Just a quick note today because I'm still in dissertation hell. I've got a mountain of data that needs to be cross tab and checked for covariance. But I just wanted to feature this article about the new direction Ohio University, the place I'm going to be working, is taking.

Ok, fine! It's about me! I think it turned out well. I was nervous during the interview, and I'm surprised my quotes make sense.

Found this gem in my e-mail today:

Hans K. Meyer,
Your account, 'Hansron', has been banned by the system administrators.

Ban: Disable Login
Expires: Never

That's it. There was no explanation. I'm just banned from iReport.com. I guess I can't be a citizen journalist anymore. Does this mean I can't research it anymore either? If so, I'm in trouble. Better start looking for a new line of work.

I'm joking, of course. I honestly could care less. I don't have any horrifying disaster stories or remembrances of recently departed celebrities (unless Bob from Sesame Street passes, which we all hope and pray does NOT happen any time soon.) The only reason I bring it up here is it adds fuel to my fire about why the legacy media, such as CNN just don't get citizen journalism. If you have such Draconian administrative policies that someone gets banned without explanation, then do you seriously think people are going to want to share their stories with you?

I had better relate my history with iReport first to be fair. I enjoy the site. In many ways, I think it can be a model citizen journalism community. CNN seems to be one of the few organizations to actually do something more with the contributions they receive than publish them. The network used to have a show that featured exclusively iReports. Here and there, CNN news shows also include iReports.

I based much of my dissertation experiment off the good work iReport has done, and I thought what better place to look for participants than the site itself. I skimmed through the user agreement and didn't see anything that forbid it. I thought I'd give it a try.

Well, less than an hour after I posted my little spiel in the "Save Newspapers!" topic, I got an e-mail saying my post violated the user agreement and was being removed. It claimed my post was trying to recruit participants to a CNN competitor and that I was impersonating CNN employees. I thought the reasons were pretty silly, but I wasn't surprised my post was removed. Honestly, I just hoped it would be on the site long enough to catch a few dozen people. I'm not sure how many participants I received from it. (Incidentally, the best places to recruit participants by far has been the two alumni networks I belong to on LinkedIn. Thanks Mizzou and BYU grads!!)

I also fired off an e-mail to the moderator who removed my post, not arguing with the decision, but simply explaining what I was trying to do. It wasn't rude in any way. That was two weeks ago.

So today, I get banned, and I don't know why. I can only assume it has something to do with my nefarious post, but I wish CNN would tell me. I can only wonder what it's like to work with the site when you are actually contributing what you think is journalism.

Look, if you really care about your audience and you really want to accept their contributions, then you either have to 1) accept them all, even the occasional piece of spam, or you have to 2) at least work with them to make sure their posts fit.

CNN, I had high hopes for you. I really did, but you are just proving to me that even as much as you say you want to hear from us, you only care about the stuff from the capital J Journalists who went to fancy J Schools like Columbia, Northwestern and Missouri. You only care about people who have memorized Kovach and Rosenstiel's Elements of Journalism or people who have experience working at an actual daily newspaper.

Funny thing, CNN - I meet all your arbitrary criteria, but you wouldn't know that would you because you never bothered to ask.

Sorry for not posting for a while, but I've been pretty fried. Between trips for conferences and looking for a house, while trying to sell our house in Columbia has kept me pretty busy. Plus there's also this dissertation thing going on, which still needs more responses. (Tell your friends!!)

So you can see that when we got back from Chicago Sunday, all I wanted to do was veg out. The kids were watching a movie upstairs, as if they hadn't seen enough on the 9-hour drive to Ohio, so I was stuck in front of the computer. Perusing through the category of mindless entertainment online, I skipped Hulu because I've seen almost all the SNL clips already (I still can't get Justin Timberlake dressed as an implant out of my mind. Good thing I can't find it on Hulu.) I decided against watching summer movie trailes on Apple.com because I've actually seen most of them in the theater. I settled on YouTube. I thought for sure I'd find some brainless stuff like dumb TV newsreporters messing up or toppling dominoes or Star Wars movies made with Legos.

