The Butt-Slap story goes viral

(Bobby Ellis, Ball State Daily News)

Day 1
Public Safety Notice: Assaults near Worthen Arena and Student Health Center
Public Safety Notice
Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2010 10:49 AM
To: MEmergency Broadcast

University Police are reporting two complaints of assault following incidents at approximately 8:00 a.m. this morning, April 7, in the vicinity of Worthen Arena and the Student Health Center. According to Assistant Chief Robert Fey, two women walking in the area reported being slapped on their buttocks by a white male as he rode past them on a bicycle. Fey urged anyone with information about these assaults to contact University Police immediately at 285-1111.

Police Chief Gene Burton also took the opportunity to again stress to all members of the university community that they remain alert to their surroundings at all times and, especially at night or in early morning darkness, refrain from traveling alone. As appropriate, he said, students and others should make use of Ball State’s free shuttle service for convenient and safe transport across campus.

First story
Ball State student, employee report assault by bicyclist (Ball State Daily News online)

UPDATE: Assault victims make note of offender's unique bicycle (Daily News online)

Day Two
(Victims speak out)
Ball State student, employee report assault by bicyclist (Daily News print)

OUR VIEW: Campus battery is nothing to laugh about (Daily News print)

TV picks it up
Cops alert Ball State campus to buttocks slapper (WISH-TV,with video)

School Buttocks-Slapping Incidents Ignite Online Furor (WRTV-TV, with video)

Day 3
The local newspaper
Backside-slapping assault becomes butt of jokes (Muncie Star Press)

University president reacts
President's Perspective: April 9, 2010president@bsu.edu [president@bsu.edu]
Sent: Friday, April 09, 2010 10:08 AM

President Jo Ann M. Gora
As most of you know, there were assaults on women near Neely Avenue Wednesday morning. Yesterday The Ball State Daily News reminded the campus community that assault is not something to laugh about. I commend the Daily News for its stance. I also appreciate that two victims stepped forward to file police reports. This will allow our university police to pursue a resolution. The police responded appropriately with a public safety notice that asked for the community's help in identifying the perpetrator. The purpose of these notices is to elevate awareness about such incidents on campus and provide official information to mitigate misinformation.

I am disappointed by the reaction of a portion of the student body. The creation of a Facebook page mocking these incidents and inviting similar behavior for fun goes beyond poor judgment. Such mimicking and mocking has the effect of condoning strangers to violate personal space and touch others without warning. It is both insensitive and disrespectful to anyone who has ever been assaulted, including the victims, and to the entire Ball State community. This attempt at humor misses the mark badly and is an embarrassment to the university.

The personal safety of every member of our Ball State community is important. While I believe the incidents on Wednesday were isolated, the only way to ensure that is to work together as a community in a respectful manner.


Gora denounces Facebook group for Ball State butt slapper (Daily News)

Ball State president: Facebook page 'an embarrassment' (WISH-TV Indianapolis)

Other stories:
United Press International
Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette
WTHI-TV, Terre Haute
WANE-TV, Fort Wayne
WIBC-FM, newsradio, Indianapolis
WBBM-AM newsradio, Chicago
The Daily Show, online forum
Dave Barry Blog, Miami Herald
Fark.com
Deadspin.com

Catch-phrases:
- Buttock-slapping biker
- Ball State Butt Spanker
- Talking smack
- Ride-by spankings
- Rogue bicycling ass-slapper

WITH SONG -- Everybody Panic; The Ball State Ass Slapper is on the Loose

Buttocks grabbing Ball State bicyclist: Police Update (Photo of bottom)


Group of Ball State students call for butt slapping incident to be taken seriously (Daily News online)

Journalism, news work and paying the bills

In any revolution one of the biggest fights begins with language.

Today for instance, in a 24/7 world of print, cable, broadcast and Web updates, what exactly is "journalism"? Does it cover both The New York Times and my neighbor's blog?

Jan Schaffer says there's a difference between journalism and "news work." And the people we call citizen journalists, she says, might be better described as "citizen media makers."

Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, spoke March 20 at the Indiana Coalition for Open Government's Citizen Journalism Boot Camp.

