Ground Control to Cmdr. Hadfield – Winning Social Media from Outer Space!

Posted on May 16, 2013 by admin

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has just finished up his five-month tour as commander of the International Space Station (ISS), and he’s done a great job of showing how social media can be used as a great educational and public relations tool.  Even before going up to the ISS, he had an active presence on Twitter and YouTube, but following his tweets and videos from low-Earth orbit, he’s now a social media superstar with close to a million followers on Twitter.

But it’s his closing video from space, a cover of David Bowie’s 1969 hit “Space Oddity” that has truly brought him to the forefront of popular culture with more than 12 million views, as of today:

Space Oddity by Chris Hadfield

It is worth noting that Hadfield does his own singing and guitar playing in the video, which was produced by his son Evan. (And original artist David Bowie praised the cover on his official Facebook page. He also notes that Emm Gryner, who was a part of Bowie’s band from 1999-2000, worked on the piano arrangement for the video.)

Hadfield had previously recorded an Earth/space music video with the Canadian band the Barenaked Ladies:

Prepping before launch

To produce this:

And he’s done music with another astronaut as well:

“Ride On” Tribute to Sally Ride by astronauts Chris Hadfield and Catherine Coleman

But all this is not just about drawing attention to Hadfield, it’s Hadfield trying to draw a whole new generation into being interested in space travel. So along with all of his space demonstration videos, he’s tweeted images of Earth, life in space, and of the station itself.

As a child of the space age, I have to say I have been totally geeking out on how Hadfield has done such a great job of bringing our world’s space programs to life.  I’m also so impressed with what a renaissance  man he is, being an astronaut, and educator, and a pretty credible musician.

Hey, even David Bowie likes him…

(The class that I teach using Living in a Media World is called Global Media Literacy.  Guess this is a blog post that is truly global.)

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Obsessed fans, Iron Man, Censors, & Rush – Pop Culture Roundup

Posted on May 7, 2013 by admin
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End of the Semester Offensive Video Day

Posted on May 1, 2013 by admin

Couple of videos for you today: The first is a funny Hitler Finds Out episode that contains NSFW subtitles.  The second has to be the most offensive promotional video I’ve seen from a major American food corporation.

Hitler Finds Out That AOL Has Shut Down Comics Alliance

If you are any kind of comics nerd (@dwainsmith, I’m talking about you…), you were saddened to learn that AOL had closed the doors on their great comic blog Comics Alliance.  Of course , Hitler was unhappy when he heard about it….

Mountain Dew Uses Racism and Violence Against Women to Promote Caffeinated Sugar Water

This is so awful, I can’t imagine who thought this was a good idea.  As Mashable points out:

A Pepsi rep told Adweek: “We understand how this video could be perceived by some as offensive, and we apologize to those who were offended. We have removed the video from all Mountain Dew channels…”

Could be perceived? You watch and decide.

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Continuing to Learn From Your Mistakes

Posted on April 24, 2013 by admin

F-bombing anchor A.J. Clemente lost his job at NBC’s Bismarck, North Dakota affiliate last week for his ill-advised comments on an open microphone.  But then his flub went viral on the Internet. So now he’s getting interviewed on NBC’s Today show, with an appearance on Letterman to come Wednesday.  It will be interesting to see how this story plays out.

UPDATE: He’s going to interview celebs on the red carpet of a movie premier for Live with Kelly and Michael.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Learning From Your Mistakes – North Dakota Edition

Posted on April 23, 2013 by admin

So by now just about everyone has seen the video of A.J. Clemente having a really bad first night on the air at KFYR-TV in Bismarck, North Dakota.  The newly minted West Virginia broadcasting grad was reportedly practicing pronouncing the Tsegaye Kebede when he cut loose with a “f#$in s%&t” over a live microphone.  You can see the video here:

To those of you getting started in broadcasting, those are not likely to to be the first words you utter on the air.  A.J. was promptly suspended from the station and very shortly after that fired.

And then… the sports blog Deadspin picked up on the story, and it went viral.  You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing about the story.  The famous F-bomb clip even showed up in bleeped form on Letterman this week.

So what happens to Mr. Clemente now?  Edward Esposito, of the Radio Television Digital News Association tells him:

“Don’t worry, it’ll pass. 

You’ll always be “that guy” who lost his first anchor gig on the first day he anchored by muttering two very bad words right off the bat. You’ll always be the guy who lost his job over it. You don’t have to be the guy who sinks his career over it.”

A.J. is trying to keep up his side of the story through his Twitter account, though he’s been pretty subdued.  He did note that he’s going to be on the Today show tomorrow.

I should note that I was on the journalism faculty at WVU for 15 years before moving to Nebraska, and both A.J. and WVU (and Bismark’s NBC affiliate for that matter) all have my sympathy.  But I thought the most interesting comment I saw on this case came from my old buddy “Doc” Ivan Pinnell, public relations professor and retired Army lieutenant colonel.  He wrote on Facebook:

“Deep in the bottomless pit of every broadcaster’s stomach there was a twitch of relief when they heard A.J.’s story. Emotions? Sympathy? Empathy? Sorrow for A.J.? A desire to reach out to A.J.? Thank God it was A.J. and not me! Some station somewhere will snap him up in a heart-beat, and out of sheer curiosity some potential broadcast student and/or his/her parents who did not know WVU had a School of Journalism will pull us up on the internet just to check us out. In the long-run A.J.’s mishap may be a positive for A.J. and the Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism. Every cloud, even the darker ones, has a silver lining. We just have to look for it.”

