leaders, scholarship recipients and other shining stars at the annual spring outing – literally. It’s usually held outside, in Dixon Court, with lots of food and fun.

So, even though the paint is barely dry on the SMC office walls, we’ve hit the ground running this semester. We know it’ll be a great ride.

(Interested in information on Ad Club or PRSSA? Center for the Study of New Orleans or Spring Fiesta? Want to check out the renovations to the SMC office? Stop by room 332 in the Communications/Music complex and ask for details.)

1. Currently, if you’re on the Loyola campus and wish to use the university wireless network, you need to login.  Here’s the login screen.

Then, whenever you lose the Loyola wireless signal, or need to reboot, or plug-in another laptop to connect to an overhead display, or go off campus and come back again, you need to login again.  This means, during the course of the day, you need to deal with lots of login screens.

If you are on a mobile phone and trying to access the university wireless network, you usually just give up and use your (slower) cellular connection.  So, here’s something I’m looking forward to:  Auto-login for the Loyola wireless network.

2. Currently, LSU is one of three USA universities enrolled in the eduroam initiative.  More common in Europe, eduroam allows students and faculty at participating universities to share a common password and login procedure at each university. I’m looking forward to that.

3. Currently, lots of educational institutions and organizations have open access policies promoting a more egalitarian means of producing and distributing scholarly information.  I’m looking forward to having something like that at Loyola.

4. Currently, some people and places offer free public wireless.  Cities do it; buses and trains do it; even educational institutions do it.  So that’s another thing I’m looking forward to: Loyola doing it.

5. Currently, Loyola promotes two ways to access your Loyola email.  Read all about those two here.  SquirrelMail is the more innovative of the two; it was developed in 1999.  In 2004, Google Mail went public.  Now, lots of people use Gmail.  In case you missed that news, here’s a story from 2007. Universities use Gmail.  Cities use Gmail.  I use Gmail.

One more thing I am looking forward to in 2010: A 2010 Loyola email service.

In my first blog entry, I wrote about getting on the train or getting run over by it. Having spent the last year as a passenger on that train, I’ve been pondering the whole BLOG idea. There’s still something about the word that makes me laugh. But after posting a few dozen entries – and getting a response or three – I’m not lining up to drink the Kool-Aid but I’m definitely more interested in the idea of blogs as a means of communicating with the masses than I was a year ago. I decided to find out more about this brave – or not so brave –  new world.

WHO’S WRITING
A Washington Post article in 2006 said that the 12 million bloggers (at that time) were generally under 30, with only about 15 percent of them making money at it.

Robin Good wrote on his blog in Sept. 2008 that 2/3 of bloggers were men who were generally younger than the women who blogged and not as good at figuring out ways to make blogging pay.

Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere for 2009 says that they’re still mostly male, mostly young, affluent, well educated and are making money – LOTS of it – from their blogs.

Apparently celebrities love to blog, but they’re either too busy (or something) to write their own, so they hire people to do it for them. (They also do this for their Twitter accounts, which begs the question, why bother?)

WHAT THEY’RE WRITING
According to caslon.com, in 2007 researchers for the Oxford English Dictionary claimed that among the 15 most frequently used words in the blogosphere  were such erudite expressions as stupid, me/myself/my, oh, yeah, OK, stuff and nice. Apparently, the ability to write without restriction hasn’t improved our communication skills.

In 2007 blogger Chris Brogan decided to create a Top 100 list of topics he hoped people would write about in their blogs. Some of the more interesting titles:
• Somebody Has to Say It
• How I Find Time to Make Media
• My Mother is On Facebook
• Do Rock Stars Need Social Media Strategies
• Ten Guilty Pleasures

I’ve talked about everything from advertising jingles you can’t forget to innovative new courses in the SMC to events we’ve planned and executed.  I’ve had the chance to salute the efforts of students working on community-based service learning projects; cheered for the national champion Bateman team; complained about bad advertising; wondered about the state of the motion picture industry; bemoaned the lack of readers in today’s society; advocated student internships…and the list goes on. Blogging has given me a platform from which to promote causes I believe in and point fingers at those I don’t.