She credits Columbia University doctoral student Chris Anderson with terms like news work and "fact entrepreneurs" - bloggers like Matt Drudge, for example.

Journalism is about collecting, validating, producing and publishing news, Schaffer said. "News work is bigger than journalism. It is sharing information, facilitating conversation, crowd-sourcing stories, smart curation and aggregation, data-mining and visualization ... social shout-outs."

It's less fun to talk about but I'm glad the business of news is getting some attention, too.

Schaffer's remarks in Indianapolis reflected views she's expressed elsewhere on entrepreneurism and the future of news, including at the University of Southern California in February.

"As I look at how the media ecosystem is evolving in communities large and small across the United States, I am more optimistic than pessimistic that citizens will get their information needs met," she said then.

"I also think that traditional journalists will play a smaller - albeit still important - role as the gatherers and disseminators of news.

"Others, though, will have increasingly important roles to play. They include citizen media makers, but also fact entrepreneurs, creative technologists, philanthropic foundations, universities, advocacy groups and even governments."

The J-Lab has been funding news startups around the country. Schaffer refers to "the promises and perils of this new breed of citizen journalists."

"They are not merely bloggers, inveighing against something they don’t like," she said at USC. "They are more than photographers or videographers, bearing witness to some catastrophe or breaking news event. They do more than post tweets shouting out some bit of news.

"These people have deputized themselves to systematically cover town news as best they can. Some have “beats;” they have formulated rules of governance for their news enterprises; they have guidelines for content; many have sought nonprofit status from the IRS. They edit content that comes from other contributors. They moderate comments on their sites. Many buy libel insurance."

Aside from grants, how does this work get funded?

"For the most part, they are doing this as a labor of love," Schaffer said.

"They are lucky if they can raise enough money to get reimbursed to drive to a town meeting or pay for a babysitter. They are looking to do more than just dispassionately cover their communities. They are seeking to connect and inform people in ways that might help their communities do well."

That economic angle haunts me because I teach journalism to college students. The work they're preparing for is hard, and they deserve to be paid.

Projects like J-Lab do a great job of helping us think through the nuts and bolts of content creation. The startups they fund are helping point the way to a future clouded for now by tough economic times.

We also need something like an "S-Lab," as in sales, to find economic support.

The future of news won't be decided by people who do it as a labor of love. There aren't enough volunteers for the endless hours of commitment it takes to produce serious enterprise reporting.

We'll always have blogs or outlets like them. Civic-minded volunteers will play an important role in crowd-sourcing, local-local coverage and community organizing. But if we want dispassionate beat coverage and enterprise reporting we'll need the kind of money that comes from self-sustaining businesses.

We're working on it: Online revenue is growing again, and the Web sites at some metro newspapers generate enough cash to equal newsroom payrolls. Some of us are experimenting with inexpensive multimedia tools to produce cost-effective online ads.

Ultimately, the same kind of energy and creativity we direct to the editorial side will help us through the business challenges.

We'll do the vital news work we need to do - and pay people fairly for doing it.
- John Strauss, jcs1122@yahoo.com

First lesson for citizen journalists - get it right

I was presenting at a conference for citizen journalists this weekend, talking about the "Marlboro Marine" story on the fascinating multimedia site Mediastorm.com.

The Mediastorm audio slideshow, here, recounts the story of Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller, whose photograph by Luis Sinco of The Los Angeles Times became an icon of the Iraq war.

The Mediastorm piece is a very powerful story of post-traumatic stress disorder, and Sinco not only took the photographs but befriended the young Marine and tried to get him help.

Sinco's work has been widely hailed, so I was surprised when one of the people at the conference, a woman whom I later learned writes for the Web site Daily Kos under a pen name, raised her hand to ask this question:

"What do you think about the way that cigarette was Photoshopped in?" she said.

I'm not aware of that, I said, and moved along to the next topic in the presentation.

Afterward I asked her about this claim that one of the best-known photos from the Iraq War was a fake.

"It's on Snopes," she said, referring to the myth-busting Web site, Snopes.com.

