My blog's gotten too serious lately. That's what studying for comps will do to you. I feel like my head is about to explode and spray all near me with Social Cognitive Theory, agenda setting, interactivity, co-orientation and social presence factoids.

So to lighten things up, I'm going to embed this slide show from Flickr.



Also, stay tuned for big developments from this blog.

I was originally just going to add this as an update to my first post, written way too late at night to make any sense. But I've got to give Lee Stranahan, a frequent poster on The Huffington Post, the credit he deserves. He's been following this story far more closely and objectively than DailyKos. He also supports my original hypothesis - the blogs are providing much more relevant and better sourced information than the national media.

First, here Stranahan exposes the flaws in the DailyKos' initial reports.

Next, he provides his own evidence that Palin was definitely pregnant in 2008.

Finally, his short essay on why Palin's daughter's pregnancy is an issue is heart-felt, honest and on-point. This is the kind of transparency I teach about in my beginning journalism class, but it's too often absent in the mainstream media. Thanks Lee for giving me and my class a good example, and thanks for looking past personal politics to provide factual relevant information to a nation. Even if the mainstream media isn't taking note and following suit, many of us appreciate it and will support you.

Not much besides my comprehensive exams has been on my mind this week, but I have watched the announcement surrounding McCain's VP choice pretty closely. I guess I still held out a smidgeon of hope he'd choose Mitt Romney. When McCain finally made his surprise choice, I went first to the mainstream media. But I also spent a good deal of time scanning the blogosphere for anything about this relatively unknown Alaskan governor.

When I saw a McCain aid (and former member of the CBS Evening News staff, Katie Couric so smartly pointed out - probably right after asking this woman if she wanted to go out for drinks to catch up later) blame the release of Bristol Palin's pregnancy first on liberal and then on Democratic blogs, I had to respond.

As tragic as the story is and as much as I don't want a teenager hurt by unwanted and unnecessary national exposure, the blogs I have seen got it right. They provided strong documented evidence for their claims and even counter evidence supporting the other side. When even the media admits this was a poorly guarded secret, it suggests blogs are doing the work the traditional media should. But I'm getting ahead of myself ...

I stumbled on this story first on DailyKos.com, admittedly a liberal blog. I can't find the original story because so much has been written on the site since, but if you really want to here is a link to all Daily Kos stories tagged Sarah Palin. Yes, Daily Kos did originally float the rumors that Bristol was really the mother Palin's 5-month old son Trig, but it wasn't the only one.

A CNN iReporter made the same claims and backed them up pretty well with photographs and stories from the Anchorage Daily News. My wife was pretty annoyed as I called her over again and again to examine the girl's "baby bump." Despite what audiences may say, I think CNN would not like being lumped into the liberal or Democratic blog category.

What really unnerved me was this story posted on CNN today from Time Magazine. I couldn't stand Nathan Thornburg's smugness, his boy-those-country-folks-is-alright attitude, but even more I couldn't understand why he wouldn't use the information he had as a journalist to set the record straight. Why did he wait until Palin's camp made the announcement? I can understand protecting the girl, and believe me, my heart goes out to her and her family, but the rumors were already out there. In fact, revealing the real story could have actually helped her.

I guess this is yet another example of how the mainstream media still don't get the blogging community. You'd think they'd have learned after Rathergate or CNN's Eason Jordan that some people actually take blogs seriously, that the rumors they report don't just go away. Even if what the blog community is writing is way out in left field (which some of the deeper less credible stuff on Bristol Palin was, I must admit) I still think the media has a job, nay a duty, to check them out. By all means, when the media has the CORRECT information, its practitioners are more duty-bound than ever to release it.

In the end, I'll continue to scan both the mainstream media and blogs, but I have a feeling I'll learn more from the blogs. I've already learned that Palin's "troopergate" scandal may not be all it's cracked up to be, thanks to Josh Marshall and TPM Muckraker. Even Marshall admits some of Trooper Mike Wooten's actions were "quite serious" although the gives perspective that Wooten was probably not as rotten of a guy as Palin might want you to believe. Nearly every mainstream article on this I've seen says nothing about Wooten.

DailyKos is also following an interesting connection right now between Palin and the Alaskan Independent Party. I guess ABC News is now confirming this as well. Maybe they had to read it in a blog first before they decided readers might want to know?

Jay Mariotti is a genius! I don't know how he did it, but he realized something no one else has figured out yet. News, and especially sports news, he said is moving to the INTERNET! Wow, why didn't I realize that?

