Saturday, June 19, 2010

Meta-Blog: Blogging about Blogging

I admit I had not previously been paying much attention to the link feeds gathered (by Mr. Elliott?) on the left side of our blog.  But this one in particular really was a powerful story: Inside the mind of the anonymous online poster.  If you get the chance, please read it--it is a bit long, but hey, it's the weekend, and you have time, right?  100% great editorial reporting by the Boston Globe, in MHO, and very much addresses some minor things that Len Downie, Milt Coleman, and Sarah Glassen have discussed about this brave new world we live in.

I think the article also directly addressed the things I tried to get at in my Reynolds Institute application essay (in French, essaier, root word for our English 'essay', means "to try or attempt").  To post the text of my essay, I have made my own blog, so as not to clutter up this one--it gets a little hard to follow when 8 people a day are posting here): Of Trolls and Tweets.  It is similarly a little long, but those of you that I've talked to here, maybe you'll give it a chance?

I've also played with some settings in Blogger so I can copy and paste stuff, and make links much more easily...lest any of you veterans out there think it was easy, I assure you this required several consecutive hours being anti-social and nerding out in my hotel room.  And although this post is not about Reynolds Institute physical sessions per se, I believe that I am demonstrating knowledge gained, and skills learned.


I will leave you with this wonderful bit of "desk flair" from our trip to the Republic offices yesterday. I wanted to steal the one on the left.

I am also sticking to my nom de guerre, since it is quite relevant to the Globe article, and having shamelessly stolen it from a Dave Barry column many years ago. (try BabelFish if your Francais is not so haute).

Monsieur Pantalons Inteligents
(aka Zach Anderson)
Indian River HS - Philadelphia, NY
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2 comments:

  1. Mr. RewriteJune 19, 2010 at 3:44 PM

    I'm counting the numbered dinner roll already as a great bit of institute-related color, actually. Thanks for the article. Can't wait to deal with comments, presumably anonymous, on my news service's site to be. Yikes.

    Steve Elliott
    Arizona State University
    Phoenix

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  2. M.Pantalons InteligentsJune 19, 2010 at 4:05 PM

    Comment moderation is really the thing that I see as the biggest hurdle for taking our school newspaper online. People expect to be able to comment on everything, anonymously, and that is a real problem when those people are (relatively) immature, often didactic minors.
    It's the main reason why my students blog inside that "walled garden" where I have a list of who everyone is and approve every comment before it goes live. It's hard to keep up with even only 80 kids doing that; our whole school is over 900, plus parents, = a potential nightmare of commentary.

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