As we talked I did a Google search with my iPhone but couldn't find anything.

"It's on there," she insisted. "You have to go to Snopes and do the search from there."

By then the next session was starting, and I had to go back inside. But when I got home, I looked again. In fact, a check of Snopes - and everywhere else I could look on the Web - turns up nothing. The photo and Sinco have been widely acclaimed, and as best I could tell no one has seriously charged that the image was faked.

Miller, who according to media accounts accepted his fame only reluctantly and in no way celebrated his appearance in the photo, has never challenged its accuracy. Again neither has anyone else, as best I could tell.

Which made me wonder why someone would raise an accusation of journalism fraud in the middle of a journalism workshop on such shaky grounds - if any grounds at all.

I wanted to ask the woman that, and looked her up on the Daily Kos site. Three things struck me:

- The Web site allows its writers to publish anonymously.

- There's no contact information that I could find for the person.

- Kos is the nickname of the Web site's publisher. Accuracy doesn't appear to be a big concern. If a reader wanted to point out an error in one of the pieces on his blog, he offers this advice on the site's "Contact" page:

"I only write those posts written by "kos". Please do not send feedback on other posts since, well, I didn't write them."

Get it? If you think something's inaccurate here, the publisher doesn't want to know about it.

I couldn't find any contact information for the woman who attended the seminar and impugned the photographer's integrity. So I left her a note in care of Kos, asking for more information about the Photoshop claim.

Bottom line: It's good that we're hearing more media voices, and I'm happy to help train them. But maybe along with the lessons in audio, video and interactive graphics we need to stress the highest value of all.

Trustworthiness.



- John Strauss, jcs1122@yahoo.com

Daily News brings home national online awards

The Ball State Daily News won 15 Gold Circle Awards for Online Media on March 19 from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, including all six places in the Interactive Graphics category.

It was the DN's best-ever showing in the CSPA online division. The newspaper's online sister publication, Ball Bearings, added a trio of awards for Online Magazine Design and Multimedia Presentation.

The Daily News won first, second and third place, and all three honorable mentions in the Interactive Graphics category for stories about utility bills, a plane crash, astronomy and other topics.

The newspaper took first and second place, and an honorable mention for Multimedia Presentation for stories on the Peru Circus, energy drinks and Ball State men's volleyball attendance.

Other awards included:

- Second place, Secondary Coverage, for "Flight Path," the newspaper's explanation of a light plane crash that occurred after the pilot lost consciousness.

- Second place, Breaking News, for coverage of a bomb threat at LaFollette Complex.

- Second place for News Site Design

- Two honorable mentions in the Photo and Audio Slideshow category.

- One honorable mention in the Video category.

Here is a list of all the Online Media awards presented by the CSPA today:

http://cspa.columbia.edu/docs/contests-and-critiques/gold-circle-awards/recipients/2010-collegiate-circles.html#N1076D


- John Strauss, jcs1122@yahoo.com

Reporter working on "Indiana Breweries"

My friend John Holl, late of The Star-Ledger and The New York Times Co., is working on a book about Indiana beers and is looking for some tips. Contact him at johnholl@gmail.com or www.facebook.com/john.holl if you want to help.

Here's John:


"Indiana Breweries" will join the Stackpole series pioneered by Lew Bryson.

I'm working on it with Nate Schweber of the New York Times (he's also the frontman of a band called the NewHeathens - www.newheathens.com).

It's scheduled to be published in June 2011. We'll spend the next few months reporting and writing from the Hoosier state. Indiana boasts more than 30 brewpubs and breweries and I'm really looking forward to revisiting many of them. This book is a bit of a homecoming for me. As you know I was a staff writer for the Indianapolis Star in 2003-2004 and spent a lot of time driving the state and visiting a lot of fine breweries. It will be also nice to reconnect with some friends and family who live in Indiana.

Indiana beer is often overlooked by people, who focus on beers from Missouri to the West and Michigan to the northeast, but the Hoosier state has some really great places. We're hopeful that this book will encourage people to hit the road and visit not only the breweries but the towns and attractions in the area.

I think there is such a diversity among the Indiana Brewers that even people with very particular tastes will be able to find what they want.

