Author Archives: Ralph Hanson

Conflicts between newsroom and management at Washington Post

Posted on June 7, 2024 by Ralph Hanson

NOTE: Sorry for the recent lack of posts. I’ve been writing away on the ninth edition of Mass Communication, Living in a Media World that comes out in 2025. Expect to see posts based on some of that material as the … Continue reading →

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Video Game Examples

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Ralph Hanson

  Atari Pong – First Commercial Video Game? Mario over the years Tomb Raider – Girl Power or Male Gaze? Using Final Fantasy to Create Machinima animation Mortal Kombat Fatality Grayson the Fish Playing Pokemon Presidential Candidate Herman Cain Quotes … Continue reading →

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Everyone’s Gone To The Movies: 2024 Oscars Edition

Posted on March 11, 2024 by Ralph Hanson

Some thought’s from last night’s Oscar broadcast. People often tell me I see connections between movies that no one else does. For example I think that Rober Zemeckis’ Contact and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus tell thematically similar stories. And I have argued at … Continue reading →

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Interesting Columnists – 2024

Posted on February 27, 2024 by Ralph Hanson

E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post Writers Group Dionne is a liberal Catholic columnist and blogger for the Washington Post who takes a fairly serious, measured response.  Provocative without being a flame-thrower.  When Pope Benedict stepped down in 2013, he called for … Continue reading →

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What happens when a library burns? Depends on what the books are made of

Posted on February 7, 2024 by Ralph Hanson

How big of a book nerd am I? While researching book history this morning, I pulled these three volumes out of my personal library. Here’s some of what I found: Canadian railroad economist Harold Innis wrote one of the most … Continue reading →

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How Do Social Media Affect Young People?

Posted on January 31, 2024 by Ralph Hanson

Frances Haugen was a Facebook product manager whose job was to protect against election interference on the social media site. She worked at the company for nearly two years, departing in May of 2021. During her time at the social … Continue reading →

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Ten Accounts I Follow on Threads

Posted on January 30, 2024 by Ralph Hanson

This week my JMC 406 Blogging and Commentary students were asked to do one of their first posts by listing 10 Threads accounts they are following and why. You can find my students’ posts using the #JMC406 hashtag. Here’s my … Continue reading →

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Gerwig can’t overcome double whammy of directing a female-centric comedy

Posted on January 23, 2024 by Ralph Hanson

Greta Gerwig has directed three films since 2017, including Lady Bird, Little Women and the monster hit Barbie. All three were well regarded with multiple Academy Award nominations – but only the indie Lady Bird managed to score her a Best Director nomination. … Continue reading →

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When Unions Dominate News Over Media Conglomerates

Posted on January 18, 2024 by Ralph Hanson

Usually when we talk about the media business we are talking about the actions of corporate giants like Disney and Paramount, but in the summer of 2023, it was the actions of the movie and television writers and actors unions … Continue reading →

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When Scholastic Book Fairs Got Segregated (and then Desegregated Again… Maybe)

Posted on January 16, 2024 by Ralph Hanson

The Scholastic Book Fair is a long-running rite of passage for K-12 students in the United States when the educational publishing giant sets up big displays of books for sale at schools across the country. For your author, the Scholastic … Continue reading →

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