Let's get the spelling right...

In an article on CNN.com on Sarah Palin's latest attack on Barack Obama (Palin blasts Obama for ties to Palestinian professor) the following graf appears:

• Palin accused the [Los Angeles] Times of being Obama’s “pet newspaper” and said the
  paper would win a Pulitzer Prize for “excelling in cow-towing.”

Okay...

I didn't know that one could win a Pulitzer for pulling a bovine behind a vehicle.

The correct spelling is "kowtow."  It means to kneel and touch the forehead to the ground. It is an English version of a Chinese term to supplicate yourself before the emporer.

So who made the mistake?
CNN or the Palin team?

Students talk about the election

CNN.com has an intersesting piece on the election.

It looks at what students think are important in the election and who they are supporting: Students weigh economics, ethics

Just an idea of what student journalists should/could be doing.

Dan

Outsourcing Newspapers? (From Ted Pease, THE WORD)

Hell, why not? A California paper already pays for a guy in India to look over a California city's web pages to glean news and then write it up.

"Fond
memories of dead newspapers will do nothing for our communities. . .
. One thing we're exploring is having one news desk for all of our
newspapers in MediaNews ... maybe even offshore." 

--Dean Singleton,
CEO of MediaNews Group (54 dailies, including the Denver Post, the
Detroit News and the Salt Lake Tribune) and chairman of the board of
the Associated Press, told the Southern Newspaper Publishers Assn. last
week that newspapers might have to send news operations overseas to
survive, 10/20/08 (See http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2008-10-20-singleton_N.htm)

Speak up! Comment on the WORD at http://tedsword.blogspot.com.
Feedback and suggestions--printable and otherwise--always welcome. As
Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "There are no false opinions."

Consumer Confidence v. Student Confidence

Below is a news release from The Conference Board on the drop in consumer confidence.
A decent research/story project for your students could be to look at this data and then conduct interviews on campus looking at how confident GMU students are about their present and future.

Yes, such "student on the street" interviews would not be scientific but it will give the students the experience of researching (getting the hard data) and then trying to match it up with interviews.

News Release

 

Further information:

Lynn Franco (212) 339-0344

Lynn.Franco@conference-board.org       Release #5278

 

The Conference
Board Consumer Confidence Index^TM

Plummets
to an All-Time Low

      Oct.
28, 2008…The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index^TM,
which had improved moderately in September, fell to an all-time low
in October. The Index now stands at 38.0 (1985=100), down from 61.4
in September. The Present Situation Index decreased to 41.9 from 61.1
last month. The Expectations Index declined to 35.5 from 61.5 in September.

      The
Consumer Confidence Survey^TM is based on a representative sample
of 5,000 U.S. households. The monthly survey is conducted for The Conference
Board by TNS.  TNS is the world’s largest custom research company.
The cutoff date for October’s preliminary results was
October 21st.

      Says
Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center:
“The impact of the financial crisis over the last several weeks has
clearly taken a toll on consumers’ confidence. The decline in the
Index (-23.4 points) is the third largest in the history of the series,
and the lowest reading on record. In assessing current conditions, consumers
rated the labor market and business conditions much less favorably,
suggesting that the fourth quarter is off to a weaker start than the
third quarter.  Looking ahead, consumers are extremely pessimistic,
and a significantly larger proportion than last month foresees business
and labor market conditions worsening. Their earnings outlook, as well
as inflation outlook, is also more pessimistic, and this news does not
bode well for retailers who are already bracing for what is shaping
up to be a very challenging holiday season.”

      Consumers’
appraisal of current conditions deteriorated sharply in October. Those
saying business conditions are “bad” increased to 38.3 percent from
33.4 percent, while those claiming business conditions are “good”
declined to 9.2 percent from 12.8 percent. Consumers’ assessment of
the labor market was also much more negative. The percentage of consumers
saying jobs are “hard to get” rose to 37.2 percent from 32.2 percent
in September, while those claiming jobs are “plentiful” decreased
to 8.9 percent from 12.6 percent. 

      Consumers’
short-term outlook turned significantly more pessimistic. Those expecting
business conditions to worsen over the next six months surged to 36.6
percent from 21.0 percent, while those anticipating conditions to improve
fell to 9.9 percent from 13.4 percent. The outlook for the job market
was also less favorable. The percent of consumers expecting fewer jobs
in the months ahead surged to 41.5 percent from 26.9 percent, while
those anticipating more jobs decreased to 7.4 percent from 11.9 percent. 
The proportion of consumers expecting their incomes to increase fell
to 10.8 percent from 15.1 percent.  

 

Source: October
2008 Consumer Confidence Survey

The Conference
Board

Instant messaging Etiquette

More and more of us are using instant messaging to either set up or conduct interviews. (Let's hear it for SKYPE.) The problem is that some people are not as savvy or considerate as many of us in the use of IM.

I ran across a great article that explains some of the basic rules of the road when using instant messaging in wikiHOW. Thought it might be useful: How to Practice IM Etiquette.

Tracking Fed spending and making it local.

Thanks to Al Tompkins at Poynter for his Morning Meeting tip today about tracking federal spending.

Using the URL for the Federal Procurement Database I looked at how much money George Mason University gets from the feds for non-student loan programs.

Here is the URL for the contracts GMU got from the federal government.

There is no judgment on the contracts. I mean contracts from the National Transportation Safety Board and Geological Survey are not like the ones Michigan State got 40 years ago to train the South Vietnamese police.

But wouldn't it make a good set of stories for the students to look at what the contracts are about and why Mason won the contracts. (Obviously GMU is the best and cheapest but why did Mason even enter the race to get the contracts?)

And wouldn't it be nice if more info about what Fairfax County/NoVa companies also won contracts?

Are blogs now old hat?

A friend from Mexico, Ramón Pedrosa-López (email@ramonpedrosa.com) wrote:

Have blogs REALLY gone out of fashion?

In this "Wired" article (http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/16-11/st_essay), Paul Boutin says that blogs have gone REALL out of fashion.

More than that, he asserts that "Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004", and that the best thing we can do is basically close all our blogs and move over to the next decade.

What do you think? Are blogs something of the past?

Should we close them and move to the next frontiers?

Guidance. Please. And thanks.

Ramón (whose blog is on www.ramonpedrosa.info)

----------------------------------
And I add, not saying yea or naye on this issue but let's look at what has happened in the last few years.

• Mainstream media are on the financial ropes.
• Blogs create "unfiltered" access to opinion.
• Laid-off MSM journalists turn to blogs
• Many bloggers do actual research before writing -- albiet the piece is still slanted.
• Blog pieces are short -- usually less than 500 words.
• MSM outlets turn to blogs for more and more information about the campaigns.
• Suddenly everyone startsTwirttering and the resulting "stories" are becoming shorter and less gramatically correct.
• And the MSM continue to fail financially.