We already have the list of breweries and brewpubs in the state and are ready to hit the ground running. What we're looking for is suggestions for other great bars in Indianapolis, Ft. Wayne, Bloomington, Kokomo, Evansville, etc. That way, we can flesh out the guide a bit and give people some variety.

And, since books don't pay a lot we're looking to get Nate Schweber into some live music bars to he can play for a new audience. He's the frontman for a Roots Rock band called the New Heathens. Their second album will be released in the spring.

Here's what the village voice has to say about the band:

"Local root rockers the New Heathens make the best with keeping their music focused, but simple. They sound familiar at first listen, some Bruce, then a bit of Graham Parker and the Rumour creep in. You're getting jangle in your guitar and smarts in your lyrics, but that's why you love bands like this in the first place, right?"

Anyone with suggestions is welcome to contact me at johnholl@gmail.com or www.facebook.com/john.holl

-30-

Internet mythology

People are increasingly weaving their own views of the world from strands of fact and fancy using email and the Web.

Thomas Friedman’s Nov. 28 column, “America vs. The Narrative,” gives a vivid example, based upon the reaction to the killing of 13 people at Fort Hood by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

Friedman notes Hasan’s support for Muslim suicide bombers, a seminar presentation he made entitled “Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam,” and his contacts with a Yemeni cleric who supported jihad violence against America.

All that, Friedman writes, makes him believe “that Major Hasan was just another angry jihadist spurred to action by ‘The Narrative.’”

“The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11. Propagated by jihadist Web sites, mosque preachers, Arab intellectuals, satellite news stations and books — and tacitly endorsed by some Arab regimes — this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand ‘American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy’ to keep Muslims down.”

Friedman notes the persistence of this belief despite U.S. efforts on behalf of Muslims “in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Many Americans assume the jihadists are deluded, but carry their own persistent misconceptions. A favorite uncle has me on his email list for every crackpot chain-letter he gets.

I say “crackpot,” because nearly every claim I’ve checked from these – usually some lurid story about President Obama, Speaker Pelosi or some other liberal enemy of the conservatives, is wrong.

Here’s a typical chain-letter, titled “Pelosi’s jet,” which features a picture of a large military aircraft and this caption:

“This Jet is the USAF C-32, Boeing 757, that MADAME PELOSI uses. And the Democrats want to talk about Sarah's dress??? Conservatives! Are you out there? Madame Pelosi wasn't happy with the small jet USAF C-20B, Gulfstream III, that comes with the Speaker's job...no, Madame Pelosi was aggravated that this little jet had to stop to refuel, so she ordered a Big Fat 200-seat USAF C-32, Boeing 757 jet that could get her back to California without stopping!”

There’s much more, but most of it is false, according to Snopes.com, the authoritative fact-checker of Internet lore. Snopes reports that the House speaker, third in the line of succession to the president, has been assigned military transport since 9/11, and that the jet in question was not routinely used.

Another chain letter is simply titled, “NFL or NBA?” and recites the supposed list of crimes and personal problems of a group of people:

36 have been accused of spousal abuse
7 have been arrested for fraud
19 have been accused of writing bad checks
117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
3 have done time for assault
… And so on.

The group that has achieved such low distinction turns out to be members of Congress, the email says – “The same group of Idiots that crank out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line.”

Snopes reports that the email dates to 1999 and is problematic because, since none of the people are identified by name, it’s impossible to verify the claims. It’s also odd that the email does not claim any of the lawmakers was actually convicted of anything – but only arrested. Criminal convictions are reported on all the time in the news. Why go to all the trouble to compile such a list, one might wonder, without adding the specifics necessary to make it believable?

Obama is the subject of numerous bogus Internet claims, including the contention that his birth certificate was forged and he should not legally have been allowed to take office. The latest turn in the story occurred in August when a Kenyan birth certificate was produced allegedly showing Obama was born in that country. The document was quickly proven to be a forgery.

What’s this mean? Rumors have always been part of politics, but never has a lie – or any other information – been able to take flight around the world with such speed. The real concern here might lie not in the existence and spread of these rumors, but the way in which some people who believe in them increasingly isolate themselves from fact-checked sources of information.

