Is it a database?  Maybe.

But what a newspaper is NOT, at the moment, is money-making.  Here are some numbers showing what has happened during the current college student lifetime.  [From here and here].

So, based on those numbers, most newspaper people are worried — even worried enough to do something about it.  Like turning newspapers into databases, for instance.

The New York Times started the ball rolling in October of last year with the NYT Campaign API, which can be used “to quickly retrieve totals [of campaign contribution and expenditure data] for a particular candidate, see aggregates by ZIP code or state, or get details on a particular donor.” [From here.]

And what’s an API exactly?

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I’m going to introduce you to the cloud.

Here we go.

If you are currently on a PC, download the free ZumoDrive application available here. And then, if you have an iPhone, go to the Apple app store and get the free ZumoDrive application there. That’s it. You’ve just added a free 1GB drive to your iPhone and to your PC that will automatically sync and share whatever files you put in it. Got a bunch of music files on your PC? Drag those files into your ZumoDrive and you now have all that music on your iPhone as well – and on any other computer with a similar installation of ZumoDrive. Very simple. Very cool.

Currently on a Mac? Download the free Dropbox application available here. And then, as soon as the iPhone Dropbox application becomes available (it’s on its way), you can download that application and do the same thing with Dropbox that the PC people can do with ZumoDrive, except more. Dropbox users get a free 2GB drive to sync and share their files. And, even better, if you are on a PC, you can use both Dropbox AND ZumoDrive — right now — for 3GB worth of free storage.

But you’re not done yet.

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In this spring’s Media Play class, we have been discussing how play behavior is similar, in part, to cutting-and-pasting.  That is, play tends to break things down and then (sometimes) put them back together again.  This can be both a destructive and a (sometimes) constructive process, but it is always a deconstructive process.

Deconstruction, of course, requires some sort of construction to have already taken place.  And play, as deconstruction, requires that too.  Play seems parasitic in this respect — and that is most particularly the case with digital media play.

Digital media play can be observed most readily in the recombination of existing media elements.   This recombination process has been called “remediation” (Bolter & Grusin) by some, but is probably better known as the “remix.”

Go to youtube, for instance, and search for “remix.”  You’ll find a lot of stuff.

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Environmental issues will play pivotal roles the lives of all high school and college students today. That is why I direct SMC’s Center for Environmental Communication. The days of hydrocarbon-based energy are waning. Louisiana is losing 10.3 square miles of coastal wetlands per year. There are serious concerns about the effects of synthetic chemicals on our health. Exposure of enlarging coastal populations to hurricane risk is changing the availability and cost of insurance. Ozone depletion potentially exposes all living organisms to the threat of increased ultraviolet light, etc., etc…

Your Loyola education will inform you that environmental changes affect our economy, culture, and well-being.  Before you get too depressed, you must know that the game is not over.  We are in mid-play, and informed leaders and entrepreneurs do and will have incredible opportunities to resolve the threats.  In so doing, they will improve the lives of today’s impoverished peoples and tomorrow’s generations.  Oh, and along the way, there are very comfortable livings to be made.

So, what can a Loyola student in Mass Communication do?   First, broaden your understanding of what “environmental concern” means.  Understand that considering environmental issues is not a fringe activity, and it certainly is not anti-business.  It is main-stream, and becoming more important every day.   It is patriotic.

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A menu system is a type of user-interface design that attempts, like all UIs attempt, to make using something easier.  When you set your digital watch, for instance, and cycle through the settings for hour, minute, second, month, and day, that’s using a menu system.  When pilots go through their checklists prior to takeoff, that’s using a sort of menu system too.  And when you call your voicemail to retrieve your messages, that too requires using a menu system.

Menu systems are fairly safe, fairly secure, and fairly useful.  But then, lots of times, they’re not.  Sometimes, for instance, it’s lots quicker and easier to whirl the minute-hand on your old-fashioned analog watch.  And, if you’re Indiana Jones and in a hurry, you’re probably not going to want to go through the whole airplane checklist thing — or take the time to punch in a bunch of numbers on your cell phone to hear what calls you’ve missed.

So there are pluses and minuses.

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I’m in the process of proposing a new mass comm course. It requires a great deal of planning, research and paperwork, but the demand for this course seems to be fairly strong. What class is this? It’s event planning, a mass comm elective that PR and ad majors may want to consider.

We had our first event planning course in fall 2008 (CMMN A494 Strategic Event Planning and Management), and now everyone’s asking when we’ll offer it again. Well, the Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise (literally), we’re going to put it on the schedule for fall 2009 (and many falls to come, hopefully).

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One of Loyola’s central themes is that of critical thinking – how it should be practiced in an academic environment and applied for the improvement of the human condition. In my classes, I stress nine concepts which I believe engaged people must use. They serve as my “nine-step process” toward deeper understanding.

1. Trade-offs: For every action we take, there will be a tradeoff. When we restore beaches in front of beachfront homes, we make some people very happy. But, there is only so much money, so what lost funding so that the beach could be replaced?  Education?  Health care?  Highways?

2. Unintended consequences: When we leveed the river to protect ourselves from flooding, we did not intend that, 70 years later, we would be flooded from the Gulf of Mexico as the sediment-deprived coast continued to sink.

3. Unforeseen events: Somewhat allied to unintended consequences is this topic.  A common failing in our society is the art of planning – long-range thinking and effective forecasting.  We must be better at using our experience to predict long-term results of our actions.  The problem is, it is rarely done.  We tend to plan activities with the primary target being short-term gains.

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There’s something about the word “blog” that makes me laugh. It sounds like a made-up word (and I suppose it is) that belongs more appropriately in a Batman comic strip:  ZIP! BAM! BLOG! It’s almost hard to take it seriously. We have lots of other words that describe putting one’s thoughts on paper:  journal, diary, memoir, column, op-ed, white paper, novel. None of these words is nearly as funny as “blog.”

What isn’t funny is the impact that blogs are having on society. We’re besieged by blogs: blogs for myspace,  news and  sports blogs, Christian blogs, blogs for neopets. (Neopets? Seriously?) Technorati counts over 119 million blogs. Who has time to read all that? Who has time to write it?

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I have been blogging for some time – not forever, but for a while, off and on.

During that time, I have put some pictures of myself on my blog – not often, but once in a while.

Here’s one, for instance.

That one is pretty old.  Don’t remember those glasses frames at all.

Here’s another one.

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