WHO’S READING
A 2004 blogads.com survey attempted to create a picture of the typical blog reader. He was 30-50 years old and made more than $45,000 a year working in education (student or teacher) or (surprise, surprise) the computer industry.

His magazine reading consisted of the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic, Time, Newsweek and The Economist. (Interesting note: 54 percent of respondents said print magazines were worthless or only somewhat useful as a source of news and opinion.) He spent up to 10 hours a week reading 3-6 blogs a day. Although he considered himself an opinion maker, he didn’t blog himself.  But he did feel that blogs were faster, more honest and gave better perspective than traditional media and offered news not available elsewhere.

As part of the 2007 Blog Reader Project, someone attepted to identify demographically Perez Hilton’s blog readers. Less than 10 percent were under 18, 62 percent were Democrats and 37 percent went to church. Nearly 90 percent were female, and more than 30 percent were likely to comment on the blog.

So what does the blog reader of 2010 look like? It’s hard to say. Data don’t seem to be available. I guess everyone’s too busy blogging. And that includes me.

Here’s to a new year with many topics to choose from and to write about. I don’t have a Top 100 list, so feel free to send me any ideas that you have.

Anonymity can be a good thing.

For instance, I’m a big fan (more so than some of my colleagues) of WikiLeaks, an organization that operates largely on the assumption than certain types of information –- information of public value — will not be revealed unless it is revealed anonymously. Similar assumptions justify the use of shield laws protecting anonymous sources used by journalists. Watergate and the travesties of the Nixon administration, for instance, may never have been revealed without the anonymity of “Deep Throat.”

In 1987, I published a study called, in part, “Anonymity is part of the magic.” In that study, I concluded that online anonymity allowed online actors to more fully explore behavior and activities that were oppressed and suppressed offline. That remains true — and, in general, it remains a good thing. But, sometimes, the oppression and suppression of offline behavior and activities have good cause. And the usefulness of anonymity –- particularly online anonymity –- has some important limits.

Significantly, online anonymity is really only a sort of pseudo-anonymity. Internet protocols require both message senders and message receivers to have a unique address — an IP address –- much more easily made public than kept hidden. When courts (and others) have acted to remove the anonymity of bloggers, for instance, this is easily and quickly accomplished. Website administrators seem more than willing (and able) to remove user anonymity when it benefits them to do so –- yet equally willing to preserve an aura of pseudo-anonymity that attracts users when it benefits them to do that.

Also, let’s be clear about distinctions between anonymity and privacy.

Privacy governs the release of information made unintentionally public; anonymity is about controlling information made intentionally public. While online privacy preserves individuality and innovation, online anonymity often simply serves as a means of avoiding public responsibility.

As a strong proponent of open access, open source, and free information, I am somewhat disheartened to see a growing number of online information sites implement strict user registration and comment moderation policies.  Yet, I must reluctantly admit that it is probably in their readers’ best interests that they do so. Freedom of speech and information certainly includes the freedom to be loud, graphic, and irrelevant –- but not always at the expense of those who wish to be otherwise.

Some people think journalism is about truth.  I think it’s mostly about information.  Once people have information, the truth can take care of itself.  And, though you can certainly have information without truth, it’s very hard to determine what’s true and what’s not true without the proper information to do so.

For instance:  Are the illusions of magicians “true”?

Magicians, of course, would like us to think so.  And, in order to keep us from thinking otherwise, magicians are reluctant to reveal their information — their “secrets.”

Some magicians, however, are less reluctant than others…

When secrets are revealed, the truth becomes less mysterious, but not any less magical.

Currently, there are many circumstances in which we consider information bound by a sort of magician’s creed:  rightfully private and best kept secret.

For instance, how much you make –- your salary — is sometimes considered best kept secret.  If you make too much, after all, you might become the target of your fellow workers’ envy.  If you make too little, you might become embarrassed.

But, whoever is paying your salary has your salary information –- as well as the salary information of your co-workers.  And, with that information, your employer’s ability to negotiate salaries is vastly superior to your own.  In cases like this one, who benefits most from information kept secret?