Newspapers are hardly perfect. But they adhere to standards of fairness and accuracy that require stories to be checked before they’re printed. But my good uncle and many others have given up on the “mainstream media” and instead get much of their information from talk radio, internet chain-letters and other unreliable sources that serve mostly to reaffirm their readers’ and listeners’ beliefs.

Country music's great lyrics

David Allen Coe

Working on a piece about "The Creative Spark of Country Music."

I once wanted to be a songwriter. I even ended up in Nashville as a news editor. I told our country music writer about my desire to one day write songs, and his reply was pretty deflating:

"Yeah, you and about 12 other people who got off the bus today."

He was right. But I still love a good lyrical hook - like the famous "mama" stanza from David Allan Coe's "You Never Even Called Me By My Name."

Coe gained fame as one of country's "outlaw" singers, and among other hits wrote the Johnny Paycheck anthem "Take This Job and Shove It."

Here's that memorable section from "You Never Even..."

Midway through the song, Coe starts talking...

"Well, a friend of mine named Steve Goodman wrote that song

"And he told me it was the perfect country-western song

"I wrote him back a letter and told him it was NOT the perfect country-western song because he hadn't said anything at all about
mama, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or gettin' drunk.

"Well, he sat down and wrote another verse to the song and he sent it to me

"And after reading it, I realized that my friend had written the perfect country-western song.

"And I felt obliged to include it on this album. The last verse goes like this here:

"Well, I was drunk the day my Ma got outta prison.
And I went to pick her up in the rain.
But, before I could get to the station in my pickup truck
She got runned over by a damned old train. "


That's a great lyric and a great story.

Here's a more recent picture of Coe in full outlaw style:

The psychology of creativity

This is a video about some thoughts prompted by the reading of "Churchill's Black Dog, Kafka's Mice, and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind" by Dr. Andrew Storr, a British psychiatrist who took an interest in the psychology of creative imagination.

Storr's essays amount to a kind of long-distance psychoanalysis of famous figures like Isaac Newston, Franz Kafka and Winston Churchill.

He says Churchill’s depression was actually part of what made him so productive.

"To avoid this state of misery is of prime importance; and so the depressive, before his disorder becomes too severe, may recurrently force himself into activity, deny himself rest or relaxation, and accomplish more than most men are capable of, just because he cannot afford to stop."

Churchill's personality fits the description of the personality type known as "extraverted intuitive," in C.G. Jung's "Psychological Types." This is a person who has strong powers of intuition, but is less inclined to think things through carefully.”

This theme of the role of depression and mental illness seems to show up with some regularity in books about creativity.

Storr's main question is this: Why do people devote so much time and energy to creative invention. There may be rewards of fame and money eventually, but "many artists and scientists struggle for years without attaining either, and some win recognition only posthumously," he writes.

Creative work, which he also calls "imaginative activity," is inspired by something beyond material reward. Freud thought that imaginative activity came from dissatisfaction: "A happy person never phantasies, only an unsatisfied one...."

Dr. Johnson called this "the hunger of imagination." From Storr: "It is surely this hunger which accounts for man's supremacy as a species.

"If man, like some insects, was preprogrammed to be more or less perfectly adapted to his environment, he would live ... with neither the need to look for anything better nor the capacity to imagine it.... Because he has only a few inbuilt responses, he is capable of learning, of invention, of assimilating novelty and of creating symbols... We are never content with what is; we must always strive after something better."

It's hard to know what to conclude from Storr's essays - especially for a person who is generally upbeat, hopeful, positive.

I’m afraid I may be just too happy to be very creative by this standard, but maybe these gray, rainy days of winter will spur me into a useful - if gloomy - productivity.

- By John Strauss, jcstrauss@bsu.edu

Palin coverage and the phantom quotes

Sarah Palin and her supporters complain bitterly about her treatment in the news.

And while it's not uncommon for controversial public figures to take issue with their critics, she has a point in one regard.