Oh wait, I did, along with hundreds of other people. But that's not my big beef with Mariotti's sudden departure from the Chicago Sun-Times. I hadn't even heard about it until today when a good friend told me about it. (Thanks David!) What really gets me is Mariotti's audacity in how he announced his resignation. Newspapers may not be the medium of the future, but if Mariotti really cared about sports journalism, I don't think he'd be so eager to jump from a sinking ship.

I mean, take a look at what this guy told the Chicago Tribune.

"I'm a competitor and I get the sense this marketplace doesn't compete," he said. "Everyone is hanging on for dear life at both papers. I think probably the days of high-stakes competition in Chicago are over.

"To see what has happened in this business. … I don't want to go down with it."

Gee, that's great Jay, so when the going gets tough, you get going, I guess. In the same article he talked about how he's fielding several offers from web sites. So I guess he's jumping to where the action is.

Give the originators of the Jay the Joke web site all the credit in the world for calling Jay on his bluff.

Plus, I am sure that his family is thrilled to see Jay walk away from millions of guaranteed dollars in a tough economy so that he can seek his* fame and fortune alongside porn sites, gambling sites and us. By “thrilled” I mean it in much the same way as any sane person would cheer an outbreak of Ebola in their neighborhood.

His decision isn't just about money, however. In a later post Jay is a Joke hits the nail on the head again. Jay's doing what's good for Jay, not what's good for the business.

The citation of Jay’s resignation due to “newspapers are dying” is bogus. Not that long ago, the pundit bemoaned over the supposed illegitimate blogging ways of those dreaded Internet creatures. And rather than stay on board and fight the good battle alongside Rick Telander to preserve the newspaper business, Mariotti fled. “Courage of conviction”? I think not. His former colleagues were not fooled and neither is the reading public of this city.

As a media researcher and former professional, I just want to echo Mariotti's critics. Newspapers are facing a change - that is certain. But to say they are dead and everything's gonna be Web sites is shortsighted and probably premature. Newspapers need the best people in line to help them through the transition to help them maintain their credibility and give audiences someone to trust to give them the straight scoop. Obviously, Mariotti isn't one of them.

But he does teach those of us who still care about the business a valuable lesson. Now is not the time to give up! Now is the time to look at what we do best, what we are trained as journalists to do, and find a way that we can keep doing it online. Maybe this doesn't mean we are the only sources for news now. Maybe it even means we read and (gasp!) quote from a blog here and there. Maybe we even open our news pages up to (gasp, gasp!) citizen stories and comments. But there's no reason to trade away the credibility we have left (enough credibility to get you a $6 million over three year contract) just because no one is playing by our rules anymore.

CROSS POSTED at The Cyberbrains

For his birthday my son got the peanut butter and jelly game from a friend. It's a fun game that he and his three-year-old sister really like, but when the four of us sat down to play it together, we ran into a dilemma. We got to a point where we all had two of the three sandwiches you need to win, but there were no bread cards left in the deck. We were left with ant and fly cards. When this happens, as Ryan W, who goes by Maxac on the Board GAme Geek forums, so eloquently put it, you're screwed:

"The game becomes an endless tedious cycle of all of the players stealing/blocking each other, making the chance for the stars to align and a single player to win very small."

The only reason I found Maxac's review was I went online to see if we were missing a rule somewhere. Online FAQs about game rules that creators didn't envision when they initially created the games are staples in the collectible trading card game universe. Just look at the long list of Magic: The Gathering rule interpretations. Wizards of the Coast doesn't have to publish this, (The wiki that fans have created may be even better.) but their effort to use the power of the Internet helps them connect and forge strong relationships with fans of the game. In fact, you could say this willingness to adapt has made Magic the highly competitive and popular game it is.

Now, I know that the Peanut Butter and Jelly Game probably wasn't intended to be played competitively, but Fundex makes a lot of other games. I might be more likely to buy those others if I felt the company listened to my concerns about the first one. To be fair, the company's site does have an e-mail address for customer service, but am I really going to write customer service about whether my ant can steal a jelly card from another player's completed sandwich?

My point is that it wouldn't be hard to create an FAQ on the site for each game. It would be even easier to create a wiki and allow the fans to answer questions themselves. But like so many other brick-and-mortar companies, it looks like Fundex doesn't get it.

(On a side note, the Peanut Butter and Jelly Game doesn't have a wikipedia entry yet. Maybe I should start one?)