Good luck, A.J.  And watch the open mics….

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Video Blogging Examples for my Commentary Students

Posted on April 23, 2013 by admin

My Blogging and Commentary students are hard at work right now on their video blogging assignments, so I thought I would put up some links to work by former students from this class and also just some fun examples I’ve collected over the years:

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What a Media World Mess – News Misfires & Successes Covering Boston

Posted on April 22, 2013 by admin

Last week was not the best of weeks for the news media, both legacy and social.  There was a lot of good reporting going on, but there were also a number of high profile screw ups that happened on the national stage in front of everyone.  And to be fair, few industries conduct their business as publicly as journalists do.  With that in mind, here’s a round-up of stories about last week’s journalistic misfires:

And finally, Neil Diamond leads crowd at Fenway Park in Sweet Caroline Saturday. 

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Fred Rogers reminds us to “look for the helpers”

Posted on April 18, 2013 by admin

There is an old quote from children’s television host Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers) that started spreading virally following the Newtown massacre in December.  It goes like this:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.” 

At a time when a lot of us were looking for words of comfort when something utterly un-understandable was going on, the words of Mr Rogers spoke to us. (I passed the quote on at the time through my Tumblr blog.) The words of Mr. Rogers were often paired with a photo taken by Jim Judkis, the man who for years was the official photographer for Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. (I learned this part of the story by reading an article by Washington Post reporter Maura Judkis, Jim’s daughter.)

This week, following the Boston Marathon bombings, the quote resurfaced and may have been been even more quoted than it was during the Newtown aftermath.

Slate had a good history of the “look for the helpers” story on Tuesday.  Rogers first published his mother’s advice back in 1983 in a book called Mr. Rogers Talks With Parents. He has repeated the story multiple times, and quotes and video of him telling this story show up after each American tragedy.

I’ve seen the quote show up on multiple photos, but perhaps the best portrayal was on this cartoon by Randy Bish of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review:

Randy Bish - Pittsburgh Tribune Review

Check out the amazing collection of Boston Marathon cartoons at Cagle.com.

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Remembering Roger Ebert

Posted on April 8, 2013 by admin

“Roger Ebert loved movies.
Except for those he hated”

It was hard to get the news last week that Pulitzer Prize winning film critic Roger Ebert had died of cancer.  Just the day before he died, Ebert had announced on his blog that he was taking a “leave of presence” from the Chicago Sun-Times.  He said that he would be limiting himself to writing only about the movies he wanted to as he dealt with a recurrence of the cancer that cost him his jaw, his voice, and the ability to eat and drink. (Back in 2010, Equire ran a fantastic profile of Ebert by Chris Jones that talked about Ebert’s post-cancer, post-voice life online.)

I don’t have the time to write the remembrance of what Ebert has meant to me since I first started watching him on TV more than 35 years ago.  Suffice it to say that he has always been the critic I turned to first when I wanted to know what critics had to say about movies.  One of the things I loved about him is that he wasn’t afraid to trash a popular movie, praise an unpopular movie, and to love movies that are just plain fun. (The NY Times called him “a critic for the common man.“)  One thing I had not realized until the news of his death broke was what a talented student journalist he had been working at the Daily Illini.

I have long talked about Ebert (and his old TV partner Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune) in my commentary class, and was scheduled to talk about him in class right when he died.

As I started digging through my blog archives, I was startled to see how many times I had mentioned Ebert over the last 9 years.  Here are links to as many of the blog posts as I can find.

But first, here are two of his reviews from television with Gene Siskel.

Siskel & Ebert review The Shawshank Redemption:

Siskel & Ebert review Jurassic Park:

Mentions of Roger Ebert in this blog over the years:

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Are mandatory cable channel bundles good or bad for consumers?

Posted on April 3, 2013 by admin

There’s been a lot of talk lately as to whether some form of a la carte pricing on cable would be good or bad for consumers.  The idea here is that we get big bundles of channels from our cable provider.  As a subscriber, you might have a choice of two or three levels of service, but no choice as to which channels come within that block of service.  Don’t want five flavors of VH1 or ESPN, but do want all of the History channel options?  Too bad.  If they are packaged together, you have to take all of them to get any of them.

Local cable providers, such as Verizon and Cablevision, are in a similar position, according to the Washington Post.  They want to offer subscribers the popular Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon, but don’t necessarily want to be paying for little watched channels like VH1 Classic or the gay-themed Logo.

Cecilia Kang reports that Verizon and Cablevision are pressuring media companies, such as those owned by Viacom, to give the cable providers more leeway in choosing just the channels their viewers watch.

The counter-argument content providers make is that the bundles make small, less popular alternative channels available to viewers, and that if cable providers only carried the most popular channels, there would be much less diversity coming out of the cable box.

The problem here is that cable/satellite TV prices are climbing rapidly, and consumers – especially younger consumers – are turning to streaming sources like Netflix for a cheaper video fix than their getting from cable.

Given that this fight is going on between content giants and cable service giants, it can be a bit hard to tell who is really trying to best serve the needs of consumers.  (My guess would be neither…)

 

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