In her new book, Palin points out that she never uttered the most famous quote attributed to her - the great spoof on SNL in which Tina Fey chirped in wide-eyed excitement: "I can see Russia from my house!"

What Palin actually said was, "They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska."

You can decide for yourself whether that's one of those differences without a distinction. Collections of Palinisms, like Daniel Kurtzman's "The 25 Most Devastating Quotes About Sarah Palin," are part of the landscape.

But Palin's shortcomings aside, any public figure deserves fairness. Deliberate misquotes aren't new, however, as Wisconsin blogger Ann Althouse notes in this post.

When she asked her readers to make up a sniglet for deliberate misquotes, two Althouse followers came up with real gems.

Someday, if they're not already, "malapropaganda" and "substiquote" could describe tactics in the Playbook of Dirty Politics.

- John Strauss

Flight instructor

A former airline pilot who's now a flight instructor at Indianapolis Metropolitan Airport talks about his love of flying. This is a test of video storytelling techniques using inexpensive point-and-shoot cameras, in this case a Panasonic Lumix TZ-5 ($238).

Staying creative for life

People who work in creative fields have to find a way to keep growing as innovators, an author and design executive said Thursday during Ball State’s digital media conference.

Tom Kelley, general manager of IDEO, the design and development firm responsible for the Apple mouse, the Palm V and other products, said he met famed architect Frank Gehry recently and was impressed to see him still active and creative at age 80.

“It’s not hard to be an innovator at your age,” Kelley, keynote speaker at this week’s iDMAa Conference, told students in an informal afternoon talk.

“But what happens is, as you go out into the work force, it’s almost as if circumstances conspire against you, to drive some of that innovation out of you.

“It’s like, ‘No, we do it this way.’ That kind of wide, broad, creative thinking you do now, over time there are pressures that narrow that down.

“I talk to students about how to be innovators for life.”

Kelley is author of “The Ten Faces of Innovation,” and “The Art of Innovation,” which describes IDEO’s "deep dive" approach to brainstorming and teamwork in creating new products. Fast Company ranked IDEO fifth in its 2008 list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies.

The International Digital Media and Art Association’s conference, "@ the Digital Edge: Innovations and Challenges," began Thursday and ends Saturday at Ball State.

Thursday afternoon’s meeting with students leaned heavily on advice for people about to enter the workforce. Kelley recommended the Jim Collins book, “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … And Others Don’t.

Collins, he noted, said people should think of their abilities and personalities in three circles – the things they are good at, the things others will pay them to do, and the thing they are so passionate about, that they know they were “born to do.”

Kelley said he uses “reverse mentors” - younger colleagues to advise him on trends - to keep pace with a rapidly changing world.

“There are trends - there are new emerging things happening in the world that do not start with 50-year-old bald males,” he laughed.

Kelley said he also has a “regular” mentor, “and I encourage you to find one, someone who is five to 10 years older than you to share their life experiences so you can take advantage of that. “

But he said IDEO relies on its interns to help stimulate fresh thinking, a process he calls, “the eggs teaching the chicken.”

Kelley said some of the best advice he had heard about dealing with creative people came from film director Francis Ford Coppola.

“When you’re working with super-creative people, you don’t tell them what to do – you invite them to the party,” Coppola told him.

- By John Strauss, jcstrauss@bsu.edu

Ford luxury brand targets Gen X

You know that Gen X consumers have finally arrived when they get their own Lincoln commercials.

Sharon Silke Carty reports that new ads for the MKS sedan feature a space-age look with popular songs from the 1980s.

"To my fellow children of the '80s, I'm sure you'll recognize the music, but we've done it in a fresh, new way," Thomais Zaremba, communications manager for Lincoln Mercury, tells Carty.

Zaremba knows her audience. What late-20s-something wouldn't want to be decribed this way as the MKS target audience:

"They are fiercely independent, and they don't care what other people think," Zaremba says.

"We feel like we've found a distinct voice for ourselves."

'Dealing' a novel with index cards

Writers looking for a creative jump-start might take note of the new book from author Vladimir Nabokov, best known as the writer of “Lolita.”