Like the salary example, there are many other circumstances in which we seem prefer to keep information secret because we fear we might be embarrassed or targeted.  But, in almost all those circumstances, revealing information is more likely to make things better than worse.  The real problem, it seems, is not the information.  The real problem is in those systems –- of government, of laws, of businesses, and of societies –- that, for their own self-serving reasons, penalize the revelation of information.

Are those penalties justified?  Or is the information we continue to protect protected merely for the sake of a dwindling number of magicians who are otherwise unable make us believe that something false is actually something true?

Here’s what’s happening now:  The Google Book Search project is being questioned over “privacy” concerns – not always by the public whose privacy is supposedly threatened, but by a relatively small cadre of lawyers who assume they know best.  Copyright –- and patent — laws are likewise being used to protect the public through forced restrictions on information distribution and use that have resulted, in one case, in a 1.9 million dollar fine levied against a Minnesotan housewife who illegally downloaded music files.  And, while our new President talks about a “free and open” internet, he also is inclined, like presidents before him, to use claims of “national security” to keep secrets.

Are these concerns and restrictions and claims justified?

Well, I can’t really answer that question unless I have the information necessary to do so.

I got to sit in with Dr. Yolanda Cal’s Advertising Campaigns class last week as they worked to develop a strategic campaign for their semester client, New Leaders New Schools. Lots of ideas swirled about the room as the discussion ranged from goals and objectives to target audiences to “the big idea” and how that might be executed. With so much creative energy in the room, I thought about all the exciting advertising that would result from this campaign.

That led me to another thought. If so many good ideas come up in the process of creating advertising, why are there so many bad ads out there? And there are plenty. As a VP at Young and Rubicam once remarked, about 90 percent of all advertising is bad.

But is that a good thing? Randall Rothenberg believes bad advertising plays an important role in American society. In a 2005 article in Advertising Age, he said, “Truly insipid advertising – the kind that causes eyes to roll, heads to nod and palms to slap disbelieving foreheads – is disappearing from the U.S. landscape, a victim of increasingly clever copywriters, imaginative graphic designers, inventive TV producers and directors, and new technologies that enable dazzling special effects and accentuated punch-lines entree into our homes and psyches.” He goes on to say, “This is a bad thing. The disappearance of stupid advertising has deprived Americans…of one of our few unifying platforms: our ability, regardless of race, sex, age or creed, to ridicule Madison Avenue.”

Sarcasm aside, bad advertising can be effective – in creating bad reputations and public perceptions of products and the companies that make them. Rance Crain said in the same publication eight years earlier, “What supposedly sophisticated companies fail to realize is the debilitating effect bad advertising can have on an organization.”

There are MANY examples of bad advertising (both in taste or lack thereof or in claims made). Recently,  Mental Floss added to my collection with “Who Approved That? 7 Food Promotions Gone Horribly Wrong.” My favorite “ads gone wild” example on the list was for Hell Pizza, a name almost as weird as Naked Pizza.

Listerine, whose hand has been spanked for overstating claims in ads, was listed in “5 Times Drug Companies Promised Too Much (Or Explained Too Little),” also on Mental Floss.

It’s not just consumer products that suffer from bad advertising.  Bad nonprofit advertising not only has the potential to make people sneer or laugh at the ads but can seriously damage the reputation of the organization. Cagla Okten and Burton A. Weisbrod wrote in 2000 in the Journal of Public Economics that advertising and information have a direct and positive effect on fundraising. We might infer that a negative effect is also possible, if the advertising and information are bad.

Andy Goodman, an expert in public interest advertising, has written about this topic in “Why Bad Ads Happen to Good Causes.” It’s available for free download here.

I’m looking forward to seeing the end product when I get to be one of the judges for the Ad Campaigns final presentation. I’m sure the students will bring their best work. And I hope that, as we send this group out into the working world of advertising, they’ll do their best to change that 90 percent to a number – and advertising – they can be proud of.

On Aug. 30 I wrote a column called “What’s on your schedule?” It covered one of our first year experience (FYE) seminars, taught by Prof. Michael Perlstein. As a follow-up, some of my students have asked me to share information on a special event related to Prof. Perlstein’s class. So I’m turning over today’s blog space to the Venue Team:

After a triumphant Networking Night at Loyola, students from Strategic Event Planning and Management have been working on various projects for their final. One group of students has been working closely with Prof. Perlstein’s freshman seminar class to bring a unique production called Voices of Innocence to Loyola’s campus on Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2009, in Monroe Hall’s Nunemaker Auditorium at 6:30 p.m.