Instead I ended up watching a compelling documentary about Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, the creator of Rat Fink. It was either that or SuperSize Me for the 10th time, or season 1 of Alf, and the best part is I didn't have to watch them in 10 minute pieces. YouTube now features full length movies. Now, you're not going to see Taken on YouTube yet, but I thought this was an exciting blog-worthy development because it demonstrates that YouTube is thinking about what its audience wants.

Flipping through the titles YouTube Movies offers reminds me a little bit of what NetFlix Watch Instantly looked like at the beginning. The list includes a bunch of cult films and TV shows that I probably didn't watch when they were first on, but I'm mildly interested in watching them now. It also has a lot of "fringe" content, such as anime that appeals to a pretty specific audience. My son, for example, will be stoked when I show him that all three incarnations of Yu-Gi-Oh! are available. Oh, and if you just caught the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie in theaters and you want to get all the references, you can watch the entire original series online, which I might actually do this summer because the only thing to watch is Wipeout.

Besides getting more free content, why do I applaud this effort? In other words, why is this smart for YouTube? First, YouTube is expanding its image. It's no longer just the place for viral videos. This could potentially establish YouTube as an entertainment player. But more importantly, it allows YouTube's to expand its advertising potential. Daisy Whitney writes in TV Week that pre-roll ads don't really work for short videos, but they work great on longer ones. Personally, I don't mind watching a 30-second clip before a TV show or movie. I do it all the time on ESPN.com.

The reason I like the changes at YouTube so much is it means more free content now, and hopefully, in the future. The flexibility YouTube offers gives entertainment companies a viable profit stream while also encouraging them to use online and in-demand platforms, which is where and how audiences are demanding their entertainment. No where is this more clear than in this Columbus Dispatch article about the battle between YouTube, Hulu, and other entertainment purveyors online.

The bottom line is I'm going to be spending a lot of time this summer with YouTube movies and relatively little on network TV. In fact, when the new season starts, who knows if I'll go back to the boob tube.

In other news:

On another YouTube related note , have you ever felt left out when a group of people are talking about a viral video? For example, do you have no idea who Bubb Rubb and L'il Sis are? Do you have no idea why Zombie kid likes turtles? Then go to Wikitubia, an ambitious project to compile all those buzzworthy YouTube clips in a searchable database. The site still needs work and contributors, but I applaud the effort. It's important to know the stories behind the videos, and I'm glad someone is trying to compile them. I might have to add my own research into the originators of Canon Rock .
A quick observation about classified advertising . I'm trying to reach average residents with my dissertation experiment, not just students or those who spend a ton of time online, so I put a short ad in the Columbia Tribune. It has run since Friday, and I have had three responses from it. At $42, I paid $14 per response. That's not really cost effective.
I pulled up Pandora again while I wrote, and I have to say my Ben Folds radio station rocks! Not only do I get a Ben Folds song every third song, but I also got to hear some classic Elton John and Beatles tunes. Throw in some new Keane, Guster, and Death Cab for Cutie and I'm all set. I'm still wondering why Summer in the City by Joe Jackson came up. Weird.
Finally, Junice is back!

If you know me or you've read this blog a couple of times, you know I have iPhone envy. I've wanted one of the sleek little gadgets for some time now, but it's hard for me to justify the expense. With that in mind, however, I'm glad I'm NOT an incoming freshman at the University of Missouri because the last thing I want is my school to recommend to me that I have to buy one (You can catch up on any of the 100s of blurbs written about this HERE. In fact, whether it's a requirement or recommendation notwithstanding, I think it's a strange course for the world's oldest journalism school (and one of the world's best) to take. It seems contrary to the principles I've tried to teach for the last three years of inclusion and diversity.

Again, don't get me wrong. The iPhone is a fantastic tool. It has impressive audio and video capabilities, as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education Brian Brooks explained to the Maneater, a student newspaper on campus. Students at the school have also tapped into the phone's vast potential for news application development in a recent competition. In fact, the growing iPhone app store bodes well for news organizations that want to reach their audiences outside of traditional means. Mike McKean, convergence journalism chair and Information Technology Committee chairman, said he recognizes the importance of cell phones in the future of news.

"Truly, the mobile phone is going to be one of the key components for not only students communicating with each other, that's the obvious thing, but in terms of trying to reach audiences," McKean said. "It's probably one of the most ubiquitous means of reaching people with news and information if you know how to do it."