Nabokov died 32 years ago, and there’s a question over whether this new work, “The Original of Laura,” should be published because Nabokov, a perfectionist had not completed it and wanted the manuscript destroyed.

Details are in this story by Robert McCrum of The Guardian.

Whatever the merits of the new book, some writers will be intrigued by Nabokov’s creative technique.

As McCrum describes it:

“Writing on index cards, in pencil, had become Nabokov's preferred method of composition.

“He would fill each card with narrative and dialogue, shuffle the completed pack and then, in the words of his editor, "’deal himself a novel.’"

Others have used the technique and recommend it as a way to get organized and start writing.

Stuart Brown in his article, “How to Use Index Cards to Write a Novel Outline,” points out that the cards are small, easy to carry around and update as new ideas arrive.

Index cards are easy to sort, Brown notes. And because rewriting and revision are so important, “They are easy to discard,” he writes.

“If you change your mind about an idea, you can throw it away without having to throw away the entire paper.”

- By John Strauss, jcstrauss@bsu.edu

The latest on status updates

A new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that the use of Twitter and other status-update services has more than doubled since the summer of 2008.

The study, “Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009,” shows that nearly 20 percent of people with Internet access use Twitter or another status update service.

Status updates are short messages broadcast to all users of a service. The messages can also be targeted more narrowly – to “friends” on the Facebook service, for example.

Twitter use has exploded in the past year. The Pew report said that besides its data, continuous surveys and real-time network data by comScore show that Twitter logged more than 17 million unique visitors in May, compared with 2 million per month in December 2008.

A sliver of Twitter users is responsible for most updates, according to research from Harvard Business School cited in the Pew report: “A random sample of 300,000 Twitter accounts found that the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets,” Pew reported.

The Pew research found that 19 percent of Internet users send or receive updates on Twitter or another status-update service. That is up from 11 percent in December.

Other findings about those who use Facebook, Twitter and other status-update services:

- The median age for Twitter users is 31. For Facebook it is 33, up from 26 in May 2008.

- Women (21 percent) are more likely to tweet than men (17 percent).

- Blacks (26 percent) lead whites (19 percent) and Hispanics (18 percent).

- Ages 18-29 use those services (33 percent) most, followed by 30-49 (22 percent).

- College graduates and those with some college (both 21 percent) are heaviest users.

- Twitter use increased from 6 percent of Internet users in August 2008 to 19 percent last month.

Mobile users are increasingly more likely to send updates. About half of Internet users have wireless connections via laptops, cell phones and other devices. Of those with wireless connections, 25 percent do status updates, up from 14 percent in December 2008.

Pew interviews show that mobile users wish to stay in touch with others and post content online.

The Pew report triggered several news stories, including a report by Associated Press national writer Martha Irvine writing from Chicago with the headline: “Grudgingly, young people finally flock to Twitter.”

“They think it's pointless, narcissistic. Some don't even know what it is,” the AP story begins.

“Even so, more young adults and teens — normally at the cutting edge of technology — are finally coming around to Twitter, using it for class or work, monitoring the minutiae of celebrities' lives.”

The AP story includes comment from David Silver, a media studies professor at the University of San Francisco who teaches a class on how to use Twitter and other services.

"Every semester, Twitter is the one technology that students are most resistant to,” he told AP. "But it's also the one they end up using the most."

- By John Strauss, jcstrauss@bsu.edu

BSU student paper wins national award

The Ball State Daily News has won the prestigious Pacemaker Award for general excellence from among more than 200 entries in a contest sponsored by Associated Collegiate Press.

The Daily News joins student papers from Yale, Michigan State, Minnesota, Kent State and the University of Oregon in the awards, announced Saturday at the 88th Annual National College Media Convention in Austin, Texas, sponsored by ACP and College Media Advisers.

Ball State was the only Indiana winner among the 228 entries from across the country. The contest was judged by the Poynter Institute.

Entries were judged on the basis of coverage, writing and reporting quality, in-depth reporting, layout and design, photography and graphics, and leadership on the opinion page.

More at:
http://www.studentpress.org/acp/winners/npm09.html

- By John Strauss, jcstrauss@bsu.edu