Organized by Resurrection After Exoneration (RAE), Voices of Innocence helps RAE raise general public awareness on facts and statistics for exonerees. In Voices of Innocence, four exonerees perform monologues that detail their lives and experiences in their own words. These personal stories expound upon the impact that wrongful incarceration has on an individual and offer the audience a picture of the exonerees as complete individuals, and not just victims.  The production also serves as a fundraiser, which helps RAE provide services, such as housing and job assistance, for exonerees.

Louisiana has one of the highest per capita exoneration rates in the nation. When released, exonerees typically only receive a bag of their possessions and $10 from the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections. They have often been denied job training, literacy classes and GED preparation while in jail.  Often, exonerees have lost all of their possessions, housing, loved ones and any connection they formerly had to their community.

To date, Voices of Innocence has been performed at several public venues and universities nationwide. Most notably, Voices of Innocence has been performed at Harvard University, Tulane University and the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana.

RAE’s mission for social justice coincides with Loyola’s mission statement, which pledges to cultivate students to be with and for others.

For more information on RAE and VOI, contact Ora Nitkin-Kaner, program manager at (504) 943-1905 or visit RAE’s Web site at www.rae.org.

Tickets for this event will be $5 for students with a valid ID and $7 for general admission. Presale tickets for a discounted price of $3 for students with a valid ID and $5 general admission will be available on sale in Loyola’s Danna Center from noon until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 1.

You might not have heard of Voice of the Wetlands, a homegrown group – to be precise, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization – dedicated to the preservation of one of Louisiana’s most valuable – and endangered – resources. But the members of the fall 2009 Writing for Public Relations class (CMMN A317) do. They’ve taken on VOW as their semester client and are working to develop media materials that will help VOW spread the word about the need for aggressive action regarding the wetlands.

Jodi Forte, Garlyn Gryder, Dominic Moncada, Kelsey Morris, Constance Thompson, Marimar Velez and Dominique Webb can quote statistics and present facts about the wetlands and its impact on people, property and prosperity in Louisiana and beyond.

Here are a few things they can tell you about VOW in particular and the wetlands in general:

Tab Benoit, the Grammy-nominated singer, founded VOW to raise awareness of and interest in the fate and future of the wetlands. Tab, a native of Baton Rouge and long-time resident of Houma, determined that VOW would be a different kind of environmental group, one that brings together not only those passionate about environmental issues but folks from the communities that are part of the wetlands and, perhaps surprisingly to the public, the oil and gas industry.

Louisiana’s coastal area produces $67 billion in oil and gas annually. That fuels not just Louisiana or even the Gulf Coast but much of the nation. Louisiana ranks first in the country in crude oil and second in natural gas production.

VOW partnered with Music for Relief to “Send Dirt.” For each text of the “dirt” to 90999, a $5 donation is made to the cause.

The Mississippi River controlls 2/3 of the USA’s watershed, based in the wetlands, and Louisiana’s commercial fishing comprises 1/4 of the nation’s total fishing industry.

VOW sponsors the University of VOW, an interactive discussion on the need for awareness and cooperation among all the interested parties. Tab Benoit travels to college campuses to get students fired up about the issues, often showing “Hurricane on the Bayou” and singing to bring attention to the cause.

More than 2 million people (more than 47% of Louisiana’s population) live in Louisiana’s coastal parishes. This important geographical area provides storm protection for about 25% of the waterborne trade.

And the list goes on. The class members work every day to learn as much as they can so they can help VOW speak for and about the residents (both human and non), the industries and the concerns related to the wetlands.

One of the projects the class will pass on to VOW executive director Christina Kogos, a Loyola alum, at the end of the semester is an on-campus event that will bring the University of VOW to Loyola. It’s called “The Wetlands - A Disappearing Act.”  Watch for details.

If you want to know more about VOW, visit www.voiceofthewetlands.org.