http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/

email: rshuler3156@gmail.com

A transplanted Midwesterner puts down roots in Alabama and helps show how "loyal Bushies" have corrupted our justice system.

Above the fold, two surreal videos. Below, a quick mention of some of the past week's pieces on ePluribus Media that you may not have seen and will probably find very interesting.  Opening volley: Surreal Videos -- "The Googling" Part 1 and Part III:

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After the flip, a brief preview of some of the great pieces currently on ePluribus Media.

The History Commons, formerly the Center for Cooperative Research, is working on History Commons 2.0. Why do you care? Because we're documenting history in a way that no one else is, and we need your participation. Not your money so much (we could damn sure use it, but that's not what I'm in here soliciting), but your time, your effort, and your writing and researching skills. I read your work in here, I know you've got mad skillz.  We need 'em.

Follow me below the fold for info on who we are and why I'm in here shilling my shameless ass off.

In this week's issue of TIME magazine, arriving in print and online tomorrow, columnist James Poniewozik uses the passing of Tim Russert to highlight the decline of the Old Media and the rise of the New Media, described as  "bloggers and YouTubers: a diffuse army of the uncredentialed, uninhibited and - most terrifyingly - unpaid.  In Russert, the press lost its most authoritative mass-market journalist, just as it is losing its authority and its mass market."

Poniewozik  explains: "It's too simple to say that the new media are killing off the old media.  ...What's happening instead is a kind of melding of roles.  Old and new media are still symbiotic, but it's getting hard to tell who's the rhino and who's the tickbird."

So, rhino or tickbird, hear this: He goes on to cite a DailyKos "scoop" this week in his evidence of the trend.

I didn't think I had much to say about the recent inter-blog Obama/Clinton wars.  Not much to say about the "anti-Hillary" diaries on DKos and "anti-Barack" posts on blogs next door on the net.  Not a lot to say about the exchanged fire over claims of racism and sexism.  Hardly anything to say about the foul language.  Not much about the current calls for renewed unity and some of the brush-off responses to those calls.

And maybe I still don't have anything much to say.  But I would like to take a moment to praise all of it, or very, very nearly all of it.

Couldn't get tickets or take time off to go to the Obama '08 event today?  Not to worry; Michigan Messenger has two team members on site now at Troy High School in Troy, Michigan to cover the Obama campaign event scheduled for early afternoon.  Minehaha Forman is already getting opinions from the crowd now waiting outside the venue, and Todd Heywood has already spoken with school officials.  

We'll be updating the liveblog as frequently as possible during the course of the event today -- check back frequently!

And if you have any questions you think our team members should answer in their coverage, be sure to post them here in comments, or in comments at our site.  We'll relay them to them as they check in from the field.

MORE BELOW

Political bloggers and others that use the Internet to communicate for political reasons are just the beginning of what will come.  We on dkos represent the prototype.

This is from my private blog.  For more go to http://shannonlstewart.blogspot.com

As the internet spreads ever further around the globe and the mass media is being swallowed by corporate giants, each with its own agenda, is it really any surprise that people are turning away from their newspaper and toward their computer screen?

The mass media can no longer cover all the local news that it once did, especially in major cities. There's simply too much of it. Only a handful of cities still have more than one paper. How can one paper, even a hefty one, possibly cover all there is to write about? Even in those cities that do have two, there's still far too many stories. Some have to go unreported.

Except they don't. Enter citizen journalists.

I'm going to take a step back this morning.  

I'm going to refrain from commenting upon the latest raging political controversy. Instead I'd like to take a fast moment to reflect upon the role of bloggers and the blogsophere in this day and age.  

[Ed. note: We are going to post periodic reports from the field as we ramp up to the Obama Campaign event in Grand Rapids this evening. Stay tuned!]

BUZZ NOW 5:55 pm: Obama Campaign has confirmed the endorsement.

5:31 pm:  Todd Heywood is at Van Andel Arena, will be liveblogging the event -- said that it's confirmed by the campaign that Edwards will endorse before end of 6pm news cycle.

WATCH FOR MORE ON MICHIGAN MESSENGER.

Watch Michigan Messenger for more coverage of the Obama Campaign events in Michigan.  Find earlier updates below the fold.

UPDATE -- 4:00 PM EDT --

The petition drive has now been launched at FireDogLake; click here to read the post.

CLICK HERE for the petition itself.

11:51 AM EDT -- Hey gang -- that plan to "split the baby" may have legs; there's going to a petition drive launched later today.  We have a limited amount of details at Michigan Messenger, with more to come.

• BREAKING: Petition drive expected today for new  MI delegates apportionment plan

We've also got some other goodies posted for you this weekend -- follow below the jump.

Good afternoon, guys.

I'm conducting a survey on the intersection of citizen journalism and the changes taking place in traditional media. The data will be used in a research paper submitted as my final in my NIU Media Management class (J449). If you are or were a member of the MSM, the independent press, a J school educator, or consider yourself a citizen journalist would you consider helping by answering the questions below?

Yup, we are so desperate that we have been marked as easy pickings.

That's what former employees have indicated to our intrepid reporter Eartha Melzer in her continuing coverage of private disaster response company Sovereign Deed.

You can catch her latest installment here:

Fear and failure haunted Sovereign Deed, say ex-employees

Jeepers, what other locusts have descended upon us already, taking advantage of our blind desperation? We know of at least one other such locust, about which we will be reporting in the near future. (More below fold.)

And Michiganders wonder why the automotive industry is in a sorry state of decline.

But Lutz claims his personal beliefs about global warming don't affect his business decisions.

Don't you feel better already?  Yeah, me too.

You can read the rest of this story at Michigan Messenger.

We've also got a lot of other new content today, if you don't want to waste your time on Lutz, check it out below the jump.

If you're concerned about how the media regularly engage in the demonization and denigration of liberal voices in our country today then you should check out the article at FAIR.org Friday. Voices that express mainstream American values and offer the only hope for the future of our country that is.

Taking Offense at Edwards

By the time the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries passed in early January, there had been several distinct cycles in the media coverage of the fight for the Democratic nomination. Hillary Clinton went from inevitable nominee to also-ran to comeback kid in the space of a week, for example, while Barack Obama was transformed from hopeful newcomer to sure-thing front-runner in one evening.

One media trend remained remarkably steady, though: the press corps’ hostility to the John Edwards campaign.

Sorry to burn a diary on this, folks, but my time tonight is short and I wanted to call your attention to two pieces up on ePluribus Media:

The Scream of the Peacock ... Journalism vs Infotainment by Roxy and Secular Saviors: Science Steps Up by me.

Both touch on topics that I think everyone here will find interesting and well worth the read, but with the focus here on the candidate diaries it wasn't likely that any crossposting would have helped.

Excerpts from the opening sections of each below the fold.

OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: After nearly four months of engaging the Ohio Legislative Correspondents Association (OLCA) to review and rule on a request by ePluribus Media to secure Statehouse press corps credentials for three of its journalists, a rejection of those candidates was received Tuesday citing "the appearance of political bias and a lack of adherence to professional journalism standards as referenced in the OLCA constitution," as reasons arrived at by the group’s board of officers.

In today's Washington Post is an article audaciously titled Storming the News Gatekeepers. The author apparently meant to explore the nature of "citizen journalism" and its impact on conventional media and society. The end result however is far less significant than its ambitions as it focuses on a single Brooklyn blogger and fails to embrace the broader new media influence on the blogiverse.

At one point though, the article takes a noticeable dip in IQ by quoting Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture.

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