Despite the iPhone's power and customizability, I worry that requiring or even recommending it to incoming freshman will narrow their focus too much. I'd love to see them develop new iPhone apps that make news exciting for young people. I'd jump for joy if they created an app that allows the audience to interact with the news more easily and conveniently. But what I'd love to see most is for them to develop an app that works on all phones, not just the one built by Apple.

In Principles of American Journalism, the class I just wrapped up, I emphasized over and over again how much journalists need to diversify. They can't rely on the same sources and the same stories over and over again. They need to step outside of themselves to involve people in the news that don't normally see their pictures on TV or in the paper. They also need to write in such a way that more people, especially those that don't normally pay much attention to the news, become interested and maybe even involved. Suggesting a focus on the iPhone does not fulfill that goal.

The gadget, while impressive, probably eludes the reach of most people, and I'm not just talking about its sticker price. Technologically speaking, not everyone will be able to use its full capabilities. What I'd like to see the journalism school focus on is cross platform development. If I were in charge, I'd encourage students to find new ways to use old technologies to ensure the news reaches as many people as possible. For example, KOMU, the NBC-affiliate on campus, does a great job with KOMU mobile, a news service that works on any Internet-capable phone.

One of my colleagues wants to take mobile news delivery a step further. Fellow Cyberbrains contributor Dr. Clyde Bentley has been named a Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellow for 2009-2010 and has privately told me his project will focus on finding new ways to make text messaging effective as a news delivery mechanism.

I can't wait to see what Clyde comes up with because not only am I certain it will be inventive, but more importantly, I know it will be inclusive. Even though Clyde recently joined the iPhone toting pack, he's worked with enough cell phones and carriers over the years to understand what people want and how they use technology. He was the first to tell me about cell phone novels in Japan.

I'd love to see the Missouri School of Journalism invest more in ideas that bring people together than ones that unnecessarily categorize them.

Just to keep people in the loop, and explain why despite my best intentions, all you get is one blog entry a week from me, I completed my dissertation experiment and it's now in the field. If you want to check it out, go to this link . You can take the study if you want. It's anonymous so I won't know if you did. I'm hoping not only to get good enough data to finish my dissertation but also something that will suggest a direction the industry can take when they consider asking their audiences to submit news stories. I've based it mostly off CNN's iReport, where I've spent a lot of time recently. I think the site has a good mix of the citizen journalism you'd expect - commentary, light news, lots of photos - but also has some serious journalism that exemplifies what citizen journalism can add to the industry.
I was particularly impressed with how New Yorkers covered the Air Force One photo op disaster. To me, a story like that one shows how journalists and citizens can come together to giver readers a clearer picture of the news. The opportunity CNN missed was compiling all the citizen reports with CNN.com stories to create a clearinghouse of information. Where was Eric Lanford when you needed him? Maybe that's the next step. It's not hard to do if you assign a dedicated reporter to it, With my dissertation and my future research, I hope I can steer r. But I guess I've got to get that degree first.

A post script to this blog entry: While I was perusing CNN.com for links today, I came across this story. My daughter is just getting into Sesame Street again and sometimes, before I get started working from home, I'll watch a little bit with her. I can't tell you how comforting it is to see Maria, Luis and Gordon still dealing with the muppets and teach valuable life lessons. She's a fond part of my childhood. I just wish Bob was still there. My brother still teases me about a picture I took with him when I was 7 or 8 years old.
To me, Sesame Street remains the epitome of good children's TV. They've responded to the critics adding new characters and increasing the length of segments, but the staff still create a show that's fun to watch and educational. And while I'm talking about Maria, one thing I've always appreciated about the humans on the show is that even when they are doing the silliest things, such as channeling DreamGirls to sing the alphabet, they don't seem put out or, on the other hand, unrealistically enthusiastic. (I'm not sure I can say the same thing about the First Lady in the clip I provided above.) They are just those old friends you've always relied on for a laugh, a smile and a little worldplay.

BTW, I couldn't find the right alphabet song, so I'm embedded Merilee's favorite instead. Here's a link to the entire video. This is just a preview.